It is said that nothing can compare to the sight of a Coalition Battlecruiser cutting through space. Serene. Deadly. Majestic. I wonder of that truth… is it true because it was always thus, or because there is nothing so grand that is left to compare?

  - Aris Vismoth, Poet (Deceased)

  When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was… he didn’t open his eyes.

  It wasn’t like opening eyelids. Instead, his vision arrived suddenly, and with a strange filmy filter overlaying the sight. Letters and numbers were tucked away in the corners of his vision, something he had never seen before.

  And the sight before him was not that of the tundra he’d been… remembering?

  Yes, remembering. His memories were still turbulent, but the anchor he did have was that painful, humiliating defeat. Had he somehow survived? He had lost consciousness shortly after… after…

  “Apexillos, can you hear me?”

  A woman’s voice cut into his thoughts. Familiar, shouting, but not shouting at him. He couldn’t place it. He felt no burning rage at hearing it, so it must be inconsequential. He needed to find out where he was. This was not the frozen wasteland where he’d been lured and trapped. It was enclosed. Metal. A dwarven colony?

  It was a huge room, he could tell. He dominated the space, but that only meant it had to be large. A Great Dragon was not a small creature! But even so, he could make out that the walls of the cavernous room were all metal – and some kind of refined steel or similar, not just clumsy plates of iron. They covered the entire room in his vision, decorated only by some tubes and the occasional scrawl of lettering that he did not bother to focus on enough to decipher.

  Two massive doors were directly in front of him, and to either side – without moving his head to see – a number of tiny walkways threaded across the walls, many of them extending branches toward him, almost insultingly close. The walkways were minuscule, much smaller than any of the Lesser Folk he had encountered over the centuries.

  “Apexillos, I’m told you are conscious but I won’t know unless you respond. We’re running out of time!”

  Again, that voice of a female… human? Elf? It was hard to say just from voice alone. The voice cut into his thoughts, and he realized now that he was hearing it inside his head. Different from a mental message, this one carried the tone, the actual pitch and timbre of the voice, not just the meaning. It was not coming from within the room, but through some means of magical transmission.

  He looked downward slightly, and his head dipped obediently. It felt strange, sluggish. Like he’d just awakened from a long slumber. Yet it did bring more of the room into view.

  The lights flickered and sparks showered from one wall, but the illumination was enough that Apexillos could make out the floor… much farther below than he had thought. Upon the metal floor, he could see a complex diagram, beyond anything he had ever seen before. Mystical runes of many types were integrated into the design, although it appeared dormant for now.

  He also saw other details. Details such as dead bodies and strange tools floating in the air, untethered by the downward pull of the world beneath. They looked human, although he spied a half-elf as well, all bloodied or burned and showing signs of battle. Blood pooled in the air, congealing into rounded, wobbling droplets the size of hands or heads.

  The walkways were not tiny, he realized.

  He was larger than before.

  “Apexillos, you moved your head, so I know you are awake. I’m going to hope you can hear me. The doors are about to open, and I need you to fly out of it as fast as you can. I’ll explain everything once we are safe. Until then, please do as I say. I know you have little reason to trust me, but just this once, please!”

  The voice sounded again, breathless and desperate. Who was she to demand he do something? And who was speaking?

  It was that moment that Apexillos realized he heard no other sounds. The sparks from the wall were noiseless, and the entire room was dead silent. The only sound he had registered since awakening was that of the voice. A voice that begged him to move… once the doors were open.

  The giant doors in front of him? The dragon was unsure how easily or quickly they would move. It would take great magic to budge those, especially if they were as big as he now estimated.

  Just as he was considering that fact, the entire room shook. He still heard nothing, but the visible sway and collapse of some of the thin metal walkways was enough to tell Apexillos what was happening. The power to shake a mountain must be immense… although he already noted so many other strange discrepancies. The lack of gravity being a particularly worrying one.

  That very thought came but a moment before the doors silently, yet violently blew open.

  Apexillos felt himself lurch forward slightly, but barely paid attention to that fact. Around him, the corpses and tools that had been strewn about the massive cavern tumbled outwards toward the open doorway, and he noted that some of the numbers in the corner of his vision plummeted at the same time. He paid that no heed, instead staring outward.

  Into the void.

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  A tapestry of stars met his gaze, with no sky or land in sight. As a Great Dragon, he had soared to the very limits of the sky more than once. He had witnessed the glory of the sun cresting over the horizon from far above, where the air was too thin to breathe without magic and the sky was both night and day. He had believed that to be the limits of what could be done.

  Although still sluggish and confused from his odd slumber, Apexillos was still an intelligent, perceptive being. The shock of seeing that dark canvas with brilliant specks of light upon it jolted his mind into reconsidering where he was. He was not wholly ignorant of what lay beyond his own world, he merely never thought it somewhere that he would go. But he knew.

  He was in space.

  “GO!”

