“Well, that was a bust.” Andy grouched as he flopped down at the table Adam had reserved for them at the Dancing Djinn, his expression twisted in irritation. “Three different leads, and not a single one of them worth the marks we spent finding them.” The Mageslayer had opted for a full switch to arabian assassin to better fit their current climate; black boots, pants, tunic, and a hooded cloak that the costume designers of The Mummy would have been proud of. Given how often he’d teased Arcturus for a similar colour scheme, it had been amusing the first day he’d shown the outfit.

As for Andy’s frustration, Adam sighed in understanding as he turned towards the open doors of the bustling tavern, his [Party Interface] keying him in as Danica, Elethea, and Tylariel entered. As with Adam and Andy, all three women were attired properly for the desert nation they’d found themselves thrust into: Hoods to keep the billowing sand out of their hair (more effective thanks to some quick enchantments), flowing cloaks to oppose the sun, replacement sets of clothing, and properly insulated boots that kept the sand out.

When they doffed their cloaks and moved to join Adam’s table, the stark difference in fashion choice was evident: Danica had stayed true to her style, and gone for what might generously be called a crop top and parachute leggings in white. If not for the strapless brassiere under the top, however, she’d have been flashing half of the tavern with the way the loose material of her ‘top’ flapped around.

As for Tylariel and Elethea, they’d chosen a more traditionally imperial style: Form-fitting blouses, tight leggings, and knee-high boots that matched their personal styles. Green and gold for Tylariel, while Elethea had chosen to mimic another: Black and silver were her dominant colours, and no one had felt the need to ask why when she’d selected them.

“—ridiculous amount of marks for something so barely useful.” Danica was saying to the others as the women joined them. “I wish you had broken his nose, Elly.”

The former Highblade Heiress laughed at Danica’s words. “I would have, save that we’re trying to keep a low profile.”

“Not too low.” Danica said as she nodded to the aetherblades on Elethea and Tylariel’s hips.

“The riff-raff should know whom it is they trifle with, if they seek to intercede with our affairs.” The redheaded Archon said unrepentantly, sliding down into the chair beside Andy and looking around for a server immediately.

“Thirsty?” Andy asked her casually.

“Parched.” The Archon confirmed, flashing him that cool, disinterested look she gave whenever she wasn’t dragging him bodily into their shared room. Tylariel vacillated between cold disinterest and burning desire with such unpredictability it would have given Adam whiplash to try to keep up.

Andy seemed to enjoy the game, however.

Almost as if detecting the needs of a customer, a waitress appeared moments later at their table. The most striking difference between her and the standard imperial barmaid was, of course, skintone. While the Empire was a melting pot of cultures and backgrounds, it was primarily ethno-caucasian with a heavy lean towards what Adam could only describe as Augustan culture.

The Southern Kingdoms, meanwhile, were an eclectic collection of nations some of which consisted of multiple megalopoli, and others of a single massive city-state. Earth-typical African and Arabian cultures and phenotypes were present throughout, though they lacked the monotheistic unification present in Earth’s Africa and Middle East. What made it more interesting, however, was how common it was to find Demi-Humans in the Southern Kingdoms.

That was, of course, where the true divide was. As long as you were Human, the Empire held no prejudice. Black, brown, white, asian… Imperials seemed to find it irrelevant. It was those that held esoteric blood within them that drew imperial scorn and rejection. People like, for example, their bunny-eared serving girl.

“Something I can offer the beautiful ladies?” The Ribatran girl asked in accented Aquilan.

“Water.” Tylariel said coolly, pointedly not looking at the girl’s face.

“Juice, please.” Elethea responded brightly, her own gaze locked on the ears.

“Ale. Strong.” Danica finished with a wink.

Adam shook his head slightly at the disparate ordering, and watched as the waitress offered an awkward curtsy and sashayed away. Even in the heart of the Southern Kingdoms, the Empire’s influence was strong enough to coerce a mandated learning of Aquilan. It was survival, if nothing else. Imperials were notorious for being ‘easily offended’ according to the locals. After travelling with Elethea and Tylariel, he could even understand the perspective.

