Maya didn’t squint her eyes or ask if anyone else saw what she did. Instead she told them all to come over. Finally they were almost there. A small dot in the distance was growing. It looked like the strangest thing. Almost like a distant star as it glimmered in the darkness of space. Their ship was still very far away but they were getting closer. A few hours at most now.

As they slowly got closer, the reason this place was special became more and more obvious. From far away it was impossible to see the different pieces as all you saw was the light shining out. It was also one of the reasons it was strange. No planet of any kind shone light. But this was no planet nor a star. The fractured pieces were bathing in magic. Nothing was static and unmoving. Especially the magic.

The whole crew was in the cockpit for a few minutes, but for most of them it was too far to see anything and they returned to their other occupations. They would come and look once they were closer. There was no point squinting your eyes now. Only Matt lingered behind a bit longer. Maya had thought he had been extra weird lately. She put it out of mind for now as even he finally left her alone again.

She was the only one who got to see it from start to finish. From a blip in the distance to a more visible fractured mess. There were a few pieces floating around the main mess like smaller moons. She had read about this place many times as it was a fascinating subject, but seeing it with her own two eyes was something else. It felt so out of this world. How was it even possible that a fractured world could continue to ‘work’ so to speak.

They were getting closer now, still far enough that she could only guess at most of what she was looking at, but close enough all the colors didn’t blend together in a strange mess. No, they were close enough to see the different pieces drifting from afar. Krovukk was the first to come back, probably from baking something as he still had flour on his shin he had missed. Everyone knew he baked as a hobby now.

Then came Philip that seemed to perpetually frown these days. Kali soon followed and couldn’t help herself from teasing the grumpy man who frowned even more. Xar and Matt were last as it seemed they had been working on Matt’s magic again. There they stood as they looked out on what had been the origin of everything, now broken and in litteral pieces.

Maya was more than familiar with the ship now. She had been practicing moves out in space to Xar’s amusement and the others' annoyance. It used more mana of course but they did need a decent pilot and the others had admitted she was rather good at it which had pleased her more than a little. It was an admittance of her skill, and a skill she had gotten all by herself. Her stronger body and reflexes didn’t make a difference here. It was all her, which might be why she had been so happy with the compliments.

As they drew closer, Maya started questioning Xar about what they were seeing. Especially the strange magic things with different forms that seemed to morph and move between the pieces. Magical currents, he told her and she was instantly fascinated. She hadn’t known that was possible at all. He went into a lengthy explanation that only her and Matt listened to. It boiled down to a lot of theory and not a lot of facts, but one thing was for sure, it was very dangerous.

Maya was trying to look at the magical currents and their strange secret when something caught her eye in the distance. She felt like she had imagined something but there was nothing to see. Or was there? She actually squinted for once as she saw a new light shine straight at them from afar. Her eyes widened as she made the whole ship roll to the right. Everyone else fell to the side at the sudden movement and Philip cursed her loudly while the others groaned. A huge blue beam shot past them and lingered for a second.

“Combat posts, now!” Krovukk yelled as he scrambled to move out of the cockpit. The others followed suit and only Philip remained with Maya as he sat down in the copilot chair. She avoided another shot as she turned on all of their detection devices. They had turned almost everything off to save on the mana. The different devices and their associated screens lit up but something was wrong. Maya didn’t see any other ships on there.

One of them warned them of incoming missiles coming at an angle from above them now. Still fairly far away but they would be a lot harder to dodge than fixed weapons. She turned the ship and fired in the location where the missiles had appeared. A ship appeared as it deployed its shields just in case. Of course she missed it completely, but without their shield up, a stray shot could have been the end of them.

“They have cloaking technomagic?” Philip groaned. Maya was about to answer but figured it was a rhetorical question just in time.

“What is the best way to force them to reveal themselves?” She asked him in hopes he would know something she didn’t. He looked at her as she kept her eyes open and on the enemies.

“You need a better ship with state of the art modules.” He told her deadpan.

