Moonrise ✔ [Complete]

53 Sunlight (Part 2)

The base's control room was in a state of chaos. But when Maeyune and Reo entered, all activity slowed to a halt.

Councilor Daylana Hart and the rest of the generals had gathered around the table at the bottom of the stairs. Their gazes lifted, and the rest of the room went silent.

Without a second to waste, Maeyune and Reo followed Deiyu down the stairs.

"Replay the footage," Deiyu said.

One of the officers leaned over the table and pressed a button on its panel. Maeyune and Reo directed their gazes to the head monitor, where the screen flashed to life and replayed a scene.

Displayed was the Wobeck harvester ship, black and formidable above the Beran desert. Alien ships and smaller fighter aircrafts swarmed the dark, gray sky around it.

The speakers in the room played sounds from the recording: a human soldier explaining details of enemy formations. His voice mixed with the harvester's steady, loud thrum as its purple beam drilled into the planet's surface. Within that purple beam, Maeyune could see green light swirling upward into the ship—Vaius's life energy, stolen and absorbed.

She stared as that same green light detonated. A stray, emerald ray shot outward, piercing through the Wobeck's purple energy and into the gray gloom above. A hole opened in the gloom, and beyond that hole, Maeyune saw blue sky. A column of golden sunlight tore through and skimmed the desert surface.

At the sight, soldiers in the recording muttered in confusion.

Then, to Maeyune and Reo's shock, silver and gold twisters erupted from the desert floor and crashed into the bottom end of the harvester ship.

The footage shook as if the individual behind the camera had leapt back in surprise. Shouts from the recording rumbled throughout the control room. When the camera straightened again, Maeyune saw the serpentine shapes within the silver and gold light.

There were two shapes: one with horns, the other antlers.

Their shapes attached to the bottom end of the alien ship that generated the purple beam. Wobeck aircrafts converged on the dragons, firing their plasma. But it was too late. The gods squeezed their bodies, and the bottom section of the ship erupted into debris.

Sounds of explosions and cracking metal echoed through the desert—through the speakers. The soldiers in the footage threw their fists to the sky and yelled in triumph.

And then the dragons were gone, disintegrating into emerald light. The gloom above filled the hole, and sunlight vanished. The footage cut to black.

The room had fallen deathly quiet as the recording had played.

General Soras turned to Maeyune and Reo. The entire room turned to them. The Beran general bounced his eyes from Maeyune to Reo, then back again.

Breaking the silence, he said, "I don't suppose you two had something to do with that?"

Maeyune and Reo stared wide-eyed at each other.

"This happened two days after you two went missing," Deiyu explained. "For ten whole seconds, you became the gods and immobilized their weapon. How did you do it?"

Reo opened his mouth. "Well, when a man loves a wo—Ow."

Maeyune kicked his ankle and ignored his dramatic grimace of pain.

"We found Vaius in a cave off-base," she said. "We...interacted with its life force, because we believed it would return my powers to me." Her eyes roved around the startled faces at the table. "Somehow, time had no effect on us. We didn't realize we were gone for two weeks."