「 Heal 」 「 Harden 」 「 Haste 」

  Barely had the incantations been casted, and scarcely had the craft of them begun to take hold, when Saeryn’s body was struck full on by a surging wave of energy blasts. The missiles swept across the emptiness like a sudden green storm, each one cutting through the dark with unwavering purpose, all of them bound to the dragon by a lock that didn't falter or stray.

  The long, sinuous body of the dragon writhed and twisted in furious effort, diving downward in a desperate attempt to escape the pursuing lights. Yet it availed nothing, for the blasts followed every swerve and bend with exacting faithfulness, clinging to Saeryn’s path until they either struck true or spent their force and faded away into nothingness.

  One by one, then many together, the energy missiles smashed against the dragon’s scales in tight, focused eruptions. Though no sound could travel in the void where they fought, the sight alone was enough to tell of the violence of the blows. A dragon’s body was like a living plate of mail, an outer hide fashioned by nature itself to serve as armour, but even such a defence couldn't remain unmarked beneath so relentless a hammering. Scales were chipped, surfaces cracked, and the strength beneath was pressed and strained without mercy.

  「 Heal 」

  At once, some of the harm was undone, not merely mended on the surface but reversed deep within, where the smallest structures were restored and warped flesh grew back towards its former, unspoiled state. Seralyth knew well that her incantations weren't without limit, nor could they banish all damage, yet even so they lent real aid, helping Saeryn endure where otherwise the onslaught might have broken it.

  'Saeryn, focus!'

  She cried the words in her heart and mind alike. Ever since the ambush had sprung, the dragon had been driven into a wild and unreasoning state. It was as though something buried deep in its instincts had recognized a pattern of death and reacted in blind terror. Such awareness seemed strange in one so young as a hatchling, yet there could be no denying the raw emotion that thundered through the resonance between them.

  More energy blasts struck home. Saeryn’s frantic twists through the cosmos couldn't free it from its pursuers, no matter how sharply or desperately it moved. Seralyth saw the truth of it then, and her thoughts darkened, for if matters continued thus, they were racing toward a dead end.

  'Damnit–!'

  With no gentler path remaining, the princess turned her mind to extremes. She no longer merely guided the bond between herself and the dragon. She seized it and held fast. Drawing upon every fragment of influence she possessed, she forced the hierarchy of their shared resonance into alignment by sheer will.

  The recoil was brutal. Blood, vivid and bright, burst from her lips and spattered against the glass of the pod that enclosed her.

  Even so, she wouldn't release her grip.

  Bit by bit, the raw instinct in Saeryn that screamed to flee or fight blindly was pressed down, smoothed and subdued beneath her cold, measured resolve.

  'Don't panic. I'm here.'

  The resonance answered her, though not without unease, reflecting back a fragile reassurance.

  'Help me understand what that is.'

  Seralyth’s own perception yielded, sliding aside as Saeryn’s took its place, and the world reshaped itself into a construct of space as the dragon perceived it. Together they turned their focus upon the blasts that battered Saeryn’s body at regular intervals, each surge arriving with grim predictability. They weren't truly projectiles in the simplest sense, but masses of plasma, highly energized and violently destructive.

  'If that's so…'

  「 Barrier 」

  The next swarm of missiles crashed against a thin, shimmering membrane that hadn't been there before. Instead of exploding outward in force, the plasma was scattered and broken apart by the refractory shield. Still, the barrier dimmed, trembling under the assault and bowing dangerously close to collapse.

  'It works. We can manage this, Saeryn.'

  「 Barrier 」 「 Barrier 」 「 Barrier 」

  A thicker defence took shape, layered threefold across the dragon’s body. The shields stacked into interlocking arrays, each reinforcing the others, and together they offered a much-needed respite, granting Saeryn a moment to steady itself after the shock of the first attack.

  Seralyth judged that it would take several more waves of missiles to tear such a defence down.

