“AND HERE WE ARE, YOUR MAJESTY… THE SKILIAN WAR PITS!!!” Nyte proudly presented to Lord-Prince Axius as they now stood in ‘the Podium’, which was a raised box set at the Southern End of the ‘Alpha War Pit Arena’.

  With the Alpha War Pit being the largest out of the grand total of THREE that bordered near the outskirts of the ‘MEGA CITY’ that was Smuggler’s Haven, Lord-Prince Axius looked down at the massive, heptagon-shaped (and orangish-yellow sand covered) ground floor dubbed ‘THE WAR FLOOR’.

  Occupying the ‘War Floor’ were eight unfortunate gladiatorial combatants… SLAVES of the Nyte who he referred to as ‘War Pit Warriors’.

  Amongst these ill-fated and hapless, multi-species enslaved fighters was the Snorixan Tox-Addict Zan Fuu.

  “So… WHAT DO YOU THINK,” Nyte asked as Axius kept his eyes locked down upon the frightened and shaking Snorixan. “Remarkable… YES???”

  “Intriguing… Very intriguing,” the Vexan Lord-Prince replied, much to the Skilian Warlord’s distaste.

  “Well, everyone has their opinion… No matter how THRACKED it be.”

  “The Changeling, Nyte… WHERE IS IT???”

  SUDDENLY, entering the Alpha War Pit through a passageway that led from the ‘Skilian War Pit Warrior Academus’, which stood alongside the massive arena that trained and housed many of the Nyte’s enslaved combatants, was a hooded being… WHO STOOD AT EXACTLY EIGHT-FEET-TALL.

  With a total four-count of Nyte Crewmen keeping the towering, hooded being restrained on Electro-Shock capable Magna-Bonder Sticks, they all, in unison, released it from their clutches.

  The Nyte Crewmen quickly retreated back in the passageway and sealed the automatically locked door shut behind them.

  “There he is, Ax… MALICK,” the Nyte eagerly hissed as the Vexan Lord-Prince narrowed his sights on the towering, hooded being who caused ALL of the Alpha War Pit’s multi-alien species spectators to rise up from their seats, chant, and cheer for the last Kadorian Changeling.

  In a SPLIT-MILLI-CYCLE, ripping and tearing from Malick’s ratty hooded cloak was a WARRAH, which was a six-armed, green and purple-furred alien beast from the Unknown Galactic Sectors dwelling jungle world of Suumborotoro.

  The WARRAH let out a deafening screech from its razor sharp, jagged-fanged-mouth as it unleashed a BELLOWING BLAST of hot pink ‘energy fire’ on the eight enslaved War Pit Warriors.

  With three of them instantly being reduced to piles of charred and flaky ash, the remaining fighters all scattered away from one another in search of ANY WAY out of the Alpha War Pit.

  “AGH! AAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!!”

  “ARGH! AGH! NOOOOOAAAARRGGGGH!!!!!!”

  “Kroones… THRACKING KROONES,” Nyte snickered as both he and Lord-Prince Axius watched two more of the War Pit Warrior disintegrate and melt down to smoldering pools of bubbly, blackish-sludge-MURK after trying to climb up the black impenametal spikes that lined the seven walls of the Alpha War Pit Arena.

  “POISON,” the Warlord uttered, causing Axius to look back at him in confusion. “I have the spikes coated in a very potent poison from the world of KAANERAN-IV in Agravaa-Vyraath Galactic Sector. Tis brings INSTANT DEATH with the slightest of SLIGHTEST touches. Heh, heh, heh…”

  The Vexan Lord-Prince narrowed his eyes again at the vicious bounty hunter turned planetary dictator as the WARRAH’s roars turned to high-pitched screeches.

  Turning his head back around, Axius looked down and saw that now flying in the place of the WARRAH was a SYRODORU SALLON from the planet Pranvaa in the Lonngvino Galactic Sector.

  With its long, elastic-like, VENOM-DRIPPING razor-tongue, the Syrodoru Sallon lassoed one of the now THREE remaining War Pit Warriors around his waistline and TORE HIM IN THRACKING HALF!

  “Urgh… Thrack this! DIE, RAXX-EATER! RAAAAH!!!!” cried out one of the last two War Pit Warriors; a Drogarthian Female named Duua Synd, who was sentenced to THIRTY CYCLES of ‘enslaved servitude’ to the Nyte after refusing to pay off a HEFTY SUM of ‘Straciit Racing’ Gambling Debts to him.

