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They have a split second warning before it happens. Every Amoenei on the command deck grabs their heads at the same time and cries out. Rhitahtyn is reaching out for Lord Baelsar's shoulder when the lesser moon explodes.
The world is on fire. The ship jerks abruptly. The shockwaves slam against the prow and the vessel rolls slightly. The peregrini yell panicked reports and updates over top of each other. The Amoenei pull their shaking hands from their heads and force them onto navigation controls.
Then the dragon roars.
The dragon? Rhitahtyn thinks, and then the ship is plunged into whirling eddies of disrupted skies. The currents from each massive wingbeat batter the ship and set off collision alarms. The roaring updrafts from the pieces of the moon detonating below turn the skies into a roiling bucking mess.
Lord Baelsar stands utterly still, helmet trained silently on the display in front of him. He does not give the order to retreat. He does not give the order to stay. Rhitahtyn is not his Tribunus, but tol Laurus had been sent down below with a compliment of Frumentarii and a stealth Reaper and that means she's probably dead. So Rhitahtyn gives the order instead.
"Evasive manoeuvres, and get us back to Ala Mhigan airspace!," he says, as calmly but loudly as he can. The engines whine against the strain as the flight techs comply with all haste.
Rhitahtyn is not a Amoenei, with their third eyes and eerie 360 degree senses. What he is, is occupied entirely with saving the Auxilia and everyone onboard from the unfolding fiery disaster. This is why he doesn't notice mal Scaeva nearly has his hand on the drop hatch release switch until it's almost too late.
With no time for grace, he forces himself across the deck faster than he's ever moved and slams into Scaeva right as his fingers brush the edge of the button. In time, but barely.
His heart is racing. "Do you want to get us killed!" he roars.
He is not prepared for Scaeva to twist and throw an elbow into his jaw. Rhitahtyn reels, and it gives Scaeva enough freedom to wriggle forward and kick Rhitahtyn's nose in. The pain is electric. The fury is not. Scaeva darts for the hatch - again! - and Rhitahtyn lurches forward on his knees to grab hold of Scaeva's legs and drop him. Scaeva hits the metal third-eye first. Rhitahtyn doesn't hesitate. Through the hazy taste of blood he scrambles up to dig a knee into man's back. He pins Scaeva to the ground and whips one forearm chokingly around his throat.
"Stand down!" he orders. Surprisingly, Scaeva still struggles desperately against Rhitahtyn, his efforts ceaseless even as they get weaker, and weaker, and more jerky with the lack of oxygen. He's going to get himself killed, Rhitahtyn realizes. He's not going to stop and Rhitahtyn's going to have to hold him here until he's dead.
Just then, he goes limp, and a hiss which sounds almost like a word escapes him. Mindful of his arms, Rhitahtyn leans forward.
The fractured gasps, Rhitahtyn realizes, are not just from the chokehold.
Scaeva's crying.
Scaeva, who'd treated the whole mission with unbridled disdain, who had to be forced onto the ship, who only went willingly after Junius demanded he go and put an end to this ridiculousness-
The part of Rhitahtyn that is focused on surviving stills, and he remembers why they are here.
Officially, the Auxilia and its officers were here to render support to the VII. Unofficially, they were here to slow or even halt the devastation of van Darnus' plan. Beyond that...
Rhitahtyn looks over to Lord Baelsar, who is still silently facing the screens, still watching the world erupt into flashes of gold and red. Meteors are streaming along the dragon's wake, now. Gaius has a gauntlet pressed vacantly against the upper right side of his breastplate. He has a cluster of raised scars there, from when he'd spent weeks in quarantine holding vigil over the primus architectus' sickened infant child.
The ground outside turns molten like lava.
"Please," Nero is saying, barely audible. "Please, I can still- I can get to him, I can- I can... I can't, not again, I can't-"
Rhitahtyn came to the Empire because it was supposed to prevent this kind of chaos. Where is their peace now, with their people dying in scores below? Where is there order now, when the strongest man Rhitahtyn knows has to watch his son die in the flames of a uncontrolled Legate's endless ambition, over the crime of a childish rebellion? Where is peace, in the deaths of their people, in the deaths of the Eorzeans who would have been their people, in the steel of the Auxilia which came here to stop it but could not and did not? Where?
...if there is no Empire here in this moment, if Rhitahtyn is all they have, then Rhitahtyn will have to do.
He pulls his arm off Nero, and instead bodily hauls him to his feet. He looks broken. Scaeva - haughty, impetuous, uncaring and unkind - looks for just this moment in time like a person who will never be put back together again in quite the same way.
Rhitahtyn looks him dead on, until Scaeva gives up on trying to look anywhere but. He tries to put the memories in his gaze, like some witch of old. He can see them even now, his friends, his family, his allies in his troupe. He can see the ways they bled, and starved, and fell. He can see the despair, and the truth that there would be no tomorrow, not one worth reaching. He can feel the blackness, sweeping through and climbing to his chest and choking him.
And he can also see the Wolf, who reached out his hand and gave Rhitahtyn the power to stop it.
He says the words his Lord said to him, all those years ago.
"Decide. Will you die with them?"
And when Nero looks like Rhitahtyn had felt, then, like the world was over and the only thing left to do was surrender, he says what he wishes his Lord had said.
"Decide," he says, "and never look back."
What it means to Scaeva, if it means anything like what it means to Rhitahtyn, if it means anything at to Scaeva at all, Rhitahtyn cannot say. All he can know for certain is that mal Scaeva shudders, then takes a breath, and another, and another. He looks up and meets Rhitahtyn's stare, and his eyes are dulled but they do move. He nods, once, jerky and unquiet, but he does nod.
"Good," Rhitahtyn says. "Now get to work."
The blaring bevy of klaxons fades back into Rhitahtyn's awareness. They hit mal Scaeva all at once, if his sudden look of alarm is anything to go by. He stumbles over to the flight crew, wincing like every other Amoenei whenever another flare streams by.
Rhitahtyn turns back to his Lord. His helmet is tilted up, towards the plating at the top of the deck. Rhitahtyn had been present in the aftermath of Bozja. Scaeva thinks he couldn't go through that again, but he could. Rhitahtyn knows what it looks like when someone really, truly could not endure the same thing twice. He reaches out to his Lord again, then bolts. Every Amoenei on the ship shivers, then drops. He is barely in time to catch hold of Lord Baelsar. He looks frantically to the screen, but instead of more hellish fires, he sees instead a titanic and violently bright sphere blocking out half of the atmosphere. A sense of violent dread hits his stomach.
"Lord Bael-" he says, and then the world is white, and Carteneau is over.