CHAPTER 2 — PLANET OF FREAKS
There's a reason they call it the Incest King's world. When the Dragon of Khaos rips out of hyperspace, the planet below is already humping itself to death: a cancer sphere rotating slow, black veins thickening the orbital map, sick red light leaking from the cracks like a botched corpse makeup. Sensors choke on the atmosphere—too much methane, too much ozone, too much everything that says "don't breathe this unless you want to cough up your own ancestry."
Khaos is first to the viewport, letting the raw, uncut scenery mainline into his optic nerves. He's grinning, but it's the manic grin of a man who knows that the only way out is through. DragonFire stands behind, arms folded, one foot propped on the edge of the dash, all business. The ship's hull creaks from the heat and pressure, or maybe just the tension.
He slaps the HUD, flicks on the outside cam, and lets the full panorama broadcast to his co-pilot. "You seeing this, DF?"
"Hard to miss," says DragonFire, voice flat. She's staring at the monitor, but his eyes keep drifting to the burn patterns in the clouds—she's cataloguing, mapping the thermal vectors, already thinking about how to burn it cleaner.
Khaos magnifies the hemisphere: The upper atmo is a brownish-yellow soup, streaked with ragged black rivers of soot, and underneath, the continents are mostly ruins. Pits gouged everywhere, like the world's been gnawed on by rats the size of tectonic plates. Even the so-called cities are just scabs—concentric circles of half-collapsed buildings, fused at random angles by some planetary-scale welding torch.
"Looks like hell's ghetto. Bet you ain't seen this in no travel guide," Khaos says, flicking a glance to the hypothetical audience he's sure is out there. He tosses in a smile that lands somewhere between TV ad and mugshot.
The ship rattles, turbulence going straight to the teeth. Khaos slams the inertials up a notch, using the G-force as a thrill ride instead of a threat. He flips the switch on the cabin air—filters working overtime to keep the reek outside, but even with the best hardware, a tendril of it snakes in: burnt hair, spoiled meat, the ammonia tang of a million unwashed bedsheets. He sucks in a long, loving breath and coughs for effect.
They break through the lower cloud deck and get their first look at the surface. "Jesus," DragonFire mutters, not meaning it religiously.
The land is a disaster. Breeding pits the size of sports stadiums, each ringed with razor wire and high-voltage pylons. Mutant towers jut from the ground in obscene poses, metal grafted to flesh, flesh rotting and healed over with metal. The rivers run red and yellow, two-toned like a sick child's vomit. In the bigger basins, the muck bubbles with movement—something alive, or at least ambitious.
Khaos zooms the lens. The city nearest their drop-point has been built, destroyed, and rebuilt so many times the streets have no order—just a grid of agony, slums bolted to other slums, every wall scrawled in a language of violence and graffiti. The breeding pits here are full—crowds of half-grown monsters pressed together, chanting or shrieking or gnawing at the fences. Overhead, drones circle, dropping chemicals or surveillance nodes, the sky thick with both.
He feels DragonFire's mood shift. The flames tattooed on her arms flicker, responding to the ambiance. Her knuckles tighten around the seat frame. "You sure you want to set down here?" she asks, but it's rhetorical.
"We're not gonna get a better welcome anywhere else," Khaos says. He calls up the HUD, which flashes the mission marker:
OBJECTIVE: DESTROY KING GRINE'S EMPIRE
STATUS: INCOMPLETE
REWARD: TO BE DETERMINED
He adds, "Besides, we blend in better near the bottom." He shoots a knowing look at DragonFire, who rolls her eyes but doesn't argue.
Khaos angles the ship for a "hot" insertion, dropping into the urban abyss at a speed usually reserved for last stands and suicide attempts. The ground comes up fast, but he flares the repulsors at the last second, burning a landing crater in what passes for a plaza. The shockwave sends a ripple through the nearest breeding pit—bodies tumble, some shrieking, some laughing, some just staring up with hopeful, rabid eyes.
The landing bay hisses open. Heat slaps them both in the face, making Khaos's hair stand on end and DragonFire's skin bead instantly with sweat. They don't bother with masks. If you're gonna wage war, you breathe the same poison as your enemy.
