007

Maiden Voyage

While much of Blue’s time had been consumed with designing and testing things related to the Skyseed, the fact remained that she was technically Vaughan’s apprentice and as such needed to learn things about advanced magic theory. Thus, the need for “lessons.”

Vaughan’s idea of “lessons” was nothing like the Academy’s. There was no lesson plan, no specific talk, nothing structured. Instead, he just asked her questions. Lots of questions that were often quite random. Yet, somehow, they inevitably ended up talking about some concept that Vaughan would then explain in detail and potentially even go grab some examples of. Most commonly these were topics relating to crystal core design, but there were many other options.

For instance, today’s topic was on the infamous “cooling problem.”

“Look, just put an ice cube in a sealable crystal box,” Blue was saying. “The cooling problem isn’t even much of an issue.”

They were currently in the room Blue had commandeered to be her “lab.” It was about half-filled with various plants and jars, the rest occupied with sketches and drawings related to the Skyseed. Vaughan was currently seated in a cushioned chair he had brought in just for this purpose. Blue didn’t have a seat; she preferred to work while standing, as was commonplace for most quadrupeds.

“Blue, there is more than just a practical concern…” He twirled a Red crystal out of his robes. “You can heat, but you cannot cool. Your little ‘icebox’ merely allows us to store something already cold, not to cool something down as an ice elemental would.”

“Icebox…” Blue’s expression became distant.

“The hunt for an arcane cooling device has been a long one that has ultimately gone nowhere. Every Color adds heat or does nothing an—Blue? Blue your mind has run elsewhere again.”

Blue held up a hoof. “Have you ever thought about how… strange Colored crystals are?”

Vaughan scratched his beard. “I suppose so. Quite different from everything else.”

“Just, think about the icebox. In a sealed, hollow box, the object within will never heat up because heat doesn’t transfer through crystals.”

Vaughan folded his hands together, deciding to go along with the change in topic. “Well, that’s not strictly true. Crystals do not conduct heat, but heat can still be transferred through them via vibration or light.”

“Encase the box in something black and don’t move it, problem solved. But that’s not my point. My point… is that it doesn’t conduct heat and that’s weird. Everything else does! Why shouldn’t they?”

“Do we have any idea what causes heat to transfer, though?”

Blue let out a whinny. “No, not really. Hot things transfer to cold things over time, not the other way around. Rub something enough or subject it to Red and it gets hotter. Barring the rare ice attribute, nothing just spontaneously cools; something colder has to take heat from it. I think.”

“That is a little beyond what we’ve researched or I’m familiar with, but I do know it’s very useful.” Vaughan put on a cheesy grin. “Your little ‘icebox’ is not the only use for this property. I’ve heard tales of mad wizards who went to volcanoes with crystalline shoes.”

“…That has to be a made up legend.”

“Maybe. Or maybe the shoes took as much effort to design as our Skyseed.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Regardless, my point. Crystals are weird! Their pure insulation property is just one thing in a long, long list. They’re the slipperiest thing in existence if cared for properly, grow in seven very specific shapes and Colors, can only be used by spirited people, naturally fuse together with other crystals of the same Color but will never do that with other Colors, and get smaller over time as they’re used!” She started pacing in a circle around the lab. “It’s like air, we take it for granted but there are so many bizarre properties and considerations surrounding it. What is air? Well, we still don’t know, but we’re closer. What is magic? Same response.”

“What is magic?” Vaughan nodded his head a few times, considering that one. “I suppose you could define it as any action that could be blocked by a Magenta Crystal.”

“That feels lacking.”

“It works, doesn’t it? All Crystals are blocked by Magenta interference, and if the person using the Magenta knows what they’re doing they can block attributes as well.”

“Attributes make even less sense,” Blue muttered. “The Crystals follow definite, predetermined rules that can be written down. Attributes can be basically anything. …But there are limits. In theory. That Jeh might prove wrong simply by existing.”

“Unless what she is isn’t an attribute?”

Blue stared at him with her trademark “you’re a moron” face. “Pretty sure the Academy would be aware of a third type of magic if there was such a thing.” She didn’t let Vaughan respond—because her comment had given her an idea. “Yes, types. Attributes and crystals are two different types. But if it wasn’t for Magenta working on both, we would have almost no reason to think they were related. Crystals appear everywhere in veins and mines. Attributes are restricted to spirited.”

“There has been much work done on that subject.”

Blue gave him a cheeky smile. “Oh, they’re not satisfied with the ‘Dia’s gift’ explanation either?”

“Even those who are satisfied still like to look into it, you know. Why, back in the day, Lila…” Vaughan frowned. “Now, how do I tell this without her biting my head off later?”

“She wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Blue deadpanned.

“That’s what you think,” Vaughan said with a low whistle. “Suffice it to say, Lila of the past was quite devoted and quite curious. Very curious. Wanted to solve all the ancient mysteries of Dia.”

“Dangerous work. You might find out that the Seekers were right all along.”

Vaughan raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You sympathize with their position?”

Blue shook her head. “Oh, no, I think they’re morons for trusting what they do. Ask a few questions and it becomes dubious rather quickly. But if you seek truth, you might not like what you find.” Blue gained a distant look. “But you must seek it anyway. To live a lie is to wrong yourself.”

Vaughan let out a low whistle. “I can’t tell if you’re wise or just young.”

“I’m distracted,” Blue asserted. “Back to the topic at hand: magic, what the heck is it. You mentioned work on the difference between crystals and attributes?”

“It’s nothing you weren’t already taught, unfortunately. Most of it comes up with nothing new. The connections keep getting reinforced, though. If you use enough of any Color of crystal, attributes in the area will be blocked. A—“

“Wait, hold that right there.” Blue tapped her hoof on the ground. “It’s like breathing.”

“…What?”

“Breathing. You know, we consume something from the air, use it up? What if this is exactly the same? Crystals consume ‘magic stuff’ or whatever from the air, making it so the attributes can’t ‘breathe.’ “

“That… actually sounds remarkably like Wizard Avocado’s limitation theory. There is a finite amount of energy that can be drawn from any point at any given time.”

“Seems reasonable.”

“But it was largely rejected on a more recent result—Gronge’s crystal test.”

“Never heard of that one.”

“Gronge was an Angler, an aquatic race with an attribute that gave them the ability to manipulate and control light coming out of a strange ‘luring’ organ of theirs. He used it as an indicator when attributes were being jammed. He set up a clever little arcane device that used Blue to accelerate the rate at which a simple Orange spell was used. Then, the moment his attributal lights went out, he told the device to start using a Red crystal to light a small fire nearby. It did.”

“…What.”

“The Orange had supposedly ‘drawn enough power from space’ to ‘hinder the attribute,’ but in this state Red could still cast more spells, meaning it hadn’t hit the ‘limit,’ suggesting such a limit does not exist. Or, at least, is much larger than we were led to believe.”

“That makes no sense, why would crystals jam attributes but not other crystals? I don’t eve—“

“Hey guys!” Jeh interrupted, almost tearing the door off its hinges as she lunged in, the black of her new bear furs making her look more predatory than usual in her lunge. “It’s almost ready it's almost ready!”

Blue blinked a few times. “There’s no way they’re almost done, we haven’t been in here that long.”

“Time is an illusion!” Jeh called as she ran back outside.

Vaughan stood up and stretched. “I suppose we better stop hermiting.”

“You’re the one who dragged me into ‘hermiting,’ ” Blue huffed.

“Yes. I did, didn’t I?” This thought appeared to amuse him to no end. “You’ll make a good wizard yet!”

“I feel the need to remind you that most wizards work in academia and are not assigned to tiny towns like you.”

“You think I was assigned?”

