Chapter 20 Vokar
VOKAR
The first sign of betrayal is silence.
Not the peaceful kind. The wrong kind.
A dropped-to-zero hum, like the whole compound is holding its breath in preparation to strike.
I’m in the command hall with Yorta, reading through voltage-routing reports, when every screen in the chamber flickers—blue, then red, then dead.
The lights overhead stutter, casting long jagged shadows across the carved bone pillars.
The warm haze of the morning lamps vanishes into harsh emergency crimson.
Yorta stills beside me.
Old warrior instinct.
His spurs flex with a faint scraping sound.
“…That,” he growls, “was not a glitch.”
I open my mouth to answer, but the room gives me its own reply.
A deep whump vibrates through the floor—followed by the unmistakable staccato crackle of internal power relays shutting down. The alarms should start screaming.
They don’t.
Trebuchet.
Only he could slip past our systems like a ghost with a surgeon’s hands.
My upper lip curls back in a snarl.
“Systems are blind,” Yorta spits. “He cut us at the spine.”
I pivot toward the main exit—then the wall beside it explodes inward.
Shards of wood and stone fly like daggers. I shield Yorta with my body as dust roars through the hall in a choking wave. Something heavy crashes through the debris, boots slamming onto the shattered floor.
Arnab.
He stands framed in smoke, grinning that feral, starving-wolf grin that always marked him as dangerous, even as a youth. Blood—not his—splashes his bone plates, trailing down the sharp ridges of his elbows.
“TRAITOR!” Yorta roars.
Arnab laughs, a low, wet sound. “Pretender king,” he spits happily. “Today you fall.”
More bodies pour in behind him—Reapers I’d trained, fed, trusted. Their eyes are wild. Their faces twisted with the thrill of sanctioned violence.
The coup begins.
And it begins with my own warriors raising blades against me.
I launch forward.
My claws slash the first throat before the traitor even lifts his weapon. Warm spray hits my chest. Someone screams. Someone else cheers. The hall erupts into chaos—metal on bone, bone on flesh, growls and shouts colliding into a single monstrous roar.
I’m not thinking.
I’m moving.
War takes the reins—muscle memory older than diplomacy, older than the reforms I’ve forced down too many resistant throats.
I tear through three bodies in seconds. Spur, fist, knee. Bone hits armor. Armor splits. A rib cracks in my grip like brittle kindling. A blade slices my shoulder—shallow, glancing—but it’s enough to send heat surging through me.
Blood slicks the stone under my boots. My breath tastes like iron.
Yorta falls back beside me, fighting one-armed—his other hanging limp, bone spur shattered. But he’s still deadly, even wounded. He snaps a younger Reaper’s neck with the butt of his elbow.
But there are too many.
Too many blades.
Too many traitors.
And somewhere behind them—Trebuchet’s shadow lingering like a curse.
Arnab steps forward again, raising his sword. “Look at you,” he sneers. “Drowning in your own idealism. Did you truly think we’d follow a king who beds a soft-skinned pet? Who trades raiding for… farming?”
His voice drips contempt.
Rage floods me cold and clean.
I charge.
He blocks—but barely. Our blades clash with a thunderous crack. He slides back several feet, boots carving trenches in the stone. His grin widens, maddened.
“Still strong, old friend,” Arnab taunts. “But not strong enough.”
I am about to rip out his throat—
—when I hear her.
“Vokar!”
Freya.
My heart stutters. I whip around and see her across the hall—barreling toward me, weaving through toppled chairs and broken stone. Her eyes wide, terrified, but blazing with that human fire I crave like air.
“Freya—NO!” I bellow.
A pair of Reapers grab her arms. She kicks one viciously, bites the other—but they’re warriors twice her mass. They drag her back as she thrashes.
My vision goes red.
I tear free of the Reaper in front of me—splitting his skull with a clawed punch—and lunge toward her.
I almost reach her.
Almost.
A hulking silhouette drops from the shattered upper balcony with impossible grace—metal boots denting the floor, servo-motors whining softly.
Trebuchet.
His eyes glow faintly beneath the strips of grafted skin stretched over his skull. His voice is a hiss of static and something colder.
“You’re predictable, Warlord.”
I roar and charge.
He moves faster than flesh should. Faster than bone. Faster than me, even in blood-fever.
I swing—
—he sidesteps.
Yorta stumbles, bleeding heavily. Arnab laughs somewhere behind the smoke.
Freya screams my name again.
I shove past debris, tearing through one of the warriors holding her—but it’s too late.
Trebuchet turns—not toward me.
Toward her.
“Don’t—!” I snarl.
