“Are you sure this is going to work?” Saela asked with a grim expression as she studied the stone wall through the gloom. “This thing doesn’t seem stable at all.”

“That’s because it isn’t,” Trim smiled as she checked the object in front of them for the final time before placing a hand on Saela’s shoulder. “You can do it though, so good luck.”

Jade, Svanda, Trim, and Saela had all dressed in black before snaking their way through the night to their current location. Crouched on a rooftop across the street from the moat, they ignored Saela’s frown as they huddled around the makeshift device that they had assembled for their rescue mission. There was a range of expressions across their faces as they examined their handiwork, but according to Reina it would get them over the wall and into the Royal District.

Well, Saela at least.

“Svanda and I will watch for guards down here,” Trim whispered in reference to the regular patrols that walked along the street in front of the moat, trying not to raise her voice so that it would travel through the silence that hung in the air. “Jade will keep an eye out for anyone on the top of the wall while you cross the moat. Once you’re against the wall you should be pretty difficult to see so just keep it steady.”

Saela pushed her nervousness down with a nod before the group eased their away across to the edge of the roof. If she was honest she didn’t want to do this at all, but Reina had made it clear that she was the only person who could fill the most vital role for their operation. Saela didn’t even like Nina, but she knew that if she was going to maintain any form of harmony with the rest of the group, tonight she was going to have to be a team player. If she could make Reina happy, maybe she would earn some praise too which was a plus.

When it came down to it, Reina’s plan had actually been quite simple. The six of them would split into three teams of two where each would have their own role to play. Reina and Aline were currently off negotiating with the Farmer’s Guild about using their exit to the plate below, while Trim and Svanda were responsible for maintaining a presence at the wall. Firstly they were to help Saela and Jade get inside the district, and after that they would cover their escape after they returned. If Ormain and his team did appear for some reason, Trim and Svanda would be the pair to face them.

That left Saela and Jade to form the actual rescue team.

Saela thought it would have been more logical to bring the other pair over the wall with them, but Reina had rejected the idea for two reasons. The first reason was because she argued that a smaller team would be more effective in sneaking through the Royal District. Not only were Jade and Saela quick on their feet, they would both be harder to spot than the much larger Svanda. Reina had also highlighted how Jade and Saela’s combined skillset alone actually resulted in a rather frightening ability to break into just about anything. Most of The Cloud Orchestra had already learned firsthand that locks weren’t really an issue for Jade, while Saela’s history of stealing what she really shouldn’t have been able to get her hands on was more than enough to leave Reina confident in her ability.

The second reason that they would be staying behind was because Trim and Svanda were too heavy.

Svanda had laughed when she heard the second reason, but Trim certainly hadn’t. She did, however, eventually accept the fact that while she wasn’t heavy, she was heavy in relation to what they needed to do. Due to how the guards patrolled the top of the wall, the group wasn’t going to have much time to get everyone up the wall and then over it before the next guard moved past. Hauling Trim and Svanda up would simply take up too much time and risk their cover being blown, so Saela would instead pull Jade to the top of the wall before they set off themselves.

How Saela herself got up the wall… well that was what Reina’s idea was about to help them accomplish.

“When we give you the all clear, go for it,” Svanda smiled as Saela nervously picked up their hastily assembled device. Watching as she dropped off the edge of the wall and hid herself behind a small wooden screen on the side of the road, she instead sighed quietly before looking over at Trim. “She must be pissed.”

“I’d do it,” Trim smiled while her attention remained fixed on the road that trailed away along the moat. “It would be good fun.”

“Too bad you’re too heavy,” Svanda chuckled while turning her attention to the road in the other direction. After waiting for only a few minutes, she perked up as she looked into the distance. “Oh, this side looks good.”

“So does this one,” Trim replied. “Jade?”

“If you’re still good in about ten seconds, then I think we’re good,” she replied while her gaze remained fixed on the top of the wall. Thankfully for them, the top of the wall was lit at frequent intervals which allowed her to see the movement of the guards.

