Dragonscales: Scattered

“You have lost, good king.”

The broken, bleeding man tried to stand, only to be dealt a vicious blow by the guard restraining his arms. He spat blood, perhaps intending to mar the pearl white skin of the lizard tyrant standing before him.

“Now, now. What would your people think of their `lord of beauty' if they saw him reduced to such petty acts of vengeance?” Frieza admonished him as one would a little child.

“We are not defeated,” he rasped, his voice hoarse with thirst. “We will never bow to you.”

“Your people may not all be dead,” Frieza said thoughtfully. “But they are defeated nonetheless. A scattered people is a defeated people. They have no home, no army, no safe haven, and soon they will have no leader.”

“My son lives.”

The tyrant sighed at the annoying persistence of the doomed king. It seemed all dying rulers subjected him to their fits of denial.

“Indeed he lives. As a servant in my court until he dies,” he added with a cruel smile. “And with his beauty, exceptional even among your race, I believe he will make an exquisite consort as well.”

He dealt the king a crushing blow hardly a split-second after the man tried to lunge forward and attack. He put a hand to his lips in mock surprise as he saw that he had snapped the king's neck. In death the man's face was still twisted in hate, his formerly beautiful features heavily battered and bruised.

Then he made a move none of his guards had ever seen. He knelt before the corpse. With a bemused look he removed the amber earrings and necklace from the man's ears and throat, examining them in his hand curiously.

“I'll tell your son that these are from daddy,” he whispered in the corpse's ear.