March 9, 2019. 4:20 am.

“Control console?” I ask, staring at Roberts for a second. Then I remember where we are and what we’ve been doing for the last week. “Right. The city. Sorry, it’s been a crazy few days.”

“Oh? Something to share?”

“Definitely, but I’m kinda enjoying the view,” I gesture outward, still entranced by the surrounding Elswyrms. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that they were… Wait, they are coming around again. “How long have they been here?”

“The Elswyrms’ve been basking the area in their beauty for the last three nights,” Trellani informs us, finally looking away to join us.

“But they’re leaving us alone, so that’s not a big deal, right?” Rose asks.

“Not for us,” Rufka agrees.

“So, where is this console?” I eventually ask Roberts after watching the Elswyrms dance for a few minutes.

“Not far. But I was hoping the Elswyrms would ease off. They leave my barriers alone when we’re sitting still, but the second I move, they treat it like a game, smashing into them with tremendous force. I’ve already healed Trellani twice.”

“Hey, I was just investigating. And if I’d listened to you, we’d still be trapped beneath the surface.”

Roberts nods, smoothing his brown suit, though there are no visible wrinkles. “And then we wouldn’t have gotten caught out in this in the middle of the night, would we?”

“Nope. But I’ve spent too much time underground the last couple years. It was… uncomfortable.”

“Which is why I don’t blame you. I’m just informing them that these Elswyrms are dangerous.”

“Yeah, we kinda figured they would be,” Rose interjects, drawing Roberts’ attention. “I mean, they’re literally throwing off sparks.”

“Yes. Regardless, it would be less of a hassle to wait for dawn.”

“Which means, we have time for a game of Astra’s Stride,” Rufka exclaims, pulling out her board before anyone has time to object. It's as good a thought as any, so we settle in to play while I fill in Roberts on everything that's happened since we last spoke.

After being beaten by Roberts twice in a row, Rufka puts her board away with a surprisingly upbeat smile. Probably because she did better than me both games. I did even worse than usual, unable to focus. Even while talking to Roberts, I kept brushing my hand over the recording crystal, thinking about the fact we have only the vaguest sense of where the others are. And my connection still tells me they’re nearby despite having left the area days ago. Another glitch due to the System's interference.

“Lex?” Rose is standing in front of me, his eyes drawn together. It takes a second before my brain clues me in to the fact that he was talking to me. Unfortunately, it (rather unhelpfully) doesn't tell me what he said.

“Sorry. Was thinking. What’d you say?”

“Oh, nothing," Rose starts, then at my raised eyebrow, he adds, "I just asked if you wanted Trellani to look at the crystal. But Rufka already shot the idea down.”

“Oh,” I mumble, getting to my feet, whisking dust off my pants with a swirl of earth-manipulation. Without thinking, I start shaping it into a small figurine of Smoulder, only realizing what I’ve done when it’s sitting there in front of me.

“Hey, it’s okay. We’ll figure-”

Rose is cut off by a sudden swell in the Elswyrm’s song. The rising pitch draws our attention to where they’re moving out of the city, their strange swimming motions carrying them east, lost amidst the glare of the rising sun.

As my eyes adjust, I try to follow their path. Instead, I notice a figure emerging where they passed over the rise. With several thin blades reflecting the growing light, details are difficult to discern. Then as if they timed it, the sun breaks over the horizon at their back as they approach. It’s only once she’s within a dozen metres that I’m able to distinguish the colour of her fur. At first, I’d thought it was red. But now I realize that was a trick of the morning light. If not for seeing the same effect with Tipan, I might not have realized that the approaching K’tharn’s fur is white.

Have to say, if she’s trying to impress, it’s working.

She stops five metres away, her eyes playing over each of us, the tattoos etched over her eyes emphasizing an otherwise slight narrowing of her upper eyes. She has a short, rigid mohawk, reminding me more of a military cut than Tipan’s. After several seconds of silence, she asks, “Do any of you know the one named Tipan?”

“What do you want with Tipan?” I ask, before I can help myself.

She shifts her stance, turning toward me. Something in her gaze makes me feel as though she’s not impressed with what she sees. “So, you do know her. One of the Outlanders, I suppose.”

