In the nightmare, Diana is running down that same hallway of the castle she called her home. All the lights are too bright and its distinct features are blurred. She knew every detail of it before, she had been down it thousands and thousands of times. Her sister is freshly dead, she couldn’t even look at her for more than a moment. Luann is harmed, that’s all the registers in her mind. Her mouth speaks the words, in the dreaming landscape they are jumbled. The Court Mages have the killer seized, but she reaches into the ground, trying to bring out her magic, trying to kill him. If only she had succeeded, Blodwyn wouldn’t be alive.

She fails. She failed, the Mages failed. The vial vanishes. The fire erupts. This time the fire comes raging out for her. She cries out, but no sound comes out.

Diana’s eyes snapped open in reality. There was no valerian in her system to help dull the ache. There was sweat dampening her clothes and against her back was another body. She turned, surprised to feel Jonah nestled up to her. The events of the last return, washing away the foggy dreams. The throbbing of her head was still there, the anxiety about the Heroes as well. It was all rounded off at the harsh edge though for now.

The room was dark and filled with the sound of rain falling hard. She didn’t sleep enough, but it had to be late morning. Jonah didn't stir as she sat up from the bed. She started at the reflective eyes of someone on the couch.

Kalyah switched on a small light in her hand, a physician's electric torch. “Do they look weird?” she asked, waving the torch under her face. “They’re one of the few benefits of dwarf blood.” She chuckled softly, setting down the book in her hands. “I didn’t want you two to wake up. It’s a miserable day so close to the storm, everyone else is in their cabin.”

Aiko raised its head, still stationed at the door.

“Your tiger made an exception for me,” Kalyah said, walking towards her.

“Yes, she’s been doing that,” Diana said, rubbing her head. There was a muggy heat in the room.

“The heater is running on the ship, everyone would freeze without it. Your blankets are fine, but fully clothed sleeping, not great. I removed my patient’s pants, he was about to sweat out of them. He had me charm him back to sleep. Really, it’s the only thing to do today,” Kalyah said, keeping the light pointed to her chest. “I didn’t want to do anything to you until you woke up.”

“I can’t spend the whole day abed,” Diana groaned. “I’m not sick, at least, I hope I am not.”

The Priestess’s small hand touched her forehead. “Hmm, you don’t feel great either, sweetie,” she said gently.

“It was not a great night…”

Kalyah put her finger to her lips, shaking her head.

“Do you know?” Diana asked, suddenly concerned.

Kalyah nodded. “You should rest,” she said.

“I have to get up,” Diana said, one eye closed as it was where all the stabbing pain was located.

“It will be at least a few days before we make it to Graycliff,” Kalyah said, touching her forehead.

A prayer came from her as her finger swirled. Diana knew a good bit of elvish, they were another close ally. It was a desire for the goddess to ease her suffering. The headache dulled and her desire to sleep grew. She sighed, knowing that she was defeated. With a shuffle she removed her billowing skirt, she would have done it earlier.

Kalyah wiggled her eyebrows at her.

“What?” Diana said, lips pursed.

“You’re a beautiful woman, and your legs are lovely,” Kalyah said plainly.

The Druid huffed. “Thank you. I only wear long skirts to be proper,” she said with a coy smirk.

“Well, I think Jonah will like the view when he wakes up,” Kalyah grinned.

Diana settled back into bed.

“You know he’s fond of you, right?” Kalyah asked.

“He isn’t exactly hiding it,” Diana said with a chuckle.

There was a long pause from the Pixie. “Well I have to know,” she said, gesturing to her.

“What?”

“Are you?” she wondered.

“No, I make it a habit to sleep beside men I loathe,” Diana said, rolling her eyes.

Kalyah scoffed. “That’s why he gets so nervous around you, always teasing,” she said. “It was trying to cheer you up that almost snapped all his anchors. Did you tell him how much danger he was in? Or how worried you were?”

Diana sighed. “I have more important things to worry about,” she said, turning to her side to face the sleeping man.

“Those things are easier to go through with someone else,” Kalyah said. “Even if it’s not romantic, sweetie. A friend your own age goes a long way.”

