But for the *Drkahryggur Imperium, the power sequestered in the Drakenspine Mountains, the economy of the Occidanian continent would have been in shambles from the war. The devaluation of currency during the war would have crippled trade even after the war had ended. While they did adopt a non-interventionist policy, they were not indifferent to the development of the Occidanian continent even though it had fallen far from its pedestal. Who were Imperiums that thought themselves worthy of putting the significance of Occidanian nations on a scale? Easy, they are the nation of dragonkin; the descendants of scion who, their bloodlines manifested the features that we see on them today.

*For those who are not vocally gifted with sibilant and throaty phonetics, Drkahryggur may be pronounced as Dr⸱kay⸱gar. Excerpt from Valerith Quillworth’s, 'Alkerd: New World History.'

“[Seeker] Holly Mission log, time is the 23rd quart, 34 pars and 12 casions. Destination, alleged interception point of telepsychic echoes rumored to be [Message] spells. Originator? Suspected to be mission subject secondary, designated Stormbreaker. Seeker Holly entering mission.”

After parting with the Sturmjager, Holly flew her craft towards the village of Dorn, following the direction of the telepsychic ‘pings’ that Doladraen’s vessel had picked up. Surprised to find a quaint little village devoid of all life, she came around the outer perimeter wall and ran another telepsychic sweep just to be sure—they came up empty for signs of life. Holly noted it to her mission log

“ Life Sense detects nothing; unknown frontier village seems deserted, “ she murmured as she guided the drachenflieger into a low hover. The main village isle was just wide enough for her craft to pass unimpeded. She flicked on the Lux crystals and what she found made her gasp in shock—Words died in her throat as she cast about for something to add to her log,

“ Seeker Holly, supplementary log…this is—I don’t even know what to say,” she stuttered, fumbling with the light runes and killing the illumination. Knuckles hard against her yoke sticks, Holly felt an icy chill crawl through her spine as the glimpses of bloody trails and congealed splatters burned themselves into her memory.

She cursed the magitech crafters for making a bubble canopy for her current vessel feeling exposed even though there were several finger spans of animus alloy metal in the way. Nonetheless, one didn’t become a Seeker by running away from fearing the unknown—there were worse things in the Underneath.

Swallowing the fear bubbling up her parched throat she followed the dark lines resigned to using only the craft's Dark vision which cast everything in a gray monochrome, [Cryo Lance] rune matrices were already engaged to make an icy popsicle of anything that could jump at her.

The bloody streaks suddenly petered out to a barely indistinct smear on the ground, to be replaced by shallow divots—it looked like something had dragged corpses a long way. That, or a killer had done a messy job of cleaning up after themselves. The sense of foreboding just made her run another sweep of Sense Life just in case, this time she made sure to check for any anomalous residues of mana.

Something jumped out to her and she bit back a shuddering breath. There was mana attuned to the specter of death, Mors lingering like a cloud in front of her craft. The vessel’s canopy bubble rendered it as a dark oily mist on the equivalent of a HUD in her drachenflieger. She felt her skin crawl and break a cold sweat just from flying through it.

Granted it was a given that residual mana from any living thing would decompose into that before dissipating but this one seemed to have lingered for a while. It was a surefire tell, that death magic had been used—and another telepsychic sweep calibrated for Mana Sense found the highest concentrations on the ground, near a low earthen fence.

Leery as she was to get out of her vessel, Holly had to get to the bottom of things. She hemmed and hawed, thinking about a potential encounter with undead or whatever had caused a massacre in the village—or worse a combination of the two.

Holly didn’t like fighting things she didn’t see coming; she was sure she heard the magitech crafters say that not even vengeful spirits which were matter that coalesced from telepsychic residue tethered to the physical realm could escape the telepsychic scan.

However reluctant she was to get things underway, the dwarven woman unbuckled her harnesses as the vessel glided towards the site of her investigation. Checking her armacus one more time she made sure to switch her utility spells for offensive ones, including [Stone Dart], [Spark Bolt] and an Orb of Ground Anchor.

The last one was a preloaded tier four spell with its own mana source, scrivened onto a little sphere that could fit the palm of her hand. It had a delay vector and could, on activation, ground anything in its area of effect by consecutively multiplying its weight until the target was immobilized—or crushed into the ground —whichever came first. She really was not taking any chances.

