"Agh."

  Seralyth felt her eyes stir and open but halfway, as though some heavy hand still pressed upon the lids, and a low groan slipped from her mouth, born not of thought but of the body’s simple insistence on breath. She lay there drawing air, and as her sight cleared little by little, she took in the room about her through a wavering haze. White it was, all white and scrubbed clean, with smooth walls and the bare look of a place kept more for purpose than comfort. From this, and from the faint, familiar scents of sterilising medicine, she judged that she must have been asleep in a medbay, for such places seldom troubled themselves with adornment.

  "Wakey Wakey~"

  At once a sharp pain cleft her head, like a sudden crack through stone, and she winced beneath it.

  Of course.

  She turned her gaze to the side, blinking against the ache, and there she saw the blonde researcher, Rynna, seated comfortably in a recliner, tapping away with cheerful focus upon her pad. Seralyth’s eyes held neither relief nor gladness at the sight, but rather a cool and searching inquiry. She knew Rynna enough to know that she wouldn't have come merely to keep watch.

  "H-How…" Seralyth murmured, her voice rough and dry, as if it hadn't been used for some time.

  "How's Saeryn?"

  Seralyth gave a small nod, slow and deliberate.

  "Perfectly fine. You know we're talking about a dragon, yes?"

  Had she strength to spare, she might have snickered at that, but instead Seralyth only rolled her eyes faintly. She tried, then, to reach outward along the familiar thread of resonance, seeking that warm and vast presence she knew so well, but found nothing answering her call.

  "Oh." The devices about her bed gave a soft response as they caught the ripple of her attempt. "Don't force it. Saeryn is fine but busy. Since you were out cold, we figured we could go ahead and install the pilot structure inside it."

  Rynna didn't add how much persuasion it had taken to draw the dragon away from Seralyth’s side, nor how long it had glared and fretted before yielding. In the end, it had accepted the judgment only when it understood that, with a proper facility to uphold the bond, such an accident wouldn't be allowed to happen again.

  Seralyth let out a long sigh, for weariness had smoothed her thoughts and dulled their sharp edges. If Saeryn was fine, then it was fine.

  Even so, sleep didn't claim her again at once. She tilted her chin slightly toward Rynna, a clear gesture that she wished to know why the researcher herself was present. A nurse, after all, could easily have delivered such tidings.

  "Because we're friends!"

  There was no reply. Even a dullard could have seen the flat disinterest resting in Seralyth’s ocean blue eyes.

  Rynna clicked her tongue, feigning annoyance. "You're no fun. Anyway, I just wanted to pass you the news of the assessment. I'm still your designated overseer, you know?"

  At that, the apathy faded, replaced by a quiet spark of interest. Seralyth twitched her nose, urging Rynna to go on without speaking a word.

  "Hmm. I sorta want to tease you, but I feel it'd come back to bite me in the arse later."

  Raising one hand, Rynna held up three fingers. "Firstly, you. It was a pain to classify you. I sorta wanted to make you an operator already, but the geezers insisted you had to be a neophyte."

  Seralyth stared at her with an empty expression. She could guess at meanings well enough, but the ranks themselves told her little.

  Rynna caught on quickly. "Neophytes are newbies in this dragon bonding business. Operators are for the newbies that were deemed capable to resonate with their companions in practice. Since you still have to synchronize with Saeryn appropriately inside its body, that's still a placeholder."

  Seralyth nodded once. The matter stirred little feeling in her. A rank was a rank, and little more. With a small motion of her hand, she bade Rynna continue.

  The blonde researcher shrugged, lowering one finger and wiggling the other two. "As for Saeryn, it's a hatchling. There's no way around it, even if it's an irregular one."

  They both knew there was no arguing with the laws of flesh and bone. The frame, the organs, the very structure of Saeryn were those of a newborn dragon, whatever oddities lay within.

  Rynna lowered another finger, and this time her manner changed. Where before she had been casual, now she leaned closer, excitement plain upon her face, and pointed directly at Seralyth where she lay.

  "Lastly, the bond!"

  Her words tumbled out in a rush, faster than Seralyth could have stopped her even if she wished. "I was really, really, reaaally adamant with this one. There's no way I'd let them categorize that fascinating data into a standard benchmark. That's why. It took a lot of arguing, but I made the institute committee board recognize a provisional classification. Wanna guess its name?"