Blue tapped her hoof on the ground. “That’s just the norm—what are we doing!? It’s almost ready and we’re not gonna be there!” She reared up on her hind legs and sprinted out of the cabin at high speed. She burst through the door and came to a skidding stop in the familiar cataclysm that was Vaughan’s backyard. Today, however, one object took front and center: the Skyseed.

It wasn’t exactly how Blue had imagined it, but it was very close. The wooden fins had more variety in their grain, the connections for the glass-steel rods weren’t perfectly smooth, and the drive itself was a bit Yellower than she was expecting. All of this meant almost nothing to her: it might as well have been perfect, as far as her eyes were concerned. Granted, the lid hadn’t been screwed on so the top was just the opening of the jar, but she could see the lid to the side with the brass disc welded to it, so that wasn’t a concern.

Over the last few days, they’d had several people over to assist in building, but currently only Krays and Big G were there. Krays’ work with all the glass was all done by this point, but she refused to leave. Big G provided most of the muscle. He was here alone, but previously he’d brought an entire mining team to get the initial fin framework setup.

“Everything’s set,” Big G was telling Suro, who was currently standing on a crate. “Technically, once we’ve sealed the jar you should be able to fly it.”

“Yes!” Jeh shouted, performing a cartwheel out of excitement. “I am going to go to spaaaace! Yes! Bring it on, lemme in!”

“Hold it!” Vaughan called, coming out of the cabin. “We need to perform checks! Lots of checks.”

“But…” Jeh ran to the Skyseed and tried to hug it. This was rather hard to do since the craft was composed mostly of the narrow wooden fins, not giving her much to latch onto. She persisted anyway. “Doesn’t the Skyseed look ready?”

“It’s missing a lid.”

“Lid can’t go on until I do!”

“Potential language confusion,” Blue said. “The lid can’t go on until you go in, not on.”

Jeh blinked a few times. “Oh. Just when you think you’ve got this figured out…”

“Chin up, kid, you’ll get in eventually!” Krays called from her chair—apparently, she’d decided lounging around was a good idea. She even had a bright blue drink in her hands.

Wait… Blue’s eyes narrowed. “Krays, where did y—“

“Hi!” Seskii said from right next to Blue’s ear.

“Augh!” Blue took several steps back and stared in alarm at Seskii… who was just offering her a drink from a tray of brightly colored juices.

“I recommend the pink one, it’s the best,” Seskii said with a wink.

Blue, not one to refuse free food, levitated the drink off the tray—but continued to fix Seskii with a death glare. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to alleviate the suffering of hard workers! ” Seskii declared, holding her forearm to her forehead. “Nothing cheers people up on a long day like lemonade!”

“Only one of those is lemonade. …Where do you eve—“

Seskii had already moved on, giving Vaughan the lemonade. He curtly thanked her and then shot Blue a smug look.

Blue whinnied before turning back to the Skyseed. “Okay, so… Big G, is it really ready?”

Big G opened his mouth to respond, but Krays shouted for him. “You bet your tattered tail-bow it is!” Blue self-consciously checked the bow on her tail. It was a tad dirty and worn, but not tattered. “This fancy box is built exactly to the outrageously specific specifics and sporadic specifications of your spontaneous plan.”

Blue gestured at the uneven connections of the glass rods with the glass jar itself.

Krays shrugged. “Within reason, of course. You morons don’t have any idea how hard it is to work with glass inside of other glass.”

“…I’m sorry, did you just attempt to insult my intelligence?”

“Bold of you to insist it was merely an attempt.”

“Need I re—“

Suro coughed. “How about you not enter a vocal competition with the winner of every year’s shouting competition?”

This comment was long and strange enough to divert Blue’s train of thought. “Shouting competition?”

“The one we would hold if Krays didn’t exist.”

“There’s no way that ever existed.”

Suro only gave Blue a silent, enigmatic smile.

“So…” Jeh tapped her fingers together nervously. “Are we gonna get to those checks, or…?”

“Already been working on it,” Big G said as he ran his finger across the Skyseed’s exterior ring. “Fins, check. Glass, check. Drive works and all interfaces are accessible. Stress test…” He picked up a rock and threw it at the jar. “Check.”

Vaughan shook his head. “Not very scientific.”

“It works. Do you have any other tests?”

“Yes, actually, but I want Jeh inside to start them.”

Jeh jumped up. “All right! I’ve got my things right here!” She reached into her bear furs and pulled out a pack filled with a selection of produce from Mary’s garden, a medium-sized crystal of every Color, the book Races and Attributes of Ikyu, an oblong glass object with a bubble in it that worked as a level, and a notebook with a pencil.

“You’re forgetting your stabilizer,” Blue said.

“Uh… no.” Jeh pointed at the large Orange chunk sitting on the ground a few meters away. “That’s right there.”

“Ah. Well then…” Blue grinned at her. “Get in.”

Getting into the Skyseed wasn’t the most convenient thing ever, since the way in was on the top and to get up there required climbing. Thus, a simple and elegant solution had been devised: have Blue levitate Jeh inside.

Jeh remained still while she was in motion—moving around in unicorn telekinesis could make Blue lose control and drop Jeh right onto the fins, which was the last thing they wanted. However, once Blue had set her inside the jar and on top of the cushions within, Jeh let out a huge “woo-hoo!” and threw her hands into the air. One of her fists smacked into the steel-reinforced glass bar. Her fingers cracked, the bar did not.

“And that’s why you can trust us,” Krays said, grinning. “Super strong and reliable!”

“Bring on the lid!” Jeh called.

“Not yet!” Vaughan called. “We need to balance it first! Jeh, if you don’t mind, would you please activate the drive? We’ve run so many tests surely you sh—“

Jeh was already following the instruction. She grabbed the rods that surrounded the drive’s glass enclosure and started moving them around until both mechanisms within had been placed on their lowest setting. Once this was done, she grabbed a third rod and swiveled it directly upward; the direction the drive would push. After locking it into place, she picked up a small wrist band coated with numerous Magenta dots and slipped it on. “Ready to activate arcane systems!”

“Activate at minimum,” Vaughan cautioned.

Jeh rolled her eyes but did as instructed, pushing her will onto the Magenta band. A series of Magenta flashes coursed down a weave of circular crystal links that split into two paths: one heading to the air restorer, the other to the drive itself. Both devices sparked to brilliant life, though there was no discernable difference beyond this. The drive was too weak right now, and the air restorer never made any visible changes.

“Now, Jeh… slowly increase drive output.”

Jeh nodded, grabbing hold of one of the rods and moving it along the grooves in the glass casing, clicking the drive to the next strongest spell. Finding no result from this, she clicked it again, and again, each click increasing the drive’s glow. There was no other effect until Jeh clicked it up to the setting that could push more than the ship’s total weight.

This transition was a large enough jump that the Skyseed went from motionless to hopping off the ground in an instant. Upon feeling the launch, Jeh clicked the drive back down, making the Skyseed drop back down with a thud.

“Hop successful,” Vaughan said.

Jeh nodded, turning to adjust the smaller set of spells, increasing the force to the ship in small increments until, at last, the Skyseed slowly lifted its base from the ground. It was obvious that the side of the jar Jeh was sitting in had a tendency to dip due to the weight distribution, but Jeh countered that by using her Orange on the Skyseed’s underside brass disc.

“Blue, the sandbags,” Vaughan instructed.

Blue levitated two sandbags into the jar while it was still hovering, which Jeh arranged in a triangular formation with herself to balance everything out. It wasn’t a perfect balance by any means, but she was going to be manually correcting the tilt of the Skyseed so perfection was not required.

