The viewscreen showed the enemy gunship. It fired the final volley that would end the Chrysaora. Everyone braced, expecting to get blown to hell. Rex put his hand over his pocket with the S-Meat ration in it, to try to keep his Baby safe.

  Yorna had other ideas. She reached out and bent the universe to her will, causing one hell of a gravitational fissure to appear midway between the gunship and the Chrysaora. The trajectories of the three shots bent wildly around Yorna's spell, one down, one up, and the other mostly sideways.

  Everything nearby felt the gravitational pull; technically, the entire universe would too, eventually. Yorna shoved her violation of the laws of physics into the gunship and it folded in on itself into a ball of super heated, super dense material that used to metal and flesh.

  "Holy shit!" Sheena cried out.

  "That was fucking awesome!" Lucas added. "What... uhh what was that?"

  "Anger." Yorna replied. "Made manifest."

  Before it went nuclear Yorna dropped the gravity spell, and molten slag exploded out from the over-dense ball, raining super-heated material down on the jungle below. Good thing it rains there, often.

  Their whole ship shook. The Frexard above them was getting pounded.

  "Yorna," Bob said from her left hand. "Place a hand on Bethany and channel some mana into her. Give her a good strong boost, would you please, she can take it in that suit... I think."

  The sticky, goopy, mess of a dragon scion did as Bob suggested. She limped up to the captain's seat and placed her hand on Bethany's shoulder. Flix jumped off her head, and flew down to her hand, to watch, learn, and then copy. Flox was busy on her leg, continuing the spell that the tank had been using to repair her, slowly pulling in the ectoplasmic goop and forming it into leg meat, nerves, skin, and all that other fun stuff that goes in on in a human body.

  A pulse of mana flowed from Yorna to Bethany, a small but reasonable pulse as far as Yorna was concerned, but...

  Bethany roared back to consciousness feeling for all the universe like her blood was on fire with power. She felt as though she could boil the seas, and split the sky. Like she could throw a moon to crack a planet with her furious power if she wanted to, or maybe even snuff out a star.

  "PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER!!!" Bethany's eyes lit up the bridge glowing white with borrowed power. She took all that Yorna would give her, and with it wrapped not just the Chrysaora, but the Frexard too, in her shield spell. I was still present in her mind, lock in place because she'd spooled it up in her exosuit, but this new shield was hardened and ten layers thick.

  The fusillade from the destroyer only broke through two layers, and then only with the rounds from its largest cannons. The rest of the weapons weren't powerful enough to even burst a bubble. As they started to recharge their weapons, the ablative shield layers returned much faster.

  Flix grabbed onto Yorna's hip with his back legs, and Bethany with his front. He'd keep the mana channel opened like a little noodly umbilical cord. What a good boy.

  "I'm not entirely sure what just happened." The Nuphidri said. "But I think, thank you, Yorna?"

  "You're welcome, big blue alien woman..." She took a moment to recall her name, "Nuphidri?"

  "Correct." The Nuphidri smiled, then highlighted the enemy destroyer above them in the holo-display of the battle space. "Is there anything you can perhaps do about this vessel."

  "I have a plan." Bob said. "And it'll probably save most of the slaves. Yorna, Invert the gravity vector of this ship, and the Frexard above us please. When we're above the destroyer you can release the spell.

  "Okay." Yorna pulsed with power, and so long as she willed it, the entire Frexasaora started accelerating at 1.4g away from the planet below.

  "Lucas, c'mere m'boy. You'll have a hand in this too."

  "But I can't do magic." Lucas said, getting up and coming over anyway.

  "Bahh, that's just because you're ignorant of how. That meat suit you live in is perfectly capable of all manner of magical fuckery. Now scooch over in that brain."

  "Fine?" Lucas said, but it turned into a question as it came out. Bob took that as permission enough, and he Temporarily Enlightened Lucas, by taking over his whole body.

  The Destroyer started missing some of its shots, now that their target was suddenly accelerating much faster than was expected. As if by magic.