They step out together, side by side, the Dragon and the Bastard Prince of Chaos. The local wildlife clocks them instantly: the scent of outworlder, the posture of predators. The first wave of attention comes from the pit guards—hulking shapes with bony exoskeletons, dressed in shredded combat gear, most holding tools that double as weapons. They watch, but don't move. Not yet.
Khaos makes a show of stretching, arms wide, flexing the nano-chain mail sleeveless over his biceps, chaos tattoos crawling and shimmering with excitement. He cracks his neck and grins at the nearest guard, who pretends not to notice.
DragonFire surveys the pit. The children here are more creature than human, every one unique in its deformity: some with extra eyes, some with no face at all, some crawling on too many hands or too few legs. The strongest have already carved out a hierarchy—one kid, maybe eight, is riding another's shoulders, shrieking orders in a voice two registers too deep.
"Efficient," DragonFire says, voice dipped in acid.
Khaos shrugs. "Why train an army when you can breed one?"
DragonFire's lip curls, the dragon in her wanting to torch the entire pit. Instead, she just says, "Let's move. The longer we stand still, the more interesting we look."
They skirt the edge of the pit, boots crunching on a carpet of broken glass, old teeth, and discarded needles. Every fifty meters there's a hanging post, each displaying a corpse, crucified as a warning. Some are fresh, some are not. One still twitches, reflex nerves firing off a last middle finger to the world.
Khaos points it out, "That's dedication. You don't see that kind of work ethic anymore."
DragonFire doesn't laugh, but the fire on her arms flares, a little hungrier.
They pass through what used to be a market. The stalls have been welded shut, the goods inside rotted or pillaged. The only commerce now is flesh—mutants trading bites of meat for needles, or drugs, or favors. A few watch them pass, eyes full of hate or hope, but none make a move.
There's music, sort of: a bass rumble from underground, punctuated by screams and mechanical grinding. Somewhere a siren wails, then is cut off mid-bleat. Above them, old speaker arrays are blaring propaganda: a deep, male voice chanting slogans about the King's glory, the purity of the new breed, the future of the bloodline. Every third word glitches, replaced with static.
They keep moving. The city's arteries are clogged with refugees and soldiers in equal measure—nobody walks with purpose, everyone just shuffles, trying not to attract notice. The soldiers are worse than the guards, most of them ex-human, now rebuilt with scrap metal and exposed wiring, skin tattooed with barcodes and kill counts. A squad of them blocks the road ahead, but Khaos and DragonFire cut down an alley, using the chaos as cover.
On the far side, they find the main event: a training yard, where hundreds of half-humanoid, half-nightmare spawn are drilling for war. The instructor is a woman with arms like steel girders and a head shaved to the bone. She's screaming at the freaks, but her voice is so fried by chemicals and rage that it comes out as pure noise.
Khaos watches, arms folded. "You think she knows she's ugly?"
"She's alive, isn't she?" DragonFire's response is deadpan.
They watch the training for a while, cataloguing tactics. The spawn fight in swarms, overwhelming with numbers, but there's a weird logic to it—a dance of violence, each one knowing its role. The weakest are thrown at the enemy first, literally used as shields. The second wave are bigger, smarter, using the meat-shields as platforms to leap and attack. Third wave is all muscle and hate, the finishers.
"Grine's got style," Khaos admits, reluctantly impressed.
DragonFire grunts, "He's got fear. That's all you need."
There's a commotion at the edge of the yard—a group of prisoners dragged from the pits, tossed in to be "trained." The spawn set on them immediately, tearing, biting, but also testing, sparing the ones that fight back best. The losers are left to bleed out, the winners shoved into the next line.
Khaos shakes his head, "Natural selection. With extra steps."
The smell is getting worse: burnt ozone, fresh blood, and the ripe, greasy odor of fear. Khaos breathes deep, savoring it.
DragonFire looks at him sideways. "You like this."
He shrugs. "I like knowing what we're up against. And I like a challenge."
She says nothing, but the flames on her skin burn a shade brighter.