Jeh took a moment to examine her level: an oblong glass object with water and a bubble inside. It wasn’t as useful as Blue had originally thought it was going to be—on a moving object the bubble wouldn’t always float directly upward—but it could be used to determine the immediate direction of acceleration. Currently, since the Skyseed was being held relatively still, it worked as it normally would, letting Jeh know exactly when she had everything level.

“We’re good!” Jeh called. “I can balance it with just the bottom disc!” She gave everyone a smug smile before clicking the drive down slightly so the Skyseed could drift slowly back to the ground.

“Looks like she’s good…” Vaughan turned to Blue. “You’re up again.”

Blue nodded, taking a few deep breaths—this was going to be heavy. She picked up the jar’s lid, which had the upper disc welded to it. Unlike the bottom, which had a hole in the center for Jeh to look out of, the top was solid metal and had no such thing. It was an unfortunate limitation of the jar lid itself and they didn’t trust themselves to install a window into it that could handle the pressure differences.

Luckily, there wasn’t anything to crash into in the sky.

It took Blue considerable effort to levitate such a large chunk of solid metal, but she was able to place it gently on top of the Skyseed, at which point she turned it several times, tighter than she’d ever put it on before. “Sealed!” she called.

“Ready?” Jeh asked.

“I… I think so?” Vaughan scratched his beard. “Feels like we’re missing something.”

“Perhaps some bravado?” Suro suggested. “A speech to commemorate the occasion?”

Vaughan raised his eyebrows. “…Why?”

“It’s… yeah, a silly idea.”

“Why not just have a countdown?” Seskii suggested. “Start from ten, tell Jeh to go on zero. Just to make it feel right.”

Blue stared blankly at Seskii. “…What would that acc—“

“Ten!” Jeh started, gripping the rod that adjusted the secondary spells. “Nine!”

Blue facehooved. “Oh for the love of…”

“Eight!” Jeh said, with Suro, Krays, and Seskii joining in.

“It’s just a number!”

“Seven!”

“You’re all a bunch of morons.”

“Six!” now Vaughan had joined in, leaving only Blue and Big G silent. “Five!”

Blue rolled her eyes and tried—unsuccessfully—to tune the countdown out. “Four!” However, she was able to limit her annoyance by simply taking it all in. The Skyseed sat there, ready for flight. “Three!” A chilly breeze wafted through her mane, indicating the beginnings of autumn. “Two!” The sky was filled with puffy, calm clouds that seemed to frame the dim crescent moon. “One!”

Jeh switched from the secondary spell rod to the primary, grinning madly. “Zero~!”

She clicked it up one notch. Instead of the slow, lazy drift they had planned, the Skyseed violently jumped into the air, and this time Jeh didn’t turn it off immediately. It still wasn’t very fast—Blue could easily move faster at a brisk trot—but the speed was certainly alarming and prompted Blue to call out in panic. “Jeh! Don’t crash it!”

“I’m not!” Jeh was yelling as loud as she could and Blue almost couldn’t hear it. “Mission: see Ikyu’s curvature and return! You can count on me!” Despite going faster than the initial plan, Jeh was still able to balance the Skyseed as it lifted higher and higher. All that practice had really meant something.

“Be careful!” Blue shouted back at her. She heard a response, but couldn’t make out any words.

For a time, nothing further was said. Everyone could only stare at the shape of the Skyseed as it floated higher and higher. Unlike previous experiments, it wasn’t as easy to keep track of: the glow of the drive was largely hidden by the bulk of the Skyseed, with only the small window in the bottom of the jar letting any light get to their eyes. The rest of the ship continued to float upward, level so far as those on the ground could tell.

Blue frowned. “I wish there was a way to talk to her while she was flying.”

“You could go with her next time,” Vaughan suggested.

Blue whinnied. “It’d be convenient. She’d be able to tell us what was happening as it happened. Right now we just… egh.” Looking up, she found it difficult to find the Skyseed. “I hate waiting.”

“You waited several months to build this thing,” Big G pointed out. “You can wait a day.”

“Six hours. That’s how long we expect.” Blue furrowed her brow. “Jeh might try to go even faster, though. Vaughan we never should have designed that drive with the capacity for that, she’s just—“

“She won’t do anything she doesn’t think she can do,” Vaughan said.

“She thinks she’s invincible.”

“And she’d like to be in space rather than crash,” Vaughan countered. “She’ll be fine.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about…”

“Yes it is,” Seskii said, punctuating the comment with a sip of her cherry juice.

Krays snapped her fingers. “She’s got you there.”

Suro put a paw to Blue’s leg. “It’s okay, Blue. We just need to trust her. She’ll be able to follow this through.”

Blue frowned. “…But we know so little and…”

“And when she comes back we’ll know more. That’s how this works. I believe you were the one who told me that when I asked about your plant experiments.”

Blue tilted her head to the side. “Heheh… yeah. Yeah, you’re right, fine. C’mon Vaughan, let’s go work on something while we wait.”

“Work on what?” Vaughan blinked. “The ship’s already flying. If it works, anyone who can push will into crystals could fly into space with enough training.”

“There are speed concerns. The Skyseed can get us off Ikyu, but it’s doubtful if it can make it to the Moon and we don’t think it can go anywhere else. Furthermore, we need to consider practical applications... Just come on, we’ve got stuff we can do.”

~~~

Jeh knew one thing for certain: everything would go wrong if she stopped pushing her will into the arcane devices on the Skyseed. The drive would cut and the air restorer would cease functioning, and she needed both of those things. Furthermore, activating the drive after cutting it would be “structurally unpleasant,” as Vaughan had put it earlier.

So Jeh had slept extra the night before and had brought along several sugary pastries from the Sourdough twins to keep herself awake and alert. Already, she was absent-mindedly eating one of the rolls while she continually used her Orange on the upper disc to maintain balance.

She found that it was noticeably easier to balance the Skyseed while it was in motion as opposed to levitating motionless—probably the fins doing their job channeling air properly. It became almost second nature to keep everything pointed up. Jeh felt more than a little proud about this—this was not a skill she had just remembered like virtually everything else, this was something she’d learned. Something new.

Admittedly, the actual flying part was kind of boring. Once she was decently high up it wasn’t easy to see anything. To the left, sky. To the right, the tip of Mt. Cascade, but it would soon be sky as well. Upward was blocked. Looking down had been very interesting, but once she got high enough that it was hard to tell buildings apart in Willow Hollow, it just looked like a colorful map.

The sensation of continually rising was a bit odd as well. She felt slightly heavier than usual, compressed even. It did nothing to impede her focus or enjoyment, but it was there nonetheless.

A gust of wind hit the Skyseed from the side. It shifted to the side slightly, but Jeh counteracted without breaking a sweat. Laughably easy, even.

She only waited for the second gust of wind to decide it was time for more. She clicked the main part of the drive to a higher setting, increasing her speed considerably. The fins became even more effective, lining the Skyseed up with the direction of motion. In addition, the feeling of heaviness increased. She was still going slow—and could make adjustments to the direction manually—but her speed far exceeded that which Vaughan had planned for her.

…The mission is just to get to the curvature then come back down. It didn’t say it had to take six hours, that’s just the expected time… Jeh grinned. I bet I can do it in one. Despite her desire to accelerate to maximum, she paced herself. She waited for gusts of wind, tested herself, and then pushed the drive to the next setting.

Every time she did, she felt heavier, but the fins also became more effective. More speed meant more air passing through them. Extra speed came with it extra chance for pilot error, however. With the drive pushing so hard it’d be much easier to enter a wild tailspin.

Jeh wasn’t one to be afraid of a little challenge. Vaughan had slapped her around everywhere in the rickety test chair; this ship behaved like an angel by comparison.

And then everything went white outside.

“Augh!” Jeh called, almost losing focus on balancing. Recognizing her nearly fatal error, she pushed the shock out of her mind and focused intently at the jar’s lid and upper disc. She even went so far as to click the drive’s setting back two notches, removing the artificial heaviness.

Satisfied that the Skyseed was stable, she glanced around at the white. The wispy, fluffy, mist-like…

I’m in a cloud.

She let out a laugh, clicked the drive back up to her previous setting, and continued her flight. A few seconds later she popped out of the cloud and could see sky all around—sky with a varied assortment of clouds. Above, below, sideways—she was in a sea of blue with wisps of white mass.

Jeh was fairly certain Vaughan had gotten this high on his initial trip, but had been a bit too focused to have a look around. By contrast, Jeh was relaxed and in a relatively stable situation. She could look around at the cloudy wonderland.

Up this high, she was mildly surprised to see life. Specks of green and blue drifted around the various clouds, and in the distance she could see a balloon whale drifting along with its mustache-like hairs. It had bright blue fabric along its side, which meant it was being used as a mount. Though why someone would want to fly all the way out here was a mystery—there wasn’t anything in this area of the world worth charting such a beast.

She also thought it looked silly. A whale with a mustache. Just simply amusing.

Another gust of wind came, forcing Jeh to re-adjust. With a stretch of her arms—discovering for the first time how hard it was to do that amidst the glass-steel rods—she continued her practice of testing herself and increasing the drive’s power.

She was far above what setting she was told to use at this point, but she didn’t particularly care. It had been smooth sailing so far.