“I still find it weird that we ended up here—” Danica said as she settled down beside Adam with a warm smile “—and Arcturus is… I dunno, that-a-way.” She gestured vaguely in an arc between north and east, towards the massive section their HUD compasses told them Arcturus’ anchor-point for their tethers was pulling them. At least they knew he was alive.

“Why would he be in the Blighted Lands, though?” Andy sighed. “It doesn’t make sense, neither now nor when we first figured it out.”

“The gateway must have taken us to different locations for a reason.” Elethea said confidently. “Our Prince—”

Andy grunted.

“—will be quite alright, I would wager.”

“Stop calling him that.” The Mageslayer admonished.

“It is his title by right of birth!”

“We lost, princess.” Andy responded flatly. “The only ‘right of birth’ he has is being hunted like you and madame tsundere here.” He reached out and did something that Adam suspected involved a pinch and Tylariel’s lower body, because the Archon jumped and then glared at Andy frostily.

“Let her say what she wants.” Adam cut in before Elethea, her cheeks reddening in anger, could respond. “What we need to focus on is finding a way to get to Arcturus. For all we know, he’s barely surviving out there. We’ve all heard the stories; that place is the closest thing to hell on Terra.”

“Get to him and then what? Be stranded with him?” Andy asked as he tried to smile away Tylariel’s scowl.

“It keeps coming back to finding an airship and crew willing to convey us there and back, but—”

“Everyone is too craven to undertake the task.” Elethea finished for Danica, folding her arms over her impressive chest and frowning in distaste. “There is no lust for adventure, no desire for glory. They are all too terrified to even chance it!”

Their drinks arrived as she finished, and the group took their respective beverages before the discussion continued.

“It is sort of a suicide mission, to most people.” Danica said placatingly. “We can’t be that surprised that they’re not willing.”

“I even tolerated their lecherous stares in the hopes they’d cooperate!” Elethea griped. “I should have cut off their hands for what I saw in their eyes.”

“You would have had my approval. Perhaps you can practice on someone more conveniently close by.” Tylariel added as she narrowed her golden eyes at Andy.

“Nobody’s cutting off anyone’s hands.” Adam said as he rubbed his forehead.

“What do you think we should do?” Danica asked at his side, drawing Adam’s attention.

“If we can’t charter a trip the normal way, we’ll either need to find a particularly devil-may-care crew, or…” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “We steal a ship for ourselves.”

“What?” Hissed Tylariel, looking a mix between offended and ready-to-smite. “We are not common criminals!”

“Yeah, but half of the crews here are.” Andy cut in with a shrug. “Al’Sahar is a smuggler and sky pirate hotspot. Half the airships here belong to cutthroats. The only reason nobody’s asked you ladies ‘how much’ is because of the aetherblades you’re carrying.”

“People have asked.” Elethea muttered darkly as her cheeks flushed with colour.

Adam was interested to see Tylariel’s cheeks redden as well. There was a story there.

“I still cannot condone such a baseborn action.” Tylariel said in a low, fierce tone.

“Tylariel.” Adam said as he looked at the blushing Archon. “We have neither the time nor the resources to be hung up on morals, especially when half the people we’re dealing with would as soon put a knife in our backs and do worse to you girls.”

When Tylariel opened her mouth to object, Elethea reached over and put a hand on her arm. The Archon turned to her most recent Apprentice, and something passed between them before the redhead seemed to relent, albeit with clear discontent in her eyes.

“We already have a target.” Adam continued as Tylariel’s objections were placated — at least for the moment — by Elethea’s intervention. The Archon’s sense of morality and propriety had been his biggest concern for what he had realised they’d most likely need to do.

“Already?” Elethea asked in surprise.

“I planned for this just in case.” Adam said with a nod, before turning to Andy. “Andy did the reconnaissance.”

