Rather than a prima facie caste system, the Avensi’s division seems functionally sound as far as things go. Each caste is relatively important to the whole no matter its hierarchy. The Gestia for example are the royals or the nobles, but it is not the beauty of their plumage that accords them the right to rule rather it is their wit and meticulousness in matters of administration. The Volturi are more adept in physical undertakings and are the most fearsome caste of them all. Their physiology is well suited for combat and it is therefore no wonder that they form the military wing of the Avensi. Excerpt by Valerith Quillworth in his book: An Exposition on the Genesis of Races.

The drachenflieger was the craft’s name. The vessel type really; Seekers changed vessels every now and then due to the nature of their occupation and didn’t have the luxury of being attached to one. It even had a serial number in Erythrean duodecimal and rune script to identify it via [Appraisal]. Provided you had the aptitude to delve into its memory crystal without bleeding your brains out of course. And that wasn’t easy mind you, you had to get past the equivalent of firewalls against magical intrusions, like the anti-telepsychic warding that Numen so casually sidestepped.

Were anyone to attempt the same thing, they would have gotten the equivalent of telepsychic backlash that felt like a brain freeze and having their greymatter squeezed from the inside out―like taking a [Discombobulate] spell point blank. Nasty magic that―

The memory crystal was locked up tighter than an armory housing relics and heirlooms, she’d give it that. It took her thirty casions to get past the warding enchantments. They would not accept anyone other than the Seeker’s mana signature to gain authorization. Eryth’s biometrics really did take things a step further.

However, once she was in, Numen was swimming in a literal ocean of a thousand, no, tens of thousands of rune and spell matrices woven together to make a complex array of commands for the vessel’s magitech.

Propulsion, mana source and internal regulation, communication, runecraft and spell work, including offensive and defensive arcanry. Those were the primary systems sitting in the crystalline labyrinth of lattice work. Then there were subsystems bridging the mains using smaller matrices to create interdependent and hierarchical connections among all those systems.

Numen acknowledged the genius of it all, as she parsed the multitude of spells. She coveted it for her Stormbreaker! However, assimilating the complex meshwork runecraft would take time which she did not have. She needed to pilot the drachenflieger and save the Stormbreaker. Then there was her father’s mess to think about―the synth almost rolled her eyes. She couldn’t fault him for the mess, after all, he was only human. There! She found the overarching matrix that sat above all the rest like a control bus.

‘I’m in!’ she smiled triumphantly. Outwardly, nothing seemed out of place to the Seeker, but Numen held the ship's heart hostage. She, however, frowned at the use of expression; she’d been watching too many of those moving pictures―for research! Or else, where would one think she got the designs for the new artifacts sitting in her memory matrices?―and the catalogue had once again, grown.

Out of courtesy however, she sent the Seeker a [Message] through her armacus. It was easy to get into it since it was linked to the drachenflieger’s memory crystal. What the dwarven woman received on her end was,

“[Message]; While I do not begrudge your mastery of aerial combat, I cannot stand by and watch as my ship is harried by interlopers. I am taking over,”

The Seeker recoiled as if struck as she turned her saucer shaped eyes to the synth. Numen’s eyes were closed as a smug expression played on her lips. Behind her eyelids, Numen’s irises glowed amber as she leveraged all the skills she could use; the dwarf registered a rising mana signature on her armacus.

“ You what are you―” was all she got out before she was unceremoniously slammed into her seat. Using [Channeling], Numen dumped mana into the craft as it rolled off her in waves. Of Arcis and she, Numen had the bigger mana reserves of the two.

Channeling was the only non-contact skill that the synth had at her disposal. It was inefficient but, in effect, it allowed her to bypass the restrictions that limited the use of the bound skill to three casts. Now with more than enough leeway for what she was about to do, she enacted the next part of the plan. Running through her decision trees to ascertain her intended outcome, she initiated [Slingshot].

The bound spell was to be used by locking onto objects before catapulting the craft forward, like a spacecraft using gravity assist. Therefore, the drachenflieger locked onto the nearest available object―the Sturmjäger.

G-forces magnitudes above the drachenflieger’s recommended limits pressed the dwarven woman into her seat with a pained shriek. But for her constitution, she would have passed out as Numen executed maneuvers that would have made a fighter pilot piss their pants.

