Date: 4th Month, 499th Year AOP

Location: 223 Windkiss Street, Third Borough, Azure Sky City.

Time: 4:30 PM

"Titus Aaron Glazier, you put down your father's alchemy things and get yourself down here this instant!" The voice echoed up the staircase causing Titus to jerk back in surprise. A few tiny droplets of softly glowing aetheric acid sparkled and glowed as they spilled from the clear crystal vial he held in his hand. He cursed as they hissed, burning straight through the protective enchantments on the pristine wooden alchemy table. How did she know what I was doing? He stared glumly at the pock marks that were now stippled across the expensive walnut, wondering not if, but how painful it would be when his father killed him for this.

"TY!" The call echoed impatiently up the stairwell. "Coming Ma!" he called feebly as he fumbled to replace the crystal cork that kept the magical chemicals contained before slipping it gingerly back in its place. The hundreds of other finger-sized vials of chemicals gleamed in a rainbow of colors from where they stood in the wooden racks mounted inside the huge cabinet mounted to the wall of his father's shop, some glowing softly, some humming or vibrating on their own, and still others swirling about as if stirred from within by an unseen force.

Titus quickly closed the door to the alchemy cabinet and turned the lock with a click before making sure his set of tiny steel lock picks was securely in his pocket. He ran his fingers through his spiky strawberry-blonde hair as his gaze swept the room one last time. His heart sank as he he spotted the small flask he'd left sitting beneath the titration pipes on the table leaking smoking blue-white swirls of glowing aether. Its contents were now a useless mess of sludge that was slowly solidifying as the reaction continued to sputter out.

He sighed. Another failure.

Titus snatched up the flask and quickly emptied its contents into the small waste chute in the corner of the room. The ancient Sky City's aether core wasn't picky about its sources of biomass, even if they had a little aetheric acid splashed over them. He flung himself into the dim stairwell, nearly tripping over the softly hissing steam radiator protruding from the wall and took the stairs leading down from their tiny living quarters three at a time. As he reached the second landing, the single bright white aether crystal lamp at the top of the stairwell far above dimmed and began to flicker with a sickly yellow light. More power issues? he wondered. I thought dad said Governor Bellweather was trying to fix that? Finally reaching the bottom of the staircase, he burst through the swinging doorway into the bakery kitchen beyond.

He ducked between the kitchen staff who were all working feverishly to stoke the oven flames, ice pastries or cakes, cut huge loaves of bread, or knead enormous bowls of dough large enough for Titus to take a bath inside. Everyone was all in a tizzy over some self-important Avian official that was visiting the city for some reason or other, and the bakery had been working through most of the last few nights to cover orders for pies, cakes, breads, and pastries for the proceedings. His mouth watered as he caught a whiff of the delicious scents of baking bread, melted butter, confectioner's sugar, and even the faint hint of one of the rarest treats: lemon meringue.

A particularly crispy-looking croissant sitting innocently unattended on a cooling rack with two dozen of its mates drew his eye as he passed, a light glaze of sugar frosting glistening wetly as it dried. He paused, swallowing thickly as his stomach growled. Again. But mom says that kids are always hungry! I have to grow right? Before he could reach for the treat, a petite figure wearing a white apron moved to stand before him with a flour-dusted hand planted firmly on each hip. Titus quailed inwardly and looked up. "Hi mom!" he offered weakly, "Fancy seeing you here!"

Ceanna Glazier was known to all their neighbors and bakery customers by such affectionate names as "sweetheart", "dear", and "angel", but Titus knew that her candy-coated exterior concealed a beast the equal of any creature of the Surface. She stepped towards him with the demeanor of a rampaging cloud dragon, her intense green eyes flashing dangerously as her thick midnight-black braids trailed in her wake.

"Titus! Of all the times you've been told not to touch your father's alchemy equipment when he's not there, how many of them ended well when you tried to get out of trouble by acting cute?" Titus winced, certain that every child in history had heard some variation of this speech and yet he was still amazed at how effectively it incited feelings of guilt in its victims. "None?" he replied hesitantly, then piped up hopefully, "But dad says there's a first time for-"

His mother turned away from him and he caught the briefest glimpse of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth before her flour-caked fingertips seized his ear. He yelped aloud as she began walking towards the front of the shop with him in tow, and he stumbled to keep up, wincing in pain. She walked from the kitchen to the back of the counter in the bakery's brightly-lit front waiting area, continuing to talk as if the first part of the conversation hadn't happened.

"Titus, how many times do I have to tell you not to mess with your father's alchemy without him present? It's bad enough that he lets you do it at all, but if you keep mixing things without knowing what they'll do then one of these days you're going to do something permanent and heaven help us all when that day comes!" "But mom!" Titus protested, "Sugar is the only organic substance that can hold aether for more than an hour! If I can figure out how to make it non-poisonous, we could make edible aether rations for the Apt airmen and the crystal hunters! Even candy!"

Her eyes narrowed. "Didn't you already poison yourself and your sister twice already on that fool's errand? I seem to recall someone begging their father to kill them and get it over with because their stomach felt like it was full of ground-up glass shards!" Titus winced at the memory. "But I'm so close to figuring out the missing element in the formula! If I can complete it, the Aptitude guild would have us simply swimming in gold sovereigns! I just need to try..."