Tylariel shot her lover a look, and he shrugged at the haughty redhead easily before turning — albeit a little nervously — back to the group. “There’s a ship berthed nearby called the Spear of the Mejai, a fast cruiser owned by a local ‘merchant’ named Fariq Maruud.”

“I take it he’s not an actual merchant.” Danica interjected.

“No, he’s a smuggler.”

“Well, there are worse—” Elethea started, before Andy cut her off.

“He smuggles people.” Andy clarified. “Slaves, specifically, captured from settlements and imperial provinces low on direct protection. Some of them as young as thirteen.”

Both Elethea and Tylariel bristled in immediate, reactive anger at the revelation.

“That’s horrible.” Danica said sadly.

“I spoke with the local law enforcement.” Adam said as Andy turned to him. “And Abioye Sebala, the head of the constabulary, was more than happy to give us the means to circumvent the berthing tower’s security to access Maruud’s section of it.”

“It’s that easy?” Elethea asked in surprise.

“Abioye is no fan of Fariq Maruud.” Adam replied. “Apparently Maruud’s pride and joy was stolen from one of the deep Southern nations during a civil war. Maruud turned traitor, and a lot of good people died. Abioye was on the side that suffered.”

“That checks out. Reminds me a bit of the drama back on Earth.” Andy said with a sigh.

“So when do we ‘go’?” Danica enquired.

“Tonight, twenty-one hundred. We’ll get everything ready, then we’ll hit Maruud and steal his airship.”

“What about the crew?”

“We don’t need them, and they’re slavers, killers, and worse. We dispose of them.”

Adam’s words were met by single nods around the table, and even Tylariel seemed on-board. Her eyes had turned hard at the mention of enslaving children.

“So what do we do until then?” Andy asked casually.

Adam smiled thinly. “Prepare.”

So they did.

The conversation at the table drifted into minutiae and then the group split up. Tylariel stalked off upstairs, followed by a sighing Andy, while Elethea and Danica left to go investigate what was apparently a travelling circus. That left Adam to tromp up to his room, pointedly ignore the muffled sound of raised voices that his System-enhanced hearing picked up through the ‘soundproof’ door to Andy and Tylariel’s room, and settle himself down in the room he shared with Danica to meditate the hours away.

Not before cleaning, and then packing, just to be time efficient.

While not a requirement or even a necessitated recommendation of his class, he’d found that regular meditation was invariably helpful in the proper circulation of his mana and the better understanding of his spells. Unlike most similar universes he’d read about, the Source didn’t have some convoluted system of mathematical calculation that made a chemistry major a living god. Instead, magic followed fundamental rules that, if obeyed, could be refined to grant a practitioner considerable advantages.

One such advantage, in fact, was Adam’s [Dual-Cast] ability.

Through a mix of Luck and Intelligence, he’d managed to stumble on the ability to not simply chain his spells together, but to simultaneously cast two different spells in the same moment. The drawback to the insane utility of [Dual-Cast] was, of course, the fact that the second of the two spells cost half again as much as its base mana price: But that was, at his level, relatively negligible unless he was engaging a particularly powerful opponent.

Arcana scaled the magical capability of an individual and their capacity to handle higher tier spells, but it also naturally increased the mana cost of a spell. This increase, he’d found, was based on two factors: Firstly the level of the spell or channelled freecast — such as Arcturus’ telekinesis — in question, and secondly the level of effectiveness as dictated by the Arcana level of the caster and the power of their opponent.

A much weaker version of his [Firelance] ability, for example, would suffice for a run-of-the-mill Dungeon Wolpertinger, but not for an Aether-Warped Lynx. The increased effectiveness, which was accessible through higher Arcana, also had a proportional mana increase. He’d roughly worked out a formula to devise the mathematical increase, until Arcturus’ telekinetic abilities had thrown his insights out the window handily.

For someone like Adam, who loved formulaic approaches to things, it had been endlessly infuriating to realise that magic simply did not want to play nice with mathematics. One of the first things he’d tried upon attaining his Battlemage class was to create a miniature hydrogen bomb, and the magical ‘coding’ of the Source had all but laughed at him when he’d attempted it. Manipulating chemical elements in adequate quantities required a level of finesse that he doubted he’d achieve until at least middle A-Rank, if even then.

