I was unfortunately right on two counts. The first and perhaps worse of the two, was that my black sheep cousin Tony, and Tombason were a match made on the fields of Elysium itself. The second was that the slavers weren’t about to let me off easily. I spent hours trying to push scrying casts off of Sweetwind’s wardings and was getting really annoyed by the time we were at our cruising altitude.

They would have probably followed me with one of their flyers if they thought they could catch me. I had pushed Sweetwind hard as we separated from Argos and Fortunate trying to mask my separation from their formation with a simulacrum that was being towed from the stern of Fortunate. From a distance it looked as if I was still in formation, the illusion being maintained by the warded decoy tow that Aunt Gracie kept for fooling would be shipping raiders or privateers. Normally it was set to look like Argos or one of the family’s other large airships.

From what I could tell, I was doubtful our ploy had worked. They had some very powerful magi with them, and the decoy wasn’t much good against that sort of attention. I had been able to slip up into a cloud layer, making it difficult for a good visual but it was only a matter of time. The sheer amount of their attempts at trying to scry the ship had made it evident that they didn’t know my heading.

Well I had no doubt they would make my life a living hell, and likely increase my bounty. I had seen how that slaver had been looking at his tablet. He likely had been looking at my bounty information. It was probably the Hunter’s Guild that had spilled the beans on my activity, and thinking back on it I wondered if that complaint about me had been designed to give the slavers more time to get to the travelers and take them.

Most of my time during the journey towards Swapper’s Needle was spent with Neil, trying to get him familiarized with life aloft. Mostly that meant a lot of teaching, a lot of very frustrating teaching. I was not a good teacher. For years I had been used to working under my mother who had been nearly seventy when she had me. All celestial elves live for a very long time, and stay in their prime for almost two centuries. That mostly meant she had forgotten more about being an airship captain than I could even begin to imagine.

Then…after she had been killed, I had spent many years on my own. Even before I took Sweetwind back from the brink of being sold off to someone like Costas, I had been on my own. I had avoided other family members like the plague.

For most of the theory of being a magi I left Neil in the hands of Cid, who was more than happy to give him lectures to alleviate the boredom between his constant tinkering. But there were some things that I had to teach him myself.

“Feel the deck under you feet Neil! Move with her and extend your senses!” I was moving between the forms of a martial form that my mother had taught me, all the while flowing with the movement of the ship as it’s autohelm rode the winds. Well I was flowing, and Neil was stumbling and often falling. He had already nearly gone overboard twice and managed to tumble into an open hatch just a few minutes ago.

I had done these forms whenever possible, usually every morning aloft for as long as I could remember. “Channel your power between your limbs, flow it as you move and use it to anchor you to the windsong of Sweetwind.” I tried to explain, but I could see his aura and how he couldn’t hear the ship’s song or match his own power to intertwine with it. Tony was lashed into the stern helm position and had extended the map table with Tombason lashed into the navigator’s position next to him. They were playing sago, a game played with magnetic discs and a grid-like board. Tony was puffing on his pipe as he talked quietly with the traveler and they exchanged betting stakes as they played.

Far aloft, Natasha was in the mainmast lookout, the telescope out on its rail next to her as she scanned the sky with a spyglass. I could feel the happy thrum of Sweetwind’s song a she roared along, bouncing on the wind and muttering to herself merrily. The ship liked when I gave her at least a little time on the autohelm a day, it kept her happy.

Each time Neil stumbled and landed with a sliding thud along the deck was normally proceeded by a shift in course as Sweetwind tracked our course. I was getting suspicious that the ship was in fact amusing itself at Neil’s expense a little bit. The shifts normally occurred right when they could most easily throw the boy off balance.

I knew that my vessel had a wicked sense of humor, and enjoyed small pranks like that. I had once been woken up when I slept in one time and Sweetwind cut her ballast and freefell for a thousand feet or so. Such a maneuver was sure to wake any good captain in a fit of outright panic.

Frustrated, I watched the boy stumble over a loose line that I was sure had gone taunt just for him to trip over. He landed with a thud then he panicked once again as he started to slide towards the port beam railing, Sweetwind banking at just the right moment to toss him across the deck. He gave a yelp as his hands flailed and grasped at the deck until he found a lash point and slammed his harness clip into it to catch his breath.

I rode my way across the deck, my own clip not secured to anything. He wilted under my disappointed stare and then unclipped himself and tried to stand up. Just as he was getting to his feet I felt Sweetwind give a slight buck and he lost his balance and I caught him awkwardly.