  In Lucas' body, Bob placed a hand on Yorna. Using all the subtly and skill of his many millennia, and all the power he could borrow from Yorna without burning dear untrained Lucas out, he multiplied the gravity vector of the Frexard, but not the Chrysaora. No, he had other plans for the little ship.

  The bigger ship rocketed away. When it was clear of enough atmosphere to maintain a warp bubble it blipped out of weapons range. In truth it maintained its warp bubble for only forty seven seconds before the damage to so many systems caught up to them, and they dropped out to await rescue from the Federation navy.

  Meanwhile Bethany's shield spell no longer had nearly so much surface area to cover, and so hardened more, and grew to thirty-one layers.

  "Sheena," Bob said, with Lucas' voice. "RAMMING SPEED!"

  She looked back at him in Lucas' body, but Lucas with spoke, "He's gonna show Yorna how to reinforce the structural integrity spell on the ship, and Bethany's shield is plenty strong now, I say fuckin' Ram!"

  Yorna and Bob dropped their gravity spells, to focus on keeping the ship from crumpling on impact. Bob started, and then Yorna copied, improved, and enhanced what he was doing.

  "RAM! RAM! RAM!" Rex tried to vote three times.

  "Abstain." The Nuphidri said.

  "FUUUUUCK THESE ASSHOLES!" little, shy, quiet Bethany screamed like a death metal vocalist. "DEATH TO SLAVER SCUM!!!"

  Sheena shrugged, "Already thought I was gonna die enough times today to keep me in therapy for eternity, what's one more." She grabbed the controls and set them on a collision course.

  Lucas' eyes were glowing, Bethany's eyes were glowing, Yorna's and the dragonlings eyes were glowing.

  "I wanna join the glowing eye club."

  Rex walked away from monitoring engine outputs, and put a hand on Yorna. Wouldn't you know it, his eyes started glowing too. Bob had told him he was a tiny baby wizard, and he just now realized that meant he could do magic. Taking what he knew of sword fighting and gunplay, he had to start from the basics.

  Rex... as a simple man, thought of a simple, basic spell. A punch spell. He pictured himself as a giant man floating in space. For Rex this didn't mean anything about obeying newtons laws, it was the mind of a simpleton. There was a floor his feet were somehow on in his mind picture in space, that was affixed to the ship. Unknowingly, Rex was actually practicing some of the finest basics of magic. For good clean magic a clear picture of the effect you want is required. Normally it helps if you're trying to accomplish is at least within the bounds of the laws of physics.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Rex balled up his fists in his mind-self, and as they were about to slam into the enemy destroyer, he threw a vicious upper-cut.

  This Kinetic strike hit like a rail gun shot, and blew the Destroyers whole forward shield emitter out, it overloaded the thing so badly it burst into flames.

  The Chrysaora slammed into the destroyer, and the sounds of metal and flesh ripping screamed into both ships. The Chrysaora was fine. Sixteen of Bethany's shield layers were gone, but nothing more. The destroyer on the other hand had a fresh Docking Port smashed into by an angry jellyfish.

  Both ships were part space ship, part not-quite-living-not-exactly-not-living flesh golem. All space ships of the time were. Rumors abound of the ancient past when ships themselves were full-golem and sentient, and not commanded as mere machines.

  Sheena killed the engines and parked the ship.

  Rex passed out. Hit the floor with a bigger thud than they had experienced ramming the damn thing.

  "Bob," Yorna said. "Open me a neat, easily repaired hole into that ship with Lucas please."

  "I can do better than that." Bob made Lucas reach out and bend a hole open, clean through to the front of their ship, right out the viewscreen. He folded it into a nice hallway with an airlock, two sets of hatches, and the equipment to repressurize and depressurize. "I've made a few ships in my day."

  Flix released Bethany, and Bob did the same, after a fashion, with Lucas. Yorna started walking down the new hall toward the hatch that used to be the viewscreen on the bridge, her limp already significantly improved.