~~~

“So…” Vaughan rolled out his star chart for Blue and Suro to see—everyone else had gone back to town. “This is the universe.” He pointed in the center. “There’s Ikyu, the moon, sun, planets… and then the very distant stars.”

“I find it odd that you can’t accurately tell how far away these things are,” Suro said.

“Astronomy isn’t easy,” Vaughan explained. “Without a telescope, it’s really hard. You need precise tools to measure the exact position of the planet in reference to the fixed stars at different locations on Ikyu at the same time, and that can only give basic estimates. Astronomers and Astrologers have done most of the hard work for us, though, since the motion of the stars is supposedly tied to fate.”

“Supposedly,” Blue emphasized. “There’s no real evidence for this. Crystals don’t react differently based on the stars, at the very least.”

“Regardless, we have only vague ideas of distances to the planets,” Vaughan said. “And we can’t get more precise measurements.”

“Actually…” Blue tapped her hoof a few times. “It might be possible to use the Skyseed to assist. We can take measurements at different altitudes. All we’d need is to figure out how high we are at any given time. Which could be accomplished by creating a constant velocity and an hourglass… hmm, that might actually be any more accurate than what we already have…”

“Might help the Astronomers figure out some of the issues they have,” Vaughan chuckled. “The ‘retrograde motion’ doesn’t sit well with them.”

“Hmm?” Suro tilted his head.

“The planets each have a time in their cycles where they start going backward for no discernable reason. The sun and moon, curiously, do not.”

“That… is interesting, to be sure.”

Vaughan scratched his beard. “Of course, the best way to figure out what happens is just to go there and find out. Which is why we’re here.”

Blue nodded. “Yes. With what we know, it’s clear that there’s virtually no air out past, say, the moon, so we might as well pretend it doesn’t exist. Our various destinations go around Ikyu in near-circles with occasional—but predictable—retrograde motion. The main difficulty is going to be reaching a moving target.”

“Why’s that a problem?” Suro asked.

Blue lifted up a pencil with her horn and gestured at Talu, the closest planet. “Talu goes this direction. If you point at it and fly straight at it…” She mimicked drawing a line on the chart without actually marking it. “It would have moved while you were flying to it.”

Suro nodded. “You’d have to fly at where it was going to be…”

“Which means a lot of planning. We’d have to know how fast we go in air, with less air, and… basically a lot of numbers.”

“I fear the complexity of those calculations,” Vaughan said. “Why not just design an improved ship that could handle any situation?”

“That… could work,” Blue admitted. “But we need to know more before we can design that. We can only talk theory right now. And I can see trying to actually go anywhere in space being a real issue.”

“I still want that moon rock,” Vaughan said.

Blue rolled her eyes. “Of course you do…”

~~~

Jeh had left the clouds behind a long time ago. When she looked down, she saw land, sea, and white covering most of it in complicated wisp patterns. It was something else entirely to see the sky from above.

She’d also noticed that the blue of the sky was dissipating—the sky around her was duller, while if she looked to the horizon she’d see more intense blue.

Is air… blue?

As fascinating as this was, she did get tired of staring at it eventually. Turning to the drive, she clicked its speed even higher—there was almost no wind hitting her anymore. She’d even stopped manually adjusting for stability for a few moments. Without anything to push the Skyseed off course, it remained where it had been going previously: up. Everything was much smoother.

This wasn’t to say there was no air out there. She could still hear it whizzing through the fins as she rose higher and higher. It just wasn’t affecting as much. It was also impossible to tell how fast she was going: she had no references aside from Ikyu itself, and from second to second there was no longer a discernible difference in height.

Just to satisfy her innate curiosity, she tried again to look at the horizon and determine how fast it was changing. The result: no change.

Except now the horizon had a slight curve to it.

“No…” Jeh said, grin widening. “Already?”

Already indeed, she had reached the point of the mission: the curvature of Ikyu was in her sights. The landmasses and mountains wrapped almost flatly around the curve, making it amazingly obvious that Ikyu was approximately spherical. It was a bit hard to take it all in at once—she could only barely see the curvature and Ikyu still felt like “ground” to her—but there was the proof.

She was supposed to go back down now.

Jeh’s grin faltered. That was… that was it? Just go down now, don’t go anywhere else? Don’t see what awaited further up?

She glanced around at her little ship. The air restorer was still working, the drive showed no signs of wearing down, and she didn’t feel tired. Plus, the mission was given a six-hour window. There was no way she’d been at this for more than an hour—though she wasn’t a good judge of time.

Nothing was wrong, the journey was actually getting easier…

“Screw it.” Jeh clicked the drive into the next position, increasing the push significantly. “Onwards and upwards!”

~~~

Blue glanced at the sun out the window, using it to quickly calculate the time.

It had been three hours. The halfway mark.

If Jeh went as fast as Blue suspected her of going, she should have been back by now.

Suro saw Blue’s face contorting in worry. “Blue, give her the time you said she had.”

“I’m just… geh.”

“We all designed the mission and agreed it was safe,” Vaughan said. “Go up, see curvature, come down.”

“But… what if there’s some kind of barrier around Ikyu? Something we can’t see, like air. What if we’re making a mistake, wh—“

“Then Jeh comes down as quickly as she can,” Vaughan said. “She has maps with her, remember? She can identify the shape of Kroan then narrow it down to Mount Cascade easily. For once, the bird’s-eye view take of maps will be exactly what she needs.”

“I know, I’m not a moron.” Blue frowned. “I just can’t shake the nagging doubt that there’s something we’ve forgotten.”

“Clearly, we don’t fully know how air works.”

