Chapter Eight: Roll that Will Save!

Gimtesh Thresh, of the House Thresh and current captain of the unhappy needleship Banemaw, had been sweating bullets for the past twenty eight hours. As she normally didn’t even bother with sweat glands to begin with, this was a pretty stark stress reaction.

        “Scrying report number three six two eight nine...” A bored sounding voice burred in the background – barely heard by Gimtesh. “No change.”

        Gimtesh continued her pacing, her red scaled fingers tapping her chin as her small, whippy tail snapped back and forth, back and forth. The Five Talon Empire had started a civil war that had been nearly five thousand years in coming. The chromatic dragons of the old Asemat Empire would rise up and overthrow the parody of peace that was the Prismatic Throne, using advanced genetic weapons known as D-suits.

        The only problem was that while the first shots in the civil war had been fired by the chromatics, and the prismatic and neutral dragons in the rest of the empire had no idea that they were soon to be in a life or death struggle...the second shots had been put on hold.

        Postponed.

         Delayed .

        All because Lord Xosh – soon to be Emperor Xosh of the first Chromatic Dominion – didn’t wish to risk attacking Draconis Prime, the homeworld of dragon kind, until he knew that Princess Relix Castrovel, the true heir of the Prismatic Throne, was dead and buried. And he had set the objective in Gimtesh’s hands. If she failed, then she’d end up like her brother. The very thought made her want to curl up into a ball and whimper.

        “Scrying report number...” the soft voice came from one of the many war-wizards that were working on the Banemaw to keep her magical systems running. But what made Gimtesh lift her head up and narrow her eyes was the hesitation. “Sire! Sire!”

        Gimtesh ran over to the scrying pool that the war-wizards stood around. The one who was speaking was a burly looking elf whose body had been slabbed with an immense amount of crude magitech augmetics, all of them designed to bolster magical abilities. There were cogitation units sticking out of his forehead to assist with memorization, and arcane symbol weavers that thrust from his shoulders like the limbs of some great clockwork spider. Those were used to make somatic gestures easier, faster.

        But the thing that made Gimtesh shiver were the eyes. Specifically, the eye-tubes that were wired right into the scrying pool. It had something to do with sympathetic magic. Whatever the reason, it turned her stomach to see those segmented, worm-like tubes fastened to those empty eye sockets, like the man was being continually attacked by cybernetic predators.

        “What is it?” Gimtesh asked, her tail clicking against the corrugated metal of the Banemaw’s deck.

        “The signature of Princess Castrovel has vanished!”

        “She’s left the plane of negation?” Gimtesh asked.

        “No, no, our tracking spells...lost her.” The war-wizard cocked his head. Then he chuckled. “Sire. The feathered bitch headed for the Outlands before we lost her life signs.”

        “So?” Gimtesh asked, irritably. She dug her hands into her armpits and tried to not dig her claws into the soft flesh there. But her claws refused to retract. She was that on edge.

        “It means she died,” the other war-wizard said. “I knew her ship couldn’t survive in the plane of negation forever!”

        “She...died?” Gimtesh asked, blinking. “She died!”

        “Well, we should-” the first war-wizard started. But Gimtesh waved her hand.

        They had waited long enough.

        “Send a laser com burst to Lor-” She caught herself, shaking her head. “To Emperor Xosh! Tell him that the last princess of the Prismatic Throne is dead.” Gimtesh grinned, rubbing her hands together. “Just in the nick of time. Oh! And set course for Draconis Prime! I want to be in...in at the death .”

        The two war-wizards exchanged a glance.

        Remarkable, considering that neither had eyes.

***

        Draconis Prime.

        Population: 1 billion citizens.

        It seemed really small for the capital planet of an empire spanning three galactic arms, the galactic core and the Magellanic Clouds. But there was a simple reason why the planetary population on all the official census hovered at the one billion mark.

        Dragons counted dragons, half-dragons, quarter-dragons and sorcerers with draconic bloodlines on their census. The fifteen billion slaves, servants, civilian bondsmen, artisans, craftsmen, magisters, wizards, clerics, zealots, mercenaries, whores, whoremongers, holo-vid personalities, reality show producers, writers, wanna-be-pro wrestlers, actual pro-wrestlers, school teachers, historians, amateur historians, wargamers and assorted low life scum were listed as civilians . Or as servants . Or as chattle.  Not that that prevented their taxation.

This was an Empire after all.

        The planet itself looked like a world that had been unwoven. Continents had been lifted from the mantle and suspended on vast magitech engines, while the metallic core had been tapped and spun up with solar powered thrusters the size of small cities. Planetary surfaces had been carved from molten stone and planted with new landscapes that were kept in place with artificial gravity and force fields. It had taken almost five thousand years and the life-long careers of literally millions of wizards, but the end result was a megastructure capable of giving each dragon living on what could be theoretically termed a ‘planet’ the ten thousand kilometers of distance between other draconic holdings which they needed to feel comfortable leaving their hoards behind.

        It was vast.

        And it was deeply fragile. A statement, really, about the unassailable nature of the Five Talon Empire.

