Korr did not hesitate to exclaim; his infant voice had become screeching for an instant.
However, Vorath did not respond to the salute, not when his eyes seemed clouded by almost excessive fury. His fingers seemed to open and close, his nervous tic causing spasms in his body.
"In the name of Argall, Korr-Add, what is this?" he asked, while his gaze looked at the pigment stains all over the floor, the walls, the glass shelf, and the obsolete machines tinkering and staining the sanctity of the fortress. "Tell me what this is, Korr-Add, by all the Mephistophelian demons, answer."
Korr did not know how to respond. What could he say? He had never heard this man curse during the short time he had seen. But this general was invoking demons at this moment.
His mouth opened, but no words came out that could answer him.
Vorath, who came even closer, leaned dangerously toward his son, narrowing his eyes.
"Did you do this? Did you do this, Korr-Add?"
His voice, which seemed low, became shrill the moment he said his name. Even so, with all the fear of being face to face with this merciless being, Korr's voice was able to come out once and for all, responding to his words.
"Yes, General, I did this," he said, nodding in the process, while feeling his throat dry up from the effort.
Vorath closed his eyes for an instant, and in that brief moment, Korr could almost imagine hearing the gears that made him process his processing.
"In the name of all the demons of Tartariux, you cannot imagine the humiliation I am experiencing."
Korr also believed what he said. For the way his hand seemed to want to rise and relax, it seemed he was deciding whether to exterminate him or preserve him for this last time.
"I am sorry to have my quarters messy, General. I will do everything possible to fix all of this."
Korr's words surprised Vorath for a moment, before he smiled and let out a dry laugh, shaking his head.
"Ha, he's sorry, he says he's sorry," he said to himself. "How dare you? No. I left you instructions to maintain your theoretical imperial education until my return, but when I return, I only see," he said, furious, moving away and levitating around her. "I only see this affront?"
Landing in just the blink of an eye, his hand closed on the glass shelf with the speed of a meteor. The material, capable of resisting tons of weight under stress for centuries if necessary, shattered into a thousand fragments under Vorath's strength.
Korr shuddered in terror. Never in his life had he felt so much fear of being physically harmed. He had never been a coward, until he met these merciless beings.
The paintings fell to the floor covered in crystals, and the pigments mixed with the remains of the gel, and the modular artifacts rolled away beyond what his rigid gaze could capture.
"A son of the empire never lowers himself to servitude, remember that, boy!" Vorath shouted, his roar echoing through the entire room. "No descendant of my genes will lower himself to play with waste, like a slave. Is that what you want, Korr? Answer, damn it, answer when I ask you!"
"Gr-great General, I didn't know—"
"Of course you didn't know, Korr-Add! You didn't do the homework you were assigned. How do you pretend to be part of the empire's elite when you behave like a slave? You are Argall's lineage, and as such, you are expected to fulfill your duty."
"Yes, General."
"Damn it, I don't want to hear those words, I want you to never again humiliate your race with these actions. I am ashamed to have to raise genetic garbage like you!"
Korr did not dare to reply, because he knew in advance that everything he did was wrong. This was the empire, the closest thing to what he knew as a galactic totalitarian government.
But it seemed so stupid to him. How was knowing, innovating, exploring intellectual potential a racial humiliation?
The answer was simpler than expected. A Viltrumite did not need it.
A Viltrumite possessed a unique biology in the entire galaxy that turned each individual of his race into living weapons. The Smart Atoms, that special molecule that composed every Viltrumite tissue, allowed them to remember their optimal physiological form at all times. They extracted cosmic energy to feed the massive amounts of energy necessary for their bodies, which translated into strength, endurance and superhuman speed, flight thanks to an internal balance system of inertial manipulation, stellar resistance to withstand space vacuum, extreme temperatures and nuclear explosions, extremely strong lung capacities, as well as accelerated regeneration to heal wounds, regardless of their severity, plus a reactive adaptive capacity to damage, which translated into becoming stronger.
They were also extremely long-lived, in the millennial sense, taking Viltrumite time as a framework, not to mention that they possessed dominant genetics.
In short, despite the great technological advances, it could well be considered a mere mockery for a Viltrumite.
In imperial terms, Viltrumites did not need interstellar ships, as they crossed the void at speeds that defied physics. They did not need spacesuits, as their skin resisted the vacuum, radiation and absolute cold. They did not need hospitals, as their Smart Atoms regenerated any wound. They did not need tanks or artillery, as their fists pulverized mountains. They did not need flight engines, as their internal orientation, which they called inner ear, defied gravity. They did not need shields or fortresses, as their bodies were like impenetrable walls. They did not need fuel or rations, as they extracted energy from the void.
With the exception that they only needed communication implants. For everything else, they were more than enough, and over time, the belief arose that only inferior beings needed ingenuity to overcome challenges that posed no inconvenience to them.
The universe was designed for their convenience.
And Korr was tangled up in a race like this, as complicated as things were with the state of perpetual war due to excessive expansion.
Korr wanted to say so many things. He wanted to tell him to go to hell and say that he was not wasting his new life and that, if it were up to him, he would defecate on his stupid fascist and supremacist heritage, that he was only trying to do something useful, to give value to the new gifts he currently possessed.
But he did not do it; he did not dare, because he would gain nothing from it, and much less did he want to be some kind of martyr due to his heretical thoughts.
