Veralla kept looking back as she and the others made their way down. She felt a small pang when Airo sank into the roaring, otherworldly blizzard. Kiana led them back to the communication tower with haste. She and Zuckeroff barricaded the building as best they could, and then settled to wait for the warpstorm to pass over.
Now, much later, Veralla stood beside one of the viewpanels, and watched the warp-engulfed glacier, her tail and wings twitching restlessly.
"Do you think we will survive this, Ki?" Zuckeroff asked for the fourth time. He leaned on the nearby wall, fiddling with a sniper rifle in his hands. Kiana stood next to him, her arms crossed, staring sourly at the ceiling. Their combat armors were sealed, since the strong radiation was penetrating the comm tower's interior. Veralla had been given a small tightbeam headset so she could listen and speak over the commlink.
"Ain't no idea," Kiana snorted. Her tone was grim. "My head's spinning from all the vertigo. That shit about willpower better be true, or we're going into exotic places soon." She tapped the wall to punctuate her words; the comm tower's sides were expanding and contracting in a rippling pattern, without doing any actual movement.
"I've never been in a warpstorm," Zuckeroff said with a shaky voice.
"Nobody here has been, gamebrain," Kiana snapped. "Just sit tight, and grit your teeth. Let's hope the self-righteous bastard's plan works."
Veralla peered intently through the viewpanel, trying to see into the whirling darkness of the warpstorm. She felt her anxiety increase with each passing minute.
"Do you think the Boss will return?" Zuckeroff asked tentatively.
"You stupid or something, gamebrain? He's not returning," Kiana said bitterly. "Nobody can survive what's out there. Tall, dark, and imperious made his foolish heroic sacrifice. He's probably dead already."
Veralla whipped her head around, the words piercing her heart like a talon.
Then she bolted to the tower's exit.
"Veralla, WAIT!" Kiana shouted after her.
She went outside and ran toward the glacier, the storm descending upon her in full force. Furious gale whipped her webbed ears. Blinding thunderbolts laced her slit-pupiled eyes. Tiny, almost invisible particles danced at the edge of her vision, cutting and piercing the very air, slamming into her scaled skin in miniature tingly explosions, their presence tinging the air in blue afterglow. It was radiation, she realized. The land around was rising and falling like some unseen predator, disorienting her and making her crests flare with tension.
She struggled to find purchase on the ground, her claws scrabbling the ice. She was frustrated at her body and her limbs and her wings, all of them so small and lacking in might. She wanted to take flight, to challenge the raging storm, to tear through it as she hastened to save the person who gave her her life and her name. She leapt and bounded across the valley, hissing in fear and concentration when she slipped or tumbled after a misstep. All that time she kept her head high, looking straight ahead, toward the glacier, where she could sense a flicker of life which was slowly winking out.
She waged an unfair battle with the storm and its otherworldly nature. She pushed herself to the limit, bidding her small body to go faster, for time to slow down, to allow her to reach Airo before it was too late. She started to climb the summit, and she pushed harder, digging her talons in the ice and propelling herself upward.
At last she went over the rim, staggering and panting heavily from effort. Here the wind tore at her with tremendous force, and she leaned hard to avoid being blown off. The E-beacon was enveloped in a mantle of piercing radiation particles, and they washed over her, raking her skin and stabbing her eyes. She looked around hurriedly, blinking against the broken perspective, and spotted Airo lying prone next to the beacon, covered in snow and ice. She swiftly came by his side, and prodded him urgently.
"Airo! Wake up!" she cried out. "Wake up, Airo!"
He stirred weakly, and muttered something. Miraculously, Veralla's headset was still attached to her ears.
"Why... come..." his voice crackled over the commlink, heavily distorted with static.
"Airo! You have to wake up! We need to get out of here!"
"Where... I cannot... see..."
"Airo, PLEASE!"
His fist suddenly clenched. His body shuddered, and he slowly rose on his knees. He coughed, the sound ringing hollow over the commlink. "What... now..."
Veralla was thinking desperately. She couldn't fly, yet the strong wind gave her an idea. She looked behind her. The hill on the opposite side of the valley was lower in heaight, yet the glacier's slope was too lightly slanted. She needed a steeper incline. She glanced at the far end of the summit. She would have to loop back to get to the comm tower, if she jumped from there.
Yet it was the only option.
"That way!" she shouted, nudging Airo. He dragged himself on all fours, leaning heavily on her as they reached the edge.
"Wrong... way..."
Veralla clambered on his back, wrapping her legs tightly around him. "You have to jump!" she shouted.
"W-what..."
"JUMP!"
For a second, Airo didn't move. Then he heaved himself, and tumbled off the edge.