        Because of this structural fragility, it was defended by, at any one time, four War Spheres from four of the different draconic houses. Those War Spheres were matched by the First Imperial Fleet – almost five hundred ships, suspended above the spiraling beauty of Draconis Prime. And watching over this entire majestic display was Admiral Lionteshkar Throakhawn. Sitting on his command throne, surrounded by holographic displays and the warm chatter of his bridge crew, Lion considered the bowl of tea he had been brought by an elven woman dressed in gold paint and carefully placed holograms.

        “Is this really tanna leaf?” he asked, looking down at the woman.

        “Yes, Lord Admiral! Conqueror of pirates, master of the spectral frequency, dominator of nanocytes, castigator of cybernetic consciousness-” the elf said, beaming as she recited the litany of sobriquets.

        “Oh, stop it, Fiona,” Lion said, his tail cracking out, smacking her rump with exactly enough pressure to cause her butt to start jiggling. The elf giggled and rubbed at her backside.

        “Admiral!” she gasped.

        Lion chuckled, deep in his golden breast.

        “Admiral!” This voice was less playful and flirtatious. More confused .

        Lion looked over and saw one of his underofficers. The half-dragon was dressed in the green-gold of the sensor service, with a complex code of button pins that indicated that he was a subspace scanning specialist. He looked as if he had sprinted from the far end of the six hundred meter wide bridge, holding a crystal sheaf in one hand. Lion’s brow furrowed and his long mustachios twitched as he leaned his large head down to eye the officer.

        “Yes, Tasmin?” he asked.

        “I-” Subspace Scanning Specialist Third Class Tasmin Yorle looked a bit taken aback to be addressed by his first name. He shook his head. “I, uh, I’ve been doing signal intercepts, Admiral. And we’ve stopped getting any data from, uh, the outmost holding of House Yeltanzo.”

        “Which holding is that?” Lion asked.

        “A, uh, minor planet. Population two dragons, three billion menials,” Tasmin said, looking down at his scanner. “But here’s the weird thing. The last data signal we got was a House Xosh merchant freighter arriving.”

        Lion rubbed his chin. “Xosh and Yeltanzo are in a trade war. Why would any Xosh freighter be arriving openly? Unless Xosh has decided to captiulate in the marketplace.” He paused, one long claw stroking one of his equally long mustaches. Slowly, the gold dragon shook his head. “This doesn’t smell right...”

        “Should we dispatch scoutships?” Fiona asked, cocking her head. Despite the fact that she was just a concubine, Lion spent a few moments considering her words. He shook his head firmly.

        “No. Scanning branch!” he shouted. “I want a broad spectrum scrying spell – tell me if there are any Xosh ships approaching Draconis Prime.”

        This set a few dozen people across the bridge into new flurries of motion. Lion felt the same crawling, creeping nerves that he had felt when, as a young hatchling, he had first led a squadron of fighters against a Hawking Pirate raid-wing that had turned out to merely mask a Mumbler deathsphere. The hideous black hole monster had ripped through half his wing before he had put it down with a gravitic grenade right down the throat. He started to look at the space around him, thinking. If he was going to do something sneaky , what would it be…

        He rubbed his muzzle.

        And there, in the foreground, he saw what every Lord Admiral of the First Fleet had seen for the past five thousand years: The four Warspheres that protected Draconis Prime. Each one was the size of a small moon and bristled with weaponry. Each was shaded in the colors of a different house. None was House Xosh. But, by long tradition, two were metallic, and two were chromatic. He leaned back. “Fiona...which metallic whelp was it who was badgering the daughter of the fifth wife of the Emperor?”

        “Uh…” Fiona looked a bit confused. “Why? She doesn’t matter.”

         Ah, yes, Lion thought. The misdirection did work quite well, didn’t it?

         But then Fiona snapped her fingers. “Oh! Wait! I remember, it was Bex Thresh of-”

        The bridge turned to ruby red as the main weapon of the red painted Warsphere of House Thresh activated its primary weapon and fired it into the silver and copper Warsphere of House Tranyo. For a single, horrifying moment, all was still. Everyone looked up from their consoles and away from their work and merely gaped at the sight. The flagship was positioned perfectly to see the effect. The beam of pure redness, belching from a divot on the Warsphere’s equator, smashing into the skin of the other ‘sphere. There was a few moments of boiling as adamantine plates ablated under the hellfury of that immense energy weapon...and then it punched through and scythed through the Warsphere, cutting and cleaving until the moon-sized weapons platform was uncoiling like a peeling onion.

        Lion felt less shocked than he would have liked.

        For the past several centuries, he had been feeling as if another shoe was about to drop.

        “Red alert! Bring the portal shields online! Ready weapons and fire a full spread of torpedoes at the traitors!” Lion bellowed. “Signal the fleet that Plan Gold Plated Iron has gone into effect. The chromies have stabbed us in the back!”

