Rex's knuckles cracked. "He's hiding like a rat. Let him." His gaze shifted to Ys, now back in human form, giggling as she poked a surrendered soldier's dented helmet. "We've got what we came for."
But Lilla wasn't celebrating. She stared northward while narrowing her eyes. "That coward won't stop. He'll dig up something worse; men like him always do."
Rex smirked. "Good. Saves me the trouble of hunting him down later."
Meanwhile, beneath the planet's polar ice, the Supreme Commander limped through a hidden facility, his boots clicking on obsidian floors. The walls pulsed with bioluminescent veins, and the air reeked of ozone and decay.
Before him was the Chief Scientist, a gaunt figure with too many mechanical limbs bowed. "The Aurora Protocol is ready, Commander. But the cost—"
"I don't care if it burns this planet to cinders," the Commander spat. "If I can't rule it, no one will."
A massive console hummed to life, revealing a hologram of a massive beast.