She also checked her stocks of potions, retrieving and returning each in turns; Potions of Healing, Potions of Rejuvenation, a Draught of Mnemosyne for stupefying people's memories and Pixies’ Breath to put to sleep anyone she wanted subdued non-lethally . She also holstered two daggers made of svartanite steel for anti-magic engagement. Finally, she was ready.

With a hiss of depressurizing air, the vessel bubble canopy opened to let the Seeker out. She shivered, catching a brush of the cold air outside and tapped the self-heating runes to bring some warmth to her arms. Come rain, shine or freezing blizzard, a Seeker was always geared to be sent to the most treacherous of places for missions.

Thus, the Seeker jumped over the grass thatch, careful of the more precarious parts where the roofing was too thin. Finding an easily navigable spot, she then slid all the way down to the lip of the roof where she parkoured and landed on her feet, the motion coming to her from years of practice.

Securing her obsiderite goggles, she furtively stalked around the outer perimeter of the village, and the buzzing of her armacus brought her about the mud wall. Mana attuned to death had definitely been used, she confirmed;by the residue in spite of the ambient mana it couldn't have been more than 3 quarts past.

‘Were they fighting someone?’ Holly murmured, tracing the areas where scorch-like marks had been left behind, vitality leached out like a bone. Her eyes kept fleeting to the corners of the compacted mud walled houses; doors left ajar and windows unlatched were creaking. She could almost feel the tension ready to snap.

'Deep breaths Holly,’ she exhaled, stopping short of twitching her hand from casting [Light]. She'd rather not have seen what the darkness hid, beyond the reach of her obsiderite's Dark Vision goggles.

A rustle of movement had her rapidly start, bringing her armacus to bear—only to find a pair of rats tussling on a pile of dry grass. She chuckled ruefully, shaking her head—the only things that could have escaped her sweep were the vermin crawling out of the nooks and holes where the magic did not reach.

Holly wiggled her toes inside her boots to recenter herself, then remembering , she retrieved her cavea candy and tossed one into her mouth. The caffeine was like a shot of clarity into her system—Mind in the clear and more alert, she realized why she'd been so on edge. And now she could devote more of her attention to thinking things through—

‘It doesn't make sense,’ she pursed her lips as she kept moving. She tried putting the clues together as she tracked the trail of gouges on the ground, into the farm where young sprouts had been trampled on, and the soil looked disturbed.

It was as she was past a grove of trees, armacus primed to release [Spark Bolt] at the first thing that jumped that she found the remains of a campfire— and bones—but not the bones she'd expected. ‘Huh?’ she stopped, prodding the bones with her foot, then crouched and picked up pieces of hemp rope on the ground, with a groove of one very sharp object having cut through it and the ground beneath.

‘Enchanted weapon,’ she murmured. ‘Too many disjointed clues,’ she scratched at the back of her neck. ’There's a story here but what?’ She mulled looking towards the direction of the hills, silhouettes in the dark like sentinels watching over the village. A river, lined with trees, marshes and eroded boulders meandered in between. The night was alive with the sound of chirps, croaks and nocturnal creatures.

Holly sighed at the loneliness of the task ahead; signing up for it was one thing and doing it? No she didn’t really have a choice. She noted another mission log on her armacus and continued searching for clues, unaware of the fact that the thread that would unravel the mystery of the village was about to fray and tangle her in it.

Elena's ear cuff buzzed almost ticklishly on her sylvani ears. Somewhere along the way she'd gotten a little buzzed, caught in a small drinking game and come crashing down. How a search for adventurer parties to mount a rescue turned into a drinking spree she could not hazard a guess.

But with a woman like Brunhilde who was a literal whirlwind, larger than life perhaps, literally and figuratively. Whose energy was so contagious it embosomed you like her well…bosom.

It was not so hard to see why things ended the way they did. And she had that mother hen vibe to her; you couldn’t help just letting go for a while when she said so. And she was a good listener; after months of moping, and burying her ache under moist sheets, trying to occupy her mind with work under a new employer , a chink had finally formed on her armor. Truth be told though, she wasn't very good at bottling up things...unbottling things though—

The ear cuff buzzed again, she groaned unsticking herself from the bar table. She looked around, saw her glass was half full—Nevine was squeezed between two women, Umika or Signe of the Hill Maidens; she wasn’t sure which twin was which. They were listening to the freckled boy go on and on about some Antecessor conspiracies, occasionally laughing raucously at some joke or another.

The teenager’s cheeks were flushed and he kept trying to adjust his askew glasses as someone slapped him on the back. A little awkward and out of his element perhaps, but the boy might have had some dwarven blood for all the drinks he was throwing down.

