Chapter 14: Delving the currents

Final note, Chronicles of the Heroic Knight timeline happens 10 years later than canon.

6 months after chapter 13

Things had been quiet since the overwhelming defeat of Allania, from a military standpoint. Flaim and Valis were now much more accepting of their new ally as the tri-shot crossbow designs helped to offset the power of the repeating crossbows.

Despite the change, 160 Manaweaver troops were still enough to often put a severe hurt on an enemy many times their size due to their crossbows.

With refugees and immigrants from Allania, Kanon and other lands trickling in, Xapferey had to rapidly bolster his economy for dealing with the influx of people and their wages for their future jobs. Thankfully any and all foreign debt was cleared by selling runecrafted devices such as runecraft seeds which not only helped crops grow healthy and vermin free, they doubled the yield of all crops by halving the required growing times.

In the desert kingdom of Flaim, such magical devices were godsend where growing space was hard to come by. Secondly, Xapferey's northern allies were right on the doorstep of Shooting Star, a massive cranky and outright evil Dragon. As such, their western lands were fertile but unusable.

In response to the troubles of his allies and future attacks by Shooting Star or the other evil dragons such as Narse or Abram. Xapferey, Malika and Slain had designed the Mana Powered Assault Armor (MPAA). Said armor combined high technology and the best runecrafting they could add on and the prototype system was equipped with a veritable arsenal of weapons.

Despite the arrival of the runic seeds or rune-seeds as they were called by the layman, Flaim's growing season was hit hard this particular year due to the heat and many crops suffered from droughts. As such many decided to try their luck and colonize the reaches by Fire Dragon Mountain to secure enough food for the winter even with the misgivings and aid of Valis and Draconia on the matter.

As such, Xapferey was in the midst of Operation Drag and Drop as he named it. Drag and Drop involved sneaking into Abram's lair with their only package of disposable transport enhancers and beaming the evil Dragon into space where it would die from the cold and vacuum exposure.

Said plan was only good for one Dragon and Xapferey was confident he could take Shooting Star with the MPAA so he snuck off with Malika and the Flyer under cloak to Abram's island in the south of Lodoss.

"Last emitters are in place, are we ready? If we screw up, the plan is blown period."

"Beacon planted, energizing in 10 seconds," Malika reported from the Lodoss Flyer.

"Shit he's awake… And moving," The mighty blue Dragon rose and began leaving the area of the enhancers, in response Xapferey began muttering a very powerful spell under his breath completing it just before the Dragon moved out of range of the enhancers. Soon a pair of twirling square bands of energy connected by glowing green bars appeared around the blue Dragon.

The Dragon roared in challenge before it began pounding at the spell holding it, but with Xapferey reinforcing the magic, it held. Abram disappeared in blue light and his roar was cut off by his sudden appearance in vacuum.

"Abram is confirmed dead," Xapferey heard in his earpiece. ""However Shooting Star is moving on your northern allies for disturbing his hunting grounds.

"Great… when it rains it pours," the young gold grumbled. "Deploy the MPAA, have it meet me enroute.

"I have a lock, I'll provide a site to site transport while I use the Flyer to acquire the treasure.

"See if you can find the Soul Crystal Ball, we'll be likely needing to hide it if Wagnard tries for Kardis again."

"Tries?" Malika asked rhetorically "energizing," Xapferey disappeared and reappeared in midair halfway between Flaim and Draconia. Since the MPAA suit was based on elements from the Iron Man and Mijolnir armor systems it had a bulky look to it. Especially along the spine where the reactors and mana wells were placed. The armor deployed itself, opening up while Malika locked on to Xapferey's limb positions.

Being designed for a full Dragon, Xapferey had cut his whiskers; and considering the last time he had put on the suit, he had gotten part of the armor stuck after it trapped a couple whiskers. The armor had inadvertently borrowed from Iron Man's color schemes, as Xapferey based it on the red and gold flag of Draconia (gold Dragon on a red background).

The armor opened like a flower coming into bloom before it began encapsulating the young Dragon. The armor quickly took the form of a heavily armored Dragon. The young gold watched systems pop up all over his HUD and spoke to his AI through the earpiece.

"Malika you there?"

"Up and running, just as we practiced on the holodeck."

"Let's do it, raise shields and arm everything. Jets to full and standby all `maneuvering thrusters. Maximum burn," Xapferey ordered and the jets roared propelling the Dragon to mach two causing many to look in the clear sky in question at the rolling thunder.

Xapferey watched the ground pass under him at a ridiculous pace as it turned from arable to arid, then sand and then back to grasslands. The smell of smoke and fire assaulted Xapferey's nostrils despite the suit's air filters and the Dragon grimaced under his helmet.

Once Xapferey flew within visual range of Shooting Star he groaned. The dragon's head was bigger than his… whole… freaking… body. He then slowed to subsonic speeds and aimed his wrist-mounted machine gun firing the same caliber rounds as his G11.

"Eat this you overgrown gecko on steroids," he snarled as he opened fire. The large Dragon roared in surprised pain as the bullets dented or cut into his powerful scales. He let loose a long 15 second burst of gunfire into the Dragon's side before he activated the missile launcher. The missile fired straight at the monstrous Dragon before it deployed its MIRV attachments and the large missile and the secondary warheads impacted blowing great holes into it.

