Cruelty was always lonely, Ariock thought. Torture only happened if there was nobody in power who cared.

That was the Torth assumption. That was the Torth way.

Ariock watched from the air while half a dozen zombie dregs bumbled around the rocky red landscape. These leftover zombies were filthy and emaciated, but they should trigger any traps or missiles or whatever. He was ready for anything.

Nothing seemed alive in this desert except for crucifixion victims, the shambling zombies, and small desert critters.

Ariock expanded his awareness across the desert, hyper-alert for any hint of danger.

He did not sense any unwelcome blazes of power. No Rosy Ranks. No Servants of All.

Nothing hidden underground. Just rocks and dirt.

Nothing overhead except for dry desert air.

Ariock scanned for any metal objects that might be a nuclear bomb instead of a cross. Nothing. No unstable wrongness. No military transports. No armored vehicles waiting just out of sight.

Ariock growled at the time he was wasting on being overcautious. There weren’t even any ominous satellites in orbit over this region of Nuss.

Thomas had probably soaked up too many Torth minds. Maybe he was growing paranoid and jumping at shadows? The bags under his eyes hinted that he wasn’t sleeping well.

Ariock ghosted to his contingent of healers and friends. He encompassed everyone within his awareness—Jinishta, Garrett, Evenjos, and all the healer-warriors—and teleported them all to the desert.

While everyone adjusted to the change in temperature and atmosphere, Ariock said, “There’s no trap here.” He spread his arms, and his voice went cold and distant as he sank his awareness into every piece of metal in the desert. “I’ll set down the victims so we can go through and heal them.”

In the early days of using his powers, Ariock would have had trouble keeping track of so many millions of metal beams. He would have had to uproot them one at a time, or in small batches. But these days? He regularly encompassed huge amounts of cargo or armies within his awareness. It was a juggling act, to sort living cargo from barrels and crates, and to set things down gently after traversing half a galaxy, especially while shielding himself. Ariock was a lot more comfortable with multitasking than he used to be. Being a titan of power had become second-nature to him.

He yanked every single cross out of the ground.

For a moment, they hovered, shedding red dust that billowed across the desert. Ariock made sure that he had a sketchy notion of the uneven terrain.

Then, satisfied that he was aware of boulders and ditches, he simultaneously eased the crosses to the ground. He was careful to keep the organic matter—the people—on top, rather than squishing them underneath each heavy cross.

Now the victims could be healed on an individual basis. That was the only way to do it. Healing was a full focus power.

“Let’s go,” Ariock said.

Jinishta shouted orders, and her black-armored warriors spread out amidst the downed crosses. They must be searching for sunburnt albinos decked in purple mantles. It was common sense to heal warriors first. That went without saying.

“That poor shani!” Orla rushed to a victim with curly white hair, whose face and arms were as red as a boiled lobster.

“I should never have consented to allow my people to settle in a desert.” Jinishta strode away, grim. No doubt she was searching for her sister’s family among the victims.

“Evenjos,” Ariock said. “Go overhead and look for anyone on the verge of death.” He hoped she would obey orders. “Prioritize healing them, first.”

“Good idea.” Evenjos dissipated into dust. As a field of particles, she would be able to spot dying people before anyone else.

She would be an angel today.

Ariock broke chains, removing them in batches. That should be enough to free everyone. He might have missed a few, but his people were armed with their own tools and powers.

The Torth Empire probably assumed that Ariock would never rearrange his own personal schedule to conduct this rescue operation. Torth simply did not comprehend kindness.

And Ariock supposed his track record on Nuss wasn’t great.

He had failed to rescue dozens of people in an attack on Plateau City last week. And the week before that, there had been six people killed. The Torth kept nabbing people who happened to wander a bit too far from his military outposts. They caught smugglers who were undercover. They murdered free people almost every day, in terrorist bombings, or raids upon the cities he was supposed to be protecting.

“When are you going to stop blaming yourself for other people’s bad luck?” Garrett growled in a low voice. “You can’t be everywhere at once. You can’t save every single—”

Ariock walked away.

