***Tirnanog, Mount Aerie***

***Magnus***

The next day brought a reunion with my sister.

When Astra took us out to the carriage for the long-awaited round trip, Iv was already waiting there, dressed in very practical trousers and a cream coloured blouse.

“Ivonne! I didn't see you yesterday. Where have you been?” I asked once we were within comfortable talking distance. “I thought you would come running when we returned.”

Iv pursed her lips. “How am I supposed to come running when I did't even know you were back early? I am not the type to sit at home and anxiously wait for your return when you are supposed to be on a honeymoon trip!”

I coughed, unsure of how to reply. Guess I still hadn’t truly arrived in this strange new world. Everyone was referring to my outing with Astra as a honeymoon trip, but it hadn’t felt like one.

Without pause, my sister pulled a small notebook from a large pocket on her trouser's thigh and showed me a tightly packed timetable. “My new 'Mom' apparently thinks I am lacking in education. She had that old hag pack me a tight schedule. From morning till midday, I have theoretical courses for wildlife and animal behaviour, plus advanced math and calligraphy. Then I barely have the time to take a bite before I have practical sessions and the evening is blocked by hospital visits!”

“Who is a hag?” Astra asked in her friendliest tone while linking arms with me.

“Mary,” Iv stated unashamedly. “That woman is a taskmaster if I’ve ever seen one.”

Astra paled and whispered. “Don't let her hear that or things might get dire for you. Mary is mean enough to go through with making people’s lives miserable if they displease her.”

I felt uncertain whether I wanted to cheer on Iv for having the bravery to call out the old elder, or whether I should be warning my sister away. I didn't dare to trigger the woman because my sixth sense told me it would end badly – for me.

Instead, I chose to switch topics. “Hospital? Are you sick, Iv?”

“No, but Sienna is interested in some nerve relaxant inside my blood. She has me coming in daily for blood samples and additional tests,” my sister explained and shrugged. “I am fine with it as long as I am not treated like an experiment. Plus, it gives me a chance to see Thalia and Tor every day.”

“Who's Tor?” I asked.

“A friend I made.” Iv played with a lock of hair and grinned stupidly. “And before you try giving me the big brother routine, Tor's nice. You aren't allowed to bully him.”

I blinked, taken aback. “I had no intention of doing that. You've survived on your own for years. As long as you don't prove to me otherwise, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to choosing your friends.”

Iv gawked at me. “I thought I got my big brother back so I could sic you on people I dislike. Are you intending to be a stranger now?”

“Then let's see this Tor and give him some gas!” I proclaimed jokingly. How bad could it be if Thalia knew the guy? I hadn’t known her for long, but I was sure the woman would have said something if Tor was a bad influence. Her ability to look into people’s minds was uncanny, so as long as Thalia cleared the guy, I wasn’t worried about Iv’s safety.

“Maybe some other time?” Astra pulled me towards the carriage. “I am afraid the day is already allocated. We can call ourselves lucky if we manage the entire round trip till late evening. Twelve hours of daytime and thirteen stratas to visit. If we account for travel time, that’s half an hour for each strata.”

I laughed and allowed Astra to herd me and Iv into the carriage.

“Just out of interest, why do I have a glowsponge floating through my quarters?” Astra asked once we were sitting, derailing the conversation towards yet another topic. “Those things are weeds in the truest sense of the word. If we aren’t careful, we will have them growing all over the place.”

She was referring to the floating, orb-like sponge which we had encountered in the Maw. Interested in its ability to generate and more importantly, capture, hydrogen or whatever gas it used to float, I had pocketed the thing.

I remembered taking the plant out of my rucksack when I returned to our quarters last evening, fearing it might die if kept in a confined space for too long. “It’s something I was thinking about. I was impressed by its ability to generate and contain enough hydrogen to float around. I seriously can’t understand why nobody would use that to build airships or zeppelins. It would make it much easier to get around. Imagine us taking a zeppelin between the Old Camp and Mount Aerie!”

My partner pursed her pretty lips and smirked at me.

“What?” I creased my eyebrows, feeling like I was missing something.

“Nothing, dear.” She squeezed my cheek lovingly and giggled. “You will see.”

Astra’s tour was more like a guided bus tour than a real visit to pay the various stratas homage. Iv and I got to ride to points of interest while Astra played tour guide.

