There was nothing left that they could do to him and so: Kajj laughed.
“Hit him harder.”
Bright red lit up his blackened vision, bubbled copper within his throat. But still he laughed. The pain was nothing. His body was already a cracked and crumbling shell, full of aches that could never quite fade. Pain was a friend, a familiar companion. The only one left to him, in the end. He held it close, lips stretched in a pink-streaked smile.
“It’s too late,” he sang, the sound taking up a rasping hum from the damage to his tymbals. He could feel the scrape of it within his chest, a dull ache to keep the sharp one company. “Too late…”
“Worthless *fool*,” Rek snarled, grabbing a handful of antennae to yank Kajj’s head back, glaring down into bronze-depths already too gone to focus. The world rang and blurred, forming a bright prickling halo around the Viceroy’s head. A crown for them at last. A crown they would not wear for long. “What did you *do*? Tell us, before I slit your worthless throat!”
The sound of Command boomed out around him, twisting its claws into his mind, his chest… and yet, they disappeared into formless mist. Insubstantial. Inconsequential.
He knew who he served.
Who everyone truly served.
His laugh was wet and wheezing, brought on by the twisting, wrathful confusion that warped the Viceroys face – once his ruler. Once his brother. No more. No more. The hand lashed out again. And again. And again – His laughter built, stuttering with the blows, filling the room with echoes, drowning out the noble’s cries – “SHUT UP! SHUT UP, SHUT UP AND DIE IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE USELESS–”
One final order he would have to obey.
But it was not the Command that took him, in the end.
The lights fractured around him, breaking into stars, into night – and the Black reached out and swallowed him home.