A Breath of Fresh Air
"Kill him!" Garrick shrieked, his voice cracking with a pitch of absolute panic. "Tear him apart! Now!"
The twenty elite enforcers shook off the paralyzing weight of Cassian's Aetheric density. They were cornered rats, and cornered rats fought with everything they had. The command center erupted in a blinding, chaotic flash of stolen Vanguard power.
Plasma whips ignited. Kinetic hammers buckled the metal floor grates. Heavy rotary cannons spooled up, their barrels glowing white-hot as the elites unleashed a coordinated, overwhelming barrage designed to vaporize the Inquisitor where he stood.
Cassian didn't even draw his sword.
He sparked a Tier III Kinetic-Dash, completely vanishing from the center of the room before the first plasma bolt even reached his coordinates. The overlapping crossfire of the enforcers slammed into the empty space, melting the star-metal shackles Cassian had left behind into a puddle of glowing slag.
Cassian materialized directly behind the heaviest gunner in the room.
"You rely too much on the trigger," Cassian whispered into the man's ear.
He didn't use a flashy core. He simply reached out and gripped the back of the man's neck, pulsing a microscopic Tier IV Nerve-Shatter directly into his spinal column. The gunner's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed, instantly dead before his body hit the floor.
The remaining nineteen spun, roaring in fury. Three of them lunged simultaneously, swinging heavy kinetic-blades.
Cassian sidestepped the first blade with flawless, frictionless grace. He caught the wrist of the second attacker, using the man's own momentum to pull him forward into the path of the third blade. As the friendly fire severed the enforcer's arm, Cassian sparked a Tier IV Aero-Shear in the palm of his hand.
He swept his arm in a tight, horizontal arc. A crescent of compressed, razor-sharp wind decapitated four enforcers at once. Their helmets hit the floor with a synchronized, sickening thud.
Garrick watched in absolute, paralyzed horror as his elite guard—the deadliest killers on Krieg's Folly—were dismantled like training dummies.
Cassian was a silver blur. He didn't fight with the desperate, feral energy of the outer rim. He fought with the cold, mathematical perfection of an ancient executioner. He moved through the chaotic crossfire without a single wasted motion. A palm strike to a chest plate sent a localized gravitational shockwave that crushed an enforcer's ribs into dust. A flick of his wrist redirected a stream of superheated plasma back into the face of the man who fired it.
In less than ten seconds, nineteen of the twenty elites were dead, their stolen cores sputtering out in the growing pools of blood.
The final enforcer, a towering man wielding a pair of thermal-axes, let out a terrified scream and charged blindly.
Cassian didn't dodge. He stood his ground, letting the man close the distance. Just as the axes came down, Cassian sparked a Tier III Density-Shift in his left forearm, turning his bones harder than white-dwarf matter. He raised his arm, effortlessly blocking the superheated axes. The weapons shattered against his sleeve.
With his right hand, Cassian grabbed the man by the throat, lifted him two feet off the ground, and casually tossed him thirty feet across the room, where he crashed headfirst into Garrick's star-metal throne.
Silence slammed back into the command center, broken only by the heavy rain beating against the skylights and the erratic, terrified humming of the three cores embedded in Garrick's chest plate.
Cassian stood amidst the slaughter, not a single drop of blood on his restored skin. He slowly turned his silver gaze toward the Warlord.
"Twenty elites," Cassian noted dryly, slowly walking toward the throne. "I suppose standards have slipped while I was away."
Garrick roared, a sound born of pure, animalistic terror. He lunged at Cassian, swinging the heavy plasma-cleaver in a desperate, two-handed downward strike.
Cassian stepped inside the swing, slapping the flat of the glowing blade aside with the back of his hand. He stepped into Garrick's guard and drove a brutal, unaugmented knee directly into the Warlord's stomach.
The impact folded Garrick in half. Before the Warlord could gag, Cassian brought his elbow down like a pile driver onto the back of Garrick's neck.
Garrick smashed face-first into the metal floor. His plasma-cleaver skittered away into a puddle of blood.
Cassian didn't let him recover. He grabbed Garrick by the back of his heavy poly-steel collar, hauled him to his feet, and threw him brutally against a support pillar. Garrick slumped against the steel, his face a bruised, bloody mess, gasping for air as his corrupted cores whined violently in his chest.
