Flying a few feet above a desolate moonscape was interesting at first; the entire place looked strange, with signs of impacts that hadn’t been smoothed out by wind and water all over the place. Nothing grew in the land outside the domes; when Rissa asked Emi why that was, Emi asked why they should bother. If they needed more ground space, they could just grow another bubble.

At least as far as Emi knew, they weren’t interested in terraforming Berinath; they simply wanted space to live.

The shadows alone were shocking; she’d never realized just how fuzzy shadows were normally until she saw the absolutely sharp delineation between darkness and light; they weren’t simply shadowy, they were truly dark.

As the crawler moved, it sent up plumes of dust, which fell back to the ground slowly and strangely, almost seeming to dance in ribbons at times. All of the flyers stayed well to the sides, avoiding the dust as much as they could, but there was no avoiding some of it. Fortunately, it hit the bubble and bounced away.

The novelty wore off eventually, though new sights could still draw Rissa’s amazed eyes. She found herself splitting her attention between the strangeness of the landscape around her and the entirely-too-large planet above her head.

The more she watched it, the stranger the planet in the sky seemed. The water and clouds were similar, but the continents peeking through the clouds weren’t; they were not covered in the healthy green of Earth’s land when seen from space. At first, she thought it was deserts and mountains, like the brown and yellow parts of Earth, but the more she looked the more she wondered. There were a few bands of green, but they seemed oddly splotchy and far smaller than what she thought she remembered of images of Earth.

When they did stop for the night, the crawler simply halted and settled to the ground before it withdrew most of its vines into the bubble, creating a “floor” for the people inside to walk on. Its bubble seemed to squish a hole in the dust, sending more into the air.

Blaze and most of the others controlling flyers settled in close to the crawler, but the bubbles didn’t touch.

“We aren’t going to be able to talk to any of them, are we?” Rissa indicated the crawler and the other flyers with her head.

Blaze shook his head, watching behind them rather than looking towards Rissa. “No. You don’t want to take a bubble down while you’re outside a dome unless … heh. Looks like you’re about to see why. At least there’s only one this time; on my first trip, there were three. I was on the crawler, of course.”

“What?” Rissa spun around, following Blaze’s eyes. A flyer that had fallen behind the others weaved drunkenly as it tried to catch up. It was very different from the other flyers; it only had a top dome, resting on top of a metallic platform.

Its underside skidded off another flyer’s dome, then one of the crawler’s vines shot out from under it and seemed to pierce the dome on the out-of-control flyer.

Emi laughed. “Idiots. There’s a reason you don’t use ordinary flyers outside the domes. Even with a bubble on top. They’re cheaper, but they don’t survive the trip.”

“At least they remembered the domebush.” Blaze’s voice was serious, almost grim. “On my first trip, two of the groups didn’t. The guide caught them in time, but only barely. If I hadn’t been there, some of them would probably have died.”

Emi seemed subdued as she nodded, agreeing with Blaze.

The vine pulled the malfunctioning flyer over until its dome touched the rear of the crawler’s bubble and bounced. Ot pulled them back together, simply resting them together, while another vine rose and wrapped around the meeting point. The flyer then started getting pushed closer to the crawler again, slowly, with the domes no longer conflicting.

Rissa couldn’t make out what was happening until a large portion of the domes were merged; at that point, she could finally see past the now far larger circle of vine that joined the two bubbles. There was no bubble where they met, simply open air.

The damaged flyer tipped up at a serious angle as more of the dome was pushed against the end of the crawler’s bubble. Soon, Rissa could see the people on the flyer climbing off it, onto the crawler. They took everything, including the domebush. Once the flyer was empty, the crawler reversed the process it had used to join them, then tossed the now-empty flyer to the side.

“Are they going to just leave it there?” It seemed somehow wrong to Rissa to simply leave the broken-down vehicle behind.

“Of course. It’s not worth anything anymore.” Emi grinned. “A crawler might move it if it’s in the way, but other than that there’s no issues unless someone wants a dome, and who would build one this far out? Once the bubble fails, it’ll just be covered in dust.”

Rissa supposed that it was probably hard to move a broken flyer, even if it did rub her wrong to just leave it where it fell.

The break lasted about ten hours, long enough for a meal and some sleep. By the time they were moving again, the planet in the sky was no longer visible, which told Rissa that Berinath didn’t always show the same face to the planet above it.

It was another two long days of travel before they reached Harrow. When they did, it was very much similar to when they left, except that they had to sit in the bubbled flyers for almost an hour before the vines opened up an inner wall. Even after that, it was another fifteen minutes before D’ackt had the crawler release its bubble and lower itself to the ground. The passengers on the crawler moved slowly and looked like they all ached as they gathered their belongings and left the crawler behind.

