023

Lectures, Diplomacy, and Diplomatic Lectures

The royal dragon den was more a garden than a den. Large trees with pearlescent leaves grew among a carefully tended lawn with numerous large boulders, many of which were currently being used by dragons to sun themselves. Many of these massive stones had gateways carved into them that led into caves for those who would have preferred something more like an actual den, but few of these were occupied. Dragons were creatures of the sky, and given their size, they rarely found any need to go inside anywhere. Even the youngest among the species, while easily able to go inside structures, generally preferred the outdoors unless the elements were particularly nasty. As such, even the royal dragon den had no houses, just numerous plants and objects arranged to look natural while at the same time clearly being heavily catered. The entire place held maybe two-dozen dragons ranging in size from smaller than Alexandrite to a truly gargantuan red dragon comparable in size to a balloon whale.

This red behemoth was clearly old—too old for his wings to provide lift. He slept, currently, and it looked like he did little else.

Alexandrite landed in front of the immense dragon whose maw was large enough to eat him whole. Blue and Tenrayce got off, Tenrayce immediately going to check on Greg, while Blue just stood next to Alexandrite, trying not to feel nervous at the presence of the enormous sleeping predator.

“Mica the Red,” Alexandrite said, voice solemn. “He was a legend since before I was born…” Alexandrite shook his head. “I wonder how long he has been here, waiting?”

Blue looked to Alexandrite, frowning. “You… okay?”

“It is rare to see one of our kind so… old.” Alexandrite shook his head. “Most will die long before this age, and those who do not tend to hide themselves away. Even Mica here is hidden… in a sense. Not just anyone can come in here.”

“True,” a female voice said. A purple dragon roughly three times Alexandrite’s size came out from a hiding place within the coils of Mica the Red’s tail. “I find myself wondering what service you have rendered to be considered worthy.” She glanced past Alexandrite to see Tenrayce and immediately bowed her head. “Ah, princess.”

“Rise, Kunzite,” Tenrayce said—naturally without looking up from a tiny book she had somehow managed to produce from her robes. “Treat Alexandrite well, he is a guest. No, he is not a new royal dragon, but he is a Deep Messenger, do not think him incapable.”

Kunzite lifted her nose into the air, clearly thinking this over. “Of course, Your Highness.”

“Come on, Blue,” Tenrayce said. “We have somewhere to be.”

“U-uh right!” Blue stammered, scampering over to Tenrayce. “N-nice meeting you, Kunzite!”

Kunzite flashed her teeth. “What’s the matter, little one? Afraid?”

Blue blinked. “W-well, yes, obviously.”

Kunzite paused. “Most won’t admit that right out.”

“Would be kind of useless to lie, right? I mean, who wouldn’t be terrified in my position?”

“Greg,” Tenrayce said, gesturing at the ugly horse eating grass without a care in the world.

“Well he’s probably used to having giant dragons around.”

“And you can be too. In time. But that’s for later, we really do need to get going.”

Mica the Red let out a great snore that drowned out anything anyone could have possibly wanted to say at that point, and it lasted for quite a few seconds so Blue just shrugged, waved to Alexandrite, and followed the Princess. Even with Tenrayce riding horseback and Blue essentially being a horse, it still took a minute to cross the royal dragon den. Blue realized with some shock that they were going to the palace.

Why am I surprised? Of course she’d want to go to the Palace first, it’s where she lives…

A very large set of double doors designed for all but the largest of dragons greeted them. The rims were gold and the door itself a deep blue marked with numerous stars made from non-magical crystals. There were clearly innate, intricate designs all the way up to the top, but given its sheer immensity Blue had no idea who the designs at the top were for.

Naturally, these doors were rarely opened and there was a much smaller, much less interesting door just to the left of it. This was where Tenrayce led them. She wordlessly handed Greg off to a human stable boy and went inside.

The interior of the palace was… admittedly not as impressive as Blue had been expecting, but she supposed they were entering through a backdoor into some kind of side passageway. It was mostly smooth, chiseled stone, with simple blue rugs laid everywhere. The one note of luxury clearly on display was the lighting—every wall was lined with Purple lighting casting the exact same kind of light that the sun would on a calm day. Blue quickly realized that all the lights had to be hooked up to some kind of central system that led to a wizard—or perhaps multiple wizards—always putting will into the system to keep the interior of the palace lit.

“I can already see you dissecting our lighting systems bit by bit in that analytical head of yours.”

“You haven’t even looked up from your book.”

Tenrayce nodded. “That does not mean I do not see what happens around me, a fact of which you should be well aware at this point. Now, our destination is the Palace Lecture Hall, which should not be in use but will be in use very shortly. Father will want to hear you speak as quickly as possible.”

Blue took in a sharp breath. “Don’t even get to recover from the ride, eh?”

“Oh, you’ll have time, he has to gather the master wizards and his advisors, that will take time. You may scout out the Lecture Hall as you wish. I will send scribes to assist you. While your notes are impeccable, they are quite small to show an entire auditorium.”

Blue blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that…”

“The royal scribes are most diligent; I assure you their work will do you no disservice. Now, I…” Tenrayce suddenly looked up from her book. “Oh, here she comes.”

“TENII!” a blue gari shouted, running down the hallway and pulling Tenrayce into a tight hug. Now this gari looked the part of a Princess—an ornate dress with gold and silver emblems sewn into it and hair done up in a shape reminiscent of a badger, except with really big adorable eyes. “You’re back! Oh, I’m so glad, you have no idea what’s been going on…”

“If I had to guess, Father is making plans for both peace and war, Wyett has sent no word back yet of his efforts, and the wizards still have no answers.”

“Uh… yes, but I was referring mostly to the string of murders.”

“Murders!?” Blue blurted.

“Oh, yes!” The Princess turned to Blue with a grin that really didn’t fit the mood at the moment. “There’s been a lot of murders in Axiom over the last few days. Apparently they’re pretty sure it’s a kancathi, but can’t find her anywhere.”

“Another plast dragon…” Blue shivered.

“You’ve met one?” Tenrayce asked.

“Yes. Was… not a fun day. Then, apparently, his people just up and killed him for failing to complete the hunt.”

“It is their way,” Tenrayce said, shaking her head. “Surely, like all the races, there must be variation among them, but we have never found one separate from this way of life. But we also have never seen more than one at once… it is most troubling if one is acting so brazenly. Perhaps there is some other goal…”

“Um… by the way,” the young Princess said, coughing. “Who’s this?”

“Oh!” Blue suddenly remembered who she was talking to and bowed. “Princess, I am Blue, a Minor Orange Wizard, primary theorist of the Wizard Space Program.”

The Princess turned back to Tenrayce. “Oh my gosh, you really found them.”

“Yes. Yes I did. Oh Via, when will you learn not to doubt me?”

“When you stop forgetting to toast your toast in the morning.”

“…Via…”

“What, she’s clearly comfortable with you now, I can say whatever I want.” She gave Blue a thumbs up. “Welcome to the palace! We promise to try not to scare you away.”

“RAWR!” There was suddenly a silver wolf in front of Blue. She screamed.

“Mom!” Both Tenrayce and Via shouted at the same time.

None other than Queen Riikaz herself pulled the wolf-hide hood off of her face and grinned. “I wasn’t going to but then you just set it up so perfectly…” She patted the frozen stiff Blue on the cheek. “Plus, it builds character.”

“True, but still improper, she is our guest,” Tenrayce said.

“And you just claimed your mother, the Queen, was acting improperly.”

“We have already gone far too deep into improper procedure to salvage anything.”

Via put an arm around Blue’s neck as though they were suddenly best friends. “See, look at the two of them, a debate of refined braininess versus the raw power of nature! Who do you think will win?”

Blue looked at Via awkwardly. “Uh… there has to be a winner?”

Via blinked, considering this. “Hmm… hmm… guess not!”