Ceanna tugged a little harder on his ear to regain his attention, and Titus cut off with a squeal of protest. She blew out her cheeks as she huffed and, seeing he didn't intend to continue to argue, she released her grip on his ear. Titus groaned in relief and began rubbing his sore appendage as the inevitable lecture began. "Titus. You are twelve years old. Twelve! That is far too young to be playing with things that could level the entire borough! Your brothers and sisters may have been bold, but even they knew better than to mess with alchemy, and their Alchemy marks in school were all higher than yours, I might add! Why I remember when dear Perseus..."

Titus continued to rub at his ear as her tirade continued. He made sure to keep at least half his attention on the flow of conversation so he could nod in all the right places, and he kept his head hung to show an appropriate level of shame. He couldn't, however, keep a small scowl of irritation from his face. After all, it wasn't his fault that all his other six brothers and sisters were, as his Uncle Martin put it, "model citizens".

His oldest sister, Mercy, had awakened her innate Aether talents at the tender age of five and now at twenty-two years old was the second-youngest Fourth Circle Master Apt on record in the Azure Sky City Aptitude guilds, her aether Aptitude the equal of nearly two hundred and fifty First-Circle Apt Initiates who were themselves no pushovers.

His second-oldest sister, Josephine, had been tapped two years ago at the age of nineteen to apprentice to the chief representative of one of the largest fuel trading companies in the world that supplied the oil, diesel, coal, and kerosene that were the lifeblood of the sky cities' human economy.

His fifteen-year-old brother Kendall had just accepted a promotion to Cadet Sergeant First Class in the Third Borough Preparatory Air Officer's Training Corp and seemed to be the object of desire of every girl from seven to seventeen that Titus had seen in his vicinity.

The next oldest, fourteen-year-old Caroline, had been using the local auction house extensively over the last year to sell her watercolors. The budding art prodigy had already saved up enough to send herself to the very expensive and prestigious Dragon Sky City Academy of Art - with money left over to buy herself a barely-used personal diesel-driven auto carriage.

The final nail in Titus's coffin, however, was that his one sibling younger than himself - his twin sister Isla - was head of their year in school. From the time she was six, she had been beating out Titus and every other student in their year in every single subject - including, and especially, sports and combat arts.

And as for their oldest sibling, Perseus, well... "dear Perseus" had just been granted the rank of Commander in the Azure Airmen's Fleet and was now in charge of his very own Air Ranger strike team a mere 22 years after being potty-trained on his second birthday.

The stuck-up, self-righteous dolt.

A pair of fingers snapped in front of Titus's nose with a puff of flour dust. "Hello? Azure City to Titus?" Titus lifted a guilty glance up at his mother's face. Her normally-full lips were pressed thin in frustration and her nostrils flared, making the freckles that dusted the bridge of her nose stand out against her pale skin and fine features. "I'm sorry mom, what was the question?" he replied sheepishly.

"I said..." his mother drew out the word, irritation in her tone, "You’re late beginning deliveries, and I need you to bring your sister her dinner as the very first one. She's helping Master Atticus tutor the lower years in Falconian grammar tonight, and she won't be home until your father picks her up on his way back from patrol." Titus nodded as he continued to rub at his ear, grumbling quietly under his breath as Ceanna retrieved a small lumpy canvas bag.

A quick peek inside revealed several packages wrapped in butcher paper that smelled strongly of peanut butter. His stomach growled again, and he had to resist licking his lips as he looked up at his mother beseechingly. "Mom, is there-" "Yes, there's enough for you too, Ty" she said, with a small smile, "but you have to bring your sister her dinner before you can take yours. You'll be coming home for a proper dinner when you've finished, but she can't!"

Titus's face split in a wide grin. "Sure thing mom. I'll take them right over." He ran to the hallway that the bakery used to prep deliveries and grabbed one of the smaller thick duster jackets hanging on several hooks on the wall. He proudly examined the bakery logo emblazoned on the back of the protective jacket - wheat stalks emerging from behind a cloud - before patting his pocket to make sure he had his sun goggles tucked safely away.

Rushing back up to the front, he practically snatched the bag from his mother, who smiled at his enthusiasm and ruffled his hair with one white-covered hand. "Mom!" he protested as he shrank back from her, scrubbing furiously at his scalp, "That's gross! I have flour stuck in my hair now!"

Ceanna's mouth widened in a mischievous grin, but her answering retort was cut short by the tinkling sound of the bells from the front of the shop. Titus looked up to see six tall figures outlined against the evening sunlight garbed in unfamiliar uniforms beneath the more common white hoods and dark glass goggles of their protective sun gear. The tall figures ducked their heads as they entered the bakery waiting area, each pausing to take in their surroundings before spreading out into the shop. A knot slowly formed in the pit of his stomach as his mother's expression turned sour momentarily before it smoothing seamlessly into a businesslike mask of professional cheer.

The door closed behind the last of their guests, and his mother gave a cheery greeting. "Good evening, Officers! Welcome to Cirrus Bakery, where our pastries are lighter than clouds! How can I help you?"

An uncomfortable silence hung in the bakery shop for what seemed an eternity. The six hooded and goggled figures milled about restlessly, their suspicious gazes sweeping over the wooden tables and chairs set out for guests who wished to dine on the premises. Titus's eyes narrowed as he examined the unfamiliar red Protectorate uniforms, knowing they were probably part of the foreign official's guard. Which meant...

"Avians!" Titus breathed softly, feeling hatred stir in his chest.