Lily watched as molten metal cascaded down the invisible energy shell surrounding the ethership. Even if Lily hadn’t known what it was, it would be immediately obvious to anyone that this was no ordinary metal. Despite being in hot enough to run like water, the metal wasn’t glowing a bright red or orange like iron or any other mundane material. Instead, it was a brilliant blue with silver streaks and sparkles mixed in.

Someone in Caeden’s line of work would be able to identify the magical metal by that fact alone. Famous for its high energy conductivity and super-low resistance, its distinctive blue tint could be found in all manner of ethertech across the Starry Sea.

Mithril.

It turned out that Asherta’s blue-tinted scales had almost the exact same coloration as the metal, a fact that Lily knew Caeden had kicked himself over more than once since they figured it out. It was blatantly obvious if you held a bar of the stuff next to Asherta’s draconic features.

The only reason they hadn’t figured it out immediately was due to how rare it was for a dragon to have an affinity for a magical material. Almost all of them, over 99%, were tied to mundane materials or forms of energy. The odds of Asherta having such an affinity were quite literally less than one in a million.

That being said, her having an affinity for a metal often used in weapon construction instantly elevated Asherta’s standing among the Bladeborne. She was regarded differently than the rest of Caeden’s team. Lily wasn’t still clear on how they viewed her half-dragon friend. The Bladeborne were alien in their thinking and priorities in many ways, and she found it hard to follow their culture and logic.

Really, the only thing even slightly familiar about their culture was their strong familial bonds. But even that was drastically different than human relationships. The Bladeborne viewed Caeden as their father, but it had an extra level of veneration and reverence that she hadn’t seen in humans. Some of that came from the fact that Caeden was essentially the actual god of their world, but Lily was certain that they would treat him just the same even if Caeden were powerless, solely because he had made them.

Asherta occupied a similarly strange place in their community. Lily knew that she and the other humans who had spent so long in the Forge were treated more as guests and oddities than a member of the community among the Bladeborne. They were welcomed and treated well but never really trusted or included much.

Asherta was different. Her demeanor and affinity seemed to mesh with the Bladeborne in a way that human sensibilities just didn’t. They seemed to have a sort of kinship with the dragon-woman that wasn’t present in how they interacted with Lily, Erik, or Cat.

All of this skimmed across the back of Lily’s mind every time she saw Asherta tap into her Hoard. Once they had finally figured out what it was, Caeden had spared no time stuffing Asherta with as much Mithril as she could possibly hold.

The difference in Asherta’s power was both obvious and terrifyingly potent. Especially when considering the actual effects of Mithril. Before she filled her Hoard, Asherta had access to the bare minimum of draconic abilities. She was stronger, faster, more durable than a normal human. She could transform small portions of her body into dragon equivalents. That was it.

Now, she got the full measure of a true dragon’s power with the added benefit of a shroud with two splinters to back it all up. So when Caeden sent only her and Asherta up to deal with the whole fleet, Lily wasn’t all that worried. Because both of them were uniquely suited to deal with exactly this sort of situation, and it wasn’t just because both of them had the best flight capabilities on the team.

Obviously, Lily had already used one of her better counters to the etherships targeting them. Her Anti-Attack Cloud was exactly the kind of defensive ability they needed to make it through the barrage of attacks. Now, it was Asherta’s turn to show off one of her advantages.

The second the molten Mithril made contact with the energy shield, it started doing what Mithril did. That is to say, absorbing and dispersing energy. In moments, the half-ton of Mithril had stripped the shield bare, causing it to flicker and fail in sections, letting molten metal drip through, only to get cut off as the shield desperately worked to reassert itself.

Once again, Lily found the Revolution displaying a surprisingly uncharacteristic level of capability, as the someone on the ship must have recognized the distinctive appearance of molten Mithril. The ethership wasted no time, immediately shooting upright toward Asherta. Most likely, they were trying to move back toward the safety of the larger ships and greater numbers higher up.

Despite that, the Mithril’s capacity to wick away energy was too much for the shield to endure. Before the ethership could make it very far, the barrier failed entirely, leaving the physical vessel underneath exposed. And Asherta was waiting.

The rapid rise had pulled the Revolution ship even with the half-dragon’s height as she darted out of it’s path. That left her in a perfect position to lunge forward, landing on board and slamming her claws into the deck. There was no one on deck; they’d all run for cover as soon as Asherta started her attack.

That left no one to defend the vessel from a determined, powered-up pseudodragon’s assault. Magically reinforced with her shroud and the untold tons of 100% pure Mithril Caeden had provided her, Asherta’s claws ripped through the forged and reinforced deck like it was tissue paper. Unlike the energy shield, there was plenty here for her to grip, and she took that leverage and turned it into shredded metal and ethertech.

It didn’t take long before something important ruptured. Lily had no idea what, she wasn’t an ether technician, and the ship was still covered in false aura that blocked her senses from making it past the hull. But the ship shuddered before rapidly losing height, which likely meant Asherta had crippled its flight engine somehow.

Dropping out of the company of its fellows, the ship was left exposed for Lily to move in. Sky didn’t need any command, knowing exactly what was going on. She swept over, leaning enough to give Lily a straight shot to the deck. She formshifted into a cloud and dropped right down.

