The heavy high-pressure doors of the Aethelgard’s lower galley hissed open. Chief Engineer Szabo emerged pushing a massive, two-tiered heavy-duty cargo dolly.
The scent drifted onto the watching deck. Then, five distinct pairs of ears and nostrils perked up with violent, uninhibited interest.
“Alright, you hungry freeloaders!” Szabo bellowed, a broad, mischievous grin splitting his weathered face as he wheeled the cart onto the deck. “You saved the sun, you saved the ship, and you saved my miserable hide! Back on Earth, the high-society tamers feed their beasts sterile nutrient paste in silver bowls. But on Szabo’s ship, we eat like kings!”
With a dramatic flourish, Szabo pulled back the heavy burlap tarpaulins covering the lower tier of the dolly.
Revealed beneath were four massive wooden crates filled to the brim with giant heads of Frost-Vein Mountain Cabbages. Each cabbage was the size of a beach ball, its thick, crisp leaves veined with shimmering pale-blue frost mana, freshly harvested from the high-sky ice-slow farms of the northern plateaus.
From the center of the terrace, Titus’s eyes flew open.
The ancient Northern Xuanwu didn’t merely stir. His entire twenty-two-metric-ton bulk surged forward with surprising, lumbering agility. His four pillar-like legs drove into the deck with thunderous thuds. THUD-THUD! Titus pushed his massive dark rock head right into the front of the cart, his ancient nostrils flaring with wild, rapturous ecstasy as he smelled the icy, stone-rich cabbage leaves.
