Jalten followed from a distance as Galan joined in the looting, ‘letting him go’ with the condition to not get into scraps with the others tacked on.
Keeping from breaking out into laughter and revealing himself proved a surprising difficulty. Galan behaved strangely, and Jalten had trouble getting over the fact that hijacking Kalden’s tromoudas and tromoudens went so smoothly. Raiding Kalden’s caravan would more than make up for four others not amounting to much. All the good stuff seemed to be pulled toward some specific effort.
While continuing his tailing, Jalten occasionally scooped up things that caught his interest when a lithe young woman blocked his way. Fortunately Poina proved to be too pleased by the treats to make a fuss and flew off without even trying to dig into his shoulder.
“Do we not ought to keep this raid short?”
“Do we? I kind of hoped to let the kids let loose more, Shanna.”
“I guess we can risk a little longer. None of Kalden’s tromoudens freaked out, so he still has hope of catching his runaway drake. This orb takes a third of a Proél day to circumnavigate, so we should have six more hours at the very least.”
Shanna chewed her lips, so Jalten grinned. He considered the habit cute, and it told him he might get his way.
“Everyone else is keeping watch right?”
“Yes…”
Shanna closed her eyes and sighed tiredly.
“It’s just… didn’t we lose a kid last time?”
Jalten’s mood almost plummeted completely.
“I get it. I think I’ll remember Analken’s look of terror forever. The kids were getting restless, though, and we are being much more careful.”
Jalten stepped forward to pull Shanna into a hug.
“How about just two hours more? I’m sure the kids will tire by then.”
Shanna finally relaxed and circled her own arms around Jalten. For a moment, they just stood there embracing each other, his auburn hair and her dark brown hair tousled by the wind. The happy laughter filled the ambient noise and soothed them.
“Want to walk with me?”
“I don’t know. I did leave my post...”
A third raspier voice further broke the silence and startled them.
“They already shuffled the post assignments. Go have fun, Shanna. I’ll keep an eye on the new kid for you, Jalten.”
They called out their thanks, but only silence responded so Jalten laughed.
“That’s Baedo.”
Pulling away from each other, Jalten smiled broadly at Shanna’s own small grin. Hands clasped, they walked off to watch the excited children.
They smiled at little Heda draping herself with flamboyantly colorful cloth. Little Seldo made building blocks out of Kalden’s plates. Many just ran around. Jalten could have sworn a weak wind current was lifting him, until Shanna shot him a look of dread. A bunch of the children had just ran by with Galan following along.
“I guess you didn’t notice that kid’s prana as awfully inhuman?”
Jalten frowned.
“Oh? I just know he’s kept his prana in some sort of self affecting pattern.”
“The kid’s prana actually almost reminds me of the prana Sidero had.”
Jalten froze in shock at the blast of a statement.
“Then we need to end the ‘raid.’”
Jalten shoved prana down his tromounda mimicking rod and Shanna did the same with a nod. While they signaled for their lookouts to come back through their tromoudens, Jalten gestured for Baedo to get Galan away from the kids.
A rather nondescript, tanned and middle aged man appeared to the side, and Galan cocked his head to listen. Jalten followed suit to Shanna in sighing in relief when Galan stopped following the kids without a fuss.
Twenty figures in the distance shot up into the sky, and a tromouden from his flock came back down by then. Jalten held his breath until his tromouden squacked a full twenty times and almost relaxed when no more squacks left his tromouden. No more squacks meant no complications.
A couple minutes later, his lookouts on Kalden finished gliding down to them.
High in the sky, their battered orb hopper came down to hover overhead and anchor with a combination of quiet ability mimicries.
As Jalten and the twelve other men kept a close watch of ‘Galan,’ Shanna and the other women ferried the children up to the ship. With all the kids up aboard the ship, they deactivated the anchor and unfurled canvases into sails all over the ship. Catching the wind, carried them away on a course eventually to their settlement.
