The war ended at 3:13 A.M.

  It was at the start of Nagia’s thirteenth summer, when the cicadas were starting their month-long orchestra, and Andromeda, promising to house just as many players as the Milky Way did, was just coming out of beta testing.

  3:13 A.M., January 20th, the date clung to the prickly pines outside Nagia’s window as her room sweltered with the passage of lonely days. It was written on every plaque in every space port, carved in the debris that circled each scarred planet so that the surviving worlds would look to the skies and remember.

  Like all wars, it began abruptly, lasted longer than anyone was prepared for, and was over before realization hit. Fifteen million celestials died. Their conquerors suffered double that number of fatalities. More fell to the residue of the bombs, and the famine and sickness which followed.

  Yet, even after being reported by international news, most people in the real world still did not know of this unfathomable death. To them, it was Monday.

  Hunger sang within Nagia’s belly. She opened her eyes, ancient ambers that reflected the drifting cosmos, and yawned. She couldn’t tell which one of her bodies was the one in pain. It didn’t matter. She was always in some form of pain. Uncurling her lengthy body, she felt the crackles deep within her joints. She had fallen asleep again, which was against the user manual’s recommendations, and it made her scales feel stiff. She preferred this kind of discomfort to the one that chased her hours in the other world, though. This, at least, made her feel at one with her celestial form.

  Gazing at the voids around her, Nagia saw the veil of darkness twisting around a faraway horizon. Ah, so she had not drifted out from the shadows of the black hole. That was good. The universal devourer was the only thing keeping her safe now. Three years she had been in this stretch of nothingness. Three years spent drifting, sleeping, daydreaming, refusing to let go.

  Although it was a reluctant shelter, she had come to know the swirling void as home. It was safe here, after all. The legions would not dare sail their ships so close to dead space, where there were no habitable planets, and so nothing to conquer.

  It was only too bad that the gravitational pull of this dark giant was also slowly, inevitably, pulling Nagia towards its unknowable center. Nagia did not know exactly what was on the other side, but it was not hard to imagine her beautiful dragonic form scrambling into rubbish code, bringing her a kind of death that would feel all too real.

  The hunger grew stronger. Nagia needed to move, hunt. She tried. It was like trying to direct the cosmic wind. Her body twisted around itself. Her scales rattled. The emptiness offered no footholds. Darkness clamped around the bare branches that were her wings.

  It was hopeless. A crippled celestial was nothing more than stardust. All she could do was wait for some distant shock waves to brush against her, or until the black hole swallowed her, or for some wayward imperial legion ship to stumble upon her. The war might’ve been officially over for three years now, but the last time she checked, the legion was still hunting pockets of rebellious dragons.

  If she could choose, Nagia preferred to take her chances with the event horizon. She always wanted to see what was on the other side. Would it be painful to become spaghetti?

  One of the nearby stars winked at her. Strange. Nagia turned her head towards it. She saw a flash of fire curl around the thin atmosphere of a dwarf planet. She looked closer, and the planet shattered in a silent explosion. A dragon slithered from within a blossom of magma, sparks flying as molten rock bounced off her rainbow scales. Four larger, grey dragons followed close behind.

  Nagia shrank into the cradle of darkness underneath her black hole. It was unusual for dragons to hunt one another, but ‘usual’ was hardly the world they were living in now. She followed the chase with her eyes, watching the trio zip past systems and dodging asteroid belts. One of the grey dragons was caught in the massive debris field that was forming in the orbit of the demolished planet, swallowed within the desolate rocks.

  The rainbow dragon turned, stuck out her tongue, then dodged a beam of silvery flame launched from within one of her pursuer’s jaws. Zipping forward, she shot up behind a wayward moon and slammed her body against its rocky surface, sending it right into another grey dragon.

  The resounding collision of an exploding moon sent shivers through space. Even Nagia felt it. Tingles of pleasure sparkled underneath her scales as her body was swept along by the energy. She tasted delicious momentum. It was gone quickly, but no matter how small, it had been the opposite of her usual inertia, and was exactly what her starved soul craved. She wriggled, as much as she could, towards the chase, wanting more of it. More movement. More life.

  At the edge of a glowing red star, the two gray dragons split up, one going around while the other kept on the rainbow dragon’s tail. It was clear they were going to meet on the other side of the star, before Rainbow could complete her slingshot maneuver. Someone had to help.

  Nagia caught a piece of debris as it drifted past her. She nudged it in place, coiled her tail in tight, aimed, then whipped it out into space. The debris became a comet, spinning straight and true towards the white star. It clipped against a desolate planet, continued in a wobbling trail, then somehow still found its target.

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  Rock and metal exploded as the gray dragon was pushed out of orbit and into the pull of the red giant.

  The remaining gray dragon, without its partner, could do little else than chase the rainbow around the rest of the star, where her momentum carried her right out of the gas giant’s grasp and out into space, much faster than before.

  Perhaps seeing that his prey was heading to dead space, the gray dragon gave up the chase. He breathed a ball of fire at her tail, clipping her scales as she launched out of his reach.

  Nagia let out a cheer that startled herself. She had not felt the vibrations of her voice in a long time and began to worry if those vibrations carried. Would she be found by those gray celestials? She studied the stars. No. Those guys were gone, now. And the rainbow dragon? She was…

  Wait. Is she heading over here?