For several terrifying moments, Veralla spun uncontrollably, knocked around by the wind. Then instinct took over. Her head, neck, and tail snapped straight like an arrow. Her body rolled over, unfurling her wings, and she suddenly shot forward with tremendous speed, the acceleration nearly tearing Airo from her grasp. She screamed with unrestrained glee, and angled her wings, turning the steep dive into a twisting ascent. The storm howled in her face, and the radiation emissions bit into her flesh, drawing a hiss of pain from her. She strained to keep her wind-assisted flight under control, and banked right to loop around the glacier. But she underestimated the wind currents and was blown sideways. She began to lose altitude and lurched sharply, trying to right her wings again. She barely managed to do it in time, and raced across the air only mere meters from the writhing, warping ground. In the distance, she saw the communication tower, a darker outline against the shifting ice floes. Beneath her, Airo hung limply, clutched tightly in her claws, his limbs flailed by the squall.
She could make it. She needed to hold on only a little longer. Pain wracked her, and her vision swam, already half-blinded by lightning and radiation. The tower was getting closer. She gripped with all her strength, feeling her talons sinking into hard composites. Only a few more moments. Airo's body almost touched the hilly ridge. Abruptly, she reached the tower's entrance.
She pulled her wings, drawing her entire body back. Her speed dropped, and she crashed on the ground, rolling off Airo's back. She lay dazed on the ice, and saw someone move towards her. She was dragged off, and put somewhere quiet, away from the piercing radiation and the rumbling storm. Someone was talking to her, holding her gently. She focused her senses with effort.
"Veralla, are you all right?" Kiana asked her urgently. Her visor was retracted, and her face was full of concern.
"Oh, I am fine," Veralla said in a small voice. "I am only feeling a bit tired. I think I will sleep now."
Then she closed her eyes and became dead to the world.
***
Several days later
Airo idled along the snowy ridge. Behind him, near the comm tower's entrance, Zuckeroff and Kiana were having some heated discussion about interstellar exploration. Airo didn't pay attention to them, his gaze focused on Veralla, who was skittering around happily and playing in the snow. Events from the past few days were still hazy in his mind, yet he remembered one thing clearly.
The dragonet had saved his life.
He learned later she had brought him back to the comm tower, unconscious and near death. Thankfully, the tower had been equipped with a medbay, and Kiana and Zuckeroff had struggled for hours to keep him alive, while the warpstorm had raged. The E-beacon had been completely destroyed by the storm, and the comm tower also had been damaged extensively. However, Kiana had been able to contact the Consortium, and now help was on the way. Afterwards, a couple of days had passed until Airo and Veralla had managed to recuperate, and since then it had been another two days of tense waiting for the rescue forces.
However, all this had registered with Airo only dimly, and now, gazing at the frozen landscape, with much needed civilization finally approaching him, for a moment he even forgot the reason he was on this planet.
He was completely, utterly baffled that a dragon had saved his life.
As evening came and the group retreated into the comm tower for the night, Airo walked to one of the outer platforms. Usually he took this time to practice his martial skills, but tonight his mind was wandering among the depths of thought. He sat down on the edge of the platform, the comm tower lights flickering behind him, the stars shining in the skies above.
He couldn't fathom why she had done it. He hated her kind, and demonstrated his outlook openly, scorning her and even threatening her. The only reason he tolerated the presence of the dragonet was because of the dying wish of her mother; and because some lines he wouldn't cross even under the most dire of circumstances. And yet, even when he told her to stay away and save herself, she had risked her life in order to preserve his. He knew adult dragons were practically immune to radiation, but her recovery after the impromptu rescue had told a different story, at least concerning fledglings. Even if this wasn't the case, there have been other dangers during that damned storm, both mundane and paranormal. What bothered him most was a single question.
Why?
He had no idea about her motives, yet the very thought of asking her filled him with disgust and, strangely, dread. He didn't know what she saw in him. Maybe that was the reason he was afraid to ask: because she had acted merely out of kindness, and there was nothing, not a single redeemable quality to merit and give value to his life. He smiled wryly. Perhaps it was true - he really had no desire to live except to enact his revenge, and then... nothing.
He lifted his head. The night sky unfolded like a great map of the cosmos, starlight charting countless worlds, and the black void between the constellations pointed to even more distant places in the universe. Maybe even the afterlife was somewhere out there, among the infinite vastness of creation. Airo gazed at the heavens sadly. He craned his neck, turning, until he saw the tower's entrance behind him. There, by the pile of salvaged equipment next to the medbay, slightly sideways to where Kiana and Zuckeroff sat beside their makeshift bedrolls, Veralla slept, her wings and tail tucked tightly against her body. Airo watched her silently, noting how her black scales absorbed the light, like a shadow turned liquid. After a minute, he sighed quietly, bemused. He set his sight once more upon the skylight of the Great Cosmos. He felt lost.
Will I ever see you again, Zee?
He didn't wait for an answer that wouldn't come, and went back into the comm tower. He needed shelter from the devouring emptiness in his soul, and hes ought temporary solace in the dreamscapes of early sleep.