With everyone’s complete vigilance against Galan no longer necessary, they methodically packed up Kalden’s caravan vehicle. Shanna had long since alerted everyone to the reason for the abrupt end of the ‘raid’, so tension filled the air.
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“Why do you hate me?” Galan asked sullenly.
Ignoring him, Shanna and the remaining four women carried the caravan carrier into the sky. Leaving one behind, they glided back down to a bit of a distance behind the twelve men spread out behind Jalten.
The hurt in Galan’s eyes ignited, “stop ignoring me!”
Jalten sagged inside from a bit of guilt but kept his face steady.
“I will be a little frank. We deemed you a potential threat. Can you tell us why your prana might seem similar to Sidero’s?”
Galan’s frown twisted in confusion and for a while a suffocating silence formed. Then Galan finally shrugged helplessly, “I dunno. ‘Cause I survived an attack?”
Disbelief tinged the following silence, but still-- silence fell over the area.
“Victims of Sidero’s attacks do experience changes in prana,” Shanna growled, “but not gain prana so similar to Sidero’s.”
Following the declaration, Shanna abruptly shifted her prana and sent a ripple through the ambient prana. No veil disappeared to reveal a terrible dragon, leaving Shanna baffled and Jalten and the others confused.
Galan angrily shot back, “get your sails torn! Maybe my prana was already weird. How many kids survive an atmosroi-blown-out attack by Sidero.”
Jalten nodded as well as most of the others but Shanna kept a skeptical expression. He made a note to talk later but pushed on.
“So... Do you want us to take you in?”
“Sort of? Kinda lookin’ for a group to settle an Orb rich with. Thinkin’ I found a really good one.”
Galan seemed so mundane compared to before, Jalten almost let his guard down. Only… he felt a faint predatorial nature underneath the childish speech pattern. That kept in mind Shanna’s noticing a hint of Sidero of all things in Galan’s prana. Still, if Galan could deliver, then so many issues would disappear.
“Sorry, but I find you a little hard to believe.”
Galan smiled just like the children from before, not really fitting the topic.
“I just need someone to follow me. I’ll just wait on the orb for you to show up.”
Jalten signaled, “Is anyone willing to go?”
All the men called out ‘aye.’
“You’re all crazy bastards,” Jalten laughed and then singled out one, “Kedan, are you sure about tagging along with Galan?”
Kedan, a fellow auburn head, nodded solemnly. They ended up giving Galan a boost to three currents before finding the current he thought would bring him to the Orb he mentioned.
As they saluted, the wind carried Kedan and Galan away, and after everyone’s tromoudens came back to them, they took off themselves.
Shanna raised an eyebrow at him, “why we are risking things with this ‘Galan?’’’
“We could gain quite a bit of resources, learn valuable information, or both no matter the outcome.”
The rest of the journey back finished in silence. Everyone focused on staying on course back to their settlement, too exhausted for anything else as rushed orb jumps tended to render them.
A switch to a different wind current became necessary after passing three Orbs and another switch after four orbs. After passing by a total of eleven orbs, they finally neared their settlement’s Orb.
Jalten gestured, and everyone sent an intricate pattern of prana pulses out to their orb settlement. While waiting, they switched to nearby wind currents. They followed the tromouden sent to greet them.
“Welcome back!”
A crowd of sixty waited where they touched down. They had to rebuild on a new orb after an orb collision destroyed their last one, so the only permanent structure was a granary and a few perches for their tromoudens to launch off of.
An elderly man growled, “you left us all worried when you sent back only the children and four of your ‘raid’ squad. Not to mention the major changes about to happen.”
Jalten laughed tiredly.
“Sorry about that Kenjo. We ran into a possible major opportunity but we thought better to make sure the kids-- wait, major changes?”
Kenjo chucked a newspaper at him with a grunt. The headline declared boldly: “THE REVILED SIDERO DEFEATED!”
Jalten’s community only had the income for a second tier subscription. That meant some others had known for at least a day or more. His exhaustion blew away.
“Double, no… everyone send out all your tromoudens to keep watch. I’ll try to get an upper official of the triumvirate to lend us more tromoudens.”