  If there had been someone to match that enthusiasm, the moment might have been lively indeed. Instead, Seralyth regarded her with an expression so vacant it might have belonged to a fish long out of water. Even had her throat allowed it, she wouldn't have answered.

  "Inverted bond ! ! !" Rynna declared triumphantly, caring not a whit.

  Seralyth snorted despite herself, and the motion sent a sting of pain through her throat. How wonderfully inventive, she thought.

  "Heeey. Don't be like that. Studying it will be so fun."

  Maybe for you.

  Seralyth felt her interest ebb away. By now it was clear enough that she was, in effect, being handled as a subject of study, and that Rynna’s so-called support rested chiefly upon how curious her bond appeared to learned eyes.

  That, too, was acceptable to the princess. So long as there were real and practical improvements to be drawn from it, she cared little how the institute regarded her.

  Rynna, meanwhile, clicked her tongue again, disappointed by the lack of response. Rising from her seat, she wore a sly and knowing smile.

  "Anywho, I'll let you rest now. Don't take long, there are a lot of fun things for us to do."

  When the researcher departed, the room fell under a weighty silence, as if a cloak had been laid across it. Seralyth felt her eyelids grow heavy at last, fatigue winning out over stubborn will.

  Before darkness took her fully, one final thought lingered with a faint steadiness in her mind.

  'Fun, huh.'

  ???

  There was a saying well known throughout the Imperium, one of those coarse bits of wisdom that soldiers, researchers, and bureaucrats alike repeated with grim satisfaction. 'Fuck around and find out.'

  Seralyth now understood, in a manner far too intimate for comfort, what the 'find out' portion of that saying truly entailed, having learned through bitter experience how driving her implants into overdrive left her confined to a bed for the better part of an entire week.

  In truth, it ought not to have come as a surprise. The implants were no mere tools worn upon her person. They were woven into her flesh and bone, bound directly into her neural system so that mana might be guided and shaped through her as water through carved stone. As she lay there in enforced stillness, she found herself quietly wondering what might occur if she were to force two or even more of those implants into overdrive at the same time.

  Perhaps she would fall straight into a coma, without so much as a moment to regret it.

  Surely not.

  Right?

  Be that as it may, neither life itself nor the institute that governed her days had any inclination to wait for her recovery. The researchers continued their tireless hunt for fresh discoveries, poring over data and arguing over results. Instructors drilled discipline into the cadets with unrelenting persistence, and technicians worked themselves ragged repairing the daily damage inflicted upon the facility by a thousand different causes, some mundane, some less so.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Amid all this, there was at least one piece of notable news. Saeryn had at last been fitted with a minor internal facility. It had been installed along the line of its rib cage, and though modest in size, it was more than sufficient to support Seralyth in the endeavours that lay ahead of them.

  The princess had, of course, questioned Rynna about the construction, though what she was told sounded rather more like a surgical procedure than any act of engineering. To Seralyth’s mild surprise, dragons didn't experience pain in the same way humans did. This made the entire process considerably simpler, if only because it spared the institute from expending thousands of units of anaesthesia in a futile attempt to render unconscious a being of such immense scale.

  That was, of course, assuming the anaesthesia would have worked at all.

  And so, time passed.

  At last, Seralyth was formally discharged and permitted to meet Saeryn once more. Any thoughts she might have entertained of a warm or touching reunion were swiftly set aside, for she was soon escorted to a field beyond the bounds of the institute itself.

  The princess was, at long last, to take part in a drilling practice.

  'Crater IX - External Combat Range'

  The information displayed upon Seralyth’s personal pad was clear and unadorned. She, along with a class numbering roughly a hundred cadets, was to undergo military training. Their proving ground would be a vast crater to the southwest of the main facilities, far enough away that any mishaps might have their consequences contained.

  Owing to her previous isolation, Seralyth arrived late and entirely alone. By the time she parked her leased motorcycle near the designated zone, the other cadets had already assembled, and the exercises were on the verge of beginning.

  Even so, her gaze was drawn upward first and foremost.

  'I would very much like to know what you are speaking of.'

  Chatting was hardly the proper word for draconic communication, but it was the nearest human approximation she had. Saeryn made no effort to respond. Its serpentine form was already mingling with a cluster of hatchlings far above, drifting in the void of space directly over the crater.

  The bonded dragons of the cadets, Seralyth surmised.

  Leaving them to their own affairs, she walked toward the edge of the chasm. At once, she became aware of dozens of eyes fixed upon her. Her late and solitary arrival was enough to draw notice on its own, but the true cause of their attention lay elsewhere. Though the results of the evaluation hadn't been publicly released, everyone had seen the arc of plasma light up the outer boundaries of the institute.

