Fenric looked at Eldin and Inpheria to find just as much shock upon their features as he felt himself. "Are you serious?" he asked the windwyrm. "How?"

"When the miasma came, I fled up this mountain to escape its malice. The circumstances at the time forced me to leave behind my clutch of crenya."

Fenric, unfamiliar with the word, looked to Inpheria for clarification. "It means its--or rather, her eggs," she said.

"That is so," the windwyrm said. "How have you come to study the language of the wyrmkin?"

Inpheria shook her head, eyebrows furrowed in some confusion. "I haven't studied it. I don't know how I recognize that word. I only feel that I've seen it somewhere before." She stared off at nothing, frowning, as if digging into her memories.

"No matter. You are correct in your translation. My crenya--my eggs--have remained in their nest some ways down the mountain, where I left them in haste 700 years ago. The discovery that purewind can repel the miasma creates an opportunity I long ago thought impossible. You may retrieve them for me, for in my weakened state, I cannot produce the purewind to do so myself."

"You want us to go down the mountain?" Fenric asked.

"Into the miasma?" Eldin added quietly.

"Indeed. A newborn windwyrm, after only a few years of growth, can assume the vigil I have stood for these centuries, providing you with the windstones you require to survive."

There was some silence before Inpheria asked, "Could any of them have survived all these years, enveloped by the miasma?"

"Wyrmkin eggs have exceptional durability. They are formed from the same substance as my heart--much like a hollow windstone. If purewind can repel the miasma, it may be that the material that produces it could protect the hatchling within. I cannot promise that any will have survived, but it is not impossible. It is your only chance."

"Will it even want to help us?" Fenric asked.

"It will obey its mother."

"How far down the mountain was your nest?"

"It would perhaps take a human half a day to descend to the cave, and almost a full one to return."

"We'd have to camp on the slopes."

"No," Eldin interjected. "I don't think I can maintain the purewind barrier while asleep. We'd have to do it in one stretch."

"A full day and a half?" Fenric said. "Without rest?"

"I don't see that we have any other options," Inpheria said. "And think about the Ventus. She won't be far behind us."

"The shuttle cruised at a faster speed than the Ventus," Fenric said, "so we have time while they catch up. We can go down, get the egg, and be back before they arrive, with some time to spare. Once we have the egg, we can convince the admiral that we have a better solution than to harvest the windwyrm's heart." Inpheria smiled at this plan, showing hope for the first time in a long while. Fenric couldn't help but feel the same. The plight of the Ventus had seemed hopeless for the last year, and now, they finally had a chance. "El?" he said, expecting to see the same excitement on his friend's features.

But Eldin was staring down the slope of the mountain toward the clouds--and the miasma beyond--as if consumed by thought. "El?" Fenric repeated, and Eldin startled.

"Oh--yes. Yes, that's our best chance. We have to go down." He spoke with a white-knuckled grip on his windstone and said no more.

They left immediately and without ceremony, each of them understanding the gravity of their quest. They packed light, bringing little more than a couple days' worth of food and some survival supplies from the shuttle, including a windstone-fueled lantern that would soon be required to illuminate their way, for light struggled to penetrate both the clouds and the thick veil of the miasma beneath. Inpheria had attached something long and thin wrapped in cloth to her pack, but before Fenric could inquire what it was, she announced their departure and stepped forth through the clouds and down the slope, forcing Eldin--responsible for the all-important purewind barrier--to hasten close to her.

Inpheria led the way, guided by a rough map she had drawn in her journal from the directions dictated to her by the windwyrm. Eldin and Fenric followed, the former maintaining a constant swirl of purewind to repel the miasma and the latter doing his best to ignore the obvious signs of anxiety his friend was showing. Eldin was dripping sweat and his breaths came quick, despite the easy hike down the slope of the mountain. An hour of this display became overbearing for Fenric, who lost his patience and said, "Eldin," much more sternly than he had intended. "What is the matter with you?"

Eldin stammered a vague reply about being tired, but Fenric pushed him until the Windchaser finally conceded. "You remember how my mother died?" he began.

"I do." He and Eldin hadn't known each other at the time of the incident, but Eldin told Fenric about it some years into their friendship. Inpheria, up ahead, remained silent, though Fenric knew she was listening attentively.

"Well," Eldin said, "it messed me up more than I ever let on. The miasma... terrifies me."

"It frightens us all, El," Fenric said. "It's dangerous."

"No, this is different. I can't think about it without remembering my mother's face, or what was left of it after melting off. It haunts my sleep. I don't know--it just never let go of me. I'm really struggling with this." And as if speaking of his fear only intensified it, he sent a stronger pulse of purewind outward to push the miasma back even farther away from them.

Seeing Eldin's usage of the windstone stirred a curious thought in Fenric. "Why did you become a Windchaser then?" he asked. "You regularly fly above the clouds. Wouldn't that be the worst job for you?"