  Armed with a blunted, barely lethal Pulsar Battle Axe, Duaa Synd used her enhanced drogarthian strength to fling the weapon up at the Syrodoru Sallon… STRIKING IT IN ITS LEFT, BLUISH-WHITE WING.

  As the crowd relentlessly booed Duua for attacking the Syrodoru Sallon, the Nyte remarked, “Oh. That wasn’t a grand move.”

  Lord-Prince Axius remained sagely silent as he watched the massive Syrodoru Sallon land HARD on its hind legs in the middle of the War Floor.

  “Did you hurt it???” Zan Fuu nervously stammered as he stood alongside the Drogarthian Warrioress.

  “Not yet… NOT ENOUGH,” Duua growled as she, Zan Fuu, the Nyte, Axius, and the THOUSANDS of spectators that filled the seats of the Alpha War Pit Arena watched as the Syrodoru Sallon began to CHANGE ITS SHAPE.

  In a matter of just a few milli-cycles, the Syrodoru Sallon shifted its shape and form in a rather grotesque manner into that of its TRUE FORM.

  “Raxx,” Lord-Prince Axius gasped as the last Kadorian Changeling had reverted himself back to his original, more terrifying form.

  Standing back at eight-feet-tall and weighing two hundred and eighty pounds of bulky and brawny, solid and SKINLESS muscle was Malick, who had long razor sharp black claws extended from his eleven fingers and toes, long jagged fangs, glowing yellow eyes with black, reptilian-like pupils, an exposed grayish-pink pulsating brain, and a glowing purple crystal that was embedded in middle of his forehead.

  “Buh-By the High-Elders,” Zan Fuu stammered as both he and Duua stared at the towering changeling in utter, frozen terror.

  Lowering his hairless and skinless brow, Malick sneered devilishly at the two enslaved War Pit Warriors as the spectators continuously chanted for death and blood.

  More frightened than she ever had been in all of her cycles of existence, but not wanting to go out like some lowly skogger, Duua gritted her teeth whilst shouting, “URGH… THRACK YOU!!!”

  The Drogarthian Warrioress then made a mad dash towards the Changeling… ONLY TO BE PIERCED THROUGH THE CHEST BY HIS HIDDEN, SCORPION-LIKE TAIL!

  With blood-lusting cries and cheers echoing from up in the grandstands of the Alpha War Pit, a quivering Zan Fuu watched as Malick brutally ripped its black spiked tail and poison-injecting stinger out of Duua Synd’s chest.

  The Drogarthian Warrioress then collapsed down to her knees and coughed up a gob of blood before crashing down flat on her face on the sand-covered war floor.

  “And then… THERE WAS ONLY ONE,” the Nyte snickered as Lord-Prince Axius regretfully watched the defenseless Snorixan Tox-Addict fend for himself ONLY against the HIGHLY DANGEROUS Kadorian Changeling.

  “Ugh… Uhh… Puh-Please! PLEASE!!!” Zan Fuu tearfully screamed, confusing Malick slightly.

  Dropping down to his knees, the Snorixan pleaded, “PLEASE! HAVE MERCY ON ME! I… I’m unarmed! DEFENSELESS!!!”

  With the crowd cheering for more blood and gore and the constant cries of Zan Fuu wearing grandly on his mind, Malick merely scoffed as he stormed toward him… STOMPING on Duua Synd’s head and popping it like a plum as he went

  “Please! Please do-- AGH!!!” Zan Fuu shrieked as Malick lashed out towards him and grabbed him by the sides of his bony arms.

  Lifting the Snorixan from up off the ground as if he were light as a feather, Malick extended his jaw and elongated his already long fangs.

  Then, in THREE CHOMPS, Malick devoured Zan Fuu’s bald, yellow-skinned head all the way down to and through his pelvis, bisecting him.

  At a loss for words, Lord-Prince Axius just stood up in the Podium with his eyes widened and jaw-dropped.

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  “You see why I priced him so grandly now, eh? Rather HUNGRY, that one is,” the Warlord of Skilia continued to thoughtlessly chuckle as Axius stared down at the monstrous shape-changer, who was now reveling in the chants and cheers of the crowd after easily dispatching EIGHT enslaved War Pit Warriors.

  “So, Ax… ART THOU READY TO MEET YOUR ‘NEW’ PRIZE???” Nyte asked as the Vexan Lord-Prince lowered his dual-brow.

  Turning back to look at the Nyte over his right shoulder, Lord-Prince Axius ordered, “TAKE ME TO IT.”