“Watch out.” He said as he had seen something she hadn’t. The ship strafed just in time to avoid another long range shot. The missiles were closing in now.

“Krovukk, we need you to shoot down those missiles.” Philip yelled through the ship.

“No need to yell, activate your earpiece. And I’m on it.” Krovukk said and Maya could hear him in her ear clearly, like he was standing next to them. Maya pointed to his ear as he clearly didn’t hear the response. She repeated the word and Philipp dug into his pocket and brought the thing to his ear.

“He’s on it Philip.” Maya repeated to bring him up to speed. The ship started to rumble as Krovukk used one of the gun turrets to shoot at the missiles coming their way.

They were clearly advanced missiles as they split up and started flying in semi-random directions to avoid getting blown up. Of course they weren’t actually smart. Two of the many missiles actually ran into each other and blew up, but it was a small solace in the face of the salvo. Krovukk kept shooting non-stop and got one here and there but it was clear he wouldn’t get all of them.

Maya knew they were going to be toast if they stayed out here in the open and accelerated towards the nearest satellite Piece. She reached down to override the safety on most modules as she changed the mana allocation of everything. Philip looked at her in horror as he didn’t seem to understand what she was doing. The ship accelerated fast as the thruster module started blinking in warning.

“What are you doing?!” He questioned her.

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“I weakened the shields to push the engines beyond the recommended values.” She told him as the acceleration was pressing him into the seat. She knew the only way the missiles didn’t take them out was if they gained enough time by outrunning them, or simply took cover behind the Piece.

“Oh shit, oh shit.” Was all Philip managed as another blue beam almost touched them. He knew that with the weakened shields they probably wouldn’t like to get hit by anything these guys had. Their ships were clearly top of the line, and he didn’t want to discover how good their weapons were right now.

Another two ships became visible as they accelerated to keep up. There were only a few missiles left on their trail, but they were still catching up and it was clear that Krovukk wouldn’t have enough time to shoot them down. Turning off the thrusters, they stopped accelerating as the ship continued to hurtle through space. She rotated the whole ship as it was now sideways.

The panel warning them about the missiles was blinking rapidly now as they were almost upon them. Putting her hand on the throttle she cranked it up to the maximum, disengaged the safety on a second handle and cranked it up too. It felt like the whole ship exploded as they were all thrown back into their seats violently. Both she and Philip looked as one of the missiles passed them by just in front of the cockpit as the whole ship violently changed direction.

Another explosion rocked the whole ship as it seemed they hadn’t managed to avoid all of them. But all of the other ones who had been a bit behind all exploded on the Piece they had just hid behind. Maya could even see blue grass down there on the surface. But she didn’t have time to delve on that as she knew they couldn’t stay here. There was more ships coming in on them and she turned the ship yet again before going full throttle.

She knew distance was their only viable defense here. If they didn’t manage to keep it rather far as it was now, there was no way they would avoid any of the weapons they were shooting at them. So she accelerated to the only place she could think of. This Piece they were hiding behind wasn’t an option. It was split from the general mess that the old world was, just orbiting it from afar. They would die if they landed on it. No, they needed to hide where no one would follow them.

A few smaller ships were closing in on them and she started rolling and dodging to keep the ship somewhat intact. Xar was yelling something about how much they were drawing on their mana crystals but she ignored him. If she stopped they were dead anyway. Philip did actually help a bit as he nudged the ship here and there to avoid something she had missed.

Krovukk had been shooting non-stop since earlier and didn’t slow down now. He didn’t get any of the smaller ships but it did force them to avoid being shot down and slowed them down. Something hit them again in the back and Xar yelled at Matt to help get some crystals directly into the shield system. Maya knew what Xar wanted to do and approved.

Under normal circumstances, the mana storage distributed the mana to where it needed to be. But of course it could only haul so much mana at a time. Right now when they were overusing all of their systems at once, it was clearly struggling to keep up. Pouring in mana directly would alleviate the issue, if the ship held together for that long.