"I know it's weird, but learning how to fly with the windstones made me feel safer. My mother couldn't save herself because she couldn't fly, so I learned Windchasing to be able to do just that, in case I ever fell from the ship like she did."

Fenric's eyes widened as he made a connection. "Is that why you almost always wear your windsuit?"

Eldin nodded. "Yes. So I'm always prepared in case I should fall. I tell people it's so I'm always ready for a windstorm, but that's just a cover."

"I never knew, El," Fenric said.

"I've managed to bear it in secret all these years. But I've never been this close to the miasma before. I'm barely keeping myself together." He shuddered violently.

"You're very courageous, Eldin," Inpheria said from the front without looking back. Fenric looked at Eldin, who opened his mouth as if to speak, but then closed it without doing so. Fenric didn't know how to mend the rift between his two friends, or even if it was possible, so he let the conversation die.

The next several hours of their descent down the mountain passed quietly. Each of the three was occupied with his or her own thoughts, and the exertion of the hike left them breathing too heavily for conversation anyway. As they descended farther down the mountain, the miasma seemed to grow thicker, and Fenric absorbed himself in examining the world beneath the clouds. They encountered no animals of any kind, for life was forbidden by the miasma, and it made for a very quiet and lonely world. Dry, tough grass had adapted to thrive in such an environment, but it was sparse and grew in thin patches, and seemed to be the only fragment of life left on the planet.

Their arrival to their destination came as a surprise, for they could not see the cave--despite the immensity of its size--through the hazy miasma until they had drawn close enough for it to enter their purewind barrier. Inpheria referenced some notes in her journal to ascertain their location, and despite his hunger and fatigue, Fenric felt a surge of hope when she announced her confidence that this was where the windwyrm's clutch would be--if it had survived. Recalling their limited time and the importance of haste, they stepped immediately into the cavern, darkening their world even more and placing even greater value on the greenish light of their windstone lantern.

It was a short trek through the narrow recesses of the cave. The tunnel they walked through soon opened into a larger cavern, though it was impossible to tell just how large it was when one couldn't see past the miasma. A few steps more, and Fenric nearly ran into Inpheria when she stopped suddenly with a soft gasp.

"What is it?" he whispered. She stood frozen, holding the lantern out at something she had seen, and which no doubt had caused her exclamation. She didn't respond to him, so he stepped up to her side to see for himself what she had found.

It was people.

Or rather, some hideous aberration of people. Their bone-thin bodies were naked, and their skin was black and crusty, like heavily-charred meat. Baked by the miasma, they produced a smell like cooked cloudhawk that tricked Fenric's stomach into a disgusted hunger. Their eyes had long shriveled to nothing from the miasma, and the huge, empty sockets gave their faces a horrific expression. But worse than the hideous perversion of their bodies was a fact that filled Fenric with the most profound terror and nearly stopped his heart in its beat.

They were alive.

The creatures--a half dozen of them or so--had gathered into a dense mass, and were crouched to the ground and clutching or clawing at a collection of what seemed to be massive windstones, each one wide enough that a man could only barely wrap his arms all the way around it. As the lantern's beam struck what was surely the windwyrm's eggs, they reflected a dazzling green light.

Fenric paled at the sight of the monsters, who by every natural law of the world should not be living, and stood with his mouth hanging open in astonishment. Inpheria still hadn't recovered from her frozen terror, and the two of them remained rooted in place, long enough for Eldin--who had taken the rear--to notice something had happened ahead. The Windchaser drew up next to Fenric to see what had caused the delay.

And when he saw the creatures who no doubt resembled his mother the last time he had seen her, he screamed.

The monsters in unison spun their heads toward them, emitting echoing shrieks that pierced the ears and chilled the blood. They half-stood, half-leapt to their feet from their crouched positions and rushed toward the sound they had heard.

The sight of that stampeding horde of ghouls shook Fenric from his trance. He drew his windstone pistol from his belt and fired it at one of the approaching monsters. The windstone bullet buried itself in the forehead of the beast, decimating the upper half of its head with the impact. No blood was produced from this wound, and--more alarming than that--the creature continued running after recovering from the blow, despite possessing nothing of its head besides a jaw and mouth.

Fenric, stunned at the sight, let simple instinct drive his movements. He pushed Inpheria backward to safety, then kicked the monster in the chest as it approached, knocking it to the ground. He began the quick process of reloading his pistol and spared a glance at Eldin, who had recovered from his mania upon seeing the monsters and was nimbly avoiding the beasts with the agility of a trained Windchaser, twisting and rolling out of their reach each time one tried to grab him. And though he was expertly avoiding these attacks, he seemed unable to counterattack at all, as if all he could do was dodge. Fenric noticed the tight grip Eldin had on the windstone in his hand, and realized that while maintaining the purewind barrier to protect their whole group, he could not dedicate its powers to offense. He was essentially without a weapon.