The Druid fluffed her pillow, breathing deeply. “I probably would have gone home if he wasn’t here,” she admitted. “I’ve just gotten so frustrated with the people meant to be Heroes. I was considering it on that walk back to Rowoak… My mother wanted to board this ship, join the Heroes once more.”

“I saw you two coming from the castle, your mother seemed proud of you,” Kalyah said, tucking her blankets in around her.

"I lost my mother and my father as well, I had to go,” Diana said, the words were always there, but it was the first time she had spoken them. “My mother was crying non-stop for days. Once the funeral ended, she stiffened up. It was like she was done mourning. The hawk had regained her composure…” She breathed a labored breath, eyes watering. “It was the Hero's countenance, the Druid walked the castle, not my mother.”

“I’ve seen the histories, she is powerful,” Kalyah remarked, sitting on the edge of the bed. “An Archdruid at such a young age.”

“Ten years older than me now,” Diana said, feeling so lazy in her training. “She has laxed some, but she could have mastered the Crown technique for Blodwyn in the time since Luann has passed.” She wiped her face with the pillow.

“You can cry now,” Kalyah said, rubbing her shoulder.

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I love my father, but I can’t be like him. Any time I saw him alone he was crying. If I start, I won’t stop.”

“If you say so, sweetie,” Kalyah said. “I’ll drop off some stuff for Jonah when he wakes up.”

“I’m not charmed, am I?” Diana asked.

“No, do you want to be?” Kalyah said.

She considered it.

“You’ve been using valerian root, I can see it in your eyes at breakfast,” the Priestess said. “It’s too late for that now though.”

“Just a charm so I wake up when he does,” Diana said. "I've struggled to wake easily."

Kalyah nodded, drawing a circle on Diana’s cheek. “He mumbled something about not waking you up earlier,” she said.

Diana fell back to sleep with a smile.

Jonah woke with ease in the dark, it was exactly 12:23pm, according to his vision clock. There was warmth all around him, and slick skin on his leg, registering differently on his organic and metallic. Blindly he pawed for the nightstand lamp, the blankets dragging with him as he reached. He had yet to move the table closer, in the same place as when he was in a coma. There was a soft feminine sound and for a moment he thought he was back in bed with his ex, some years ago.

He almost fell out of bed as the light came on. There was Diana, half dressed and half covered. He hungrily scanned her, laying on her stomach, face turned from the light. Trying to steady himself, his metal feet took the blanket off the bed and her.

He could hear his heart over the pattering rain. So that's what was under her skirt. God, why was he such a stupid horndog? Probably because it had been so long since he'd been this fortunate. What was the life threatening thing he had dealt with last night? It didn't matter, for now at least.

Aiko chuffed loudly behind him and he jolted off his feet, trembling in shock.

Diana laughed, flopping her head to face him on her pillow. There was a wide smile on his face and clear awareness in her eyes. "Well, Kalyah was right," she said. "Oh come now, don't look away. You're lucky enough to see the arse of a princess, the least you can do is look me in the eye now." She raised up on her elbows, auburn hair everywhere and an unpainted paleness on her face that brought out her freckles. "Ah, there you are. The heater is lower, I might have frozen to death if you left me uncovered for much longer."

"You're hot enough to wake me up," he said, pushing out the words.

Her face lit up with a beam and the room was brighter from her laugh. It was one he hadn't heard much from her. It felt so good to be the source of it. After a relieved sigh, she rose up from the bed. "A mere friend, as if Kalyah," she said, walking around the bed to the bathroom.

"What?" he asked.

The sound of his voice was dulled by the snap of her elastic underwear being adjusted.

"Nothing," she said coyly. "I can feel your eyes still." She shut the door with that.

The tiger scanned him as he put on his pants.

"Hey," he said, frowning.

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"It's only fair," came Diana's voice from the feline.

He grumbled. "I don't have anything worth looking at."

"Don't diminish yourself like that," Aiko went on. "Your skin alone is marvelous."

