“We cannot just leave them.” Pan dragged Aria to the second biggest window on the Ischyros.

It gave her a decent view of the Volanter vessel, along with the approaching Volanter ship. Better, she thought, than what she would see on the bridge. The Ischyros remained devoted to its escape vector, and the nose pointed, full of hope, in that direction.

The approaching ship was a splendid shade of spring green. That shade was the only reason that Pan could see it hovering behind the wreckage, making its way in. With a lesser color, she would have never seen it.

The faded green, nothing more than a tinge, of the wrecked Volanter vessel was equally easy to spot. It looked like old schoolhouse walls or that sad bathroom in the old town hall. Pan thought the Volanter had a great grasp on color. Odd, given that they and she, were all done up in black and white.

“So, what are you going to do?” Aria didn’t bother to look at the window.

What would it show her anyway? The smears of the crew and their emotional cast offs.

“I’m just going to watch for an opportunity to help.”

“You should get to the bridge. It’s just a few decks up and forward.” Aria turned as if to head to the aforementioned bridge.

Pan pulled her back. “No. We’ll stay down here. Alban isn’t going to turn the ship away from our escape vector, and I don’t want to work by camera. Besides, down here, he won’t tell me what to do. I might discover a new talent, left to my own devices.”

“I have my com,” Aria said.

Pan let her aura speak. It had to hold her distaste.

In reality, Pan didn’t want to venture on the bridge because she couldn’t decide whether she should use the dragon or not. She didn’t think Alban should have that call.

Pan watched space and the dead ships. She hoped to see the Fauchard’s little shuttle soon. Alban had made the Iruedians take all the risks for this excursion, even though both he and Rooks agreed that it needed to be done.

The spring green vessel wove up and down. A stray piece of hull skittered through space, impacted by the chipper ship.

Aria sighed. “Well, I don’t see why I should have to stay. There’s nothing I can do. I might as well wait for whatever happens.”

Pan grabbed Aria’s arm. “With me. Wait, with me.” She gave Aria a pointed look and then set her eyes once again on space.

She saw it! She saw the shuttle. “They’re coming out.”

A flash of light engulfed the shuttle just as it left the wrecked Volanter bay.

“What was that?” Pan searched the wreckage for an answer. She found no nearby ships or weapons fire, which meant it must have been magic.

Pan’s mouth dropped open as she saw a dozen small things fly through the wreckage. She wouldn’t call them ships. They moved more like space deer.

Pan pressed her hands to the window and put her nose to the glass. She peered closer and saw that the flying things were animals – strange animals. They bounded, flew, and darted over, under, and around slag. The animals varied; they shared only one characteristic – an inflated ball of transparent scales, shaded dark. It clung to each animal’s back. Pan stared longer and saw Volanter inside those balls. Sparks of magic, only just visible, trailed from feet and tails, not to mention butts.

“They’re riding animals into battle,” Pan said.

“What?” Aria’s attention finally turned to the window. It was a futile gesture.

Magic began, flitting around those riders. The first casts were single-ringed. Pan countered three. She watched as several Volanter whipped their heads around for the source of the disruptive mage. She smiled. She wouldn’t let them find her. The Iruedians and Scaldin would be gone before the Volanter realized someone hassled them through a window.

Pan drew a portal before the Iruedian shuttle, careful to give them room to maneuver and line up with the circle. The shuttle missed her cue, and a Volanter rider took the portal instead. Pan moved the portal’s exit to a place atop a wrecked vessel’s hull. The Volanter rider pulled back and skidded across the ruined ship. The animal showed bloodied knees and staggered to its feet.

Pan grinned. It felt better to hassle Volanter when they were actively attacking. Pan searched for more riders to capture. She portaled two Volanter riders into one another. A bird flapped to get out of the multi-armed grasp of a crustacean. They tangled instead. Pan laughed.

The next three Volanter didn’t fall for her tricks.

And, soon they would be joined by twenty more riders, on their way through the wreckage. Four riders tried to surround the Iruedian shuttle. Magic circles littered space with rings. They set off effects only to be blocked by a magical shield. It was three arcanes against four because while the Volanter riders were all arcane. The Iruedian shuttle also had its fair share of casters.

