"So weak."
A sneer twisted bloodied lips.
"So pathetic."
And then.....
He nudged his aged father away.
Not hard enough to wound.
Hard enough to humiliate.
The elder, already unsteady, stumbled sideways and struck the floor.
Gasps broke across the chamber.
And before any mind had finished registering what had happened....
Thessian was no longer in his seat.
He was there.
In front of the son.
No one saw him cross the distance.
One moment he sat.
The next his hand was around the captive's body.
And then.....
Violence.
Raw.
Ancient.
Terrible.
With a movement so brutally effortless it scarcely seemed possible, Thessian lifted the restrained son clear off the ground...
And tore him apart.
The sound that followed was not a scream at first.
It was something wetter.
More horrible.
Then came the scream.
"Aaaahhh!"
It erupted not from one throat, but many.
Elders.
Guards.
Even one of the remaining captives.