A roar from behind Fenric arrested his attention, and he turned just in time to suffer the headless demon's tackle. The monster barreled into him and took them both to the ground, where it began to rake the skin of his face with its black claws. Fenric's pistol was still in his hand, but he knew that if the monster still stirred after losing half its head, another bullet would serve little better. He tossed his pistol to the side and used both his hands to desperately push the beast's sharp nails away from him, and after a moment of struggling, he managed to bring his leg up to kick the monster several feet away.

He and the beast stood at once and faced each other. His foe was just about to charge again when a flash of something bright--like metal--swept horizontally through the creature's belly, splitting the monster in two. The entire upper half of its body fell to the ground, with its legs still standing erect.

Behind it stood Inpheria, wielding a thin saber in the pose of one who had just sliced a creature in half.

Fenric looked at her, and she at him, and then Eldin's pained yell from nearby drew their eyes to their friend, who was still standing amid his foes, but holding his hand to a long, red gash at his side. One of the monsters charged forth to slash at the Windchaser, but Inpheria flung herself forward in a graceful spin that ended with a slash of her saber that severed the beast's arm at the shoulder. She turned her attention to the other monsters then, and engaged them in a majestic blade dance--for a dance is what it resembled with all its twirls and spins. The nimble whirls and elegant leaps she performed were accented with the sharp blade in her hand that cleaved body parts with every turn and pivot. It was a tornado of steel, impossible to approach without being cut, and the mindless monsters, heedless of danger, tossed themselves into the meat grinder until they no longer possessed enough of their body to be able to move.

Shortly, it was over, and Fenric and Eldin watched Inpheria in amazement as she stood amid a pile of severed flesh, panting and sweating. She sheathed her saber and stooped to retrieve the lantern she had dropped when the attack began.

Fenric finally regained his wits. "Inphy, what was that?"

"That," she said proudly, tossing her fiery hair back, "was me saving your lives. Here, let me see to your scratches." She spent some time administering first aid to Eldin and Fenric's cuts, and while she did so, she explained the origins of her swordplay skills. "I approached Veric upon our return to the Ventus last year to ask him to teach me swordfighting. I quickly grasped the basics, but found his style to be rather uncivilized, and so I devised my own, practicing it with him during our daily sparring matches."

Eldin's eyes widened at this. "Veric?" he said quietly.

"Yes. The man is a brute, and as charming as a cloudhawk, but he is proficient with the sword and at the instruction of it, so I tolerated his company for the benefit of my practice. I have come to surpass him in skill, however, so some weeks ago I took the liberty of discontinuing our meetings."

Fenric watched Eldin's face as a ray of joy suffused his features, as if some terrible burden had suddenly been lifted from his heart. But that joyful expression was replaced with one of curiosity when he asked, "But why learn the sword at all?"

Inpheria's face became grave, and she spoke as if the words pained her. "I was useless during the incident with the cloudhawks on our first voyage to the source of the windstones. That day, I vowed to become someone who can stand with you two and fight."

Fenric looked at the carnage all around them and whistled. "I'd say you've accomplished that and then some." He then grimaced. "What are these things, anyway?"

"And how did they survive the miasma?" Eldin asked.

"I can't fathom," Inpheria said. "I assume they had died, like we expect they would, but somehow--perhaps if the corpse remains long enough in the miasma--it reanimates them. The miasma is still a very unknown phenomenon to us. It possesses many properties we know nothing about. But if my theory is correct, then these creatures are humans who had been left behind during the Ascension 700 years ago, and whom the miasma has transformed into what you see now. Perhaps the entire planet is covered in them, and they have been endlessly wandering the world for the last seven centuries."

The three of them were quiet for a time, contemplating the horror of Inpheria's suggestion, until at last, "We have a job to do," Eldin said. Fenric recalled that the Windchaser still maintained the purewind barrier, and the effort would surely be draining on him.

Led by the green light of the lantern once again, they approached the nest to inspect the condition of the windwyrm's eggs. There, they were disappointed to find that the five eggs gave no visible indication that any of them bore an infant windwyrm--living or dead. Indeed, the eggs seemed to be simply extremely large windstones, massive replicas of the very one Eldin held in his hand to manifest the purewind barrier. That supposition was only strengthened when Eldin touched one and exclaimed that he felt the magic of purewind stirring within it, and could produce and control that purewind like any other windstone.

"The Ventus would do well with these," Fenric said. "Each one could power the engines for months."

"But we're not here for windstones," Inpheria said firmly. "We need to figure out if any of them bear a living windwyrm."

