The vessel beneath their boots was less a machine and more a living weapon of ancient celestial myth.
Known as the Astra-Vanguard, the Void-Skiff of the First Sovereign stretched three hundred paces from its razor-sharp ramming prow to its flared stern engines.
Carved from the calcified rib-bones of an Elder Celestial Drake, the hull was layered in interlocking plates of shimmering white dragon-scale and polished black adamantine.
Instead of sails or thrusters, three immense, crystalline rings of liquid starlight rotated around the midsection, converting solar radiation and void-gravity into an impenetrable atmospheric slipstream.
Standing at the helm on the open, shielded quarterdeck, Seraphina and Kaelen watched the blue-and-white marble of Earth shrink into the velvet blackness behind them.
The mortal atmosphere had dissolved into a thin blue ribbon of light, replaced by the suffocating, silent expanse of deep space.
Yet inside the ship’s pressurized etheric envelope, the air was warm, smelling faintly of cedar, ozone, and the celestial incense burning in the deck sconces.
"Two hundred thousand miles from Chicago," Seraphina murmured, resting her hands against the carved bone balustrade.
Her amber eyes reflected the infinite sea of unfiltered stars, her twenty-foot wings of starlight resting calmly against her back. "If someone had told me six months ago that I’d be standing on an ancient fae dragon-ship in lunar orbit... I would have had them medically evaluated for acute psychosis."
A low, rumbling chuckle sounded behind her.
Kaelen stepped up to the rail, his massive chest pressing lightly against her shoulder. His dark hair was caught in the gentle draft of the deck's life-support wards, his obsidian doom-plate gleaming under the harsh, stark light of the distant sun.
One large, scarred hand slid possessively over hers on the balustrade, his thumb tracing the curve of her knuckles.
"Mortal medicine lacks imagination, little sun," Kaelen murmured, his silver eyes flashing with quiet, breathtaking affection. "You were never meant for a hospital floor. Your soul was forged from the fires that lit these very stars."
Seraphina smiled, turning her head to meet his gaze.
"Maybe," she whispered softly, her fingers lacing between his. "But I wouldn't want to fly among them with anyone else."
Kaelen leaned down, his mouth brushing hers in a slow, sweet, devastatingly tender kiss that set her skin humming with delicious warmth. His arm slid around her waist, pulling her slender form against the hard contours of his armor, holding her tight against the backdrop of the cosmos.
A sharp, rhythmic pulse of red light on the navigation pedestal broke their reverie.
"Approaching lunar apogee," called out Commander Vane, Kaelen’s trusted second-in-command of the Black Vanguard, his hands working the etheric helm controls. "Clearing the moon's terminator line now."
The Astra-Vanguard banked gracefully over the cratered gray limb of the moon, sliding into the perpetual shadow of the lunar dark side.
The view before them took their breath away.
Hovering silently in the black void was the Star-Forge of Aethelgard.
The colossal ring-station gleamed like polished bone, its twenty-league perimeter rotating slowly against the starfield. At its center, the caged red giant star pulsed with dying crimson anger, casting long, dramatic shadows through the four massive structural spokes.
Yet the space around the station was a hornets' nest of dark matter.
The twelve jagged dreadnoughts of Void-Admiral Karrus formed an interlocking blockade around the primary solar radiator spire. From the command dreadnought—a four-mile leviathan of jagged obsidian bone known as the Abyssal Scourge—heavy plasma batteries were already bombarding the station's dormant perimeter shields.
"They've breached the outer docking ring," Seraphina noted, her paramedic eyes instantly mapping the damage.
"The atmospheric integrity of Section Four has collapsed. If Karrus reaches the Central Control Core, he can disengage the magnetic dampers holding that red star within ten minutes."
"He won't make it to the core," Kaelen growled, his voice turning to sovereign stone as he drew Gloom-Weaver.
The broadsword ignited with dark-matter lightning, the localized gravity field rippling across the open deck.
"Commander Vane, bring us in on their blind spot beneath the orbital plane," Kaelen roared, his silver eyes locking onto the enemy flagship with lethal intent.
"Seraphina and I are boarding the Abyssal Scourge directly. We cut off the snake’s head, and the fleet dies with it."
Seraphina drew her twin sunstone daggers, her starlight wings flaring in brilliant, battle-ready dawn.
"Let's go break some spaceships, Vance."