• • The Royal Bastards of Galagan
• August 16, 2026

The Royal Bastards of Galagan (Chapter 16)

The Royal Trial

“Fear is what you feel towards what may come, and terror is what you feel when what you fear is right in front of you.”

Lady Camilla Lexus

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Potempa Lexus

When I walked into that gym, I had no idea what Calcutta had done the last time she visited. I had no idea why their eyes turned towards me, let alone that they even knew what or who I was. I just came for the gravity weights because I couldn’t sleep and I knew Flavia wouldn’t go there.

There weren’t that many night owls there, but there were a few. And several of their denizens were there, along with a Lupian with bags under his eyes, and wet gray fur. An old dog if there ever was one. It had been awhile since I had seen one and I tried to avoid his eye.

It was hard to forget the last time I saw one of them.

Their eyes followed I could feel them, but it didn’t register with me that everyone in the room was following me until got to the weights and looked in the mirror. 

There was this unseemly hot chill that ran down my back as I noticed all the eyes staring at me with such hate. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling, but where you are can change so much. You won’t even know it until it happens.

I didn’t bother picking up the weights, they wouldn’t make useful weapons if I needed to defend myself. Instead, I focused on powering up my cakra. 

As I did, I surprised myself. There was more to hide than usual. The training may not have been getting me closer to the ability I wanted, but being stronger was never a bad thing. I smile for myself, and then upon hearing one of my fellow gym-users growls, my mistake was made clear to me.

It was some kind of Chiroptera species growling at me. With its wingspan, it could nearly touch the floor and ceiling, and was as tall as the Lupian, or would be if the Lupian was standing. 

But it was the blue girl with her hand on the Lupian’s shoulder who spoke first. “How can you show your face here after what your sister did?”

So they knew, not just that I was a Galagan, but a royal, and that we were all here. Flavia hadn’t known when we first ran into each other so maybe the news was getting out? It was possible she started blabbing too. She was making plans for Cutta and Lemon, maybe she wasn’t as careful as she should have been.

Wow, that sounded like a mother.

Well, this wasn’t the first time I had to deal with people who escaped being swallowed up by a planet I destroyed. The survivors usually surrendered and joined the empire, and they always had choice words for the warriors who were just doing their jobs.

“We had to what we had to do to survive,” I told them, letting my cakra buff my body for an attack in case one of them is faster than they look. “Royal bastards aren’t know for their long shelf-life, at least not most of them—”

The wolf interrupted me, but not with a snarl. “Actually, she was talking about when Calcutta assaulted everyone in this room.”

I stumbled over my words in response to that. “I- what? What are you talking about?”

Another one, some kind of gelatinous alien in a metal suit, spoke perfectly through her microphone. “She attacked us, folded us like tin cans because we said what she didn’t want to hear!”

They had few other choice words that I ignored. I was more preoccupied on hearing that Calcutta was in a fight? I thought we were supposed to lay low! I thought we were supposed to come running if one of us gets jumped. She didn’t even give me a heads up when I saw her for lunch!

Could it have been after that? Maybe? A Pyrie could have healed them since then, but would they have cleaned up? Would these guys be that stupid to try something again so soon?

Then the wolf interjected again. “It wasn’t like that,” he told them with his head slowly learning towards the ground. “I attacked her first, and you all followed suit. It was stupid of me to attack her like that.”

“Like what?” I asked as I found myself with my fist slowly rising to the opportunity… 

Only to find myself being ignored as they focused on soothing this Lupian’s ego. “Haskel, you had every reason to, she destroyed your planet.” 

I let go of my fist, hearing that. From what I could gather, he tried to attacking Cutta for vengeance, got his ass and everyone else’s kicked. The guilt of that on top of the survivor’s guilt… I could only imagine… I’ve… I have imagined…

“God,” the Chiroptera muttered as he walked between my eyes and the Lupian. I let my eyes rise to meet his instead, and did my best impression of Calcutta as I could. Only an idiot would think they had a chance against me. I could sense what power he had, and there was nothing to hide. Even those who hide small power levels had something, but this guy clearly never learned anything about cakra. 

It would take only a second to—

“How do you not slit your own wrists thinking about all the lives you’ve taken?” The question was blunt enough to remind me that my name is not Calcutta Sha. “Calcutta laughed at the question,” he said as he felt brave enough to walk towards me. With his wingspan and feet, it wasn’t long before he was within his arm length.

But I could have squashed him though, so… there was nothing to worry about.

“You’re not going to laugh,” he said as I was busy telling myself there was nothing to worry about.

He walked right up to me, leaving me practically cornered against the wall. “How small you are in-person. How could such a small person be so heartless that you could take the lives of billions, and leave millions more without their homes?”

Easily… very easily… easily as breathing… that’s what survival means.

“Among my people, all our hearts are the same size once we reach adulthood,” he said as he moved his hand to where his heart would be in his chest. “But many are born small, with the heart that’s the same but feels twice as large. We don’t belittle them for how they have to fight harder than any others. They live knowing that time is short and that they have to make sure they’re living a life that they’ll wish they had more of.

“But you and your infernal breed forced that hell on us all. We all have to live in fear of the mighty Fists of the Khan, the Galagan Empire and their monstrous royal bastards.”

Sometimes I forget that ‘bastards’ was a sort of slur, but not when he said it.

He leaned into my face, as the heat of his breath tried to make me sweat and shake. He looked me up and down as if I were but I wasn’t. I would never have.

