“Ortusbough, also known as the landport to the hinterland is a city at crossroads of every trade caravan that uses land routes. Aership services are sporadic at best because it does not have the facilities to field a port for aerships. But do not be deceived, it is no less successful than your average merchant run frontier town. It is also perhaps one of the wealthiest towns close to the frontier. It has sprawling farmlands, impenetrable walls, colorful bazaars and a confluence of many races from orcs, goblins, humans, sylvani, centaur and even the occasional beastkin. It is connected to the by wagon trail to Aldmoor and a smattering of other wayside towns and villages along its routes as well as Esterlynn, Gallowick, Cherville all the way to Guernemyr… Excerpt from Saelethil Greatstrider’s Wanderlusts: Peoples and Places.

In the living compartment of the Stormbreaker, five people sat in the recessed seating area. On the table were the remains of what could have only been their first meal of the day; half-full and lukewarm cups of beverage and an assortment of other nibbles that some of them more or less preferred . Everyone looked content somewhat. However, they did not let the stupor of a food coma encroach upon their minds; they were having the provisional crew's first meeting.

“Going forward, the Storm breaker will be our home and our base of operations—” Arthur began, “Before I continue, I would like to say one thing—” There, Arthur revealed to them how he was allegedly caught up in a magical translocation working of some kind that brought him to Alkerd.

It was a matter of framing really, he didn't tell them he'd found himself on Eryth;that was a different can of worms. Arthur also added that he'd somehow lost some of his memories either as a result of the phenomenon or some other thing he didn't know about. Of course he did gauge their reactions and out of all, Nevine had a plethora of questions.

“Yes, Nevine?”

“Where are you from?” the former guild intern asked.

“From far away, but nowhere that you'd need to concern yourself with,” he left the ’For now' hanging at the end.

”But why tell us this if you're just going to give it to us in halves?” Elena asked, catching her fellow listener's gazes before regarding Arthur

“It's doubly complicated,” Arthur said, he cast about for the words to let them down slowly. “More complicated than the situation we're in,” he regarded them. “For example, I might not have been the only one caught in the translocation mishap. I believe some people I know were also caught up in it and as far as I know, they might not have been as lucky as I am.”

“Ah...then the aership—”

“Yes,” Arthur paused to let it sink in.“ I wanted to put it out there that going forward we're not doing any aimless wandering,” ‘Originally, it was just my dream of living on my own terms’

“That said,” he added,“ If you deem it too much at one point or another, I won't hold you back from leaving,” Arthur said as a matter of fact. “In fact, I'll get you where you want to go,” he said, meeting their gazes in turn.

None of them raised as much as a peep of a concern; he took that as assent that they were there to stay. He almost slumped back against the seat in relief; if anyone were to pull them out, his plans would be in disarray. Just a minor hiccup but a disruption nonetheless.

Somewhat satisfied that they were onboard, Arthur turned to his adopted daughter, and nodded that she take over. Clearing her throat as if about to pitch, Arcis stood up. All attention was momentarily on her as she pulled out an assortment of artifacts.

“These are telecry, or if you like, telepsychic crystals. I guess that's what they're called after being turned into working artifacts,” Only Nora seemed to be familiar with them; in spite of the fact however, she was stumped but for different reasons altogether. The shapes of the telecry Arcis had produced varied greatly from what she remembered

While the conventional sylvani telecry had been a badge that was pinned on the breast or on the lapel of a tall collared coat, the ones on the round table were a choker with a gem in the middle, an ear cuff that looped behind the ear helix and the ear lobe, and finally a geeky pair of glass frames where the right temple had a gem inset. That Nevine’s attention quickly turned to the last artifact was not lost on the synth as she immediately grinned.

“ Aunt Nora had already been acquainted with telecry, “ Arcis pointed out. “ However those are too conspicuous to sylvani who use them in their towns.”

“ Ah,” Nora muttered in realization. The burnished silver of the artifacts gave them the illusion of having been well-worn just like Hanna’s telecry pendant.

“ All three have preloaded [Message], [Farspeak]—” there was a gasp of disbelief from Nevine who snatched up the frames and eyeballed them like some precious relic. Arcis went on, “[Light] and [Minor Obfuscation] matrices as well as a panic function that I'll show you about later on.” Arcis sniffed and threw her chest out, “ And that’s all I could do with the materials I had at hand.”