The HUD pings again:
OBJECTIVE UPDATED: PENETRATE CENTRAL COMPOUND // FIND THE KING
SIDE QUEST: SURVIVE
Khaos grins at the update, then looks straight through the fourth wall. "You rooting for us yet? Or you just here for the violence?"
He scans the crowd, spots a patrol of freak-army goons headed their way. "Either way," he says, "it's about to get entertaining."
The scene ends with Khaos and DragonFire slipping back into the shadows, prepping for the first real hit. The taste of the world is in their mouths, and it tastes like old wounds and fresh rage.
The air tastes worse at ground level, if you can believe it. Khaos and DragonFire stick to the alleys, moving quick but not sneaky. In a place like this, nothing's subtle—every street is a stage, and if you're not loud you're already dead.
They skirt the edge of the next district, dropping down from the half-melted skyway into the bone-yard of a village. The buildings are a parody of shelter: walls warped from old heat, roofs sagging with the weight of generations of failure. Every door is broken or barred. The few that aren't have bloodstains and warning glyphs etched right above the frame—amateur hour for anyone who's ever survived a block war.
They pass the first corpse before either of them speaks. It's strung up by the ankles, arms missing, face eaten away by rats or something worse. The thing's chest cavity is split open like a roasting chicken, guts swinging gently in the hot wind. Underneath, a cluster of kids are scraping up the spilled viscera with tin cans, arguing over the best parts. Their eyes are milky, but their teeth are sharp. They barely register the newcomers.
Khaos offers a polite wave. "Morning, my dudes." One of the kids flips him off with a three-jointed finger.
DragonFire is stone-faced, but the flames coiling around her wrists get brighter. The dragon tattoo on her forearm is pacing now, scales rippling with agitation. She watches the kids for a long second, then moves on.
The further they go, the more the place looks like an autopsy. Corpses nailed to crossbeams, some so old they're more leather than man. In the center square, a dozen heads on pikes, their mouths pried open with metal rods. Each has a sign hung around its neck—some warning, some joke, some just blank because nobody cared.
The soundscape here is all work. In a courtyard behind a wire fence, another crop of children—these less mutated, maybe a little more human—are chained together at the ankle, hammering hunks of scrap metal into rough weapon shapes. Overseer freaks pace the rows, smacking laggards with electrified clubs. Every so often, a kid collapses. If they get up fast enough, they're ignored; if not, one of the overseers hauls them out and tosses them into a pit for "processing." What's left over after processing isn't worth describing.
Khaos leans against a scorched lamppost and watches for a while. "I'd say child labor laws have gotten lax," he says, "but I think OSHA just gave up."
DragonFire doesn't smile. She looks like she's about to bite through her own tongue. The dragon in her skin has stopped pacing; now it's just glaring, tail lashing. Khaos's chaos core flickers in sync—a feedback loop of rage and disgust.
A cluster of guards come into view, herding a cart full of fresh parts. Not food. Not anything you'd want near your mouth. The guards are the same model as the pit crew: all muscle, ceramic plates, scars you could use for GPS. One glances at Khaos and DF, decides they're not worth the hassle, and moves on.
Khaos addresses the imaginary camera, voice softer than usual. "I joke to keep from snapping. But this? This right here? This gets burned." He punches the palm of his hand, and the chaos tattoos surge to life, crawling up his neck and around his skull in a halo of bad intent.
They move deeper into the village, drawing the stares of the survivors—mostly women and old men, cowering in doorways or behind welded-shut hatches. None of them ask for help. None of them believe in rescue. The ones that look away quickest are the ones most afraid; the ones who stare you down are already broken, nothing left to lose.
In the shadow of a burned-out church, DragonFire finally breaks. She watches a little girl with webbed hands and a caved-in jaw, dragging a chunk of slag twice her size, and something in her just snaps.
"Enough," she growls, more dragon than woman. The air around her heats up, blurring, as if reality's about to melt.
Khaos feels it too. The HUD in his brain glitches—numbers spike, the interface shakes. Chaos Energy at 90%, it flashes, then 92, then 93. He grits his teeth and lets the charge build, eyes locked on the square where the overseers are lining up a fresh batch of kids for the night shift.