While Adam could usually predict the percentage drop in his absurdly high mana pool when using his abilities, there was still an element of randomness to it that he couldn’t quite comprehend. It was as if something was missing between the use of magic and the mana that fuelled it. A bridge or link that would make the whole process more logical and easy to understand, but for the life of him Adam couldn’t put his finger on it. It was elusive to the point of incredulity.

In this sense Archons fascinated Adam, because of the unique connection they seemed to have with elemental magic. Where others used invocation, Archons used intention. He knew from his discussions with Arcturus, Elethea, Tylariel, and even Tiberius that no Archon could cast without the three steps of spellcasting: Catalyzation, Visualization, Invocation. However where other mages might need extra half-seconds to comprehend and shape the magic, Archons simply knew what it would be. It shaved off a total of two to three seconds — sometimes less and sometimes more based on the individual — from spellcasting, and in a battle that could decide life and death.

Add in the absurd rate of growth Archons seemed to enjoy, and there was a mystery there that Adam had been trying to puzzle out for the better part of his two years on Terra. The laws around magical use seemed bent when it came to Archons, and their very nature seemed antithetical to the ‘balance’ the System seemed to favour. Finding out the reason for their existence, and why the alteration of physical traits — such as pointed ears — was universal within all Archons (both those within the Empire and their non-Imperial equivalents) remained a borderline obsession for Adam.

The minutes flew by as he meditated, working on expanding the efficiency of his mana channels while the world outside changed. Danica’s temporary return was no intrusion, with her knowing how to recognise his meditation, and she was gone quickly after she came back. Adam only distantly noted her arrival and departure from within the depths of his meditative trance, and remained wholly focused on his task as the minutes bled into hours.

When his HUD clock finally flashed at him to alert him of the designated time to prepare for their grand theft aero, his eyes opened to a room lit by the low glow of the singular aetherlight in the middle of the ceiling. His legs unfolded slowly, and he stood up with a stretch and crack of his back and neck. The [Party System] in his HUD marked his companions on his minimap, and Adam finished stretching his torso as he made his way towards the door; picking up his sheathed sword and attached sword-belt from the sole table as he walked.

When he opened it and stepped into the corridor, he saw his companions joining him moments later. All three women were hooded and cloaked, and Andy damn-near faded into the wall with the subtle enchantments woven into his clothing combined with his class-specific skills.

“Everyone ready?” Adam asked as he finished strapping his belt around his hips. His battlestaff could remain unsummoned until needed, thankfully.

“Yeah, we’re good.” Andy replied, reinforced by a nod from Tylariel.

“Yup.” Danica answered good-naturedly.

“Fine. Let’s do this.” Elethea finished.

Adam spared another glance for the redheaded Archon in their midst, and again wondered why Tylariel had been so ready to go along with his leadership. She had almost a century on him. It was a small mystery that he still hadn’t received a satisfactory answer for, but he hadn’t pushed the issue. After all, it worked out nicely for their ability to stay on target if the Archon’s proprietary predilections weren’t a deciding factor in their planning.

“Let’s go.” Adam said as he walked down the corridor towards the stairs, and led the group towards the exit. The numerous [Bag of Holding] items the Nephilim had acquired in their first few months on Terra made the entire process easier, allowing them to store everything they needed in belt pouches they’d invested heavily into making nigh impossible to steal.

Their rooms had all been paid up as a matter of principle, and if anyone went to investigate, they’d find them better than when they’d been rented out — that was all that really mattered to innkeepers in the end.

There were proper Hotels in the Source, but they were inordinately expensive and high profile, especially as deep in the Southern Kingdoms as they were. None of them had wanted to draw attention for the benefit of luxurious creature comforts.

“Target should be marked.” Adam said to the others as he double-checked the [Party Waypoint] on his minimap. “Tylariel, stick with Andy. Elethea, stay with Danica. I’ll take the lead.”

