Dimensional Descent

The moment the small ship was locked onto by several behemoths, as though a rock out of a slingshot, its acceleration suddenly doubled.

Sparks and explosions rang through the quickly thinning atmosphere, and yet they only seemed to propel the small ship faster as it squirted out of their encirclement.

The lights were so bright and the ship was so tiny in proportion to everything else that it was immediately assumed that the operation was successful. But, if it was so easy to fool such high tech, why would the Guild have ever invested however many billions they had to build them?

However, what left the siblings at a loss for words was that the moment the ship used the momentum around it to shoot by the last thinning layers of the atmosphere, runic patterns exuding a magnificent aura bloomed like a halo.

At first, the runes were etched right onto its sleek, silver surface. But in the next, they became animated, wiggling about as though life had been breathed into them.

They rose from the surface, forming a protective disk of flickering silver the grew brighter and brighter until it rivaled even the second barrage of beams headed right for its small frame.

Tobyn's eyes widened.

"RETREAT! EXECUTE EVASIVE MANEUVERS, NOW!"

Very few seemed to understand the purpose behind Tobyn's orders, but their job wasn't to understood. Even though some of the Guild Head's children saw themselves as less than, any one of them that was known to have such a connection wouldn't be easily crossed. On top of this, Tobyn wasn't like them, he was born from the Head's legitimate wife. His orders were even less likely to be ignored.

It wouldn't be long, though, before they realized that Tobyn had saved all their lives.

The rippling silver runes reached an unspeakable peak, touching upon a level of brightness that seemed to rival the sun in the distance.

everything

were warped, threatening to be slinged into the ether as they trembled to maintain the path they had followed for billions of years. And the ships that had once

the ships were simply

space. What once

a display of the cruelty of this world, the latter was nothing more than

ships that were further away were a bit luckier, but the result was still them

The end was devastating.

what looked like beautiful swirls of white, green and blue

their orbit, drifting into the depths of space with off kilter propulsion that wrestled and

most devastating were three ships that crashed headlong into one another. The resulting devastation was even more furious than that of the ships that had been too close. At least in the latter

filled with fireworks and smoke, but it wasn't the kind one could enjoy on a national Independence Day. Rather, it was the kind that made one's ears

would become known that the Milky Way Guild had suffered such devastating losses targeting a ship that didn't even have their

related

…

silver ship, tunneling through space to

control of the steering before passing it on to an AI. The second wore a look of confusion, seemingly wondering how it is she had gotten caught in this mess while her heart was lodged in her throat. And the last was in a daze, blanky staring at something on her wrist without a word. In fact, from her demeanor, it seemed that she might not speak for a very, very long time. And maybe if you

these three be if not

an irony that an action Leonel could very well abhor with all his heart and soul…

half a day later, it wasn't only a small ship that covertly slipped through the cracks left by the Guild's defenses. There was another protected vessel that seemed to have been doing the same. And, oddly enough, these two left from completely different ends of Planet Vincero and

that he would need to use almost all of the trump cards he had planned. Had he known things would be like this,

As for the second…