“O… kay…”

Tenrayce turned from her mother. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a guest to escort to the Palace Lecture Hall. I suggest you inform Father of our arrival.”

“Oh, right!” Via slapped herself in the forehead. “He told me to tell him the moment I saw you! Gotta go!” She ran off, stumbling a few times because of how ridiculously poofy her dress was.

Queen Riikaz patted Blue on the head. “You’ll get used to us if you stick around.”

“I… do intend to go back to Willow Hollow, Your Majesty. They do need me there.”

Riikaz looked at Blue with a hard, thoughtful expression, revealing her to clearly be much more than some wild woman from the forest—there was a cunning intelligence to the gaze, one that spoke words without even moving her lips. Blue suddenly felt even more like a prey animal than she had when she was standing next to Mica the Red.

Riikaz broke into a smile. “Loyalty. I like that. I hope you get what you want.” Her smile softened. “This is not a promise that I am an ally in your struggles. My first duty is to this kingdom.”

Blue swallowed hard. “U-understood.”

“Before you go… what is your name?”

“Blue.”

This made Riikaz laugh. “Ah, a perfect name for any guest of the Kroan!” She held out her hand, making an unusual gesture that she then moved around Blue’s face. “May the woods and Dia smile upon you.” With that, she jumped into the air and proceeded to run down the hallway by smacking her feet into opposite sides of the wall, managing not to touch the floor the entire time.

“…Huh…” Blue shook her head—she had other things to worry about than the quirky royal family right now, she was going to be presenting soon. She had to get her thoughts in order. She hurried after Tenrayce, pulling out her outline for the talk from her saddlebags and reading it over. Yes, she had it well and truly memorized at this point, including multiple points of possible divergence, but it couldn’t hurt to go over it again, right?

“MISS BLUE!”

Blue froze in her tracks, her heart skipping a beat. She knew that voice. It was a voice she dreaded, perhaps more than any other, for every time it shouted her name, suffering was in order for her. To this day she still had nightmares of it calling her and forcing her to clean the bathrooms, to shine the windows, to organize the files correctly or be forced to start from scratch again…

Master Magenta Wizard Richard Xerxes.

“Miss Blue, what do you think you’re doing!?” Xerxes shouted as he marched up to her. “Charging in here with a bag of scrolls and the Princess?” His scowl deepened as he stopped inches from her face—which had the effect of almost ramming his belly into her snout. She could smell faint whiffs of cheese. “I thought I told you to leave! Did the record and decree of expulsion mean nothing to you!?”

“I… Um… Sir…”

“Are those excuses I hear forming in your mouth? You know what I think about excuses, young lady! Now, there will be consequences for this, great consequences! I’m feeling creative today. Miss Blue, do you perhaps have any suggestions on what should happen?”

“W-well I—”

“Bah! I thought you knew better by now! When I want your opinion I’ll give it to you! It’s time to fall in line a—”

“SHUT UP!” Blue shouted at the top of her lungs screaming into Xerxes’ face. “Do you see this hat? Huh? Do you see it? I am a Minor Wizard. Vaughan himself promoted me! You know what for? Well, have you been looking at the night sky lately? See a little white speck flying across the sky? That was us! That was me! So you can go stuck a sock in it you narcissistic pedantic callous regimented old fart! You thought I didn’t have what it took, but I did, so ha, there!” She rammed a hoof into his belly. “I am not one of your students anymore, Richard, I don’t have to listen to you, I don’t even have to respect you, you are not my superior, you are just another wizard with a fancy career. Did you ever send anything into orbit from a backwater town in the middle of nowhere with minimal funding? No? Well then shut up!”

Xerxes was stunned into silence.

Blue walked past him and continued following Tenrayce. However, just when they were about to turn a corner, she stopped.

“And thank you,” Blue said.

“…You are most welcome, Miss Blue,” Xerxes said.

Blue closed her eyes and used her telekinesis to wipe a tear away as quickly as she could. Wordlessly, she followed Tenrayce deeper into the palace.

~~~

Despite being waist-deep in the discussions, Wyett couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Those crisp notes.

The brilliant melodies.

That song.

Try as he might, he couldn’t push it out of his mind. It was just so… catchy. Playing on repeat in his head, over and over and over again. However, so far as he could tell, this did absolutely nothing to hinder his ability as a politician. He was able to navigate the complex weave of the Shimvale Council’s governmental procedure without more effort than he would have expected (although it was still significant, considering how much of a mess their system was). In fact, it was somewhat pleasant to have Kaykayzee’s song back there.

Or it would have been if it didn’t make Wyett extremely nervous.

That song was supposed to do something. It was in his head. Did it mean something? Was there a message encoded in it? Perhaps the song itself wasn’t anything, but it served as a marker, a declaration of some sort—a signal for something else…

The more he thought the less answers he had. It was just a particularly catchy song.

But that gari put herself at great risk… and she moved with far too much skill… she made sure I didn’t get a good look at her face, and that no one else would have heard… surely, that was deliberate?

“…and while we have turned up nothing in our searches thus far,” Kaykayzee Ziggurat continued from her rather long-winded report on the efforts to find the source of the energy beam, “…we did note, however, the presence of a balloon whale in the area.” She produced a scroll with a blue insignia on it.

Wyett narrowed his eyes. “…I am not sure what that means, but I believe I have seen it before.”

“You have?” Noran Toran flared his fuzzy wings in excitement. “That’s a lot more than we had to go off of, we don’t recognize that symbol at all!”

“I did just say I do not know what it means,” Wyett reminded the sphinx. “I do not even remember where I saw it. For all I know it is a family crest of some sort.”

“A bit too simple for that,” Vi said, the air getting noticeably colder as she did so. “At least, in Shimvale and Kroan.”

“A foreign balloon whale…” Wyett narrowed his eyes. “Things have just gotten much more complicated…” He made sure to commit the symbol to memory. If he saw it again, he wouldn’t hesitate to investigate. That is, assuming they didn’t just make this up to absolve themselves of any blame. “Do we know anything else about these visitors?”

Kaykayzee shook her head. “I am afraid not. Multiple scouts saw it, but it was already leaving to the South, and the environment up North is not conducive to the pursuit of a balloon whale.”

“I’m surprised a balloon whale managed to survive the trip in the first place,” Fr’ll commented. “We generally don’t bother with the resources required to maintain one that far North.”

The quietest of the Council members, the red rigid who Wyett had learned was simply named “Crimkle,” finally spoke in her scratchy, shrill voice. “They are most certainly related. Find the balloon whale, find answers. Resources should be pushed to that end.”

Fr’ll held a tentacle to the top of his head. “Do you have any idea how difficult that will be…?”

“It is the only lead we have at this juncture, we should pursue it readily.”

“The scouting missions are not complete.”

“We waste time in waiting for them.”

How does anything ever get done here? Wyett wondered.

At that moment, a blue-furred fox-like creature with nine very fluffy tails pranced into the room. “Urgent message for the Council from the scouting teams!”

Kaykayzee glanced to the other Council members. “Shall we?”

“…No,” Vi said. “It is too much of a risk.”

The other three disagreed with her without speaking, each nodding in their own way.

Kaykayzee nodded. “Very well. Messenger, you may speak.”

The messenger started. “But… but Esteemed members of the Council, I see…”

“Prince Wyett can hear whatever it is you have to say.”

More moves to seem open… could this fox-being be a setup?

The fox tilted her head back. “Very well… the scouts have found what the believe to be the original location of the mysterious energy beam.”

Wyett tensed. Answers.

“They have located a massive chasm that appears to be a perfect square cut into the ground. Within the chasm, no plants grow and all the snowfall is recent. It is new. Investigations are ongoing, but no explanation presents itself.”

“How large is this chasm?” Noran demanded.

“A few kilometers, at least,” the messenger reported.

“A perfect square…?” Vi’s tone betrayed her confusion. “Who would bother to go through all that trouble…?”

“What could cause that much damage to a landscape!?” Crimkle blurted. “There does not exist a power on this world that could do that much! Not even a Crystalline One!”

“...Perhaps not a Crystalline One of normal size…” Wyett said.

Kaykayzee turned to him. “…Prince? Have you something for us?”

Wyett nodded, reaching into his coat and taking out a map. “This map was drawn based on observations taken by our wizards at an extremely high altitude.” He unrolled it and ran his finger further and further North until he came across the Purple cube. “We saw a Crystalline One the size of a mountain.”

All five members of the Council leaned in to examine the map.

Kaykayzee waved the messenger over. “Is this approximately the right location?”

The fox woman jumped over and lightly sniffed the page. “Yes, that matches what I have.”

Kaykayzee frowned. “To think, something so… massive was in our backyard…”

“That’s preposterous,” Crimkle said. “This… this can’t be real. What, do you think this supposedly mountain-sized Crystalline One got up and walked away, leaving a square hole!?”

“You seem to doubt me,” Wyett said, narrowing his eyes. “And yet, this map is clearly more than a week old and it had the Purple cube in the correct position. Clearly, we are fabricating nothing.”

“…We assure you we had no idea such a being existed within our borders,” Vi declared.

“I think I believe you,” Wyett said. If they were trying to hide the cube’s existence, this situation would not have occurred. Someone on that scouting team would have prevented this messenger from being sent. “So, the question is, what do we do about this? The power of such a large Crystalline One must be astronomical.”

“And she’s Purple, too,” Fr’ll pointed out. “For all we know she could be floating above us right now and we might not know about it. Who can tell what mastery she has over deception?”

“…People have been going missing out there as long as recorded history,” Kaykayzee said, face suddenly growing haunted. “My tribe has feared that area for generations.”

“She did not want to be found,” Fr’ll said. “So why did she make her presence known?”

“Potentially because we were taking pictures,” Wyett said, folding his hands together. “She must never have considered the possibility of someone looking at her from so far above she couldn’t sense them.”

“Then how did she figure out you were looking before we did!?” Crimkle demanded.

“Isn’t the answer obvious?” Kaykayzee said, turning to glare in a Northward direction. “Someone told her.”

“Shimvale has been importing a lot of Purple crystals, more than any other color,” Wyett offered.

Kaykayzee stared blankly at him. “We have?”