Cassian stepped up close, pinning the Warlord in place.
"You thought you were a king because you sat on a pile of scrap and bullied scavengers," Cassian said softly, delivering a short, sharp jab directly to Garrick's broken nose. The Warlord whimpered. "But you forgot the golden rule of the Azure Expanse, Garrick. You never wake the ghosts."
Garrick looked up, his eyes bloodshot and wide with panic. "Wait... wait, please! I have credits! I have ships!"
Cassian tilted his head, his silver eyes flashing with a dark, ancient amusement.
"Tell me, Garrick," Cassian murmured, leaning in close. "Do you remember why I had to lock you up in the deepest cell of the Tartarus block three centuries ago? Before you broke out? Before you played warlord?"
Garrick's bloody face suddenly froze. The desperate pleading died in his throat. The realization hit him like a physical blow, turning his expression entirely to stone.
"That's right," Cassian whispered, his smile turning razor-sharp. "You never learned moderation. You overclock your cores."
Cassian didn't draw a weapon. He simply placed his open palm flat against the center of Garrick's poly-steel chest plate, directly over the three stolen Aether-cores.
Cassian sparked a Tier V Resonance-Cascade, but he didn't use it as a weapon. He used it as a battery. He flooded Garrick's poorly maintained, corrupted cores with an overwhelming, catastrophic surge of pure, refined Aether.
"Enjoy the power," Cassian said, pushing off the pillar and taking a slow step backward.
Garrick looked down at his chest. The three cores didn't just hum; they shrieked. The purple light flared to a blinding, sun-like intensity. The casings cracked.
"No! Wait—!"
The three overclocked cores simultaneously detonated.
The explosion was contained but absolute. Warlord Garrick was instantly vaporized from the chest outward. A violent flash of purple light illuminated the entire command center, and when it faded, there was nothing left of the Warlord but a pair of smoking boots and a fine layer of ash drifting onto the blood-soaked floor.
Cassian brushed a speck of dust from his sleeve. He took a deep, steadying breath, letting the heavy, metallic smell of the room wash over him. It wasn't perfect, but it felt remarkably like a breath of fresh air.
He turned his back on the throne and walked slowly toward the heavy blast doors.
As he stepped out of the command center and into the sprawling, rain-slicked courtyard of the fortress, he was met by an army. Hundreds of Garrick's scavengers, hunters, and mercenaries had gathered outside, their weapons drawn, having heard the muffled explosions from within.
When the heavy doors parted, they aimed their rifles at the lone figure stepping out of the smoke.
But when they saw the Inquisitor—unarmed, completely unharmed, and glowing with an Aetheric density that made the rain physically bend around his body—nobody pulled the trigger. The entire courtyard froze in absolute, terrified silence.
Cassian stopped at the top of the metal stairs. He let his silver gaze sweep slowly over the army of killers.
He locked eyes with the closest man—a shaking, heavily scarred lieutenant holding a kinetic rifle that was visibly trembling in his grip.
Cassian pointed a single, steady finger at him.
"You," Cassian said, his voice carrying effortlessly over the sound of the rain.
The lieutenant gulped, his face draining of color. "Y-yes?"
"You're the new leader now," Cassian declared smoothly. "Congratulations on the promotion."
The lieutenant blinked, completely stunned, lowering his rifle a fraction of an inch. "I... I am?"
"You are," Cassian confirmed. "And your first official act as Warlord is to walk over to that terminal and clear the five-million-credit bounty off my head. Erase it from the universal network entirely."
Cassian took a step down the stairs, and the entire front line of the scavenger army collectively took a step backward.
"If I ever see my name on a bounty board again," Cassian said softly, a dark promise lacing every syllable, "I won't just kill the Warlord. I will come back here and unmake this entire planet. Are we clear?"
The new leader nodded frantically, dropping his rifle entirely. "Crystal clear! The bounty is gone! It's erased!"
"Excellent," Cassian murmured.
He walked down the remaining stairs and stepped into the crowd. The army of ruthless cutthroats and hardened killers instantly parted like the Red Sea, falling over each other to clear a wide, terrified path for the Inquisitor.
Cassian walked slowly through the heavy rain of Krieg's Folly, leaving the fortress and the smoking ash of the old Warlord behind him. It was time to find out exactly where the Foundry of the False Gods was hiding.