Thumb pressing into soft flesh, the war chief scowled down at his cock. Making the slit pop open with a squeeze that quickly became brutal, that sensitive glands flushed purple in the vice of a clawed fist.
But not a drop of piss dribbled out.
“Needs a legacccy,” he mumbled, and horked up a wad of slime as he stuffed himself back behind his leathers. “A quality bitch with Anhur blood. Not some”—a shiver rattled down the bumps of his spine—“some… Hathorian slag shitting out half-breed sons.”
At his back, the low drone of the horde trickled through the trees. Approaching in a relentless wave, they moaned in a single voice that lulled him into distraction. Made his grotesque head turn toward the sound as they drew ever nearer, listening as they seemed to call out his name. One he didn’t recognize as his, but was meant for him all the same.
An uneven halo flared up around Balkazar’s shoulders. It was instinct. Some almost forgotten trepidation that warned him to flee, and with his head tipped back, the war chief caught the breeze through a tiny open hole in clogged sinuses. Scent sticking to the goop of infection, he lumbered toward the whiff of familiar males. Every step bringing him closer to his prince.
Thump-pat, thump-pat.
Hobbling as fast as he could, Balkazar stumbled through a forest swirling with vibrant color and fantastical creatures. Trees whose trunks wriggled and danced, only to snap back into rigid uniformity the instant he looked. A metallic sheen coated everything—from the chaotic half-truths wriggling before his eyes, to the taste laying thick on his pallet.
Blood and gold and copper that was green and pink.
A hysterical giggle burst from uneven lips, and throwing his hands out to the sides, Balkazar roared. Bringing the sound up all the way from the bottom of soggy lungs.
He’d had no idea!
Never felt so alive or seen such color in the world.
Swinging his left arm, Balkazar obliterated the trunk of a purple tree trunk. Sending a shower of gleaming silver wood to litter the earth as he ambled by, he pounded at his chest—aggravating the wounds left by Sinadim’s claws. Wounds that had already healed over with a crust of flesh that was easily twice as thick as it had been before.
Balkazar clawed at the ridges and sucked back a glob of snot to clear his airway. The scars were a gift, he knew. Armor, given to him by his prince, who awaited him in the shadows of the Nine themselves. A prince who’d disowned him too soon, who didn’t yet know what it was Balkazar had given him.
But he’d learn.
Adjusting his course, the war chief followed his nose to the edge of a quiet creek that was laced with the barest whispered hint of slick.
Renegade.
Mane spiking up, he bristled at the memory of a female who would dare. Defiant, she’d stood before a prince without fear and without lineage, issuing orders as if she was anything more than what she’d been born to be.
An incubator for cannon fodder. A womb with legs and perfumed cunt.
The memory sent a surge of blood to bloat his cock, and with glassy eyes, Balkazar clawed at his prick. Shredding his leathers as he trudged through the deepest part of the creek.
Oh, he’d have another taste. He’d lap up whatever spilled cream the prince deigned to share, then cram a few hybrids into her belly that would grow strong and hale beside royal blood.
Fisting himself below the water’s surface, Balkazar shuddered as an overeager drop burst from his tip, and took no notice of a spurt tinged an alarming shade of crimson…
When Sinadim rose up from the dark, a fiery crown on his brow, Balkazar would ask his reward. To breed the girl in the old ways, witnessed by the pack, beneath the watchful gaze of the triplet moons.
He cleared the creek and fell to his knees, stumbling on dry ground. Unable to adapt to the change in terrain, he dragged a few precious sips of oxygen into swampy lungs.
And for a moment, as colors became smells and the sounds of the wood grew to be insidious whispers, he was lost. Head spinning, brain swollen and threatening to spill from his ears, Balkazar was serenaded by the voice of the legion. Drawn back the way he’d come, where a thousand shuffling feet marched on his sloppy trail…
Sinadim.
One eye green, the other silver, he was radiance itself. Pure-blooded, a direct descendant of the Nine, even before Balkazar had given him to the dark where his fate lurked in fetid shadows.
A smile creased a face that had become grotesque, that grew more disproportionate with every lurching twitch of infected muscle. The only recognizable feature of an Anhur male that had once been known as Balkazar was the distinct shade of piercing blue eyes, now laced with murky gleaming bronze…
“You’ll ssseee, brother…” he slurred, and wobbled to his feet. Watery eyes rolling until they caught on an expanse of dusty, red stone. “You’ll seeeee…”
The slopes of an ancient riverbed, now nothing more than a gently burbling creek. Ringed on three sides by dense forest, it was a clearing backed by a sheer cliff face. One the infected male recognized, from somewhere deeper than the puss and rot.
With claws fully extended, growing at an uneven pace on his left hand, he ambled toward the mouth of a cave. Head tipped back to catch the scent of any who might yet linger in that cursed clearing…
