Under A Wild Star

by SwordTune

Prologue: Burning Skies

Panic, its hold always seems to drag out time, freeze every muscle in your body until you think nothing you do can fix the mess you’re in.

Silver Storm was going through that very feeling. She planted her hooves firmly in place and grasped the controls to her space shuttle with her talons. Hippogriffs were as mighty and free as a bird, but sturdy too like a draft horse. Panic sowed the seeds of her determination.

Her heart threatened to burst out of her chest. Thump-bump, thump-bump. Her forelimbs, the powerful talons of an eagle, clamped like a vice around her controls. Electronic assistance was damaged, hence the panic. If she was going to make a safe landing, it’d be by sheer force.

Eldyrea expanded into an endless wall. With all her body behind it, Silver Storm yanked up, forcing her shuttle to glide with the surface of the planet.

Beside her controls, a screen and speaker struggled to receive a signal from the main ship, the orbiting space station that she was supposed to remain attached to. The screen was cracked and all but unusable, but sound still crackled over the speaker.

“Approach Point New Hope,” said her commanding officer before cutting out for a few more seconds. “-fires are spreading--all units on Point-”

Silver Storm squawked, the landing chutes on her shuttle finally deployed and her beak slammed against the controls from the sudden drag. Her vision blurred for a second, but through the small windows of the shuttle, she spotted trails of fire careening past her. Other pilots, dragons and gryphons and kirin, were plummeting into Eldyrea’s surface.

“There you are,” she muttered, twisting her body against the controls, forcing the nose of the shuttle to align with the mountain ahead of her. She aimed down, hoping to match her descent with the slope of the mountainside.

As shuttle shot down through the clouds and the mountain came into view, the blue waves rippling across the planet’s surface became clearer and clearer. Against a backdrop of snow, large trees coated in dark-blue leaves shivered in the icy storm.

“This’ll be a welcomed gift,” Silver muttered, adjusting the course of her fast-burning metal ship. Fragments of material snapped off the surface, losing their structure from the rapid oxidation by high heat. But she was on the best course for a crash landing. Silver Storm braced, ready to accept defeat knowing she did everything she was trained to do.

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Fear, it’s a good motivator, driving the blood pressure up and sharpening the senses to any dangers around you.

Cinder Crest needed to make sure he kept it that way and didn’t let his fear paralyze him. The dragon stretched himself out, bursting through the doors of his smouldering shuttle. The metal pod was hardly big enough for an adult dragon. Now that it was bent and battered from the crash landing, he had to struggle just to slide out of the rear hatch.

“Sergeant Crest?” a voice on the shuttle’s speaker crackled through the loose wires and damaged circuits. “Sergeant, can you confirm a safe landing?”

The dragon puffed smoke out of his nose as he pressed a claw down on the speaker to reply. “Call that safe and you can call me a lizard,” he coughed. “I’m alive, but dragons swim in lava and eat gemstones. I’m not sure if anyone else made it..”

“Best we can hope-” the voice said before it cut out. “-others and establish--”

The speaker stuttered and broke down completely. The sergeant glanced around at the rest of the shuttle, watching the remaining emergency lights blink away. It was a total loss of power, meaning he was sitting in nothing but a hunk of useless metal.

He pulled himself out and surveyed the area. Blue trees and cold snow, Eldyrea looked exactly how the satellite images showed it. He grabbed what he could from the shuttle. Boxed rations and survival manuals were helpful, but the most important thing was the backup radio on the ship’s controls. The screen and speaker were broken, but as long as the radio could be repaired, there was still a chance to contact the orbiter.

Crest unplugged the device and grabbed everything else, packing them into a survival bag. It was a sizeable kit, but it was designed for gryphons and other smaller beings. On Sergeant Crest, it barely slowed him down.

He raised his eyes to the sky and watched as the last trails of fire shot through the clouds. There were dozens, at least, each carrying a pilot, soldier, or scientist for the Empire. The damage would be devastating. Nearly half of the entire orbiting station had broken down, forced to jettison its inhabitants far sooner than expected.

Crest hurried, eager to catch up with whoever was in the shuttle nearest to him. Most of the creatures here to colonize Eldyrea were limited in their training. Without full knowledge of how to survive, there’s be costly losses, and there was no way to go back to their home planet to collect reinforcements. If they were going to be the first to land on Eldyrea, they needed to work together and survive until the rest of their people came.

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Curiosity hit at the strangest of times and was a surprisingly strong motivator. Understanding meant control, and control was key to survival.