        The flagship whirred as its reactors snapped open portals to the plane of positive energy, drawing power in nearly incalculable amounts to power the main guns and the shield arrays. Hanger bags on attack carriers opened and fighter-craft screamed into the void by the hundreds, while smaller cruisers put their burrowing spell-torpedoes into the astral plane, where they would dart towards the enemy Warsphere before returning to physical reality (hopefully inside the moon sized warship.) But even as the fleet began to react, the low whump whump whump of ships emerging from subspace hammered on Lion’s sense of soul.

        An old dragon gets quite good at hearing disruptions in space time.

        Comes in handy for an admiral.

        And there was the third Warsphere, painted a brilliant Xosh blue. Surrounding it was the entire Xosh fleet, like a vast cloud of carrion birds. With a quick glance, Lion estimated at least three hundred ships of the line, maybe twice that in smaller frigates and destroyers, all arranged in an arrowhead attack pattern. The kind designed to rip through enemy fleets in a single, brutal pass. But rather than plunging towards the First Fleet, the Xosh fleet held back.

        “Sir! They’re launching...something...” a sensors officer said, sounding confused. “It looks like...dragons?”

        Lion harrumphed.

        Sending your dragons out to fight was poor sportsmanship. Dragons took a long time to breed and were quite valuable. Committing them early was just...rude! To their families, if to no one else. But then the screens surrounding Lion flared with hundreds of thrust plumes. His brow furrowed and his mustache twitched. “What is this?!” His roar shook the bridge as his wings mantled.

        “I don’t know!” The sensors officer shouted back.

        Across hundreds of kilometers of space, the ‘dragons’ were shooting towards the First Fleet on plumes of fire that stretched across the stars like bolides cutting through the upper atmosphere of a doomed planet. They flew towards swarming formations of fighter craft. The instant they were in range, the fighter craft opened up with their PRCs. Beams of killing frost zipped through space, seeking targets. The dragons banked and twisted, evading most of the oncoming fire. Then their wings flared, bringing them to a near perfect stop in the vacuum of space.

        The fighters, unable to slow, shot through the draconic formation.

        And space exploded .

        Plasma beamcasters scythed lines of purple fury. Spinfusor blades hummed and sliced and roared. Deathwands flared with their black-white killing radiance. Shrike catapults filled the void with flechettes that somehow managed to whine with ear-splitting fury despite the utter lack of sound in space. Bolt-guns hammered and vol-tech rays swept about in cones of pure white heat. Plasma missiles arced and captured targets in balls as hot as the surface of a sun.

        Then the dragons were rushing forward, leaving behind smoldering wreckage and vented space suits and gaping, stunned faces – frozen in the embrace of space. But while the battle was quiet from a distance, the bridge of Lion’s flagship was filled with the radio broadcasts from his pilots.

        “What are they?”

        “This is Talon B, he dodged a point blank missile!”

        “Eject!”

        “Bring the AMS online!”

        “They’re cutting through the-”

        The first dragon smashed into the bridge of the flagship a second later. He smoldered with the waste heat of his weapon systems and his claws dug into the metal plating of the deck. He decapitated a few deckhands with the edges of his wings before six arms unfolded from his chest, each one tipped with a different killer. Lion grabbed his bed slave and crammed her into the escape pod reserved for his egress – then triggered the launch with his tail before leaping at the boader.

        The boarder rolled aside with indraconic speed then fired a spread of flechettes into Lion’s side. Gold scales cracked and Lion roared in fury, then breathed six centuries worth of dragon fire straight at the pseudo-dragon. The boarder lifted an arm and extruded a shield that shimmered with a blackness deeper than space, drinking in heat. Lion, though, was old enough to know that a breath weapon was merely half the battle. He snapped his jaws shut at the same time he swung his claws, catching the boarder in the gut. Scales and scales under those scales tore and caught, the boarder went flying.

        Lion caught the boarder before he could get more than a half meter – literally tossing him to his other palm like a cat.

        Lion was also old enough to know that when facing something new, you made sure it was dead.

        And so, he lowered his head and bit down. The creature split in half in his mouth and he spat the upper half away, before tossing the other half as far away from the torso as he could manage. Only once he was done did he pay mind to the metal darts digging into his flesh.

        A metallic controlled cruiser - the Fairchaser  -  chose that moment to detonate spectacularly. Then a battleship, the Last Resort . Then another battleship, the Reliant Gold Pile . Then a third - and by now, Lion was unable to keep track of which ship was going up and which were merely burning. One after the other after the other, each one flaring with a pure radiance that announced the cause of death: Reactor breaches. Lion didn’t need to be told the battle was lost. He ducked his head forward, then growled.

        “Signal the fleet to retreat...and set our course...” Lion snarled.

        “Where, sir?” a stunned looking helm officer – one of the few left after the horrible violence of the boarder.

        “Right. Down. Their. Throats.”

***

        Emperor Dogan stood before the holographic display table. The view was horrifying – worse than the worst predictions of the dourest prognosticator. Half the First Fleet was burning wreckage. A quarter was so badly damaged that it couldn’t even try to retreat. The last quarter was retreating. But the worse news was coming from subspace listening posts. Smaller fleets were attacking metallic holdings across the FTE. Worlds were burning. People were dying. And there was almost nothing he could do about it.