DragonFire's fists ignite, real flames now, not just the tattoo show. The overseers see it, hesitate, then double down—one raises a pulse rifle and points it straight at her head.
Khaos laughs, sharp and ugly. "Oh, you wanna play?"
He flicks his wrist and the world slows down, time bending to the will of the chaos core. He's in the square before the overseer can finish pulling the trigger. He grabs the pulse rifle, twists, and uses the guy's own finger to blow his own head off. The other overseers scatter, but not fast enough—DragonFire's already on them, her dragon spirit roaring, mouth wide and fangs exposed. She grabs two by the neck, smashes their skulls together, then tosses both into the pit. Third guy tries to run, but Khaos knees him in the groin so hard his pelvis cracks, then curb-stomps the back of his head into the concrete.
The children just stare, not sure if this is a rescue or a new kind of hell.
Khaos kneels, puts himself at kid-level. "Hey. You ever seen a monster explode?"
One of the kids—maybe twelve, six arms and a face like a collapsed star—nods, solemn. "Every day, mister."
He grins. "You're about to see it in person."
The HUD flashes:
NEW OBJECTIVE: MAKE IT LOUD
The square is chaos now. The freed kids are running in all directions, some hiding, some just standing there, blinking in the new light of violence. DragonFire stands in the center, the dragon coiled around her like a living inferno. She's breathing heavy, but it's a good heavy—the kind you get after a workout, not a panic attack.
Khaos looks at her, then at the mess, then at the reader.
"Bet you thought we were just gonna watch. Nah. If you're gonna break a cycle, you gotta do it with style."
He stands, cracks his neck, and watches the chaos energy in his arms spike to redline.
Next stop: the main event.
You don't call it a "freak horde" because you respect the troops. You call it that because even nightmares don't want to dream about what's coming down the street.
It starts as a vibration: bootsteps, but wrong. Like someone playing hopscotch on a sheet of tin and broken glass. The chain of command here is zero to genocide in under a minute—word got out about the attack on the overseers, and now the block's getting "sanitized." First in line is a pack of lurching mutants, twenty strong, moving in formation that's more stampede than platoon.
At the front is Cragjaw.
Cragjaw's a legend even before he opens his mouth. Dude's seven feet and climbing, skin like cracked basalt, every joint bulging with unnatural muscle. He's got three arms—two where they should be, one sprouting from the shoulder blade, each tipped with a different kind of claw or blade. His single eye is the size of a billiard ball, glowing radioactive blue, and the teeth—fuck, the teeth—are a disaster of broken glass set in concrete gums. The voice is pure gravel, a bulldozer idling with rage.
"OUTLAWS," he bellows, and even the walls tremble. "KING'S LAW: COME QUIET OR COME DEAD."
Khaos flexes his hands, checks the blasters. DragonFire cracks her neck, lets the dragon spirit expand, coiling up her back and around her ribs like a living set of chainmail.
Khaos steps out into the open, dead-center of the boulevard, and cups his hands like a megaphone. "Hey, Cragjaw! You're uglier in person, man. You know that?"
Cragjaw grins, splintering a chunk of old bone between his molars. "SOFT BODIES DIE SLOW."
The horde moves as one. The front row is all speed—mutants with four legs, two heads, torsos twisted for ramming. The next ring is muscle: brutes dragging spiked clubs or just using their own limbs as battering rams. At the back, a couple of spindly horrors with telescoping limbs and faces like deflated basketballs, shuffling in rhythm and waiting for the first opening.
Khaos doesn't wait for the charge to get close. He draws, two blasters at once, and fires straight down the line. The time-warp rounds are his favorite—each shot is a miniature paradox, folding the target through a second or two of alternate timeline. Sometimes that means they freeze in place, sometimes they age a hundred years, sometimes they implode like a soda can in a vacuum. First three mutants go down hard: one turns to dust before it hits the ground, another's skin boils off in an instant, the third just ceases to exist, leaving a neat, smoking crater where its chest was.