Iridescence grabbed her survival kit and pushed open the dented hatch on her shuttle. Eldyrea was uncharted territory, not a good place to be alone. Satellite scans, thermal imaging, those tests from the orbiter couldn’t compare to experiencing the planet first-hoof.

The young kirin gasped as she braced against the cold winds. The planet’s atmosphere was denser than she was used to, making it harder to breathe. Nitrogen and inert gases were more abundant on Eldyrea, according to the spectroscopy experiments.

It didn’t take more than a minute for Iridescence to realize she was out of her depth. The empire asked for scientists and technicians to realize its dream of colonizing Eldyrea, but she was never meant to set a hoof on the planet’s surface.

She hid back inside her shuttle, protecting her small frame from the blowing winds. Despite their distant relation to dragons, Kirins were far small and had no flame to heat themselves. A lion-like mane was the only thing they were blessed with, but this planet’s sharp cold was too harsh for her biology.

If she couldn’t find help, Iridescence decided on staying warm and conserving her energy until someone found her. She did land in a blazing ball of fire, it couldn’t be too hard. The single antler in the centre of her head glowed, powering a damaged radiator to warm the shuttle.

The survival kit had a week’s worth of rations, but if she stayed put and conserved her energy, Iridescence estimated there were enough calories to last up to three weeks. She divided her food up into smaller portions and set the bag aside. She took a small pot from the bag, collected snow from outside her shuttle, and heated up some powdered stew.

“This-” she started to complain to herself before she actually realized how she felt about it. Food, water, and shelter wasn’t a problem, and nearly half the station broke off during the accident. She knew there was help out there.

The setback was huge, of course. The lower decks of the station had all the research materials, months of work gathered on a single databank. There were backups, of course, but the newest data definitely hadn’t been stored yet.

She leaned against the cold metal wall of the shuttle. Iridescence figured she was to blame for not submitting her reports on time. Nevertheless, she was on the surface of the planet now. Hundreds of samples could be taken just by stepping outside of her shuttle.

The strange blue trees, the alien animals picked up by thermal imaging, even the soil itself, they all intrigued her. Maybe getting off the orbiting station wasn’t so bad. Maybe-

A clunking sound disrupted her thoughts just as her stew began to boil. Again and again, like stones being pelted against the metal hull. At first, she thought it was the storm. It brought heavy snow, so why not hail? The problem was, hail didn’t pick one spot to land on repeatedly.

Iridescence stood up and grabbed a flare from the survival kit. Eldyrea’s animals were bizarre, seeming almost like they were fusions of regular creatures. Deers with wings, misshapen bears, anything could’ve been outside her shuttle.

But, animals feared fire, or at least that’s what the survival guides all said. Iridescence held the flare tight in her mouth as she worked on the hatch, pushing her way out to confront the thing bashing on her shelter.

Before she could get a clear look at the thing, something sharp flew at her and narrowly grazed her cheek. Acting on reflect alone, she slammed the flare against the shuttle and threw the burning stick back at the thing that attacked her.

To her shock, the animal jumped on two legs and evaded the flare. Through the snowstorm, it was hard to get a good look at the creature, but it was clearly chimeric like the rest of Eldyrea’s animals. The way it walked, it clearly had hooves like a kirin or hippogriff, but its body was furless. It had wings, but no feathers or membrane across it, only bone.

“Hey!” she yelled at it, hoping the animal would be spooked by the noise. From what little she picked up from the soldiers’ survival training, sounding large and intimidating was another way to keep away wild animals. Though, she got a little more than she expected.

A second object came at her, but this time she got a good look at it. Being bipedal, the creature was free to raise a spear in one of its arms. Iridescence shrieked and stumbled back, managing to drop below the weapon’s trajectory as it flew over her head.

Magic surged to her horn and she acted in defence of her life. The leaves in the blue trees above them flailed in the wind, becoming heavier and harder until they shone like freshly-polished steel. Too heavy for the branches, the wind flung the metal leaves down into the snow, raining their thin edges against the creature.

It flinched, but seemed confused and annoyed by the storm of metal leaves rather than injured. Iridescence worried it only angered it, but before she decided to make a dash back into her shuttle, the creature turned tail and fled into the trees, its silhouette completely occluded by the falling snow.

Now Iridescence was sure about her feelings. “This really sucks.”

Comments

[Nitro Indigo]

I like the atmosphere, and how you conveyed each character's deal.

Nitpick: In canon, dragons have one-word names and kirin have two-word names.