Striding comfortably through the dim halls of Emperor Zeppo's castle, Aidan looked at the potraits exhibiting his host king's lineage. After making sure that he had deposited the shamed prince before his father, Aidan had received Zarkon's command to go and greet the emperor for his impending arrival on his new territory. Understandably, he had been sent as the least threatening individual in Zarkon'scourt. Or as human sacrifice.

Face after face of deceased drule kings murdered by kin all in the name of an unquenchable desire for glory met him as he walked past. Murder, bloodshed reflected back at him through unseeing eyes. When he reached the potraits of Zarkon, the man who's Kingdom he was about to dethrone.

"It's the fate of kings to be dethroned sire. If not me who can you depend on for a glorious demise. Soon you'll receive the surprise of your life, Zarkon."

Alarms blared through the drule floating castle as the section through which the banquet was taking place was ripped through by explosions. Screams accompanied the thunder and screeching of displaced walls ,glass and expensive marble. Aidan turned his head to see drule soldiers firing at the beasts that stalked them, unyielding. He watched as the beasts tore through the drule guards, flinging them through walls and windows, leaving behind distinctive crimson streams and the metallic scent that accompanied death. Recognizing the death of their prey, they turned toward Aidan, red-eyed, muscles rippling through shattered armor that was barely identifiable. They launched themselves at Aidan, ready to shred the calm man before they dissipated into gas.Red gas.All that remained of a brutal massacre was clanking armor that Aidan kicked aside as he walked back to the banquet hall to survey the result.

Frowning in distaste at how messy the scene in front of him was, Aidan stepped carefully around the dismembered bodies of the imperial members of drule. He paused when he heard gasping from a bloody mass to his left. A fur covered arm reached out , trying to shift the heavy body that had it trapped.

Zeppo heaved the huge body of his personal guard off of him, gasping as he tried to catch his next breath. His side was burning from the pain of claw marks that had ripped through his flesh. His eyes were wet from the blood that had blinded him. His guard's blood. As he wiped it off ,his eyes caught sight of Aidan standing in his regal attire, spotless.

"You!!!You vermin!"Zeppo roared.

"My, my. It seems my pets failed to do a thorough clean up." Aidan replied, unimpressed by the large drule's struggling form. He walked toward the floundering giant and pulled out a clean toppled chair before sitting down regally. Zeppo tried to get up, but his injuries oozed more blood in warning. Huffing with exhaustion, he fell back down.

"Wise decision my liege. Even for a drule, punctured lungs do prove fatal. Especially when inflicted by another drule." Zeppo stared at the human in front of him with disgust. The things that had attacked them were not drule.

"Are you surprised by my statement, sire. I assure you, the creatures that attacked you were your own kin. Partially adapted by me, ofcourse."

"There is no drule of that kind. My life has spanned for over a millenia. You lie you vermin! What..."

"Before you go into your typical drule rant on how inferior my genes are, I assure you. It is the truth. I engineered those creatures. They have no loyalty, no emotion, no remorse. Rogue beasts. True Robeasts. The creatures I create put even that dolt Haggar to shame." Aidan crossed his legs as he relaxed more into the chair. He saw no threat from the injured emperor and comfortably showed it.

"Whatever your plans are you won't succeed. My men will destroy you. They are on their way here to end this charade." Zeppo yelled, anger fueling his hate for the human in front of him. He did not care for his dead kin. They could be replaced with the aid of a few concubines. He would not take being looked down upon by a human.

"I'm sorry to inform you sire. But aid is the last thing you should be considering. Physical or magical." Aidan added calmly, eyes unflinching.

"You see, I've studied your world for the better part of two decades thanks to my encounter with a former acquaintance of yours. Merla. You shunned her and chose another woman for your son to marry instead of her. She's been more than helpful. I know factually that your paranoia concerning your political enemies has had you establish a number of imperial protocols to protect yourself. Ahh, what were they again?" Standing upbruptly, Aidan headed toward the royal throne to check the left armrest of the emperor.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"Zeppo shouted, anger turning into despair as he watched the human initiate a few codes into the system.

"I'm implementing the first command: Sealing off the emperor's quarters. You are known to be a recluse at times in fear for your life. How long was your last hiding session? 3years? All drules know that once you go into recluse, they receive orders from you remotely. This I do thank Zarkon's father for. Had he not tried to kill you it would have been difficult to implement this plan."

Zeppo's head throbbed as he watched the human initiate his defence protocols without hesitation or question. Shock ripped through him as he watched his fortress' plans displayed before the throne and each section seal off as per command.