“I think we need to try something else Neil.” I said weakly as he nodded. Motioning him over to a small, sealed bin just under the mainmast I palmed the catch and undid the oilcloth drawstring on a set of rolled up mats. I spread them on the deck between two lash points and motioned for him to clip in and take a lotus position next to me.

He awkwardly shifted into the position and I nodded. I had been trying to teach the teenager to meditate, but it was slow going. Thinking for a while I got a bit of a brainstorm.

“Sing, pick a song and sing in your mind.” I said as we both tried to relax. I automatically timed my breathing to the thrumming roar from Sweetwind’s windsong as she thundered along. As he closed his eyes, I spoke to him.

“Reach out with your power and when you feel something time your song to it.” I said and I felt him relax. Soon his body started to glow softly. I just rode along in the windsong with him and kept my own rhythm as I waited for him in my mind. I don’t know how much time passed, as I often lost track of it while meditating. I could feel his power on the edge of my awareness and hear his song. In the background, I felt Sweetwind pause in her usually merry babble to herself that I could never quite understand, and just listen.

As the power grew, I felt him slowly become aware that someone else other than myself was there, listening to him. The music was quite alien and lovely at the same time, something I suppose from Neil’s world, the one that the travelers came from.

I was abruptly shaken back to my senses by a shove, then a painful slap. Tony was standing over me and screaming something at me, and I felt heavier. It was harder to breath and much colder. I startled out my drowse as I realized we had gained significant altitude and were likely above safe altitude without masks. I was already feeling the effects of our altitude.

The sails had furled and I looked at the wispy clouds around us and a distant forest of gigantic white spheres with grey specks flying around them. My eyes bulged in my goggles and I stood up, pulling my mask out of my harness and securing it around my face as I looked around for Neil.

I gasped as I saw him floating there, only his harness keeping him from drifting away. His form waivered, as if he was bending the wind around his body and his aura was quite visible to the naked eye. I cursed and tightened the Sweetwinds’s wards hoping that none of his power was leaking out of them. It would be sheer stupidity if his leaking power was noticed by some unfriendly magi.

Instead of trying to wake him, I pulled his mask off his harness and strapped it over his head and zipped up the hood of his flight jacket to enclose his reddening ears. I felt the exhilarated joy from Sweetwind as the ship sang along with Neil on some level, I wasn’t privy to.

The ship had let its attention on the autohelm slip, and I saw Natasha desperately working with Cid at the aft helm to try and get the ship back onto a sensible course, hopefully one that wasn’t heading directly for the floating spore island that was rapidly getting larger.

I ran for the aft deck helm, riding the angle of the ship as we climbed with expert ease before I lashed myself in at the pilot’s console, switching off with Natasha as I grasped the charge leads and tried to pull power out of the ballast and back into the storage crystals. Slowly, with Cid working the mechanician station we got the wild surge of power under control and I tried to trim the ship away from the swiftly approaching mass of puffy white.

I saw a hunting pack of cloud cats in the distance who were chasing down a fleeing Mythrax across the collection of gigantic round spore pod, growling and hissing as they drove hard at their prey. One broke off to streak past the Sweetwind as we turned and dived towards the underside of the spore bulb. The very tip of the mainmast barely cleared the puffy white surface of the bulb as we plunged. Gritting my teeth, and pushing hard on the rudder, adjusting the crystal to roll us away from the side of the bulb slightly, I cursed and growled under my breath.

The young cloud cat landed on the bowsprit and folded its wings while it preened, ignoring myself and my crew completely. Its furred head tracked the side of the bulb with interest as we plunged down into the trailing tendrils from the spores. The tendrils avoided the wardings aboard the ship like the plague, parting to let us through like a drawing curtain.

The young cloud cat gave a hissing roar and alighted off the bowsprit as we emerged into the clear sky beyond, its massive white furred body and wings difficult to pick out against the bright sunny sky. I caught my breath and wearily sunk down into my harness. I watched the predator streak back upwards along the side of the bulb towards it’s circling pride. “Curious little beasties, cloud cats.” Cid laughed and I saw him with a spyglass out, watching the fauna around us that inhabited the underside of the spore colony.

Leveling the ship off, I began to circle the spore colony and study it intently with my own spyglass. My mouth went dry at the size of the collection of round bulbs and the swarming biota around them. Such finds were very rare. I debated whether to put a mage mark on it. I had seen a mythrax, and they were very valuable finds indeed. It would take at least a day to find a spot to secure the working to and I wasn’t sure I wanted to linger here that long, much less take the time to lay a powerful mark on it that would easily let anyone in the area know where I was.