        “Signal the evacuation of Draconis Prime. Use every mage, witch and hedge caster we have to open portals to...to anywhere! The City of O, the Night City, Purgatory, I don’t care, get our people out of here!” he growled.

        “The magical components alone are-” Secretary Rolin started – his claws tacking as he tapped them together.

        “Raid every last hoard on this planet if you have too!” Emperor Dogan snarled. “I don’t care about property rights, we have three enemy Warspheres overhead and only one-”

        Once more, that terrible, ruby red light spilled in through the windows of the palace.

        On the holographic display table, the symbol for the last surviving defense winked out.

        “I’ll begin the confiscations,” Rolin said, bowing as he backed away from the table. Dogan barely heard him. He walked slowly to the window, looking out and upwards. There, he could see the brilliant glow of the three Warspheres coming closer. The thrust plumes of their immense engines could be seen as lights smeared across heaven – intermixing with the fading throb of the burning ships and smoldering wreckage. He took hold of the sill and knew that everything he had planned was for naught. He licked his muzzle.

        “At least it will be quite a show...” he whispered, softly.

        “Sire?”

        Looking back, he saw that only one servant was left. The rest of the council had fled with Rolin and the other servants. He wondered how many were teleporting away from Draconis Prime as quickly as they could wrangle wizards together. The servant was an older looking halfling – his face seamed with lines, his hair turned a dignified silvery gray. Dogan tried to recall his name, but he found it escaping him.

        “Do you know what the primary weapons of a Warsphere do to a planet?” Dogan asked, reaching up to take the circlet that signified his imperial status off his head. He twirled it, casually, on one finger.

        The halfling shook his head.

        “On their full setting, they shunt the entire planet into the lowest level of the Abyss,” Dogan said. “That’s why we call them hellwhips, you see. That’s all the primary weapon is, a hellwhip the size of a small continent. But on a half setting, they merely...are...” He trailed off. “Quite hot.”

        The halfling gulped.

        “Since they have three ships, I believe they won’t bother with the full power. They’ll need to use the spheres again, after all.” Dogan looked back out the window. The halfling walked over to stand beside him. He rummaged around in his vest pockets and took out a tiny cigarillo case. Tapping the bottom with one long finger, the halfling got out a slender stick of concentrated pipeweed. He stuck it into the corner of his mouth, then started to rummage around, trying to find a match.

        Dogan held out his thumb. A tiny twist of magical energy caused flames to leap from the tip, lightning the cigarillo up.

        The halfling grinned shakily up at his Emperor. Then he tapped out a second cigarillo and offered it.

        Dogan took it, shifted away his natural resistance to such drugs, and tucked the slender tube of paper and powdered leaf into the corner of his muzzle. He set off the tip with his thumb, then shook his hand to banish the flames.

        “What’s your name, anyway?” Dogan asked.

        “Well, it’s kind of stupid,” the halfling said, chuckling. “I preferred being called ‘you there’ for most of my life for a reason.” He blew out a smoke ring. Dogan puffed his own smoke ring through it.

        The sky started to glow ruby.

        “Oh?” Dogan asked. He forced himself to look out the window, like he was just watching the sunset. The beams lanced down – painfully bright. They impacted on the edges of the coiling horizon, and the shockwaves billowed outwards. They moved slower than light. Slow enough to seem like they should take days to reach them: massive, roiling clouds of flame and smoke and fury. Chunks of earth the size of small cities, bouncing and rolling and crumbling apart before a shockwave sweeping along Draconis Prime.

        The sound hadn’t reached them yet, so the view was eerily silent.

        “Well,” the halfling said, chuckling. “My mother, for some harebrained reason, decided to name me Baggins.”

        “Baggins?” Dogan laughed.

        The halfling punched him in the hip, grinning.

        The invisible curtain of pressure that was pushed ahead of the flame and smoke and debris reached the castle without warning. Bricks flew apart and metal was flayed and for a dizzying moment, the entire castle seemed to roil in the air as if the whole building had been transmuted into an air elemental. The tornado of debris writhed for a few moments before the heat arrived, and turned everything into fire and fury and ash.

        And then…

        Nothing at all.

***

        Gimtesh blinked and shivered. Like a small dog exposed to an air raid siren, she was unable to move. Think. Breathe. She just sat there and shivered . Her eye was about two inches away from the needle sharp tip of the prow of the former flagship of the former First Navy. The ship had struck the command decks of the Xosh Warsphere and penetrated through almost two kilometers of adamantine armor before inertia and pressure forced it to stop. By the end of the progress, the flagship had been crumpled and crushed and mangled, until it was essentially turned into a scrunched up needle of mishmashed metal.

        A scrunched up needle that had almost impaled her through the head.

        “Oh, get up, you’re fine,” Emperor Xosh growled.

        Gimtesh sprang to her feet, gasping.

        The rest of the bridge showed just as much disarray as one might expect. But the crew – mostly bond slaves and kobolds – were already working to clear out the debris the impact had created. The few other dragons – representatives of house Bryaugh – remained poised in their lounging pits. But Gimtesh could see that the big black dragons were all quite agitated what with their near death via ship smashing into the bridge.

