Captain Esha Tavalik of the Storm’s Deceit nibbled her lip in annoyance. The tendrils that connected around her head writhed in reaction to her mood and the floating island shuddered in response.

She tapped the armrest of her throne, soothing the Core with her gesture. The control orb under her fingers shuddered in pleasure as she delicately stroked the glass. Years of being bonded to the Deceit’s animating spirit had made her as familiar with its quirks and needs nearly as well as she knew her own body. More familiar in some ways.

With the monotony of planar flight, Esha’s mind wandered into her memories over the past few days, starting with the rather ill-fated attempt at capturing their target Chaos Ship, the Ebon Horizon. The ship’s name had been elusive and it wasn’t until she had connected to Holy Yabranth’s Root that the knowledge had flowed into her mind. Along with not a few extraneous, and utterly useless thoughts that she had to spend several hours to sluice off from her mind.

When she saw the Ebon Horizon fly into a Chaos storm, with a funnel that led to the depths no less, Esha knew that this had just become more troublesome than she expected. There were rules of engagement, even out in the depths of Chaos. One never knew when one fell under the power of another, and there was a reason why letters of marque existed.

If the Storm’s Deceit had been captured by Verdanian forces, or in the unlikely event that the Coalition ever got its act together, the letter ensured that she would be ransomed back instead of executed out of hand. Of course, she’d lose everything she owned in exchange but at least she would live. The Xylarchy did the same for any Verdanian privateers they captured. Any merchant ship so accosted by her ilk would not have been in any danger of death, if they had surrendered. Battle casualties were expected, of course, but no one executed prisoners. Unless the war between the two gigantic nations intensified.

The last time that happened was more than a century ago when one of the Empress’ offspring thought she could push the borders beyond where they already were. A couple of planes untethered from the Xylarchy and added to the Empire’s. Another couple nearly consigned to Chaos, and a single plane that was still nothing more than two armed camps on either end and a wide no man’s land.

So when the Ebon Horizon had chosen to fight and flee, instead of surrendering, she knew that they probably carried something that was worth far more than their lives. And when the Holy Yabranth’s whisper came from the Core, she knew that she was chasing after trouble.

She hadn’t been far, not with the enhanced senses that the Deceit gave her, and she saw their quarry. An artefact. A weapon. Why was the Holy Yabranth interested in a mere melee weapon?

Then she watched the bearer, a young woman wearing distinct Xylarchy fashioned clothing repulsed the Poisoned Rose by swatting it away. A girl. Barely taller than Esha, and probably weighed less given how slender she was, swatted a Chaos ship weighing thousands of MiJin, way with the artefact.

Esha caught a glance of the girl’s face and felt her heart twinge. Holy Yabranth’s seed repulsed the attempted influence and Esha felt her Anima return to normal less than a blink of an eye later.

Well then.

The cat and mouse game ended with the Horizon diving into the funnel and Esha was sure as the Abyss that she wasn’t going to risk her ship going through such a dangerous road.

The Abyss.

That’s where Chaos funnels always led to. Which layer of the Abyss was the more pertinent question. So, imagine her surprise when that particular funnel led directly to the Pure Lands, one of the Holy Yabranth’s bases of power. Well, half the time anyway.

And upon entering the Pure Lands, a fellow captain had given her several letters imploring help. Well, that had actually been easier than looking for the artefact. Her hold was filled with bodies, barely living, though definitely with mutilated Anima.

Well, they were a distraction at best. Captain Gallus Messor’s target hasn’t made himself known. The target was a prince from a medium-sized nation in the Coalition. She wasn’t sure what Messor’s client paid him with, but she doubted it was simple gold or jade.

Her thoughts drifted back towards her quarry. She needed to find the Ebon Horizon. She had no doubts that the artefact and its bearer was there. All Esha had to do was travel beyond the influence of the Root, where the Pure Lands reverted from being a Domain and back into a Waypoint. Sure enough, the Chaos gave her a direction, and she mustered her troops to follow it.

And of course, the Blood Moon. It was one of the few ways the light of the Luminous and the Radiant asserted control in the depths of the Chaos Sea. Shackles and restrictions made the expression of power more focused. The trouble was that the Luminous and the Radiant were without Will. Which meant another who knew how could take advantage of the gap.

She watched with cold eyes as the ground disgorged those who refused to die. Watched as they slaughtered each other, and absorbed the loser’s remnants to grow stronger. It was a never-ending struggle. A futile struggle, according to Holy Yabranth’s word. No matter how strong an army becomes, it was worthless if it could never leave home.

‘Except as a deterrent.’ Esha thought sardonically.

Here were lands rich in crystallized power but to dig was to invite death. A treasure land that only the Roots could salvage the tiniest trickle. If they could harvest more than that, the Belrath Xylarchy would have long won its wars and unified the Myriad Planes.

The Blood Moon stripped away the fog, the invisible mist that twisted the senses and made small things larger. It widened the spaces between the Roots. With the Blood Moon, all became clear. And what was clear was that all became insane with bloodthirst.

Those who dwell around the Roots survive in the Pure Lands but they, in turn, lose what little freedom they had. There was no succour in the wastes and only from the Root, or from the few ships that slipped down into the Dusk Zone, brought any kind of supply. And with the Blood Moon, comes the Other. He wrests control of the Roots from Yabranth and forces those who partook of the bounty to fight. To devour and to grow.