"How did you know my command procedures, human?" he shouted at the foe he had underestimated.

Pausing, Aidan left the throne and went back to the struggling creature in front of him. His eyes held no pity or suprise at the question. Just annoyance reflected at the interruption.

"It wasn't hard to guess. Any human would have guessed because we are creatures of habit. This system is anti-drule. Not anti-human. You overestimated your intelligence. We see and recognize patterns better than you do. I've served under Zarkon for years after I left the human world. I've repeatedly seen, passed through and analyzed the fortresses of every drule ruler since changing sides. All of you have the same paranoia concerning betrayal. You fortify your thronerooms, never your kins' rooms. You live, breathe and die on those thrones. You have access to all the information of your kingdoms from this room. Your guards are strongest near this room. Too strong for the regular human. Your most loyal generals reside near this room. It's part of your personal suite and cannot be entered by anyone unless let in. You made all precautions against every plot by your people. You underestimated just one human."

"You bastard!"

"No, no, no. Zeppo. It's long live the emperor of a united drule and human empire." Aidan tsked as he gracefully pulled out an injection. Stepping toward Zeppo, he filled the syringe with a grey liquid.

"Before your life expires I do have a need for your services sire. You are about to herald the dawn of a new empire. Before then, let me help you understand my motivation."

Aidan followed his father through the forests of their territory. Being 13 years old his father had woken him up at night to lead him to their ancestral ruins. A rite of passage, he had been told. The man in front of him was strong, a leader, fear by all. Except his son who was also his confidant. Their trust bound them. Their goals united them.

"The stories you've heard about the history of Arus are all lies, boy. They lie through their teeth about who the true rulers of this world are! Tonight you'll know the truth!"

His father stopped in front of a stone wall. Pushing the huge stone aside, he retrieved three steel trunks. Inside them were red leather trunks that protected what looked like tapestries and documents.

"What are these father? Crests?"

"Our family left a world called Terra countless millenia ago. We were some of the first to arrive on this world. This world was a wild place. Jungle upon jungle. But we made it work. We built settlements, tamed the land and grew families. Our children were wiser and stronger than the inhabitants of this world. We had know how that they did not. Our technology was more advanced than their's. Our settlements stronger, made of steel and their's of wood and mortar. Our weapons were more powerful too. Naturally, a dispute over water rights in the north near the Alpine Mountains caused a war to breakout. We fought. We won. We were stronger." Aidan's father spoke in a faraway tone, remembering his own father's passionate appeal to him.

"Who were the inhabitants, father?" an innocent Aidan asked.

Grimacing, his father picked up a torn crest of the house of Arus. The house of Queen Ariella. The red, yellow, green and blue faded but still outlined. The gold cross in the center was all too familiar to Aidan.

"These aliens were our slaves. And this," he shouted, throwing the crest back before snatching another up and shoving it in his son's face, "is the crest of the family that betrayed us!"

Aidan that night heard the history of Arus, the blood of Ariella and the greatest of the noble families, the Koganes.

"Our people ruled this region. We were demigods feared by the creatures of this planet. We made them our servants by right of war and claimed their territories. Those who didn't agree with us, we placed inthe fighting arena to fight it out with our best warriors. They would lose, ofcourse." Aidan's father explained with pride, picking up tapestries with woven images of men, bloody from battle with severed heads lifted high.

"We were conquerors! The land you see here now is only a smidgen of the land we possessed. We kept on moving forward, son. Until..."9

"Until what father? What happened?" young Aidan asked, held captive by every word his father uttered.

"That was until we met another immovable force. Another group from Terra from the East. They were strong. We fought them for three solid years before our forefathers decided to call a truce to negotiate. .Our losses were heavy on both sides. But they had better military precision and supply routes. Make no mistake, son, we weren't backing down. We had found bigger fish to fry."

"Fish?" the boy asked, confused about how fish had gotten into the story.

"Prey, my son." Lifting another tapestry and unfolding it, Aidan examined it and saw woven images of 5 beasts.

"The lions! They're real!" he exclaimed excitedly, running a small hand over the images.

"Yes. They are. Our forefather decided to negotiate with the Koganes. That the world would be split between the 2 families. The two peoples. According to how many lions each side had gotten. Kira Kogane agreed to the terms. He proposed that each side would not interfere with the other until news of the captures were complete. Little did we know we had made a mistake."

"Mistake?"

"Yes. A grave one. The Koganes did not capture or enslave the aliens like we did. They co-existed with them. Even married off their children to them. We had been infiltrated from the beginning of the war." "But that's unfair!" shouted little Aidan, fists clenched as his heart raced at the unfairness his people had endured.