~~~

The Palace Lecture Hall was situated in the west wing, near the edge of the Palace Grounds. There was a very practical reason for this: the dome that housed the Lecture Hall could be opened to the sky for the express purpose of allowing dragons to listen in should it be required. And yes, it was a Lecture Hall, not a meeting hall, or a conference room, as occasionally the Academy had to give a lecture to essentially the entire school body and none of the towers could agree on who got to have the big Lecture Hall, so the King at the time had said “screw it” and had one built onto the Palace. Of all the rooms in the great Palace, this was the one a commoner was most likely to see.

It was rather impressive, though not in terms of intricate designs or interior decoration, but rather pure size. Perhaps ten thousand people could have sat in the rows upon rows upon rows of seats. These seats weren’t anything complicated—auditoriums couldn’t afford to do that in a place with as many different kinds of people as Kroan—and were effectively just padded benches that were considered the best ‘general size’ for most people. There were flat areas in the back for larger races, and a few raised pillars the smaller races could climb up to get a good view. This occupied about three-fourths of the area’s edge. The other fourth was the staging area, which was made out of well-polished wood, almost like a theater’s stage but without as much space. There was an adjustable podium on the center of the stage, and behind all of this was a rather awkward rectangular room just inserted into it all where all the backstage equipment was kept. Hanging from the ceiling was a large white tapestry.

The projector screen.

Blue looked up at the blank tapestry for the umpteenth time.

Even though it was a lot smaller than some of the things she’d seen on her way here, it was far more intimidating. Her work was going to appear on that giant thing as soon as the scribes got their job done. Then she would use it to tell everyone about… what the Wizard Space Program was doing. In the middle of a bout of what she hoped was just minor political panic over an energy beam flying through the sky.

Nothing big.

Nothing big.

Blue let out a shaky breath and started pacing, going through her notes. She didn’t have her actual drawings right now since the scribes were busy copying those over into projection devices—a method of representation she hadn’t thought she would ever be able to use, seeing as projection devices needed to have images stored in a very exact way to be able to transition from image to image properly, making each projector more or less unique. But this was the Royal Palace and they could afford to have scribes learn the exact way to store the images and have hundreds of storage devices cut in exact ways…

And she was able to just say “hey, scribes, copy all of this for projection” and they would go do it.

Blue let out a demented laugh. “This is insane!” She called.

Her own voice echoed back at her several times over.

It dawned on her that she was utterly alone. Alone in this room, yes, but that wasn’t all—she was alone in her task. She had no allies. Alexandrite wasn’t here, the rest of the Program was back at Willow Hollow, and she didn’t exactly have allies here. The scribes were just helping her because Tenrayce told them to, Tenrayce herself was only acting out of practicality and maybe a sense of friendship with Seskii, and the wizards of the Academy were going to be against her on principle. She was more afraid of them than she was the King at this point.

That was what she was facing.

“You signed up for this, Blue,” she muttered to herself, shuffling through her notes again and again, though her eyes weren’t really looking at them any more, “You knew this was coming, you kneeeeew… ‘hey, I’ll go, I know how best to do this stuff.’ True! Very true!” She adjusted her hat. “And admit it, you wanted to come, you wanted to be on this stage so you could tell everyone what for. Show them that you did it. That you were better than they thought you were. That you weren’t a complete failure but a genius. A friggin’ genius!” She let out a haggard laugh. “…I need some air…”

She trotted up to one of the windows and threw it open, allowing the fresh breeze to blow through her mane. “Ah… good.”

The Lecture Hall’s windows led right out to a public park, specifically one she herself had walked many times during her time as a student. She saw numerous students walking through the greenery like nothing unusual was happening, like it was a completely normal day. She spotted many pointed hats—a good chunk of them as gray as hers—moving through the green. There was even a small lesser unicorn with a hat designed just like hers, though the unicorn was orange and the ribbon on the hat was blue.

Blue couldn’t help but chuckle at this. Oh, the irony. Already, she was feeling a little better. Maybe it was the fresh air, or maybe it was just seeing people walking around like everything was normal. Because it was, wasn’t it? Just another day for most of them, purple beam in the sky or no. This was Axiom, the capital of Kroan. Life moved on.

Then she noticed a group of children dancing nearby. No… not dancing, they were placing some kind of game where they walked in a circle. Humming… something.

Blue swiveled her ears around, trying to make out the tune. She couldn’t quite put her tongue on it, but there was something about it…

“Ready?”

Blue let out a dramatic shout and leaped into the air, her horn lighting up with a flash.

Tenrayce put her hand over her eyes. “…You better get ready, people are going to start arriving in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes!?” Blue shouted. “The scribes aren’t done yet!”

“Yes, they are,” Tenryace said, rubbing her eyes in an attempt to remove the temporary blindness Blue had inflicted. “Should be right behind me, in fact.”

Sure enough, three scribes came into the room, one of them holding a medium-sized box. He set the box on the podium and opened it up, revealing a few dozen disc-shaped devices composed mostly of Purple with a few Magenta dots within flashing to indicate the storage loop. “All of them have been tested, Miss Blue, they carry more than enough detail.”

“Let’s see then…” Blue picked one of the discs out and levitated it all the way up to the dome’s ceiling where the brick-like projection device hung. She inserted the disc and then tried to perform a long-range cast with her telekinesis to activate the device.

She didn’t have enough will.

“Don’t know what I was thinking…” Blue muttered. “Who wants levitated up there?”

“It’ll beat taking the rope,” a cat-scribe said, flicking her tail. “I’ll go.”

Blue lifted her all the way to the projector and set her on a ledge next to it. The cat grabbed the device and put her will into it.