        “Lion was quite an admiral,” Xosh said, his voice dropping the furious growl that it had held. Gimtesh swung her head around – and saw that Xosh was standing, brushing his hands along his broad crest. “But, well, you know what they say. A traitor’s blow is legion...” He chuckled.

        “Sire,” a kobold with a tall shako stepped up, doffing his cap. “Draconis Prime is destroyed. We detected several portals, but none in the Imperial Palace. S-Save for a minor teleportative disturbance. B-but!” he added, quickly. “It wasn’t large enough for a dragon!”

        Xosh inclined his head, then threw it back. He laughed. Long and loud and proud . “The Prismatic Throne is dead ! The Five Talon Empire -”  he spat the word as if it was a curse. “-is dead . The Chromatic Dominion is ascendant!” He spread his arms wide. “The Emperor is dead, long live the Emperor!”

        “Long live the Emperor!” the dragons, kobolds, and bond slaves shouted.

        They had to shout.

        Xosh, after all, was clad in a B-suit. He had shifted it to match his coloration, but Gimtesh couldn’t forget the number of hyper-tech weapons worked into his new skin. Xosh walked forward, putting his hand on the needle of the former flagship. He opened his mouth.

        And a low bleep deep rang out.

        It was the sound of a signal being received.

        Slowly, Xosh turned to face a kobold who was quickly trying to turn off the bleeper.

        “What is that?” Xosh growled.

        “U-Uh, uh, uh, uh...” the kobold stammered.

        Xosh glared at him.

        The kobolds gulped, then stammered. “W-We’ve detected the Prismatic Throne.”

        The entire bridge turned to frost. At least that was how Gimtesh felt. She felt like it was time to maybe start thinking about running away, and she wasn’t entirely sure why. She had no idea why the Prismatic Throne was important. It was just a thing someone sat on, wasn’t it?

        Xosh’s tongue flicked along his muzzle. “Where?” his voice was deadly cold.

        “Um, on a, uh, planet...” the kobold stammered. “Called...Ea-Arth?”

        “Earth,” Xosh said, slowly.

        “Yes. It teleported there before the castle was...destroyed...” The kobold quailed underneath Xosh’s glare. But that glare didn’t rest there for long. It swung around and transfixed Gimtesh. Gimtesh gulped, loudly.

        “The Prismatic Throne teleported to Earth .” The Emperor walked towards her. He moved slowly. His feet thumped on the deck like mini-earthquakes. Gimtesh wanted to move. But she couldn’t. “How could that have happened, my dear Gimtesh?”

        “I-I-urk!” Gimtesh grabbed onto Xosh’s wrist as the Emperor lifted her from the ground and smashed her into the wall. Deck plating buckled and her back cracked as he snarled into her face.

        “It’s keyed , you ignorant bitch, to the fucking genecode of the true heir!” Xosh roared. “The heir you told me was dead !” He drew Gimtesh back, then smashed her into the divot her body had left. Gimtesh saw black spots in her eyes as her head rang.

        She managed to choke out. “J-Just...throne!”

        “It’s not just a throne !”

        Xosh turned.

        Threw.

        And Gimtesh grunted. Something huge and thick pierced her belly. She put her claws around it – and saw that it was the nose of the flagship. The long, needle thin spur that had been a forward antenna was now slick with her blood. She gasped, then coughed. Xosh turned his back to her.

        “How long until we can send the fleet to Earth?”

        The kobold navigation officer gaped at the still writhing Gimtesh.

        “How long !?” Xosh roared, lightning crackling around his muzzle.

        “T-Two weeks!” The kobold stammered. “Firing the hellwhips at even seventy five percent-”

        “Begin the process! Now!”

        Gimtesh closed her eyes, gritting her teeth against the pain.

        She wondered how long it’d take before Xosh finished her off.

        She wondered in vain.

***

        The air above Antarctica was crisp and clear at this time of year. The sun hung at a perpetual twilight, painting the skyline in a pastel of purples and pinks and blues. There was not a cloud in sight. For Dr. Tobias Finley, it was the best kind of day. The helicopter that perched in the center of Dallman Base was being fueled by a pair of technicians while a third one was scraping some of the frost from the window with a thick metal scrapper. The quiet chuff chuff chuff of ice scraping suited Finley’s mood. He sipped from his thermos of hot chocolate.

        “So, think we’ll be able to find the source of the magnetic disturbances?” Dr. Sophie asked, stepping up to stand beside Finley. As per usual, her French accent sent a kind of delicious cascade along Finley’s spine. He grinned at her. Despite the chapping from the desert dry air and the sun-burn that any pasty European would get in the Arctic white, Dr. Sophie was the finest thing he had seen...in...ever.

        Shame about the wife.

        “I think so,” he said, nodding. “Assuming the gizmo your buddies cooked up works.”

        “Well, it’s not exactly a gizmo,” Dr. Sophie said, chuckling. “It’s just a simple extrapolation of-”

        The technicians servicing the helicopter jerked away from the pontoons, which was where the gizmo had been strapped. One of them bellowed in heavily accented English: “Dr. Sophie! It’s going off!”