“What's the panic function?” Elena asked.

“ It's for when you think someone is tailing you or you’re in trouble. I'll help the rest of us get to you in short notice,”

“Mmh,” Elena nodded in understanding.

“ Also, all long range communication will, in the interim, go through Arcis,” Arthur pointed out. “ She will fill in as our [Relay Mage] until we get an artifact to take over.” Once Arthur had said that, Nora and Elena each took their own telecry; Nora the choker and Elena the ear cuff.

Arcis then went to explain how to go about the casting process for all the communication matrices as well as the other utility functions. [Minor Obfuscation] was always active whenever they used the artifact to prevent anyone from eavesdropping but could not hold out against hijacking after the [Message] had been sent.

By virtue of its complexity, [Farspeak] was hard to tap into; in fact Arcis was still examining the spell’s matrices layer by layer. She didn't even know if she too could tap into such a link between two parties.

The synth also showed them how to exchange mana signatures so that they could attune their artifacts to one another. The artifacts intuited whoever they wanted to hail or [Message] as long as they visualized the recipient or verbally told it to connect to someone. Once the excitement of fiddling with new artifacts had abated, Arthur raised another issue of note,

“ Elena, how are we on supplies and gold?”

“ Eh,” Elena began, as she put down her ear cuff. It was ergonomically designed for her sylvani ears.

“ Food supplies might last us a nundine or so. Coin, well, we’re almost scraping the bottom of the pouch,” she said. Of all of them, perhaps Elena was the most prudent when it came to spending.

“ Right, “ Arthur sighed, scratching the back of his neck in thought. “ That gives us two immediate objectives; we have to resupply and find work. The former means we’ll be a constant visitor to villages or a nearby town. The latter leans towards future projects as well—we might need books, arcane artillery for the Stormbreaker, diamond glass and other —” he looked around the sparse living compartments and added , “ furnishings to make the ship more homely.” ’ and an Azure Surfer Mark II’ he thought wistfully.

“How are we going to do that? Run a courier service?” Nevine put across, a rather perfunctory remark. Of course it did evoke a reaction from Arthur.

“Yes, that is one thing we're looking to work on.” Arthur said with an air of agreement. ”Assuming our aership is the fastest thing without sails in the sky, we can start by building up reputation and then charge a premium service once demand grows.”

All the adults nodded at that point.

“Also, we might need to go back to adventuring . Nora and I already have aliases tied to our Guild credentials. You should also pick aliases; not for adventuring of course but communication. Just in case our [Messages] are intercepted.”

”Finally, that brings us to roles. As members of our provisional crew, you're expected to pull your weight. I shall provide the breakdown of posts and duties soon,” Arthur put across. “Questions?”

“Do we have a heading?” Nevine asked, looking up from his frames.

“Kingsfell.” Arthur announced, “ We're going the long way round; I don’t think it bears repeating that the dwarves will likely be in force along the Rift. and speaking of headings—” Arthur paused, “ What's the nearest town?”

“ Ah, thought that might come up,” said Nevine, crouching beneath the table. All attention turned towards him as the sounds of rustling paper were heard. As he got up however, he knocked his head against the table. “ Ugh, by Eryth’s dirt!,” he grunted as he got up, one side of his glasses drooping from being knocked askew.

After correcting his glasses he spread the roll of parchment on the table. It was pretty old, almost coming apart on the sides where threads had been sewed to help it keep its shape. “ Based on Arcis’ extrapolation of direction and the distance we covered—, “ he ran a finger across the faded map.

Arthur could tell it was meant to be a topographical map from the layered lines. Nevine pointed from Aldmoor and then dragged his finger to where they would be and said, “ the nearest town would be Ortusbough, bridge to the frontier.” There was unbridled enthusiasm in his voice as if he'd been waiting for that day his whole life.

“ Hmm, we move at sundown,” Arthur said with a quirked brow. “ For now, you have the rest of the day to yourself; do remember to have your aliases ready by then.”

“ What am I in here for?” the dhampir asked. She sat on Arthur’s bed almost gingerly as if afraid she was desecrating some hallowed ground or, as if the bed were a mimic would suddenly awake to bite her in the ass. Her eyes? They fell everywhere but the human leaning against the bulkhead, arms folded with an inscrutable expression on their face.

