World of Wreckage [removed] Torth #3

Previously...

Just in case it's been a while, here are a couple of abbreviated excerpt scenes from the previous book.

✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ 

"Give me your hand," the old woman whispered. "Prophecy requires touch."

Murmurs and coughs echoed across the vast plaza. Ariock knelt before Migyatel, forcing himself not to show fear. They're just words, he reminded himself. It was best to just get this over with. Let Migyatel tell everyone that he was a fraud. Maybe they would be shamed as stupid zealots. Maybe no one would be able to hear her barely audible voice.

Even on one knee, he towered over Migyatel, perched on the granite chair, but the old woman did not cringe or stare. Cataracts blinded her.

Ariock's hand would not fit neatly in her grasp. He gently touched two fingers to her palm.

The very instant his skin contacted hers, Migyatel threw back her head and howled.

"OHHHH!" she shouted in the slave tongue. Her suddenly powerful voice rebounded off the cliff-like wall. "HE IS THE ONE!"

Ariock jerked away as if shocked by a slave collar.

"AONSWA!" Migyatel pointed at him. Messiah.

The audience rose like an earthquake. They pushed back from chairs, raised goblets, or hugged each other. "Salvation!" The proclamation rose like a storm, from many voices into one great roar. "Light and glory!"

Ariock's anger whipped out and coiled around nearby objects. He wasn't going to lead the Alashani to light and glory. He wasn't fit to destroy the Torth Empire, and it was only a matter of time before the Alashani figured out that truth.

Jinishta planted herself in his path. "Your future is the future for all of us, messiah."

✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ 

"I'm sorry," Thomas whispered, sickened by his own cruelty to Cherise. Wind whipped away his words, yet even if she'd heard him, she would not lose her disgust and fear of him. She saw him as a leech. A pathetic little monster.

She was right.

Thomas's mind reeled from that revelation. Cherise understood him in a way that he had failed to understand himself. She could not trust someone so weak-willed to protect her, or anyone she cared about. She could not even trust Thomas to take care of himself. She was right about all of that.

Because she was stronger than him. So were her friends. Ariock, Kessa, and Vy ... they were all mentally stronger than Thomas. Every single one of the former slaves was stronger than him.

Why?

As a Yellow Rank, Thomas had suspected that slave species must hold some undefined resilience, but he had not understood it until now. After all, he had rejected emotions. He had rejected humanity. He had told himself that they were an inferior species, whereas he was superior.

He'd been lying to himself.

Lying.

His mouth tasted sour. He had lied and lied and lied to himself. He'd woven a web of lies to justify his actions.

Truth radiated from Cherise's core personality, and now that he'd learned it, he could not forget it. Passions and hopes gave humans a strength which the Torth categorically rejected. Ultimately, slave species would outlast the Torth Empire. Their lives were infinitely richer than the lives of a trillion Torth. They had friends. They knew love. Those were the qualities that built civilizations.

The Torth could only steal what other species created.

"You ... are superior," he realized.

✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ ✯ ☆ 

World Of Wreckage Copyright © 2019 Abby Goldsmith. All rights reserved. Publication of this work to any other site or forum without written permission of the author is strictly prohibited.