The armies march, and in the midst of the plains, they would clash, all eight settlements around Holy Yabranth’s Roots.

There! She saw it, the Ebon Horizon. On a plateau near the settlement of Serenity.

“Ready the catapults,” she ordered her attendant. The boy saluted then scurried away.

Hmmm. Ah! A lucky break. It looked like the Chaos ship was still inoperational. She wondered if they could use their vaunted plasma carronades still.

‘Heh. This should be good.’

Her connection with the Deceit’s Core told her that the Arbella was also within striking distance, along with the oddly named Candied Fig, and the Bloody Dragon. Her associates, Captains Ayar Gajin and Teshi Erasto of the White Tide and the Poisoned Rose weren’t in the Pure Lands, bad luck to them. It looked like she would be the one bringing the bounty home.

With a thought, she activated the Lignoculi and had them stand ready to deploy. The Storm’s Deceit flew languidly until she was directly over the plateau and less than a longstride from her quarry.

A large plasma ball from the carronade flew at her ship, but she intercepted them with small ice shards. The sharp projectiles pierced the ball’s containment field and forced its payload to burst while several hundred paces away. With the Ebon Horizon immobile, it could only fire from one carronade at a time. She would have come from the stern but it so happened that the Chaos ship’s orientation had its rear end facing the mountain wall.

“Release the Lignoculi,” she commanded the Core. At the bottom of the Deceit, a trap door opened and a veritable rain of the puppet warriors dropped. Each of them was curled in a foetal position and only straightened out when they were close to the ground. Puffs of red dust and dull thuds.

Esha leaned back against her throne and pursed her lips. Messor’s crew were dropping their own ground troops on the plateau. The only thing left to do was wait.

_________

“We can’t wait any longer!” Yuriko insisted.

They observed while lying prone on the ridge, the Chaos ships disgorging their troops. Then they watched as the townspeople clashed at the other side of the valley, and near the endless plains.

The fighting had been both swift and brutal, with no quarter given. Would there be anyone left in the towns after this? She shook her head at the insanity. What were they even fighting for?

She had watched the flying island nervously while it meandered in the sky, then heaved a sigh of relief only to choke and cough when she saw the Ebon Horizon’s plasma bolt. The plateau was only two hundred paces away, but it was also that much higher.

The problem was that the trail that led up there wound around the mountain, which meant the actual distance they had to walk was more than a league. Of course, she could scale the cliffside…

“Ahhh!”

Ptang! Swish! Boom!

It looked like she needed to run up the cliff.

“What are you doing?” Aidan’s sharp tone dragged her out of her thoughts.

“Eh? Ah, I think I’d better climb up the cliffs to get to the Horizon faster,” Yuriko said quickly.

Aidan stared at her for a moment before he shook his head. “And what about the rest of us?”

“Uhm, follow?”

“Right up the cliff? Did you think how dangerous it would be and how we’d make such fine targets for those Chaos ships?” Aidan asked sardonically while he pointed behind him.

Yuriko followed his arm and she gasped in surprise. Where there had only been the floating island before, there were three other ships in sight. One looked much like the Horizon, being a flat bottomed river barge that was nearly a hundred paces across. Another looked like it had been carved from a glacier, and gave her the illusion that she could see past the translucent ice. But Animus flows obscured anything beyond a pace or so of ice. The third looked like a mirror image of the floating island, except it didn’t have dirt covering the black stone hull. Obsidian, she thought, and there were even the dull red flows of lava near the top. A floating volcano?

The only thing that marked them as Chaos ships were basically the crisscrossed runescript patterns all over the hull.

“But we’re vulnerable as soon as we go on the trail,” Yuriko protested.

“Not as vulnerable if we climb up the cliff.” Aidan shook his head, “No, we’re better off running.”

“But the Horizon…”

“What are you worried about?” Riley snorted, “Aunt Layla’s there, and so are Jonir and Zoey. Three Knights are more than strong enough to fend off an undisciplined mob.”

“No need to be rash.” Aidan continued, “And no need to dawdle either. Hey, exiled prince, can you and yours keep up? I’ll carry our cadet officer if your man can’t.”

“Have no worries, friend.” Reinhardt gave a brilliant smile. “We can make it. Ah, Devion can carry friend Tiernan, no problem.” He gestured towards Aidan’s weapon, “You must be free to protect yourself.”

“And you, too.” Riley snorted.

Reinhardt just shrugged. “We should hurry, Mister Davar.”

Yuriko looked up at the cliff. It would take her a minute to scale up the two hundred paces if she focused. She could shape her Anima to stab into the stone and to be flexible enough to act as a springboard, yet return to immateriality in an instant so that it wouldn’t catch in the stone. If she did that a dozen times it wouldn’t be her climbing, but her jumping up to the top. A minute or less.

“Yuriko.” Aidan grabbed her shoulder. “Believe.”

“I…” She hesitated until her eyes fell on the Isgeri and Tiernan. If she and her cousins scaled up the cliffs, they would be vulnerable. She didn’t spend all that time protecting them just to abandon them now. “Alright.”

“Then, let’s run.”