  Lucas passed out, Bethany too. The boys were on the ground, and Bethany went limp again, strapped in the captain's chair. The other half of team 'glowing eyes': Yorna, Flix, and Flox, was still plenty conscious.

  "Sheena, come with us, please." Bob said, "Nuphidri, your mana isn't as... directly compatible with Yorna's. So keep the ship locked up tight, if you would. Make sure those two don't choke on their tongues."

  "I... What?" Sheena was busy being dumbfounded by the new air lock on the fucking bridge. It took her a second to process what Bob had asked of her. Meanwhile the Nuphidri just nodded, and went to roll the boys on their sides.

  "Hey kid, you wanna let me borrow your body to do some interesting and weird magic?" Bob asked, as he was carried past in Yorna's hand. "It'll probably leave you capable of all kinds of stuff afterward, like your friends... Unless Rex cooked himself. Gonna need to examine him later I think to see if he can still magic."

  "Sheena," Yorna turned to her, the air around her rippling with unfocused mana, "I need you and Bob to keep me from accidentally killing any innocents. Please... just let the ancient one's repository of magic knowledge inhabit your body, for a little while."

  "Man, you guys are laying it on thick." Sheena got up, pilfered the S-meat ration sticking out of Rex's pocket and handed it to the Nuphidri. "I'll allow it. If you promise me after we kill the captain and free the slaves we'll run away and make something to eat."

  "Agreed!" Bob said, gleefully flowing from his skull to Sheena's. Never before had he been allowed to possess so many people so freely. His maker feared he'd become addicted to it, and 'get weird about it.' Probably right.

  Shbobeena pulled the skull from Yorna's hand with magic and set it down on the pilot seat. 'See, we're coming back. My house is here.'

  She, Shbobeena being that she, walked up to Yorna and placed a hand on her shoulder, tapped off her well of power, and joined the glowing eyes club.

  Speaking of the glowing eye club. Flix joined Flox in working on Yorna's leghole. It was almost fully healed, and most of the goop still stuck to Yorna was used up.

  Together as they walked into the airlock Yorna sent out pings of detection magic. She could easily see who had a collar, and who did not. Who had a weapon, and who did not. And the fastest route to the captain that would not add more holes to the ship. Bob, being Bob, could also read all that same information from the returns on those same pings, and so Shbobeena also knew the way.

  They marched into the pirate ship, and immediately faced incoming fire. Shbobeena put a shield spell, much like Bethany's, but more refined, between them and the incoming fire. Yorna simply pinched closed the tips of guns, laser and otherwise, from a distance.

  A felidian pirate saw what happened to his friend when his blaster backfired and completely vaporized the man. Noticed his was likewise damaged, and for some reason he decided to try his claws instead. A charging, snarling, wild felidian leapt from cover... and with a lazy gesture he was turned into a red paste on the wall.

  "What the hell was that guy thinking?" Yorna chuckled.

  "I have no idea."

  A man with a gun, but also a collar, was shoved out into view from an intersecting hallway. Shbobeena shielded the man as his blaster was overloaded and thrown around the corner, at the asshole trying to use him as cannon fodder.

  There was a scream and blaster plasma roared around the confused, enslaved, but very much alive and unharmed man. Poor guy for sure thought he was also about to be dead. The shield protecting him dropped, and the rampaging sorceress and her armored backup moved on.

  They entered a stairwell. Sometimes these big vessels have rapid transit systems, but this destroyer wasn't quite large enough for that, so they had to take the stairs up a couple levels to the bridge.

  Three enslaved men were forced to try to shoot at them as they came up the stairs. Those poor guys were wrapped in magical bubble wrap and rolled down the stairs after their guns were stolen with a nice magical yoink. At the bottom they were released into a pile of notably uninjured confusion.

