Chapter 21 #2
The grip was inescapable, crushing the shredded, glass-filled lacerations on his palm. Drystan roared in agony, twisting his body to break the hold, but a second executioner grabbed his heavy leather duster from behind.
They lifted him completely off the iron floor.
"Moros!" Nymeria shrieked.
She lunged forward, swinging the heavy halberd shaft at the head of the zealot holding Drystan's arm.
Before the blow could land, a third executioner stepped out from the phalanx. He didn't grab her. He stepped inside her swing and backhanded her with his massive golden gauntlet.
The impact was devastating. Nymeria was thrown across the room like a broken doll. She slammed into the ancient control pedestal in the center of the hub, her head bouncing violently against the iron runes. She collapsed to the floor in a heap of torn velvet and tartan, entirely motionless.
"No!" Drystan screamed, the sound tearing his throat to shreds.
The sociopathic, calculating tyrant completely dissolved, replaced by a pure, unadulterated, localized rage. He didn't care about the Script. He didn't care about the extraction protocol. He thrashed wildly in the grip of the massive executioners.
He threw his head backward, smashing his skull against the crystalline visor of the zealot holding him from behind. The glass cracked, but the zealot didn't let go.
Drystan twisted his body, driving his heavy steel-toed boot into the knee of the executioner holding his right arm. The joint buckled, but the grip remained absolute.
They dragged him toward the center of the room.
The remaining Vanguard filed into the hub, a wall of pristine, untouchable gold surrounding the captured anomaly. They didn't speak. They didn't gloat. They operated with the terrifying, silent efficiency of an automated harvesting machine.
They threw Drystan face-down onto the scorching iron plates.
The impact drove the air from his lungs in a violent, bloody rush.
Before he could push himself up, an executioner dropped a knee directly into the center of Drystan’s back, pinning him to the floor.
The sheer, crushing weight of the golden armor was immense.
Drystan’s broken rib ground deep into his pleural cavity.
He was suffocating. He couldn't draw a breath.
A heavy, runic-forged iron shackle was violently clamped around his right wrist. The metal bit deeply into his raw, shredded flesh, locking with a definitive, mechanical click.
An executioner grabbed his ruined, dead left arm. The zealot didn't care about the fused brass or the blackened, charred meat. He roughly hauled the heavy limb backward, bending the shoulder at a terrifying, unnatural angle.
The second iron shackle was clamped directly over the melted brass of the Weave-Gauntlet, crushing the metal into Drystan's dead nerves.
A thick, heavy iron chain connected the two shackles, entirely immobilizing his arms behind his back.
The golden knee pressed harder into his spine.
Drystan Harrow lay pinned against the scorching floor, drowning in his own blood, completely neutralized. The grand, tactical slaughterhouse he had envisioned had ended exactly as the system required. The anomaly was secured. The harvest was ready for transport.
He turned his head slowly, his cheek grinding against the hot iron.
He looked toward the ancient control pedestal.
Nymeria Shade lay in the shadows, her dusky twilight skin terrifyingly pale, a thin stream of dark blood trickling from her hairline.
She wasn't moving. The localized eclipse she had carried, the fierce, cynical defiance she had weaponized against the world, was entirely extinguished.
Evander Cross was going to put her in a cage, and Drystan was going to be strapped to a table and drained dry.
The executioners attached a heavy chain to the center of his shackles. They were preparing to drag him out of the hub, back across the Ashen Wastes, and directly to the Apex Spire.
The absolute, crushing totality of his defeat was undeniable.
He had lost the game.
Drystan felt a heavy, armored hand grab his silver-white hair, hauling his head backward to expose his throat. An executioner knelt beside him, a glowing, localized aether-syringe in his hand, preparing to inject a sedative to keep the livestock quiet during transport.
Drystan stared up at the featureless crystalline visor of the zealot. He saw his own reflection in the cracked glass. He saw the blood covering his teeth, the bruised, exhausted hollows of his cheeks. He saw a man who had absolutely nothing left to give the universe.
But as the glowing syringe moved toward his neck, the Valedictorian refused to close his eyes.
He didn't weep. He didn't beg for mercy. The terror that had haunted him in his previous life, the cowardice that had dictated his every waking moment, was completely, permanently eradicated. He had died behind a desk, but he was not going to die a victim today.
Drystan Harrow bared his blood-stained teeth.
He smiled.
It was a horrific, jagged, terrifying smile. It was the smile of a monster who had looked into the abyss, calculated the cost, and willingly paid the toll in blood. He stared directly into the soul of the golden executioner, completely rejecting the fear they demanded from him.
"Tell Evander," Drystan choked, his voice a bubbling, wet whisper that carried the sheer, unadulterated spite of a dying god. "Tell him the glitch isn't fixed."
The executioner didn't hesitate. The glowing aether-syringe plunged into Drystan’s neck.
A wave of freezing, localized numbness instantly flooded his nervous system. The scorching heat of the iron floor faded. The crushing weight of the golden armor vanished. The world tilted on its axis, spiraling violently downward into a suffocating, absolute darkness.
But even as the sedative dragged him into the void, the smile never left his face, cementing his final, ultimate defiance against the golden architecture of Kaelen-D?r.