“MY GRAND AND GRACIOUS LORD… May I respectfully introduce AXIUS VEXAS,” Lady Belene announced after bringing the Vexan Lord-Prince before the Nyte in his personal ‘NYTEKEEP’ dwelling, which was placed on the top, one hundred and sixty-eighth floor of the NYTETOWER.

  “Grand thanks for the ‘introduction’... BUT YOU FORGOT MY OFFICIAL, ROYAL TITLE,” Axius corrected as Lady Belene gave him a sour look.

  “Grandest apologies,” Lady Belene said with a strong hint of distaste in her tone, to which Axius picked up immediately.

  “Grand thanks, Belene. You may be dismissed,” Nyte ordered, causing his Nytehand to bow to him before turning away to leave his lair… But not before giving Lord-Prince Axius one final, cold glare.

  “Tis quite an achievement gettin’ on Belene’s ‘bad side’, Vexas… AND YOU ACCOMPLISHED IT IN MILLI-CYCLES,” the Warlord of Skilia jested as the Vexan Lord-Prince lowered his dual-brow at the double, sliding doors that the Nytehand had just exited the NYTEKEEP through. “But alas… Could you blame her? You did, after all, DECIMATE her home world and nearly wiped out her WHOLE thrackin’ species.”

  “The ‘decimation of Vosmara’ was not a personal endeavor,” Lord-Prince Axius coldly replied as he set his sights back on the dark purple and golden armored infamous bounty hunter turned planetary warlord. “We had intel that the Pyramid of Power may have been on it at the time so…”

  “YOU HAD YOUR THRACKIN’ BEAST DEVOUR IT PIECE BY PIECE,” Nyte snapped, causing Axius to grow silent. “Just as you did with Sularia, Woylatun, and Eobos… CORRECT???”

  “And Guardinas,” Lord-Prince Axius gritted, causing Nyte to immediately go silent.

  “You… DECIMATED planet Guardinas?” the Nyte asked in a ‘shaky’ voice after nearly a minute-cycle of silence.

  The Lord-Prince nodded in reply.

  “Interesting… VERY INTERESTING,” Nyte replied, breaking his minute-cycle long vocal pause. “ Tell me, Vexan… How does it feel?”

  “How does ‘what’ feel?”

  “TO DESTROY WHOLE PLANETS? TO RENDER NINETY-NINE POINT SEVEN PERCENT OF A SPECIES EXTINCT? TO FREELY TREK ACROSS THE KNOWN TWENTY-FOUR DOING WHATEVER IN THE THRACK YOU WANT??? How does it thracking feel to be like gods?”

  “We are not gods.”

  “How so? You slimy kroones freely determine the decimation of a world and its people without ANY repercussions or revengings oncesoever… LIKE GODS. Tis a rather ‘vexing’ thing to think about… YES???”

  Nyte smirked behind his face shield as Lord-Prince Axius glared at him with his glowing bright, fiery red eyes.

  “I did not come to this SQUALOR to discuss my brothers’ and Is ‘exploits’,” Axius sternly stated. “I came here to make deal with you, Nyte.”

  Upon hearing the Vexan Lord-Prince NOT refer to their Lord by his ‘official, self-given’ title, the squad of TEN Nyte Crewmen of the Skilian Warlord’s personal gang/paramilitary force; THE NYTE CREW, immediately brought of their Advanced Pulsar Auto-Rifles and set their purple targeting lasers on Axius’s skull.

  “Settle down, grand gentlemen… SETTLE DOWN,” Lord Nyte ordered firmly to his ‘dogs of war’, who followed their master’s command and lowered their energy weapons (for now).

  “Make deal, eh? I SEE,” Nyte nodded. “Before that, Ax, what’s with this ‘squalor’ raxx you so venomously spit? If my memory serves me correctly… WHICH IT ALWAYS DOES, that last time you were here on Skilia about seven or eight month-cycles ago you and a slew of your ‘thrack-minded’ wartroopers took GRAND pleasure in the many ‘joys’ that MY CITY… MY WORLD provided you kroones.”