With a deep sigh of regret, I turned the Sweetwind back on course and watched the colony recede into the distance. “That’s zee first time I’ve ever seen one ziss my own eyes.” Cid muttered wistfully. I nodded, I had seen ones larger but that was a really healthy spore colony with no one harvesting it. It looked completely untouched.

“I’ll make a note of it, and it’s heading. Perhaps I’ll cross paths with it again someday.” I said with regret still in my voice.

Tony was explaining the encounter to Tombason who nodded when my cousin told him how long it would take for me to mark the colony, and how it would likely reveal our position.

I looked at my still drifting apprentice and groaned. If our position wasn’t already compromised. I had great faith in Sweetwind’s protective wards, but there was always the chance the ship had lost her grip when the stupid boy and her melded.

“What the heck?!” Neil gave a squeak as he came back to his senses, then landed softly on the deck, and looked around at everyone staring at him. I saw his hands go to his mask and I chided him. “Leave it on, we are above safe limits right now. I’m taking us back down, but it will be a bit. “Make sure you keep the pneumatic compressor’s crystal charged unless you want to go hook into the ship.” I pointed to his side pouch where his mask had been secured and the little device inside that the breathing hose snaked out from and he nodded. Natasha was hooked into the ship’s pneumatic system next to me and shook her head in exasperation at the boy’s antics.

I hooked my own mask into the console next to me and refilled my harness’s containment crystal as I yawned and tracked the sinking sun high above. We had at least another three hours or so of daylight left, but I was hoping we would make it to Swapper’s Needle before dark. I scanned the horizon, looking for its towering line. It should be visible soon.

I was shortly proved correct, I saw a giant needle glimmering in the setting sun as we approached it. The structure towered almost to eight thousand feet, a massive tower in the middle of the ocean and I knew that was only the tip of the needle.

The bulk of the needle actually went far down into the ocean, then into the bedrock below it. I wasn’t quite sure anyone knew just how deep the structure went, as the lower levels were notoriously hard to navigate, especially once you passed the civilized floors and descended into the wilds.

Tombason gawked at the sheer scale of the massive construction as we plunged downwards towards a small curving loop at the top that glowed like a beacon. That was often called the eye, and it was the entrance to the tower.

All along the sides of the glowing eye, a town had been built, that was Safe Harbor. It was the first of the needle towns, and the gateway to its massive interior.

As soon as we were in sight, I saw the bright flashes of heliograph from the port authority. Several small airships circled towards our decent and I exchanged friendly greetings as I spotted the Infamous and laughed as the old warship gave us a fizzling salute with its port broadside. The ancient caster crystals flashing merrily at Sweetwind as I waved and gave them a glow from my bow lance.

As the massive vessel thundered past, vibrating our timbers, I saw Captain Fredrick Holms give me a curt bow from his stern helm and I returned the gesture before giving a friendly bank as I slowed Sweetwind down to port speed. We drifted slowly in towards the eye of the needle and the extended cradles of the port office.

Sweetwind shuddered softly as we set down in a skiff sized cradle, the same one I always used when I landed here at Safe Harbor. Several men in the official robes of the folk were waiting for me with grins on their faces at my arrival. I frowned when I saw an adjudicator with them, as well a young man in Mageos uniform and the seal of a Dracon on his shoulder.

As the small gangway extended out of the side of Sweetwind’s railing I pulled my flying jacket straight and pushed my hood down.

“What’s going on?” I asked and I saw the excited faces of the men turn into frowns as they looked around the deck of my ship for something.

They began a heated argument and none of them looked angrier than the man in Mageos uniform. “Where is she?!” He bellowed and I gave him such a look of confusion that he paused for a second and groaned in consternation.

“My apologies Captain Marshall, let me explain what has been going on since you left.” He said and seemed to deflate under my piercing gaze.

Tony however, just looked at the Dracon directly and asked a question that I should have considered from the beginning. “She ran off didn’t she?” He asked and I was confused for a second until I realized why a Dracon from the Academy Areonautica was here waiting for my arrival at my next possible port of call.

“That stupid girl!” I screamed when I realized that Gina had run off. I was betting that Uncle Roark had arrived back at Bagliona to find his daughter missing and sent word here.