“Nephilim and their magic.” Tylariel muttered without true discontent, staying near the Mageslayer without complaint as the group set off across the main thoroughfare to weave between the tightly packed buildings and sandy alleyways, destined for the berthing tower that served as the mooring point for Fariq Maruud’s stolen airship. Unlike on Earth, military science on the Source had been heavily influenced by the abundance of aether, and with a desire to soar the skies that seemed universal to flight-impeded peoples across the Source and all its Shards; one of the greatest inventions had been airships.

Some of them, like the most powerful vessels of the empire, were colossal behemoths over a kilometre long bristling aether-cannons and rare ballistic weapons capable of devastating anything below, on level, or above them. Airships were also fully enclosed, with complicated generators fuelled by esoteric technology Adam still didn’t fully comprehend. They were aetherially and kinetically shielded, and their design was far sleeker and more ‘advanced’ than one might have suspected for nations that still used swords as a primary weapon of war.

Then again, in a world where magic was more deadly than bullets, it wasn’t that surprising.

Even Archons were next to useless against the power of the more impressive airships that could be fielded, given the comparatively miniscule range of their powers and the elevation airships could attack from. How they flew was another mystery to Adam, who’d only understood that they used some sort of levitator aspected with gravity aether that allowed for lift using a blend of repulsor and nullification technology. It also meant their mass wasn’t as big of an issue, and they could be built in ways that normal physics might have made impossible when it came to taking them to the skies.

Adam’s ruminations cut off when he realised they’d already made it most of the way to their objective, quietly amazed momentarily at the sheer speed with which they could move thanks to the System and Aether.

The berthing tower stood ahead of them, punching up into the sky with faded paint lining its cylindrical shape. As opposed to a thing of beauty, it was a building of function with ten massive bridges like the branches of a tree extending to where the docking framework was built to hold airships during their maintenance. With what Adam understood of levitators, they never shut down once they’d been turned on, and all maintenance was instead done using the closed loop of the levitator as a reliable safety precaution. Something about it being fuelled by ambient aether.

A cursory glance of the walled off area and checkpoints to the tower showed a distinct lack of law enforcement, and even the private security was sparse for a Wednesday night. Abioye had been as good as his word, and the fact that Adam was guaranteeing Fariq Maruud had no easy means of escape from the enforcer’s clutches certainly had helped motivate the man.

A glance to his companions showed their readiness, and Adam motioned the group forward silently as he started across the distance between the buildings and the tower. Their ingress was marked by silence, with only the flare of aetherlights and the overhanging moon as witness to their passage. When they reached the base of the tower, Adam nodded to Tylariel and the Archon almost lazily lifted her arm, sweeping them all onto a block of sandy earth and, after severing it from the ground, propelled them rapidly upwards on a makeshift elevator.

The transit from ground to air was the easy part: Taking the ship would be harder. The delicacy of the situation meant that Tylariel throwing around her power without restraint, while a fast way to end the contest, would only serve to damage the vessel they needed to make good on their intention to regroup with Arcturus.

When the accelerating block of granite hit the zenith of its ascent, the group launched themselves onto the bridge connecting to the docked airship. The two crew members standing guard stared at them in momentary bewilderment, before an eruption of light saw Elethea appear in their midst, and two severed heads fell from where her aetherblade sliced through their necks.

Adam reminded himself they were fighting pirates and ignored the echo of guilt at the immediate death of two people, pushing past the still-twitching corpses and into the entrance of the vessel on Elethea’s heels.

“Alright, there’s five decks including the cargo bay and command deck. Andy, take care of the sleeping crew on the deck below us. Danica, Elethea, secure the lower decks ahead of him, and make sure no one messes with the engines or generators when we take off. Tylariel, we’re going to the bridge.”

A quick wave of nods and chorus of agreement met his words and the group scattered, the two Terrans relying on the minimap-guided Nephilim to show the way. With Tylariel at his side, Adam was certain things would go smoothly… but that rarely was the case, in truth.

