Lord Celzex sat on his throne. The air was thick with the musty smell of corpses, the walls were licked with condensation and corpse flies buzzed about the room in lazy circles over the moldering bodies. Sunlight still streamed in from above, heating the feted meat to a slow cook as the bodies slowly began to liquify.

His body buzzed with adrenaline as he lorded over the room of corpses, making it difficult for him to sit still as the pungent stink of decay permeated the air around him. No one dare step into the room while he was here, the bodies on the floor a testament to what he could and would do when in such a mood. Every movement, every sound, every smell was heightened, his vision seemed to make everything slow, and the world passed by around him as he sat and waited.

He didn't feel sorry for the bodies before him, but he did feel anger towards the one who had done this to him. The creature that came to sit behind his throne and threaten him. He wouldn't have been worried about the creature if they had simply used a knife.... But they had come and done something far far worse.

They were using the adrenaline to manipulate him.

At first he convinced himself the substance was easy enough to let go, the humans had no problem with it constantly in their bodies after all, so clearly it was something he could handle giving up. But as he tried multiple times the following symptoms became too much and he found himself begging, pleading for another dose. He felt sick at himself, sick at the image he could see in his mind of the great emperor bending to a fraud, tethered by the substance that had once brought him even more glory.

He sat like a pupped on his own throne ordering ships into an attack formation as they prepared for assault on the GA, staring with the human solar system.

Lord Celzex tapped his foot impatiently. He had to get out of this somehow. If they were to attack the humans he would lose more than his honor. If anyone were to know what was going on, he would lose more than his honor. He would lose his crown, and his followers and his possessions, and probably his life.

Lord Celzex had made it to the top because he was the most ruthless warlord ever to come out of the seven ring, but even he could not withstand a full attack from hundreds of warriors storming his palace. In fact, it was almost a miracle he had made it this far. The celzex as a group were vicious and blood thirsty and if they didn't think you were giving them enough blood, then you would be off the throne very quickly. There were some who thought he wasn't going far enough by not taking over the universe, but his quick and decisive destruction of one of his own moons had convinced them that he was not the kind of warlord to argue politics with.

He could take over the universe.

But why would he want to?

He would gain nothing but notoriety from such a stunt, and it would likely take the next thousands of years to quell any sort of rebellion, and even if he did destroy the human homeworld first, other humans were always going to be out there to cause a nuisance.

No, none of that would do.

He had made friends with the humans for a reason, and now this unknown entity was going to ruin all of that. He had managed to keep his people in line by way of fear and awe at his expense, but if they learned that he was being extorted for drugs behind his back.... Well it wasn't likely they would have many praiseworthy things to say about him.

It was just then that he felt the cool press of a knife to his back.

"Good morning your eminence." Said the voice dripping with scorn and sarcasm as the tip of the knife was pressed harder into his back. This was not the same voice that he had heard on the first day. This one was slightly deeper than the other had been convincing him that there were at least two or three people involved. That first voice had not been around for a while, a few weeks at most, leaving their friend behind to do the dirty work.

Lord Celzex had tried to bribe the newcomer, and then threaten him, and so on, but clearly this one was picked for it's brawn and not for its brains because it didn't succumb to any of Lord Celzex's cajoling or threatening, simply laughed and mocked him with the threat to take away the adrenaline. A few times he had told the person good riddance and that he would not be taking it anyway.

On those two occasions he found himself on the floor not an hour or so later writhing in agony of need feeling weak and pathetic against the strength that the human adrenaline gave him.

Then there was the fact of his heart of course.

The adrenaline was slowly poisoning him, said his doctor, and soon, despite everything he did to stop it. he would be dead anyway. He needed to quit, needed immediate medical attention as he could sometimes feel his heart falter in his chest as he sat on his moldering throne, but that was not an option. He had a knife to his back and nowhere else to go,.

And so he took the offering of the small vile of adrenaline and drank it down, feeling his body quake back to life.

"Order our men to prepare another fleet by the lateral star system."

Lord celzex thrummed with anger, but despite the drug he knew when he was going to lose a fight, "The Drev do not have any ships of their own, it would be pointless to stage an attack with them in mind."

The voice snorted "The boss ain't interested in the backwater painted beetles, The boss is interested in the resources of their moons and the precious metals under the surface of their world. If we take anin, we take the means to support your little army."

Lord Celzex bristled at that.

His army was hardly little, and even if it had been, the weapons on even one of their ships could vanish an entire solar system if they tried hard enough.

Lord Celzex liked the Drev as much as he liked the humans, and he didn't wish to see either one of them destroyed.

There had to be something he could do, but what.

He shook his head, the adrenaline clouding his mind to the point where it was difficult to think. He could come up with no way to get out of this. His heart skipped another beat in his chest and he leaned over with a cough.

Behind him the man laughed, "This is all assuming you live to make the order of course."

The laughter faded and the man was gone.

Leaving Lord Celzex alone on his throne.

***

"That was.... A close call."

"It was either that or go the other way, and I seem to recall you saying there were patrols over there."

"perhaps I did but I thought I was warning you so you could avoid them, not warning you so you could go the exact opposite direction and almost get us killed."

Lord Avex was sitting in the copilot seat still as Adam adjusted their gear in preparation for landing. He was talking about how Adam had chosen to maneuver their little craft straight down through the rotating rings of the pinnacle, which by way of their rotation, was almost too fast to comprehend on a normal human level. The amount of maneuvering he had to do just to keep them alive as the massive rings slid into place around each other was sickening, and Sunny, sitting in the back was rather pleased to see how green Amelia looked, even the UV light interacting with her skin had gone off.

