[Ouroboros' End]
Standing on deck as their starweaver cut through the atmosphere of the realm fragment, Darganth watched as the sprawling city rushed past a few kilometers below. In all directions, its intertwined network of roads, both large and small, stretched further than it had any logical right to do, its impossibility of densely packed population and towering architecture sustained only by magical engineering.
At his side, Allaire was looking further up as she watched the countless starweavers that shared the space above the city with their ship. For most of the day it had served as a good distraction for her, with Darganth also taking care not to remind her of the city below that seemed to consist only of the aspects of urban environments she hated most.
However, over the past hour, the traffic in the air had steadily risen as they came ever closer to the goddess' palace. It didn't truly surprise Darganth that this was the case, as the seat of power of the one effectively ruling a majority of the realm fragment would always draw many guests, but it was still an annoyance.
Especially because there appeared to be no rules that governed the approach toward the starweaver port. Each captain instead took whichever path they fancied that day, resulting in absolute chaos as the more reckless ones among them carved their way through traffic with full confidence in the fact that the other side would turn away. Only the constant vigilance of crews and the fact that many starweavers were captained by mythic ranks who possessed good enough reflexes to keep up when the ships moved even above the speed of sound kept collisions from happening every moment.
Not that they didn't still happen. Just minutes earlier, they had watched one of the starweavers leaving the port suddenly turn up sharply, probably intending to save energy reserves by taking the shortest path out of the realm fragment. Why the other ship didn't notice their approach, they will never know. Darganth suspected the crew had simply forgotten someone to assign as lookout for below the ship, though the truth didn't really matter.
What mattered was that the rapidly rising starweaver had slammed straight into the other ship's keel. The impact had turn through the crystaline material the second ship had been made, cleaving it in half and leaving everything from crew over debris to the two pieces to plummet toward the city.
But before they could crush the unsuspecting people below, mana surged somewhere deep within the port building and shot toward the falling starweaver. The spell reached its target in a fraction of a second, leaving the crew no chance to react even if their panic hadn't already foiled such efforts. The instant it struck, crew and ship alike vanished from the skies above the city as if they had never existed. Not even the smallest piece of ship seemed to evade destruction, as even seconds later the buildings below stood completely untouched.
The other ship also didn't fare much better, with the impact having dented the hull enough that the enchantments on it flickered on and off. However, the captain didn't seem to notice the fact and continued on as if nothing had happened. A mistake. When the starweaver left the protection of the realm fragment a few dozen seconds later, the shields protecting its crew from the astral flickered. Even from a distance, Darganth could see sparks of mana jump up from the enchantments. Possibly the crew did too, but by then it was too late. Not even five seconds after the first spark, a surge of mana burst forth from the hull as the damaged enchantments burned out, sending a wave of mana into all directions at the same time as the shields imploded and the astral surged against the starweaver, shattering its hull under a bombardment of elemental energies that left similarly little of the ship and crew as the city's defenses had with the other starweaver.
The surrounding ships barely even reacted to this. A few maneuvered to avoid the falling debris, but otherwise the annihilation of two starweavers wasn't treated as anything out of the ordinary. On the contrary, some ships rushed into the route the ship approaching the port had taken, their reaction happening far too quickly for it to be an improvised maneuver. Though it did appear that the sight of the two starweavers' destruction still influenced these, as all three ships that tried to get the landing space the destroyed starweaver had approached flew far more carefully. The two that backed out of the race also did far earlier than it happened in most other conflicts Darganth had seen, likely also because they didn't want to share the other ship's fate.
"What a chaos, how can anyone endure moving through there?" Allaire commented at the sight of all this.
"Yeah. Luckily we don't have to deal with that, otherwise I'm not sure we should have bothered trying to land there."
Allaire briefly furrowed her brows at his words. Thinking for a moment, it took her a moment to understand what he was referencing, at which point she glanced toward him with a look of disbelief.
"They're actually going to do that? Isn't it a bit excessive? Most of the people around us are probably just merchants, they might die from shock if Yldra and Neandra suddenly appear."
"Then we'd have to race for a landing spot the same way everyone else is doing. Do you want to do that?" Darganth asked.
"Point taken, your idea is better than that alternative."
Darganth had to chuckle at how fast her opinion changed once her reminded her of the alternative, something that earned him a side-eye from Allaire.
"Just forget I brought it up." Allaire said after a moment.
"I'll consider it." Darganth said with a grin.
Before Allaire could respond and continue with their banter, they were interrupted by Neandra arriving on deck. A wave of mana followed a moment later as her anticipation for when she'd announce herself to the real fragment at large caused her presence to fluctuate with excitement, resulting in the mana radiating out from her being far more potent than usual.
