“You shall sail the iron ship with warriors of bone,

You shall find what you seek and make it own,

But despair for your life entombed within stone

And fail without friends,

To fly home alone.”

Percy Jackson

“Can it not do anything now?” Aleera asked intrigued. Surprisingly, when she asked the youngest daughter from the diver’s family scoffed at her question. There was clearly some antagonism between the two beyond the disagreement over the pearls. Lady Acacia stopped Aleera with a look while the girl’s older sister restrained her in return.

“Just the light at the moment, Lady Silversea.” Archbishop Grigori answered openly unaffected by either the question or the quiet critique. Perhaps his use of the title was a quiet rebuke of the other family’s scorn or a warning. Politics was complicated if you thought about it too hard or read too much into every situation.

“Could you show us?” I asked unabashed and unafraid of criticism. If there was one benefit to my open, innocent and still childish face it was the ability to ask whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to. Provided I could maintain my poker-faced ignorance everything was forgiven, overlooked or misunderstood.

“Certainly Lord Silversea.” He smiled. I did not care if he was making a political point, I quite liked receiving the honorific. Made me feel a foot taller. Although I could hear the rest of my family calling me Little Lord sometime soon, which would likely last until I was taller than them. We needed to resource more of the Elvish elixir to continue to speed up my growth, or maybe that had resolved with the recalibration of my status. It had not really been enough time to tell yet.

“A light to guide the lost.” Archbishop Grigori intoned as he pressed on one of the glyphs on the stone column it began to glow.

Grandfather grumbled, “Or a lure to every monster from here to the horizon.” While the clergy did not respond to his quiet critique I could not help but notice that both knights alongside Lady Acacia seemed to have heard him and judging by their body language possibly agreed with him as well.

“That is all for today. Thank you for your support and the time you have spent . . .” he was interrupted by a roar from further up the coast. Out of a cave in the cliff face monsters spilt forth. It was a snarling, snapping tangle of eel-like monstrosities that had somehow emerged from the very Lodestone itself. Their sudden swift emergence sent some of them to their doom. The leaders of the tangle were pushed off the cliff ledge by the heaving mass behind them to fall onto the rocks or into the sea below. However, the majority of them turned without falling searching their surroundings before locking onto us and the shining stone in front of us.

One of the knights stepped forward to slap the stone column turning its light off. We stood frozen as the world paused with bated breath. But then reality snapped back it felt as if as one they moved their focus from the stone to me and they surged forth towards us along the cliff searching for a way to reach the top of the cliff or find a way along it. The tangle of monsters spread out following the path of least resistance but they were coming. Worse still they had yet to stop exiting the cave in the cliff face their numbers still growing by the second. A dozen, a score, a fair few had fallen but a horrible amount had not.

“Stand firm.” The knight shouted and they arrayed themselves in front of the clergy to protect them. They had all retreated to the edge of the cliff by the miniature monolith.

Grandfather though had seen what I had feared. They were no longer targeting the stone marker. They were targeting me. I might not have called them forth but now that they could see me they focused on me once more. It became even clearer once they had reached the top of the cliff and ran along it. We were stood a little distant from the clergy now that they had retreated to surround the stone marker and you could see how their path was now angled ever so slightly away towards us rather than the stone marker.

“Kai,” He grabbed my head turning it and tearing my eyes away from our approaching doom.

“Focus, if you stay here, people will die. They are focused on you but will kill everyone else as well including your father and your sister. I can carry you, but I cannot fight effectively at the same time, and they will catch up eventually.” He quickly outlined the problem as they grew ever closer. I fought to look but he held my head firm. “We need to leave, and now, to save you and by saving you draw them away and save your sister.” With no time to object to his plan, he picked me up and turned to leave giving one parting nod and command to Lady Acacia, “Protect them.”

Then we were off.

Grandfather was insanely fast when he wanted to be despite his white hair and obvious age his stats still mattered. It even felt as if the distance between the monsters and us was increasing for a moment but then they turned to follow and the chase was on.

