The final invader thrashed in Varziel's grip, his eyes flickering erratically, looking like a candle sputtering in the wind. His earlier arrogance was gone, replaced by fear.
"Correction," the invader rasped again, the glitching voice crackling like fractured glass. "Threat level: Lethal. Emergency disengage protocol initiated."
"Disengage?" Varziel growled, tightening his grip on the intruder's throat. "You don't get to attack my palace and simply leave. Does this look like a toilet?"
But as Varziel was speaking, something strange happened. The segmented armor around the invader's neck shimmered, breaking apart into countless motes of light that scattered into the cold air. The armor itself collapsed inward, folding and shrinking until Varziel was no longer holding a man but a hollow, lifeless husk of fabric and metal, then, the metal also begun to disintegrate in the same manner, leaving Varziel holding nothing but air.
