“You look like crap,” Katka said as Dallion came back into the room.

Dallion didn’t even bother to grumble a reply. The zapping experiment had been a complete failure. Jiroh was skilled enough to start slow and gradually increase the power, all the time careful not to harm him. Near the end, when his hair had started to suffer, she had called it off. The results were always the same—Dallion could feel the sensation, yet at no point did he hear Nil’s voice.

“Jiroh will get your artifact,” he said.

“Argument?” Despite her conniving nature, or probably because of it, the mage seemed to love intrigue. Dallion could feel curiosity emanating from her very being, almost deafening all other emotions.

“I thought getting zapped would let me connect with my realm,” he said. “Seems I was wrong.”

“I could have told you that,” Katka smirked.

“For a moment earlier today, I was able to.”

The comment immediately changed her attitude. The mage briskly sat up, looking at him straight in the eye. The casual curiosity coming from her was instantly replaced by hope and fear. It was quite peculiar how often those emotions went together.

“When I put on the electric clouds, I heard the voice of my echo,” he went on. “Did you feel anything when you played around with the theater thing?”

“No,” the mage replied. She didn’t seem to be lying. “I had a similar idea, but nothing happened.”

“Something must have been different.” Dallion lay on the floor of the room, preparing for sleep.

From what Jiroh had told him, electricity was far more important in the fury world than he initially thought. Thunder furies had the power to cause massive devastation, but that wasn’t the main reason they had historically been feared and revered. Lightning was the equivalent of life. A lot of modern fury scientists and scholars believed it was through lightning that life on Flora began. The “spark of life,” as they called it, had brought rise to the very first creatures in the sky and them on land. Today’s clouds had been tracked to be the remnants of massive beings—possibly the equivalent of dinosaurs—that roamed the skies millions of years ago. All modern clouds and cloud creatures came from them. And the thing that granted them life was the electricity coursing through them.

There was no way of telling whether the process was identical to Earth’s, but one thing was confirmed: the cloud creatures gained their charge from the planet, consuming it in the atmosphere as they flew about. They also gained their matter from water vapors. The difference was that unlike “dead clouds” the living beings were good at maintaining both energy and water: not consuming more than they needed and not releasing more than they could afford.

It was precisely that power that had given rise to the furies’ civilization. Initially, the cloud creatures had been used as beasts of burden and occasionally weapons, but it was not until the discovery of their “electric” properties that things really changed.

Similar to the awakened world, the process was crude and bloody. In the distant past, creatures were captured and incorporated into clouds to form cloud cities. This led to hunting expeditions and even wars to capture the creatures. Supply was abundant, so for several centuries there were no issues. It was inevitable that things would change. Seeing what fate expected them, the creatures moved away from areas frequented by furies. Natural selection had made only the fit survive and they were becoming more and more difficult to capture. At one point, it was more economically sound to simply capture other fury cities than spent resources on seeking and capturing wild cloud creatures. In such conditions, everyone was seeing a game changing practice, and one was found. One of the smaller cloud cities—ignored since it was considered too small for an all-out attack and too large for a forced alliance—made the desperate move of splitting the clouds hearts of the creatures maintaining its cloud, in order to create a second city. To everyone’s surprise, while the attack power of the city was weakened, the cities appeared no different in any other way. The creatures had died in the process, but since that would ensure the cloud’s survival for millennia, it was estimated, it didn’t matter.

A population explosion followed, and the power shifted from cities with powerful clouds to those with large populations. The once undisputed powerhouses were swarmed by more numerous, though weaker enemies. Once conquered, the energy of their clouds was dispersed, creating even bigger cities that could hold more furies.

The process of “heart splitting” went on and on. New methods were developed to split the “energy” in smaller and smaller chunks until one day it was found that it was possible to extract enough from a creature to have everything possible without killing it. That was the age of enlightenment, during which cloud creature culling ended. Creatures were caught and released with only a small amount of their energy being taken. Seeing that they were no longer hunted, the cloud creatures gradually moved closer to fury domains until the relations of centuries ago were restored completely.

At present, cloud hunting was a crime, and no one lacked any energy. If anything, it was other resources, such as food, that had become an issue leading to the establishment of farming communities, and all the problems that came with them. However, fury society was left with more energy that it needed, which led to experimentation, thus the “cloud theaters.”

Part entertainment, part internet, the theaters had become a key part of society. Using an abundance of energy, they allowed for the creation of cloud objects according to templates. With some clever usage of air current manipulation, they were even able to emit sound, becoming a home theater for all to enjoy and use. It was the energy scraped from cloud creatures that kept everything running. Incidentally, it was exactly the same amount of power that had allowed Jiroh—as well as Dallion and Katka—to reach their present destination. If that were so, maybe the way to returning wasn’t in divine artifacts as the mage suggested, but the theatre system itself.

Dallion had no dreams that night. His attempt to have another conversation with the local Moon failed. The morning was quiet. Jiroh was quick to get dressed, preparing for her trip to the library. The last few days, she had been allowed to do so on her own reconnaissance. Dallion and the mage, on the other hand, were quietly waiting for the cloud with the furies to arrive.

“You’ve been washing your hands for ten minutes,” Katka said. “Just stop it.”