And there was a gathering around their group, adventurers and some run of the mill patrons who were just swept up by the energy of the Hill Maidens. A boisterous Annika and Frigg were singing a drunken duet, harrying the bard to keep up with their contralto’s fit for yodeling in the hills. In a few pars, Elena had already gotten to know the adventurer party in all their quirks.

“Auntie Lena!”

“Gah!” Elena started, it felt like someone shouted in her ear—her ear cuff! Elena fumbled trying to appear as unruffled as possible. Luckily nobody seemed to notice the gaffe of a sylvani suddenly go from near drunkenness to a frantic yelp—the tavern was too chaotic for that thankfully; not even the hawk-eyed Orsen had caught on.

“Mothrot!—Arcis, you— you almost gave me a heart attack, ” Elena choked, patting her chest; saliva had gone down the wrong pipe. She quaffed the rest of her lukewarm lager, wetting her throat and subsequently drowning off the rest of what would have been a dry cough even as her eyes watered. The warmth in her belly helped shake off the fog in her head. She hiccuped as her bearings came to the fore, ‘Rot how much did I drink?’

“Auntie Lena?!I can't believe you—ugh, grown ups!” Arcus mumbled and grumbled on the other end of the connection. “ I sent a panic signal twice, you didn't pick up…”

”Hold up, hold up,” the sylvani said. “Calm down, what's gotten into you?”

“Me?! What's gotten into me?! The roof...get on the roof! There’s trouble….big trouble!”

Then she heard noise from outside the Old Sailor's Swill. Hue and cry went up as some revelers in various states of drunkenness rushed towards the door.

“Oh no...Nevine!” Elena yelled to the freckled bespectacled boy. She stumbled past the press of legs around the barrel table and squeezed past drunk patrons as she all but ran to the door. But for her sylvani metabolism she wouldn't have been so sure on her feet.

“Elena...wait—hold on!” Nevine cried out behind her but it was all an afterthought. Before she even made it to the door, unmistakably bright beams lit outside startling a few adventurers who drew their weapons in alarm, llimu squawked and horses neighed pulling at their tacks in a frenzy as a silhouette passed overhead.

Elena skidded to a stop outside the door just in time to see the Stormbreaker with arcane fire lighting its belly pivoting around in the middle of the main street. The sylvani almost flinched her eyes shut when it came about, stern and bow almost scraping the top of the second storey building.

There was no time to stand gobsmacked like an adjacent bystander however as Gallowick’s own town guard appeared at the end of the thoroughfare. The guard captain must have been frothing at the mouth to see an unauthorized aership—actually the only aership to grace the wayside town bypass the guard checks at the gate. They were armed with crossbows, for all the good it would do against an iron wood hull.

“ Well, slap my bum and call me a troll’s mother!” Brunhilde crowed, checking Elena on the back. “ Is that yours?” she grinned, milky white teeth glinting in the illumination of the Stormbreaker’s lux crystals. The whole tavern was right outside with them, din rising up a fever pitch as they clamored for a glimpse of the aership. The Stormbreaker banked towards one of the flat topped buildings..

“ What are you waiting for?! get on the roof!,” came Arcis' voice. Elena turned towards the Hill Maiden, [ Axe Maiden] because she fought with axes. “ Uh, Brunhilde, you wouldn’t happen to be ready to move on short notice would you?” Elena fidgeted looking up at the taller woman. ‘ Mothrot, I’ve really messed up big!’ she thought as she crossed her fingers.

“Are you kidding me lassie? When adventure calls no one is ever ready!” Brunhilde said. “ Girls!“ she bellowed, turning towards the tavern. “ We’re leaving…Annika grab the wee sprog, “she yelled like a drill sergeant issuing rapid fire orders as she started running towards the building. Luckily, it had a staircase that went up from the outside ending at an open top with tarps meant to shed eatery patrons from the sun.

The Hill Maidens elbowed their way out of the tavern, weapons, shields and armor strapped on as if they’d magicked them from thin air—yet the last time she’d seen them they were without. Nevine was being dragged bodily by one of the women who towered a head and shoulders above him, his glasses were askew and his hair was mussed up; at least he was steady on his feet.

“ Oi Brunhilde you mountain giantess! What on Eryth is going on there?!” the guard captain bellowed. Elena whirled towards Brunhilde, nudging her bicep as she shifted from foot to foot. With all the time she’d wasted she would’ve gotten way more teams to join in on the mobilization; if only she hadn’t let herself get carried away.