“I mean something obvious.” She glanced outside again at the sun sitting amidst an idyllic sky with a handful of clouds. “Something very obvious…”

~~~

Jeh reached the highest setting on the drive.

Strange. It didn’t feel all that different. Did she feel heavier? Maybe slightly, or maybe she was just used to the sensation of being heavier. Regardless, it didn’t matter. This was as fast as she could go.

There was absolutely no wind, now. Looking out the sides of the jar, she could see some stars among a very dark sky, only a blue band sticking near the horizon reminding her that it was still day. The crescent moon was rather impressive, too. Although… it didn’t look any bigger.

It occurred to her she had no real sense of scale as to how far away the moon really was.

Jeh began to wonder where exactly she was going. The moon? Even she had to admit, the Skyseed might not be able to make it that far. She’d have to sleep at some point, and then the drive would stop and she’d fall right back down to Ikyu.

Still, the higher she went, the more stars she could see. As well as more of Ikyu. Entire continents were laid bare before her; verdant forests, sandy deserts, purple splotches of mushroom groves, what she swore was a Purple crystal larger than most cities…

Yeesh, that… I’m not sure what to think of that one.

There were actually several things on the surface of Ikyu’s waters that she’d noticed from this height. An eternal storm swirling in one of the oceans, a portion of another ocean that was crimson red, an island she swore moved every now and then…

Ikyu was so full of wonder and impossible things.

She turned to the moon. It was gray. There were no bright colors on it. It seemed dull, compared to the rainbow of Ikyu. Thoughts that maybe there was nothing up there of interest began to creep into Jeh’s mind.

Crack.

Jeh suddenly heard whistling coming from her side. She twisted herself sharply, discovering, to her horror, a tiny hole in the glass. It was no larger than a grain of sand, but Jeh could hear the air escaping through it at an alarming rate.

Scrambling—and paying no attention to the stability of the Skyseed—she opened up her box with all the crystals in it. She took out the Red one and held it to the hole, trying to heat the glass so it would seal itself up.

This was a supremely stupid decision since glass shatters when exposed to extreme heat gradients. While Krays had done her best on making the jar resilient, dealing with environmental temperatures was a far cry from someone trying to melt glass.

It was by dumb luck alone that Jeh didn’t shatter the entire Skyseed right then and there. She was graced with a small crack in the glass that warned her she was about to break the entire jar.

Idiot! Jeh kicked herself—there was a much easier answer. She picked up her backup Green crystal and held it to the hole and the small crack. The restoration worked wonders—patching the damage up. Since it was such a small hole the spell was able to borrow glass material from around without sacrificing structural integrity.

Jeh let out a sigh of relief—the whistling was gone. Her air was safe. Some had been lost, but she’d had more than she needed, and the restorer would keep it up.

She realized with some horror that the air restorer was no longer glowing. In fact, the Magenta conduits were shattered.

“What!?” she shouted to nobody, grabbing the shattered Magenta and stabbing her hand a few times in the process. She found an extremely tiny piece of metal amongst the Magenta shards.

A piece of metal that could conceivably have made a hole in a glass jar.

Her satisfaction at having found the culprit of all this did not last, for now she was down a significant chunk of air and had no air restorer.

Actually… Jeh glanced at the Green in her hand. That’s not strictly true. She ordered it to convert the air. She hoped it was working. If it wasn’t… she only had a few hours of air at best.

Sadly, Jeh did not trust herself to continue any further. She’d have to manually manage both the Orange and the Green while also watching the state of the drive. It was time to go back down before another little metal thing smashed through the jar and broke the drive.

Which meant it was time for a gear shift.

She stopped willing the drive to operate. It shut down immediately, and the sensation of being heavy was gone. She, her belongings, and her sandbags all started to float into the air. It was an incredibly nauseating experience, one that made her lose focus on both the Orange and the Green.

For once, however, space was forgiving. Nothing happened to her as she drifted inside the jar, staring blankly ahead.

Something inside of her clicked, and her grin returned. Using the support bars to drag herself around, she returned to the drive and unlocked its position, twisting it so the direction of force would be down.

Jeh noted that she’d gotten somewhat misaligned while she’d been floating around—the Skyseed’s bottom was no longer pointing directly at Ikyu, but toward the horizon. This was easy enough to fix by applying Orange to both discs at once and forcing the ship back into a relatively upright orientation.

Looking through the bottom window, she pointed herself right at Ikyu and turned the drive into the lowest setting.

She suddenly felt like she had weight again—except now the floor was the lid of the jar and Ikyu was above them. It was immensely disorienting—she preferred the weightless sensation. That said, she felt almost weightless like this.

Now that things were stable again, she looked “up” at Ikyu. She needed to find Willow Hollow by the shape of the landmasses and…

Clouds.

So many clouds, all over Ikyu.

Covering the land.

Jeh’s eyes widened. She tore the maps out of her belongings, discovering with horror that she couldn’t find the shape of the Kingdom of Kroan. It didn’t even look familiar.

Back up… back up… just take it slow…

Jeh exchanged the map of Kroan with a map of the known world. This gave her a lot more context—the shapes of continents, while clouded, were possible to differentiate. She found rather quickly that the quality of map left much to be desired: there was an entire mass of land not even on it, several shorelines were of different overall sizes, and a few things were awkwardly stretched.

However, she could identify the continents, and as such identify which one Kroan was on. This allowed her to narrow her search until she found a gulf-like area of the sea that was mostly covered with clouds.

That was her best shot. She used the Orange to point the Skyseed in that direction and increased the speed of the drive, gradually, back to maximum, all the while using the Green crystal to recycle air. That’s what she hoped she was doing, at least.

With the floor now the ceiling, it was an interesting ride. She was going down, but as far as her body was concerned, Ikyu was above her.

A few minutes later, it occurred to her that she was probably going faster than she’d ever gone previously. She wasn’t trying to go up, she was going down, and things already wanted to fall naturally. She was just pushing on it harder.

She grinned. She was going to be back before the time was up.

Assuming she landed anywhere near Willow Hollow. At this point, all she could be certain of was that she was going toward Kroan. The clouds were just in the way.

~~~

“Clouds,” Blue said, staring out the window.

“Eh?” Vaughan stopped drawing circles and planets in his notes. “Clouds?”

Blue pointed outside. “It’s gotten cloudy all of the sudden.”

“So it has.”

“Jeh is currently above the clouds.”

“…Yes?”

“Vaughan…” Blue’s left eye twitched. “How is she going to know where to land!?”

Vaughan stood up in alarm. “Oh.”

“How did we miss something as obvious as clouds!?”

“I don’t know! They’re just… there! The weather isn’t bad, it’s just…”

“Aaaaagh!” Blue rammed her head into the table. “She’s going to crash somewhere random and have no idea what to do or how t—“

“Snap out of it,” Vaughan said, picking up his scepter. “Assuming she’s still up there, we have time.”

“Time?”

“To make a beacon.”

“…Vaughan you aren’t a Purple wizard. You can’t ju—“

“I’m not using Purple.” He pulled out a large Red shard. “I’m using Red.”

“How are y—“

“I need more.” He ran out of the room and made his way to the main hall. It still felt empty, but now it proudly displayed the blueprints of the Skyseed. He was not here to revel in his accomplishments, however; he was here to get the Red powder.

“Blue!” He called back. “Get the burner ready!”

“You’re insane!” Blue called, nonetheless running to the backyard to do as he asked.

Vaughan didn’t have time to worry about using the proper containers—he grabbed a large bucket and drove it into the Red powder. The infinitesimal shards cut and damaged the bucket in several places, even making a few tiny holes that would be a mess to clean up later, but he didn’t care. He just needed a lot of easily accessible raw power.

Which was one of crystal powder’s many uses.

He ran outside with the bucket, arriving at Blue’s side of the operation: the burner. The arcane device largely consisted of a Magenta plate with a few other Colored crystals on the underside, all supported by three metal legs.

It was actually a rather simple arcane device, providing a way for a wizard to be in contact with large sums of powder without shredding their body. So long as a piece of powder was on the Magenta plate, Vaughan would be able to use it.

“Stabilized,” Blue reported, kicking the burner’s legs just to make sure it wasn’t about to fall apart. “You’re clear.”