“This is pretty cool.” Adam said as he and Tylariel moved through the corridors, impressed by the sleek and advanced design of the interior. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie. One with a really high budget. White floors and walls, with smooth sliding doors and interior lighting that would be at home in any star-faring spaceship. It was hard to believe he was still on Terra, given the disparity between the regular fare of what he saw outside and the almost anachronistic level of sophistication on display within the airship.

“Airships were originally invented by a Nephilim.” Tylariel said matter-of-factly. “It’s not a fact many want known, but I read about it when I was younger. Their design, function, and method of prosecuting war were all devised by some mad genius from an aether-devoid shard. Apparently her world had advanced outside the constraints of their cradle, and taken to the stars.”

“I can believe it.” Adam said with a nod. “This is like something out of the movies back on Earth.”

“I still find the idea of your shard’s technology curious and bewildering in equal measure. Especially this idea of non-aetheric energy.”

“Plenty of Terrans use electricity, Tylariel.”

“Only when Aether isn’t available. As for this ‘nuclear power’—”

“Personally, I hope that never eventuates.” Adam cut in. “It’ll change the Source forever.”

“If the devastation is as profound as you claim, the Twelve would never permit its propagation.” Tylariel said confidently, seemingly unconcerned at the interruption. “They would not tolerate endangerment of the Source on that scale.”

“I hope you’re right.” Adam said as they turned down another corridor, and promptly spotted a pair of crew members looking straight at them. “Tylariel!”

The Archon was on them in a heartbeat, vanishing from Adam’s side with a flash of movement and appearing among the unsuspecting pirates like a beautiful reaper. Virtus sliced out in a green blur, and blood painted the walls, ceiling, and floor in a spray of viscera as the redhead dispatched the pair.

Adam reminded himself not to feel bad as he walked past the carnage and caught up to Tylariel, his left hand gripping his sword for comfort. The men aboard the ship had committed crimes beyond forgiveness. It was their just reward that they were receiving, in truth. The thought process helped, though it was also a startling revelation on how much he’d changed since he arrived on Terra. Killing had once made him throw up his most recent meal and the one before it.

Now, he only had to suppress a grimace as he moved past the charnel remains.

Another turn found them facing a pair of double doors, and Adam stepped forwards probingly. In a laughable demonstration of how truly arrogant the pirates were in their presumption of safety, the doors slid open without issue. The skeleton crew of six populating the twelve-person bridge turned in surprise at being interrupted. Surprise that, upon seeing Tylariel’s aetherblade and the waves of power emanating from her, turned into horror very quickly.

“Who the fuck—?” One of them started, only to cut off in a wet gurgle as Tylariel blurred into action to answer.

What followed next was an outright massacre. The Archon cut through the corsairs on the bridge with the impunity of a lion fighting a herd of rabbits. Adam walked through towards the command throne at the bridge’s centre, upon an elevated dais overlooking a crescent depression with terminals that looked half-modern built neatly throughout it. As he settled into the throne, he tried to ignore the screams for mercy and desperate sounds of dying or soon-to-be dying pirates as Tylariel butchered her way through him.

He very studiously did not see a head and half a torso, trailing intestines, fly past.

Adam pressed his hands to the metal sheets upon the arm-rests of the throne, and received a prompt asking him if he wished to initiate startup. Momentarily surprised by the lack of any form of security protocols, he quickly understood the issue: The vessel, for all its sleek futuristic appearance, was not truly a thing of science or computers. It was a magical device, one that was already far more complex than common sense should have allowed. Adding some sort of security system, especially when there was no way to properly deal with it if it failed, only served to create an untenable risk in future.

It also explained how Maruud had stolen the vessel so easily. He must have trusted his crew implicitly to have left them with the ship so readily.