        “ Merde ,” Sophie hissed. She started forward, her shoes crunching along snow.

        The sound that followed was like the end of the world. Roaring and screaming and a wind that tore the thermos out of Finley’s hand. His scarf went flapping and he was knocked onto his shoulder. The snow caught him and softened his fall. Meanwhile, Sophie skidded a few feet on her derriere . She fetched up against him and Finley took a moment to enjoy the softness of her body before she was shoving him away and springing to her feet.

        And to his shock…

        She was laughing.

        Whooping.

        Jumping up and down and waving her arms over her head.

        Finley blinked away snow and saw that the wind and the roar had been brought by a twenty meter long needle of purple-silver metal. It soared through the air in a slowly descending trajectory, carried forward by a trio of pure blue flames, leaving behind contrails of smoldering air. Finley stood and gaped – unable to believe what he was seeing.

        Sophie grabbed him. Shouted. “Dr. Finley! Dr. Finley! It’s a, a, a, a-”

        “A spaceship...” Dr. Finley whispered – his voice lost in the ringing of his ears. “Where’s it going to-”

        The needle-shaped ship smashed into the side of a mountain. It was one of the many harsh, foreboding cliffs that made up this part of Antarctica. But rather than an explosion of dust or flames, all that happened was a neat hole appearing in the mountainside as the ship punched through what should have been solid rock, followed by a rush of dust, and then an attenuated scream of engines.

        Dr. Finley scrambled for his binoculars. Putting them to his eyes, he saw that the hole had punched through five meters of rock...and then opened into an open space. As if the mountain was hollow. Before he could even open his mouth, he was being dragged towards the helicopter by Dr. Sophie.

        He didn’t even try and resist.

***

        “Okay. Just saying. That was not the best landing I’ve ever seen.” Merton grabbed onto the pile of Brash that was mashed against his face and lifted the small dragon up. Merton’s back was pressed against the side of a console, and his feet were up in the air. But other than a few bumps and bruises, he mostly felt okay. A few groans came from other crew and passengers who had been tossed about when the Talon-9 landed.

        Brash waved at him. “Hi!” he said, cheerfully. “I’m Brash!”

        “In my defense!” the pilot said, pushing herself to her feet. “That fucking giant mecha was shooting at us!”

        “They were using cannons !” Relix snarled. “Shooting iron cannonballs! They couldn’t have dented the armor!”

        “My question is why we’re still alive,” Lisa said, groaning as she started to help Merton’s Mom to her feet. “We hit a mountain.”

        “Well, uh...” Merton blinked. “Whoa.”

        Looking out through the front screen of the Talon-9 , Merton could see why they hadn’t simply pancaked against mountain. The Talon-9  had hit the side of the mountain, punched through, and come to a rest inside of a massive chamber that looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed for thousands of years. The entire mountain was hollow . And the ship had come down in the center of the city buried within. The buildings were uniformly beautiful and carved of stone and crystal. Spiraling images that reminded him of something between Aztec and Mayan art covered each structure. The streets were broad enough to admit multiple dragons – which was how the ship had come down without smashing any buildings. The street was paved with black stone that had crumbled under the impact, leaving great drifts of sloughed sand, like they had come down in the middle of a desert.

        “Where are we?” Brash asked.

        “Atlantis,” Dart said, groaning as she sat up. “At least, part of it.” She winced, wrinkling her nose. “Ugh. It looks like it’s seen better days.”

        Merton leaned back against the side of his command throne. The orange tabby cat leaped onto the seat. Merton smiled, slightly. “So, you’re still alive?” he asked. The cat had been scooped up by Relix when she had snatched up his family, girlfriend and best friends. No one had been sure who owned the cat, but since it was a cat, it had accepted being petted and fed with the assurance of a god-emperor accepting tribute.

        “Yes,” the cat said. “And she’s right. Atlantis has seen better days.”

        Merton was surprised to learn he could still be shocked.

        “What!?” Relix shouted.

        And that was when a small sphere of glittering, prismatic light appeared out of thin air and beaned her in the head. Relix slumped to the deck and the stone landed beside her, then started rolling towards Merton. Merton gaped at it until it bumped against his thigh.

        “We’re under attack!” Gunner shouted, drawing his pistol.

        Brash leaped over to land on the stone, as if it was a grenade. He yelped at the top of his tiny lungs. “Ouchies!” And started to flap away, his belly smoking. Then Relix groaned and started to push herself to her feet. Merton grabbed the stone and threw it into an unoccupied part of the bridge. The stone got about five feet away from him before whizzing back and beaning him in the face. Merton slammed back onto the deck and lay there, groaning.

        Once his head stopped ringing, he sat up and saw that the entire bridge was gaping at Relix.

        Because Relix was sobbing. Her hands pressed to her face and her shoulders shook. And in that instant, Merton forgot orbs and Atlantis and technically being back home on Earth. Instead, he simply scrambled over and got to his wife at the same time Julia wriggled over. The two of them hugged her, tightly. Then Brash fell ontop of them, having shifted into a massive tiger. His belly fur mashed into them as he started to purr at max strength.