  “I HAVE COME TO MAKE DEAL WITH YOU,” Lord-Prince Axius angrily restated, causing Nyte to snicker. “Nothing else… UNDERSTAND???”

  “Heh… Understood. Please, my Lord, don’t decimate Skilia as well because I have caused you ‘meager frustration’! Heh, heh, heh…”

  Keeping his dual-brow lowered at the villainous Warlord, Lord-Prince Axius took a seat in an empty, hovering chair before the solid golden ‘Royal Throne’ that Nyte sat upon (which he had taken for himself after toppling a fascist regime and its Unholy Dictator on the distant world of ‘Redaar-Mynn’ out in the Unknown Galactic Sectors cycles ago when he was a still just a Bounty Hunter… ALL BY HIMSELF.)

  “NYALA,” Nyte called out after Axius had sat down.

  “Yes… my Master?” asked a tantalizing, amethyst-skinned, haired, and eyed Vedosian female, who looked to be somewhere in her mid-twenty cycles.

  Wearing a rather ‘revealing’ dress, the Nytehand Nyala approached the Warlord’s Throne sensually.

  “Hello, love,” the Nyte greeted as Nyala smiled widely at him whilst being DEEP in a trance-like state caused by the Tox she had injected in the back of her neck ten minute-cycles ago. “Please fetch the ‘humble’ Vexan Lord-Prince and I a bottle of Skilian Ale.”

  “Grand thanks for the offer… BUT I REQUIRE NO DRINK,” Axius bluntly stated as Nyala went to retrieve an unopened bottle of Skilian Ale from the Nyte’s ‘Personal Stock’.

  “Oh, come now, Ax! Don’t be so ‘poor-minded’,” Nyte said as Nyala poured both him and the Lord-Prince boblets full of Ale. “I always have a drink when I deal. Tis… ‘loosens’ the mind, if you will?”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “I REQUIRE NO DRINK.”

  As Nyala gave the Ale Goblets to both Nyte and Axius, the latter denied his, to which the former took for himself.

  “Grand thanks, love,” Nyte nodded as Nyala gave him a formal bow before returning to her post off the side.

  Setting his covered sights back on the Lord-Prince, Nyte asked, “So, Ax… What is it that you require that made you pull yourself away from your BLOODSOAKED campaign across the cosmos???”

  “You have a Kadorian Changeling in your Pit Warrior Stables… AND I WANT TO BUY IT,” Lord-Prince Axius revealed.

  “The Changeling?”

  “Yes… THE CHANGELING. Tis WELL-KNOWN across the Known Twenty-Four that you have been in possession of the LAST Kadorian Changeling for quite sometime now. IS WHAT I SAY STILL TRUE.”

  “Yes… BUT HE’S NOT FOR SALE.”

  “He?”

  “Yes, Your Royal Highness. He… NOT ‘IT’.”

  “Everything’s for sale, Nyte. You know grander than I.”

  “Yes… Yes, I do, Axius. For sale, everything is… FOR THE RIGHT THRACKIN’ PRICE.”

  Narrowing his eyes again, Lord-Prince Axius asked, “HOW MUCH?”

  As Axius awaited his answer, he watched as the lower-half of Nyte’s battle helmet briefly faded away into ‘digitized dust’... REVEALING THE HORROR LIED BENEATH IT.

  With his modulator/oxygen mask now gone, the Nyte’s dried and crackled lips, gnarly mouth, and pale, ashen-gray ‘burn-scarred’ skin was revealed.

  Picking up his goblet, the Warlord downed the WHOLE DRINK in just two smooth gulps.

  After finishing off his goblet, Nyte licked his nasty lips to reveal his black as coal teeth and his foul-looking, grayish-green colored tongue.

  Setting his empty goblet down on the right arm rest of his throne, Nyte, with the ‘mental link’ that he had with his armor, caused the lower half of his battle helmet to reform itself.