He was sick of that lecture. Garrett brought it up whenever he caught a whiff of guilt from Ariock. Well, if the old mind reader didn’t want to absorb spillover guilt, then maybe he shouldn’t stand so close.

“Get to work, Garrett.” Ariock removed his helmet and made it vanish. He would teleport it back if this place turned into a battle zone, but he suspected that his galaxy armor was overkill here.

He knelt near a moaning nussian. He had to let go of his personal shield, since healing was an act of overwhelming giving. Ariock had more than enough raw power to spare, but healing required his absolute presence in the moment.

He was sure that Garrett was wrong about his supposed Savior Complex. Guilt was a trait that mind readers—including Garrett—seemed to have a deficit of. It didn’t mean that Ariock was power-tripping. Just the opposite. Guilt was a telltale sign that he was human.

No one deserved this much suffering. Ariock, of all people, knew how it felt.

When he leaned over the poor nussian, he heard a mechanical hissing sound. Weird. But Ariock was too busy connecting with her ebbing life spark to investigate. He poured himself into her life.

The nussian gasped with relief. She sat up.

Ariock coughed a little bit. The air had an odd smell, like chlorine mixed with ale or beer.

He stood. Warriors knelt here and there, and no one chastised them if they poured their healing powers into non-warriors. There was far too much pain here to stick to standard protocol.

The only person who didn’t seem obsessed with healing was Garrett. The old man stood in the midst of the atrocity, hands on his hips, looking like he expected bad news.

He hadn’t looked that way a minute ago. Why wasn’t he pitching in with the healing?

“I owe you my life.” The nussian swept her head in a gesture of loyalty towards Ariock. “Are you the messiah? The Son of Storms?”

“I am,” Ariock said absently. His hairs stood on end, the way he typically felt before a major battle.

He nearly asked Garrett what was wrong. But he wasn’t going to waste time coaxing intelligence out of the old man. If Garrett sensed a threat, he would say so.

Ariock went to the next dying victim, another nussian. He knelt and extended his hands over pebbly skin.

But he had trouble feeling the necessary sympathy.

Ariock shifted his position, irked by his own feeling of annoyance. He needed to give healing energy to this suffering nussian. Instead of feeling empathy, all he felt was anger.

He was pissed off that a city full of his people had allowed themselves to be victimized. What sort of defenses had failed? Who was in charge?

When he leaned over the victim, a puff of that scent filled his nostrils, chlorine and beer. It made his eyes water.

Did the cross beam have tiny nozzles embedded in it?

Ariock studied the metal. The nozzles were easy to overlook, camouflaged to blend in with the metal, and they were partially blocked by the nussian’s head. But … had the cross just sprayed a neurotoxin at his face?

The Torth weren’t that clever. Were they?

Ariock scanned the scene. If every cross was a trap, then a hundred of his best warriors had probably just breathed an unknown toxin. Their space armor made them nearly invincible, but their faceplates were down. They had taken their cue from Ariock.

Well, who wanted to breathe canned air in every situation?

Ariock supposed they might all need healing. Evenjos was impervious to most dangers, and she could fix any illness or injury. After this, he guessed he would need to wear his helmet from now on, even when he felt safe. Ugh. Air tanks and helmets. They looked so stupid. With so much gear, his warriors would be clumsy.

It really pissed him off.

“The crosses are traps.” Ariock straightened to his full height, his armored shadow engulfing the nussian at his feet. “Don’t lean over them.”

“What?” Garrett braced himself, staff clutched in both hands. “Ariock, we have missiles incoming from three directions.” He pointed out the directions: east, west, and above. “I’m beginning to suspect the boy gave a valid warning. I think we should leave.”

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“Missiles?” Even as Ariock spoke, shrill whistles brought his attention skyward. He recognized the shriek of incoming projectiles all too well.

All around the desert, warriors snapped to attention. They drew spears, looking skyward.

“Ariock!” Jinishta yelled, sprinting towards him. “Get the victims to safety!”

Ariock began to encompass the victims within his awareness. He wasn’t going to fight off a Torth fleet while worrying about millions of injured victims.