        “Are you okay?” Merton asked once they had managed to wriggle themselves into a position where they weren’t being smothered by Brash being cute.

        Relix shook her head. “N-No...” She whispered. “T-This...” She held up the glittering gemstone. It had flown into her palm at some point and sat there, glowing. “This...”

        “Is?” Julia asked.

        “This is the Prismatic Throne,” Relix whispered. “I-It...it being here means my father...” She closed her eyes. “B-But it doesn’t make any sense . I’m not the next in the line of succession! I-I’m the daughter of his fifth  wife!”

        The orange tabby hopped up onto the curved piloting console. He sat there and spoke, his voice as deep and full of gravitas as James Earl Jones.

        “That was a deception, my granddaughter,” he said.

        The entire bridge crew gaped at the cat. Julia reached slowly over to close Merton’s mouth with her hand. The orange cat looked down at Relix.

        “You may be the daughter of a fifth wife and a minor functionary in the Imperial Bureaucracy but you are, in truth, the heir to my bloodline.” The orange cat lifted his head. “For I am Quetzalcoatl. The feathered serpent. The first dragon and the one who has...has...” He paused as a hand patted his head. He shook his head, then looked back at Brash, who had teleported behind him and was still petting him. “Stop that!”

        “So fluffy!” Brash whispered.

        The orange tabby cat flashed with a pure white radiance. When the light cleared, the whole front of the bridge was dominated by a serpent that coiled in and on itself again and again. His snout was long and narrow, and it had no legs – rather, it merely had a set of six glittering wings, each one feathered and shining in a rainbow riot of colors. His scales were metallic and shone with luster, smoothly transitioning from copper to bronze, with gold and silver tiger stripes along its sides. His snout was framed by a pair of elegant mustaches, and his eyes blazed with a light beyond light. Brash sat on one of his coils, now rendered kitten sized by Quetzalcoatl’s glory.

        “Oh my god...” Merton whispered. “Y-You were a dragon the whole time?”

        “Yes,” Quetzalcoatl said.

        “You could have fucking helped at any time?” Relix snarled. “You sat back while we bumbled around and let my people get killed!?”

        Quetzalcoatl leaned forward. “You are my daughter because you care . But do not think this means you can give me cheek, little one.”

        Relix literally bristled, her own feathered scales flipping up as she hissed.

        “I could not reveal myself in the greater universe, lest Xosh and his allies know that their plans were opposed,” Quetzalcoatl said. “And more, I needed to ensure that you truly were my daughter.”

        “You couldn’t have fucking tested my blood ?” Relix growled, stepping forward. “You could have done it the instant you came on board!”

        Quetzalcoatl drew his head back, his own feathers ruffling. It gave him an almost lionlike mane. “You think that mere genetic similarities make you my daughter?” He tossed his head. “Ridiculous. Dragons are more than genetic sequences and cybernetic implants and magic. We are creatures of soul . And your soul is the first in ten thousand years to be equal to bearing the weight of the Prismatic Throne.”

        Relix looked down at the glittering gemstone.

        Merton slowly stood up. He was trying to not give in to the intense urge to simply bow before the shining glory before him. Seeing Brash do a little dance on the coils of the immense dragon did help. But what helped more was seeing Relix’s indignation on the behalf of her crew. He walked slowly over, then put his palm on the gemstone.

        “What does the Prismatic Throne do?” he asked, quietly. “Tell me, for the audience members in the cheap seats.”

        Quetzalcoatl slowly turned to look at him. He snorted out two thin streamers of smoke.

        “Why, my annoying little mage-blind human, the Prismatic Throne was constructed by the one who made us - and finding it was how the first Prismatic Emperor forced the kingdoms of chromatic and metallic dragons together. The threat made those ancient dragons bend their knee to him. They swore to keep its true power secret. For the Prismatic Throne is far more than a symbol .” He reached out with one claw, tapping the glittering orb. “I t contains the spiritual essence of true dragonkind. A mage with this can unweave dragons at their whim .”

Quiet gasps came from the entire bridge crew. Quetzalcoatl bowed his magnificent head, his voice becoming solemn. “A true daughter of mine - one who knows the value of life - can finally do what needs to be done . T hey can erase the great mistake of the Magi from the Universe. They can free the galaxy of our arrogance, our-”

        Relix smashed the gemstone on the ground. It hit the ground with a crunch, the edge denting inwards slightly.

        Quetzalcoatl opened his mouth.

        Relix lifted her foot, then brought her heel down on the back of the Prismatic Throne. The orb crunched. She slammed her heel down again - the loud crunch crunch crunch noise of her heel smashing the delicate components into powder filled the utterly silent bridge.

        “W-Wait!” Quetzalcoatl stammered.

        Then Relix hit the remains of the Throne with her cold breath. Then she stomped on the frozen chunks again, grinding them under her heels until nothing but a fine powder was left.

        Quetzalcoatl blinked slowly. “Well...” he said. “I thought, uh...I didn’t...expect that.”

