“Pull up!” Dawn screamed. The Arcadia’s nose cut up. Its belly skidded by a few hundred feet above three Dragons. One had emerald scales, one amethyst, and one a deep, dark ruby. Drogan peered over the railing at her, though she had no idea who he was.
“Drogan. You’ve made your choice,” Machaeus’ voice screeched through his head. Drogan forced the nails of both his human hands into the sides of his head.
“I’ve… disappointed you…” he growled.
“Not yet,” said Machaeus. Two mental knife jabs in Drogan’s brain. He fell to his knees. He dropped the rifle he’d planned to use.
“Hey, you alright?” Wagner bent to help him.
“Overwhelm them! Use everything you can get your hands on!” Dawn’s voice jumped through the speakers on deck. The combined force of Alice’s upgraded cannons and the rifle fire from above deck condensed as one. An umbrella of blinding silver Chrysum descended on the planet Mukurus. To the three Dragons below, the world became whiteness. Their touch was consumed with infernal heat, enough even to scorch their armored scales.
“Take to the skies! Circle them!” one of the Dragons screamed. Drogan heard the voice in his blood. Krystis. Dawn watched through the viewing screen until three shadows ripped free from the bright onslaught.
“Manage your targets! There are three of them, don’t give any one a second to breathe!” Dawn ordered the crew, then, “Alice. Show off some of your upgraded hardware on that archway.”
Wagner and the others turned to follow blurs of color across the dusky sky. They fired in the Dragons’ wakes. They fired ahead of them. Chrysum ricocheted off the scales. The Dragon known as Regalon launched a ball of Chrysum-fire across the deck of the Arcadia. The ashes of three incinerated men swirled in its wake. The return fire of survivors filled Regalon’s open mouth. Humanity learned just then that a hole in the throat was as fatal to Dragons as it was to them. Regalon dropped from the sky.
“No! Darven, go beneath. They’ve no guardians below!” Krystis dove along with him. Chrysum bolts followed them. None hit their mark. But, instead of a magic blindspot, what Krystis and Darven found beneath the hull were a hundred jutting cannon barrels. Every one of them shimmered bright.
The Dragons parted ways when the Arcadia bounced up from the recoil of explosive cannonfire. This ammunition didn’t fire in a ray, like Krystis and Drogan had seen before. These were weapons designed by dredgers, who’d actually seen how a Dragon moved. The cannons unleashed body-sized Chrysum comets with built-in sensors to seek living targets. Balls of light ripped around in pursuit of the winged beasts, until they flew out of range. Then, at the turn of Alice’s thought, they hurled themselves at Mukurus. A meteor shower blasted the illusory archway to rubble and dust.
“No!” Krystis’ hiss infected Drogan’s mind. The mirage of emptiness rippled away. One building at a time, the ruined Dragon city of Fierghlass bled into existence. It looked considerably less abandoned than Drogan had seen it before, with eight Dragons he could see out in its streets. They wore scales of gold, sapphire, and rose. The windows of buildings lit silver with the awakening of millennia-long unused city defenses. Columns arose from the dust, brimming with the same light thrown by the Arcadia.
“That’s it,” Drogan pushed up from the deck. He stood with two hands on the railing, mind finally free of the Watcher’s screech. “Machaeus is distracted. He’s trying to wake some backup.”
“Do your thing, Drogan,” Dawn told him. Wings burst from his back. The borders of his body fogged, swirled, and doubled in size, into the dark-armored shape of a Dragon. His gemstone eyes swept the broken city for the monument to his master. DA-Vos’ misty form grew up his arm, into a gauntlet.
“Make sure I see you on the other side of this,” Drogan rumbled. He launched for his target, the Watcher’s Fountain.
“Drogan?” Krystis snarled at the sight of him. His black form screamed across the brown planet below. Eight jaws of silver smog pointed up at him. They launched Chrysum fireballs through Drogan’s zipping black afterimage. He chanced a strike back with a silver charge from his own gauntlet. It blasted one of the Dragons off his feet. He lay stunned, on his back. Drogan manoeuvred around another convergence of dragonfire.
“Alice, do you have any more of those homing blasts?” Dawn asked. The bridge rocked with the impact from Krystis and Darven on either side of them. “And dammit Wagner, keep them busy!”
“I’m all out!” Alice called back.
“Light up the city with whatever you have! Keep them off of Drogan!” Dawn cried.
“On it!” The Arcadia’s front hull parted in two pieces, to unveil two enormous barrels. One of them had a Chrysum-imbued steel cross over the end of it. The other poked out from a freely rotating node.
“Alice… is that…” Miller muttered. He’d seen a cross-barreled weapon like that only in his imagination, from the darkest outerworld tall tales.
“Don’t worry. We don’t need it yet,” Alice told him. A thin, technicolor laser jumped from the inside of the cannon in the node. Its nose turned to lash a shimmering scribble across the buildings of Fierghlass. Dawn’s eyes brightened when the heaviest flow of Chryst plasma she’d ever seen burst across the viewing screen. The Arcadia’s long, blazing whip traced the shimmering scribble back from end to beginning. It disintegrated everything in its path. Fierghlass went up in silver fire.
Drogan’s path was clear. His wings held steady against the rising wind of heat. He rode the edge of it, a black bullet in the light of destruction. He flew with the fury of his every mistake until he reached it. The Watcher’s Fountain. Drogan’s yellow eyes turned down the circular waterfall of Chrysum. There was an open shaft around the pillar that held up the twisted monument to Machaeus. Drogan dove inside.
His wings narrowed to fit down flowing tunnel around him. Drogan plunged into the heart of Mukurus, through a cloud of resonant voices.
“An interesting turn…”
“A mistake, or his triumph at last?”
“Which of them will it be?” The voices of the Higher Order stirred around him, then faded.
The glow of Chrysum falls around Drogan dimmed, the deeper he went. Darker. Blacker. The world vanished around him. It reappeared when he reached the bottom of the pit. Drogan’s wings beat down to slow him to a hover. It was a stony cavern, big enough for a gathering of the Arcadia’s entire crew. The Chrysum from the Fountain falls thinned to a film over the walls. The whole place was splintered by thirsty cracks. The thousand straws of the Watcher, Machaeus. Amber light shone through every break. Drogan stared down at his floating reflection in the rippling Chrysum pool. It was tinged orange by the light of the Watcher in the wet cracks.
“Drogan.”
“Machaeus. Sorry to interrupt your wakeup call,” Drogan greeted. Silver smoke oozed from between his fangs.