The rocket was done. It didn’t exactly look safe-most of the metal was rusted, bent, or bolted together poorly-but Arthur was almost sure it would work. Paladin was far less certain they wouldn’t die in the vacuum of space, but he had no choice but to trust Arthur’s planning. They didn’t have an option, and even he was getting worried about the dragon eggs.

  Luckily, they didn’t have much they needed to put in the rocket. Arthur’s pack was the biggest thing, and that fitted in with no issues at all. They did one last sweep of the town for any food they could use, but very little turned up. Everything usable they found was loaded into the rocket anyway. The meat they’d taken from the farmhouse had already been used up, and it was too long of a walk to get more.

  The interior of the rocket was cramped and didn’t smell great, but there wasn’t much they could do about that. It was just how those small, personal rockets used to be built. Arthur climbed in first, taking residence close to the fuel generator, his pack and the fuel. Paladin took the pilot’s seat, which for them was a chair with half eaten pillows they’d found on the far edge of the dump. Paladin climbed up to the top with unnerving grace and took a seat.

  Arthur crouched down on the floor of the rocket, digging through random rubbish he’d picked up ‘just in case’ and finding the pull cord for the generator. He looked up to Paladin. “Ready?”

  “I am ready, Squire!” Paladin shouted down. “Let us escape this husk of a world.”

  “See you, Karrus,” Arthur said. “Would not give you a seven out of ten these days.”

  Arthur yanked on the pull cord and the generator whirred to life. He climbed up the side of the rocket and strapped himself on his seat, which was a slab of wood flanked by a basic car seatbelt.

  Suddenly, the engines roared into action. Even inside the rocket, Arthur could feel the heat from them, and it suddenly made him very worried about re-entry. Massive jets of blue tinged smoke erupted from the engines before there was a massive kick and the rocket was hurled upwards.

  Arthur hung on for dear life while Paladin’s head was thrown back into the plush headrest, hanging onto the controls to keep himself from falling out entirely. They were hurtling away from the scrapyard far faster than he expected. The whole ship rattled around them as they soon began to escape the atmosphere, panels and lights flashing around them. Most of them were warning signs that several critical systems had failed.

  “Don’t worry, I just forgot to refit those!” Arthur explained over the panicked beeping. “I’m an engineer, not an electrician!”

  “Could have switched them off entirely,” Paladin muttered.

  It was hard to tell when they hit space. There were no clouds in the sky and no day or night, so space and the dead world of Karrus bled into one. Only when the rattling slowed down, and the effects of zero gravity began to kick in, did Paladin breathe a sigh of relief, cutting the main engines. Arthur, however, was still on edge.

  “Not sure what that’s like where you’re from,” he said, “but that was the easy bit. Let me take over.”

  Arthur unbuckled his seatbelt and floated up to Paladin, who quickly rescinded his chair to his squire. It was quickly obvious what he was talking about: they were flying towards the mass of clockwork that obscured Karrus’ sun.

  “One scrape against that and we’re dead,” Arthur explained, flicking switches and pressing buttons.

  Arthur fired the control thrusters, lightly pushing the ship right while letting its initial momentum carry it through space. Now, away from the planet, cracks started to show themselves in the mass of metal and gears. While it was clear the Rot was thick, it was the first time Paladin had seen how layered it was.

  Countless tiny gears whirred and spun, not seemingly for any purpose but to exist. Tiny rays of light hit the ship, a few stars and the nearby sun escaping its dark grip, only to be immediately hidden as the gears turned. Weaker sheets of brass were being melted away, but were being regenerated so fast the sun couldn’t melt it all. From here, the clockwork sky wasn’t a single monolith of darkness, but a constantly moving, living thing, one that only existed in contempt of humankind.

  The ship was piloted down a tunnel through the rot. There were plenty of smaller holes that would fit the rocket, but Arthur didn’t want a chance of ever coming into contact with the Rot. They were soon in total darkness. Luckily, Arthur had fitted the ship with powerful beam lights to see through the dark.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  As the ship progressed, Paladin began to see things jutting out of the Clockwork Rot. It was metal, but not the brassy tones he’d seen so much over the past few days. This was clean steel, darkened glass and burnt metal. As he examined it, he began to see more and more of the objects jutting out, and although he didn’t know them exactly, he’d seen things like them back in his home universe. Fightercraft and capital ships.

