Before Space – Eons Ago #2
She exhaled, and time warped around the breath. Slowed, then stretched.
Every face she turned to held history. Wounds and small victories.
She held each gaze, her eyes burning bright with the draconic gleam that marked her for what she was. And one by one, she pulled them into her heart, anchoring herself to them in that final, fragile calm, the last stillness before the storm.
She usually wore the shape of an average human woman.
There was a certain utility to it, unassuming, familiar, often underestimated.
Compared to almost every other intelligent lifeform, humans were short-lived, physically fragile, and originally designated as low-tier labor stock or fodder for wars they didn’t start.
They were a stitched-together mess of half-baked creation ideas that had no business surviving as long as they had—and yet, they did.
Repeatedly. Sometimes spectacularly. They were the universe’s accidental success story.
Maybe that was why her fractured, disobedient heart always rooted for them.
She preferred humans. Their chaos. Their resilience. Their mess. And she had walked in their shape more often than her own, chosen soft feet over golden claws, living among them instead of above them.
But not today.
Today, she would not hide.
Stepping forward, she let the shift take her fully.
Gold blazed along her skin, scales unfurling down her arms and legs in gleaming waves.
They caught the bridge lights and scattered them like flame through mist. Each scale curved with perfection, razor-edged and battle-worn, radiant as a sunrise set afire.
A hush fell across the bridge.
Some stared, unmoving, reverent in their silence. Others stepped forward instinctively, hands rising in salute, fists over steady hearts. A few bowed their heads, not in submission, but in shared faith.
She met their attention, one after another, holding onto the moment.
Then…she roared, her heartbeat made audible, splitting the air like thunder through shattered crystal.
The soul of a dragon loosed into the world.
“We go forward as planned.” Her voice rolled through the bridge, deeper now, rough yet resonant. “And we lock these essence-drinking bastards behind the curtain of reality, once and for all.”
She didn’t shout. She didn’t need to. Her voice crested like a wave over those before her.
“In doing so, we make sure those we love, or might have loved, one day, have a future. One that lives on in the Weaving, eternal and unbroken.”
Silence held for a beat. One breath. Then another.
Eyes burned. Jaws clenched. Across the bridge, fists began to rise—slow at first, then with growing force—beating once, twice against armored chests. The sound was uneven and uncoordinated.
But it built.
And then they roared right back at her.
It tore through the space, a scream of exultation, of grief, of fury made holy. It surged from every throat at once, from everybody who had followed her this far and chosen to follow her still.
It was not clean. It was not beautiful. It was defiance. Even fear rose to join it, sharp and alive, demanding to be heard.
They were ready.
Something twisted in her twin hearts, and she nearly staggered, claws scraping the ground.
Was that…love?
Great Mother, she hadn’t thought herself capable of it, not since the day her father ripped her from her mate and flung her out beyond the stars to die on some cursed front line.
Yet here it was.
She loved them. All of them. Not in pieces or categories or ranks. She loved them in full.
Just in time to feel them die.
“First wave. Go.” The flight leader spoke into the crystal affixed to his shoulder.
From her place on the bridge, she watched it all unfold with brutal clarity.
The fighters streaked into the black, swarming like a net thrown wide, then tightening with each pass. The Wraith cluster bulged forward in response, tendrils of power cutting through the trap with brute force.
“Ice Wing—cut left, now!” the flight leader ordered.
Two of the lead ships pivoted late, and a pulse of energy bloomed from the enemy fighters, flashing white across the screen.
Rynna inhaled as her ships disappeared in fire, shrapnel, and plasma scattering through the field.
Battles in the stories always came with noble speeches and clean victories. But those stories were shaped by half-memories and softened lies, filtered through the minds of the few who made it back.
This was no tale. This was the truth.
Every time one of her attack vessels erupted in flame, it wasn’t a number.
It was a name. A face. A memory. She felt their terror and their desperation—all of it—through the strange bond that sometimes formed between commanders and those under their care.
It was a kind of psychic thread, too thin to hold, too deep to sever.
And each thread that snapped sent a jolt through her ribs, carving hollows inside her chest.