Pan thought they were all great mages, but still, the Volanter seemed to have them outmatched. The Volanter kept them from breaking through the wreckage to the Fauchard, which had started to move in that direction and turn, perhaps ready to release its fighters in answer to the riders.

The Ischyros didn’t have a large group of fighters, but it shot at the approaching ship, the big one.

The Volanter had come prepared this time.

“Where’s that familiar when you need it?” Pan said.

The circle hummed into being behind her.

“Pan?” Aria backed away from the circle.

Pan whirled to face her unwanted creation and felt panic fill her eyes. “No. No.” She couldn’t stop the circle.

A billow of smoke and light filled the space. It hit the window with force, as much force as smoke and light could muster. The dragon of ink waited where the circle had been.

It took one look out the view, and its eyes opened wide, along with its jaws.

Aria cowered against the wall. “Send it out! Send it outside.”

Pan drew a portal from their once peaceful observation room to a point in space, a too short distance from the Ischyros. It was the best she could muster in her panic.

Pan edged the portal’s entrance, ready to slide it over the dragon. She feared the dragon wouldn’t go, but it flew to meet the portal and rushed inside. Pan’s heart pounded. She’d just sent her familiar into space. It would struggle to breath. Could it die?

Pan pressed her hands to the glass again and searched.

The dragon danced in the vacuum and didn’t die.

Pan let the portal fall away and stared after it. The dragon swam through the wreckage, or appeared to. It wriggled its body in a rhythm and tucked its legs beneath its trim center. Wings spanned and then pulled tight. If Pan looked very hard, she could see clear sparks – magical discharge – flow from the dragon’s tail and wings.

The dragon blended into the eternal night of space. At times, it shot straight, like an arrow; other times, it wound its journey, moving back and forth playfully. Pan kept her eyes on it. The beast found two of the Volanter riders hassling the Iruedian shuttle. They didn’t last long.

Aria knew the dragon had gone. She saw the white circle that signified a portal, and she saw the dragon, with its flaming aura stream into it. The choice had been the dragon’s.

Aria wanted to ask Pan what was happening, but Pan was alight with yellow shock. So, Aria took the time to instead recall the dragon’s aura.

It had been like Pan’s – too like Pan’s.

Aria had seen the lavender, the blue, and the grey. She’d seen the red anger, more than Pan had in her aura now. But still, it all matched. Aria even saw the threads of gold.

As far as Aria was concerned, the dragon was a part of Pan. It was a lot to take in.

“It’s destroying the riders,” Pan narrated from the window.

“The dragon?” Aria climbed to her feet.

Pan nodded. “It swims in space just like that time Era did. Except it farts sparks.”

“That’s useful…” Aria said.

She didn’t get an answer from Pan.

Pan couldn’t watch her familiar run amok and chat with Aria for the rest of the fight. She had to help the Iruedian ship out of trouble.

Her dragon would take out riders, and the Iruedian ship would break free, only for more of the riders to harass it. Now, Pan couldn’t make a portal to safety and expect the Iruedian fighter to take it unhindered.

Fighters, shuttle, dragon, Ischyros, Fauchard, and Volanter ships – all had their roles in the battle.

The only thing not in play were the pieces of wreckage.

Pan cast a portal circle ahead of the wrecked Volanter ship. She pushed the portal along the ship’s length, and the sick green ship came into view between the Ischyros and the new Volanter vessel. The wrecked Volanter exploded.

Pan pressed herself to the window. Before the smoke, sparks, and fire cleared, she grabbed a vessel and telekinetically pulled it into the path of the Volanter ship.

Debris scattered from the crash that Pan set in motion, rewarding her spectacularly.

She couldn’t see through to the Volanter ship beyond, but she knew it was there. It had crashed.

Since she knew where it was, she might as well send it more trouble. Pan cast her telekinetic circle. She cast it not once but several times over a lot of ships. They started to move to the place that Pan called them.

All would converge on the Volanter ship. They might not collide with it; after all, Pan couldn’t see the Volanter ship behind the debris, and she didn’t have great control of telekinetic circles in this incarnation. But, big sloppy movements had always been easy enough for her.

Pan watched and waited, keeping the spells active.