  “There was a space battle here,” Paladin realised.

  Arthur nodded. “The Federation scrambled to attack the dragons not long after the belt of worlds around the Clocktower was attacked. That’s why the Rot is so thick here. This is where the first battles of the war were fought, where the Federation struck back with all their might. ‘Course, they didn’t know about the Clockwork Rot yet. They were consumed quickly and easily. Federation changed tactics eventually to stop the spread, but by then it was too late. They didn’t have a fleet to work with.”

  “Have the dragons consumed everything?”

  “Probably not. Universe is a big place. There’s probably some frontier worlds tha-shit, turn everything off!”

  Arthur shut off the flood lights and began to disable all the beeping, blinking systems in the ship, Paladin doing the same. Eventually, all that remained on was the life support. For a moment, they were in total darkness, appearing as just a generic piece of space junk. Then, a vast array of lights flew outside the window. They were clearly dragons, with the bright blue eyes and lights to match the wings and legs, but they didn’t move like the dragons Arthur and Paladin had encountered. They were almost playful, and most importantly, there were far more than one.

  “They’ve hatched,” Arthur whispered. “They must have followed us all the way out here.”

  “They can keep up with a rocket?” Paladin asked.

  “Easily, and that’s just the kids. How do you think they took out a whole interstellar armada?”

  It was like watching fireflies. The dragons danced around them in a spectacular array of light, making mechanical sounds that were far less harsh than those of their elders. Paladin could tell they were play fighting to an extent, biting and barging each other into the brass walls of the tunnel. All of them were so focused on each other that they didn’t give the rocket a second thought. They flew down the tunnel, occasionally climbing into the walls of the tunnel, and were out of sight.

  “We wait for half an hour,” Arthur said, “then we move.”

  “They seemed…normal,” Paladin admitted. “That was how I would expect young animals to act.”

  “Don’t start to think they’re worth our pity,” Arthur replied sternly. “The kids are kinda nice, they usually just act scared and attack out of panic. The adults are monstrous. Like, they don’t fight on instinct like the kids do. They’re just sadistic. They want us dead for the sake of killing us. I’ve known people who have tried to make contact with them, try to end this war with peace. It’s never worked.”

  Paladin nodded. “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Less idiots are good for us.”

  They sat in silence for a while, waiting in total darkness to make absolutely certain the dragons were gone. Paladin finally spoke up.

  “How long until Berethian?”

  Arthur shrugged. “A long, long time. We can’t move at lightspeed, and we can’t use the engines much because we need the fuel for dodging the Rot.”

  “Have you travelled between planets like this before?”

  “Once. It took me about two months where I nearly ran out of food. This will be longer, and we’ll have to ration more. Hopefully we don’t run into stuff like this again. Let’s get moving.”

  Arthur flipped a bunch of switches, turning all of the lights back on. Paladin looked out of the windows, examining the ships trapped in the bronze outside. Occasionally, he saw the corpse of a dragon embedded in there as well, their eyes occasionally flickering on like its spirit was still watching them.

  “Would the cruisers or fightercraft be able to move at lightspeed?” Paladin asked.

  Arthur was taken aback. “All of those cruisers are rotted through. There’s no way there’s a ship that hasn’t been consumed.”

  “I’m immune to the Rot. I can get through the ship with no issue. You packed a spacesuit, right?”

  “Yeah. You’d have to ditch your armour though. Even then, you’re not gonna find shit! Hell, how do we get everything from this tin can onto another ship, even if we do find one?!”

  “Via space. You need to think less sane, Squire. Sometimes less sane is more practical. Turn away. I am going to remove my armour.”

  Arthur looked away as Paladin removed his helmet, letting his long blonde hair flow free. The helmet floated into the upper part of the rocket, soon followed by his gauntlets and breastplate. Arthur activated the ship’s reverse thrusters, bringing it to a halt near one of the ships embedded into the wall.

  “You’re going to die,” Arthur said, “so I’ll say now it’s been nice knowing you.”

  “That’s quite a change,” Paladin said as he started to put on the heavy spacesuit, grabbing his sword and sheath. “I’ll see you soon.”