Suddenly, an image appeared on the projection screen: the full, extremely detailed and precise diagram of the Moonshot itself. Even the tiny scribbled notes could be read at that size.

Blue grinned. “This… this is going to work.”

“It is in your best interests that it does,” Tenrayce said. “Anything to alleviate the interrogation you are about to receive.”

“Oh, I’ll show them…” Blue’s eyes sparkled as she looked at the massive diagram. “Just you watch.”

“I will be. Carefully.”

~~~

The discussion had been long and arduous, but eventually sleep had to come. Wyett and his group were led to their rooms, which were apparently just in a really fancy hotel that the Council had rented out for them. It was quite fancy, almost worthy of a king, but it was still a hotel. Since there was no royal place, the government didn’t have a place to give visitors proper luxury, so this was what was done. Wyett had inquired about it—apparently, the theory was that it was better for companies to offer most of the services rather than the government itself.

Shimvale certainly was an experiment, that was for sure.

Wyett and Hyrii stopped in the hall outside their two rooms. The doors were made of a deep, bluish wood that shone like ice, but wasn’t cold in the slightest. Quite unlike anything they had back in Kroan.

“…Can I remove the earmuffs now?” Hyrii asked.

Wyett glanced at her. “You could have removed them the moment we left the meeting.”

“What?”

Wyett nodded in her direction, prompting her to remove the earmuffs. The tips of her ears were red and folded at an awkward angle, and she immediately started massaging them.

“Hyrii…”

“I made sure I didn’t hear anything!” Hyrii said with a soft laugh. “So, uh… what terrible thing did I avoid?”

“I have no idea,” Wyett grumbled. “She played the song, it was good, it seemed like a gesture of peace, and we all seem to be on the same page right now…” He put a hand to his forehead and took in a sharp breath. “It’s not adding up… we’re missing a piece of the puzzle…”

Hyrii frowned. “Well… what’s our next step?”

“Kaykayzee Ziggurat—the violin girl—she’s apparently got some kind of personal vendetta against the Purple cube, probably childhood trauma from losing someone close to the wilderness is my guess. She’s ordered every record of Purple purchases and movement be tracked down to find out who’s responsible for this. As soon as she gets results, she’s going with us to the… square hole in the ground.”

“Square hole?”

Wyett proceeded to fill her in on what the messenger told them.

“Woah…” Hyrii let out a low whistle. “She moved. That’s… wow.”

“Yes, I know.” Wyett frowned. “Part of me wonders if this is a trap, but they’ve let me send the messengers back to Kroan with no chaperones, without even blinking an eye. They act almost entirely like they want us on their good side, to be trusted, and the situation backs up their suggestion… except…” Wyett tapped his foot. “I need sleep.”

“Yes, you do.” Hyrii gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “Try not to stay up all night dreaming up conspiracy theories.”

Wyett managed a weak smile. “Yes… you too.”

Hyrii laughed. “I never have that problem!”

Wyett fumbled with the key to his room and opened the door. As he entered, Hyrii caught him humming the start of a tune she’d never heard before.

She kind of wanted to hear the rest of it, actually…

Hyrii shook her head. No, he needed his sleep. She opened the door to her room and shut it behind her. It was a large, rather extravagant room, far larger than the one she had back in Kroan. She was of noble birth only by technicality and actually lived among the middle class of academics, so the king-sized bed, ruffled curtains, and special candies arranged in an intricate mosaic pattern was far more than what she was used to. She would have let out a squeal of delight and enjoyed every little bit of it had there not been a person standing in the room, eating the candies off the plate.

The person was a red gari in a black cloak who wore a bird-like mask over her eyes, leaving her mouth open to easily toss candies into. She offered Hyrii the plate. “Want one?” she asked with a deep voice that was clearly exaggerated on purpose to disguise whatever she really sounded like.

“Um… yes…?” Hyrii nervously took a candy. “W-what are you doing in my room?”

“You’re the one who managed not to hear her song,” the gari said, folding her legs and sitting down on the bed. “So I get to talk to you.”

“Ooooh, you’re the gari Wyett mentioned!”

“I admit, that Prince of yours played what cards he had well, I wasn’t entirely sure he would find a way to get anything useful out of my warning, but he managed not only to do that but to do his job as well. Though he does not yet know the price he paid.”

“Price…?”

The gari sagged slightly. “The song will never leave his mind. It will be within for eternity. If he is of a certain sort, he will spread it to other people around him, putting it in their minds, like a plague. Anyone ‘infected’ with this song…” She paused.

“Will…?”

“I’m trying to decide if you’ll believe me or not.”

“Does it… matter?”

“It kind of does.” She folded her arms behind her back and frowned. “But if I want to do anything, I don’t think I have a choice.” She suddenly stood up and crossed her arms. “The song is like a leash. All those with it in their minds have become Kayz’s servants. All she has to do is play a different song on her violin and they will do whatever she asks of them, even give up their deepest, most cherished secrets.”

Hyrii stared at her.

“It is imperative that Wyett not know of this, for if he does, Kayz will be able to extract the information from him easily. No matter how pure his intentions are now, how much he plans to fight her, he will fail. He does not have immunity.”

“Immunity…?”

“The sound must be heard by ‘fleshy’ ears to work. Most rigids are immune, as is Vi… I think, it’s hard to tell with her. She… is difficult for me to read for a lot of reasons.”

Hyrii scratched the back of her head. “So… this… Krayz can just… play a song and get into your head? That’s…” She pressed her hands together. “I grew up among wizards, that’s not how magic works.”

“I don’t think it’s magic,” the gari said. “If it was, Vi would react while it was being done. Elementals are extremely sensitive to magic fluctuation. The song has been played in her presence many times, but at most she flickers only slightly.”

“Not magic…”

“There are many incredible abilities thought to be attributes that were later revealed to not be.”

“But… she’s a human!”

“Yes… she is.” The red gari shook her head. “Look, I can’t explain it, I just know what is. She can do this, and she’s spread her influence far. She’s from a tribe so far North we didn’t know about it until a few decades ago, and now she’s on the Council? Nobody rises through the ranks that quickly.”

“What’s the point of this…? Like, what’s her goal, or…?” Hyrii flopped on the bed, head reeling.

“Since she’s taken special interest in your group, it has to involve Kroan in some way. I’m not sure if she wants power, if she wants to keep control of the border, if she has some negotiation tactic… or if she’s trying to destabilize your royal family.”

Hyrii’s eyes widened. “No.”

“This is Shimvale, Hyrii. As a rule, everyone here hates royalty. You have been given a wide berth by choice for diplomatic reasons. There is much legislation that all but directly decries you and your way of life.”

“How do you… know all this?”

The gari paused for a moment. “There were some members of the royal family of Shimvale who survived the change of power. Mostly indirect relatives. Those who did were put to slave labor, but a bunch of nobles are not suited for physical work, so the Council found a new use for us—paperwork grunts.” She rolled up her sleeve, revealing a brand on her shoulder with three lines coming out of a single point. “We do the boring, monotonous, and sometimes rather complicated work so they don’t have to. It is better than working until our bodies give out and die in a field somewhere, but it is still slavery.” She rolled her sleeve down. “But those of us who do well are given more and more sensitive documents. Never anything overtly classified… but I think they think we don’t actually read it all the way through and try to understand what it means.” She frowned. “We are the ones going through the economic records looking for your Purple transactions, by the way. Thanks for that. Most of my people won’t be getting any sleep tonight.”

Hyrii shuddered. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”

“You did not even know we existed.” The red gari took out a Purple crystal. “…I have spent more time here than I should, and told you more than you needed to know.”

“Do you… know any more?”

The gari grimaced. “I… I wish I did. But… I’m sorry, I can only warn you and hope that you can somehow bring her down… eventually.” She twirled the Purple crystal in her hand… and vanished. Hyrii heard the sound of the door opening a second later, but as far as her eyes told her it was still closed.

Hyrii blinked. “Well. That’s… impressive.”

After she heard the door close, she ran over to it and opened it, looking down the hallway. She didn’t know what she hoped to see, since the gari was clearly a master of Purple stealth magic. The hallways was just empty.

Wyett poked his head out of his room. “You okay, Hyrii?”

“Y-yeah, fine…” Hyrii said, turning to Wyett. “You think I can have a messenger?”

“What for?”

“I want to send a letter to Dad.”

“Ah, homesick already?” Wyett smiled warmly. “I’ll see to it.”

“Thanks. But you get right back to that bed after you’re done, you hear?”

“Alright, alright…”

~~~

“Ladies and…” Jeh caught herself. “Lady. Well, that removes a lot of the bravado… unless I’m talking to myself…” Jeh scratched her chin in thought.