“Yes, she has been missing since yesterday.” The man confirmed and I growled under my breath. Gesturing the men towards the aft deckhouse we descended past the helm and into my cabin. I pulled down the conference table and gestured to it as we sat around the wall alcove. “So, I’m guessing they think she got cold feet about the whole academy thing?” I chuckled and I saw Tony grinning ear to ear.

It had taken us most of the rest of yesterday to finish up at the island and we had been tacking all day today after the hard push away from the island to make it to the needle, slower going than usual after that first sprint. I thought for a bit and realized that they had thought that the girl had been following us towards the island while we traveled there, if she had left the same day.

“You know I have no idea where she is right?” The adjudicator held out a truth stone to me and questioned me to verify I had no knowledge of the girl’s hairbrained scheme.

“It wouldn’t have made sense to try and link up with us while Argos was still along with me, and she knows Fortunate has a decoy, and probably asked where I was planning on going.” I mused out and Tony nodded.

“I’m not to familiar with young sun dragons, just how fast do they fly, what is their range, and how the heck can she fly without a harness?” I stammered out weakly, seeing the growing alarm on the faces around me.

“We don’t know, and sun dragons have a protected frill under their necks that pilots often ride on when they are younger, before the dragons get too big for the pilot to straddle the neck. So is possible she could fly without a harness.” The Dracon mused as he grumbled darkly to himself.

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. Whom do I have the pleasure of Dracon?” I asked and he beamed at me. “Eric Trask, Dracon Senior Grade of the Mageos Air Corps.” I nodded, and realized he had a comparable rank to my own, but wasn’t the commander of his dragon. He would be a Dracon Master if he held the rank of captain aboard his own dragon.

“I’m afraid if she tried to fly directly here from Bagliona it would have be very taxing on Kantar, but she should have already been here. That’s why we were looking to see if she had linked up with you instead.”

I looked at them and grinned. “What makes you so sure she isn’t already here?” I asked and I saw them all exchange glances. We looked out a nearby porthole at the gaping maw of the interior entrance to the needle.

“We would have seen her!” One of the men from the port authority cried as Tony laughed and shook his head.

“Not if she didn’t want you to. I know Gina very well and she is a sneaky little squirt. She can also pass the wards without setting off any of the alarms, as she is of the blood. Check with the Sky Patrol, they likely spotted her on the way down.” Tony said and pointed to the growing darkness around us as the sun fell below the horizon.

“She flew directly here yesterday, and waited for darkness to sneak inside the needle, she’s somewhere inside. That is if she came here at all. If she flew the Roark standard from her dragon no one would have questioned her and if they did, she could have just verified her identity with a truth stone.” Tony winced and frowned for a second after his comment, until his face brightened and he pulled out his communication crystal.

He closed his eyes as he sent his power into it, searching for her connection and then he smiled. “Yep, she’s close by, I can sense her crystal. She isn’t picking up though.” I saw looks of relief wash over the delegation, and fury cross the Dracon’s face. He glared at Tony.

“You sky folk! You have no right to Kantar! He is bound by treaty to the academy! I will bring the girl back with me, or one of the elders of Kantar’s clan will take her and that stupid hatchling into protective custody! If that happens decades of careful negotiation will be thrown to the dogs!” He roared.

Tony and I exchanged angry glances and I rounded on the Dracon. “I frankly don’t care Dracon! It’s her choice, and while we can probably talk sense into her, I’m not going order her to return if we can even find her in the depths of the needle!” I stood up, my anger causing my body to tingle, curling sparks of power leaking out to course along my harness as I glared at the man. He gave me a thin smile.

“It’s not up to a silly little girl what she does with Kantar, that dragon’s clan has promised him to us for over fifteen years, since we lost Nethrax! She wasn’t supposed to be his chosen!” He snarled under his breath and I could feel his own aura darken, power gathering around his body.

The adjudicators went pale beside us and raised their hands. “We will not condone violence in our presence! Calm yourselves good people, we have to discuss this civilly!” I saw them give us both hard looks and I forced my temper under control. It wouldn’t do me any good to acquire a fine just to satiate my temper and give this irritating Dracon a good zap.

“Her name is Gina, not silly little girl and not even stupid brat, although she does act like that sometimes. She isn’t stupid, she grew up on the Argos after all and spent her entire life aboard a warship.” Tony said and I saw the two men exchange a long glare before the Dracon gave a sigh and nodded.

“I know of the reputation of the Argos. It is… an interesting one.” Eric mused as he stroked his growing stubble at his chin. I rolled my eyes. The Argos was more often privateer than not, if times were lean. All of them were some of the toughest fighters in the family and the ship had an impressive list of battle honors to prove it.