I can’t help but squirm under her attention, taking a step back. My step is interrupted by Rufka, who isn’t smiling as she keeps me from stumbling over her with a firm grip. “And what does a Stormguard want with Tipan of clan Lithania?” Rufka demands, her voice in the low growl she only uses when someone’s made her angry.

“She’s not here. Do you know where she went?” the Stormguard asks, ignoring Rufka, remaining focused on me at the same time as I analyze her.

“User analyzed: K'tharn. Female. Gene seed D.”

“Name: Restricted.”

“Attributes: Physical; Extreme, Mobility; Extreme, Magic; Extreme, Awareness; Extreme.

Attacks: Restricted.

Defences: Restricted."

I’m not entirely shocked to see her attributes are so high. It’s worrying though. The only other person I’ve met that still registers as Extreme is Genitha. This Stormguard could probably crush me into a crumpled ball.

Even as I'm reviewing her status, my mouth decides to work on its own. I release a brilliant, “Uhhh?”

Starting to worry this constant static is getting to me.

“No? Was she well the last time you saw her?”

I nod, thinking about the last time I saw Tipan. She was worried about her mother, and the Aetherium but otherwise okay.

“And?”

“Uh. She was fine. Totally healthy.” I respond, trying to figure out what exactly she expects me to say.

“Has she maintained her training?” The Stormguard flicks her blades slightly at this question. As if she’s expecting me to attack her. Is she worried I’ll say no, or is she worried about something else?

“I think so?” I answer, trying to be as vague as possible. It’s not entirely honest. Tipan did slack off for a day, but she was visiting her mom. But we all advanced a lot while in Atun’s dungeon. And she’s been kind of distracted by the Reaper guide turned journal.

She stares at me for a second, her upper eyes blazing with emerald light before she relaxes her grip slightly, sheathing her swords.

"Excuse me, but who are you?" Roberts asks as her swords slide into place.

Once more, she focuses on me while not answering his question, "What do you know of Glimmering Sands?"

I glance at the others, but they look as confused at the non-sequitar as I am. Which is when I realize Roberts and Rufka are the only ones in plain sight.

"It's a resort town?" I ask, having less and less understanding about where this conversation is going.

She stares at me for a few more seconds, then says, "And?"

"And it was massively wrecked by Ivicka a month ago? Oh, and it has a killer Tidal festival," I try.

She doesn't quite drop her jaw at my statement, but I can see the tight control of her face go slack for a second as she spares Rufka and Roberts their first glance. Then she focuses on me again, her eyes once more flashing emerald.

"Say that again."

"Uhh. Glimmering Sands has a killer Tidal festival?”

She shakes her head, “No, the other part.”

“Glimmering Sands was massively wrecked by Ivicka?"

"You believe it. Strange."

Okay, what the heck. Is she reading my mind? Crap, is she like the dolls? I focus inward, trying to detect any intrusions while mentally screaming ‘Get out of my head!’ I don’t notice anything, and by the time I’m done, I realize Roberts is speaking.

“As you can see, Tipan’s not here. If you have a message you’d like to pass on to her, you can leave it with us and we’ll make sure she gets it.” He crosses his arms, the smooth lines of his dark suit lending strength to his pose.

Her eyes flick back and forth across us, until resting on me again. “Yes. Tell her that her father, Talkith of clan Lithania needs to talk to her. Urgently."

"And you… you should be more careful of who you analyze," she adds, pointing at me with one hand.

Then she snaps her fingers and a blinding flash fills the air, collapsing Roberts’ shields and causing several hundred points of damage. I blink at the unexpected spots, shaking my head. I haven’t had that sort of feedback in months. I almost forgot I could get spots in my eyes. When my vision clears, the Stormguard is gone.

“Well, that could have been worse,” Rose says, poking his head up from behind a large boulder.

“Why would Tipan’s father want to talk to her now?” I ask, staring at the spot the Stormguard was just standing. Did she teleport, or just run away really fast? Maybe I should be testing my teleportation more.

“Not sure. But I think that might have been the aforementioned father,” Rose answers, while blinking rapidly.

Wait… White fur. Obvious first clue. Mohawk, different, but rare among K’tharn, like Tipan’s. But the swords and… well, lack of manners.

