Heart. Body. Mind.

These were the words that the King of Galaluna summoned from deep within himself to muster strength. Sadly, a year of imprisonment within his throne room had left his body in an atrophied state. His once-muscular frame had vanished, replaced by a withered gauntness clinging to his bones. Ragged patches of his beard were all that remained of his hair, as stress and malnutrition had caused the hair on his head to fall out. Yet, his mind remained sharp, able to withstand the mental tortures inflicted by the Mutradii painsmiths. Most importantly, his heart continued to drive him forward, fueling his belief that this war would one day end and that he would reunite with his beloved daughter, Princess Ilana.

The tyrant who now controlled Galaluna, his former friend and advisor General Modula, had done his best to break him. The King always had a scenic view of the devastated capital, the sound of sporadic resistance groups fighting and dying echoing up the castle parapets. While the deaths of soldiers and civilians filled him with grief, their continued opposition to the evil that oppressed their world also filled him with inspiration.

I may not be able to fight physically, but I can remain their unbreakable rock as long as I keep breathing, the King thought, just before a Mutradii missile streaked across the sky and hit an unspecified part of the capital with a deafening boom.

"That would be the sound of yet another fruitless rebel base being destroyed, my lord."

While he couldn't turn to see the speaker, the King was all too familiar with General Modula's mocking tone. Modula, still dressed in the olive-green uniform of a Galalunian officer, stood before him. His voice made the King furrow his brow in disgust. In his mind, his coup violated everything that uniform stood for and Modula's continued insistence to wear it was an insult. As the general finally faced the King the brim of a large hat obscured his eyes, making it impossible for the King to meet his gaze.

What met his eyes instead was a protruding green eye with a squid-ink black iris affixed to the hat. It was an obvious Mutraddi modification to a traditional Galalunian cap; though it was a modification the King could never make sense of. Maybe it was a sign of how detached Modula wished to be from his fellow man. Perhaps it concealed some creature controlling his friend through mysterious Mutradii dark sciences. The occasional blast of energy that came from the eye to vaporize his underlings for their failures almost convinced the King of the latter. Staring too long at the eye placed a pit of unease in his stomach; there was something inhuman about the whole thing.

"Have you learned nothing after a year of failure, Modula? The people will continue to rise up against you while the fire of freedom burns bright in their hearts, bodies, and minds!" the King barked defiantly.

Modula responded with a light chuckle, "I've no shortage of missiles, my lord. If another mound of termites needs exterminating, so be it."

"How can you be so uncaring about the lives you end? Do you feel no guilt over the deaths of your countrymen, of your friends?"

"I have no countrymen, least of all countrymen of a world that abandons its own on desolate worlds in pursuit of vain crusades."

The King fell silent for a moment. Modula never missed an opportunity to remind the King of what he thought was the general's death on the moon of Mutradd three years ago. The King had made his move to conquer the Mutraddi homeworld only to nearly die in the process. It had cost him a leg and, he thought, the life of a close friend.

"I keep telling you, Modula, that I thought you had died. All of us who made it back did!"

"Ah, but do you know who did not think me dead? The Mutraddi. Their painsmiths put me through tortures you couldn't imagine. What you face is a mere fraction of what I experienced, believe me."

Modula violently turned away from the King, his cape fluttering behind him as he surveyed the ruins of the capital. The King couldn't be sure, but it seemed as if Modula was shaking before standing rigid as if at attention.

"Yet the pain helped me see a series of truths. Hardship is a wonderful teacher, and one the Mutraddi themselves have relied on for millions of years."

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An icy silence chilled the room, only broken by the occasional explosion of munitions or the roar of some far-off Mutraddi creature.

"I'm sorry, Modula, I truly am for what happened to you."

The general spun back to advance toward the King, but this time a wicked smile crept across his face.

"Though I have thus far blamed you for my abandonment, I should actually thank you. Without my time in Mutraddi captivity, I never would have learned why our efforts at conquering Mutradd always seemed to end in failure."

Suddenly, the eye on Modula's hat began to emit a sickly, yellow glow. Flashes of images raced across the King's mind – images of war, pain, hatred, and death. The first complete scene he saw was the heroic figure of Galaluna's first spacefaring ruler, King Dagobert VI, atop a mighty industrial war tank. Hundreds of Galalunian tanks and machines chugged across the rocky surface of Mutradd, leaving a wake of Mutraddi corpses behind them.