Rage ignited in her, flooding her veins with molten fury. These Wraith had consumed too many worlds, too many lives. They had taken and taken and taken, and now, they would pay.
Each death brought her closer to the decision she had already made, formed in her mind like a whispered dare from the abyss. She couldn’t let her people be extinguished. Not all of them. Not like this.
Humming around her, Silanda’s systems coughed from the damage accumulated over the chase as the enemy inched closer toward the tear in a writhing mass of hunger and shadow, hounded by her warriors.
It was almost time.
Stepping forward, she cast one last lingering glance over the bridge, knowing this would be the last chapter of her story. Then, without a word, she activated the preset commands that might just save some of them.
One by one, they blinked to life, cascading through the command interfaces. Engines fired, and the ship pivoted hard, throwing sparks from its rear thrusters as it prepared to launch.
The Silanda would lurch back the way they had come in one final, furious rush for the nearest inhabited planet where they had last offloaded survivors. If the calculations held and the fates were kind, someone would be there, someone who could pull her crew and passengers from the wreckage.
If not...
She didn’t let herself finish the thought.
Following that last burst of power, the commands would jettison the ship’s energy core into the vacuum behind them. And if everything timed just right, she would be able to catch the enemy in the center of the tear.
If not...
The Silanda began to turn.
Somewhere in the shift, her face must have changed—a flash in her eyes, a flick of her tail.
The cries were instant.
Voices rose behind her, shocked, pleading, enraged.
But they were already too late.
She vanished from the captain’s platform in a pulse of starlight, her body dissolving into the ether between seconds.
Of course, she could teleport. She was a dragon, a true one, no matter how flawed. Even the emptiness of space would not kill her, at least not right away.
Teeth bared, she landed in the void behind the ship, cold silence wrapping around her like ink poured into water. Behind her, the Silanda shrank in the distance, streaking away, now just a memory she wasn’t ready to lose.
Then it was gone.
Her hearts pounded beneath her scales. It’s done.
The energy core flared beside her, wild and glowing with barely contained power. Reaching out, she seized it in her claws, the heat licking her limbs, and, without hesitation, she turned and hurled it toward the enemy.
Toward the tear.
Toward the end.
She knew, with chilling clarity, that this act would end her.
And in the cruel symmetry of fate, her mate would follow.
When dragons bonded, their life threads wove into one another in an unbreakable tether. If one perished, the other would not survive. It was as immutable as gravity, as constant as the Weaving itself.
She and Fenrith had spoken of it the day she left.
No ceremony or grand farewells between them, only quiet words honestly exchanged. They both understood what this mission truly was—her father’s final sentence, masked as duty. It was the kind of cruelty he specialized in.
Now, as she barreled toward her final destination, the cold pressing harder against her golden hide, all her thoughts circled back to him—Fenrith.
His grin, always a little too sharp. The way he wore his human form, because she liked the feel of his hands that way. The softness of his voice touching her mind when they were apart. Each memory sparked into being, bright and brief, then vanished before she could grasp it.
But for a heartbeat, he was there with her, even the emptiness of a universe between them was not far enough to mute the bond.
Whether real or imagined, he was present in the weightless touch down her spine, like his spirit had slipped through the veil to join her, just once more.
I’m so sorry.
Tears came, diamonds, rare and luminous, cutting as they fell, etching shallow wounds along her hardened cheeks and jaw.
Most dragons never lived long enough or broke hard enough to cry.
But here she was, dropping the fine crystals into space, one after another, each one glittering and vanishing into the darkness as she approached her end.
With every beat of her wings, more of her fighters died, each loss punching new holes into the already-battered wreckage of her soul.
She didn’t know if she could finish it. How could she hope to succeed? She’d doomed them all for nothing.
And then, she felt it.
Awestruck, she nearly halted her advance as the Weaving opened before her, fierce and unbound, its song spiraling in all directions at once. Possibility unraveled before her in an inferno of becoming and destruction, colliding and collapsing at the edge of everything.
Tightening her grip on the core, realities unfolded faster than thought.