The problem? The victims weren’t consolidated. They sprawled over a mile or two of uneven terrain. These were not his orderly troops.

They would not all fit on the teleportation flats.

Ariock would need to find a big open space in which to deposit them. Once he found a place? Some of these already-injured people would end up being dropped from a few feet, since the ground in the new location would not match that of the red rocks desert.

That must be what the Torth wanted. They wanted Ariock to clumsily run away and worsen the injuries of his people in the process.

They wanted him humiliated.

They wanted his own people to scorn him.

Ariock tightened his fists. The wind picked up. The temperature plummeted, responding to his dark mood. His awareness spilled outward. It went far, almost against his will, engulfing a lot of motion and life sparks.

Several miles away, two separate fleets flew towards him.

A Torth armada was on its way. The first wave of enemies would arrive within a minute. Ariock knew what to expect. How many times had he battled Torth? They would bombard Ariock, and here he was, stuck in a desert full of defenseless victims.

Garrett used his powers, and the sky erupted in rings and ovals of fire as missiles hit force shields.

“Get the victims to safety!” Jinishta cried. “Please!”

Right.

Ariock needed to calm down if he was going to detach from his body and teleport people. The smell of chlorine and beer seemed to linger. He snorted outward to clear his sinuses, then took a deep breath, desperate to calm himself.

It didn’t work. He only felt more furious.

Ariock gave up on the trance. He couldn’t get in the right mood to teleport. He felt jittery.

“EVENJOS,” he said, his voice amplified by power. “GET OVER HERE AND HEAL ME.”

Garrett regarded him with concern. “What’s wrong? Can’t you teleport us?”

Ariock wondered if his great-grandfather was trying to make him look incompetent. “I told you,” he said, measuring out the words to make sure he was understood. “The crosses are traps. They sprayed me with some kind of neurotoxin.”

Garrett’s eyes went round. “Inhibitor?”

“No.” Ariock wondered why Garrett wanted him to explain. “I have my powers.”

“Then…” Garrett raised his staff, ready to bat away another round of missiles. “What effects are you having?”

“I don’t know!” Ariock snapped. He felt sure Garrett was trying to make him look stupid. “But obviously I need to be healed, to be on the safe side.”

Glittering dust zoomed across the desert towards them. The dust gathered into the regal winged form of Evenjos, complete with her tiara. She held out her hands in the healing pose towards Ariock.

Then she hesitated.

“What are you waiting for?” Ariock asked. Why did Evenjos always have to look like a fairy queen? She was so fake, so disingenuous.

Evenjos shook her head. “I sense no injury or illness. You are healthy.”

“Heal me anyway,” Ariock said, just as Garrett spoke nearly the same words. “Heal him anyway.”

Evenjos did so. Ariock felt some minor aches fade away. He must have been very tense, to have aches to begin with. He could only assume that Evenjos had healed whatever problems the neurotoxin was causing.

Garrett smashed a few more incoming missiles. The wind was becoming a force, whipping their clothes.

Jinishta and her warriors maintained their combat stances. “Nethroko is deploying the cloud fleet,” Jinishta yelled over the wind. “They should be here in a few minutes. Ariock? We need to be evacuated.”

Of course. Their spears were no match for missiles. Ariock knew that.

He shook his head, trying to clear the rage that fogged his thoughts. What was wrong with him? Why was he so eager to kill Torth instead of protecting his people? There were millions of injured innocents here, some of them still chained to downed crosses. There were a hundred of his best Alashani with healing powers. These were extremely valuable warriors. He really needed to mass-teleport them all to safety.

Missiles flared white-hot, streaking towards them.

Ariock whipped out a shockwave before Garrett even had a chance to react. He sent the missiles spinning away. While they exploded in fiery rings, the horizon darkened from the approaching double fleet of enemy transports.

Garrett look from the ominous horizon to Ariock and back again. “Ariock, the Torth don’t seem to have any advantages here, but they’re coming in fast and confident. They’re throwing one hundred percent of their planetary resources at us. I have to wonder why.”

