• • The Royal Bastards of Galagan
• August 30, 2026

The Royal Bastards of Galagan (Chapter 17)

The Royal Defense

“Take nothing for granted. Nothing is permanent. Not you, not the rocks beneath your feet nor the sands on the beach. Everything will fall away and become one again, and separate again as well.”

Lady Zohra Sha

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Calcutta Sha

You have to protect what you have, from the vultures, from the pigs, from the sharks…

…but especially from the ants. 

Those that can’t kill you, will fight to live harder than those that have a chance. Those that want you to suffer, will do their best to haunt you forever.

But not my sister. No little backwater shit was going to haunt my sister while I was around. I’ll break each and everyone of their goddamn necks first.

I’ll blow up this planet faster than I planned if I have to.

Because you protect what you have, that’s all you have to do if you want to keep anything worth losing.

I hoped the Pyrie didn’t think too highly of the gym door. 

Bam!

When I kicked it, it came off its hinges, and everyone who I had beaten the hell out of just a few days ago jumped. There were definitely fewer, the ones who recover fast or had nothing worse than a concussion.

And Haskel.

The dozen of them froze where they were around the room once they put down their weights and slide back into their machines. The fuming silver cakra that came from the eyes tended to have that effect.

When it fumed from my mouth, it only amplified that effect more so, making most of them shake and turn pale in the face.

“Do you feel like big men making a kid cry?” I asked them, completely aware of the effect my cakra had on my voice. It made it bellow through the room, with an echo that followed immediately after so it sounded like several voices speaking at once. 

I took several steps in and many stumbled back. A guy fell over his machine and a woman pressed up against a mirror, feeling around as if a way out would come.

These were people who knew what happened when a royal bastard of Galagan came knocking. I made sure to rake them over the coals. “It must have taken some big brass balls to bully and corner her when her big sister wasn’t around, but that’s not so true now, is it?” 

They were all afraid of me, and I basked in that fear until one took a step toward me.

The old Lupian bastard.

As Haskel stood where he was, neither shaking in fear nor itching to fight, his heart was calm. Had he gone stupid?

“It was a misunderstanding,” he said.

I chuckled, as I circled him as any predator would their prey. “Oh a misunderstanding, I’ll be sure to call what I’m about to do to all of you a misunderstanding.” 

I heard someone twitch towards the door I came from, and turned around to burn hole in the wall near their head.

Ki-YO!

The bat’s scream was precious as he wet his pants.

I was busy smirking when I missed Haskel walk up to me.

 “We didn’t know,” he told me, which got me to arch a brow.

It was ridiculous? What, did they not know who Poppy was when they surrounded her? Did they just harass all Galagans? No, they knew she was Potempa Lexus, Princess of Galagan, destroyer of worlds. They knew.

He knew.

I formed a cakra ball that would pulverize a simple man like Haskel on contact. I taunted him with it as it moved around my hand, ready to zip around the room at any time. He had to know what I could do, what this ball of energy did, but he didn’t flinch.

Maybe he hadn’t known. What other explanation was there. 

“Didn’t know what? That there are consequences for what you do to a Princess?”

I closed my fingers around the cakra ball and raised it to his face. As I squeezed it, the energy would leak out like a sun flare, just scratching the side of his face. 

The line blood marked him as the first who would meet my ire. After he fell, all the rest would suffer in terror.

 “We didn’t know that she was twelve when it happened.” 

“Twelve…?” I repeated, confused, suddenly out of the loop. That made my cakra fluctuate, and I moved the cakra ball out of the way of his face. What did he know? “When what happened?” 

“When she blew up Pantera, when the empire made you killers,” he said, and there was something in his eye that I didn’t recognize, that made bolts of electricity sparkle around me like when my dreads got frizzy.

He shouldn’t have been pressing for that, to know that about us. No one who saw us kill people that young got to live, it couldn’t be allowed. What people would be afraid of children? They would have demeaned us, belittled us, or worse of all, try to reason with us, as if children have ever been known to be reasonable.

Haskel pushed to far when he asked, “How old were you?” 

In retaliation, I let lose the cakra ball in my hand.

Whew.

It hit the wall behind him. It exploded, blowing up a hole to the outside. Dust, dirt, and sheet metal were ripped from the inside out, and the moon this Lupian should love so much was in the sky.

Haskel hadn’t moved, and he was lucky he didn’t. Just a bit more to my left, and the shot that grazed and cut him from his nostrils to his cheekbones would have taken his head off.

 “Old enough to enjoy it,” I told him. 

That didn’t faze him, apparently, not even the pain phased him. He looked down to the growing wound on his face, and then looked to me. 

Then he raised his hand, and I was ready for him to try to attack me. I was so ready to watch his hand shatter on impact. Whenever little runts took a swing at me while I was powered up, the shock that my body’s surface always turned their back on them.

I waited with a smile as his hand came down fast, an obvious attempt on my throat, but it wasn’t going to work. Sure, the neck has always been vital, but with my overlying cakra cloak, he couldn’t cut my neck with a new blade—

Snap.

“Wha… what is…?” I found myself stuttering, as Haskel wasn’t in any pain, and I wasn’t in any pain, but that’s… that’s the rules of these things. Someone is always supposed to say ‘ow,’ or nothing happened.

Then he might as well have slapped me when his other hand went to my cheek, shocking me, making me step away from him, but I still felt his warm touch.

“They shouldn’t have did that to you, I’m sorry—” 

Pfft!

Woosh! 

Blam!

He didn’t get to finish his thought before my fist met his chest and his back met the wall. I didn’t hear a break, or a snap, but there was the familiar sound of bones cracking. I looked at his legs which still moved, and while he had to catch his breath, his breath had not left him.

This time, none of his entourage came to help him. It was as if he had the plague as I walked over to him.

Despite laying on the ground, up on his arm, Haskel was still as tall as my elbow. He would have made for the world’s tallest rug.

I pointed my palm at him, with my cakra flowing through it. He watched the lightning that coursed through it, seeing what I had should have changed his definition of power.

“You… stay away from us,” I told him as I had already found somewhere else to be, “if you value your life.”