“ Do you…maybe have a few more people you can call for help? Passing acquaintances maybe?” Elena muttered under her breath as she backwalked, she kept peering over Brunhilde's shoulder wondering if she could ride the moment and snag a few more adventurers to go with them. And Brunhilde, it turns out knew a few heavy weights who owed her favours—

“Furry Five you coming?! ” she turned back, yelling from between her palms.

“ Damn it woman, we’re the Fanged Five,” an Ursine-kin grumbled, bodily stepping out. The throng parted at his advance as he broke into a jog. Several other beastkin of the same race stepped out, decked in their own gear. They were dressed more like barbarians, lumberjacks and bush hunters than adventurers; some had long hatchets and longbows. One of them had a round shield the size of a cellar door strapped to their back.

“Twin Rookies, that favor you called in…its right in front of you, haul ass.” Brunhilde added. Two foreign looking youth in cowls hesitated before also peeled away from the back of the small crowd and ran towards the group tailing the aership. At last the Stormbreaker came to a hover level with the staircase landing of the building.

'By Oonaris’ Elena wanted to facepalm as she looked at the rag tag band that was scaling the stairs at a jog. Gallowick's guard captain was yelling himself hoarse as he tried to get them to stop. ’Ugh I'll take 'em. How bad can it be?’

On a scale of one to ten? Things were eleven levels of bad—even with her inexperience Arcis knew that somehow things had gotten way out of hand. She was doing all she could to stop panic from ripping away all her semblance of control.

Her synth brain was close to going on the fritz from all the input she was being forced to parse— old Volemhir talking in her head giving her speculations for all the things that could've blocked a telepsychic connection; her link to the only Psiphone had gone dead, a group of guards were running after the ship with crossbows. Worst of all, there were anti-wyvern ballistas being trained on them from the top of a guard tower on the town walls.

Loathe as she was to admit, whenever guards were involved she felt like walls were closing around her once again . But that was non-consequential, it wasn't as grave as the sense of deprivation that came from not being able to reach her foster father. And not as much as drawing up the worst case scenario that he'd fallen into a trap or worse he was hurt with no way to reach them. Arcis shuddered to even dwell on the thoughts of such a thing. Not even his proximity to the dhampir could reassure her of his safety

And Elena had gone ahead and gotten drunk instead of getting them what they’d come for—surely how hard could it have been to just get in there and grab the adventurer with the meanest mug so that they could get it over with? For her, well, things were like a series of decision trees looping and looping until she got the right answer. Anything she couldn’t throw her synth brain at was a problem she could as well leverage magic against.

She’d almost collided with a bird person in her haste to get over the town walls, before she swerved down and flicked the runes to the ship's bow illumination. The poor corvani must have seen life flashing before their very eyes but it wasn't her fault they were flying in the dark—which prompted her to leverage her arcane perception and kick the old elf off her telepsychic link.

With a clearer frame of mind she was able to not only locate the tavern Elena had gone to but also somewhere she could pick up the rest of the group—without landing the ship. Searching tavern by tavern would have wasted precious time. She'd already caused much commotion and the guards were not very happy about it.

She was about to yell into Elena's telecry ear cuff for the excessive casualness in which she'd treated her only one job when she sensed more people would join her within her Scan range.

She sighed in relief; finally something was done right. Had the sylvani come back inebriated and worse, with nothing to show for it Arcis did not know how she would have reacted—they weren't close. Worse, she didn't know which was grated on her , treating her like a freak or regarding her as a precocious child who'd earned her place only because she was useful. She could excuse a little social ineptness; she was only a couple of months old for the world. But sticking to her adopted father’s social capital was only going to get her so far.

Several concussive thumps on reverberating through the deck heralded the embarking of the adventurer parties. From her count, there were about twelve people aside from Nevine and Elena. She could have identified them outright if only to gauge their strength. Without line of sight and her inability to use Scan and Identify in conjunction however, that was not happening—besides the guardsmen were rapidly entering her Scan range.

And just in time too, the farm boy yelled at her to get them moving as the noise of several booted feet and cries of awe spilled over from the passenger’s compartment . She pulled back the steering yoke and depressed the shifters to the ventral thrusters pulling them well clear off the impromptu embarkment. Tarps and loose material on the rooftop serving as a makeshift eatery were rustled in the aership’s wake as it rapidly ascended.