He flushed, touching his face. "Thank you," he said, feeling better about himself than he had in a while. Not many women his age had complimented him. Guys didn't get a lot anyways.

On the nightstand he noticed a tray with a couple familiar objects on it. There was a note from Kalyah beside it. Hera, elvish, whatever it was, had a bizarre form of cursive. He recognized some of the letters, but it could easily be another language. He knew what the gifts were, the sentiments from the nurse were the important part.

"Ah, you have your headphones," Diana remarked, leaning over him. She was all in order, hair brushed, makeup, skirt back on, apparently there were straps and buttons on it to bring the hem above her knees though.

"Yeah, where do I put the jack though?" he said, holding up the cord.

"In your sheet phone," she said.

"It's in my arm now…" he said.

Diana's eyes went from the jack to his arm. "Plug it in then," she suggested. "Your arm has proven its ability to absorb, it should be able to form a plug." She grabbed some things off the tray, holding up the small cylinders. "You will need these too, Stephan said you needed more material to form the speakers on your body. Here, take it." She tapped the rod of solid plastic against his forearm dully.

"I'm afraid," he said quietly.

"Why?" she asked, sitting beside him.

"Well, I mean before I came here that was my life, always being nervous," he said with a frown. "Kalyah says that on Hera you consider that a curse by some god. We just call it anxiety."

Diana chuckled softly. "It is called that here, as well," she said. "Whereas Kalyah's goddess struggles endlessly against a god of pestilence, Her holy husband battles against a god of madness. Some are life long, others occur naturally, as the gods gave us all free will." She took a deep breath. "It is a serious thing, your condition, Jonah. The Clerics and followers of Psyin, the god of the mind, constantly struggle with ways to tackle every ailment the mind can conjure. Where His influence is not known, there is a fair amount of people eager to ignore what you and others have. You might be called a coward in many places…" She placed a hand on his shoulder. "You endangered yourself for my benefit, lost yourself in a performance of magic. I assure you, you are not the first, you won't be the last. It is possible for magic to give you a heart attack in this world. Don't… worry about that." She squeezed him tightly as he panicked. "I was taught from a very young age. I bloomed my first flower from a bud at three." She smiled, laughing with that warming sound. "I took a long nap right after. I was so excited to do it again, I dragged my mother to the grove behind the castle every day after."

He smiled with her.

"I know how to use magic and while yours is extremely bizarre compared to mine," she went on. "I will help you as much as I can." She handed him the plastic. "Now, if you wish to absorb it, which I think was the easiest part of what you did, I think it's as simple as having the right motivation." She looked at him with knowing eyes. "What was that motivation again?"

Jonah took the rod and laid it along his forearm. He didn't want to acknowledge the teasing looks of her, it confused him. What was her interest? Oh God, it was so much easier when that little thread of a crush was wrapped around someone he barely spoke to at all.

He wanted to be useful to her. There was no splitting hairs about that. In order to not shake apart, he needed the supplies in his body. How was he going to keep something this size on him at all times? He remembered some old fact about the Empire State Building, that it could be collapsed into the head of a pin. Removing the space between the atoms was all that was needed. Was that true? He wasn't sure. It could be, if he had a signal, if this world had the Internet, then he could look it up.

He knew that no matter what, the weight of something couldn't change. Not on Earth at least. Aiko changed weights all the time. Magic could just shrug off petty physics. Did that mean he was in another universe too? Okay, push that out, he thought. No time to get existential. There was a beautiful and intelligent woman beside him, one urging him to put this thing in his arm. This was solid, she was solid, goddamn was she solid. He winced at his own joke, wondering if he should throw himself back into the ocean.

"Are you alright there?" she asked.

"Solid magic, weight, differentials," he mumbled. "Magic thoughts…"

"I see, don't let me disturb your process," she said.

"I can do this," he said, looking her in the eye.

She nodded. "Yes, you can."

"I just can't think too much about it, because it won't weigh anything more once it's in me," he said, pressing the rod against him.

"That seems to be how your magic works," she said.