“In ten seconds,” Svanda hissed down to Saela after confirming that their side of the wall would remain clear. It was lucky that they had run into an opportunity so quickly, and they weren’t about to reject it. The odds of there being both zero guards and zero pedestrians around were not high after all. “Three, two, one, go!”

Like a sprinter out of the blocks, Saela launched out from her hiding spot and dashed across the road in the direction of the moat with surprising pace. Orienting Reina’s device in front of her, she held it out before reaching the other side and stepping onto the meter of grass that ran alongside the drop into the inky blackness below. Under Jade, Trim, and Svanda’s awestruck gazes, Saela jumped into the chasm without a second thought before jamming the device under her feet.

Suddenly, she was floating.

“It worked,” Trim breathed out a sigh of relief as she watched Saela awkwardly glide through the air, her momentum from earlier carrying her across the moat in the direction of the wall. She felt like cheering, but unfortunately this was probably the most delicate part of the mission. Attracting any attention wasn’t exactly an intelligent idea.

Reina had yet again surprised them all - her idea actually seemed to be working.

While the three watched on from the roof with smiles on their faces, Saela expression was currently a depiction of pure terror. With a coil of black rope slung over her shoulder and a second length of rope in her hand, she bent her knees in an attempt to stay balanced on Reina’s makeshift device. Straightening herself out from a slight wobble, she breathed a sigh of relief as she now steadily soared across the remainder of the moat before gently banging against the stone wall that towered above her.

Reina’s idea to get over the moat had been simple in principle, but crude in execution.

Her idea had been to build a hoverboard. Or, in Saela’s case, a board which could even send her to the top of the wall. Constructed from a piece of thin lightweight wood which Trim had purchased and a piece of string that Saela now held one end of, the board had managed to not only take her across the moat, but it was now also helping her steadily rise in silence while she balanced herself by using a hand against the stone wall.

The board’s lift, of course, was being generated by six mismatched pairs of shoes which had been haphazardly strapped to the bottom of it.

Reina had asked Jade and Aline to buy replacement shoes along with their black gear so that she could borrow their usual ones for this exact purpose. After tying a rope around the toe of each shoe, she had then connected them to a single string which was pulled through a hole in the centre of the board. When the rope was pulled up, the toe of each shoe was raised which activated the thrust. While the shoes were usually only useful for reorienting themselves in the air due to their weak level of power, strapping twelve of them together and placing the lightest member of the group on top of them had actually managed to generate a tiny but significant amount of lift.

That lift was currently raising Saela up against the outside of the wall at an agonizingly slow rate.

As nobody expected anyone to be floating along the outside of the wall in the darkness, Saela went unnoticed as the next round of guards passed along the road. Those on top of the wall were also incredibly unlikely to look straight down, so Saela’s slow but steady climb continued in silence as she balanced herself by keeping one hand against the stone while the other kept the thrust activated. Unfortunately, the wall surrounding the Royal District was almost twice as high as the six meter walls that surrounded the farmlands, so the group was simply praying that the shoes would hold out until she made it to the top.

Eventually, to their relief, she did. After taking almost five painstaking minutes to slowly edge her way up the ten or so meters of stone that formed the walls of the Royal District, she finally approached the top of the wall. Slightly easing her grip on the rope before waiting for Jade to signal that the top of the wall was clear, a triumphant smile finally appeared on her face. Thankfully it didn’t take long before she received the signal that she had been waiting for, and much to her relief she was able to grip the edge of the wall with her gloves before hauling herself up onto solid ground.

Although she was so relieved that she could have almost kissed the stone walkway that she was sprawled out on, she shrugged off the smile as she knew that her time was short and she certainly didn’t want to get caught. The board needed to be returned to Svanda and Trim, while at the same time she needed to use the long length of rope coiled over her shoulder to help Jade up onto the wall.

When Reina had first raised the idea, Saela had thought that it was insane. True to her history of terrible ideas that worked, however, it seemed as though the first step of their plan been alright after all.

She was in.