  The voice yelled, and Apexillos felt a flash of irritation. His pride hurt at the idea of listening to the voice, but only because he knew it likely did so for a reason. He had no desire to be stuck in this cramped room full of dead Lesser Folk and tools.

  He knew he was not touching the floor, so the dragon was unsure how to proceed. Lacking any other context, he simply urged himself forward. That had a reaction he was unprepared for.

  

  

  The indicator at the corner of his vision flashed, drawing his attention to it. This time, he actually read it, to see if it explained the strange warm tickling that he felt at his sides and back. Four places, two on the left and two on the right, symmetrical with one another. Four numbers that went from nothing to something.

  And he moved forward.

  Slowly, at first, but rapidly picking up speed, the dragon saw the cavernous room pass by, allowing him to ease out of the open doors and into the open, empty sky. Whatever structure had held him was shed like a butterfly breaking free of its cocoon, and Apexillos felt a mental rush wash over his addled mind as the freedom of the sky – now more expansive than ever – cut through the foggy remnants of that decisive battle.

  Apexillos did not feel any sort of chill or heat at first, but all at once a sharp pain hit his side. It vanished almost instantly, leaving behind only a dull ache, but some of the numbers in his vision shifted and flashed red. He was also sent spinning, the field of stars turning on its side.

  Something just attacked me, he realized. This must be why the voice was so urgently pleading with him to move.

  A slight motion of his head changed his view, showing the yawning portal that he’d just emerged from. It was part of an even larger structure, which looked to have been built inside a massive rock. Fragments of rock still drifted around the opening, and he immediately saw that the doors had been behind layers of rock that had been blown away before they opened. His mind swiftly deduced that the doors had been hidden, and the tremor he witnessed inside had been the destruction of their camouflaging coverage over the doors.

  A large metal ship of some sort was behind the rock. Only part of it stuck out, attempting to make a turn around the enormous floating mountain. The ship was like a long metal tube, with sleek bulges and ridges lending some texture to it. The silhouette flashed and was surrounded by a red outline, with text popping up all around it to feed him a classification and several numbers he did not quite understand.

  The one he did understand was simple enough: Mana Cannon - Charging.

  With a thought, Apexillos righted himself. It was as easy as shifting his body weight, but not quite the same. Numerous tickles lit up over his body, and he felt the warmth of magic rush through him and tease over those spots as he rolled. He ‘felt’ his wings spread, willing himself to move as fast as possible.

  “Oh gods I’m going to be sick…” the voice inside his head groaned. “But don’t slow down!”

  He did not. The Boost values on the readout from before flicked from OFFLINE to 50% as he urged himself to fly, and the Main thrusters spiked to 95% both at once. He leapt forward, barely catching a flash from the highlighted weapon firing once more.

  Freed after eons sealed away, Apexillos spread his wings and flew.

  “Hrk. I’m okay, I’m okay.” It very much sounded like the woman was not okay, breathing hard. He heard her breathing, how strange. “Keep moving while I lock in some coordinates. If they make it all the way around the hideout, they can bring a lot more guns to bear!”

  He understood some of that. Apexillos was still confused, but it was the confusion of being in an unfamiliar place without context. His mind was clear, and he read enough into that statement to bank and turn – or try to.

  In space, his wings caught no air, and he felt no gravity tugging him. He turned about easily, to find himself rushing sideways, with a momentary disorientation from the change of direction. Attempting to correct caused the thruster numbers to change frantically, but it brought him around in an arc, another blast narrowly missing above his head.

  And then he was safe, at least for a moment. The ship was slow, far less maneuverable than he was, and he estimated it to be a little smaller as well. Such a petty thing dare attack him? His anger flared, but his mind grasped at it, tamed it for now.

  He knew nothing of what this thing was. He could not presume. The greatest powers in the world could fall to someone if they were unprepared for an unexpected power.

  He had learned that the hard way, had he not?

  Swooping around the back side of the mountain in space, he adjusted his trajectory so he would not come out directly opposite, flying ‘up’ – if one considered his original orientation level – and over the top instead, in case the ship tried to intercept. He considered trying to land, but the voice had been earnest about escape.

  Apexillos disliked listening to one of the Lesser Folk, but for now she was his only anchor and guidance in a place he knew nothing about. He would not trust her, but she had not attacked him and this ship had done so. For now, it was best to follow her words.

  “Keep going, and speed up! We’ll need to clear the base enough to engage the Etherglide Drive.”

  He did not know what that was, but it was the guidance he’d needed. Once again all the thrusters lit up, and he felt his body ache as it trembled under the sudden acceleration. The boosters climbed to 60%, just as he rounded the rocky hideout ‘above’ the ship. Small blips of light trailed just behind him, tracking upward toward his strangely metallic-looking tail.

  

  

  “Go go!”

  Apexillos did not need to be told again.

  With a thought, he focused on ‘Yes’ in the display that popped into his vision.

  The starry sky vanished into a kaleidoscope of color.