Vorath did not seem to want to give him any kind of time to defend himself either. His eyes scanned his son's tiny figure, and then after a long moment, he sighed and remained silent.
In fact, Vorath had begun to notice that, indeed, his uniform, which was almost ceremonial, the standard of pride and representation of the purity of the empire and the Viltrumite race, was stained.
Korr could not even imagine the consequences of that simple detail.
Vorath's face transformed. Fury gave way to something more dangerous, and his eyes narrowed into two black slits that seemed to suck all the light out of the room.
"How dare you?" he whispered, an action that felt even worse than the shout itself. "How dare you."
Korr opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His knees began to tremble, for he found no answer to this situation.
Vorath inhaled, and then exhaled. The gesture, for a moment, seemed so human that it bordered on the mundane, that it almost convinced Korr that his father had simply given up on him.
Indeed, Vorath no longer wanted to continue dealing with this situation. Instead, he chose to go toward what he considered to be the root and the one responsible for the problem.
Ignoring his son, his gaze fixed on Syra-Vel.
She was standing, as she had always been since Korr had known her.
Her bioluminescent hair emitted such a faint blue light that it seemed about to go out, but she did not move in the slightest.
Vorath levitated toward her almost as if calm had been able to deal with his temper. His boots did not touch the ground at any point along the way, and when he stopped in front of the Syreni, his height forced her to raise her head to keep her eyes fixed on his.
Every slave had the obligation to look their masters in the eyes, thus paying tribute and respect to their benefactors.
"Was it you?" he asked, without even a hint of specification. "Did you teach him all of this?"
Korr felt time stop at that moment.
His body turned toward Syra-Vel, and he saw how her hair lost all color until it became a grayish white he had never seen in her.
He saw how her shoulders shrank for a moment; she looked in his direction for an instant, then straightened up and looked with even more security at that master to whom her life was destined, condemned, to perpetual servitude during her 300 years of life.
Korr shook his head in her direction. He did not want her to say what she was probably about to say. Simply, intuition told him that she would, but Korr did not want that to happen, because a bad feeling told him that something terrible would happen.
But Syra-Vel did not even look at him. She held her gaze with her lord, and before he could even shout and take the blame, the girl had mustered all the courage she could gather and nodded.
She nodded confidently.
"Yes," she said, her voice not even trembling. "I was the one responsible, my lord."
Korr did not even know what happened. Everything happened too fast. In an instant, his nanny seemed so sure of herself, and the next, her head had rolled on the floor, like a ball following a direction until stopped by the bottom of the wall.
The preceding silence had been interrupted by the pool of purple blood splashing onto the pristine floor, and the sound of Syra-Vel's body falling snapped him out of his daze.
His eyes remained wide as saucers, not knowing how to react. Both father and son remained silent, observing the disconcerting moment for both.
The purple blood spread until it reached Korr's feet. He observed that elixir and remembered an anecdote about the Syrenis. The process for the sale of psychic energies in the galactic market by the empire consisted of extracting their blood, since that exotic trigger was found in their special proteins, which their brains activated.
Korr did not look at his father at any moment.
"You. You killed her," he said by occurrence, although his father did not seem to care.
"It was necessary. She disobeyed the orders I gave her and tried to corrupt the lineage of the empire."
"You killed her. She was my friend."
"Get over what happened! Let it be a reminder and punishment for your disobedience! I will not allow my offspring to waste his time on the activities of inferior beings."
"You killed my friend."
"A Viltrumite does not socialize with inferior beings, Korr. In the name of Argall, listen to your father, Korr-Add! Answer when I speak to you!"
But Korr did not listen to him, not in the slightest. He had only one thought. He had to kill that bastard, at all costs, by any means possible.
"In the name of Argall, Korr, listen to your father when he—!" However, before he continued shouting at him, Korr, who seemed to be in shock, shot out from his position, screaming murder.
His small fists crashed against his father's abdomen, dragging him backward, to his father's surprise. Although that action was completely in vain.
His father stopped moving forward at the attack, and looked with interest at his cowardly son's unleashed fury.
"Do you dare to hit your father? Do you dare?!" shouted the man, grabbing the child by the neck and delivering a slap that sent Korr flying through the window, shattering it, almost falling into the void from the skyscraper that was his home.
But he did not fall silent.
Korr did not know how the hell he was holding himself in the air, but he just was, as if gravity no longer existed, but he did not care.
Neither did he care about the intense pain in his knuckles, nor the fact that he could see absolutely nothing on the right side of his face.
He only wanted to kill that bastard, kill him with his own hands, until the skin peeled off his skull and fracture him with all his might.
"Wretched bastard!"
Korr shot forward, using all his strength as much as was viltrumitely possible. As if at the speed of a bullet, counting on being able to pierce through him even at the cost of his life.
But he was only a child. Even if his Viltrumite powers had awakened. He was nothing more than a simple child in front of an adult. It was like copper wanting to pierce steel. Before even making a dent, it would deform and explode in the attempt, and Vorath knew it.
That is why he stepped aside at the last second, and using the flat part of his hand, he struck the child's neck, ending the whole fiasco.
Korr fell unconscious, while his father observed his son's audacity with disdain.
"This child," he thought, smiling for a moment. "he is too insolent."