As it turned out, my first visit to the central cavern had shown me only some public areas where people from different stratas could mingle with each other.

We began with the first strata, led by Elias and Judy Walsh. According to Astra, the first provided the clan with general labour and other odd jobs. The people from the first were the ones who maintained the public facilities and provided other stratas with manual labour when tasks had to be outsourced.

Their quarters were the most down to earth I had seen so far in clan Aerie. Living mostly in wide hallways which had been cut into the mountain, the people were tightly packed but healthy. It was as much as the powerless could hope for.

Something sobering to see was that even here, I could barely make out any children. The closest were some teenagers on the verge of adulthood. It had been already pointed out that the clan was very protective of their next generation and practically hiding them away, but the true extent hadn’t sunk in yet.

On some level, I also expected to encounter something like slums among what could be called the clan’s lowest societal group, but I saw nobody who was too badly dressed or looked to require immediate help. Having a representative in the clan’s political leadership was an advantage.

We soon left what was essentially the first’s residential area.

The second strata belonged to Leo and Rita Brien. They specialized in what could only be called large manufactories where people operated various machines by hand to create all the odds and ends the clan’s population needed.

As a person from Earth who had grown up in a first-world nation, I was used to the idea of fully automated factories. What I witnessed here was a throwback to much simpler times.

Nonetheless, I felt impressed with the level of automation the Aerie had retained besides losing access to computers.

When we took a short detour through a manufactory for general tools, I got to witness first-hand how people could make do without electronics. The energy was provided by water pressure and computer controls had been replaced with pneumatic logic systems. It allowed the second strata to operate at a level close to the industrialization of the early 20th century. Some of the solutions these people had come up with were so mind-boggling that I couldn’t have reproduced it if they had handed me the finished pneumatic system to copy.

Being shown this, I now understood why the clans were seen as superpowers compared to the Old Camp.

Already knowing what was to come, the third strata’s mining operations weren’t a great surprise. Bruce and Travis Patel led a tight regime in their part of the mountain. Though, a jarring difference to the previous two stratas were the obvious signs of discontent among the third’s population.

Someone had painted offensive slogans on walls and I found more than one group of people listening to men on stages holding speeches.

Thankfully, Astra managed to avoid introducing us to the third’s underworld. If Etan was to be believed, then I would get in touch with this part of clan Aerie soon enough.

The fourth specialized in high-end weaponry and armour smithing. The carriage emerged into a large hall that was similar in design to the central living cavern but on a much smaller scale. Annie and Gilbert Kline, the fourth’s leaders, had a genuine little Mordor running here. I couldn’t see space which wasn’t taken up by some form of smithy or a related profession like leather making.

The first thing which came to my attention was that I was seeing much less automation here. Oh, they had their power tools, but everything felt like it was aimed at individualization and customization.

When I asked Astra about it, she explained how it wouldn’t make sense to manufacture large amounts of identical weapons. Which wasn’t to say there weren’t some mass-produced options out there. But in general, warriors and guards who made a living with fighting monsters preferred to have their gear custom fitted to their skills and often more importantly, their physique.

Unlike Earth’s militaries, these people upheld the quality and expertise of an individual above uniformity.

Visiting the fifth strata’s library was… eye opening? Hayne and Casey Ortega owned and managed a library. That was it. Well, not all of it but at least what I got to see first and foremost.

I knew it sounded extremely unimpressive by referring to it as just a library, but I doubted Earth itself could boast of having anything on this scale. When a society couldn’t rely on digital information storage, a truly mind boggling amount of paper was necessary to retain information. Only after thinking about it, I realized that back on Earth, I was probably carrying enough knowledge on my phone to fill a house if stored in paper format. Just by taking my e-book-library into account.

A shame that those bastard scientists took it from me before sending me off practically naked.

Anyway, the library had halls upon halls filled with books and people who did nothing but ensure the books were kept in good order and knowledge wasn’t lost.

It was eye-watering to learn that they also managed the fifteen churches of Gaia which were located all over the various stratas.

Something else the Ortegas had was a museum. And a highly interesting one at that. Safely protected inside glass cases, they had huge amounts of supposedly still working artefacts from home. Computer stations, tablets, cameras, they had gathered everything which could no longer be maintained but might hold value. Like hamsters.

I was somewhat displeased when I remembered they were in the anti-war camp.