There was a little tension in the air such that you could just stand and pinch the fabric of it as you would a kerchief but that was not why her palms were sweaty, knees wobbly, elbows leaden; no thank you. Nora was just tired from sitting stiffly; and it had barely been a par’quart.

“ You know, you don't have to be so on edge,” Arthur said, eyeing the not so at ease woman.

Nora looked at the literal edge of the bed she was sitting on, “ Fair,” she frowned. “ Now what sort of deviancy will you show me?”

Arthur colored, “ Whoa whoa whoa, hold your sails,”

“What?” Nora chuckled, hiding her laughter behind her palm. Her laughter was mellifluous; Arthur tried to remember the last time he'd ever heard her laughter.

”Relax, I was just teasing you,”she said, finally easing herself into the bed. “ Can’t be the only one who’s embarrassed.”

“ Hmm, let me guess,” Arthur’s lips crinkled with mirth. “ Never been in a man’s room?”

She snorted a laugh,” Please, I've seen many men naked; I'm a healer, remember?”

The tips of Arthur's ears grew hot, he stifled the feeling that threatened to blush his face. Of course Aeskyre had seen him half naked when she'd nursed him back to health, but that was different.

“Why'd you call me aside though?” Nora inquired, amusement giving way to a placid expression.

Arthur bit back a groan,“I have an inkling you already know,” Arthur said as he looked somewhere past Nora's shoulder. There was no window port he couldn't peer out from, only the barred obsiderite skylight overhead. Light passing through the glass lent a muted illumination to the room.

“Sorry,” Nora said. “I know it's been weighing on you a while; I didn't want to feel like I was pushing you to it,”

Arthur smiled ruefully, “ I think I should be the one who is supposed to apologize,” he said, drawing himself away from the bulkhead he was leaning against. “Eventually, I was planning to tell you.,” he met her eyes for a brief moment,” but I kept putting it off every time even though I knew it'd reach a point where it'd be too late.”

“Arthur—”

“We'll, I'll come out and say it. Nora, I am from another world,” Arthur said. “And my name, my real name before all of this happened, used to be Arthur Tyrell O'reilly.”

He waited a breath, for Nora's reaction— Surprise, shock, anger? But Nora 's reaction was anything but.

“That explains it,” she slumped back onto the bed, hair splaying around her. With pursed lips she blew the few locks that'd gotten in her face away from her eyes.

“Wait! that's it?!” Arthur blurted out.

“What would you have me do?” Nora smiled wryly. She propped herself on her elbows. “I have pondered your strange mannerisms, what you tried to hide and what you couldn't and the interest of powerful individuals, the way we seemed to encounter them with increasing frequency—”

”And?” Arthur pressed, feeling the reaction to be rather anticlimactic.

“I think I need to let it sink in,” Nora finally said. She pushed off the bed and returned to sitting, flicking some of her hair over her shoulder. “ But—” Nora added, as if resolved.“ I think it is only right that I tell you about me as well—”

“Wait,” Arthur said, stalling her before she spoke further. “You don't have to make it look like I owe you something; it makes trust look cheap,”

“Thank you,” Nora murmured as her shoulders slouched in relief.

“Whenever you're ready,” Arthur nodded to her. There was something weighing on her shoulders too. He berated himself for thinking he had it worse. What would have been an awkward silence was however interrupted buy the tandem chiming of their artifacts—

“What’s going on Arcis?” Arthur prompted, speaking into his arcano watch. Arthur shared a look with the dhampir walking briskly alongside, he let himself be grabbed and they ported directly onto the bridge deck.

“ Movement in the forest,” replied the synth; there was no one in the cockpit, not the synth nor the rest of the group.

“ Where are you?” Arthur inquired, looking at the forest outside the windscreen, he was ready to jump into the helmsman's seat and start flicking levers. “ Have they spotted us?” Arthur again asked, his speculation being that they'd been followed.

While he was conservative that the lead they'd gotten on any would be pursuers, he wasn't expecting that they'd be found out so soon. He'd practically pushed the Stormbreaker as far as its cooling systems could allow without blowing up the heat exchanger.

