Forged in Fire
No food. No shelter. No weapons. Enemies aplenty. And the only one watching his back is his captor.
When traitors maroon the immortal king Pietas on an alien planet, there's no escape. Half a million of his followers were transported as well, asleep in their cryopods.
Pietas could create a new world, rule his people, and start completely over. Except there's no technology, no infrastructure, and every pod is set to open at the same time. Stacked atop one another in inoperable units, the pods will trap his fellow immortals in a gruesome cycle of repeated deaths, lodged within the very pods that should have offered sanctuary.
Unless Pietas can free them before that happens.
At his side is an irascible mortal who'd once been his jailer, and a fascinating woman who's the designer of their people's finest weapons—and telepathic. Just his luck, Pietas has been adopted by an entire tribe of know-it-all sentient panthers. But first, he must deal with the most dysfunctional family in the history of forever...
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Tropes include: Genetic Engineering, Enemies to Friends, Tragic Past, Space Marine, Revenge
In this scene from Bringer of Chaos: Forged in Fire, the immortal king, Pietas, is surveying the alien world where he's been exiled. Sempervia is a beautiful planet, but it's not fully terraformed and it harbors dark secrets of its own.
Excerpt
The summit lay a good distance ahead, but they had left the forest. Scant grasses and scrubby bushes dotted the landscape.
Pietas pushed further up the mountain, where hand over hand, he climbed up among black boulders. Their pockmarked texture stung his palms but did no harm to his feet. He'd hiked half the planet barefoot. Panting from the quick exertion, he turned to take in the view.
Across plains to the east, low-scudding clouds skimmed a fringe of mist-shrouded mountains, no more than blue smudges on the horizon. Their white tips implied great height. North, the lazy river they'd followed from its source snaked its way across the savannah, a necklace of shimmering gold. The path took seconds to trace with his gaze but had taken them weeks to walk. As it wended its way further south, the confluence of its mighty waters with another river turned its gold to muddy brown.
What worried him were the sheets of gray in the northwest. A storm marched straight toward them. The heavy, pelting rain on Sempervia so saturated the air one could drown on land.
They did not dare let it catch them in the open. They needed to cross the summit and reach shelter.
He braced both hands on his knees. How galling to need a break. He'd hiked less than five hours. Was he no better than a mortal?
Before his exile, Pietas would have run--not walked--up this mountain without a single pause. When mortals and traitors among his kind imprisoned him in an unpowered life pod and left him to rot for over a year, it broke his health and shattered his stamina.
Had it not been for his friend, Six, what sanity Pietas possessed would have been as beaten and battered as dirt clods trampled in a horse paddock. Though unable to free Pietas, Six had stayed with him day and night, talking, whistling, singing songs, sharing life and light through his tales.
Long after Pietas could no longer respond.
Broken in body as he was, his will, determination, and drive survived intact, as had his undying thirst for revenge. No doubt his enemies thought to teach him a lesson. Having endured the worst they could muster, he'd learned there was no pain he could not bear, no matter how horrific.
One day, he'd return the favor and teach them.
Video for Bringer of Chaos
Ritual of Strength performed by Nik Nitsvetov
Voiceover performed by Zack Black
Images courtesy of: Nik Nitsvetov and @by_cosphoto
Video editor Zealot6
Based on the Sci Fi series Bringer of Chaos by Kayelle Allen
Music: Coming of Time by Orchestralis, licensed via Dual Horns Studios Ltd
Bringer of Chaos
Series page: https://kayelleallen.com/chaos-series/
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