Vaughan poured the powder on the burner, a mound of Red on Magenta. He quickly placed one of his hands on the edges of the Magenta plate, foregoing the interface crystals intended to assist with guiding his spell. He was going to put it in there directly so he could have the greatest control over his Red.

“It’s time to heat the sky.”

He willed the heat to condense, as he had on Mt. Cascade as a show of power. This time, however, he was using much, much more heat. The bundle of compressed fire became a deep, ominous blue and it formed above the burner, contrasting the brilliant Red of the spent powder. He had to control it using Blue and Green from his scepter—the Blue to increase his own reaction time, while the Green was cleverly keeping the heat from spreading to him or Blue by continually restoring the air between them. Had he not known how to create this little heat shield, it would have been much harder to do what he was trying to do.

Already, the powder was beginning to run out as Vaughan continually ordered it to burn more and more. The pile shrunk until it was nothing—and only then did Vaughan release.

A massive beam of blue, burning power shot right into the air. It started out as a narrow beam, but even a Red wizard of Vaughan’s skill was unable to maintain such a focused burst at a significant distance. Only a short way from the launch point, the beam began to diffuse into a wider arc, losing significant amounts of heat as it traveled. The raw, blue heat gave way to normal, billowing clouds of fire.

However, these fires reached the low-lying clouds. A torrent of air pressure twisted the wisps of gray in several directions but did not reveal the sky above.

“Do you… think she could have seen that?” Blue asked.

“Don’t know. She might not have been looking.” Vaughan picked up the bucket. “So we’re going to do it again.”

Blue blinked several times. “Vaughan you’re at the edge of your capacity…”

“I’m not about to let this all be for nothing!”

~~~

Vaughan’s beams were easily visible from the top of Mt. Cascade.

The leader of the Red Seekers—whose name was Joira—folded her hands together as her steeled gaze remained fixed forward. Another beam of fire had just come up from Vaughan’s cabin.

Clearly, a public demonstration of his power. His mastery over the Red.

How blasphemous.

“He should be put in his place,” Joira said.

“How?” one of the other Seekers asked.

Slowly, Joira turned to the massive Red crystal that grew on top of her home. She felt the Red embedded in her ears heat up on their own, without her giving instruction.

Slowly, a deeply malevolent, toothy grin came over her. “Why, with the Awakening, of course.”

“A-are you sure?”

She pointed at her Red earrings. “It’s time.”

~~~

Jeh frowned.

Why was it getting warmer?

It had been a little chilly earlier, but producing heat had been no issue for her with the Red crystal. It was just that higher elevations were colder, no big deal.

So as she got lower, she should have warmed up… back to normal early autumn temperatures. It was starting to feel like a summer midday in the Skyseed.

Jeh clicked her tongue. The last thing she needed right now was something else to go wrong. She was already feeling slight gusts of wind she needed to stabilize for while restoring the air and watching for any more signs of Willow Hollow. She hoped this heat didn’t mean anything.

The moment she thought this, she noticed the first trails of flame on the craft’s bottom, interfering with her view of Ikyu. Her first feeling was annoyance that fire was in the way. Her second was that of mild panic.

The fins were made of wood.

She needed to stop the heat, and she needed to stop it now. But… how!? What was even causing it?

Jeh really wished she was Blue at that moment. Blue could look at things and figure them out in an instant. Blue was a literal genius. Jeh was just a reckless blockhead who was about to burn the Skyseed to cinders without any idea of how to stop it.

She tore open her box, glaring at the crystals. Why can’t there be a cooling Color? She went through them all. Red would make the problem worse, Orange… she tried pushing the fire away, but that did nothing. Yellow was useless, Green… she tried to restore the area around the fire to what it was before, which successfully lessened the flames, but didn’t extinguish them. Blue…

Jeh’s eyes widened, dragging something Blue had said out of her memory.

“Ah, my namesake… go fast enough, you light on fire.”

Jeh remembered when she’d used Blue magic, how, the faster she had moved, the hotter she had gotten.

Immediately, Jeh turned the drive off. Instead of getting a weightless sensation this time, Jeh was all but thrown to the other side of the Skyseed, hitting one of the supporting rods hard enough to send the ship into a tumbling spin that only aggravated the flames.

Have to slow down, have to slow down. She made some attempt to right herself with her Orange, but in her tumbling state that was pointless. Soon, it would get hot enough to burn inside the Skyseed, and Jeh would be occupied with regenerating rather than stabilizing the ship.

She held up the Blue crystal. Slower.

From outside, it looked like the Skyseed stopped in midair, becoming completely motionless save for a few Blue sparkles. In reality, it was still moving, but it and everything within it was far too slow to be visually distinct.

As far as the air around the Skyseed was concerned, it was no longer barreling through at extreme velocities. The flames dissipated, a rushing wind blowing out the few fins that had actually caught on fire.

From Jeh’s perspective, everything was quite different. She was still falling at high speeds, but the world below was changing at an extreme rate. Cloud formations twisted and turned, the sun visibly moved closer to the horizon, and the glass retained the heat.

She released the command on the Blue gradually, and as she did so she adjusted the drive to point back in the “upward” direction. Unfortunately, the Skyseed was still tumbling, so this was currently of little use.

However, now that she was holding the Blue, Jeh had a solution. She just needed to be fast enough to manually adjust the discs.

She released the Blue crystal’s hold on the Skyseed, and realized with some horror that she’d gripped the crystal so hard as to shatter it and embed it in her hands. The pain wasn’t the concern—the concern was that she’d added enough surface area to the shards to make them burn faster. They were already much smaller than what she’d started with. Would she have enough to do what she needed to?

It didn’t matter. She had to try. She accelerated herself and only herself.

This turned out to be a mistake. When she had altered the speed of both herself and the Skyseed, there had been no relative difference between them. Altering just herself, however, meant that the forces between her and the Skyseed became very unbalanced. Initially, there was no real difference aside from perception. She was thrown across the Skyseed’s interior with enough force and speed to release a burst of flame.

Fortunately, nothing aside from Jeh herself got burned from the rush, but there was now a fair amount of smoke inside the jar. Gagging and coughing, Jeh completely dropped the thought of restoring the air—she just needed to regain control. She held the Orange chunk in the hand that wasn’t punctured a dozen times with Blue and grabbed hold of both the brass discs at once. She forced them to stop spinning.

With her accelerated senses, she had more than enough reaction time to counteract the effects. It was actually significantly easier to do so, requiring a lot less force than it otherwise would have.

Jeh grinned in the midst of her coughs. I like Blue crystals.

It was at this point the Blue she had was no longer sufficient for the level of acceleration she had been demanding. However, the crystals did what they could to accelerate as close to that point as possible, so Jeh was gradually brought back to the relative speed of the Skyseed.

As she turned the drive back on so it could push upward and slow them even further, she found herself thinking. What had even happened there? She was accelerating herself, but her actual speed was what the Skyseed’s speed was. But the Skyseed had also been spinning and she’d been spinning inside of it...

Probably something for Blue to test later: the use of her namesake in objects moving and spinning.

Jeh coughed again.

Right, have to be aware long enough to land. Now that the drive was pushing upward and slowing them down, the floor was the floor again. Downward was Ikyu. Specifically, downward was a bunch of clouds that almost completely covered the Kingdom of Kroan.

Jeh shook her head. That wasn’t good, that wasn’t good at all. She wasn’t going to be able to aim at a specific place for much longer. Some of the wispier clouds were already above her.

“Might as well just go straight d—“

A truly massive explosion thundered from below her, a burst of Red so immense that clouds parted in a circle around the crimson epicenter. Jeh had no idea what it was—it certainly wasn’t fire, that was for sure.

What she did know was that it had occurred on top of Mt. Cascade. The mountain was easily visible through the hole in the clouds.