Ariock had trouble working through the implications. His jittery feeling refused to go away. All he wanted to do was kill.

“I know it’s tough,” Garrett went on, “but the smart thing to do would be to exit stage left, and go somewhere we can—”

Ariock snatched Garrett off the ground with one armored hand, just to shut him up. Did the old man actually want to flee? It was atypical of him.

But it was exactly what mind readers seemed wont to do.

Cowards.

“We fight.” Ariock’s voice made pebbles jitter on the ground. Thunder rumbled.

He dropped Garrett, knowing the old man would land on his feet.

The Torth were idiots if they thought they could take on the Giant. He sensed hundreds of thousands of lives coming at him, but they were all of ordinary intensity. No Rosies. No Servants. Only weaklings.

If they had nuclear bombs? Ariock knew they would be limited in number. This planet, Nuss, lacked any stockpile facilities. They had no factories for the assembly of nuclear weapons.

Maybe these lowly Red Ranks and civilian Torth thought they could drop some pink gas and take Ariock out that way? If so, they were mistaken. Inhibitor zones took time to set up. Ariock had no intention of giving them that time, and he wasn’t stupid enough to let them get in his airspace.

Let them try.

Let the Torth fleet hurl its firepower at a desert storm.

Ariock raised his arms, lifting himself on a tidal wave of air that sparked and snapped with lightning.

“Ariock?” Garrett shouted. “Get a grip!”

A colorful phoenix bird flew overhead. Evenjos had transformed for some reason. “I’m not staying here,” she said. “Teleport us away! Now!”

What a useless piece of fluff she was. Really, Evenjos was no different from the cringing penitents who refused to take up arms to defend justice and liberty. Ariock wanted to clamp a hand over her multi-hued feathers and crush the cowardice out of her. He hated mind readers.

“Oh my, you really are mad.” The talking bird circled Ariock. It was jarring to hear Evenjos’s voice coming from an animal. Perhaps she felt too fearful to maintain her regal default form?

“You will stay,” Ariock commanded.

“Go.” Garrett waved the Evenjos-bird away.

She looked torn between the two of them, struggling against the fierce wind.

“I’m in charge,” Ariock reminded her.

“Then why aren’t you evacuating the innocent victims?” The Evenjos-bird landed on one of his huge armored shoulders. “I’m a healer, not a warrior. You know this.” She fluffed her feathers in a cute and innocent look. “I am sorry, but—”

“Shut your beak.” Ariock was not in the mood to listen to her blather. “You will take the same risks as the rest of us, for once.”

Evenjos launched herself into the air. She flapped away, moving faster than any natural creature. One of her magenta feathers lingered in the air. It disintegrated to dust and zoomed after the rest of her.

“Let her go,” Garrett pleaded. “She has her supercom. I’ll call her when we’re done. We can’t use someone who doesn’t want to be here.”

Ariock wished Garrett would stop making excuses for Miss Birdbrain.

But he was done dealing with cowards. He levitated on a tide of power, ignoring the little people beneath him. He was well-rested. He was powerful. Sure, he might have fallen for a trap here, but he had survived Torth tricks before.

Unfortunately, he needed a helmet, and he was unable to put himself into a clairvoyant trance. His galaxy helmet was back home. So he used his powers to tear chains apart, reshaping and reforging them into a crude helm. He flared its base to fit over his neck guard, leaving enough room to breathe. Slits allowed him to peer forward.

If the evil cowards who had crucified a city full of people wanted to give him a workout … well.

He was ready.

Ariock’s shoulders widened to become heavy clouds. He unfurled titanic arms of rainfall and electric energy. His awareness continued to unfurl, nearly out of his control, driven by rage. Did these stupid Torth believe they could chase away the Giant and win eternal glory in the Megacosm? It seemed like an insane risk.

A fatal miscalculation.

Ariock roared at the Torth. His roar was encased in a bolt of lightning so huge, it would blind and deafen anyone. The impact sent fissures cracking through bedrock.

Boulders absorbed the shock wave. Rocks split with a sound more ominous than thunder.