  Nagia panicked. The rainbow dragon’s trajectory was bringing her right into this part of space. Was she crazy? Claws scrabbling at the murky nothingness, Nagia tried to push herself deeper into the black hole’s immense gravitational fields. She could only hope that the event horizon would distort her silhouette enough for the Rainbow to miss her, but then, if she does nothing, the other dragon might overshoot and end up way too deep and be sucked into the void.

  With a crash, they met.

  Space and starlight went end on end as Nagia tumbled horn over tail. Her claws dug deep in reflex, and she felt the hot grasp of the other dragon doing the same. Scales sang. Breaths burned hot. The two celestial beings clung to one another as the singularity loomed over their twisting bodies.

  The spice of movement rang within Nagia’s veins, turning her into a rope of lightning. She could barely think, barely recognize the dangers they were in. She turned her gaze from the spinning stars to the dragon in her arms, and her breath caught at the endless, starry gold pools that gazed back at her.

  When the rainbow dragon’s wings crackled open, Nagia gasped.

  They came to a stop against the edge of the churning singularity. The two dragons held each other for a moment longer, then Nagia let go. The spinning inside her head was trumped only by the twisting inside her belly. It was hard to know what to do. She hadn’t met another dragon in three years, and what a dragon to meet right now. Up close, the other dragon’s rainbow scales glistened with a shifting luster, as if each piece were carved from brilliant opals.

  The other dragon spoke first. Her voice, as it tickled against Nagia’s consciousness, sounded out of breath. ‘That was you, wasn’t it?’ she asked.

  Nagia did not say anything.

  ‘The rock.’ The rainbow dragon shook her head. ‘Never mind. I’m Brianna.’

  Nagia frowned. Her jaw was open, but it took a second to remember how to reach out with her mind. Carefully, she touched the consciousness of the other dragon. Brianna’s was warm, and a little soft, like cotton candy.

  ‘I am Oyositatu, The Keeper of Secrets.’

  Memories flooded Nagia’s mind as her name echoed back to her. It felt so good to reclaim it. She had been quiet for so long, but that had changed. She was nothing, no longer.

  Brianna, though, did not react in the way Nagia expected. ‘Oh,’ she said, cocking her head to one side, ‘are we doing dragon names, still? I thought that was a pre-war thing.’

  Nagia’s jaw snapped shut. It was? Wait. What did that even mean?

  Brianna’s sharp face creased in a frown that mirrored Nagia’s. ‘How long have you been here?’ she asked, and before Nagia could answer, the rainbow dragon caught sight of something over her shoulder. ‘Oh my god,’ she gasped. ‘Your wings! What happened to-’

  Click.

  Darkness.

  Encompassing nothingness as the void yanked itself out from inside.

  Suffocating. Dying.

  ‘I’m not crippled,’ Nagia gasped, fighting for air as she scrambled to sit up. ‘I’m not…’ She rubbed her eyes. Her lips were numb. Steel gears screamed beside her as little goblins pounded on the inside of her skull. She had no idea who she was or where she could be, but she heard her mother’s voice in the chaos, and remembered.

  ‘Seriously, Nagia Nakamura. This is too much. You have been in this stupid machine since I left this morning, and now I’ve come back from work, you’re still here? Did you even move?’

  The afternoon sunlight was what was too much. Nagia shielded her eyes with her hands, and waited until the mechanical arms finished their dissonant retraction into the walls before speaking between her fingers, ‘You’re not supposed to unplug me like that, Mom. Everyone knows that. You’re risking giving me a stroke.’

  ‘You’re going to get a stroke faster by sitting on your butt all day,’ was her mother’s retort, emphasized by the VR helmet being shoved into Nagia’s stomach.

  ‘Ow! That’s low, Mom.’

  ‘You’re low.’

  Nagia tried to say something else, but her nose picked up a smell that her stomach growled for. She risked the sun damage and cracked open her eyes. ‘Is that Mapo Tofu?’

  The walls of her bedroom came into focus. Pale, drab, cut into ribbons by dirt and long cobwebs that no one has the energy to chase away. The window was opened a crack, and the dull ringing of her dreary town slipped in.

  Sara Nakamura stood above her daughter, hands on her hips, with a takeaway bag hanging in the crook of one arm. She was wearing her work suit and an expression of anger, but the latter faded into exhaustion as quickly as the clouds that passed overhead. ‘You shouldn’t be sleeping with that on,’ she said, looking at the helmet in Nagia’s lap.

  Nagia followed her mother’s gaze. ‘I know,’ she said, toying with the heavy plastic. The screen was still flickering, but the information behind it had already ceased. The rainbow dragon, the black hole, the endless wars, survival, and freedom were, for now, out of her reach.

  ‘At least come and eat with me,’ she heard her mother say.

  ‘I will,’ Nagia promised. She slung the helmet onto the claws that housed it and, pressing a button, made the contraption fold cleanly into the wall, leaving only her and the chair she sat in. When she looked up, her mother was already out the door. She looked back at her setup, her fingers hovering on the power button. She thought about that movement, all that freedom of movement among endless space, and she wanted nothing than to go back. She almost did, but the microwave hummed down the hallway. She lowered her hands from the console and down to the side of her chair. Grasping the rims, Nagia wheeled herself out the door to eat dinner.