Jill made a rather unnerving beep from her position tied to Jeh’s back.

Jeh grimaced but tried to keep up the conversation. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is… welcome to noon in the Shinelands!” Jeh pointed up at the sun beating down upon them. “You have the sun trying its best to turn us into freshly grilled steak! Then you have aaaaaaall this metal!” Jeh gestured around at the flatness of the Shinelands in this particular area. Her gestures caught the attention of a three-legged buglike rigid that jumped out of a tiny hole in the ground and skittered away. “And, of course, the wildlife which… is immune to the heat…” Jeh wiped her brow. “Okay, yeah, being loud is quite tiring…” Jeh sighed, falling silent and continuing her trek across the endless nothing.

She had no idea how close or far they were from the edge of the Shinelands, all she knew was that she was heading West and that the Western Ch’eni’tho were that direction. Beyond that, she hadn’t the foggiest clue. How far North was she? How far South was she? For all she knew, she was going to walk into Shimvale and not Kroan at the end of this… but that was getting too far ahead of herself, there were still the Wild Kingdoms to get through.

The journey just kept feeling so long. And now that Jill was on her back in very uncertain condition, she wanted nothing more than to move faster.

Unfortunately, she didn’t want to waste her Orange trying to “fly” around, and that would have been dangerous for Jill anyway. So it was just her two feet… two tiny, weak, lanky feet.

Jeh had come rather recently to the conclusion that she flat-out couldn’t build muscle mass, no matter how much she strained herself. Through sheer force of will she could push herself far beyond what most people could, but evidence was rising that she would never get physically stronger, no matter how much she subjected herself too. These legs were her legs and she was stuck with them.

And so was Jill…

“Can’t be much further, right?” Jeh asked.

Jill made no beeps.

“Right, conserving energy…” Jeh stumbled over nothing, almost falling flat on her face. “No, no, let’s not do that right now, nope…” She began to take more rhythmic steps—one might have called it marching were it not for her slouched posture and heavy breathing.

Variation in the scenery appeared on the horizon in front of them. It was large rigid “tree” composed of six trunks and a canopy of ruffled black “leaves” that promised the rare luxury of shade.

Jeh immediately started walking faster, eager for a break. Maybe she could sleep the rest of the day away and then move during the night… and get frozen but, well, at the moment frozen didn’t sound too bad. It took her quite some time to get to the rigid, but the journey was uneventful. The rigid itself was growing out of a section of the Shinelands that was brass-like, as opposed to the aluminum that was basically everywhere. The trunks themselves had gnarls in them like real trees, except the twists had lots of right angles in them. Each trunk had a dozen or so tiny needles randomly scattered around it, the tips of which glowed a soft green color.

And yes, there was shade.

But Jeh was not the first to find this place. There, leaned up against a section of the tree without any needles, was the tallest humanoid Jeh had ever seen, with pale skin that refracted the light just enough to give the sense of a bluish glow. The woman wore long blue pants, hiking boots, and a very light short-sleeved top. A cloak, satchel, and belt adorned with a surprisingly large variety of weapons sat in a heap to her side.

The woman’s race was clearly meant to be thin, but even Jeh could tell that she was not meant to be this thin. Her face was sunken and her midriff was slightly concave.

Jeh ran up to her. “You… you okay…?” Jeh knew the answer was no, but she didn’t know what else to say.

The woman let out a soft grunt, tilting her head to the side. Still alive, but definitely very weak. Looking her over, Jeh found that she was actually very well hydrated—and in fact had clearly poured water on herself recently. Numerous empty canteens were in the pile of her belongings, right next to a rather impressive set of arcane crystals.

But there was no food.

“Starving…” Jeh deduced, frowning. She didn’t know how to deal with this. She hadn’t bothered with any food and just decided to put up with the eternal gnawing hole in her stomach, annoying as it was. But this meant she had nothing to give this poor, starving traveler. She also hadn’t seen anything recently that looked even remotely edible.

“There has to be something I can do…”