“Rinsing,” Dallion corrected. As suspected, the process of interacting with the water of this world had made the orange coloration of his skin grow. All tips of his fingers had changed color, as had the palms of his hands.

“Just stop it.”

After one final rinse, Dallion nodded.

The furies came not too long after. The trip had become pretty routine at this point: a rapid acceleration to the mountain, after which Dallion was taken to the forging chamber—perfectly cleaned and set up—while Katka was taken to one another chamber nearby, where she’d spend her time researching books. This time, though, things didn’t go that way.

“This isn’t the way to the mountain,” Katka noticed. Her special orientation was far more developed than Dallion’s.

“We’re not going there,” the fury replied.

Anyone’s immediate reaction was to ask why. However, both otherworlders knew it would be pointless. Their initial advantage had diminished. From this point on, their keep was almost as much as their worth. Without a significant game changer, they’d become expendable.

The cloud went to a small cloud city not too far from Thundervein. It was significantly higher, surrounded by a lot of dead clouds. One single structure was on the building: a giant cloud pyramid.

The library alliance’s headquarters, Dallion thought.

The cloud “landed” on the edge of the city, disappearing into the floor. A pathway made of metal foil led to the building. The interesting part was that the foil allowed Dallion to walk freely on it. Concentrating, he could see that it was made of sea iron alloy as well, and quite recently at that.

“Follow the path,” one of the furies said.

“You’re not going to join us?” Dallion asked.

Instead of an answer, both furies disappeared in the blink of an eye.

“What’s going on?” Katka asked. Despite the shiver in her voice, Dallion could feel no fear coming from her.

“Guess we’ll find out.”

Both made their way towards the pyramid. Upon approaching, an opening formed, allowing them inside. The difference was that this wasn’t a library, nor was it an administrative building of any sorts. Rather, it was a giant factory. Cloud made machines with metal covered parts were everywhere, ready for activation. Dallion recognized parts of them: metal presses, industrial furnaces, conveyor belts… all were things that made perfect sense being here, and at the same time weren’t anything that the furies were supposed to know.

No more than five furies were present in the vast building: Olm, Oly, two others that Dallion had never seen before, and, surprisingly, Jiroh.

“Welcome to the cloud forge,” Olm stepped forward to greet Dallion. “I thought it was time that we showed our crown achievement.”

As interesting as that was, Dallion couldn’t help but notice that there was no forge set up for him.

“A floor completely covered in metal,” Dallion noted. And it wasn’t just foil-thick. He could feel its firmness, as if he were walking on tiles of material. “Quite extravagant.”

“Out of necessity. We’ll need to store the parts that are produced. Quite a magnificent achievement, and it’s all thanks to you.”

Dallion didn’t like the sound of that. It was usually the villains that made such speeches and always before an act of betrayal. Still, the emotions he was getting from the furies were conflicting. Some didn’t like him, though they didn’t seem openly hostile. Even Olm himself wasn’t giving off anything remotely close.

“All that remains is for you to teach the machines to function. Nothing to be scared of. You’ve already been doing that for the last week.”

“There never were other furies watching me.” Dallion shook his head. “All this time, you were just teaching the factory to work on its own.”

“And it worked. After today, there will be nothing left for you to teach. Still, let it not be said that we don’t keep our word.”

Olm gave a sign to the furies standing a short distance away. A cloud with a dozen stone objects on it floated down to Katka. Several were weapons, others—bowls, decorations, and even a closed stone jar. The one thing in common was that they had been crated through air cutting.

“The artifacts that you requested, selected personally by your fury friend. I trust that is what you wanted?”

“Katka?” Dallion glanced at the mage. The woman nodded. “Looks like. So, where’s the ring mail?”

“There’s no need for one.”

A large metal podium floated down from above. A cube of cloud matter glowed on top of it, like styrofoam.

“We’ve adjusted the theater as well. All you need to do is go there and do what’s needed. The foam matter will adjust to your requests forming into any tool you might need.”

“It won’t have the appropriate feedback,” Dallion resisted. “Only metal can act like metal.”

“We know how metal behaves, so the cloud matter will mimic it. We only need you to help create the shapes.”

“If that’s what you want…”

Dallion took off his cloud cloak and made his way onto the platform. As Olm had said, the cloud matter reacted, transforming into a copy of the mountain forge chamber. While it did that, there was a zap…

Dallion! Nil’s voice shouted in his mind. We don’t have much time! You need to get a cloud heart. Once you do that, I’ll help take you back here.

Nil? What are you—

There’s no time! You’ve been betrayed, dear boy! Get the—

Suddenly, the dagger Dallion had concealed floated out of its sheath and away from him. Two bolts of lightning descended from the air simultaneously. However, these weren’t bolts created by a fury. Black clouds surrounded them, carrying with them full sapience and aggression.

Before Dallion could react, one attempted to slash the four furies that remained a short distance away. Thankfully, Jiroh had ended up being faster, enveloping them in a protective bubble of air and electricity.

“Sorry, but we can’t have any interruptions,” Olm said as he grabbed Dallion’s dagger from the air. “I’d hate for you or anyone to ruin this moment.”