He strikes.
A flash of metal.
A sickening crack.
Freya’s head snaps to the side—her body going eerily still for half a heartbeat before she collapses like someone cut her strings.
The sound she makes—small, choked—rips something open inside me.
“NO!”
My roar shakes the hall.
The roar of rage inside me bangs against my skull like war drums in a metal tomb — but the prison they gave me isn’t metal. It’s light. Hollow. Liquid death in suspense.
One moment I’m crouched over Freya’s limp body, senses raging — copper blood, splintered wood, the sharp tang of betrayal — and the next, a shimmer in the air warps reality itself.
The walls of the hall blur, light bends, and then the world folds in and around me.
A bubble — invisible but real — materializes in seconds, cracking the stone floor beneath with unnatural pressure.
I thrash — claws rending the air — but the barrier holds. It hums. Buzzes. A low-pitch thrumming vibration that skews bone, rattles armor plates. I try to punch it. I try to tear it. I try to bite. But all I catch is empty air and the hollow taste of fury.
From beyond the ghost-glass walls, treacherous voices echo. Arnab laughs — low, wet with triumph. “Look at him, dying king. No claws, no spurs — no power.”
Trebuchet’s voice, calm and cold, comes next, soft as syn-oxide dripping: “A king must learn humility before he crowns his bride.”
The bubble jerks. Hooks catch under my arms, snap-locks fasten around shoulders and wrists. I’m lifted — suspended — a cargo of rage. My limbs flail; each movement sends bone-plates grinding and joints screaming. I feel every brittle fracture they once healed, every war-scar crack under stress.
Freya’s scream splits the air — somewhere distant, muffled by corridors and locking doors.
I strain forward, claw-hand scraping against the invisible wall — nails ripping grooves in air that doesn’t yield.
I see her silhouette, tossed roughly by two traitors: one sweaty, roaring; one calm, mechanical, darker than guilt.
“Hold her!” one of them commands. He smacks her side with the butt of a rifle. She tries to brace — curls up — but the impact tilts her. Her head snaps. Eyes roll upward. Body goes slack.
“No!” I roar. It’s not a war-cry, not a challenge.
It’s agony — a broken howl of love, betrayal, and failure wrapped in one.
The bubble shakes violently, then hisses as power surges.
A halo of blue-white arcs across the wall — chance flickering like dying hope.
But the locks hold. The prison stays tight.
A stretcher-skiff rides into place beneath me.
I’m lowered — limp as a corpse — into its cradle.
The crate-walls rise instantly, sealing me inside.
The world tilts. Blood, sweat, metal. The pungent stink of charred wiring, scorched walls, betrayed blood.
I catch only fragments: the roar of dread, the moans of other wounded defenders, the faint whine of engines starting up.
Through a viewport I glimpse the compound shrinking — lights flickering, fires licking corridors, chaos blooming like a sickness. The traitors speak of “rebirth,” of casting off old bones, forging new blood. Their voices echo distant and cold inside the transport — the promise of ash and ruin.
Then the skiff jolts. We drop.
The bottom falls out.
The chute opens.
Darkness swallows me whole.
The fall lasts too long. Time warps. My body slams against containment ribs of the bubble — force ricocheting through joints, rattling bone-straps, bleeding pain that crushes breath out of lungs.
The bubble vibrates like a dying star. I hear metal screaming, the snap of supporting ribs giving way — then nothing but crushing blackness and the slow drip of blood echoing in my ears.
The final blow is silence: a hollow thud, then the snap-crack of energy dispersal.
The sphere shatters around me — glass spatter of light and distorted noise.
I free-fall through the air, arms flailing, lungs burning.
A hiss of stale wind, rock scraping teeth, stone edges sliding razor-sharp under my belt and spurred boots.
My spine slams the wall of the crevasse. Hard. Bone-plate shuds, joints compress. Pain rips tooth-deep. My ribs snap over each other like dry branches under weight. My vision bleeds — white-light sparks behind dark lids.
My senses go out quicker than dreams. The world spins — a vortex of dust, rock, shattered oxygen — and I fight to stay alive. Not for me. Not for revenge. For her.
Consciousness fades, but instinct claws. Bone memory. Survival muscle-reflex. I roll against the stone floor. Black gravel bites. Cold seeps into armor plate, seeps into marrow. My claws dig deep — cracking grit under nails. I grip the jagged rock with every ounce of strength left.
Pain screams. Blood fills my mouth with iron and salt. My lungs burn. Each breath a battle. But I taste something else — something solid, something valuable: purpose.
Her name echoes in my skull. Freya.
I refuse to die.