Lord Malakor, the grumpy, shadow-king of his own, private, and now rapidly-falling-apart universe, was having a very bad day. His army of ghosts was being systematically busted. His spooky castle was being revealed to be nothing more than a spooky-looking cloud. And his brand-new, shiny, reality-bending super-weapon was currently in the process of turning itself into a universe-ending bomb.

And to top it all off, the cheerful, glowing, and ridiculously optimistic Wildflower was still punching him in his shadowy, metaphorical face.

He was a god. A king. A master of shadows and fear. And he was losing. Badly.

He looked at the overloading Reality Loom, which was now pulsing with a wild, angry light and making a sound like the universe gargling rocks. Then he looked at Ryan, whose own, golden-green light was now burning brighter and stronger than his own.

He could feel his entire shadow dimension, his home, his kingdom, his very soul, beginning to shake apart. The floor of his throne room was cracking. The shadowy walls were flickering. The whole, gloomy place was about to come crashing down.

He could not save his home and win this fight at the same time. He had to choose.

And Lord Malakor, for all his faults, was a king. And a king, above all else, protects his kingdom.

With a final, snarled curse at Ryan, a psychic scream that was full of pure, undiluted, and very salty rage, he made his choice.

He abandoned the duel. He let go of his fight with Ryan, his grand, cosmic ambition, his dream of ruling the universe. And he focused all of his power, every last bit of his shadowy, ancient will, on a single, desperate task.

He had to sever his connection to the overloading Loom. He had to cut the cord before the bomb went off and took him, and his entire, gloomy home, with it.

He chose to save himself.

A massive wave of raw, untamed, and very, very angry spacetime energy erupted from the Reality Loom. It was a chaotic storm of pure, uncontrolled reality, a tsunami of pure, cosmic power that had just been un-corked.

The "Odyssey" crew now had a new, and very urgent, problem.

They had won. Malakor had given up. But now, they had to escape a collapsing, alternate dimension, while towing a catastrophically unstable, universe-ending bomb behind them.

It was time to leave. Very, very quickly.

"Okay, new plan!" Scarlett's voice yelled over the comms, a voice that was somehow both panicked and having the time of her life. "Everyone back on the ship, right now! We are leaving! And we are not stopping for souvenirs!"

The away team teleported back to the "Odyssey" in a flash of light. The ship's engines roared to life. But flying out of a collapsing dimension is not like flying out of a normal, well-behaved star system.

The very space around them was coming apart. The impossible, shadowy structures were crumbling into nothingness. The dark, gloomy sky was cracking like a giant, glass ceiling. It was like trying to fly a starship through an earthquake that was happening in an Escher painting.

The "Odyssey" was torn and battered. Chunks of dissolving, shadowy reality slammed into its shields. Waves of pure, chaotic, spatial distortion rocked the ship, throwing the crew from one side of the bridge to the other.

Scarlett was fighting the controls with everything she had, her face a mask of fierce, focused concentration. But the chaos was too much. The path back to their own reality, the shimmering, silver doorway they had come through, was flickering, shrinking, and being tossed around like a leaf in a hurricane.

"I can't hold a course!" she yelled, her knuckles white on the controls. "The physics here are… they're not even suggestions anymore! They're just laughing at me!"

They were in a moment of sheer, desperate, and probably final desperation.

And in that moment, Scarlett did something she had never, ever done before. She was a pilot who relied on her own skill, her own instinct, her own gut. But her gut was currently telling her that they were all about to die. So, she tried something new.

She closed her eyes for a single, terrifying second. And she opened her mind.

She opened her mind completely to her deep, psychic, soul-bond with Ryan. She didn't just ask for his help. She let him in. She allowed his own, vast, cosmic perception to merge with her own, human, pilot's instinct.

For a few, breathtaking, and very strange seconds, they were one being.

She was no longer just Scarlett, the pilot. She was Scarlett-Ryan, a being who could feel the tearing fabric of reality with the senses of a god, and who could react to it with the lightning-fast reflexes of the best pilot in the galaxy.

She saw the path. Not with her eyes, but with her soul. It was not a straight line. It was a wild, impossible, twisting corkscrew of a path through the heart of the collapsing chaos. And she flew it perfectly.

The "Odyssey," a ship now being flown by the combined, and slightly terrifying, grace of a warrior and a god, danced through the storm. It ducked, it weaved, it spun, and it shot through the shrinking, shimmering doorway back to their own reality just as the entire shadow dimension behind them collapsed in on itself with a final, silent, and very grumpy pop.

They were back. They were in their own, normal, and beautifully boring universe. They were battered. They were bruised. They were probably going to need a lot of therapy.

But they were alive.

And they had the Reality Loom. They had managed to drag it through the doorway with them, a prize won from a collapsing kingdom.

They were victorious.

A shaky, exhausted cheer went up from the bridge of the "Odyssey."

But their victory celebration was cut short by the calm, and very worried, voice of Regent Vorlag, which was suddenly coming through their newly-restored communication channels.

A message had been waiting for them. And it was not good news.

"Welcome back, 'Odyssey,'" Vorlag's voice said, and there was a new, and very real, sense of urgency in its tone. "I hope your mission was a success. Because while you were gone… the Harvester has finished its work."

The main viewscreen flickered to life, showing them a live feed from their home sector.

The beautiful, terrible, black hole cathedral that the Gardener had built was now complete. And it was no longer just a sculpture. It was a weapon. A giant, reality-bending super-cannon.

And it was now aimed directly at the very heart of the Bastion Alliance.

It was aimed at Sector Gamma. It was aimed at their home.