"I can't feel the weight of my phone and it travels through my blood or something to get to my other arm," he said, then shook his head. "No, I can't think of that, it's already there. Kalyah could tell if I was being poisoned by the nasty shit in a cellphone."

"You were fine the last time she looked you over," Diana stated, eyes wide.

"This is extra supplies, that's all," he reasoned. "I can take it, it's my magic."

"Exactly," she agreed.

There was a sound like a boot going into wet mud and Jonah was touching his bare forearm. He laughed, patting his metal skin. "I did it!" he cried.

"You did indeed," she said in disbelief. "What a strange magic…"

"What, am I the most unique Mary Sue or something?" he asked.

Her brow raised in confusion.

"Um, forget I said that," he mumbled, waving his hand dismissively.

"The world is an incredibly large place and I know a good bit, but I have never heard of anyone with your kind of magic," she said firmly.

"I guess not a lot of people lose all their limbs to practice magic," he said with a chuckle.

"I know that the Machinist's true disciples number in a few hundred, at most," Diana said. "I have only met a handful of them. None of them had anything like you, keeping machery on you at all times" She folded her arms, thinking. "Well, there's a few Druids I know with wooden limbs, one of them insisted that it was the only true way to experience nature." She held out her hands and feet. "I quite like all my limbs though, don't you?"

"They're very nice," he said quietly.

She laughed, holding up the other rod. "Alright, one more," she said.

This one went in much easier, he pushed away the joking innuendo from his mind.

The headphones had a wooden shell on the ear cups and a lambskin texture to the cushions and band. He figured that it could actually be an animal hide where on Earth it would be fake. It wasn't worth thinking about. Either way, with such a fine mahogany finish these things would be super expensive on Earth. He had some pricey headphones before, nothing this nice.

There was no absorbing these. Putting the jack to his arm he jumped as the port formed. The worst part is it didn't have any feeling when he plugged it in. It made the limb feel alien. It was his and he had his music now though. The headphones felt better than they looked. He thought they were loose and that made them tighten on their own. They were a part of him, that made sense, it didn't make him feel better about the fact he was half machine.

Diana was inspecting his process, standing over him.

The music selection scrolled too fast in front of his eyes. He raised the screen on his arm, using his fingers so he felt more grounded. What was going to be the first song he played on his arm?

He soon realized he was trying so hard to make it special that he was idly scrolling and making it banal. Finish the song I started, he thought. Or start it over, the phone hadn't saved his place when he almost shook apart. He selected the song, the volume low on the intro. The bass wasn't that good. Then it was, shaking his teeth. A little lower, perfect.

He was back to a comfortable location with his eyes closed. The genre was perfect for what he loved about music, feeling it. The world he inhabited, where every note was a new movement around him. He closed his eyes, the lyrics vague, but he imagined them sung by ghostly figures swirling around him. They came from a dozen mouths. They were just sounds and they surrounded him like water. On Earth this was his magic, this was his escape from the drawn tight nerves of his everyday life. A release from the world of normal physics and a boring life full of stress and necessary hurdles. Some of those barriers he knew he would never cross. Accomplishments he could never get. It all faded when the sound engulfed him.

As the music faded, he opened his eyes and saw Diana sitting before him on the floor, looking happily up at him. "Your eyes are watering," she said.

He wiped at his face. "Sorry, overly emotional," he said.

"It’s fine to show it," she said, the words feeling pushed out. "May I listen to the song that nearly killed you?" She put her hands up to him. Given them, she set them on her head, fussing with her hair. “Alright, I’m ready!”

He restarted the song.

Diana closed her eyes, drawing her legs into a tighter criss cross. Her face was expressive as the parts continued on. She gripped her feet, swaying. Jonah chanced it and grew a speaker on his arm, listening along. The song sounded wrong on only one speaker, so he made another small one on his arm. It amazed him how easily it occurred, but how useful was being a speaker on such advanced magical technology? Diana was humming the chorus by the third time it appeared. When it was over, she rotated her finger.

“Again, I quite enjoy this,” she said. “It’s like a hymn, but it has a ritual beat. A strange and magnificent piece.”