  'Next–'

  If only there had been time. A sudden, urgent pain cut through her thoughts, sharp enough to make her flinch as dizziness washed over her. The implants within her body were pushed beyond safe bounds, their light flaring to a harsh orange.

  In truth, it was recklessness that had led her there, for she was conjuring stacked incantations one after another without pause. Though the spells resolved upon Saeryn’s form, Seralyth herself served as the anchor that bound them, forcing each formula to hold firm under strain that burned through her nerves without relief.

  Yet through the resonance, that very pain sharpened her awareness. Despite the biting agony that crawled along her senses, she clamped down on rising panic and drew herself back into focus.

  'Saeryn, can you do it?'

  The answer came not in words but in assertion. The dragon felt shame at its earlier loss of control, and that shame curdled swiftly into anger. Anger, in turn, fed its will to fight.

  'Then we strike back.'

  Saeryn drove its organs into overdrive, forcing its thermal output to recover from the sudden warp. Biochemical energies surged in response, building and concentrating, ready to be unleashed.

  Seralyth lent her mind to the task of perception, striving to fix upon their unseen foes. They were small, especially beside even a young dragon, and their shapes were unstable, shifting between harsh geometries that refused to remain the same from one moment to the next. She had no information or memory to name them.

  Still, she could follow where they were.

  'Five hostile targets. Small in size and extremely swift. Their weapons, as yet, are only the energy blasts.'

  As she spoke her assessment, Saeryn bent and twisted through the void, skirting past the strange figures. The barrier endured, but each impact of plasma left lingering ripples behind, and with every such wave the membrane thinned by degrees too slight to see, yet too real to ignore.

  'It will be hard to strike them with your body, Saeryn.'

  The dragon’s ethereal wings flared, suffused with gathering power. If that was so, then there remained one way to drown their enemies beneath physical force.

  'Fire!'

  The darkness was torn apart by streaks of purple blue light. From Saeryn’s wings surged dense packets of ionised plasma, sweeping outward and crossing paths with the green blurs. Though the enemies outnumbered the dragon five to one, Saeryn’s fire was fiercer by far.

  Seralyth guided the assault, shaping and adjusting the paths of the missiles. They curved and bent through space, turning with uncanny precision as they hunted down the hostile figures.

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  'It's a hit!'

  She felt the impacts through their shared senses. Two of the unknown foes were caught full on by the ionised plasma and ripped apart, bursting into clouds of raw, unbound energy.

  'Three more to–'

  The thought was cut short. Just as hope stirred that the tide might be turning, the enemies thought destroyed appeared again in the vastness. Their shattered forms warped and twisted in ways alien to reason, torn sections flowing back together as though drawn by some unseen lattice that compelled them toward wholeness.

  Seralyth scarcely had time to comprehend what she was seeing before fresh plasma fire screamed past Saeryn’s flanks.

  Saeryn couldn't pause to wonder. It twisted and manoeuvred again and again, threading its long body between the incoming blasts while hurling back its own ionised missiles. That very length, so often a strength, now proved a weakness, for the enemies’ speed allowed them to slip along its sides and evade many attacks. The barrier, too, was faltering, its surface beginning to fracture beneath the mounting pressure.

  Those enemies that were struck suffered the same fate as before. Their forms broke apart, scattered for a heartbeat, and then rejoined seamlessly. The question pressed upon Seralyth’s mind with chilling weight. Were these foes immortal?

  'No… not quite. There's less of them now.'

  She strained to discern the difference, and though it was subtle, she could sense it. Each time the enemies were destroyed and reformed, they returned smaller than before, diminished by a measure. The truth became clear. They weren't invincible. Rather, Saeryn’s strength wasn't yet enough to overwhelm the speed at which they regenerated.

  …!

  Nonetheless, there was scant room for calm pondering when one stood, as it were, upon a battlefield where every breath was contested. Even so, while she turned her thoughts with swift care to the temper and posture of the enemy before her, Saeryn labored mightily to beat back the unending storm of assaults that came upon them.