Looking over his shoulder with nothing to do but hold on I watched as they chased us south. Grandfather did not run down the slope but rather along it. Running down it would help them chase us down just as much as it would help us to speed up.

A second later the monsters had reached where we had stood just a moment before but by that time Lady Acacia had pulled Kaius and Aleera close and buried them beneath a wooden dome. The Knights braced themselves in front of the clergy but were anchored by defending them and did not step forth to meet them. For a second I feared we would be wrong and they would slaughter our family and new friends but we were right. Instead of attacking them, they sped past still aiming for us despite the tempting target. I felt a weird mix of relief that we had been correct accompanied by an increasing level of terror as it was proven without a doubt that they were somehow targeting me.

“Focus, Kai. They are still following and their focus is on you.” He shouted firmly to me. The words were not uncalled for I was understandably a little close to panicking. We might have saved our family but how were we going to save ourselves?

“What do we do when they catch us?” I asked worried but focused as I bounced around while he leapt from rock to rock running upwards now to follow the rise in the cliff edge.

“When they catch us we will have to see how well you can fly.” He bluntly outlined the next step in the plan he had yet to inform me of.

“Fly?” I asked incredulously. I had no desire to see them dive off the cliff after me. It seemed worryingly likely that some would survive the fall and once in the water I would be a sitting duck.

“Not out to sea.” He answered my unasked question. “I will throw you inland . . . To the lake . . .” He was getting out of breath. Age catches up to us all one day and it seemed that stamina was the stat it was sapping. “Reach the boats . . . or attempt to reach our isle . . . I will kill them from behind as they are chasing after you.”

He paused as we reached the top of a cliff once more.

“Ready?” he asked.

Was I? this seemed like a horrible gamble with no one to rely on but myself.

“Ready?” I asked back searching for some confirmation that he believed in me.

“You’re ready, I will be right behind you.” He confirmed. “My life before yours in the light of the Lodestar. This is the best way I promise.”

We turned to focus on our foes rapidly approaching despite the steep incline. The fact that they had completely ignored the instigators of this mess was not lost upon me. But perhaps they had always been there and were just waiting for the opportunity to spring forth. We might never know. I might never have the time to find out.

“Ready, now!” Grandfather shouted as he threw me into the air. I shot up and inland towards the inner lagoon. Strength and stats went a long way to increasing my height and distance. Travelling at least 100 ft up in the air. A child is not the easiest thing to throw. But as I went up into the air I had the opportunity to watch the monsters pause as they attempted to track my movement before turning to aim for where I would normally fall. They were now ignoring Grandfather who had . . . disappeared at some point in my flight up.

Now it was up to me and me alone.

I snapped my mana out into the cloth I was wearing manipulating the material to form my medieval flight suit turning my fall into a glide.

They continued to follow in my wake as I glided towards the lagoon. What if . . . a hundred what ifs ran through my mind but all I could do was stay in the air for as long as possible. Grandfather would do the rest. Already he had started and although I had missed the attack one corpse lay along the route they had taken. Then another. I did not have time to test my eyes and could only get a vague sense of him through my mana sense and echolocation but our plan seemed to be working. Me leading them ever onward him cleaning them up in my wake.

I threw my mana into gale not in an attempt to speed myself up but to slow my descent. It had been a long time since I had last attempted this and while I was heavier and larger now I also had a few more spells under my belt.

“Auxano aera,” I shouted the spell finally giving me enough lift to halt my descent. The monsters still charged jumping and snapping in behind me but . . . I was no longer descending and as the land dropped away due to the slope I began to feel a little more comfortable in the plan. I could do this.

But where would I go? Looking back, another corpse was lying in the tangle’s wake, but there were still plenty left to devour me. I could not go to the town the people were unprepared and they would rip right through them. I did not want to let them get to the lagoon how would we ever find them again they would decimate the stock of fish it held and if they were fixated on the mana in me possibly the pearl-bearing oyster population as well.

What to do, what to do, where should I lead them now that I was no longer falling but flying?