Eh, I wasn’t that far off with my aim, Jeh thought. Now she knew where she needed to go. With a smirk, she used Orange to pivot the Skyseed toward the hole in the clouds.

Afterwhich she promptly slapped herself in the face for being a moron. The drive was currently pulling to slow her descent, if she was pointed directly at her destination she’d be pulled away.

She’d just… have to turn it the other way. Which made it look like she was pointed away, but it dragged her closer over time.

She let out another cough. C’mon Jeh, keep focused, keep focused… you’re almost there.

~~~

Blue stared, jaw hanging open, at Mt. Cascade. The roiling sphere of Red light at its peak dazzled her eyes while also filling her with a deep sense of dread.

“…I think they are trying to put me in my place,” Vaughan commented.

“H-how… what…?”

“They probably all went together to send a message to the Great Red Crystalline One or something,” Vaughan said with a dismissive hand. “It’s good for us. There’s no way Jeh misses that.”

Blue blinked a few times at the roiling sphere—which was slowly shrinking in size. “…I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thank Dia for the Red Seekers.”

“Assuming Jeh didn’t already try to land…” Vaughan put a hand to his head, looking up at the hole the Red light had made in the cloud cover. Blue followed suit but saw nothing.

The Red light dissipated into nothing, but the hole in the clouds remained. Blue thought she saw a balloon whale near the edge of the hole. What is one of those doing all the way out here? The thought, being unrelated to Jeh, was pushed aside for later consideration. She returned to scouring the sky, looking everywhere for the Skyseed.

“…Technically speaking, it hasn’t been six hours,” Vaughan said, eventually. “She would have seen that from wherever she was, but it could take her an hour to get down here or so.” He put his hands in his robe pockets. “We’ll just have to wait.”

“In about ten minutes some panicked villager is going to come and demand you deal with whatever the Red Seekers just did.”

“Complaining about it won’t change anything.” Vaughan looked down at Blue. “She’ll be fine. Worst case scenario, she crashes somewhere outside the Kingdom and has to journey back to us on foot.”

Blue wasn’t sure she could stand waiting that long, not knowing what had happened to Jeh or the Skyseed, but she didn’t vocalize this. She continued staring at the sky through the hole in the clouds. There was an orange speck…

That couldn’t be Jeh. The drive’s glow would be mostly hidden. Unless Jeh was using a lot of Orange at once for balancing…

“Is that…?” Blue asked, pointing with her hoof.

“It’s coming in a little bright…”

“But it is, isn’t it?”

Vaughan put the telescope to his eyes. “…Yep. That’s it. Coming down a little fast… but not terminal velocity, she’s slowing it down.”

“Where’s it going to land?”

“…Willow Hollow.”

“Oh.”

Blue took off at a gallop to Willow Hollow, all the while keeping her eyes on the orange speck in the sky.

Vaughan, not being a horse, opted to use one of the small levitators for transport. Blue watched as he unceremoniously crashed into a tree right in front of her.

“Moron!” Blue shouted, grabbing hold of him in her telekinetic aura as she passed. She dragged him along through the air—a use of her attribute that took quite a bit more effort than she was usually comfortable with, but they needed to move fast.

She didn’t take much care with Vaughan. He got smacked and thwacked by multiple tree branches while he was dragged along, so many that it was hard for him to get a complaint in edgewise.

They arrived in Willow Hollow and, as Blue had expected, people were out on the streets pointing at the mountain and talking nervously. Suro and Lila were both standing on top of a box just outside the Sanctuary, addressing the people and trying to calm them down.

Why doesn’t the Mayor ever do anything? Blue wondered, skidding to a stop just behind the small crowd around Suro and Lila.

“…and until we can contact the Red Seekers, we must remain vigilant, but also calm,” Lila said. “Perhaps what we witnessed was a terrible disaster for them as well. We cannot assume anything.”

Suro noticed Vaughan and Blue had arrived. Not wanting to draw attention to them, he nodded to his wife and stepped down from the box, allowing her to keep talking to the people while he made his way to the wizard and apprentice. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“I tried sending a beacon to Jeh,” Vaughan said. “I think the Red Seekers took it as a challenge.”

“No time, Jeh’s landing,” Blue said, pointing up. “Clear the area!” she shouted at the crowd.

The crowd turned to stare at her in dumb confusion.

“Morons…”

“You heard the lady!” Krays shouted, slamming two glass orbs together and shattering them with an alarmingly loud crash. “Clear the area! Move!”

Everyone scrambled away in a fit of near-panic. Vaughan, Blue, and Suro remained, shuffling their location only slightly as the Skyseed approached the ground.

At first, Blue thought it was coming down a little fast, then she thought it was a little slow, and then it was going… back up?

“She over-corrected,” Vaughan said, holding the telescope to his eye again. “…Something’s wrong. She’s straight, but she’s relying a lot on her Orange to… are the fins burned?”

“Burned!? Where would she find fire up th—“ Blue stopped herself as she remembered the flaming consequences of too much speed from Blue crystals. “Oh. Eights above, she tried to come down too fast!”

“At least she’s straight… coming down at a slow rate…” Vaughan trained his telescope on the Skyseed as it descended. Now Blue could see the charred parts of the fins—only near the bottom—and the shape of Jeh.

Blue focused on Jeh. As the Skyseed approached—and several of the townspeople started pointing at it—Blue saw Jeh clutching onto the support bars as hard as she could, using it to support her and the Orange and… was that Green light as well? It was hard to tell with the fins obscuring much of what she wanted to see.

What she did clearly see was how strained Jeh was. The trip had evidently not been an easy one.

Blue felt her stomach drop as the Orange aura around the Skyseed started to dissipate.

“She’s losing focus,” Vaughan said, lowering the telescope. “I think there’s smoke in there.”

“Inside?”

“She’s coughing, for whatever reason…”

The glow around the Skyseed vanished. Blue saw Jeh slump over.

The Skyseed started to fall. It was only a few stories above the ground, but anything falling from that height would not have a pleasant landing.

“No!” Blue shouted, pushing everything she had into her horn. It had been difficult to lift Vaughan while running to town. The Skyseed was several times heavier and already had kinetic energy from falling. Blue had to push everything she had into her horn—her legs gave out, prompting her to fall over sideways, but she maintained her focus on her horn.

The Skyseed had one thing that made it simpler to grab: the discs, designed for stabilization adjustment, were very easy to grab instinctually. She just needed to put more energy into it to slow the fall. All the energy she had.

She succeeded in slowing the craft’s fall, but in her desperation she’d failed to keep it level. The fins on the side furthest from Blue hit the ground first, cracking and splintering in several places all the while kicking up an impressive amount of dust.

Blue released her telekinetic grip and took a gasp of air—there wasn’t anything else she was going to be able to do, now.

Vaughan, noting that Blue was down, reached into his pockets—eyes widening. “Does anyone have Orange!? I need to open it!”

Open… Blue winced. That was her job. She’d gone and used everything before she could.

“Here!” one of the miners shouted, tossing a hand-sized Orange crystal to Vaughan. He caught it, but one of the edges wasn’t dulled and cut into his hand. He ignored this and pushed his will into it. He may not have been an Orange wizard, but he had enough know-how to turn the lid, unsealing the container. Getting it off safely was another matter entirely. Still, he was the wizard. He clenched his jaw and focused as much as he could manage on the simple act of lifting the lid.

He got it off.

He promptly dropped it, crushing a few more of the Skyseed’s fins in the process, but it was still off.

With the lid fully removed, fresh air could flow into the jar, and some of the smoke could be removed. With dramatic abruptness, Jeh’s lungs activated and she took in a tremendous breath of air. There was still smoke in it, so she coughed a few times, but the coughs woke her up.

She awkwardly stood up, hand gripping one of the interior rods. She blinked a few times and shook her head.

Then she grinned. “I did it! I went to space!”