He replayed it, not making any arguments for the rest of the album. This was fine, he figured.

By the third replay, there was a knock at the door. Aiko admitted Kalyah and Stephan, the dusty tanned man haggard as the nurse carried in a couple trays of food. Only after the song ended did Diana hand back the headphones, promising to listen to more of it. They ate their breakfast at lunch time. Stephan had dark rings around his eyes as he investigated Jonah’s progress. The mechanic wouldn’t hear of him minimizing the fact Jonah had made a simple speaker and headphone jack. It seemed mundane to him, especially compared to Diana and Kalyah’s magic. The two women encouraged him to be proud of himself though when he tried to shrug off the praise. It had always made him afraid that it might go to his head. He didn’t tell them that, he only smiled and nodded.

“You saw what else I made for you, right?” Stephan said, blinking hard at his bloodshot eyes. He held the last item from the nightstand. It was a squat little metal can, he pushed a button and the speaker grill on top produced the sound of rushing water. “Kalyah said you thought the ship was too quiet, so I duplicated the one I have.”

“Yes, I did, thank you Stephan, really I can’t thank you enough,” Jonah said, holding the precious object.

“I think you might be able to absorb it too,” the mechanic said. It was possible the man was so tired he didn’t know where he was.

“Honey, honey, he’s not going to absorb everything, his arms are gonna run out of space,” Kalyah said, dragging the man to sit back down.

“No, no, he already figured out how to collapse the atoms and reduce weight. If he tries hard enough he could probably stuff the ship into his limbs,” Stephan stressed.

Diana gave Jonah a big grin.

“You need to sleep, baby, really,” Kalyah said, holding the man to her. “I’ll lay with you, you’ll get some good sleep.”

Stephan yawned so wide it clearly hurt him. “I gotta fix some of the engine stuff, then we’ll have some time, sugar, don’t you worry,” he said, laughing deliriously.

The nurse held his chin, kissing his lips. “You’re getting charmed, I’m gonna charm you, okay? I’ll make you sleep for ten hours, maybe a few days,” she said, nodding along with the insomniac’s bobbing head. “Oh I love you, but I hate how Angelina treats you.”

“I had help before everyone left,” Stephan said.

“I know, big man, I know,” she said.

“Can I help you?” Jonah wondered.

Stephan turned to him. “Do you know anything about Azure fueled engines that are over two hundred years old?” he asked with pleading sincerity.

Kalyah shook her head at him.

“I, I, could try,” Jonah replied.

“The ship still has its original bloody engines?!” Diana exclaimed.

“Yes…” Stephan stated.

“Why?” she asked with a furrowed brow.

“Authenticity, Angelina loves that…” the mechanic laughed, deranged.

When they finished eating, Jonah was glad to have the man sleeping on his couch. Only twenty some minutes had passed before the intercom came blaring on. Footsteps rushed overhead and Jonah was afraid it was something undead up there.

“Attention, all hands on deck!” came Angelina’s voice over the speaker. She repeated it several times as Kalyah roused Stephan, who was still as exhausted as he was before.

“Princess, newbie, fasten yourselves on your beds, the ship is about to travel above the clouds! There’s belts underneath them. You have five minutes!” the intercom continued.

“Shit, shit, shit, the engines aren’t ready to do that, they could overheat,” Stephan said in panic, clutching the edge of the couch. Kalyah rushed to the intercom, relaying that message.

“I don’t fucking care, Kalyah! We’re going above the clouds, Fia will hold the engines together through sheer fucking will. I’ll get a Wizard to open a damn Gate if I have to!” Angelina roared back. “Ash Makers are attacking Grayhill, we have a confirmed sighting of Blodwyn and her generals!”

Diana froze up, holding her breath. Jonah reached for her hand, holding it tightly. She stared at him, clearly terrified.

Kalyah’s head dropped and she let Stephan rush out of the room. “He’s going,” she said softly.

“Three minutes until we launch,” Angelina said coldly. “The hurricane hasn’t hit yet, I’m showing up first. The bitch will wish she got trapped in the fucking storm!” The intercom went dead.