The double fleet of Torth remained on the horizon, circling the death zone rather than moving in closer. Were they afraid? Not enough. Ariock levitated sand and blasted it towards them, along with ropes of lightning. Transports slammed down in fiery bursts. Life sparks winked out.

Ariock had grown since his last full-out battle against the Torth. Maybe he wouldn’t be so constrained this time.

He would show them.

“Ariock!” Jinishta yelled, her voice small and faraway. “You’re hurting people on our side! Can you hear me?”

Was her voice a Torth trick? Anyone who fought alongside the Giant knew to expect violence. That was a given. If they lost their footing in his storm? Well then, they should have trained better.

“Stop him!”

“There’s something wrong with him!”

The shouts of warriors faded to meaningless drizzle as Ariock’s awareness expanded to fill the desert. He was too enraged to stand still, to root himself in bedrock, to constrain himself. He wanted to connect to every incoming Torth and rip their bodies in half with the power of his mind.

This planet belonged to him.

If murderous telepaths wanted to take it back, then he would eject them like the trash they were. Let them—“DIE, TORTH.”

Ariock inhaled, and the ground swelled with enough force to rearrange the landscape into bizarre crags and canyons. A tectonic plate shifted, groaning on its ancient foundation.

Lives vanished. Enemies, surely. If they were friends, then they should have gotten out of his way. Ariock glimpsed beings in the jagged landscape beneath him. Some hid. Some ran. Some fought like maniacs, slaughtering each other with spikes or spears or electricity.

Transports continued to circle the mass of his storm-self. The vehicles banked around his circumference, miles apart, unwilling to move closer to his mortal core. He hated the way they circled him, like carrion-eaters watching a maddened beast.

Was that what he was to them? A beast who ripped aliens apart with his bare hands for a judgmental audience of silent, decadent non-people?

Were they entertained?

Were they waiting for him to run out of energy and fall, so they could chain him up and make him suffer and steal him away from anyone capable of loving him?

“You’re killing innocent people.” Garrett’s voice rippled on the wind, magnified by power. “The ones on crosses. Remember them?”

Although Ariock was sure that he was being played … a part of him, deep down, suspected that he was truly hearing Garrett.

Was he actually damaging friends and allies?

It was hard to believe. Ariock tried to reason through the situation, but he could not shake off his enraged feeling. There was something wrong with him. All he wanted to do was tear people apart and wreck everything around him.

He tried to lose his stature. He tried to make himself meager and merely an oversized human, rather than a storm.

But he could not control his rage.

And rage, he realized, was a major trigger for his storm powers. As long as he felt this way, he was unable to stop—unable to control tidal waves of sand, and earthquakes that tore the ground asunder.

He roared in wordless anguish and rage. He hardly knew who he was anymore. Ariock Dovanack? Who was that? Some kind of vulnerable mortal man? Names were human abstractions, made for lesser people. He was no longer lesser.

He was a storm titan.

He slammed gigantic fists against the desert, spraying sand half a mile in the air. People fell into the blast craters and died.

“KNOCK ME OUT,” he pleaded, but even his voice was inhuman. It was the roar of wind and the growl of thunder. He could not actually plead. Not as a storm god. He could barely make the words sound like words.

He sensed many more life sparks winking out. Many were fleeing from him, or flying away.

But one blazed towards him.

This vibrant life spark was wrapped in the scouring winds of a tornado. It was a stormbringer.

An enemy stormbringer.

The giant screeched sand and wind at it, slamming his enemy until it broke apart.

The enemy tornado reformed, coming at him from another angle. The clash of their collision sent up massive shock waves of grit.

The lesser stormbringer fell apart again, then reformed as a towering wall of rocks. The giant hammered that wall into submission. He destroyed the other stormbringer again, then again, all the while flinging away the enemy transports at his edges. He was a massive sandstorm. No one would survive his rage. These murderous mind readers wanted to make him their clown? Their gladiator? He was done with that.

He would take down every last one of them. He would destroy every mind reader on this planet, if he had to.