A sudden rumble shook the Sturmjäger as if its load had increased. Doladraen felt the ship drop in speed and yelled to the crewmen to check if something had happened to the sails. It was his man in charge of the relay console that spoke up.

“ Captain! Seeker vessel incoming !” Lezhbahn announced. Doladraen grumbled indifferently and, for the umpteenth time, directed the cannoneers to shoot the thing out of the sky. It was as annoying as the incessant buzzing of a shroom gnat. The last salvo seemed to have taken down her Aegis Shields and she would no doubt take time to recharge.

As for his vessel, he had to contend with strafes of ice on the windscreen which a certain away party was chipping off as punishment for having failed their mission. One of them had been put out of commission when an arrow went through the shoulder of their aiming arm. He couldn't have foreseen that they’d have adventurers on board. But that was on them for being overconfident; they didn’t even send back a [Message]to apprise him of the situation. Indiscipline and overconfidence had no place on his aership.

Speaking of the Ex-Triad woman, he really couldn't begrudge her. Not after she’d fought a monster of a girl― a target who had the enduring abilities of a monster and the forethought of a person. What a horrifying revelation! At least they’d gotten her. No one could survive a Mana Seeker to the gut.

They didn’t really mean to shoot her with the Mana Seekers really; something had happened to them as soon as they’d flown out of the spell cannons. His quarry had meanwhile put up a pursuit that stymied even his movement skills; he had to settle with sniping them from afar just to cause enough damage to have them slow. It was obvious that the ship had had a change of helmsperson judging by its erratic flying patterns.

He didn’t even use the heavy duty artillery for that like the runeheads. Those, he reserved for the Seeker’s vessel. He wanted it destroyed so thoroughly the Triad wouldn’t be able to glean any evidence from its remains.

“ Ah, Captain?”

“ What?” Doladraen snapped morosely. He was getting exhausted from all the let downs; five men and an Ex- Triad Mage-Hunter and they couldn’t get a job done right.

“ New [Message]...” Lezhbahn Brasscup hesitatingly said, wondering whether to tell him or not. He looked close to blowing up a steam gasket. “ You might want to see it,”

“ Send it to my armacus,” the dwarven captain grunted as he tuned the wheel to keep up with the Stormbreaker's flightpath. Where were they running to? He fired off another litany of movement skills, his staple [Swift Winds] and then [Expeditious Reload] just incase the Seeker was getting ideas.

“[Unknown]; As a preamble, the Seeker is currently indisposed at the moment. However, following in the spirit of civility, I shall let you leave unmolested if you cease hostilities against my ship. Following that, I will be forced to employ punitory action against your vessel. This is your first and last warning.”

“Wait, that last line on the [Message], where have I heard it before?” Doladraen exclaimed as he zeroed in on the [Relay Overseer]. Then it dawned on him; the last time he heard such a tone―

“ All hands to battlestations! “ he bellowed into the speaking pipe. “ We’re taking down that Seeker’s vessel. Pull out the Grounding Harpoons and Pyrtherite Runeheads!”

‘Hmm, I thought so,’ Numen sighed, out of resignation more than anything . Of course she’d extrapolated the probability that the Sturmjager would give up pursuit to be less than favorable. They’d invested too much to pull back now and barring that, they had their dwarven pride to uphold.

The synth performed a neck breaking aerolon roll from its portside to its starboard as she surveyed the weapons, she saw the cannon turrets being reloaded with new armaments. Before they could train their turrets on her however, she rolled the ship below its gunwale and hugged its underside with a few breadths to spare.

”Hnrgh,” the Seeker grunted, unable to do anything to stop the vessel's motion. She was staring at the synth in confusion. Only the movement of Numen's eyes had betrayed what she was doing—to the woman, it was inconceivable that she was capable of such. She wasn't even being affected by the inertial changes.

”[Message]; bear with me for now and I might just make it easier for the both of us. That ship—you wanted to commandeer it, yes?” She sent through [Message] . She'd actually examined the Seeker's recent mission logs. There was one casion delay as the Seeker received the message. The dwarf nodded hesitantly, she could barely move her neck.

As for Numen, she hadn't figured out how to use actual speech and the armacus she found out, was not actually created to receive [Farspeak] hails.