  The open space about them was set alight in a wild clamor of green and indigo flares, bursting and crossing in such abundance that, to any distant onlooker unaware of the peril, it might have seemed a merry display of fireworks set loose in the dark. Yet this was no sport, for the dragon, little by little and stroke by stroke, was being pressed hard and driven toward defeat.

  Again and again the surging blasts struck against the barrier, once woven in three stout layers, but now long since fallen inward upon itself, reduced to a single skin stretched thin and sorely overtaxed. The field split apart even as it tried to scatter the force of the blows, fragments failing to knit themselves whole before the next impacts fell. It was plain, even to a hopeful heart, that it couldn't endure another such volley.

  Saeryn groaned, though not with fleshly voice nor from pain of sinew. The sound passed instead through the shared resonance between them, laden with disbelief that victory should be slipping from its grasp. Its scales bore the marks of the onslaught once more, cracked and scarred, and the dragon wasn't so hale as it strove to appear. Its inner workings faltered after each answering blast, and its organs suffered under the repeated thunder of explosive force.

  Should she raise the barrier again?

  The urge leapt up at once, fierce and immediate, only to be met by a keen warning from her implants, which flared as the feedback climbed past what safety would allow. To force another resolution wouldn't merely drain her strength. It carried the risk of casting her out altogether, cutting her from the bond. Sense, with clawing effort, pushed back against raw instinct. If she had but one last attempt within her, then it must be spent wisely.

  There was an incantation she knew for such a need, taught but not tested, yet fear held her hand, for the recoil might be more than either she or the dragon couldn't endure.

  If only there were another way.

  The thought broke off.

  An idea answered.

  'Saeryn. This will be very uncomfortable, but you need to brace through it.'

  There was no need for further speech, not even in the half-shaped language of metaphor that passed along their bond. Saeryn placed its trust wholly in its companion, as one might place life itself into another’s keeping.

  It wouldn't draw back.

  It wouldn't falter.

  Nor would Seralyth.

  Through the devices bound into her own body, she gathered her courage and began to set the incantation formulae in place. She didn't allow them to settle or reach their proper endings, nor did she grant them full and proper form. Instead, she pressed them together in a rough and hurried fashion, a precarious construction that wavered on the edge of collapse.

  She wasn't merely laying one spell atop another.

  She was joining them into one.

  Three formulae in all.

  Two meant to lend power, and one to hold the whole together, lest it tear itself apart.

  She bound them into a new and singular pattern. Her body couldn't truly bear such force. Within the pod it shuddered and jerked, like a boiler straining against pressures it was never meant to contain.

  She sent it all to Saeryn.

  The dragon received the surge. Its veins prickled and burned with the sudden flood of energy, yet it didn't resist. It didn't flinch or fight the current, but allowed it to course through and take command.

  The matrices resolved together, all at once.

  「 Overdrive 」 「 Overdrive 」 「 Stabilize 」

  From these, a new working came into being.

  「 Axiom Overdrive 」

  Saeryn’s battered form swerved with sudden might. It slipped aside from the oncoming blasts as though they were clumsy things, evading them with ease and utterly outmanoeuvering the unknown foes before they could even gather their wits and adjust to the change.

  'Give them hell.'

  Seralyth’s voice came faintly through their resonance, thin with weariness yet resolute. Though exhaustion and pain weighed upon her as heavily as stone, the princess wore a small smile all the same.

  The cosmos themselves seemed seized by an incandescent and furious glow.

  Saeryn’s whole body shone like a blade newly drawn, bright and terrible, carving its path through the wide expanse with a grace beyond compare. In a heartbeat the balance shifted, and the hunters found themselves turned into the hunted before an apex reborn in fire.

  It struck them bodily, driving through their ranks like a ram loosed across the void.