DragonFire is already moving. The dragon on her skin goes white-hot, mouth splitting open in a roar of actual flame. She breathes a cone of fire into the front rank, incinerating five of them in a single pulse. The air smells of roasted meat and burning plastic.
Cragjaw laughs. "SWEET. I LIKE IT SPICY."
He picks up a mutant by the ankle, swings it overhead, and throws it at Khaos. Khaos sidesteps, letting the projectile splatter against the side of a building, then peppers Cragjaw with a dozen blaster shots. The rounds ricochet off his rocky hide, but a couple manage to punch through the soft tissue in the armpit or between ribs. Cragjaw just shrugs it off, growling, and barrels forward.
The rest of the horde closes in. Khaos hits the chaos core, feels the world slow to a crawl. The mutants are moving through syrup, jaws unhinged and hands reaching, but he's three moves ahead. He kicks the legs out from under a crawler, then triple-taps a pair of leapers in midair. One explodes like a meat piñata, showering the alley with hot gore. The other folds in half at the spine, twitching for a second before going still.
A double-sized brute grabs Khaos by the shoulder, lifts him off the ground, and tries to bite his head off. Khaos jams a blaster into the thing's mouth and pulls the trigger until the charge runs dry. The brute's skull bursts, jawbone swinging loose, and it slumps over like a puppet with cut strings.
DragonFire is faring even better. She dances through the crowd, fire streaming from her hands, setting flesh and bone ablaze with every strike. At one point she grabs a mutant by both arms, rips it in half, and uses the halves to club two more to death. Her face is pure concentration, but the dragon's enjoying itself—each kill makes it shimmer, scales flickering between red, gold, and white.
Khaos drops into a slide, catches a cluster of fused-together twins at knee height, and kicks them apart with a reality-warping round. They detonate in a spray of limbs and heads, and the rest of the horde hesitates, suddenly less sure of the numbers game.
Cragjaw plows through, bowling over his own troops without care. He swings for DragonFire, the three arms working like a meat blender. She dodges left, ducks right, and then lets Cragjaw grab her by the throat.
He lifts her up, grinning. "BURN SLOW," he says, squeezing.
DragonFire's eyes roll back for a second—but then the dragon tattoo moves, winding up her neck and around Cragjaw's wrist. It bites down, hard, and his rocky skin actually blackens and cracks. DragonFire opens her mouth, and the fire that comes out isn't just heat—it's something older, brighter, a plasma jet that boils the eyeball out of Cragjaw's skull.
He drops her, howling, one hand clawing at his ruined face. "BITCH BURNED ME," he screams.
Khaos takes advantage, teleporting behind Cragjaw and emptying the last of his blaster's high-energy rounds into the brute's kidneys. Then he jumps on Cragjaw's back, wraps an arm around the mutant's throat, and addresses the audience:
"This fool thinks he's the boss battle. Cute."
Cragjaw thrashes, rolling backward to smash Khaos into the pavement, but Khaos holds on, squeezing harder. DragonFire staggers up, face singed, smile wide. She looks at Khaos, then at Cragjaw, and nods.
"Time to end it?" she says.
Khaos grins. "Finishers only."
DragonFire lands a spinning backhand, fist wrapped in dragonfire, straight into Cragjaw's chest. The flame doesn't just scorch—it carves a hole through, searing bone and muscle, leaving a smoking tunnel right through his torso.
Khaos rides the collapsing giant down, then slaps a chaos rift grenade onto Cragjaw's spine. The grenade ignites, and a rip in space opens directly beneath the mutant's corpse.
Cragjaw's body doesn't just fall in—it stretches, distorts, screaming as every cell gets pulled into a different dimension. The sound is like a train wreck made of teeth and regret. The last thing through is the head, eye still glaring, mouth still cursing.
Then it's gone. Silence, except for the pop and fizz of burning meat.
Khaos stands up, wipes blood from his eyes, and surveys the carnage. Only a handful of the horde are left, and they're running. The street is a mess: blackened corpses, fire burning in puddles, the smell so thick you could bottle it.