"Yes son, cowardly. They were cowards. And the alien slaves we owned were escaping from our grasp straight into our enemy camp with valuables and information, which led to the truce."

"So what happened next father? Did we capture them?" the anxious boy asked.

"No. It became an impossible task. The beasts existed in 5 different locations but coordinated with precision. It became obvious that there was a leader among them. An Alpha male. Neither the Koganes nor us could hold them. We had to look for other means."

"The aliens spoke of the beasts as guardians or jailers of some kinds of beasts. The umbra. These umbra could fight these lions. But there was a problem. Only someone of drule blood could awaken and control them. And drules lived on another planet in the farthest universe sealed off through a barrier created by the lions. But we did not need a drule army. We just needed one." Picking up a dark green crest from what Aidan would later know to be Zarkon's father's ,his father placed the crest beside their family's.

"We sacrificed 1000 slaves and opened the divide and called over a drule king. A creature with blue skin and yellow eyes. Magnus. He located one of the umbra and awakened it. A magnificent beast more powerful than a single lion. The creature under Magnus's control injured the Alpha lion. Believing it dead the dimensional seal broke and more drules passed through. Soon, we were winning. The aliens ran for the hills to the land the Koganes resided, Altaire. Little did we know that fate was with that damned family ,for the aliens had decided to form their own nation called Arus under Ariella, their strongest female warrior. And little did we know that the Alpha lion wasn't dead ,but alive."

Aidan waited in complete stillness as his father stopped talking. He could hear the passion in his father's voice. He could feel the conviction in his voice ,the strength and plight of his ancestry. As he sat on that smooth rock of his forefathers, he waited for the end.

"The Alpha lion wasn't killed in the battle. It was dying. The aliens could not save it as well. But Kira Kogane decided to tie his soul to the lion to prolong it enough to fight the battle with the drule and umbra. We were willing to not kill them, but let them live their lives in servitude. The bastard refused. Altaire was the final stronghold and with its fall the drules would leave the planet to us. They wanted to conquer the universe. No one could have imagined the strength of the tie between that man and the lion. They drove our forces back. The lion was stronger, much much stronger than the umbra. Magnus decided to leave the creature to us, to collect the remaining four. Before he could release the second one, he was attacked by the red lion. Another human had decided to sacrifice their years. In all locations the drules had built fortresses we were being crushed by a lion. The drules were pushed back into the divide. And we were left powerless. Us. Powerless." Bitterness seeped into his father's voice as he placed back the tapestries in the boxes.

"The Koganes freed the aliens, ruined our economy and destroyed our trade. We had no choice but to surrender. Kira Kogane was supposed to die that day, as well as the others from Terra who had sealed their souls with the lions. Only Ariella was safe as she was from this world. It would have been justice had the other 4 died. But those lions did the unthinkable."

"They sacrificed their physical forms for the humans. They bound their souls to the humans and decided to give up their physical existence to preserve their human saviours' lives." "No!"Aidan shoutedindismay.

"Unfortunately that is the case. They are forever bound in hopelessness. But..."

Aidan in anticipation waited for his father's conclusion. The young one looked in complete admiration at his father, inspired by the hope he could sense in that single word.

"But we can take back our rightful place as victors of this world. Because I possess not only the key to unlock the umbra, but the blood of King Magnus." Opening the last chest with flare, his father beckoned Aidan to come close and look. Inside the chest were two smaller boxes, one with a heart, another with a liver and in the glass jar, with no microscopic sign of decay, was the sleeping head of Magnus.

As Aidan watched the long chest fall to the ground from Zeppo's ship as the dusk light

Illuminated it ,he surveyed what would now be his empire. Turning back to the throne, he sat down just as the first alert came through from the ship's soldiers. He adjusted the microphone that he had shoved down Zeppo's throat to collect all nuances of his scream, breathing and speech patterns, and then replied.

"Do not question me. Fire the ray beam at that chest. Let the creature inside do its work against my enemies."

Aidan watched from the throne as the beam of light hit the coffin, saw it expand and grow until it exploded. Emerging was...

Beep.

"Speak." Aidan responded into his communication device.

"It is time to start the court martial leader." Wade Wells' voice responded from the device. Keying in the codes he was given, Aidan saw a dark haired kneeling man and injured blonde woman guarded heavily by soldiers. On the split screen he was face to face with the now former king of Arus and his captured brass.

"It has been a long time, King Alfor."