Chapter 470: 20: Moonstruck

They went to the Moon.

Harmony didn't seem at all surprised to learn that Jade's friend Eric actually was Appella's player.

The expansion that opened up the Moon didn't open up the teleportation portals that were already waiting. Jade's ship, as prepared for the voyage to the Moon as he could make it, wasn't alone. 

Hundreds of enchanted vessels rose into the sky within minutes of the update. Thousands sailed within the first hour. 

Jade's ship carried the two players most important to him into the sky, even while his memories argued that there had been others, just as important, that had been left behind. He didn't even know if those people still played Living Jade Empire over a decade later.

A coin with a limitless symbol weighed heavily in his mind as Jade realized that Hisui could just ask. The largest dragons in the sky surfed the boundary of the atmosphere at the top of the sky. One leapt higher for a moment, before falling back into the sea of air with a completely unrealistic splash.

As the drops of air fell back into the sky overhead, he couldn't help thinking that it was the most unrealistic portrayal that anyone could ever have come up with. And yet, it was so fitting.

Jade actually felt a little surprised when Appella demanded suddenly, "Why aren't there any flying carpets? We can SEE the moon!"

"But no one has visited it yet, isn't that what's blocking all of the magical transportation methods?" Skyheart Snowsong calmly asked in return.

Jade didn't want to admit that he was a little jealous of the accord that the two women… his two friends… seemed to have instantly regained without the hours of conversation that Hisui and Appella had needed. But he was a little jealous.

Appella scoffed and argued, "Wizards don't have to walk to the top of every mountain that they can teleport to the top of!"

--

The largest dragons, the ones larger than the Imperial Palace and all of its islands together, slowly shrank as the little ship flew higher.

The vast dragons shrank to the size of pumpkins, to the size of apples… they were barely the size of a walnut before the moon finally appeared to grow closer. Nothing attacked the little ship. No storms stirred the vacuum they sailed into.

Despite the lack of air, the stars still shimmered and flexed as though an atmosphere still moved between the distant lights and the traveler's eyes. Appella and Harmony had stopped talking and both stared into space as though enraptured. Jade found his own gaze drawn back to the instruments he had created.

There was no air surrounding them, but there was energy. A LOT of energy. If a real planet had this much energy floating around it, it would be burning like a sun.

"It's THE dragon," Appella whispered with the intensity of a shout.

Jade glanced at her face. She… he, Eric, had played the only character Jade knew of who had ridden a dragon to the top of the sky before. He gazed upward to see if he could spot what she was looking at.

The stars still shimmered, but they also moved slowly. The constellations were similar to Earthly ones, but they were a bit different. They contained more stars, and the river that the Milky Way drew across the sky looked more like a spine.

Jade's eyes widened, as he finally caught ahold of the vastness of the shape that Appella was staring at.

"It IS a game of legends," Skyheart Snowsong murmured.

"Then the Sun… ?" Appella asked breathlessly.

Both of them turned to Hisui as though he could answer the question. He stared upward at stars that weren't distant suns. At stars that were the shining reflections on the scales of the vast dragon that wrapped around the world.

He followed the lines that were created by immense limbs and saw that the Moon wasn't floating as freely as he had assumed. The deepest dents had been left by the claws that curved around that sphere. He gulped.

"Hisui?" Harmony's voice asked.

"The Moon… should actually be unlocked, shouldn't it?" he asked incredulously. "The update said…"

His voice trailed off. The update hadn't actually said that. It had said that the Moon's server had been connected. His eyes moved to scan the hundreds of other vessels that were also traveling toward the shining globe ahead.

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Some of the ships had jetted toward the Moon fast enough that they were ahead of Jade's little vessel. Others seemed to be floundering just past the reach of the atmosphere below them. Those obviously hadn't taken the lack of anything to push against into consideration. Some even appeared to be sailing on the surface of the sky below them.

The black dragon with gleaming scales, that illustrated the endless night beyond the Living Jade Empire, didn't seem to be aware of the ships flying toward the bright "pearl" held in its claws. But… they couldn't see its eyes. They couldn't even see its head. Surely they wouldn't have to fight it. 

"It's too big," Jade blurted. "The world it surrounds has to seem like a tiny stone from its perspective. We're microscopic!"

"What if the Heart Moon is actually its heart?" Apella suggested.

Jade's dwarf and Harmony's elf both stared at Eric's human blankly, as though trying to make the question make sense. Jade was frantically communicating with his own server. Searching through the oldest records he still carried… listening to the ramblings of Lin Hao.

"It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, the moon is magical in a million legends worldwide. We'll just make it follow the moon…"

"Of course there are dragons at the top of the sky. The world dragon guards the game's existence."

"And if you ever swing upon a star… hahaha, they can be caught too. And kept in jars."

Someone was shaking him. He had frozen.

"Jade!" Appella shouted.

Jade frantically searched for impending danger, quickly scanned the little ship's instruments, and then glared at Appella. "What?" he demanded.

Despite the surface irritation, his heart was rejoicing. His friend stood at his side. Or in this case, directly in front of him.

"You're back!" she exclaimed.

"I didn't go anywhere," he objected.

"Not physically," Sky agreed laughingly.

"I was just trying to remember… I think…" Jade fumbled his explanation. "If that's a representation of the World Dragon, I think it will just act as… as a decoration. Like the original Jade Emperor, just an image representing the system."

Appella and Sky stared at him as blankly as he had stared at Appella earlier.

"What does that have to do with the Heart Moon?" Appella demanded.

"It'll probably just be holding that one in a different hand?" Jade suggested weakly. His eyes caught on the energy reading meter, and he added, "The Moons might be made of pure magic."

"So… why would the glow fade then?" Sky asked with interest.

"They promised we'd be able to land on it," Appella objected at the same time.

"I don't know," Jade admitted. 

He hadn't realized how long he had been searching his records either. The Moon was close enough that it was now growing vaster by the moment. The glow hadn't diminished either. 

A moment later he raised an arm to point at the shocking cloud that mushroomed up from the surface of the moon where the first jetted ship impacted solidly against it. There was no sound. They were still traveling in a vacuum, even if it was filled with magic.

"Decelerate!" Appella shouted.

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