Swearing in surprise at the durability of the Great Dragon in face of advanced weaponry, Xapferey banked and pulsed his thrusters pushing him ahead of the great beast and activated another weapon. From the back of his armor came the specially designed shrapnel mines, as they bounced into Shooting Star's path before detonating all over him. Shooting Star snarled angrily before he unleashed a truly terrifying blast of flame at Xapferey.

The Dragon however tucked his right wing in and fired his right thrusters and deployed his air brakes carrying him out of the path of the flames and alongside the oversized brute. A beam of red energy lashed out from the emitters on his left leg and sliced into Shooting Star and the Dragon shrieked in agony.

The beam shut down a few seconds later, the micro phaser bank not having enough energy to sustain the beam for long or multiple beams. The fact of the matter was that Xapferey was in trouble. The Mark 0 MPAA (being a combat ready test bed) was not designed for prolonged combat and many of the systems were experimental and lacked the sufficient ammunition reserves needed to kill Shooting Star. Xapferey had just fired off the last of his missiles and his guns were displaying critical ammo warnings as he continued firing into the beast.

The younger Dragon swore angrily as his guns finally clicked empty. He forced Shooting Star to chase him with the last of his shrapnel mines and flew dangerously close to the ground at terminal velocity with the oversized four-winged Dragon chasing him towards his lair.

'Wait… wait… NOW!' Xapferey thought as he rotated his wings in his sockets and aided by brakes and inertial dampeners throughout the suit he halted in mid-air and Shooting Star smashed into the mountain before crashing through onto his horde and knocking himself silly by smashing through the stone and rock; combined with his injuries inflicted, the Dragon collapsed into unconsciousness.

"Can we finish him?" Xapferey asked Malika over the coms.

"Nope, your guns are completely dry, best head home and start making improvements."

"Yea… more ammo for all weapons for sure, might want to consider more inertial dampeners for the wing sockets, I think I pulled something."

"Deploying painkillers, you did strain your shoulder and wing muscles a little with that maneuver… think about what would have happened if you didn't have the suit."

"Rather not thanks… get us home."

"We're on our way, maximum burn?"

"Maximum burn," Xapferey agreed. "it's getting late and I want to get home."

The Dragon had no idea how right he was. The flight home was uneventful and Malika and Slayn greeted him at the gates of the castle. The inner and outer courtyards had small towns growing within their walls and traffic passed into and out of them through the opened gates to the village that was springing up around the castle.

"How did it go milord?" Slayn asked while Malika waited silently with a pensive look on her face."

"As well as could be expected, he's so damn big and durable he ran my guns dry."

"Not even the micro…phaser," Slayn still stumbled slightly over the word "emitters could finish him?"

"It hurt him bad, we're going to have to upgrade the ammunition stores if the MPAA-I has any hopes of finishing the brute if we have to launch again, Malika, begin rearming the MPAA and standby to build the MPAA-I once we have a viable refit."

"Very well."

"Meet me in the runecrafting room Malika, you too Slayn if you got the time."

"Regrettably I do not at the moment, I have found several with excellent potiential for magic and I have begun teaching them. I must continue building our own mage forces, please excuse me milord."

"Ok Slayn, I'll keep you as appraised as I can."

"Thank you."

Half an hour later, Xapferey decided to work in his personal chambers instead on the MPAA-I. He and Malika were busy debating the merits of changing or altering various weapons.

"Look Malika, the main issues with the bloody phasers were power. The emitters fire too powerful a beam. Hence why they burned out, I think phasers were a poor choice."

"Pulse phasers then?"

"No I'm thinking either smaller scale, unless we can put in a phaser bank or an entire phaser array."

"The main issue with that is power, we don't have room for the phaser array, nor the power. A phaser bank is possible, but it would make the leg bulkier and slower maneuvering. Plus it would take more energy from the reactor. We'd have to put in a secondary reactor and there I just no room right now. You yourself hated how bulky the reactor casing made the armor. But we don't have any dithlithium deposits to replace it with an Anti-matter reactor. Our supplies are needed for the Flyer and it would take a minimum of half to build a proper reactor. None of our probes have found any suitable dilithium deposits in the system either."

"Hmm… ok, strip the phaser, put in a prismatic ray weapon instead."

"Oh I see… hmmm, you'd have to maintain fire for a minimum of two minutes to properly kill a great Dragon."

"I'm well aware of the requirements of a weapon with a lensing effect," the lensing effect referred to a beam of energy that grew more powerful as the beam was maintained on a target.

"Unless you want to configure it for high energy focused bursts."

"Configure the design for dual settings, give me options depending on the situation. Stripping out the phasers will free room and power for other systems.

"All right, I'll get it done."

"Thanks Malika that will be all."

"Good night milord."

Watching the hologram wink out of the room, Xapferey got ready for bed, and he smiled as Deedlit shifted into him and he gently rubbed her belly.

"Good night my little one."

Vandakass Star System

Vanda prime orbit

Cilarista first fleet

At the same time Xapferey Manaweaver fell asleep, his greater alternate self was watching, not quite having finished watching over the young Dragon.

"So young Manaweaver, what to do?" Xapferey growled quietly as his mighty flagship shuddered; even the inertial dampeners were unable to completely quiet the effects of the massive weapons array of the Xanroth class vessel fired on the defenses of the planet below.

Xapferey turned his attention back to the multiverse, the question was how far did he want to go in his interference. The truth of the matter was Malkira, Manaweaver's future child would fall in love with a young man, his name: Merlin.

"How far do I need to take this? Decisions, decisions," Xapferey Sharnoras wondered his gold eyes gleaming with power.