Adam flexed his fingers around the controls, the hard part over. Below them he watched as massive shadows passed over the land, where the great rings cast parts into darkness.

"Land there, it is just outside the capital. We can find ways to hide from there."

Adam paused, "Not to offend lord Avex, but sunny is seven feet tall and I am six two, do you really think we are going to be hiding from them?"

Lord Avex sighed and shook his head, "The architecture of the city was build to a hundred times standard specification to make it more grand. While I would not suggest jumping out in front of people to startle them, I doubt you will be as noticeable as you think. There are plenty of places to hide."

Adam sighed and nodded, taking the Celzex's word for it as he dropped through the upper atmosphere of the planet.

He had been warned that there were roving bands of drones that kept their eyes on the atmosphere, but considering that no one had ever been dumb enough to visit their planet, the security was lax enough that they managed to make it through. In the back Sunny And Amelia were quiet as they watched through the front windscreen as clouds passed by them and then vanished out of line of sight.

The ground rising up to meet them was something else.

As he looked, Adam could see miles upon miles of crushed white crystal acting as sand on the edge of a small inland ocean. The crystal glittered with thousands of refracted colors in the sun, winking up at him with what seemed to be great enthusiasm as he passed over. Water lapped over the crystal beach, the tide pulled by the movement of the rings as they sliced overhead. The crystal sand had been eroded away after many years, leaving tall formations of glittering white poking up from the beach. He took them in for a landing in the shadow of one of these monoliths and cut the engine waiting for the others to disembark before grabbing his own weapon and stepping out into the shade of one of the massive rings.

The first thing he did was lift his eyes to the sky watching as four of the seven rings traversed the sky overhead.

His eyes were wide as he watched, and he determined then and there that earth was missing out by not having rings. The sight was absolutely amazing. The shadow of the ring moved across the land at a slow march, and he could see that they only had precious few minutes in the shade before sunlight came.

He turned his head in a wide arc looking at the crystal sand below his feet, glittering white, and the tall crystal monoliths, also glittering.

All along the ground and at their sides, little patches of pointed crystal formations cropped up straight and geometric with pyramid points on the top. The crystals came in all sorts of colors, blue and purple mostly but with some green and red thrown in.

Little puddles of water, acting as tide pools, lay host to thousands upon thousands of colorful little creatures, in every shade imaginable. The sand below their feet was still white as they hurried off the beach and into the foliage, which was just as colorful as the crystals.

Many of the trees were some shade of bright pink, though some blue and yellow was scattered in. Colorful shells littered the ground looking like bits of Drev carapace dropped carelessly somehow. The crystal formations continued to appear at odd intervals, rising out of the jungle to make arches, or towers or low walls.

They were forced to step over them time and time again as they made their way closer and closer to the capital city.

Lord Avex rode on Adam's shoulder whispering directions and tips in his ear as they moved forward.

At one point Adam was urged to a halt, and they sat to watch as a very long legged creature wobbled by, its shaggy green hair blowing in the breeze as it chuffed quietly. Its feet were large and round like that of an elephant, but it was much smaller ad much rounder, and covered in thick draping layers of hair that went down towards it's feet.

It didn't see them either by way of its hair or simply because it had chosen to ignore the intruders encroaching so rudely in it's territory. A small blue stream trickled through the clearing in front of them washing over crystal sand that was more blue than it was white.

Sunny tapped Adam on the shoulder and pointed up.

Adam tilted his head back and his jaw dropped open in awe as he watched it.

The creature was massive, about the size of a blue whale, but it was flying.

Of what he could see its underbelly was whit like the clouds above. In all honesty it looked more like some sort of crazy stingray than it looked like a whale. Its vast underbelly was flat as were its "Wings" which flapped slowly up and down propelling it forward in great slowness. It opened its mouth on occasion, massive and round as it sucked in wind from before it, and somehow it managed to stay aloft.

"A Loridon." Lord Avex muttered, "You are lucky to see one this far south."

"That is.... Fucking awesome, why don't we have sky whales."

"You are lucky to see one at all." Lord Avex said, "We almost hunted them to extinction a few thousand years ago, but when the ecology of our planet started to unbalance as a result, we had to take drastic actions. They were actually extinct for a while before we managed to clone them and set them back into the wild."

Adam stared at the whale as it continued to flap slowly over their heads.

A long slender protrusion stuck from the top of its head and dangled down a few hundred feet.

Staring at it, Adam watched as a large white bulb floated past them in the clearing, following the shadow of the great creature.

"What is that thing?" he wondered.

"It's fishing, or I believe that is how you humans might say. It catches its prey by luring it in with that and then reels it back up to eat."

"that hardly seems like it would work well."

"it also subsides on solar energy though it goes dormant unless it gets enough food, now hold on we are almost to the edge of the city."

Adam nodded raising his eyes in surprise as they broke through a collection of crystal arches and out onto a hillside.

Adam gasped.

"Well damn." Sunny said softly.

Below them thousands of glittering crystal buildings jutted hundreds of feet into the air all faceted surfaces and spiny towers dwarfing the small citizens who walked and rolled through the city. Light glittered through one of the towers nearly blinding Helene who reached up a hand to block the view.

"Welcome to my home."