We had to find a way to sway these people to our side.

Gwen and Trent Torres were leading the sixth strata, which was in charge of maintaining Aerie’s water system. Meaning, they also held the clan’s power system in their hands. Attached to this responsibility was maintenance of the colony’s original air ventilation system which ensured people wouldn’t suffocate down here.

A direct consequence was that the sixth’s central quarters weren’t as impressive to visit as the previous stratas, since their tasks took them all over the clan.

It was much the same for the seventh and the eighth.

Kayden and Suzanne Blare represented the seventh, which was a construction company in every sense of the word. They were largely taking the first’s and second’s produces and… building stuff.

Yeah, I guessed every city needed something like that. I know, I could have probably paid a lot more attention during the half-hour we spent there, but I just wasn’t a house-building guy.

If I ever decided to settle down, I would have just ordered an architect to copy a design I liked.

The eighth was under the watch of Elena and Kurtis Smyth and was responsible for transportation. They planned and maintained the transit tunnels which our carriage took. Aside from that, they also controlled an extensive network of lorry railways which ensured safe transportation to the most important locations and outposts all over Mount Aerie. Like the one we took from the foot of the mountain towards the central cavern.

Sienna and Richard Tate controlled the hospital, which belonged to the ninth. We had already seen more than enough of their profession, so we skipped that particular step of our guided tour.

Sadly, I had no doubt about having to see more than enough of their skills sooner or later.

Taming wild animals and farming were the tenth's fortes. In charge were Olga and Willard White. Though, the farming aspect of their operation was admittedly a little bland. The tenth maintained large halls with hydroponic farms, relying mainly on two different crops and tanks full with starfish.

They couldn’t be blamed.

Who in his right mind would put effort into providing a large variety of foods if everything had to be cooked into largely tasteless mush?

On the bright side, Astra pointed out that the beautiful waterfall pillar in the central cavern was also maintained by the tenth. It was the old colony’s landmark and had been kept in top condition throughout countless generations.

The eleventh was in charge of vehicles of all types and sizes, led by Hope and Ashton Hall. From carts to… I found myself admittedly a little dumbfounded when I saw people weave together what could only be the beginnings of a hot-air ballon. And they had an entire cavern which was filled with nothing but floating glowsponges, ready to harvest.

It took little to put one and one together from that after seeing Astra’s shit-eating grin.

Again, I had made the mistake of thinking of the people who were stranded in this world as savages. I took my failure in stride and could do nothing but promise to do better in the future.

“I think we can throw that sponge away once we get home,” I commented after leaving the glowsponge farm.

“Thought so.” Astra didn’t rub it in and instead snuggled into my arm.

“What I don’t get, why do you walk between the Old Camp and Mount Aerie if you have the industrial capabilities to make zeppelins?”

Astra sighed. “The short answer is that it was forbidden by the peace treaty between the clans, but you really should talk to my father about it if you want the details.”

The twelfth, in charge of hunting and gathering was another point to skip on our tour.

Our visit with the thirteenth strata was short and to the point, given our tenuous relationship with Kyra and Alex Mora.

Astra introduced us nonetheless to an extensive office complex with people whose profession I could only label as scribes.

The Mora were in charge of law and order throughout the clan. They managed cooperation between the various stratas and played judge for conflicts within the general population.

Thankfully, Astra explained they weren’t something like judge Dredd, judge and executioner in one. If a matter was brought to their attention, they would judge the case according to clan law and allow a strata’s guard to execute the judgement.

If it was a case with political ramifications, the council’s personal guard usually got involved as a somewhat neutral party.

But sometimes, if especially powerful people had to be apprehended, the twelfth would have to send out a hunting party, as Astra’s people had the strongest fighters. It was extremely rare for the council members themselves to be involved in the apprehension of criminals.

The fourteenth strata specialized in trading and exotic goods and was led by Harold and Xina Lloyd. Their main trading partners were the Caravaners, but they also sent out their own expeditions to uphold direct contacts with other clans. Accordingly, they operated a large warehouse complex and an attached auction house.

The auction house, located near the top of the central living cavern wasn’t much to talk about for someone who had seen countless theatres.

If there wasn’t an auction taking place, people would often use the stage to organize plays or operas for the public’s entertainment. There was a small but professional group of artists who had made it their goal to revive some of Earth’s entertainment culture.