Taking a deep breath, Lily thrust her arms forward and activated a new mnemonic. A burst of steam-like vapor poured off of her in waves, ruching over the ship’s deck and through every nook and cranny, especially the sizable hole Asherta had made.

Through the cloud, which was composed of a number of elements intermixed, Lily could feel the entire ship, even without her aura senses. The Revolution’s false aura could block her base senses but not her connection to her own shroud’s domain.

Instantly, Lily could feel that most of the crew, though not all of them, were alive. Asherta’s attack had done little to harm them, only affecting the ship itself. The only ones dead had lost their lives to aberrant ethertech misfiring as the ship failed. A consequence of having so much ether jammed into a single ship. A large enough disruption was likely to cause unforeseen interactions.

Somehow, the ship was controlling those outbursts of wild ether. Yet another piece of technology the Revolution hadn’t revealed until now. Lily had neither the time nor inclination to figure out how it was happening; she was more concerned with ship as a whole, which was still plummeting toward the city below.

Fortunately, both Lily and Caeden had foreseen this issue, as well as the rampaging ether problem. The fact was, if Lily, Caeden, even Erik or Asherta, had wanted to, they could throw out attacks strong enough to pop through any defenses these ships had and fry them instantly. But that wasn’t a solution. Instead, it was just a way to make more problems.

Dropping a dozen heavily modified advanced etherships onto Baserock was bound to kill a bunch of people they were currently trying to protect. Worse, if too many fell at once it was likely to cause a massive burst of leaked ether like the one that destroyed their ship on the way to the dragon continent. Except orders of magnitude larger in scale.

The effects of such an explosion would be unpredictable, considering the unknown and overwhelming quantities of ether present in the air above the Tournament city. They could easily end up causing something devastating enough to finish the Revolution’s job for them. An outcome no one wanted.

So Lily and Caeden settled on this one-at-a-time strategy. It was slower, yes. And the extra time was no doubt costing them lives as the attacks continued. But the alternative was even worse.

That’s why Lily had tuned this new mnemonic on the fly. It didn’t even have a name yet, and used a combination of two other discoveries she’d made during her time in the Forge. The first component of this cloud was a knockout gas. The crew that remained dropped where they stood, removing any chance of them interfering with the next part of the plan.

The second component of the cloud was a fine mist of Null Water. A magical material that sapped at energy sources and even balanced out the acidity of liquids. Unlike Mithril, though, the Null Water would lose its magical properties as it absorbed energy, becoming normal water. It wasn’t perfect, but Lily had found that Null Water mist could act as a suppressant on wild ether by interfering with the reactions.

Together, the two components essentially neutralized the ship. Its engine stalled out entirely, and even the false aura came apart. All of which was crucial for the next step of Lily’s plan.

Lily’s Galaxy shroud was difficult to handle in almost every circumstance. After all, it was such a broad domain that she could create almost anything with it. But grasping small-scale things such as an individual element was nearly impossible. Instead, Lily had learned to control much larger-scale items.

For this, Liy needed as much control as possible, so she stuck to what she was most familiar with. Reaching out her hands to the sides, she clenched her fists before flicking her fingers through a series of gestures. Specificity, she’d found, was key. More detailed and elaborate mnemonics seemed to take much quicker with her Galaxy splinter than any other. Annoying, but necessary.

The air froze all around the ethership as shards of rock half its length took shape. With a snap, ice filled the gaps, and the vessel was completely surrounded by a newly formed comet with Lily inside.

This was something she’d come up with ages ago. Mostly made of ice, a comet was a natural extension and connection point with Lily’s other domains. She found making this mnemonic easy. Learning to control the mass of rocky ice, not so much. It was big and unwieldy, but Lily had never intended to use it in a delicate context. Instead, this mnemonic was supposed to be used as a wrecking ball, smashing through enemy defenses to get her in close.

Now, events called for a more delicate hand. With force of will and her domain’s control, Lily maneuvered the encased ship down toward the ground. Specifically, to an open Entrance Blade, its circular opening laid out flat on the ground and much larger than any other Caeden had used so far. Big enough to accommodate ships many times the size of the one Lily currently held in her comet.

Directed by her aura senses alone, Lily managed to plunge the ship down with plenty of room to spare. Once she was through, she let out a sigh of relief. Her abilities were very much tied to her her domain, and comets weren’t meant to move slowly. This was one of those situations where her shroud made moving faster actually easier than moving slower, and the effort had cost her.

Lily had used a lot of shroud so far. Now, she was not the same woman she’d been a few days ago Starry Sea time. But she also wasn’t on the level of any of the Academy’s teachers, much less someone like Damon Vestigious. All of them had dozens or hundreds of times her shroud reserves. She’d almost wiped herself out just getting this one ship into the Forge.

But, she was in the Forge now. For every moment that passed outside, hours and hours went by here. She would be fully recharged mentally and physically before Asherta could even start attacking another ship. This, too, was a part of her and Caeden’s plan. His access to a time-distorted pocket dimension was enough to single-handedly place their team in the realm others had taken literal millennia to reach.

So Lily relaxed as Bladeborne disassembled the ethership to study its technology. One even brought her a nice cool drink. She could kick back and reset for a while as her shroud recovered from the strenuous exercise.

Thanks to Caeden, she had nothing but time.