Vignettes from the Battle for Tymbren: Insects

"Oh. You want to live. Is that it?"
A hound made of shadow paced menacingly in front of its master. It bared its wicked, night-black teeth and laughed. The hacking, cackling, thoroughly unsettling sound drew a whimper from a Galbadian soldier nearby.
"Funny."
The figure cloaked in shadow chuckled. They rolled their eyes as the Galbadian soldiers continued their petty psionic assault. The pain throbbing behind their eyes was nothing compared to the backlash they'd felt when they'd cast that damnable empathy spell on the God-Emperor.
Regardless, they didn't appreciate the gnats uselessly scrabbling at their mental defenses.
"Enough."
Silence.
"That's better."
The figure's lips curled in a crooked little smile. It was a rare chance that they got to indulge this darker facet of their being. The empathy spell had not been without its drawbacks, but the feeling of completeness they'd obtained from it had been priceless.
"I can't recall that you listened when my people made those same pleas... Why should I?"
The Galbadians trembled.
"W-We're sorry!" one said.
"W-We were just following orders!" said another.
"P-Please h-have mercy!" cried out a third.
"Oh, is that so? You should have just said so in the beginning, sweetheart"
The figure should have sneered sneered. Horrid, vile, wretched creatures! Bile rose in the back of their throat. Revulsion made their fingers tremble. But they schooled their expression. They smiled a smile that did not reach their eyes.
"Very well. I am feeling generous today—"
Before the figure could stop speaking, the Galbadians around them flung themselves to the ground. "Thank you!" the soldiers cried out, weeping with relief.
"Silence."
The figure cast their gaze about. They could see noting redeeming about the cockroaches that surrounded them. In their mind's eye they could only see their people being cut down in the streets of the capital, the screams as they were slain to make way for the armies of Galbad.
"You want mercy, yes?"
The figure cocked an eyebrow at the soldier that looked to be in charge. The insect dared presume to look them in the eye as it nodded. Fury bubbled under the figure's skin but they tempered it. It wasn't yet time.
"Then beg."
The figure's voice was laden with power. Each syllable crackled and bubbled and hissed like the sound of the sea churning around molten rock.
The bugs fell over one another, begging for clemency in a cacophony of desperation and terror that gave the figure a bigger headache than all of the attacks they'd slung at him put together.
"Very well. You have earned my mercy."
Ash billowed from the smoke that surrounded the figure, the golden flecks that drifted with the currents turning to embers. The hound's eyes glowed an angry red, revealing cracks like veins of molten rock on its face as the tips of its tufts of fur smoldered.
"All you need to do is survive."
The ground beneath the figure's feet buckled, revealing magma through the cracks. The grass around them crumbled to dust. The air shimmered with heat. The clouds of ash and smoke glowed red.
"Pray and be judged, insects."
The earth trembled as a column of ash, molten rock, and poison gases shot up into the air. The force of the blast shook the battlefield and for a moment, the fighting stopped.
All eyes watched the eruption unfold until the column collapsed, sending searing-hot and choking ash across the battlefield.