“Kantar is in good hands, even if that girl isn’t from the academy.” Tony soothed and I nodded. I knew Gina and her parents well. The girl was frankly a little terrifying when you got her angry. She wasn’t as heavily trained as I was when her age, but she knew how to fight. Even the perils within the depths of the needle were not going to deter her. “Think she is heading for the Roark family holdings?” I asked Tony and he shrugged.

“It’s not easy getting down there. Our holdings are as you know, on the fortieth floor of the needle. We like our peace and quiet.” He chuckled.

I rolled my eyes, more like the Roark family was just plain batshit crazy. My own family vault was in the public concourse on the third floor in Trader’s Reach. The Marshalls had abandoned their holdings in the needle almost a century ago. My mother’s family lived in the Chrono Spire on the fifteenth floor, but I had never been there.

“How safe is the decent this season?” I asked the representatives and they shrugged. “Same as it typically is. Right after a transfer, it wakes everything up for a bit you know.” He chuckled and I sighed. I always hated taking Sweetwind down the needle. Even with mom around to help, it was a pain in the butt and could get very dangerous in the lower levels. I had never been below the tenth floor, and even then, the memories of that trip had been enough to raise goosebumps as I thought about it.

“Floors?” Neil asked and I grinned at him.

“You will see shortly.” I glared at the Dracon.

“You know the rules, you can’t go into the interior farther than the third floor, even with a diplomatic pass if you have one.” I said and he quickly nodded.

“Captain Marshall, do be aware that if she is hiding somewhere inside the needle, I’m not the only one you will have to worry about. Kantar’s clan will come looking and I wouldn’t want to anger the most powerful dragon clan in Mageos. Their battle formations would darken the sky, and defenses or no, it’s not going to slow them down much if they want to get inside and look for him.”

I gulped and glared at Tony who had turned a bit pale and was clutching his communication crystal in a white-knuckled grip. I knew he was desperately trying to reason with Gina if she had in fact decided to respond to him.

Personally, I doubted his crystal could reach past the wards of the needle. He could probably feel her crystal through the connection, but not connect to it. It was always like that with short range crystals.

“Well let’s cast off. Where is your dragon Dracon?” I asked and he pointed below. “First floor, at a guest hanger in Oak Hollow. Parthenos is waiting for me to return, and she is getting quite irritated, as she doesn’t like the other dragons down there, and I think the feeling is mutual.”

I exchanged a nervous glance with everyone else and got up as we filed out of my cabin and up onto the deck. Dracon Trask nodded to me as he lashed himself to the railing as the representatives left the ship, one of them handing me a small message scroll with a wink before he left. I looked at the address and grinned back as their dockhands lit their lamps and waited for me to take the helm and lift off the cradle.

Climbing up out of my cabin I waved to the departing officials as I slid down the forward hatchway. Settling myself into the bow helm, I nodded to Tony as he settled into the mechanician station. Natasha slid down the ladder and hurried to lash herself into the navigator’s station, a look of awe on her face as she stared at the glowing maw that was the entrance to the needle.

Neil had opted to stay on deck with the Dracon, and I suspected he was likely climbing up into the mainmast. Turning and glancing up out the bubble I saw that I had been correct. I could see him carefully ascending the mast, his gazed fixed on the sights around him as we lifted off the cradle.

I could feel Sweetwind roar with expectation as we entered changeover at the lip of the maw and fell. The ship spun around and around was we plunged downwards then righted itself as my perspective changed.

The inside of the first floor was slowly fading as the central glow was fading in strength with the coming night cycle but I could see expansive towns, farms and a busy traffic of airships and flying beasts roaring, screeching or hooting as we ducked past, plunging slowly down the center decent. The massive central axis was filled with defensive emplacements, their gigantic lances of energy humming as they tracked us down the first ring. Then we passed it and everything changed.

My stomach twisted at the unnerving sight of seeing upside down towns all around us, but that was how it was in the needle. The distance to the walls, which were also the ground was nearly two thousand feet in either direction. The interior sky was filled with condensed fog, and artificial clouds. Condensation formed on the bow bubble as we descended and I realized we had entered a light drizzle, a condition common to the evenings and mornings within the needle.

Arcs of power from the central axis thrummed up and down between the rings as we passed them and stopped almost to the dividing line to the second floor the floor divider was denoted by what looked like a flat, lichen covered floor far below us, but if we were out of the central spine it would look like a gigantic wall. That thought made my head spin and I blinked and looked around for Oak Hollow.