And then she got an idea.

~~~

Blue stood with her front hooves on the podium, watching as people filed into the Palace Lecture Hall. The Hall was far too large for the size of the audience—a few hundred people would be there, at most. There were wizards of every color, though most of them were older, “master” wizards. She recognized several of them from her time at the Academy: Xerxes, of course, but there was also Pepper, Rigelia, and her old professor WInthrope, a human with a very long white beard. Blue wondered if the students still talked about him tripping on it. The hatch in the dome was opening, allowing a rather large teal-colored dragon with a blue wizard hat to poke his head in.

Aside from the wizards, there was one other large group Blue didn’t have any real context for—the nobles. Unlike the wizards, who were organized and could easily be identified by their hats and colors, the nobles were an extremely varied lot. Some wore elegant robes, others wore more modern clothes, while still others wore nothing at all aside from a signet ring around their horns, as was generally the case for both types of unicorns. There was even a slime in the room who looked like he was made out of solid gold. Blue idly wondered what attribute that gave him.

The royal family clearly stood out from the rest, largely due to their central, frontmost seats. Tenrayce, Via, and Riikaz were already there, with Tenrayce’s nose predictably in a book. There was a fourth Blue had never seen there with them—an old, hunched gari who wore very simple clothes, her station only identified by the platinum circlet in her rather ordinary hair. This was the Old Queen Ursulii, no longer officially governing anything. Blue had actually forgotten the woman was still alive, when she was spoken of these days she sounded more like a person out of history than someone who was still alive and kicking.

Prince Wyett was absent, but that was understandable considering that he was away on some important mission. The absence that was more notable was that of the King. His family had even saved him a large, empty spot in between all of them, one marked by velvet cushion.

Blue started to idly tap her hoof. She was ready to begin already, get this over with. The audience was already staring at her expectantly, and chatter in the room was slowly dying down. But the King wasn’t here yet, nobody could start without him. She glanced up at the cat-scribe manning the projector, tapping her with her telekinesis to grab her attention. She lifted a hoof questioningly.

The cat only shrugged in response.

Great…

There was suddenly a loud crash outside.

“My apologies!” a deep, authoritative voice boomed from just outside. The next moment, the King stood in the doorway.

He looked nothing like Blue expected him too.

He was short. Shorter than both of his daughters. Somewhat unusually for a gari, his shoulders and waist were wide, though he was still angular and fit. He wore flowing blue robes with furry segments that flashed with soft lights every few seconds. Magic? Or some unusual material? Blue couldn’t tell. Under this robe was some armor that looked like gold but was most likely something else brushed with gold on the outside so it actually provided some protection. His crown was a magnificent structure carved out of some kind of blackish metal and laid with crystals of all seven Colors, with Yellow being the forward-facing one.

He was clearly in a hurry as he all but ran down the aisle to the front-most row. As he passed, everyone made hurried attempts to bow in his direction. Blue herself did as well, but she realized she couldn’t do that with her front hooves on the podium, so she jumped down from the podium and bowed.

With the podium in front of her.

“Rise, rise, everyone rise!” King Redmind called, multiple times and with much shortness of breath. “We’re already late, we don’t need to waste any more time!”

Blue quickly stood back up on the podium, trying her best to hide her embarrassment that she had basically just bowed to a chunk of wood rather than the King.

The King, for his part, all but threw himself on his cushion. Riikaz had to hold out a hand to steady him so he didn’t fall over backward. He sat up tall, dusted himself off, and held out a hand to speak—except his lungs weren’t quite ready for that, so he took a few deep breaths before actually beginning.

But once he did, he had everyone’s attention. His voice was one of those that carried extremely well; even in a crowded room with many people talking, it would have been possible to pick out his distinctive tone from quite some distance. When in an auditorium with everyone else being quiet, he all but boomed his words. The show he put on during his arrival may have been decidedly unkingly, but as he spoke that memory drifted from people’s minds. The man, the King, in front of them was no doubt the lord and master of all present.

“We are here today to listen to the report of one Minor Wizard Blue, of the Wizard Space Program headed by Wizard Gideon Vaughan. She is here to inform us of her Program’s forays into experimental arcane devices and will comment on its relation to the unknown astronomical phenomenon that graced the sky just over a week ago. I understand this meeting was called on short notice, and that we are almost guaranteed to run long, but I ask that the people be patient with both our speaker and myself in this matter, for it is a time of urgency and unknowns. I will say no more—I myself know little of the content of this talk, and am eager to hear what she has to say. So, without further ado…” He held out his hand to Blue. “You may begin.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Blue said with a nod of her head. I hope that’s the right response… She used her telekinesis to tap the cat on the back, the signal to put in the first slide. The projector came to life and displayed the logo of the Wizard Space Program for all to see—a colorless wizard hat with a curved arrow pointing around it. “Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, wizards and nobles of Kroan. I am Minor Wizard Blue, an Orange theorist and recently-promoted apprentice of Wizard Gideon Vaughan. I am here representing the Wizard Space Program, headed by the aforementioned Wizard Gideon Vaughan, and I will use my time to explain what we are, what we’ve accomplished, the basic theory behind what we’ve done, and what we plan to do in the future.”

She took a breath. So far so good… “The Wizard Space Program was founded out of a simple, admittedly somewhat insane desire—to see how far up we could go. The answer to that question, so far as we can tell, is as far as you want with no limit whatsoever…”

And so went her talk. She was definitely not the sort of speaker they were used to—regularly commenting on something in a rather casual, almost joking manner. She regularly called the physics “annoying, frustrating, and downright stupid,” and would often repeat things for emphasis in a more crazed undertone. “Yes, that’s right, one of the main problems with going to the moon is making sure it doesn’t slam into us at unimaginable speeds and turn us into a pancake. As delicious as that may be, we want to be able to come back…” But no one interrupted her, and most everyone had their eyes glued on her every move. At the very least, she was engaging them.

It was hard to gauge the crowd’s mood as a whole, especially considering how many different races with different facial structures there were. Blue could easily identify that she was boring Princess Via, making many Orange wizards so interested as to get them to start doing math on their personal notebooks, annoying many other wizards for daring to speak like she had authority, and instilling curiosity in quite a few cats.

The King, though… she couldn’t read him. He was deep in thought, that’s all she could tell. Then again, he probably had a lot more concerns than the other people listening to her.

It was roughly three-fourths of an hour later when Blue finally got to the last slide and wrapped up. She’d chosen the diagram of Operation Lunacy to be what she ended on—even though it had appeared earlier in the talk, it was the most visually pleasing of all the slides, and one she felt the most confident in answering questions about.

“…and that, as they say, is that,” Blue said. “We are the Wizard Space Program, and we’re trying to go to space. We have seen significant success in the Skyseed’s missions and the launch of the satellite. Despite the loss of the Skyseed due to the anomaly, our unique situation has allowed us to continue working on Operation Lunacy. As I speak, right now the rest of the team is ironing out the details of actually building the Moonshot and running experiments to uncover the last few pieces we need for a successful mission.” She tapped her hoof on the podium. “While it was our preference to continue working on this without any assistance, the anomaly has made it clear that this project has grown beyond what we alone can truly deal with. In short, we would like help. We believe our Program is very worthwhile and the research has already provided many tangible benefits. As such, in conclusion… I have a question to ask all of you.”

With this, she stepped down from the podium and took a few steps forward, teetering on the edge of the stage.

“Do you want to go to space?”

There was utter and complete silence in the room. No one spoke a word. Blue could hear her own heartbeat.

Pepper suddenly stood up, her fiery halo sending a few embers into the air. “That’s insane!”

Blue folded her ears back and sagged. Well, there it is, the worst has come to past. I’m going to get laughed out of here a—

“I love it! Where can I sign up!?”

Blue looked up in shock at Pepper. The fiery dryad gave her a thumbs up and a cheesy grin.

Everyone else suddenly erupted in shouting. Some at Blue, some at each other, and no small number of them at Pepper.

In essence, their response was best summarized as mixed.

But, for some reason, Blue couldn’t stop grinning like a little child.

“Order, order!” The King called. Several people listened, but there was so much noise and shouting that most people didn’t even hear him. This prompted Riikaz to get an evil smile. As the shouting continued, she slowly stood up, cleared her throat…

…and let out a battle cry that stunned everyone in the auditorium into silence.

“That’s better!” Riikaz said, sitting back down. “What did you want to say, dear?”

“Thank you, my Queen,” Redmind said. “Let’s try to keep things orderly so we don’t spend all day and night here. Already it is evening, and I would like to make it to bed before the date changes. So… Miss Blue, shall we open it up to questions?”

Blue nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Then I shall begin.” He folded his hands together. “Would you be willing to assist in the construction of another Skyseed here in Axiom?”

Blue grinned. “Absolutely!”

~~~

Wyett walked out into the cold. It wasn’t even night but it was already colder than most nights Wyett had experienced, even out on the sea. He really did need that bed right about now… but the messenger he wanted had apparently decided to go outside to “get some fresh air.”

It was not hard to find him. He was a qorvid with a bright red sash running across his chest. He was sitting in a nearby tree with snow-white leaves, smoking a roll of something Wyett couldn’t identify.

“Kelash!” Wyett called.

Kelash dropped from the tree. “Yes, my Lord?”

“Hyrii’s writing a letter to her father, I want you to fly it back to Kroan.”

Kelash let out an amused caw. “The girl’s homesick is she? She knew what she signed up for.”

“You are still going to carry her letter back as she desires.”

“Of course, of course, you’re the Prince, after all.” He took the smoking roll out of his beak and tapped it out onto the ground. “I’ll either be out here or nearby.”

Wyett nodded. “Of course. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a bed wi—” He stopped short.

He heard the song.

Slowly, he turned around. A bunch of neko children in large fur coats were playing some kind of game where they walked around in a circle, humming.

Humming Kaykayzee’s song.

“…What’s got you spooked?” Kelash asked.

“…What game is that?” Wyett asked.

Kelash shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I think we have a similar game in Kroan. Dunno the rules.”

“The humming…”

“Catchy, but ominous, ain’t it?” Kelash chuckled. “Worms its way right into your head… I think I’ve listened to those kids too much.”

Wyett did not know what to make of this. He couldn’t put the pieces together. He wanted to, wanted to so badly, to know what this song meant. But to ask the locals was to not accept Kaykayzee’s story that it was a song of her people.

His hands were tied.