“But you’re so small, to think it was something so small that would never amount to anything but—”

Pfft!

My fist slammed into his chest, sending him flying across the room in an instant. 

Crash!

He hit a bunch of weights that broke several of his bones on impact. Enough that getting up for him was insanely slow, but not as slow as my hand.

The others stared at me now as the bat was out of the way. They stared at me with my shaking fist that still stood raised. It took me time just to pull it back and grab hold of it with my other hand.

“What was I supposed to do…?” I whispered.

Again and again, these people came to me asking me why I was such a monster, why so much blood was caked in my hands. They asked how could I let such filth seep its way under my skin, as if it were my fault.

“What was I supposed… to do?” 

I looked up at them, with my eyes aflame with blue. “Come on, tell me! What was I supposed to do?! Say to my father, to my world? I saw what happened to you when you said no, so what was I was supposed to do?! Die? For you?!” 

The blue girl stood up and as the Lupian raised his hand to stop her she slapped it away. 

“Say no,” she said, and my fist just shook with rage, with this blue fury. 

“As… if… it were so easy…”

“That is what the rest of us would do,” she said. 

“That’s what the rest of us did do!” said another, an alien I didn’t know. 

Then another spoke up, an amphibian creature I didn’t recognize. “We wouldn’t kill entire planets because our daddy told us too!” 

Could her ‘daddy’ crack planets with a glance?

Did her ‘daddy’ crack his wrist the way peasant parents cracked a cane?

She talked like there was a choice to be had in anything, but that’s not how it worked, not on Galagan, not ever.

“Sorry I wasn’t as lucky as the rest of you to have a choice.”

“You always have a choice,” the bat I punched growled as he struggled to all fours. “You always have a choice,” he repeated as his head dipper, and snapped to attention with an ugly snarl, “always you monster!” 

“That’s enough,” the Lupian said, the screaming probably getting to his aging ears.

“Why?” the girl snapped at him. “Why should we stop? Yelling at her is the least of what she deserves.”

At that, they seemed to swarm him with words, but that only seemed to bristle his fur.

“How many people will never get to live their life because of her?”

Then the Lupian… Haskel… he looked at me, and there was this… soft expression I didn’t understand.

“I’ll never see my sister again.”

“I lost my children.”

“Everyone I knew as a kid is gone!”

“And do you know why, Haskel?!”

“Because of-!”

“I was twelve!”

When I screamed, they turned to me, yelling on the tip of their tongue, but I guess… I guess my words have distracted them, even as I whispered. “I was twelve…

“I was twelve when I was told to blow up that planet or don’t come back.” 

I remember it, my first… the silken Kenus, a plant of rock, wrapped in gas. Father had told me that it housed nothing of importance. It had no water, it had no food for us, it had no minerals, and had no steel, none whatsoever that would bend… just like its people.

Destroy the oversize graveyard, or die out here in the cold. There is no place on Galagan for the weak, and there is no place in my court for the useless.

“What you do then, huh?” I asked them as I clutched my glowing fist to my stomach. “You think you would be brave, that you would go against your father’s hand as he threatened to leave you in the scolding heat and burning cold of space?”

They looked at me each with an expression I didn’t know. All I knew is that it had my heart pumping, and all I had were screams that I had to keep in. 

“Well…?” I muttered. “Do you think you could have done it? Do you think you could have died out there alone?”

Haskel opened his mouth to speak, and I yelled at him. “You’re lying! You’re lying, you’re lying, you’re lying! 

I jabbed my fingers at each and every one of them as I told them exactly what they would have done if they were left to suffer the death of loneliness.

“You would do the exact same thing because you’re not better than me. In my position, with as little as I had, you’re not better than me. 

“You’d do the same thing… Every. Time. 

“You would do what you were told, and you’re lying if you think you’d be brave enough to go against an empire. You’re lying if you think otherwise. You’re lying…” 

“Child,” Haskel muttered as he took a step towards me and I aimed my hand at him ready to blow him apart. He stopped where he was, but his lip had this little twitch. 

I… I slowly brought hand back… lowered my weapon and found something wet on it.

I could tell you I didn’t notice I was crying but that would be idiotic. I just tried to ignore it, like it wasn’t something I was doing like always was… like I always had to do.

Haskel took another step towards me but I was already letting my cakra flow through me. I refused to stay, to face these people any longer. 

In a Whoosh! I cut him off before he could call me a child again.

I stumbled forward into the room, with this violent yelling vibrating through me. I entered the bedroom, Lemon’s bedroom which was as royal and fancy as the others as his voice yelling over Calcutta’s echoed through the halls.

In that moment just before they turned to see me, it was like a flash into the past. The vein in Calcutta’s head pulsing as she clenched her fist with its one pointed finger in Lemon’s face. Lemon with both hands out to his sides as his jaw stretched as far it would go out.

In that slow, agonizing moment, it was like being with my parents again.

Home sweet home.

Calcutta stopped yelling first. She opened her mouth, to say something, like how they were busy but she didn’t finish her sentence. She just saw me in a way father never could, or never would.

She shoved Lemon aside before he noticed I was there, so she could get to me, to wrap me in her big arms and hold me closer than anyone else ever wanted to.

I’ve never enjoyed talking about crying. What’s there to talk about? There’s aching pain in your chest, not where your heart should be, but the opposite. It’s like this black hole that wants to suck everything in, and you want it to succeed.

You want to be gone, and Cutta was there to hold me so I would never be gone, and to ask me one thing, over and over until I told her.

“Who?”