“Yeah, I guess I could see it,” I admit as Roberts’ barrier springs back into place above us.

“She gave up too easily. Like she didn’t even want to talk to us,” Rufka comments.

“Then why come strolling in like that? If she didn’t want to talk to us, why bother?” Rose wonders.

And why did she only show up when we were getting ready to leave? Was she afraid of the Elswyrms? Or was it something else?

“Stormguards do all sorts of strange things.” Rufka suggests with a shrug. “It’s all that time in the clouds. Makes them loopy.”

“Doesn’t most of the Aetherium live in the clouds?” I ask, arching an eyebrow at Rufka.

“Perhaps we should continue this discussion on the way,” Roberts interjects, gesturing for us to follow him as Rufka grins at us. Trellani pops out from beneath the table, and I blink at the way she was just… gone.

“Right. We should look at the console,” I acknowledge, giving Trellani a proper inspection as we make our way further into the city, towards where the silver spire once stood. Still nothing weird there. Maybe she used an enchantment?

There’s a lot of twisted wreckage as we move deeper. There are entire lengths of twisted Silver longer than a city bus lying around us. When we mentioned the city to Kellica, she’d checked the Taken’s records. the Taken tried to take control of this city at some point hundreds of years ago. They’d almost succeeded, but then the spire exploded, killing every agent involved. And none of them came back.

To be fair, resurrection is normally a Silver-rank ability. If we weren’t Citizens, there’s a lot of things that would be much harder to purchase.

We’re making our way down a partially collapsed staircase when everything seems to blur. For a second, I think the Stormguard’s come back, but then I see the tower as it was before it exploded. There’s a scaffold of glowing bone and hide encircling it with several vague shapes making their way along it. For a second everything becomes clear, the K’tharn bursting into incredible detail. But I hardly notice, because Smoulder is there, hopping towards the twisted tower. There’s a short moment where I feel her usual smugness as she turns toward me.

Then the moment is lost, and I’m back with the others.

For the second time in less than five minutes I stumble. You’d think that with an Agility of a hundred I’d be less clumsy. But even with my vision of the past gone, I’m still disoriented. It was good to see Smoulder again, but the experience has taken something out of me.

The others don’t mention it, though Rufka takes my hand as we continue to walk to the excavation site where Roberts found the console. The hole is nearly fifteen metres down, located in what was once the bowels of the control tower. Now it’s just a simple hole in the ground, with a set of crude steps stone-shaped into the side.

When we reach the console, I attempt to bring up the screen, but it gives a different message than the one in Pelwerd.

“Error. Connection to Network unavailable. Local operations only.”

“Holy crap,” I mutter.

“What? Can you read it?” Roberts asks, stepping next to me.

“Yeah. Says it’s disconnected from the network. But it’s not locked like the last one. One sec,” I answer, tapping the screen. The interface is similar to the control room, but it kind of feels like an old version. Like, this is what I would’ve had if it didn’t update to version 1.0.

The screen fills with new commands. Engines, shields, communications. Obviously, the communications are offline. Shields too. But when I hit the engines, it fills with a long list of functions, most of which are in the green. However, the one important item, the Ripple drive, is listed in red. Offline.

“So, good news and bad,” I tell the others. “Good news is that the engines are mostly functional.”

“Really? That’s amazing Alexis!” Roberts proclaims, holding up his hand for a fist bump. I giggle a little as I return it. It is kind of amazing.

“Bad news, everything else is offline. And without the shields, we’re not going to be able to take this thing into space. Never mind get it back to Earth.”

“One thing at a time Lex,” Roberts replies, still smiling. “Do you think we can get it in the air? Can we take the city to the others?”

I stare at him for a second, blinking my eyes as I think before turning back to the console. Energy levels are good. Stability is nominal. There’s even a subsystem called Momentum Inclusion. It indicates that it keeps everyone in ‘sync’ with the platform while it’s in motion.

“I… think we can do it. We can actually fly the city after the others.” I turn back to Roberts, a grin pushing itself across my face, “At least, I think so.”

Rufka grabs me and shakes me excitedly, “We’re going to fly one of the Builder’s cities! Mum is gonna be so jealous.”