  The weight of that scrutiny was heavy, but the princess pushed through it with a distant and composed expression. Compared to the pressure of the imperial court, these cadets had much to learn. Their judgments were impersonal and rooted in outcomes alone, a far cry from the invasive curiosity and self-centred manoeuvring of the nobility she had grown up among.

  She let her gaze drift briefly across the assembled crowd and recognized only one face. It was the woman who had spoken to her in the dormitories prior to the assessment. Seralyth judged that their brief exchange hadn't been sufficient to warrant a greeting now.

  Naturally, there were those who felt compelled to approach a newcomer. One such person, a petite woman with waist-length brown hair, came to stand at Seralyth’s side, wearing an open and welcoming smile.

  "Hey. What’s up?"

  Seralyth turned her head slightly and nodded in calm acknowledgement.

  The woman’s smile faltered, becoming strained and faintly awkward. "I’m Lyessa. Lyessa Vireth. Nice to meet ya."

  The persistence of the interaction drew more of Seralyth’s attention. Inwardly, she wondered whether there might be some ulterior motive behind that smile. It was a reflexive suspicion, born of years spent navigating false warmth and hollow courtesy among her extended family.

  "Seralyth Aerendyl," she replied plainly. "It’s my pleasure."

  "Jeez, Aerendyl? No wonder the rumours sounded exaggerated."

  "Rumours?"

  "You know. Gossip about you and Professor Rynna’s research."

  That earned Lyessa a contemptuous glance. Were people truly so idle as to indulge in speculation of that sort?

  "Just treat me like any other peer."

  "Aha. That won’t be easy, but I’ll try."

  Seralyth gave a small shrug. It seemed she now knew at least one person within the facility. Given that, she saw no harm in extracting a bit of information.

  "That one. Who is she?" she asked, gesturing with her chin toward the woman with carmine hair.

  "Hm? Oh, Kaela Aesh. Very by the book. Why?"

  "She approached me in the dormitory."

  "Ah, that figures. She’s really obsessed with rules and discipline. A new cadet joining mid-cycle probably ruffled her feathers."

  "I see." That was all? Seralyth was not entirely convinced.

  "Yeah. Oh, shh. The instructor’s here."

  In an instant, Lyessa’s relaxed posture vanished, replaced by one of textbook discipline. There was a faint trace of fear in her eyes.

  Kaela Aesh, for her part, straightened immediately, her compliance flawless. From beginning to end, she didn't spare so much as a glance in Seralyth’s direction.

  Seralyth turned her attention forward as well. From a separate research structure built to observe and evaluate the cadets, a man who appeared to be in his forties stepped into view. He looked every bit the archetype of a career soldier.

  "Cadets." His voice was rigid and carried easily.

  Without hesitation, Seralyth’s peers arranged themselves into orderly files and columns, a formation drilled into them for the purpose of receiving orders. It was then that the princess faintly realized just how deeply military the institute truly was.

  She waited calmly for them to settle, then moved to take an empty position.

  The instructor reacted to neither her timing nor her movement. Such cohesion and deference were clearly expected.

  "Today’s drills are for measurement. Every parameter we track exists because someone exceeded it and did not survive the outcome. You will follow the prescribed limits. Do not attempt improvisation. Do not attempt distinction. If you believe yourself exceptional, the data will confirm it without your assistance."

  Seralyth frowned, considering his words.

  The other cadets showed little reaction. They were well accustomed to warnings of this sort.

  "Neophyte Seralyth Aerendyl. Step forward."

  Uncertain of the purpose, she complied without fuss. No murmurs rippled through the formation, but many eyes turned toward her.

  "By provisional authorization under Professor Rynna’s request, this cadet is assigned to this cohort until the next cycle. There will be no preferential treatment. Cadet Seralyth will be evaluated by the same standards as her peers."

  There was no protest and no voice raised in dissent. Whatever thoughts of nepotism some might have harboured, none dared challenge the instructor.

  Professor Rynna herself was present as well. From the researchers’ platform, she waved with unrestrained enthusiasm, as though eager to draw attention regardless of propriety.

  "Step back."

  Seralyth obeyed, indifferent to both judgment and approval.

  "Cadets. Board your bonded dragons."

  The instructor made no effort to linger. At his command, the mood sharpened. Casual chatter vanished, and any sense of camaraderie dissolved, leaving behind only the keen edge of competition.