“ Sundeck,” Arcis said, “ No I don't think so, they’re moving parallel to the clearing, almost as if they’re hiding.”

“Monster or person?”

”Person— wait they're running!—” Arcis replied, the hail momentarily dropping as if truncated. When it resumed, “ I'm going after them!”

”Wait! Arcis...what happened? Why'd the connection drop?”

”I took Umbra," there was mischief in the tone of her voice. “ I'll spy and tell…” she added before the connection dropped.

‘All that talk in the morning about responsibility,’ Arthur wanted to throw up his hands.

“She'll be fine,” Nora said, bringing him back to the present. Her gaze was far away as if following something regardless of the ship's obstructions.

To Arcis, the world was a veritable ocean of psychion waves. It was noisy outside— she realized that a couple months of confinement had left her off kilter when she'd gotten out.

Even then, sifting through the deluge of information buffeting her synth brain took all she had to not get lost with every single thing that moved and some that did not— Like the trees. Anything that had a smidgen of spirit in it emitted psychion pulses. Picking them up was like gleaning the miniscule waves firing off whenever brain neurons were being brought to bear.

That's the closest analogy she could allude to using her Earth common sense as she was training herself on the sundeck. She was mirroring what she'd seen her foster father doing, what he called aura training and meditation. Though the physiology was different, the basis was the same; to shut out noise while sharpening one's perception.

Like an intermittent radar, her [Scan] pulsed through the surroundings, picking up mana signatures of nearby living creatures, flying squirrels, birds foraging in the underbrush, something burrowing underneath the soil, where the aership rested. She frowned, noticing that some of them were moving close to the tellusphere; It was the brightest thing to get a canvassing net of surveillance.

‘We really need to get that shielded,’ she thought. Some of the compartments in the ship were being shielded by a thin layer of null-steel insulation which Scuttle and their ilk were laying down.

They were doing it seemingly of their own volition ; even she couldn't parse the matrices that she supposedly lay when she was down under; subsumed by the greater consciousness that was [Host-Mind]. She barely had recollections of it, not even the gap of the time lost. It rankled her to no end but she accepted it as an irrefutable part of her existence.

Not one to let it get her down however, she concentrated on what she was trying to do. Her range of [Scan] was woefully inadequate, barely twice as long as the Stormbreaker from bow to stern.

It'd served her well within tight spaces, like the underneath but above? Things could jump at them so fast before they even detected them. [Scan]'s reach was a discrete radius around her, however she could nudge it towards the front at the expense of leaving her back blind.

Flexing the matrix to do as she wanted was simple mental gymnastics, an oxymoron in and of itself. On one hand she could do it as easy as flicking a switch, on the other, such alterations to the matrix required she hold the construct in place while ensuring that mana continuously powered it. For a time, she could draw on the tellusphere but not without melting her own mana traces.

It was as she was fuming over this predicament that something entered her [Scan] range. At that point in time, she was at the vertex of her skill's range, pulsing it like a spinning hula-hoop. It maintained the same mana costs yet allowed her to extend its reach.

While she hadn't learnt to overlay [Identify] in an attempt to force merge the two, having heard the tales of how Arthur did the same from the elder, she was sure that the entity within her surveillance net was not a monster.

In fact, it was a human or vaguely humanoid, she couldn't be sure— it was on the fringes. She observed it a while , watching its erratic movements and debated whether to tell her father or not...which she did.

The unidentified individual moved nearer and then swerved away. The grimalkin who she’d been leaning against as she sunned herself also took notice and an idea bloomed in her mind—maybe not an idea as much as a bout of impetuousness. There wasn’t even a voice at the back of her mind telling her to reconsider—that said, a girl was antsy from staying cooped up.

Since nothing couldn’t put as much as a scratch on her, it was then that she found herself riding on the grimalkin, porting through the shadows as they tracked whatever had pinged her extrasensory perception. The world went silent whenever they landed on the mossy branches of the tree canopy, bark barely crunched under the feline’s paws and all frantic motions of small creatures ceased—there was a predator on the prowl. Lying on her back and clinging to the faerie-beast’s tentacles was of course Arcis.