  At the top of the stairs, the two pirates that pushed their slaves out were forced to shoot one another with their guns. Yorna's entertainment, they were given gut shots. Painful, slow deaths if they didn't get any medical care. Their guns were thrown down the stairs.

  Yorna's limp was gone, Flox and Flix had finished their patch job. They climbed up onto her shoulders to watch, and learn more. "So Sheena, there's thousands and thousands of dragon eggs out there, right?"

  Bob yielded back, and let it be Sheena alone that spoke. "Estimates say near a million were left behind scattered all across the galaxy still when they stopped hatching. My government collects them, puts them in museums, but has a huge 'hatchery' that they protect. These assholes also collect them. Their Queen is the one that does the slave enchantments, it's said that any captain that brings back an egg gets a hundred slaves."

  "I see." Yorna's simmering, barely contained rage bent the walls and blew circuitry as they walked to the bridge on the top deck. Bob had to start running a kind of metaphysical defensive spell around around Sheena to keep her soul from being damaged while continuing to touch the Dragon Scion. "And do you happen to know where she keeps the eggs?"

  "I do not, but the captain might. Bob thinks he might even be able to extract that information from his brain if it survives the encounter with us. Easier if he remains alive, but not... strictly necessary."

  "Then it shall remain, at least, intact." They were outside the bridge, It had been sealed, and reinforced with a force field. "We'll see if I can contain myself on the alive part. Prepare yourselves."

  A ping of detection magic passed right through the walls for the freshest location data. The captain, his nine officers, along with over a dozen innocent slaves were lined up with weapons on the bridge, Hiding in cover behind various stations.

  Yorna reached out and turned the entire door to molten slag, as well as the force field emitters, and carried it with her across the threshold into the bridge as a ball of impending doom. The sparking hole in the bridge caused one of the pirate officers to break ranks and catch a shot in the back from the Captain's pistol.

  Shbobeena wrapped a tight personal shield shell around the two of them, and when the weapons opened fire they all found themselves to be about as effective as throwing marshmallows.

  To make them stop shooting - mostly because it tickled - Yorna ripped all the guns from their hands with magic and threw them to the other side of the bridge. Undaunted, the captain, a human, pulled a plasma grenade and threw it at the intruders.

  Yorna caught it and chuckled, "Nice toy," before she pulled every pirate officer on the bridge, save the captain, to it. It detonated leaving a pile of fried husks, of various and sundry species.

  In one hand, Yorna held the ball of molten door, with the other she dragged the captain from cover by his slaver's chain, that long looping amulet he wore.

  When he was on the ground in front of her she pulled that ball of door like taffy and made a searing prison for the man. She skewered him by the wrists and also through his ankles. Then she stretched it, and stuck it to the ceiling, making him a grotesque, screaming chandelier.

  "I'm going to need to you to try very hard to resist my friend poking around in your head for information. I think I'll learn mo-" He already gave it up. "Seriously... already. I barely had time to study that magic." She snapped and the searing molten metal cooled to room temperature, and screaming turned to a pathetic whimper.

  Bob had the location where the captain thought the Pirate Queen would be, if not her hoard of eggs. There was a base, the coordinates of which were not ever to be programmed into a computer. The man was basically screaming it in his thoughts a few layers down at all times. Bob ideablasted it over to Yorna.

  "Thanks Bob. You and Sheena the rest of the crew take good care of these two. I got a feeling they're supposed to grow up with you lot." She pulled the the whole Cursed Spaghetti from the soon to be human pi?ata and tossed it on the ground. "Feast, my children, and free them all."

  Flix and Flox jumped to work.

  "Yorna, no." Sheena felt her charging the spell, and with Bob aboard she knew what kind it was. "You're supposed to come eat S-Meat dinner with us, on the Chrysaora."

  She turned around, and hugged the younger woman in her exosuit. "I know we basically just met, but I like you Sheena. You're gonna be a great dragon mom. I'm sure they'll be able to help you all with your own little... collar problem. Keep a space set for me at the table, yeah."

  In a blink, Yorna was gone.