Fenric stooped to one of the eggs and rolled it over. It was surprisingly heavy, and required considerable strength. "We should inspect each egg thoroughly, in case something somewhere gives us a clue." He studied the underside of the egg he had rolled, but there was no discernable difference to it on this side. Eldin and Inpheria each selected an egg of their own and copied the process, but with no greater success.

"Should we bring them all back?" Eldin asked. "The windwyrm would know if any of them are still good."

"We can only carry three," Inpheria said. "And I don't know if we have time to make multiple trips, especially when we must rest in between each one. You are barely conscious, El. I know maintaining the barrier taxes you heavily."

"I'll do what I have to," Eldin said resolutely, and he placed his hand on another egg to roll it to its side for inspection, but at the very instant he made contact with it, he gasped loudly and withdrew his hand as if he had touched a sizzling pan.

"What is it?" Inpheria asked, concern in her eyes.

Eldin didn't respond. Eyes wide, he slowly reached out to touch the egg once again. He held his hand there for several seconds, until finally he said, "A windwyrm is alive in this egg."

This announcement drew Fenric and Inpheria over in haste. Fenric looked at the egg--which resembled the other ones exactly--and touched it in the same manner as Eldin. Feeling nothing out of the ordinary, he asked, "How do you know?"

Eldin hesitated. "I'm not sure. But when I touch the egg, I can sense the windwyrm inside, and I can tell that it's alive."

"His affinity with the windstones likely allows some sort of preternatural communion with the windwyrm," Inpheria said, scholarly curiosity all over her face. "As if the purewind coursing through the egg serves as a conduit between their two minds. Absolutely magnificent."

"There's more." Eldin was silent for some time, until finally he said, "I can talk to it--with my thoughts."

"What?" Fenric and Inpheria said in unison.

"It's... very bored. It could speak with its siblings in the same way I'm doing with it--as long as the eggs were all touching one another--but this is the last one alive, and it has been alone for many years. It wants to know why its mother hasn't come for it and who we are." Eldin paused for another long moment, then grinned widely. "I've told it what's happening with the Ventus, and the miasma, and everything, and it said that in exchange for its rescue, it will be happy to help us once it has grown enough to give us windstones."

Fenric and Inpheria beamed at each other, and Fenric felt a surge of hope banish the despair that had oppressed him for the last year. Finally, they had an answer!

Eldin stooped to hoist the egg into his arms. "Let's waste no time." But as he stood up with his burden, something in him seemed to simply break, and he tumbled over heavily.

Inpheria gasped and dashed to kneel over Eldin's prone body. She examined him for a moment, until announcing, "It's fatigue. He simply collapsed from exhaustion. Oh, I knew maintaining the barrier this long was too much for him. And his injuries have only worsened his condition."

Eldin was still conscious, but his eyes were closed and his brow was furrowed in the deepest concentration. Fenric suspected it was taking everything in him simply to keep the barrier erected.

"What do we do?" Inpheria asked. "He won't stay conscious much longer."

Fenric had no answer to that, and for a long moment, the only sound to be heard was the gasping breaths of Eldin and the blowing winds of the purewind barrier. But it was Eldin himself who broke that silence, when he whispered in a barely audible voice, "Bring me the egg."

It had rolled away from Eldin when he fell. With an effort, Fenric hauled it to the Windchaser, who had hoisted himself up into a sitting position. Eldin drew the egg close to himself, wrapped his legs around it, and held both hands against its surface after pocketing the windstone he had been using to erect the purewind barrier. Now using the egg as a windstone with which to repel the miasma, he closed his eyes and said, "The larger a windstone is, the easier it is to manipulate its purewind. With one as big as this, I may be able to..."

Fenric and Inpheria stared at him, awaiting the end of his sentence. When a minute had passed and still Eldin said nothing, Inpheria ventured close to him. "El?" she said. She drew her head close to his mouth, then gasped and exclaimed, "He's asleep!"

Fenric startled, then looked around frantically, fearing the dispersal of the purewind barrier. But his fears were needless, for the miasma was not creeping closer, and indeed, the rustling of the wind could still be heard as it worked to protect them. He smiled, finding dry amusement when he realized what was happening.

Eldin was manipulating purewind in his sleep.

Fenric looked back to his friend, who had wrapped himself around the windwyrm egg and resembled nothing other than a man in the deepest meditation. "This is a fine opportunity to rest ourselves as well," he said to Inpheria. "We have a long hike back to the peak."

They established themselves as comfortably as they could manage on the rocky ground, using their traveling bags as pillows. Fenric spent a moment looking up at Eldin's sleeping face before glancing at Inpheria, who was also watching the Windchaser. She kept a hand on his leg and smiled until her eyes closed and she drifted off. Fenric allowed exhaustion to take him then, and he tumbled rather than fell to sleep, anticipating the next day, when they would return to the Ventus and set everything right.