DragonFire stands, chest heaving, dragon tattoo licking its chops. She looks at Khaos, then at the reader.
"We good?" she asks.
Khaos checks his pulse. "Never better."
He looks around, then addresses the wall.
"Next up: the King. You think this was a fight? That was just the amuse-bouche."
He and DragonFire walk down the smoking boulevard, leaving footprints in the melted concrete.
The war is just getting started.
There's a calm that comes after slaughter. Not peace—peace is a word for people who've never had to kill to survive—but a steady, even pulse. The sort of moment you wish could last longer than a minute, but you know better.
Khaos and DragonFire stand side by side in the middle of the still-smoking boulevard, boots ankle-deep in what used to be an army. The world is silent except for the gentle pop of fire and the wet tick-tick of cooling blood. Above, the sick sky is starting to clear, red haze thinning as if the planet itself is shocked by the mess they just made.
Khaos breathes deep, savoring the scent of victory—burnt hair, singed bone, ozone, and a high note of charred protein. He wipes a smear of blood from his brow and glances at DragonFire, who's already scanning the horizon for more targets.
She's got a glow to her, literal and figurative. The dragon spirit is off the chain now, coiled around her shoulders and chest, fangs bared, scales flickering with leftover energy. She doesn't say anything, just lets her gaze wander until it hits the silhouette in the distance.
The fortress.
It's not so much built as grown: a tumor of metal and bone, rising out of the city like a middle finger to every god that ever tried to quit this world. The walls are slabs of blackened steel, but every surface is studded with bodies—some still twitching, some just for show. Lights flicker in the windows, and every so often a scream or a laugh cuts through the air, echoing all the way down to where Khaos and DragonFire stand.
Khaos follows her eyes, then shrugs. "You ready?"
DragonFire grins, all teeth and fire. "You know it."
He turns to the audience, voice back to full volume. "Bet you thought that was the big fight. Nah. That was the warm-up, fam."
He stretches, pops the joints in his neck, and looks at the carnage around them. "Can't let a King keep his throne, not when he's running a world like this. You gotta hit hard, hit fast, and leave nothing standing."
DragonFire wipes her hands on her pants—doesn't help, but it's the gesture that counts. "We go loud?"
Khaos nods. "Only way I know."
The HUD pings, mission marker pulsing:
FINAL OBJECTIVE: ASSASSINATE KING GRINE
ENTRY POINT: ANYWHERE YOU WANT
The plan is simple, because in a place like this, you don't overthink. Khaos will take point, draw the fire, create a distraction. DragonFire circles left, burns out the supporting columns, brings the whole place down if she has to. Meet in the throne room, finish the job.
Khaos rolls his shoulders, checks the chaos core—energy's still riding high, spiking every time he thinks about the King's face. He's grinning, and for once, it's not forced.
They start walking, slow and deliberate. Survivors—mutant, human, or otherwise—peek from doorways, flinching as the duo passes. Nobody's dumb enough to step in their way. The path is clear.
As they get closer, the fortress looms even bigger, details resolving: the faces in the walls, all screaming; the rivers of molten metal running through the lower levels, lighting everything in a hellish orange; the banners flapping from the battlements, each one stenciled with a black crown and the letters G-R-I-N-E in block capitals.
Khaos stops a hundred meters out, looks up at the main gate, then turns to DragonFire. "How you wanna play this?"
She's got that dragon-smile, wicked and serene. "You crack the door. I'll handle the inside."
He nods, approves. "Hell yeah."
Then, to the reader: "If you've got popcorn, now's the time."
The two of them march up to the gate. Khaos puts both hands on the steel and channels all the chaos he's got left into a single, perfect punch. The gate doesn't just break—it ceases to be, every atom of it scattered into the storm. Beyond, the entry hall is a chaos of color and sound, packed with the last defenders, the final freaks, and the King's personal guard.
Khaos and DragonFire don't hesitate. They step into the breach, fire and void in lockstep.
The last thing the world sees before the doors slam shut behind them is the dragon, wrapping itself around both bodies, eyes glowing, ready.
Next up: Royalty gets dethroned.
End of arc.