The Celestial Way

Part II - Prelude To War

PRELUDE TO WAR

Yolo's Landing, seven centuries ago

The Dragonslayer opened his eyes, and saw the sky.

Above, the city spires reached for the heavens in blocky defiance. The morning radiance glinted off the hull of an ascending orbital shuttle. His gaze traveled downward, resting upon the many utilitarian buildings and plain streets, crowded after years of intra-urban expansion.

He was alive.

He had survived his vertical descent, thrown against the waiting alleys below with nothing else besides his sword and sheer determination. His eyes turned back to the skyscraper before him, the broken panoramic window visible thirty floors up. He willed himself to rise, his body broken, yet his mind blazing with everbright fire. He went back into the building, ignoring the startled looks and the worried shouts. Of course, there was no one in his apartment. His Nemesis had fled, gone beyond his reach, seeking the protection of those the Dragonslayer had branded enemies. His path to vengeance was now barred by the unity of the very ones he wanted to deliver his wrath upon. For his crusade to succeed, he needed a union of his own.

The Dragonslayer examined his lodgings. The environment was heavy with neglect, reflecting the despair in his soul. His possessions were meager, his wealth nonexistent, his wardrobe solely the uniform he had worn with pride for so long. Only his blade remained sharp and in perfect order.

He wanted one more thing.

The Dragonslayer left his home away from home for the last time. He traveled to the cosmodrome, and commandeered an airjet. Then he flew away from the city, to the coast, and away again, to the distant south, where the ocean waves guarded the weathered shores of an old archipelago. There he landed on a small island, and left the airjet on a verdant clearing. He walked on stone steps to the highest point of the island, where a tall edifice loomed over the horizon like a forlorn beacon.

The Dragonslayer ascended the steps, and stood before Her shrine.

The triune sun hung low in the sky, its rays soft upon the monument, the purple-black surface sparkling with a thousand tiny stars. The Dragonslayer stepped closer, and knelt before Her final resting place. The shrine towered above him, massive, sharp, yet vague in shape, resembling outspread wings. He looked at it with bitter despair. He had transformed Her entirely, to give himself a ghostly semblance of peace, yet he had heeded Her last wish. In his memorial farewell, he had given Her the flight of freedom.

The Dragonslayer said no prayers. He kept kneeling before the tectonic expression of his grief, and quietly wept.

In time, he composed himself, and slowly rose. There, at the base of the shrine, lay a gridcaster gauntlet, its sable color indistinguishable from the dark body of the monument. The Dragonslayer stepped forward and took the gauntlet. His only memento of Her.

He put on the gridcaster, and felt a deep longing as its nanites adjusted the gauntlet to fit his arm perfectly.

"I will always remember you, my love," the Dragonslayer whispered, and lifted his head toward the twilight heavens.

Now he had everything he needed.

The Dragonslayer activated the gridcaster's commlink, and made a call.

***

The meeting was arranged at the city's edge. The apartment building was a plain, prefabricated structure, cheap housing for the swelling population of a former military stronghold struggling to reform into a proper colony center. When the Dragonslayer arrived, the remaining old guard from the 23rd Starlight Division had already gathered in the small studio. Twenty men and women lifted their heads as he strode into the crowded room, his closest and most loyal subordinates. One of them, a towering individual known as the Templar, stepped forth and saluted the Dragonslayer with a fist over his heart. "We're glad you are back among us, Commander," he said.