That was swiftly followed by all of the flyers, including theirs, descending and releasing their passengers. Rissa was exhausted but wanted to move; she felt dreadfully confined.

“Do you want to head directly to the Pearwood Inn or shall we see the market first?” Emi glanced between Blaze and Rissa, seeming to disregard Sillon and Ita. A moment’s thought told Rissa the reason for that; both Sillon and Ita were content to follow where the others led. Sillon simply seemed to be a relatively relaxed person, while Ita followed Rissa as though she were nearly as important to Ita as Serenity was.

Rissa thought the inn would be a good stop before they headed to the market; it would give her a chance to get clean, change clothes, and have a hot meal. She was certain she’d feel more up to dealing with the market after that.

“The Inn,” Blaze stated. “We’ll need to visit the market as well, but I want to meet up with Kerr first and see where she thinks we should head. That way, I won’t sell off something we’re actually going to need later.”

That also seemed like a good reason, so Rissa nodded in agreement.

When they knocked on the door to the suite Kerr had rented, it wasn’t Kerr that met them. Instead, it was Ekari.

“Blaze! Come on in.” Ekari’s grin seemed just a bit wider than it should have been, but Rissa dismissed the implication. She knew they were only friends.

Once they were all inside the suite, Rissa turned to Kerr. “Your message said that Asihanya was a bad option? What’s going on there?”

“War. War or destruction; anywhere there is a strong enough defense, there could be fighting. Places without strong defenders are simply destroyed randomly. As far as I can tell, the area around Stallet was the first to be hit, but there isn’t exactly a lot of news coming out of the damaged areas.” Kerr took a deep breath then blew it out slowly. “We might be able to make it through, but it would be dangerous. Whoever the attackers are, they come in groups and I’m pretty sure at least some of them are Tier Five or higher. We don’t want to have to fight them.”

Rissa bit her lip. That definitely sounded like somewhere she didn’t want to go. “So what do we do then? We need to get to Zon, I still haven’t heard from Serenity and he said he’d send a message as soon as he got out of the dungeon.”

“Lyka,” Ekari interjected. “You know I went there to check on the report from the Voice about that being where the stolen students were taken, right?”

Rissa nodded. Ekari hadn’t stayed on Earth for long before she headed back out.

“Well, I couldn’t find anything about them. Slavery’s illegal on Lyka, so it’s not like checking records or looking for slaves; I had to look for how someone snuck them in, and I wasn’t able to. Between that and what Serenity mentioned in his messages, someone in the Eternal Church is definitely involved; unfortunately, without knowing who I can’t find them.” Ekari frowned. “I feel like I ought to be able to, but I’m sure they’re being reported as newly joined initiates somewhere. Initiates aren’t permitted to leave, so it would be a great way to keep captives.”

Blaze snorted. “Of course they have. From what you’ve said, initiates aren’t that far from slaves anyway, it’s just a different name. And don’t even get me started on that Path you were avoiding.”

“There’s a reason the Guild has a warning out on Lyka.” Kerr’s words overlapped with Blaze’s. “No one below Tier Three can accept a request from Lyka. I checked on that while I was waiting here; there’s a Guild House near the Asihanya portal.”

Rissa glanced between the three, then her brow creased as she realized she still didn’t have an explanation. “Why does that mean we should go to Lyka? I know I'm the only Tier Two, but it doesn’t sound that much safer than Asihanya.”

“For Tier Threes, or someone traveling with Tier Threes, it is.” Ekari leaned forward, unconsciously straightening her back. “And the reason we should go to Lyka is the same reason the Voice was able to trace people from Zon to Lyka. There’s a direct portal connection between Lyka and Zon. It’s not as fast as going to Asihanya; it’s a lot farther from the Berinath portal. Still, there’s no war on Lyka. It should be a safer detour. If we happen to find something out about the students on Lyka while we’re there, it would be useful.”

A pained look crossed Ekari’s face as she paused for a moment. “I can get us all permission to travel to Lyka, but we’ll be traveling as your entourage, Rissa. That’s the only problem with going through Lyka; travel is restricted, so we won’t be able to hide well. If anything, you should go over the top with your presentation. You are engaged to a dual Planetary Sovereign; you need to show it. That’s the only way this will work.”

“Serenity hates it when you point that out,” Rissa protested.

Ita started to laugh. “Serenity hates being called what he is. He still doesn’t let me greet him properly.”

Sillon leaned back in his seat with a wide grin on his face. “I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he finds out.”

Rissa looked around the room. Everyone seemed to be smiling at that. “That’s really not the best reason to change our travel plans. Even if it would be funny.” She had to admit that it would be. “Still, I don’t want to go through a war zone. Exactly what would be required to cross Lyka?”

It was time to do the same sort of detailed planning they’d done back before they left Earth. It’d worked out so far and Rissa wanted that string of luck resulting from overpreparation to continue.