  Seralyth wondered, not for the first time, whether this was intentional. Rivalry was natural in such an environment, but there was something about it that felt actively encouraged.

  'Saeryn.'

  Whatever the reason, she would do her utmost. Not to prove herself to others, and not to belittle them.

  She simply wished to know how far she could go, and how great an anomaly they truly were.

  'Mmm. We wish to know.'

  Saeryn descended then, landing heavily upon the rocky surface of the moon. The space was broad enough to accommodate dozens of dragons arriving at once, though the sight of it was undeniably absurd.

  'This will be the first true time.'

  Seralyth let her hands trail across the hatchling’s scales, feeling their cold solidity beneath her fingers. She had entered the internal facility before, for calibration and testing, but this would be its proper debut.

  Her heart beat faster, stirred by excitement she didn't bother to suppress.

  At Saeryn’s prompting, a larger, modified scale serving as a pressure bulkhead slid aside. Seralyth patted the hollow bones that supported the structure and stepped inside.

  The facility was stark and functional. In certain respects, it resembled a modest dwelling. There was a sleeping space, a bathing area, a small kitchen, and the synchronization chamber. These amenities existed so that, should the dragon be required to voyage through the void for extended periods, the bonded pilot’s daily needs could still be met.

  Without hesitation, Seralyth went straight to the synchronization chamber. It was a nearly empty room, its walls and floor etched with intricate arrays. At its centre stood a bed that more closely resembled a medical pod, from which extended a multitude of cables.

  She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The surface beneath her was comfortable, gently warm. A protective glass cover rose and enclosed her, forming a complete pod. Cold water began to rise from below, climbing to her waist with a sharp, frigid touch.

  At a thought carried through her bond with Saeryn, the cables extended and connected to her implants with sharp snaps. The pain was intense, but brief, lasting no more than a heartbeat. Her vision dimmed.

  Then the world opened to her through Saeryn’s senses.

  It defied easy description in human terms. Sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch collapsed together into a single awareness of space, allowing the dragon to perceive reality as an unbroken whole.

  Light was not seen, but understood as vectors of distance and mass.

  Sound did not exist as such, but was inferred through disturbance and motion.

  Scent resolved into patterns of composition rather than fleeting impressions.

  Taste and touch shifted into variations of pressure, density, and resistance.

  Seralyth translated this flood of perception into concepts she could grasp, knowing all the while that her understanding was crude. What she experienced was only a pale shadow of how the dragon truly knew the world.

  Even so, it was enough.

  'Rise and shine, Saeryn.'

  She had no need to form the words, yet she did so regardless. The young dragon ascended with vigorous motion, taking its place among its bonded kin above the crater.

  If only the grandeur of their bond could have been preserved untouched.

  Regrettably, the drills were far from gentle, especially for a cadet newly entered into training.

  Saeryn and Seralyth, bound as one, gave all they could.

  Even so, they could not match those pairs who had trained together for months.

  The requirements were straightforward in principle. Energy had to be expended efficiently, conserving both the dragon’s biochemical reserves and the pilot’s mana pool. It demanded careful regulation and deep familiarity.

  Saeryn lacked any sense of restraint. It simply poured its power forth until the desired effect was achieved.

  Seralyth, for her part, lacked the experience to properly moderate the dragon’s actions. Time and again, she channelled more mana than was strictly necessary in order to correct their course.

  They struggled through each task, consuming far more energy than required, whether the objective was to maintain bond coherence under shifting gravity, to achieve near zero delay between pilot intent and dragon action, or to ready the dragon’s biochemical weaponry.

  It was a poor showing. By the end of the exercise, they found themselves ranked at the very bottom of the class, their results negligible beside those of the other bonded pairs.

  "Proceed to the practical examination. Cadets, line up by ranking order."

  Inside, Seralyth felt a fierce urge to scream. A wildfire had been kindled in her chest.

  Few would have guessed it from her outward calm, but Seralyth was, in truth, a sore loser.

  'Saeryn. I will not hold back.'

  The inverted bond tightened, driven to extract its maximum yield. The newborn dragon responded instinctively, compelled to match her resolve. Something unfamiliar flowed between them.

  Saeryn felt that alien emotion take hold. It urged it onward, pushing for more, stirring a hunger it neither understood nor could ignore.

  It was then that Seralyth realized she had transmitted something she could not easily take back.

  All the better, then.