        “You expect me to just commit mass intergalactic genocide just because some dragons are assholes?” Relix growled. “Fuck you! Fuck that!”

         “I mean...” Quetzalcoatl rubbed his scaled palm along the back of his neck. “I thought...I mean...”

        Relix flipped him off. “Dragonkind might have a lot of sins to answer for. And I’m going to see that things get fixed ” She growled. “That’s what Merton has shown me. There’s nothing you can’t do if you have quick wits, a big heart, and balls of fucking steel! So sit down, granddad , and let me get to fucking work. ”

        She turned to face Merton.

        “Husband,” she said, her voice pure imperial majesty. “Take me to your leader.”

        Merton blinked. He was pretty sure he had never been more aroused than this moment. He coughed. “Uh, uh…” he nodded. Then he remembered who his leader was right now. “Uh, actually, can we go to the United Nations?” he asked.

        “I second this motion!” Julia called out.

        “Leader. Now !” Relix snarled, pointing to the exit.

***

        Finely bit his lip so hard it nearly bled as he gently set the helicopter down on the top of the mountain. The perch was precarious, but trying to get near the hole the alien spacecraft had punched through solid rock would be impossibly hard from the base of the mountain. But looking down at the hole from where he stood, Finley wasn’t entirely sure how to get down to the hole without far more supplies than they had in the base. And he and Sophie had brought all the climbing supplies they had.

        “Should we...get a drone, maybe?” Sophie muttered.

        “From-”

        That was when the goddamn motherfucking dragon flew out of the hole. It was as black as Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon  and just as fast. It was followed by a second that was teal blue and gold. Finley had a few moments to simply reel before the two dragons banked, swerved, then landed before him and Sophie. They both flashed with pale light. A moment later, two humans stood before him and the other researcher. One was a man – white skinned, black haired and green eyed. He looked like a total dork, if said dork had hit the gym and got really shredded. His three piece suit showed it off rather nicely, without being overstated.

        The other woman had olive brown skin and long brown hair. Her eyes were golden-amber, like a cat’s, and she looked like she was dressed for a Parisian fashion show, with a furred ruff around her neck and a long cape. Her breasts were rather magnificent and rather magnificently outlined by her thin, sheer, silky clothes.

        “Hi,” the boy said. “I’m Merton Miles. Well, Merton Miles Castrovel. This is Relix Castrovel.” He jerked his thumb at the woman. “She’s a dragon. I’m a human. Well, uh, technically, I’m a human wearing a dragon.”

        “Hi!” the boy’s tie said.

        “This is Brash,” Merton said.

        Finley fainted.

        Relix looked at Merton. “Is that normal?”

        “Merton! Merton!” Merton’s tie started to wriggle.

        “Yes, Brash, I know, you’re very cute,” Merton said. But before Sophie could ask any questions, the voice from the tie spoke up again.

        “No! I’m detecting something!” The voice said. “To the that way!” The tie flopped up and aimed to the east. All of them turned – save for Finley, who remained unconscious. Both Sophie and Merton lifted binoculars to their eyes, though Sophie had no idea where he had gotten his from, considering they seemed to have appeared from literally nowhere.

        Looking through the binoculars, Sophie could see a pair of black dots coming from the coastline. Merton hissed.

        “Two Osprey. But I don’t see United States symbols on them.”

        “There shouldn’t be any military craft within a hundred kilometers of Antarctica!” Sophie growled, lowering the binoculars.

        “Well, this is all to the good!” Relix said, scoffing quietly. “I need to speak to your military anyway.”

        The two VTOL craft came closer and closer, rushing forward at max speed. As they swelled, Merton licked his lips.

        “Should we take cover?” Sophie whispered.

        “Nah. She’s a dragon and I’m wearing a dragon. Nothing on those two things can touch-” Merton started.

        The Osprey swerved to the side, revealing their opened bay windows. A heavy, mounted weapon thrust from each side, like the machine guns on a helicopter. Before Merton could finish the sentence, a crackling net of blue light flew out, wrapped around his body, and started to surge with electricity, knocking him flat on his ass. Relix sprawled a moment later, also wrapped up tight as the two VTOLs hovered overhead.

        Soldiers slid down ropes – dressed in heavy, unfamiliar armor.

        Sophie stammered. “Who are you !?”

        A woman wearing a slightly lighter vest and helmet, with a broad Japanese flag painted across her back, thumped down. “Lt. Kisogawa!” she shouted over the roar of the helicopter blades. “I’m going to have to ask you to come with us, Doctor.”

        “We’ve got the two X-rays secured!” one of the men shouted.

        Lt. Kisogawa looked at Sophie.

        “W-Who?” Sophie asked.

        Lt. Kisogawa chuckled. “Two hours ago, this would be a secret we’d kill to protect. But the Council just rescinded the omega level protocols...so...” She shrugged. “You’re looking at the second squad of the Dragon Combat Unit. Or...” She grinned. “D-Com.”

        The two dragons were hoisted up onto one VTOL. The other took Dr. Sophie.

        Both banked towards the east.