  Its fangs snapped shut upon shattered forms, granting no pause, no chance for them to mend or reform.

  When they sought to swarm it, Saeryn twisted and angled its course, smashing them aside with ruthless precision.

  The emptiness flared with fierce plasma bursts, lighting the dark with explosion after explosion, a merciless barrage that yielded not an inch.

  For this brief span of time, Saeryn truly held mastery over its enemies.

  One by one, they failed beneath the dragon’s wrath.

  The first was torn apart, bitten into fragments and cast away.

  The second was struck again and again by the sweep of its tail, beaten until it could no longer draw itself together.

  The third and the fourth were swallowed by a storm of ionised missiles, the shockwaves scorching their shapes into utter nothing.

  And at last, the fifth remained.

  'Saeryn.'

  The dragon halted, just short of destroying the final foe. Though every fiber of its being cried out for annihilation, it mastered itself and listened.

  'Do it slowly. There's something odd about these things.'

  Seralyth wouldn't offer mercy without cause. What she sought wasn't kindness, but care, a measured and deliberate ending. She disliked ignorance, the unease of facing what she didn't understand.

  She intended to set that right.

  Saeryn obeyed, striking out at the hostile presence piece by piece, tearing and testing it rather than obliterating it outright.

  Through their joined senses, Seralyth watched with cool attention.

  By all she could tell, it wasn't flesh-born. Neither of them couldn't find sign of organs or living mass as they knew it. And yet it lived, after a fashion, twisted and strange.

  There was no crew to be found, if only because none appeared even after the form had been shredded time and again.

  It was as though they fought a cloud, a thinking mass that strove to pull itself back together. Still, there was a limit, some threshold of cohesion it had to keep. Once that was exceeded, it lost its hold and scattered into something far smaller.

  'I can't tell,' Seralyth thought, more shaken than startled. 'It's too small.'

  She saw the world through Saeryn’s sight, not her own, and only things reduced to near invisibility would escape her perception so completely.

  What, then, was this thing in truth?

  'At least we know how to destroy it. Saeryn, how do you feel?'

  Seralyth let out a long breath as she watched the fifth enemy finally fade into the depths of space. Her worry turned back to the dragon, which now had to bear the cost of their daring working.

  Weariness.

  Wounds.

  Strain beyond measure.

  These sensations came to her translated into feelings she could grasp. Mighty as 「 Axiom Overdrive 」 had been, it left Saeryn with less than half its usual strength. The same was true for Seralyth herself, whose implants burned with sharp pain, as though heated iron lay against her nerves. A little more, and she'd have fallen from the fight entirely.

  It was a weapon for desperate hours, not one to be wielded lightly.

  A breath of true relief escaped her lips. Whatever else might be said, she was glad that her bold notion hadn't brought lasting harm to Saeryn’s body.

  She released the seal on the synchronization pod, and the lid rose, its blood-smeared glass dripping onto the warm floor of the lonely chamber. The princess tried to stand, but her strength failed her at once, and she sank back into the cold water within.

  Only with great effort did she manage, at last, to climb free.

  'We need to find a way back.'

  The ambush aside, they were still lost amid the vastness. Though they lay nearer to her home world and its moon, such closeness meant little on a cosmic scale. One couldn't simply wander home from such distances, especially when she didn't know whether Saeryn would be able to warp again.

  'But some rest may be wiser first.'

  Seralyth felt on the edge of fainting. Saeryn didn't require sleep as she did, yet it could draw in the radiaction of the sun to mend itself, if only in small measure.

  'Then that's our course. Oh.'

  As she opened the door between the synchronization chamber and the living quarters, she remembered what she'd forgotten.

  There, sprawled upon the floor, lay a figure breathing steadily, plainly rendered senseless by the violent turbulence of the dimensional passage and the fierce battle that followed.

  “Professor Rynna,” Seralyth called, her voice weak.

  This, she knew at once, would require a very long explanation indeed.