  “AHHH... Such a grand tasting ale, that was,” Nyte joyously remarked as he nursed the still full goblet that was meant for Axius in his left hand. “Now tell me, Ax… What interest does a ‘Vexan Lord-Prince’ have with a mere ‘shapeshifting War Pit Warrior’???”

  “Thrack the questions! Is it for sale… OR NOT?” Lord-Prince Axius demanded whilst glaring at the Skilian Warlord.

  Nyte started to chuckle beneath his battle helmet, causing Axius to press, “Does something amuse you… Bounty Hunter?”

  “Oh no. Tis just that all you Vexans are so much alike,” Nyte sneered. “Always so thracking UPTIGHT, your kind is. Heh, heh, heh…”

  “I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS RAXX!!!” Lord-Prince Axius suddenly thundered as he rose up from his seat.

  With the Nyte Crewmen bringing up their Auto-Rifles again, Axius continued to spearhead, “I have come here to make deal with you, Nyte… WHETHER YOU FIND IT ‘GRAND’ OR NOT! I DO NOT THRACKING CARE!!! All that I care for is the purchasing of your Kadorian Changeling! The LAST Kadorian Changeling! You will sell IT to me, Nyte… YOU WILL SELL IT TO ME!!!”

  “And if I don’t… WHAT SHALL YOU DO, VEXAN?” Nyte asked as the targeting lasers from the Advanced Auto-Rifles of the Nyte Crewmen painted Axius’s head and chest again.

  Lowering his dual-brow even more whilst balling his black gloved hands into tightened fists, the Lord-Prince threatened in a calm, bone-chilling tone of voice, “If you do not wish to sell me the Changeling then you have given me no choice but to resort to a ‘measure’ that I truly did NOT wish to take.”

  “Which is???”

  “I shall contact my empire’s ASTRO-NAVAL FLEET ARMADA and have them travel here… TO SKILIA. Once they are here, I shall then order them to turn the surface of your world to THRACKING ASH from low-orbit BEFORE we decimate it along with everyone and everything that resides upon it… INCLUDING YOU… My Gracious Lord-Host.”

  In response to the bold threat that Axius had just presented him with, Nyte simply nodded in reply.

  “I see… I SEE,” the Warlord said. “Answer me this, Ax… How will you be able to contact your fleet… WHILST RIDDLED WITH ENERGY SHOT HOLES???”

  With the Nyte Crewmen at the ready to fire upon him, Lord-Prince Axius fearlessly answered, “Go on, Bounty Hunter… DO IT. Have your THRACKING DREGS end my life-cycle… BUT KNOW THIS: Once my heart stops beating, my fleet shall immediately be alarmed by ‘the Monitor’ that is surgically-grafted into it. Once they have been alarmed and RECOGNIZE MY DEMISE, they shall travel to Skilia and…”

  “DECIMATE IT. Yes, yes… I understand,” the Nyte finished in distaste whilst leaning back in his throne. “Grand play, Vexan. Annoying, yes… But GRAND THRACKIN’ PLAY.”

  Axius kept a stern glare on the Warlord, who continued, “You want the Changeling? Fine… THRACKING FINE. Though I truly HATE to see him go, for he is QUITE the grand fighter, I would rather NOT risk the decimation of my world and people that I worked so hard to conquer and claim. I shall give you this; you Vexans do know how to drive a hard bargain… WITH A ‘WORLD-EATER’ IN YOUR STABLE.”

  “How much?” Lord-Prince Axius asked again as Nyte tried to calm his emotional level.

  “Five hundred.”

  “Five hundred… Thousand?”

  “No, you kroone! Five hundred… MILLION.”

  Upon hearing the thracking ludicrous price that Nyte was asking for the last Kadorian Changeling, Axius felt the glowing green blood in his veins run cold.

  As another brief pause was ushered between the two, it was soon ended by Lord-Prince Axius, who bitterly said, “Fine… SO BE IT.”