“Arcis, what on Eryth were you thinking?” Elena rushed into the cockpit, boots sending sharp taps through the deck floor. “ Couldn’t you have warned us?” Her chest was heaving from having run all the way to the ship, sweat sheened on her brow and then her cheeks were a rosy pink of flushes.

“ArCis WhaT on EryTh WeRe YoU ThInking!” The synth girl blurted out in annoyance. Elena found herself dumbfounded slamming her mouth shut with a clack of teeth. Arcis had mimicked her voice, cadence, inflection and everything in between—except for the mockery in her tone of course.

“ I tried to hail you several times but noooo, you just had to go play adult.” Arcis mumbled, scrunching her nose and wafting the air in front of her nose—an allusion to the smell of alcohol on Elena. She rapidly increased the ship's speed watching as the thaumometer needle climbed to thousands of thaums and kept going as the Mark Three’s clamor whined through the airframe.

Elena sputtered, shaking off her stupor. She clenched her fists so hard her knuckles popped as she worked her jaw in indignation—and the blood went to her head,

“ Now listen here you—”

“Oh, so now you finally acknowledge me as you and not just a thing huh, huh?!” Arcis almost spat, the words tumbled out of her as if a dam had burst. Her reflexive release of the ship's controls yawed and shook the ship momentarily. ”You didn’t even ask for my opinion when you two left.”

Something finally snapped in the sylvani and all the vitriol and perceived unfairness bubbling in her chest came out—

”Do you want to know why?! This is why! You’re not normal! Gods I am still getting used to the fact that golems could talk, and now you! You even broke yourself out of a prison.” She threw up her arms, chortling hysterically.

“I could barely run to save myself—then I find out you can do all those things, this stuff—” she pulled her ear cuff, throwing it at the synth. “And all the dreams of being an enchanter that I've found myself chasing have never been so hollow.” She turned on her heel, almost running into Nevine

“Ele—”

”Not now Nevine,” the sylvani snapped walking out of the cockpit.

“Ah, for the love of Eryth,” Nevine swore helplessly.

“ Arcis, go easy on her will you?” Nevine muttered, rubbing at the back of his neck. His tunic was ruffled, buttons open all the way to the middle of his chest and his sleeves were rolled up. It was like the alcohol had brought out another side to him.

“ Listen, we all went through the wringer back in Aldmoor; her included. Some of us are not used to having the ground taken from right beneath us and some take a bit longer than others to get back on their feet. I know… because Elena has been pushing herself even though she did not know it.”

“How was I supposed to know?,” Arcis protested. “ We went in knowing that we'd need to intervene somehow…our plan was set from the get-go.”

“ That is where you’re wrong. Perhaps even your father might have been mistaken too. I get that he has the weight of leading this,” Nevine threw up his arms to indicate the ship. “ But, even he makes mistakes too; I don’t know where you’re from but out here. It has always been a given that living on the frontier has some risks to it—”

“ But…”

“ Listen, it is not for a lack of trying y’see. But that is how people have lived out here…constantly on the edge of danger—I think I should have mentioned just how far-fetched it seemed to have to pull a rescue on the same day.”

“ There’s magic Nevine! We have an aership…” Arcis insisted.

“ And that is okay I suppose,” Nevine sighed. “ But it doesn’t change the fact that things have been this way for the longest time ever. I just wanted you to know that, in case it happens that we can’t mount a rescue in time—it pays to temper your expectations.”

“ Why didn’t you say it then?” The synth asked. “ You should have just told him that we did not get to play hero just because we could.” she sniffled.

“ A,...”

“ I thought so too, it's the drink talking,”

“ I’ll just pretend you meant that to be sarcastic.” Nevine let out another tired sigh. Arcis had fallen quiet, seemingly lost in thought as she shared out into the dark. The Stormbreaker was cruising right above the tallest trees, hugging a trajectory that changed with the contour of the land.

The sounds of yelling and loud conversations made her wince a little, as she peered back at the cockpit hatchway from the corner of her eyes. Arms folded, the teenager still stood there as if prompting her to speak. “What is it?”

“I didn't get the memo for our impromptu flight…”

“It's Papa…he's in trouble—” Arcis mumbled.

“Oh,” Nevine mulled, chewing his lip. “That is why you're so on edge—Miss Nora is right there with him…”

‘You wouldn't understand,’ Arcis almost said. “ It can't hurt just to make sure…he's all I know,” She muttered instead. ‘ If I lose him I’d be lost without him.’