One winked out. Then, another. Counters hit her ships.

“Come on. Come on.”

The counters continued to wink over her work.

A new scattering of debris exploded in the general area. Two of Pan’s ships made it, and a little puff of smoke and fire rose above the scene.

“Yes!”

Meladee growled as another of her circles got dispelled. This time she’d attempted a generic shield. The first shield worked, but some Volanter hotshot dispelled the new one. Meladee’s work couldn’t fall victim to counters, but the Volanter could give her trouble with magic cancellation of their own making.

Inez and Eder got off a few spells, but their casts got knocked down as well. Even their double person shield met with a counter of some kind.

“Wow, we got off easy when we took out those ships,” Meladee said.

“Their rings look different.” Camellia reviewed a video of the outside. “These aren’t the Bacchan.”

“They’re a different group,” Florian agreed. He viewed the screen but tried to draw Camellia away from it and away from the hull.

“I got a spell off!” Eder shouted.

“We’re getting help or they’re distracted,” Inez said.

Meladee decided to try again. What would be good in space?

Meladee closed her eyes and imagined a three-ringed circle. It was a toned-down version of her decay spell. It would only affect the things that came in contact with the hull. It wouldn’t spread from there. It was Agaric Healer fair, but it was too useful to waste.

The hum of the circle dissipated. Meladee opened her eyes and saw the circle fade into the deck plating.

“Yes!” A pilot nudged the controls, and the ship sped forward.

“They’re staying clear of us now,” Benham said, eyes glued to a nearby console. “Whoa the other ships are moving. The wrecks…are moving.”

“All of them?” Eder had fear in his eyes, and the same could be heard in his voice.

“About fifteen,” Benham corrected. “Not all of them.”

“Magic rings?” Meladee asked.

“Yes,” Camellia answered, back beside the console that Florian had tried to pry her from.

It seemed he had given up and just joined her. “Single ring. Must be Pan’s work,” Florian added.

“That girl is a machine.” Meladee wanted to see the handy work for herself, but she couldn’t crowd into the limited seating.

Since she and the Ferrans had been casting spells, it left them no chance to gaze at screens and video feeds. Ironic because the three of them were probably most interested in what Pan could do. She employed the single ringed spells of the Volanter, which obviously required a certain amount of Volanter DNA and were considered too much trouble, even by some modern Volanter. So much so that they had been inventing better ways to do magic ever since. Meladee guessed it was one thing to pop those runes and rings into your memory and quite another to use them and keep up the skills.

Meladee knew she wouldn’t be able to do it.

The com buzzed. The voice belonged to Alban. “Sotir says we need to start backing away. Iruedian shuttle get to whichever ship you can. We’re about to be in range of the large ship’s magic.”

The pilots pressed the shuttle forward, aiming for the Fauchard.

Meladee held her breath. She prayed they would make it. She saw the bay opening up.

As she stared into that bright, welcoming space, Meladee thought about range. She, Inez, and Eder fought the weird animal riders, and the riders cast spells within that space too. The big Volanter ship didn’t have the range to reach the Ischyros and Fauchard, but Pan could reach it. Single rings – that must be the key.

Meladee stared ahead and wondered why anyone would bother with other circle types, when the single rings could do so much.

The shuttle made it back to the ship and parked within the yellow lines. Camellia sat against the wall and watched the only video feed that remained.

She heard the pilot report their status as aboard. The bay closed up, and her video feed cut out.

She wasn’t sure, but she thought the Fauchard had fled. She’d felt that small lurch that would signify superliminal travel.

She hoped the Ischyros had kept up.

Camellia wanted to get out of the spacesuit, but no one would do that, until they were safely away from the Volanter bodies. Camellia turned her head to look at the pile of five Volanter. They sprawled across the back of the shuttle, and their tentacles spread over the space. She couldn’t tell which tentacles belonged to who, and their stripes of white and black hid under a sheen of grey.

She felt bad for the shuttle, but only for a moment. This shuttle had been through quite the ordeal in Lurren, surrounded by flesh. Now, it had to ferry Volanter bodies.

But, it was for a good cause. If Pan could talk to the dead, they could learn something about the Volanter directly from the Volanter.