[ Remus|Level 18 Farm Hand ]

They flinched and started, turning their attention to the surrounding forest only just realizing that the sounds had died. Eyes darted at shadows, as they wavered in their trudge through the forest and whirled their short-sword with feverish and almost despairing motions.

It was a boy, hardly older than fifteen Erythean years. Their hair was matted against one side of their forehead while leaves and detritus made a bird’s nest of his scalp. On the left side their eye was closed, blood crusting with dirt around it.

It was not hard to see that he’d gotten a blunt blow to their face from the black eye and split lip. Their off hand was clutching against their side and from where she was, Arcis heard his laborious and almost wet breaths as if he was drowning in air. There was blood on his soiled tunic where three rips showed grievous injury underneath—he had a hardy constitution, but it did not take a healer to know that he did not have long to live.

“ Ah ken ye'r oot thare!” the boy hissed, a manic gleam in his eye. It took everything out of him to say the words, wincing at every turn as he surveyed the vicinity of the forest. And while his bravado was commendable in his situation, he was one push away from becoming unhinged.

Arcis kept watching him, her spell matrix held ready to redeploy so she could connect with the others and apprise them of what was happening. There was none of her innocence on her cherubic face. She'd never seen anyone in that state before, that her synth mind was stuck playing catch up.

Was she sheltered? Perhaps, a few months indoors curtailed her view of what was on the other side of violence. She'd flown an aership in the Underneath, run down a stone troll unflinching and evaded mana seeking lances confident in her abilities. She'd faced down a deep wurm when a massive plan weighed on her small shoulders, now?

Arcis was facing a different kind of monster; cruelty. Her fists clenched hard enough to crush rock; Umbra's rumble brought her back to the present. She released the spell matrix, and felt the [Farspeak] connect, overlaying on it another trick she'd learnt from studying the needlessly convoluted arcane construct—adding a flash of colour that indicated urgency to the receiving end.

“Arcis!—”

“Papa, no time to talk. We need a [healer] asap,”

“ Huh? hold on, we’re on our way…”

Knees were weak, arms were heavy and that was not even mentioning the numb, almost his dead grip on the short sword he’d pilfered from the attackers. It hurt to try adjusting his fingers; he’d given up, letting it stay an unfeeling appendage.

That was nothing compared to the sensation of feeling like he was breathing in water. Every breath was drawn furtively, like a medicine that could just as well kill him but with the fatalistic resignation that he would die if he didn't. There was no discounting the agony that was rekindled every time his ribs so much as twitched. There was a rasping sound from his side, a fire like someone akin to someone shoving up a fence picket between his ribs.

His one eyed vision was scanning the underbrush while darkness was encroached around the edges—two days without sleep and even with [ Lesser Endurance] was slowly taking its toll.

Hallucinations wavered in between , gnarly tree limbs and branches occasionally flitting between grotesque features and indifferent greenery while non-existent shadows seemed to jump at him every time he thought he'd seen something unremarkable.

Yet, here it was, the consummation of that nightmare that began all those days ago, when his world on the farm was upended, and flipped on its inside. He swallowed, tasting the tell-tale taste of iron on his tongue and spat a globe of blood. Even that elicited a painful heave from his chest, yet he never took his eyes away from the forest, Remus would go down fighting.

“ Shaw yerself,” he rasped again. His heavy accent only exacerbated his situation as he hacked another bloody cough. “At least hae th' decency tae let me see mah killer in th' eyes,” he drawled on, despite it all. The eerie silence was grating on his nerves as fear wormed itself in his guts; he could swear his stomach was crawling.

That it had been empty for days was not helping matters; it was a miracle that its growl did not attract anything in the forest—an exaggeration but perhaps that is how his stalkers had tracked him down.

For all he knew it might as well have been part of the hallucination; he was already deaf in one ear from the same blow that had rattled his skull and bruised his eye closed. He really was at the end of his rope, one fray away from snapping.

Nonetheless, something else snapped before that could happen. It started with detritus of old bark, a carpet of mildew and a few bugs suddenly falling onto the forest floor. Remus, tentatively turned his gaze up to a whirligig of leaves as they slowly descended from the canopy, all he saw was a shock of white hair and thought the spirits of the forest had come for his blood. It took one palpitation of shock for his body to finally give up the ghost; his face met leaf litter with a muted whumph.