A final gurgling deathknell reached his ears, and Adam noted the grim silence that followed in its aftermath as Tylariel’s heels clicked their way back towards him. Deciding not to think about what sort of carnage the Archon had visited upon the slavers, he instead focused on the information he was gleaning from the vessel as its startup processes ran. Interesting, the aether conduits connected to the metal panels seemed to function as a form of rudimentary computation. It allowed him to read the status of the vessel and, with a momentary adjustment of his HUD, feed the ‘data’ directly into his field of vision to ‘view’ it like another element of his usual collection of readouts.

“How are we meant to see anything?” Tylariel asked idly.

“Like this.” Adam said grandly, gesturing in front of them.

The front of the bridge changed with his mental command; an effect like rippling water taking over the massive steel sheet on the wall before them. Where before it was opaque metal, instead there was a view as if he were staring out from a normal ship’s bridge. Adam whistled lowly at the crispness of the image. Illusion Magic was something else.

The Spear of the Mejai was shaped quite appropriately like a massive spearhead, with a sharp prow and a flared out stern, the shape accentuated by an inwards curve near the middle of the vessel. As Adam sent through an ignition command, the engines on his HUD readout flashed from a blue ‘standby’ to an active ‘green’. A rumble passed through the vessel, and Adam found his eyes widening as he was subtly pushed back in his seat when the airship tore itself free of the docking bridge and started its acceleration.

From what he understood, aetherfire would be erupting from the honeycomb patterned engines at the rear of the vessel, illuminating the unsuspecting suburban district of Al’Sahar in the radius of the berthing tower. With his friends clearing the ship of any stragglers, it was only a matter of time before the fast cruiser was theirs completely. While he doubted it would be as simple as board, steal, cruise: It was certainly less exhausting than fleeing from an army of Church zealots and their fanatical inquisitors.

When the bridge doors opened, Tylariel’s lack of concern and Adam’s [Party Interface] told him it was their friends arriving after concluding their business elsewhere. The voices helped.

“Talk about a massacre…”

“She’s your girlfriend, Andy.”

“I know. It’s kind of hot.”

A snort from Danica and laugh from Elethea followed the statement as the trio joined Tylariel and Adam, looking around at the former’s handiwork in various states of approval or antipathy. Some part of Adam was faintly concerned at how little death seemed to affect him and his friends since coming to Terra, but that was an issue for another time. A time when they weren’t trying to find their missing companion using a stolen airship.

“So what’s our heading?” Andy asked as he casually slid an arm around Tylariel’s waist, which the redheaded Archon seemed ready to reject, before abruptly leaning into the Mageslayer. Adam would never be able to understand Tylariel’s moods.

“Poke at your tether.” Adam replied simply.

“Fair point.” Andy said. “What about air traffic?”

“Is air traffic control a thing on the Source…?” Danica asked curiously.

“No.” Adam responded confidently. “We go north-east for now until the tethers begin to hone in, and then we adjust accordingly.”

“Do we know our maximum speed?” Elethea asked with interest.

A quick glance at his HUD told Adam the answer. “About 200 kilometres per hour.”

“...We’re going to take forever to get to Arcturus.” Danica lamented.

“It’s still faster than taking random portals.” Andy pointed out.

“Yes. Plus, the vessel is stocked for months of travel with a crew of over forty.” Elethea said reassuringly. “I believe we shall be quite alright.”

“Yeah, how are you flying this thing all alone?” Andy asked curiously.

“My Intelligence rating is far higher than a regular Terran’s.” Adam answered as he passively calculated more information for the vessel. “That means I can process whatever approximates data for this ship’s aether network. Truthfully, I think if I was a normal Terran, my brain would have melted out of my ears by now. The mana cost is also absurd.”

“Can the vessel function without you?” Tylariel asked after a moment.

“Yes. I’m working on an automated flight sub-routine for the aether processes now. It should be done before I’m forced to disconnect.”

“That’s good.” Elethea said in relief, before wrinkling her nose. “Now we need to clean up these corpses, get ourselves situated, and be rid of all this blood… Mentor, you went a little overboard, did you not?”

Tylariel sniffed. “They deserved it.”

With that, Adam could find no argument.