’Aggravating’ she frowned and then, with another [Slingshot] she used the Sturmjäger above her to accelerate forwards. They caught up to the Stormbreaker in under a par, all the while dodging arcane artillery spells which whizzed past the small craft. Those that were getting close to the Stormbreaker she shot down or used the Aegis shield, now fully recharged to tank hits for the Stormbreaker. Then she pulled alongside while hailing Elena on [Farspeak].

Elena's ear cuff telecry buzzed. Her eyes were red, she was sniffling and hiccuping, trying in vain to prevent the snort from running down her nose. Things had gone downhill and she felt like she was in a daze. Her mind was tunnel visioned—the only thing on it, was to get the aership to Arthur no matter what happened. She didn't know how to tell the man that they'd lost Arcis to an artillery spell—she'd been blown off the deck before their eyes.

There had been no blood, only tattered remains of her clothes that Brunhilde had insisted on going to get. And she'd thought the sudden teleportation of the boarding party and the other woman who'd been fighting Arcis was strange. If only she'd known that they were preparing to bombard the ship for real, she would've been more careful. But with Mana Seekers? It would still have been futile to dodge.

The only callous satisfaction she’d had was that Annika had put an arrow through one of them; she hoped that wherever they’d gone back to they were dead. The damage below deck was only in the initial incursion. Fortunately, the beastkin had the forethought to use their cellar door shield to hunker down as Annika and the other foreign adventurer shot back at the hijackers.

The sylvani wiped a tear off her eyes as she blearily checked the steam gauge; it was not in the red so she could move even faster. The cannon shots no longer fazed her, they could rock the ship but she could just as well dodge any flying erratically.

The earcuff buzzed again, she absentmindedly brought her hand to her ear and tapped it.

“Yes?” she croaked. Her voice was raw from the visceral scream she'd let rip the first time Arcis had been caught in the spellfire.

The voice that came through was not what she'd been expecting. Though it sounded cold, detached and had an aura of someone older than its owner appeared, there was no mistaking it. The synth was alive.

“ Arcis!” Elena screamed, almost in happiness and incredulity. Her exclamation attracted the two people who’d been on the bridge from the start.

“ I knew she was alive,” Nevine crowed, voice breaking. He too touched his telecry glasses as they buzzed. His eyes too went wide as he looked towards Brunhilde who was out of the loop on things.

“ But how?” the woman asked. “ I sure as the Pits saw the lil’ fille get blown off the ship― no one could survive that.”

“ If anyone can survive anything, it would be Arcis,” Nevine chuckled, blinking away his tears. Of course Numen didn’t correct them, they’d only ask her too many questions and she had no time for that. So she used Arcis’ in-hail alias to converse.

“[Kitten]; Of course I am alive―However, my modesty seems to have suffered a debilitating blow.”

There was a brief pause of uneasy laughter on the bridge as she continued.

“[Kitten]; I hope I have more than one change of clothes. I have a…should I say, an acquaintance who happened upon me and a plan.”

“ [Glasses]; Hold on how? “

“[Kitten]; We don’t have much time, but if you must insist, look outside the starboard side.

“[Quartermistress]; By Aeris! What on Eryth is that? Is that you?”

“[Kitten]; Correct. I have been able to take out some arcane missiles that were meant for the Stormbreaker. But this way of doing things is not sustainable. Now listen, I have a plan to take down our pursuers or at least take their ship from them just as they tried to take mine―”

The last ‘mine’ was said with so much vitriol that Elena second guessed herself. Arcis was not known to be so…wrathful. Maybe the spell had hit her head too hard? Neither was Arcis known to be so strategic. She broke down the plan they’d pull off while tanking hits from spellfire―most of them were Mana Seekers.

With their pursuers using movement skills, they’d become a stubborn tail even though they’d clearly been outmatched in speed. Elena was not even sure how many quints they were traversing per given time. Also, they were about to get to the village of Dorn which meant even more than ever, everything else hinged on the success of the plan. When everyone had been apprised of their roles, it was put in motion.

The ship's cannoneers had worked up a frenzy as soon as the Seeker's vessel came within reach of the Sturmjäger. Only it didn't strafe the deck with [Cryo Lance] and [Pyro Bolt] like the last time. It just orbited the bigger ship, rolling from the portside, above the twin masts to the starboard side and then below the hull. They didn't even get a chance to get a shot in. Either they had more powerful movement skills or—but why the cryptic [Message]? Who were they? The answer came from Eatrude.