  _

  “Grandest greetings… MALICK,” Nyte called out as both he and Lord-Prince Axius stood before the last Kadorian Changeling’s Holding Cell, which was located in the ‘Champion Stable’ of the Skilian War Pit Warrior Academus.

  “DEATH,” Malick asked in a dark, nightmarish tone that sounded like the voice of a demon from the deepest pits of Hell as he sat in the shadows that enveloped the back half of his cell.

  “No. No, my friend,” Nyte replied whilst shaking his helmeted head. “No more ‘death’. Not now, anyways…”

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

  “Tis not what I want, Malick. Tis what your NEW OWNER wants… WITH YOU.”

  “NEW OWNER???”

  “Come forth, Ax,” Nyte ushered as the World-Decimating Warrior, with his hood redrawn, stepped up alongside his right. “Malick… May I humbly introduce the Vexan Lord-Prince AXIUS VEXAS.”

  Throwing back his hood, Axius revealed his horned head as the Kadorian’s yellow eyes gleamed at him hatefully from the dark half of his holding cell.

  “After a LONG TRAVEL from the Zagreus Galactic Sector… And after a rather intense bout of ‘aggressive negotiations’, the Lord-Prince Axius has righteously PURCHASED YOU from my stock, Malick,” Nyte bitterly informed. “Now, there be a grand sadness brewing within myself to see you go, my friend… BUT BUSINESS IS THRACKIN’ BUSINESS.”

  Turning to Axius again, Nyte said, “This is where I leave you, Ax, to get… ‘acquainted’ with your new prize. Until we meet again, Lord-Prince… Grand voyage.”

  “Grand voyage,” Lord-Prince Axius nodded back.

  Nyte then turned away from Axius and started his departure from the Champion Stable.

  “Oh… I almost forgot, Axius,” the Nyte said as he stopped in his stride.

  Turning back around the Warlord of Skilia said, “Tread lightly in your conquest, Your Grace… For the quest to attain godhood has only two ends. Victory… AND CRUSHING DEFEAT.”

  Lord-Prince Axius glared at the Nyte who snickered as he went on with his way again as a squad of six Nyte Crewmen followed him closely at his sides.

  “A NEW PRIZE… Is that what I am to you… VEXAN-SKOGGER?” Malick hissed as he approached the translucent Electro-Shock door to his cell.

  Looking up at the towering and skinless alien monster, Lord-Prince Axius kept his fears held at bay (for now) as Malick glared down upon him.

  “No. Not a ‘prize’,” Axius denied.

  “THEN WHAT???”

  “An ally. A GRAND ALLY.”

  “FOR THRACKING WHAT, PLANET-KILLER???”

  Axius’s eyes then widened as Malick sneered.

  “What? You think your race’s ‘destructive exploits’ have not reached a total RAXX-HOLE like Skilia,” the Changeling pressed. “If so, Vexan… THEN YOUR MORE THRACK-HEADED THAN YOU LOOK.”

  Narrowing his eyes at the shapeshifter, Lord-Prince Axius huffed, “You think I ‘fear’ you, Kadorian?”

  “YES… I DO.”

  “Well… YOU ARE WRONG. I do not fear you, Kadorian. Sure, you have MORE than proven yourself to be quite the formidable, CARNAGE-CREATING adversary… IN THE ARENA. I do not fight in the arena. I FIGHT IN THE GRAND VOID.”

  “The grand void… SPACE.”

  “So, you’ve heard of it?”

  “You amuse me, Vexan.”

  “MY NAME IS AXIUS,” the Lord-Prince sternly corrected. “Axius…”

  “VEXAS,” Malick interjected. “Yes… AND I DO NOT CARE, PLANET-KILLER.”

  Axius gritted his filed teeth as the Changeling continued, “You vexans may have different names and personalities… BUT YOU’RE ALL THE THRACKING SAME. You’re kroones… RAXX-BRAINED KROONES who think yourselves to be the ‘highest beings’ in the ‘Verse… WHEN YOU’RE ACTUALLY THE LOWEST.”

  “You have become the amusing one… Malick,” Lord-Prince Axius now smirked. “I thought the KADORIAN RACE were considered the ‘lowest beings’ in the Known Universe since their only ‘remnant’... IS YOU.”

  Malick’s smirk swiftly faded as anger… UNSTABLE ANGER filled his entire being in a milli-cycle.

  “What? Have I ‘struck a chord’ within you, Kadorian,” Axius pressed as Malick still stood in rageful silence before him on his side of the Electro-Shock door. “Because, if I have… THEN I DO NOT CARE.”