All he could do was tell Hyrii not to listen to the children…

~~~

“You expect us to believe that the new planet in the sky is you?”

Blue glanced at the neko man that had spoken, wearing the robes of a Purple wizard. She had no idea who he was. “I mean, do you have any other idea as to what it could be?” She tilted her head to the side. “I’m serious, give me another explanation for a barely-visible speck of light that orbits around Ikyu once roughly every ninety minutes. I’ll wait.”

“…Perhaps… debris has fallen from somewhere else in space?”

“Ahem, hey!” Blue called up to the cat scribe. “Get us back to the orbital trajectories slide! Thanks!” The slide she asked for appeared, showing the various orbits she had calculated, including those that didn’t make circles. “As you can see here, anything falling ‘in’ is going to remain on the same path it started with, something falling from outside will either whiz past us or crash into Ikyu. In order to get into orbit something has to act on it, and in space there ain’t anything to act on it. Purposefully putting something into orbit wasn’t easy, remember, we sent two up there.” She flicked her mane back. “So, you’d have to explain how something in space would naturally suddenly change how much energy it had and which direction it was going if you want to say that wasn’t us.”

This clearly made the Purple wizard quite angry, but he didn’t have a retort for it.

“What do you expect to find on the moon?” the dragon asked through the hatch.

“Rocks, mostly,” Blue said. “To be honest, we don’t even know if they’ll be the same kind of rocks as what we find here or not. The point of the trip is to go see what we can find that we didn’t expect to find.”

“Have you considered the potential benefits of constructing things on the moon?” the dragon continued.

“I… no, no I have not.”

“It is a large, spherical rock tethered to Ikyu only by which direction is down. However, as you have pointed out, the moon is in freefall much like the Skyseed itself. Such a structure would feel no “down” and could be used to launch craft much easier. They would already be in a lunar orbit, would they not?”

“That…” Blue scratched her chin. “That’s amazing! Yes, assuming the moon really is made out of rock, that sounds feasible. Getting that much construction material up there would be difficult, and there’s the complete lack of air problem… but you’re right, if you could build something there it’d be much easier to launch things from.”

“I think your idea is shortsighted,” a greater unicorn noble said, addressing the dragon. “To build such a structure and use it would require that infrastructure be laid, infrastructure to build more ships. The Skyseed requires glass, brass, and high-quality Colored crystals cut to precision. We do not know what resources we may find up there.”

“The Colored crystals will never have been touched!” Pepper shouted, squealing. “Imagine, brand new mines!”

“Then I have a question.”

The voice startled Blue—that had definitely been a Crystalline One, but where was it coming from? Blue glanced left and right but didn’t see a single Crystalline One in the room.

“Do not look for me. I am Skandil the Blue, and I am currently watching through the eyes of Princess Via.”

“Oh, my!” Via blinked a few times. “Uh… don’t tell anyone about the… uh…”

“I will not, I know the legal code well, but you have brought suspicion to yourself.”

“…Dangit.”

“Regardless, my question. If the crystal veins in the moon are untapped, why then do we not see evidence of Crystalline Ones on the moon? Surely unrestricted Crystalline Ones would create visible effects; such as, say, a massive beam of energy cutting across the sky.”

Blue blinked. “I… huh. I haven’t the foggiest idea. Maybe they have some kind of society up there that keeps things like that from happening?”

“Or they’re hiding on the Dark Side!” Pepper suggested. “Right? Right? Come on I want to know what the other side looks like.”

“We’ll record an image,” Blue promised. “…Though I will have to adjust the mission plan, we were planning to skim the side we see, but it won’t be that hard to go further out so we can see the back. Though the location of the sun will… hmm…” She scratched her head. “We can stay in space as long as we have supplies, I think we can add it to the mission. If not, we can always make it the goal of the second mission.”

“Getting a little ahead of ourselves, are we?” an Orange wizard asked with a gruff tone. “You do not even have a functional ship that can make the journey, and yet you assume there will be multiple trips?”

“…Why would we go only once?” Blue asked, tilting her head. “If the ship breaks we just build another, better one.”

“And you assume you’ll have this money?!”

“We have been making a fair amount from selling images and air restorers to local astronomers, cartographers, and miners; in addition to some support from Wizard Gronge of the anglers. And, call me crazy, but I suspect we’re about to see a huge influx of cash.”

“You presumptuous little…”

“I already expressed my intent to support the project to her,” Tenrayce interrupted him. “There is no presumption, merely observation.”

“It will be such a waste of money!” a gari noblewoman declared. “When Shimvale could come crashing down on us at any moment, we can’t afford to spend valuable resources on such frivolous endeavors!”

“Frivolous?” a human folded his arms. “This ‘frivolous’ activity garnered enough interest to get shot down! That’s good enough reason to support it in my book!”

“Have you not considered the dangers of such pursuit!?”

“My, how suddenly your tone has changed…”

“Order!” the King shouted. “This is a question and answer session, not a political debate. Leave your personal squabbles behind yourselves.”

The two arguers had the decency to look sheepish.

After a moment of silence, Xerxes spoke up. “Perhaps I should address the dragon in the room—no, not you Rutile, just the expression.” He narrowed his eyes at Blue. “Your pilot.”

Blue coughed. “Her whereabouts are currently unknown and I have no explanations for her nature. She just… is.”

“Have you not run experiments?”

“Several, some rather unintentionally during an attack from a kancathi, but that’s irrelevant. She is not required for the space program, and as such is irrelevant here. And when she returns, she will be working for us.”

“You do not make that determination.”

“Yes,” an axolotl said from one of the piers for the smaller races. “When she returns she would serve the kingdom much better as a soldier. No Crystalline One would be too dangerous for her, she would be the perfect scout.”

“A deal in regards to the pilot has already been arranged,” the King said. “And the Crown does not go back on its word.” He gave Tenrayce a sideways glance that was impossible for Blue to read. Naturally, Tenrayce didn’t even look up from her book.

“Besides,” Blue said, glaring intently at the axolotl. “She’s already acting as a scout, a scout to space. Would you like to risk yourself up there? There’s a lot of terrible ways you could die. Burning up in the atmosphere, freezing on the way up, suffocating, starving if you end up in an orbit with no way back down, and then the classic hitting the ground at high speed. Or getting flattened by the moon. You get the idea.”

The axolotl’s frills ruffled, but he fell silent.

Then there was another question, and another, and another… it got to the point where they all blurred together in Blue’s mind and she couldn’t keep straight of what she’d already answered and what needed to be gone over completely anew. The answer to a rather large number of them was “we have no idea, that’s why we’re going up there to find out.” However, exhausting as it was, it sure felt good to put some of the people in their place. They wanted to ask a hostile question? They’d get a hostile answer. They didn’t expect it? Too bad, they were getting what they deserved.

Still, she was getting quite tired… at some point the sun had set. Stars were starting to appear.

Finally, the King stood up. “Everyone, I know there are no doubt hundreds more questions you wish to ask, but there will be time for that later. It is late, and we all wish for some rest. From all I have seen and heard, I can make a few decisions. First of all, the Wizard Space Program seems very promising, and unlike many of the proposals brought to my ears it already has results, so there is no need to convince me of the soundness of the theory. The Crown will fund the project, but Miss Blue, be aware that this will require oversight. The scribes will explain the process to you at a later date.”

Blue bowed, this time making sure to step down from the podium and move to the side before doing so. “I—no, we—are honored, Your Highness.”

“You will remain here for as long as is necessary for your colleagues in the Academy to learn and understand the theory behind what you are doing. Wizard Rigelia, Duchess Tilenii Kroan, I assign you to head that endeavor. Together, as equals. And not until tomorrow.”

Blue knew who Rigelia was, it was impossible not to know the fat gari wizard. Tilenii Kroan must have been a relative of the royal family; not all that surprising, the Kroans were rather extensive.

“Furthermore, I do not need to see any more to know I desire another Skyseed. The Moonshot is theoretical, but the Skyseed works, and I believe the Academy’s astronomers will get much use out of it, while our administration will use it for more precise maps and, perhaps most important, to check on the status of the mysterious Purple cube.”

He stepped down from the seats and walked up to Blue, extending a hand. “I look forward to your Program’s reports, both over the next few days and long after.”

Blue awkwardly put her hoof in his hand and shook it. “Th-thanks.”

He leaned in and whispered into her ear. “Your attitude has made you many enemies today. I will not be able to protect you.”

Blue’s face froze, but she continued shaking his hand.

He continued speaking in his authoritative voice as if nothing had transpired between them. “I would normally invite you to dinner but all of us want to get to sleep at this point. So, instead, I invite you to breakfast.”

“S-sure!” Blue stammered.

“Good. Tenrayce will come get you when the time comes. Until then…” the King snapped his fingers and a neko servant ran up and stood rigidly straight. “You are to show Miss Blue to her quarters for the evening. As for the rest of you…” He held out both hands to the audience. “You are all dismissed!”

Suddenly, the quietness of the Lecture Hall ended as everyone started talking to everyone.

“This way, Miss,” the neko servant told Blue. Seeing that several people in the audience were walking toward Blue, she decided that going with the servant was the best option. The servant seemed to recognize this, since she ran as fast as she could out of the Lecture Hall.

“Wait!” a gruff and very angry sounding voice shouted. “You don’t just get t—”

“Yes, she does!” Pepper shouted, releasing an explosion of blue fire in front of Blue’s pursuers. “Let her sleep, idiots! Hmph!” She held a hand to her mouth. “I got your back, Blue, don’t worry about it!”

“Pepper how dare you assault a—”

“Not a single one of you are burned. Yet!”

Part of Blue wanted to stick around to see how this interaction would end, but she knew that would defeat the purpose of what Pepper was doing, so she just ran after the servant.

At least I have one ally… the crazy fire plant lady… She chuckled to herself. Honestly, that fits perfectly.