“Hold on. Shouldn’t we-” Rose starts but I’m already working the controls, shifting power to the engines. It’s a good thing I spent time with Uthica. Manipulating the engines is practically child’s play now that she’s filled in all the gaps in my Voidcraft Engineer subclass’ knowledge.

A second later a loud thrum fills the air, followed by cracking and popping from the distance. Then the whole city lurches, and we’re airborne. I grab hold of the console to steady myself before remembering I can fly without it. Guess that Momentum Inclusion feature isn’t perfect.

Even as we’re rising, I hear the keening wail of the Elswyrms in the background. For the moment, I don’t pay them any attention. It’s surprisingly annoying to set the course for the city. It’s not really meant to be operated from a console. It takes me five minutes before I’m able to coax it forward. And by forward, I mean south, which is only ninety degrees off course of where we want to go. Roughly.

“Uh Lexi, you’re going-” Rufka starts but I cut her off.

“I know, I know.” I keep messing with the settings, attempting to route the thrusters. But half the thrusters are offline, a status that only updated after we launched. Meaning it isn’t a simple matter to change the city’s direction.

I’m experimenting with varying their thrust when Roberts calls from above, “Lex, you might want to put on the brakes. I think we’re about to run into a hill.”

That’s not what I want to hear. I’m not even sure this city has brakes. The decision to launch the city may have been a little rash. It just felt like we were finally moving forward.

I disable all the thrusters, killing our acceleration, but it doesn’t help with slowing us down. It just stops it from getting worse. The keening of the Elswyrms seems to pick up in volume, causing me to look up. But I can’t see anything cause I’m in the bottom of the pit. Which is when I realize, I’m the only one in the pit. Everybody else is on the rim. They’re not just standing there either. Roberts is throwing up shields and Rufka is using the same thunder-crackle method she was using when we were swimming with the Elswyrms. I can’t tell what the others are doing, but it would seem I’ve upset the locals.

I don’t want to imagine how they’d feel if I crashed the city.

So, I look over the console again, trying to figure out what I’m missing. My eyes lock on the power controls for the First through Sixth Levitation Engines. It’s so obvious. If we’re going to run into something, just go over it.

But of course, it isn’t that easy. When I attempt to increase the power, the console informs me going so high would be over safety limits while the shield is offline. I end up spending half a minute finding the override, which is in the communications menu of all places. Once I enter the new energy input, confirming the override, I’m slammed into the ground, knocking another hundred points off my health.

I’ve lost as much Health today as in our trip through the Cricken.

It only takes a second for the city to stabilize at its new height. Even as it does, the Elswyrms go silent.

Well, one minor crisis averted. Now, let’s see if I can figure out how to steer this thing.

“Lex. Hey Lex,” Rose calls, forcing me to glare up at him.

“Yeah?”

“I think we have a problem.”

“Another one?” I ask, turning back to the console.

“Uh yeah. I think we’re running out of air.”

What? That’s never been a problem before. I mean, we’d have to be like, what was it, six kilometres up, before air became an issue. Flying up beside Rose, I looked around the city. I could barely see the tip of a single mountain to the North and on every other side there was only sky.

Okay, yeah. I might have overdone it a little.

Flying back to the control console, I attempt to lower the power to the Levitation Engines. But instead of decreasing in power levels, it indicates I need to wait. Reading through all the text I skipped earlier, I find out that to prevent damage to the Levitation Engines, they need time to adjust to their new setting before I can change them. After five minutes of searching, I find a table that indicates I need to wait for about five hours before I can adjust them again.

Okay, that’s annoying, but not so bad. We can just fly away then come back. Or create our own air.

As I fly up to relay the annoying -it’s not really that bad- news to the others, I discover them gathered around a nearby collapsed building. Getting closer to them, I hear them talking in urgent tones before Roberts turns to me.

“Ah. Alexis. Are we able to lower the city?”

“Uh, yeah. About that. It looks like we need to wait a few hours. But hey, we’re fine, right?” I demonstrate by creating a bubble of air over us.

Roberts and Rose trade a glance while Rufka just comes over to me, pulling me to the hole in the wall. Inside I see why the Elswyrms were so loud earlier.

There’s a small clutch of eggs, three to be precise. And atop the eggs are two Elswyrms that seem to be gasping for breath.

…

Oops.