  Narrowing his eyes now, Lord-Prince Axius continued, “You wish to know what you ‘are’ to me and my empire, Malick? YOU ARE AN INSTRUMENT. A ‘tool’ for my brothers and I to use in our quest to reobtain the Pyramid of Power.”

  “Pyramid… OF POWER,” Malick repeated. “It’s a myth.”

  “TIS MOST CERTAINLY NOT A ‘MYTH’, SHAPE-CHANGER. Tis real… AND YOU’RE THE KEY TO US RETRIEVING IT.”

  “I REFUSE.”

  “Tis not that simple, Kadorian. You cannot ‘refuse’.”

  “I REFUSE.”

  “YOU CANNOT ‘REFUSE’. For, if you truly do not wish to help my brothers and I in our quest… THEN YOU SHALL BE ERADICATED.”

  “DO IT.”

  “WHAT,” Lord-Prince Axius uttered in shock. “Grandest apologies… But what did you just--”

  “DO IT,” Malick ordered again as the stared directly at the Vexan Lord-Prince. “Eradicate me. END MY LIFE-CYCLE, VEXAN. I do not wish to live in this cursed realm any longer.”

  Axius stood in a state of shock as the Changeling continued, “I am the last of my people… My world… MY KIN. For long… TOO THRACKING LONG I have been alone. CURSED WITH THE LIFE-CYCLE OF A WAR PIT WARRIOR. A SLAVE TO THE WARLORD OF SKILIA. I do not want this… ANY OF THIS. What I seek… What I TRULY seek… IS DEATH.”

  The Vexan Lord-Prince now scrunched his dual-brow as he watched a look of sadness… AND GUILT painted the horrific creature’s grotesque face, which was a mashup of skull-bone fragments and exposed cartilage.

  “I see them. EVERY NIGHT-CYCLE, I SEE THEM,” Malick informed whilst Axius kept his eyes upon him.

  “See who?” the Lord-Prince inquisitively asked.

  “MY WIFE. MY DAUGHTERS.”

  Axius now nodded in understanding as Malick continued, “I watched them die… ALL OF THEM. The sickness that struck my world like a Pulsar Missile Bombardment wiped out NINETY-NINE POINT NINE percent of our population in less than a week-cycle. In a mere SEVEN DAY-CYCLES all that remained on the surface of Kador… WAS ME.”

  Looking down at his big, tannish-green-skinned palms, the Changeling informed, “I held them… RIGHT HERE. I held them in my arms as they died. My wife; Sahla… And our twin daughters; Mylah and Siya. I watched as their life-cycles ended. I WATCHED as their Life-Forces dimmed more and more until they were finally extinguished by the sickness.

  “I now see them… EVERY NIGHT-CYCLE WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES, I see them. They stare at me waiting… WANTING for me to join them in the Outer-World, which I have been unable to oblige… UNTIL NOW.

  “You threaten me with death if I refuse to join you and your fellow ‘PLANET-KILLERS’ in your quest for destruction and chaos… AND I SAY DO IT,” Malick urged as he now set his glowing sights back upon the bewildered Vexan Royal. “END MY LIFE-CYCLE. Send me on my ‘grand voyage’ so I can be reunited with my kin once more… OR ELSE LEAVE MY THRACKING SIGHT!”

  Narrowing his eyes again, Lord-Prince Axius replied after a brief pause of silence, “What if I can bring them back?”

  “WHAT?”

  “WHAT IF I CAN BRING ‘YOUR KIN’ BACK??? With the Pyramid of Power, anything is possible… ANYTHING. It can give a ‘dead world’ life. It can CREATE LIFE. It can even… REIGNITE LIFE-FORCES.”

  “You lie.”

  “No. No, I do not… Kadorian. With the Pyramid’s Power, your kin can LIVE again… So long as you accept my GRAND OFFER to aid and assist my brothers, my people… AND OUR WORLD in our noble and almighty quest to reobtain it from our enemies.”

  As Malick thought of this truly unbelievable idea, Lord-Prince Axius pressed, “Think about it, Shape-Changer. No more would you have to plead for death. NO MORE would you have to be CONSTANTLY taunted by pain and guilt. You could have them back in your life-cycle, Malick. YOU COULD HAVE THEM ALL BACK. All that you MUST do is accept my offer… AND LEAVE THE REST TO ME.”

  Thinking over his decision still, Malick remained silent as Axius patiently waited for his answer.

  “WHEN DO WE DEPART?” the Changeling proceeded to ask in a stern and gruff tone nearly a minute-cycle later… Bringing a pleased smile to the Lord-Prince’s slimy face.