“She's alive!” Eatrude exclaimed, echoing Doladraen's hypothesis. The dwarven woman had spotted Arcis flying the Stormbreaker when they'd first landed on its deck.

“Trollshit!” It was Lezbahn who blustered. “No one can survive a Mana Seeker like that—we saw her fall!”

“And it seems, our dear dutiful Seeker has no shortage of heroics,” Eatrude retorted. “ Else how do you explain why she should not be a bloody smear against the ground?—no,” she ran her fingers through her hair. “ Whoever or whatever she is—she's more dangerous than I thought.”

Eatrude's foreboding revelation led to further stupefaction when something changed. Outside—the Stormbreaker deployed its air brakes and dropped backwards almost rear ending into the Sturmjäger.

“[Hastened Evasion]!” Doladraen bellowed. The Sturmjäger banked to the side, barely getting out of the way in time. The Stormbreaker suddenly fell behind as if a chute had been deployed in its wake.

”What in the Pits are they doing?” Lezhbahn said rattled.”Have they gotten suicidal? Wait…where is the Seeker's vessel?”

“[Sighter]!” the dwarven captain bellowed into the speaking pipe. “Get me an eye in that vessel,” he commanded, eyeing the skies as he rolled the wheel to the side. The Sturmjäger banked hard. Eatrude moved to peer out of the glass screening the ship's pilothouse and found the dwarves on punishment duty yelling expletives as they ran across the deck.

“Above us!” She yelled, jumping back and deploying her Aegis shield. After getting a taste of the synth's antics she was more cautionary than ever.

Sure enough, the drachenflieger dropped from the skies like a bird of prey. [Cryo Lance] and [Pyro Bolt] spells shot intermittently like laser beams. Ice slammed into the obsiderite glass and then scalding heat evaporated it immediately after.

“What is she doing?!” The dwarven woman said, was lost in comprehension, The Seeker vessel streaked by without doing any apparent damage save for rattling the glass pane from acceleration.

“Did your father teach you that too?!” Holly sputtered nervously. She was being held at gun-point; wandpoint? In her own vessel no less. She'd never be able to live that down. But if anything the quirky child by way of unknown magic was effectively piloting her craft better than she could, pulling out movements like she had eyes at the back of the head—while naked!

She didn't even deign to talk,instead making use of [Message] spells and sending them to her armacus. She wasn't even abashed at how scantily clad she was in a scorched piece of fabric that could barely be called clothing.

While someone might have hailed the synth a prodigy, Holly saw a child bred for war. She gulped in apprehension; she was sure going to have to change her perception of her father if this was the daughter he'd raised. She didn't have information to back her appraisal of the girl as [Analyze] kept bouncing off her.

After the fifth time the Seeker had given up. Nor could she train her spells on her; her Danger Sense was there like a dagger against the nape of her neck. Just how much animosity did the girl have towards her?

But she had to give the girl credit for thinking of using cooling and heating to rapidly crack glass. Obsiderite had the strength of iron alright, but one of its quirks was that it could only take so much abuse after being saturated with magic. You had to collect that magic somewhere or else. And the decision to use their own ship’s weakness against them by flying where the cannoranades could not swivel? Why didn’t she think of that?

Elena had one job to do and out of the two piloting the vessels, it was by far the easiest. The adventurers had taken some convincing to follow the plan but they were ready. With [Farspeak] they coordinated with Nevine who was standing by in the engine deck, alongside the Fanged Five who were raring for another fight with the dwarves.

Save for Bruhilde, the two foreigner twins Tahrir and Sahra, the farm boy Remus who had to be restrained from going along with the battle fever and Nevine everyone else was going

Their morale was high after rebuffing the intruders so it stood to reason that they would be confident. While Arcis was flitting around, blinding the Sturmjäger, Elena was getting in position. Left to the mercy of the captain's skills and the wind the dwarven ship was struggling to come about, and the sylvani had already positioned the ship above the pilot-house.

”[Kitten]; In position—move!"

“[Quartermistress]; hatch open!”

“ [Glasses]; adventurers away!”

It barely took thirty casions for the combatants to get the drop on the Sturmjäger. It was unheard of for aerial boarding to have happened from above bit they made it. On the Sturmjäger—combat ensued.