Another hit rocked the ship as they were getting closer and closer to the mess of magical currents and Pieces that made this location so special. Philip slammed the emergency pressurization button that had been blinking. Their hull had been breached and the air had been fleeing into the empty space outside. A mana barrier plugged the hole as he pressed the button.

Maya was afraid they’d run out of mana before she managed what she wanted to do. She avoided another long-range beam as the smaller ships were now on top of them. Luckily it seemed Matt had gotten to the shields just in time as they blocked the shots the smaller ships unleashed on them. One of the smaller vessels was just to their left and a bit too close in her honest opinion. Maya violently turned left and rammed into the smaller ship. Their shields collided but theirs was a lot more robust as it was a bigger ship.

The fighter’s shields winked out of existence a second later and they corrected their course. Krovukk saw the smaller ship bent strangely as it drifted lifelessly behind them. Maya was clearly daring to ram another ship while engaged with other ships. It didn’t take long for sweat to drip down Philip’s back as he pointed towards a rather large ship coming at them from the side. It would intercept them before they made it to the old world proper, and he was pretty sure its weapons would punch right through their flickering shield.

It opened fire with four different weapons and Maya barely managed to avoid them. One of them grazed their shield and it flickered off. The lone fighter still harassing them used the opportunity to spray their ship for all it was worth and several emergency mana barriers were used to patch up the holes it had created.

A second later Krovukk finally managed to shoot it down, but the damage was done. Maya could hear Xar telling her it had hit the shield module. They were naked, so to speak. Well, it wasn’t like it changed that much, Maya thought, as they had already been hard pressed to tank one of those big weapons before. Now it was just even more obvious they couldn’t get hit.

Maya told Xar to pour everything they had into their thrusters. Speed was all they had left. Both Matt and Xar worked hard to fill the engines with as much mana as possible, overriding all the safety measures they could to cram in a bit more power into their already vibrating thrusters. Maya didn’t immediately use the extra power as they filled it up more and more.

As the other ship got closer and closer, it’s weapons prepared to fire again. Just as they lit up, Maya punched it and the ship accelerated yet again, but at what price. Without shield to help prevent damage to the ship, metal was flaking off at the back of the ship. If they didn’t do something it was clear they wouldn’t be able to fly much longer. The acceleration was enough to make the weapons miss once more and they zoomed past the larger ship who turned surprisingly fast and accelerated after them.

Maya barely could believe the almost twice as large ship was managing to follow them. It was even keeping up! How was that even possible? She ignored it as they dodged the more regular shots that were coming after them. But the hardest part was upon her now. She looked at the mana current between the floating pieces in front of her as the ship finally entered what was considered a suicide zone.

She didn’t hesitate as she navigated the ship between the floating Pieces of land, eyes wide in concentration as she piloted on instincts. She followed a gentle current there, then through a current that looked like it would shred them to pieces only for it to gently let them through. Maya was using the eyes her father had gifted her to their utmost potential. To her surprise the other ship was following them closely from behind.

She almost shook her head but refrained from actually doing so. She had to concentrate. Now wasn’t the time to get distracted. The ship flew through the magical current unharmed, but their thrusters were falling apart and spluttering now. The ship behind them was gaining on them and only the wild turns and Pieces in the way kept them from shooting them down.

Maya violently made the ship dodge at the last second as she had almost missed an invisible current in front of them. The back of the ship still went through it and got sheered off completely. Their main thrusters were gone and they only had the correctional ones to guide them now. Looking behind, she was relieved when she saw the other ship disappear completely in the strange current.

A large Piece that had brown vegetation was in front of them. They couldn’t avoid it now as the ship was basically free-falling. Maya hoped this strange world wasn’t too crazy and that they would find a way to survive here. Alas just as she thought that, the ground on the Piece shook as a huge explosion ripped a huge chunk of earth upwards.

What greeted them as they were about to crash land was a huge monster spitting fire wildly into the air. Wait, that wasn’t a monster.

That was a dragon.