A step behind her followed Yldra. While it was obscured by Neandra's mana emissions, as she stepped out of the cabin at the rear, her presence also flooded the deck. In fact, the fluctuations in her mana signature were even more pronounced, even manifesting physically as brief flashes of distortion just above her skin as she strode across the deck with a wide grin on her lips.
"Ah, perfect timing." Darganth said as the two walked up to him and Allaire.
"Are we already turning toward the port this soon?" Neandra asked, her gaze trailing to the building in question. Between them and it, there were still a few dozen kilometers, leading to her mild surprise.
"Not yet, but there was just a crash only a few kilometers ahead of us, so I'd say it's time to start clearing the way. Unless you think otherwise, I'll leave the call on it to you." Darganth said.
Yldra answered him with a grin, deciding before Neandra could respond, "I was looking forward to the reactions anyway, so I would've been fine with starting minutes ago."
Darganth raised an eyebrow at the mischievous tone she answered with. Knowing her, it immediately made him suspicious that she was up to something.
"But stick to the plan, Yldra. Your size alone will be enough to deter most starweavers, so leave it at that. Or at least don't start a fight just because one of them annoyed you, and especially don't do it just for fun."
"I won't, I promise. But if someone else starts something-"
"Then you can let loose." Darganth said and nodded.
"Alright." Yldra said in acknowledgment as she leapt onto the railing, "See you on the ground then."
With that, she launched herself forward.
"Take care." Darganth said to Neandra as she readied herself to do the same.
"As if anything here can harm me, but will do." The wyvern replied before following after Yldra.
Darganth and Allaire let their gazes track them as both women flew forward while still in their humanoid forms. For a few seconds, they rushed forward, bringing space between them and their spaceweaver to create room for their true forms.
When they then undid their transformation, the effect was immediate. Neandra alone probably would've already been enough to stun the crew of every other starweaver within sight. Though not taking on her full true form, she still grew to be even longer than their group's ship, something that also made her larger than most other starweavers around, with a wingspan to match.
Were she not a dragon, Yldra would've almost been an unimpressive sight next to her, with her full true form only being about half the size of the form Neandra took. Still, the sheer reputation of dragons made Darganth suspect that at least a slight majority of the reaction that followed came due to the sight of her. Even a beast as large, and thus powerful, as what Neandra showed in that moment was, while impressive, not as rare and surprising a sight as dragons were on Ouroboros' End.
While this caused starweavers to drift to a stop as their captains got distracted, the ships in Neandra and Yldra's path did quickly overcome the shock. Noticing that the two of them were heading straight toward the port and realizing that they were in the way of that, over a dozen ships just ahead of them quickly surged back into motion.
From just over a dozen, it quickly cascaded onward to well over a hundred. Starweavers both large and small cut through the skies as their captains scrambled to maneuver out of the way as Neandra pushed forward with steady beats of her wings and pushed through the crowd separating her from the port.
Yldra was undoubtedly even worse for them. Moving with rapid beats of her wings, she constantly circled around Neandra. More than once did she catch a starweaver by surprise after its captain had believed himself clever by cutting back in right behind Neandra, only for Yldra to correct the assumption.
A first pass that saw the tip of her wings scrape against the ship's shields was typically enough to convey the message. The two ships that didn't correct even after this received a more thorough reminder in the form of Yldra's dragon's breath. Not aimed at their hulls, though the slight twitch in the corner of her maw told Darganth she did consider it, but still aimed close enough that it broke through the shields before passing by them just a few meters above deck.
The second reminder worked both times it became necessary, with the ships turning away fast enough that their starweaver didn't have to slow down or turn even once as they followed just over a kilometer behind Neandra. This made for a swift approach toward the port. And with no starwaver daring to sweep in and take any of the half a dozen landing spots that freed up between when Neandra and Yldra first transformed and their arrival at the port, it took barely over a minute for their ship to come to rest in one of the port's landing spots.
The ease of all of it made Darganth smile in satisfaction while Allaire let out a content sigh at his side. Leaning onto the railing, he then watched in amusement as both Yldra and Neandra came barreling toward the ground just ahead of their ship, transforming back into their humanoid forms only a hundred meters above ground before landing roughly and with a low rumble as their feet slammed onto the floor.
However, the moment of relaxation lasted only a few short seconds before the door to he landing bay swung open.
Seeing the small group that entered, Darganth muttered in frustration, "That goddess and her servants seem to be making a habit of bothering us as soon as we land."
Standing with her back leaning against the railing, Allaire raised an eyebrow in surprise. Glancing behind her and following his gaze toward the group, she then let out a sigh and pushed herself away from the railing.
"Should I gather the others while you find out what they want?" She asked
"That would be perfect." Darganth said, giving her a quick kiss before unfurling his wings and launching himself toward Yldra and Neandra.