I knew the small fortified village where the guest dragons were normally housed. It was a heavily defended town that seemed sideways far below to one side as I pushed the ship out of the odd distortion of gravity in the central spire and the entire ship flipped as we righted to align with the new down. I felt my stomach twist and my entire body tingled as we passed the powerful magics that isolated the central corridor of the needle from the sides of the first floor.

I blinked as I saw a spray of vomit shoot past the bubble as gravity flipped and peered up at Neil, who was shuddering at the top of the mainmast and gripping the watch post. Even his nausea couldn’t keep him from eventually recovering and pointing his spyglass at the approaching forest we were descending toward. All around us was a sky pine nursery, with an ancient stone castle in its center and a sprawling merchant town around it between massively thick walls, and towering defensive emplacements.

I signaled the town’s small watch post next to a field and a massive hanger built into the side of some of the defenses on its outskirts, and slowly descended towards the little aerodrome. The wardings pushed away the condensation from the drizzle and I saw the ground crew waiting for us, signal lamps lit and directing me into another cradle next to the hanger. I settled into the cradle and locked my landing clamps.

It always felt decidedly odd the first time I looked up when I arrived anywhere in the needle, instead of seeing the depths of the sky above, I could barely make out the far wall of the needle and fields, towns and villages, forests and lakes above me.

This time was no different. I swallowed down my slight nausea and embraced the familiar thrum of the needle’s pulsing energy as I stepped onto in the wet grass of the aerodrome and nodded to the Dracon as he slid down the side of the cradle and pointed at a large golden-white sun dragon who was curled up away from the massive doors of the main dragon’s quarters. I could see irritated and annoyed snouts of other dragons poking out of the door and eying the interloper with hostility.

Indeed, it didn’t seem as if Eric’s dragon was very welcome here considering it had chosen to sleep in the damp rather than to endure the attentions of other dragons. Most Sun dragons weren’t much loved by the many of the other dragon clans, much less the dragons of the sky folk.

The massive beast poked it’s head up out of its curled form and gave an irritated snort at her Dracon as he held up his hands in placation and ran to her. It nuzzled him as his crew filed out from a nearby barracks, a screaming non-commissioned officer calling them out. Officers from Eric’s crew were already waiting for him and they exchanged salutes as I saw the man begin to fill them in. One of them glared at me with loathing and started walking towards me as I stayed by my ship’s cradle and waited for him, leaning against it and yawning. I was dead tired and needed some sleep. It had been a long day of boring travel from the island and I need some rack time.

Far above us, the rings finished their daytime fade, and glowed slightly with the light I normally associated with night within the needle.

I saw the captain’s insignia on the Mageos uniform and tried to stand up straight for a proper greeting and almost swayed a bit with fatigue. I still managed a curt bow, as was customary for a civilian captain to a military one and gave him a tired smile.

“I am Captain Rebecca Marshall, at your service sir.” I introduced myself, but only got a curt nod from him.

“Captain Gerard Saros, it is a… pleasure Captain Marshall.” He replied and I tried to place the name, it felt familiar. I shook off the feeling and nodded to my vessel. “Sweetwind will be making the decent, did your Dracon explain the situation?” I asked and he gave me a cold nod and glared at me.

“We will be leaving in the morning to return to our prior duties. I will leave the situation in your hands, but do be aware that when we left, the patriarch of Kantar’s clan gave a deadline of only a week to find and return her missing hatching. After that deadline falls, they will come here in force to… resolve the situation themselves.”

I grinned at him. Dragons had tried to bully the needle around before and I doubted this time would be any different than the many other times. The needle had its own dragon clans, and they disliked outside clans with a nearly xenophobic fervor. Still, the dragon clans here at the needle weren’t very large or extensive and they mostly kept to themselves. The other reason why I wasn’t overly worried was that the needle could quite take care of itself, and despised any hostility towards its inhabitants. The last time anyone had even made it past the fifth floor was nearly two centuries ago. It hadn’t gone very well for the invaders.

“Well I’ll do my best, but no promises. We will find the girl, and her dragon.” I said and he gave me another curt nod and stalked off towards his men. The crew were forming up for review and I could see Dracon Trask waiting for his superior.

After the officer dismissed them, I saw him angrily stalk off back towards the guest barracks. I yawned again and ascended up the rope ladder. I had a long day ahead of me tomorrow and a runaway dragon and its pilot to find.