“Woo-hoo!” Seskii called from somewhere in the crowd and promptly started applauding, which prompted several of the rather confused townsfolk to clap as well.

Jeh climbed out of the Skyseed herself, jumping down where one of the fins had been shattered. “I’ve got so much to tell you! Everything went wrong but everything went right, it was great! And...” she noticed Blue lying down on the ground. “Blue?”

“Just… made sure you didn’t explode,” Blue chuckled weakly. Her horn felt like it had been stuck into an open flame. “Don’t mind me, I’m fine now that you’re fine.”

Jeh frowned. “You… don’t look fine.”

“I have a solution,” Vaughan said, taking out his supply of Green, focusing it on Blue’s horn. Almost immediately, she felt the pain abate. The exhaustion remained—fixing that would require a bit more involved Green usage, and that was simply unnecessary.

Without the burning nail piercing her skull, Blue was capable of standing once again. Jeh took advantage of this by hugging Blue around the neck. “I’m supposed to have danger so you don’t have to.”

Blue chuckled awkwardly. “Jeh, life is danger. We all take risks every day.”

“I don’t.”

“But you did! You could have gotten stuck in space, lost, or or…” Blue let out a sigh, stopping herself.

“I would have gotten lost were it not for that big Red thing.” Jeh grinned. “How did you guys do that?”

“Wasn’t us,” Vaughan said. “Red Seekers… it’s a long story. I’m sure we’ll get it all sorted out when we report on the mission a—“

There was a deep, reverberating call that sounded like it belonged somewhere deep in the ocean, but was in fact coming from directly above them. A fully-equipped balloon whale descended from the clouds, marked with blue insignias Blue couldn’t recognize and what appeared to be a fancy gondola strapped to the bottom, made with precious stones and metals.

A small platform descended from the gondola via a series of ropes and pulleys. There was only one occupant in the elevator, a greater unicorn in a Purple wizard’s robe…

The greater unicorn spoke in a dull, uninterested tone. “C-R will see you now.” After she relayed her message, her eyes widened in shock at the people she was talking to. “Blue!?”

“I-Itlea!?” Blue stammered.

“This isn’t right, C-R said…” Itlea glanced at Blue, the three people with her, and the wreck of the Skyseed. “By… what is going on here?”

“We should be asking that!” Blue countered. “What are you doing here!?”

“I wa—“

Mt. Cascade lit up with another burst of Red energy—this one significantly smaller, but a lot more focused. For a moment, it appeared almost like a bird.

Itlea gulped. “I… I think you should see C-R, now.” She gestured up at the balloon whale’s gondola. “She’s in there.”

Blue, for once in her life, didn’t want to be the one to make the decision. She turned to Vaughan, uncertain.

Vaughan sighed. “Might as well… lead the way, Itlea.”

“Just get in the lift,” Itlea grunted.

Blue walked into the lift with Jeh, Vaughan, and Suro. As it rose to the balloon whale, she looked down at the Skyseed’s wreck. It was salvageable. She trusted Lila to look after it while they were busy.

Blue’s gaze drifted upward to Mt. Cascade.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that the Red Seekers should never have been permitted to live here.

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

Jeh discovered, rather rudely, that when you don’t understand what exactly you’re doing a large number of unintended problems are going to arise. So, without further ado, let’s examine why exactly everything went wrong.

First of all, it should be noted that Jeh is reckless and immature and not as trained as real-world astronauts. A good number of the problems were of Jeh’s own doing.

Secondly, clouds. Clouds are pretty harmless when they don’t come with wind and storms. But if you’re not a very advanced society, you’re going to have no way to figure out your location without examining landmarks. Thus, for those trying to cheat spaceflight, clouds become a problem. A rather obvious problem that nobody would think of ahead of time.

Now, when Jeh did the unadvisable and pushed the drive to its maximum, it was mentioned that she kept feeling heavier, and when she changed the direction of the drive the floor became the opposite side of the ship. This is really how it works. Jeh was essentially operating a shaky elevator. Her initial experience was essentially identical to an elevator going up a skyscraper.

However, what explains the floor flipping? When an elevator goes down, the floor doesn’t change, we just feel lighter. Well, the thing is that elevators as we understand them are not in free-fall. Free-fall is a state that occurs when only gravity is acting on an object—whenever Jeh was weightless, she was experiencing free-fall. This is how planes simulate zero gravity, and why low-hanging ships and satellites can experience zero gravity while still being relatively close to Earth. If you’re falling at the same rate as the thing you’re contained in, it seems like everything’s weightless.

Because of this, in our history, only the astronauts who went to the moon ever felt anything close to real zero gravity. Those on the International Space Station and other habitats are cheating to get the sensation by falling cleverly, but the discussion for that will have to wait until Blue figures out orbits are a thing. I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one.

Anyway, when Jeh was going back down, she was pushing herself down faster than freefall. Because of this, the Skyseed itself had to push on her to accelerate her downward, thus changing the orientation of the “floor.” It would be much preferable to gradually decrease or increase the drive’s setting before swapping so the immense jostling of perspective didn’t happen, but Jeh was trying to move quickly, so perhaps we can forgive her for that.

A minor issue that didn’t factor in much was the sense of scale: Jeh, deep down, had wanted to try to go for the moon. However, as she noted, it didn’t really look any different at her final height as it had from the ground. (At her maximum height, she made it to about the orbit of the International Space Station. Impressive for a first shot, but not very far in a cosmic sense.)

Micrometeors are the worst. Tiny, insignificant specks of material flying through space at absurdly high speeds. Modern ships design for potential impacts with special alloys and state-of-the-art armor designs. The Skyseed was solid glass and was extremely lucky it got hit fast enough to not shatter. It was also fortunate the air restorer stopped the micrometeor so it didn’t fly out the other side and make another hole.

Some readers may think that as soon as the micrometeor made the hole, all the air should have shot out. And while air does like to blow out into vacuum with immense force, it generally isn’t as explosive as the movies suggest it should be. Jeh actually had quite a lot of time to solve the issue, even if she didn’t think so. There is a maximum amount of energy that can be derived from a pressure difference: absolute vacuum does hit that maximum, but that maximum isn’t enough force to blow up the ship or tear all the air out in an instant through such a small hole.

Glass shatters when heated too quickly. This is because heating makes the glass expand, but if other parts of the glass are still cold they won’t expand with it and shatter due to the stress. Jeh was very lucky she didn’t blow up her ship with the insanity she tried to pull.

Reentry is a problem most “floater” ship designs usually don’t have to deal with: just go back down slowly. Jeh wanted to be fast, Jeh got to discover that it’s possible to go so fast you light things on fire. Normally, it’s not possible to achieve this speed while falling due to air resistance, but Jeh was high enough that air resistance was almost nothing. Also, she had the drive pushing down, adding even more speed. Once the Skyseed reached a lower elevation, air resistance went up. The ship was going so fast that it imparted enough energy to the denser air to ignite it.

Now, why didn’t this cause the glass to shatter? Well, first of all, it never got anywhere near hot enough to try to melt it. Secondly, the heating was much more gradual. Long before there were flames, heat was being imparted through air compression, warming up the glass.

You may notice that Jeh didn’t complain about temperature until that point. This is due to her being a tad insensitive to things like pain. Rest assured, there were temperature regulation problems on the journey, but they were just of minimal concern to the immortal child.

Anyway, she managed to land despite it all.

But I hope this serves as a reminder as to how complicated, dangerous, and deadly space can be.