Burning Bright Eyes

Prologue

Three deca-phoebs ago...

        Lotor's cruiser hovered beside a palace of silver metal on a monotone landscape. The capitol city was dark and silent with the faint haze of smoke, dotted by the lights of Mieran eyes and colored cloaks. The Trueblood and Royalsoul cults had caused an uproar over a simple task of retrieving records on the military of the planet Mierome, simply because the recipients of the records were a minuscule squad of Galra hybrids. The prince disapproved of the planet's society and its purpose for the empire, but it could not be helped.

        Not yet.

        "Acxa," Lotor addressed the blue-skinned general from the throne of his ship. "Have you completed translating the reports of the military on Mierome?"

        "Yes, I have, sir," the woman nodded, sending the info chart to the main screen. "However, there is one member of the guard that you might be interested in: a half-Galra commander named Ayiko." She pointed out the picture of the mentioned general, who did seem noticeably different compared to the pureblood Miero on the rest of the chart. Her skin held a Galra-like violet tinge, and her ears were pointed like those of a Galra. "The information about her is heavily biased towards blood-purity, so it's fair to assume her way of becoming such a high rank and maintaining it couldn't have been easy."

        "She definitely looks stronger than the rest of those puny Miero we got through," Zethrid commented. "Wonder if she fights good, too."

        "I wouldn't be surprised, Zethrid," Lotor mused, looking at the mugshot with newfound interest. "I wonder why we didn't fight her when we attacked."

        Ezor soon came running into the ship, skidding along the floor to her station. "Yikes! Those guards obviously hate hybrids for some reason, 'cause I just tried to save a weird-looking Miero from a group of generals, and those creeps had their tendril things ready to tear me to shreds! I heard one of them say they were heading to some huge nearby crater and -- wow, that's the same one I saw, without the weird helmet thingy keeping her tendril things from coming out."

        Lotor's eyes widened. "Hate hybrids... blood-purity... a half-Galra commander... a crater..." he mumbled, going over what the scenario could mean. Only one real possibility stuck out, and it wasn't a good one.

        Acxa asked, "Sir, do you believe those generals are planning on inflicting harm on this commander?"

        Lotor nodded slowly. "Your assumptions are identical to mine, Acxa. Prepare my personal fighter with the coordinates to the crater Ezor was speaking of. Narti, prepare a healing pod in the infirmary; something tells me this Ayiko will be harmed by her superiors, if she hasn't been already."

        The blind general nodded and ran off to do as she was told. Acxa went to the controls, adding the location to the nearest, closest crater on Mierome to the log of the prince's ship. Lotor walked briskly to the shipping dock with his helmet on, leaping into his fighter and taking off into the dark atmosphere.

        Mierome, Lotor's thoughts wandered as he flew through the sky. A planet of haunting beauty that masks petrifying power and crippling hatred. Only taken by the Empire because of the danger of its phantasmal population, and the planet's antimatter energy for the witch's experiments. The chauvinistic groups that race across the soil are far stronger than their fragile monarchy. Like a rock amassed with ghostly wild animals no one could dare tame. And yet, there is now one who perhaps can tame the beastly cults, so long as she's taken from their jaws first. Let us hope we can carry her into our world, away from this realm of torment, before her blood-purist race destroys her for her own strength.