Last but certainly not least, we had the fifteenth, led by Skye and Juliana Rumen.

To see their facilities, we had to take a railway lorry to the mountain’s top. There, they entertained a genuine underground hangar and I finally got to see what made inter-clan warfare even possible in a world where a wandering army was more likely to be eaten by monsters than to encounter the enemy.

Clan Aerie entertained a fleet of hundreds of what I could only call… airships?

They relied on giant versions of the glowsponges to keep them afloat, turning them into something similar to floating islands. Which was why I was reluctant to call these things zeppelins.

Essentially, they relied on the same principles as a zeppelin, but they were zeppelins taken to the next level.

Also, a whole third of the hangar system was dedicated to a tame drake colony.

What was a drake?

Well, it was a tame and very lean cross between an eastern and a western dragon of lore with four enormous wings. The body was almost snake-like when they drew in their stubby legs and, listen to that, they had a jet propulsion system!

“What the actual fuck?” I stood agape, looking after one of the animals, including rider, fart itself from one side of the huge hangar to the other. Admittedly, the sound was closer to a stuttering jet-engine running out of fuel, but it reminded me of southward winds blowing nonetheless.

“It flies by farting!” I exclaimed.

Astra quickly covered my mouth with a filament and looked around. “Don’t let any of the riders hear that or they might challenge you to a duel.”

I pointed at the creature closest to us and mumbled through the filament. “Mmh. Mhut-”

“I know how it looks.” Astra slapped my hand down. “Stop that, it’s rude. They aren’t farting! The drakes take in air through the gills along their necks. They then compress it with the muscles inside their bellies and expel it through a ‘sphincter’ that’s completely separated from their anus. All of it is their breathing apparatus. None is connected in any way or form to their digestion tract. They simply breathe in and… breathe out somewhere else.”

I raised my hands, admitting I simply had to accept this biological improbability as fact. For now. After all, it was right in front of me. How did something like this even evolve? Had drakes some amphibian ancestor who used octopus-like propulsion methods and simply decided one day to shoot out of the water and into the sky?

“What do they eat?” I asked, while eyeing the colony of huge animals warily.

“Glowsponge and other plants, but they definitely prefer glowsponge if given the choice,” Astra explained. “And they are a lot lighter than they look. Most of their main body is filled with the sponge’s gas.”

Meanwhile, Iv eyed the airships with a suspicious frown. “Is something that large even supposed to fly, given this world’s gravity? I mean, doesn’t the higher air pressure on Tirnanog make balloons an impossibility?”

My attention was drawn away from the drakes. “Iv, what was your grade in physics?”

She looked at me, confused. “I never had physics while I was with the Thich.”

I curled my fingers, imagining to strangle someone who was lucky enough to be out of my reach right now. Once I had my impulses back under control, I placed a hand on Iv’s shoulder.

“Iv, buoyancy has nothing to do with the strength of gravity within a given system.” Well, aside from finding yourself inside a black hole, but there was no sense in needlessly confusing her. “It’s just about something displacing more mass than the displaced volume of liquid or gas around it would weigh. As long as that’s taken care of, things can float no matter a planet’s gravity.

“On the same account, I don’t believe Tirnanog’s air pressure is that much higher or lower than Earth’s. I’ve cooked a lot of stew since coming here, and I haven’t noticed much of a difference in the boiling point of water, nor did my eardrums pop when they threw me through the portal. Air pressure isn’t just influenced by the strength of gravity. It’s also about the amount of air above you. Which means Tirnanog’s atmospheric layers just have to be smaller than Earth’s to explain the conditions. Less air above us means less pressure, capisce?”

Iv’s eyes flicked to Astra, searching for help. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

Meaning, she understood nothing I had just said.

I looked towards Astra who wore suddenly a distant expression and stared into the middle distance.

I sighed. “I think I’ll have to talk to Teresa. Maybe she can have a practical physics component added to those Math lessons you mentioned.”

“Nooooo!” Iv wailed with the typical stubbornness of a student.

I patted her shoulder with a smile. “Don’t worry. I am sure Astra will be elated to join you.”

My wife coughed, but didn’t dare to speak up.

Eventually, the tiring tour came to an end and we returned to the mansion with me being a lot wiser about clan Aerie’s capabilities.