~~~

The tall humanoid let out a pained grunt.

“Woah, woah, take it easy now,” Jeh said, putting a hand to steady the woman. “You are in terrible shape.”

Night had fallen over the Shinelands, and it had already gotten cold enough for Jeh to make a fire. The smell of smoke and recently cooked food filled the air.

The woman opened her truly massive eyes, revealing irises that sparkled like stars. They focused on Jeh.

“Woah, that’s the first time you managed to actually look at me. Progress!” Jeh grinned.

Her patient opened her mouth—and then immediately started heaving. She put a hand to her mouth, clamping her jaw forcefully shut as she wretched. Jeh watched with absolute disgust as she clearly swallowed something back down.

“I… uh…”

The woman spoke, weakly, in a language Jeh couldn’t identify.

“Um… yeah I can’t understand that. Can you understand me?” Jeh pointed at her mouth.

The woman slowly shook her head. She tried speaking again. It took Jeh a moment, but she realized rather quickly that she was trying another language.

Jeh shook her head. She pointed to her mouth and lifted up one finger, shrugging in apology.

The woman sighed—and then let out a pained wince, grabbing her stomach tightly. She slammed one of her fists into the ground, tightening her knuckles so hard that they turned blue.

“It’s really not agreeing with you, huh?” Jeh asked, nervously wringing her wrists. “Well… all I’ve got is more meat.” She picked up a metal skewer with some cooked meat on it from a pile she had accumulated. “If you want food, here you go. …Don’t ask where it came from. …Not that you can, but…”

With pained, but determined, eyes, the woman reached out and grabbed the stick. She slowly but surely devoured it. Almost every bite came with a gag reflex. However, through sheer force of willpower, she was able to keep herself from barfing up everything.

She must have known she had to keep it down, or she wasn’t going to be making it out of this alive.

Jeh winced. “Wish I had something better for you…”

Once she finished one stick, the woman leaned back and tried to relax, but was clearly in much pain. Jeh wished Green would help, but for indigestion it was completely useless, all it would do was un-digest the food and start the process all over again.

After a few minutes of complete silence, the woman opened her eyes once more and pointed at herself. “E-Envila.”

Jeh blinked. “Oh, you’re Envila! Uh… Hi, Envila!” Jeh pointed at herself. “I’m Jeh!” Is this how everyone else felt when I was learning to talk…?

Envila nodded, then pointed at the form of Jill on the ground.

“That’s Jill. She’s… not doing so good. …Jill, beep if you’re still in there.”

Jill beeped.

Envila’s attention was suddenly focused on Jill. Envila quickly pointed to her mouth and raised up a number of fingers that she kept changing rapidly, then pointed at Jill.

“Okay so, mouth means language, uh… oh! Yes! Jill might be able to understand you!” Jeh pointed to her mouth, then at Jill, and then held up two fingers and slightly raised a third, hoping to indicate that Jill could know more for all she knew.

Envila nodded, and then started running through every language she knew, addressing it to Jill.

The fifth one prompted Jill to beep.

Jeh gasped. “You understand her?”

Jill beeped in affirmation.

“Great! We have a translator! …Who can only beep. And needs to conserve energy.” Jeh ran her hand through her hair. “This is going to be a headache…”

Envila, meanwhile, had started talking a lot in Jill’s direction. So much… that Jeh figured she might as well just sit and listen. Maybe she could pick up a few things…

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT:

Let’s talk briefly about orbits. Even though Blue is operating with very limited understanding, she is correct that, in general, things traveling on a path in space will remain on that path indefinitely. Circular orbits remain circular, elliptical orbits remain elliptical, and even objects falling from infinitely far away will escape to infinitely far away once again, assuming they don’t hit something.

Granted, this is assuming only two-body dynamics, but for the Earth-moon system that might as well be the only dynamics to worry about. The moon is on its nearly circular orbit and it is going to stay that way. That said, there are a few exotic exceptions even in this case. High-density objects like neutron stars orbiting very close to each other will actually spiral into each other and collapse. The moon itself is actually moving away from the Earth at a very, very slow rate, but we have measured this rate rather precisely by shooting a laser at a mirror we left up there and measuring how long it takes to get back.

However, for normal things going at normal speeds over time scales that a human life can experience, orbits essentially don’t change. For the most part, crcles remain circles, ellipses remain ellipses, and the others remain others.

Ah, the others—the parabolic and hyperbolic “orbits.” “Orbits” is in quotes since, technically speaking, they don’t go around, rather they slingshot past an object in a curve. A parabolic trajectory is a special case, much like a circular orbit, where the “orbiting” object is just barely moving at the right speed in the right direction to escape from the object it’s “orbiting” around. Hyperbolic trajectories occur when an object is moving faster than required for a closed orbit. If an object in a parabolic trajectory were to slow down, it would enter an elliptical orbit.

All four orbit types are related this way—if you’re in a circular orbit, you can speed up to become elliptical, then even more to be parabolic, then hyperbolic. Now, this speed is not maintained through the entire orbit, but that’s getting into orbital mechanics, and we’re going to wait for that particular lesson. Blue thinks she knows orbital mechanics right now, but she does not.

Now, to elaborate a bit on the few things that can cause orbits to change their shape over time. There’s the obvious “if you’re a rocket ship, fire your engine.” But for larger objects, the force required to move them is so absurd this might as well not be an option. The actual sources of perturbation in orbits tend to come from the fact that planets are not actually perfect spheres and thus do not have perfectly symmetric gravitational fields, and the additional fact that there are often three different large bodies acting heavily on a single location. (The ever-annoying three-body-problem.) These fluctuations will, over time, adjust orbits. Particularly lumpy objects have gravitational fields that vary more closer to their surfaces, which is why low moon orbits tend to decay rather quickly. Low Earth orbits decay because there’s enough of an atmosphere up there to inflict drag forces over time. The three-body effects happen when a body is feeling roughly the same pull from two (or more) bodies. These interactions create places where gravitational forces cancel out and objects can remain “stationary.” The orbit shapes near these areas are very weird. Multi-body interactions are also what create resonances, orbits that are integer multiples of other orbits. (Or, well, technically just really really close to it due to orbit lag, but that’s really complicated so let’s not get into that.)

There is one more asterisk. Elliptical orbits are rarely elliptical in the same place, most often they will precess around, actually tracing out something of a spirograph pattern around the star. Each individual orbit looks like an ellipse, but technically it rotates in some direction by a fraction of a degree. Usually not much to worry about, or even notice.