Chapter 1034 — Bathed in Starlight

It lasted only a few seconds. Then a vibration unlike any before it spread through the entire vessel — and with it came a tremendous crash from some distant section of the ship.

In an instant, the lights throughout the control hall dimmed, and immediately the entire alarm system erupted in shrill, piercing wails. Emergency orange lamps flashed at every passageway entrance; the shipboard systems frantically broadcast damage reports from every section. Hragor felt his whole body tilt over, and the scene on the screen before him began to tumble. The next second, he heard Bar'yang'er's shout: "Engine Two has torn away from the hull! Antenna bay completely destroyed! Bioconsumables bay completely destroyed! Reactor One completely destroyed... He's caught up!!"

Anqian gripped his seat with all his strength, holding his balance amid the tumbling. He looked toward the projection screen to his front-left, which displayed the scene outside the ship — a scene of absolute terror:

He saw a long rift torn open in the sky beyond the vessel, the rift riddled with mad, frigid eyes; and a draconic form — hideous, twisted, stitched together from countless disordered limbs — was clinging to the shell at the ship's stern, destroying this hard-won creation of dragonkind —

Part of the ship's engines had been utterly annihilated; mangled, twisted steel was spinning down into the thick atmosphere below. Several enormous breaches gaped in the side of the hull; the heavy shields and tough alloy shell had been torn apart as easily as paper. Great quantities of equipment, gas, and fluid gushed from the breaches like spilled viscera, mingling with searing smoke as they burst into space. And after wreaking such devastation, the Dragon of Chaos showed not the slightest sign of stopping. He continued tearing apart the ship's structure, all the while climbing ever upward along the hull, crawling toward the core module!

"Steady the attitude — we still have three engines!" Hragor called out, pulling Bar'yang'er's attention back to the present. "Keep climbing. We're almost there!"

"He'll tear the whole ship apart before that!" Bar'yang'er shouted as he fought to control the equipment. "Don't we have any weapons to fight back with?!"

"Stepping into the starry sky is the greatest counterattack of all —" Hragor rose to his feet, gripping the back of his seat so hard his fingers sank deep into the alloy-cast plating. "Look — He's already grown weak!"

Anqian stared wide-eyed at the scene from outside the ship. Having overcome the initial panic and chaos, he suddenly realized something — the Dragon of Chaos clinging to the hull of the *Talrond*, for all His horrifying posture, was now about the same size as the ship itself!

Not long ago, He had been vast as a city, blotting out the sky as He floated above Talrond — and now... He had been drastically weakened once again!

Bar'yang'er noticed it too. He began searching for a way to restore the ship's attitude, straining to balance the remaining engines — the automated systems had been completely destroyed, so he could only manually counter the damage and shuddering wrought by the Dragon of Chaos. And his efforts finally bore fruit: though the ship tottered on the verge of collapse, though every system screamed frantic alarms, the vessel was still clawing its way toward the starfield, inch by inch!

Starlight began to shine upon the hull of the ship. The pull of the earth was fading. Hragor felt his body growing lighter, and on the projection screen before him, the Dragon of Chaos climbing the hull had grown smaller still — now He was scarcely a third the size of the entire vessel.

Hragor was not surprised by any of this:

Though there were only three dragons aboard this ship, so long as the three of them stood upon it, so long as they advanced toward the starry sky, the rite of "adulthood" was underway.

For gods born of "symbolic meaning," symbolic processes affected them with the absoluteness of cosmic truth.

Therefore, the final step of defiance had to be completed by mortals themselves — Omega could not do it in their stead, nor could the outlanders, nor could anyone else.

Another explosion came from the stern of the ship; the shrill alarms grew sharper and more grating, and amid the ceaseless shuddering and jolting, Hragor ordered without a moment's hesitation: "Jettison all return structures and escape pods, channel every drop of energy into the main engine — I only need it to hold for three more minutes."

"With me here, it will hold for thirty!" said Bayang'er Gaoluo, carrying out Hragor's orders without hesitation. "Eyes wide open, all of you — we have waited more than a million years for this moment!"

A powerful thrust seized the ship once more, and the Talrond, already showing signs of exhaustion, suddenly flared with one last spark of life. It began to climb, to climb again — a bright trail unfurling behind it, the thick white atmosphere receding into a distant shape at its back. Shedding debris, dragging fire and smoke, it plunged into the starry sky like a falling dancer, while the twisted "gods" still clung to its hull, madly gnawing at the core module's defenses. His bulk shrank a little, and a little more... until He was flung off into the vastness of space.

The mortals had left their cradle; the god was left behind at the last boundary on the planet's edge.

Hragor felt his body drift upward, the last tether of the earth quietly dissolving. Distant starlight shone upon the hull of the Talrond, and through the monitors it spilled into the control hall — magnificent beyond words.

And in the deep backdrop of the starry void, certain vast structures, long hidden by ancient technology, were shedding their camouflage bit by bit as the Talrond drew near, revealing their true forms.

He looked at Bayang'er Gaoluo: "Mechanic, open the dome and the filters. We are going to visual observation."

"Yes, Captain."

On the battered shell of the core module, a protective plate slid quietly open and the light-blocking curtain drew slowly back. Hragor controlled the flow of magic, letting himself float slowly to the window of high-strength polymer, and gazed out at the boundless space beyond.

In the vast emptiness, ancient satellite systems ran in silence, and long-abandoned space stations still drifted quietly in orbit.

It was as though they had waited here for countless years, waiting for the dragonkin left behind on the planet to come to this place.

"We caught up..." Hragor could not help saying softly.

"Only for the moment," came Anqian's voice, low and slow, from behind him. "Our kin left on the planet's surface... they cannot build a second Talrond."

"But they will, sooner or later... even if they must start from nothing."

Hragor said quietly, then drew his gaze back from the abandoned satellites and space stations in the distance. But before he returned to his seat, he suddenly felt a stir in his heart.

Almost unconsciously he raised his head and looked toward the other side of the curved polymer dome. The next second he saw the thing floating in space, and his breath and heartbeat stopped dead.

It was a mass of hideous, twisted wreckage — the Dragon of Chaos, shrunk many times over. The old traits of the former god still lingered on His chaotic, disordered body, yet at this moment they looked so... small.

A remnant of radiance still wandered among the wreckage. As a god, He had not yet fully "died," but now He merely floated there quietly, utterly motionless.

The tension in Hragor's face slowly eased. He watched in silence as that wreckage drifted in the cosmos, watching the light deep within it fade away.

A vague voice, impossible to tell whether real or imagined, suddenly sounded deep in his consciousness: "From now on... you will have to walk on your own."

"Yes, my lord."

"The world outside is dangerous. Take care of yourselves."

"Yes, my lord."

"Do not forget to look back now and then..."