The disembodied voice of Modula began to narrate the scenes that unraveled before him.

"King Dagobert VI, the first would-be crusader who set his eyes on Mutradd. Look at the overwhelming power of his war machines! Little wonder he felt his war would be an easy victory. And yet..."

The scene shifted to a large cave opening as Dagobert VI and his forces pushed onward inside. Before long, however, the war tanks sputtered to a stop as they struggled to continue further within the cave system. Dagobert VI and his soldiers all looked frantically in the darkness as their electric torches saw treads and wheels enveloped in a sticky, tar-like substance. The goo then began to bubble as the machines upon which the army stood started to dissolve as if dipped in corrosive acid. Panic set in as every man in the formation tried leaping to the machine behind them in an effort to fall back to the entrance.

"While Galalunian technological might was nigh unstoppable, the Mutraddi quickly learned that even a little mud could put a stop to the advance of even the most powerful tank. Of course, they knew that more than mud was needed."

A loud suctioning sound could be heard from the roof of the cave as the men still within looked on in horror at what seemed to be a cave-in coming down upon them. Yet it wasn't a cave-in; what the soldiers soon discovered was that they had literally walked into the belly of a beast. It was the first deployment of a Mutraddi rock-eater, a biologically enhanced giant alien slug beast that tunneled its way under Mutradd's surface thanks to a powerful acidic compound. The screams of the soldiers as they melted away were mercifully all the King could make out as the image cut from his vision.

"Do you understand yet, my lord? Or perhaps another example is necessary?"

Before he could scream no, more flashes pierced the King's mind. He saw Galalunian troops firing upon brutish Mutraddi beasts with laser weapons before shifting to a new scene with more humanoid-looking Mutraddi firing back with captured Galalunian weapons and firearms of their own creation. Next came a scene from orbit where Galalunian starships bombed areas of the moon from orbit only to later be destroyed by missiles fired by warships of clear Mutraddi design.

The King was finally snapped back to reality, drenched in sweat. While all in his mind, the pain and misery from the visions felt all too real.

"For two hundred years we have fought the Mutraddi, and not once did you nor any leader before you ever question how the most powerful empire in this system could not conquer the simple beasts of Mutradd. It should be obvious now, though, that the Mutraddi are evolution perfected."

The King wanted to get a word in but labored to simply breathe, which allowed Modula to continue, "Every tactic and weapon we threw at them was eventually matched with an adaptation. They became stronger, faster, and more intelligent. In two hundred short years, they went from simple lifeforms to a spacefaring civilization. Galaluna was the unintentional crucible for their species to reach its full potential, and it's all thanks to you and your predecessors."

"How?" the King asked, "Such rapid development just isn't possible."

"In time you may be granted insight to deeper truths, but that time is not now."

As Modula prepared to leave, the King shouted, "This time is different, Modula. The Mutraddi have never faced the likes of what my daughter and her charges are capable of."

"On that last point, we can agree. That's precisely why a change in approach is necessary."

A titanic rumbling reverberated throughout the palace as the King saw its source; the hundreds of Mutraddi ships that had perpetually been floating above the capital were ascending toward space. 

Surely they aren't retreating? the King thought to himself.

As if reading his mind, Modula responded, "No, not a retreat. Enough of Galaluna has been pacified that I feel comfortable sending the fleet away for a brief period."

The sudden realization of what Modula was implying shot through the King's mind like a bolt of electricity. The King cried out, "No, you can't!"

"Oh, but I can and I will. Sending a menagerie of beasts after the princess has been a losing tactic. If I cannot kill her that way then I will simply extinguish all life on the pitiful little hovel of a world you sent her to. The combined power of the fleet's main cannons will easily crack the planet Earth as if it were an egg being prepared for breakfast."

The screams of the King went unheard and unfelt by Modula as he left the throne room. He issued an alert to ready the Rift Gate, though he knew a fleet of this size would not make it to Earth as quickly as one of his monsters would. Yet even if they knew the fleet was coming there was little they could do about it. Heart, body, and mind were powers that paled before the firepower equivalent to a small star.