Scales like Stars Pt. 08

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-earth quakes. 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 Antacrtica. 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. Its 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 crest. "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.

"The Prismatic Throne? Why, it contains the spiritual essence of true dragonkind. A mage with this can unweave dragons. They can at last do what needs be done. They 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.

The gemstone shattered as if it was made of blown glass.

Quetzalcoatl opened his mouth.

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 repayment happen." She growled. "My way!"

She turned to face Merton.

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

Merton blinked. Slowly.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Uh, can't we go to the United Nations?"

Relix narrowed her eyes and growled.

"R-Right!" Merton smiled. "Right, wifey."

***

The helicopter settled 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 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."