Jalten's words ended nearly in a groan when his people stayed lackadaisical. Shanna and the others also echoed his sentiment but with not much effect.
“I know it hasn’t been too long since I took leadership, so let me put it this way. Whose authority protected us?”
Jalten waited for mutters about the Triumvirate to echoe from the crowd.
“Now how did they gain their authority? By rallying the fight against Sidero. But with Sidero gone, the triumvirate will be too busy consolidating their territories. Orb communities on the fringe like us are ripe targets for opportunists! Send--”
A loud raptorial screech cut him off and then one of the rookies called out.
“Sir, that was my tromouda just now! Four of my tromoudens were taken out in zone A1!”
A second screech cut through the air, and this time Shanna called out.
“They’re rushing at us straight through zone K1!”
How were the raiders managing an approach from Vetan? Jalten shook his head. He needed to take command.
“They must have waited for us to come back, hoping we’d fatten ourselves up a bit for a better haul. Shanna, go take Jelna, Hilda, and Stalden to get the children back on the Hopper and ready to flee once the raiders commit to a descent. Everyone else, ready for parapet formations!”
Coordinating blast rod use, Jalten directed knocking over and fashioning three defensive covers out of their watch towers, and none too soon. A bombardment of fire seemed to thunder from Vetan itself. They attempted to retaliate with hurled rubble to ability effects from their more personalized ability rods, but no one could manage a proper hit. Even their frost blasts had little effect.
Morale didn’t last, and one of Jalten’s younger settlers cried out.
“How are they managing to stop overstaturation from Vitan?!”
The raiders got closer and the answer became apparent. Instead of using sails, they used roars of fire for propulsion on top of obliterating their attempts at retaliation. At the sight, six of the younger men outright tried to escape. Only one of them got away, the rest incinerated, and Shanna went rigid at the sensation of the prana.
“They’re mimicking Sidero.”
Why were raiders using revolutionized technology on a fringe settlement? Jalten squinted at their enemies’ transports. As he feared, their attackers towed a large transport for captives. They probably weren’t even the first to be targeted.
Jalten’s eyes darted back to their haul from raiding Kalden. On top of usual wares like food supplies and tromouden care supplies, Kalden had a bunch of prana accelerants and decelerants and ability-engraved rods. Unfortunately, his method of rod differentiation was unknown, but maybe a distraction could be rigged using the rods and the decelerants. They weren’t capable of fighting off a pseudo Sidero.
“If you’re not part of the current volley, help me set up an overload of Kalden’s rods.”
The idle parts of his raid group immediately moved to help him but the others were irritatingly slow on the uptake. Unfortunately, the raiders’ descent progressed far too quickly even under fire for them to get through the entirety of Kalden’s ability rods. With any luck, they set up enough for a chain reaction.
“Everyone experienced with mimicking visilias’ ability, start ferrying people to that cover.”
Jalten jabbed toward the cover opening away from them. He only directed the other covers built in case their first one couldn’t hold, but fortunately the cover that would shield them from the blast of the overload was quite close. Rigging the ability rods they figured out to continuously pull on the ambient prana for a cover fire, they managed to sneak everyone. Seconds later, the raiders touched down, a final blast of flame killing their momentum.
The raiders’ approach sent Jalten’s heart straight to his throat, their course out of view. The pull on the ambient prana destabilized the mimicry of some of the last few ferries, so the ruse could have been ruined. Fortunately, the raider proved to be unaware of the sleight.
“Captain, the settlers appeared to have escaped!”
“Check the other covers.”
What happened to the overload they rigged? Jalten furiously tried to think of a way out until a war cry cut through the air.
“You’re returning to Vetan with me!”
It was Deldan, one of Jalten’s hardier settlers. The ambient prana churned, indicating the raider’s fire offs of mimicries, but also-
“Stop you idiots! That’s what this crazed fool wa--”
A series of explosions cut off the raid leader, and Jalten capitalized on the confusion to direct a barrage of frost blasts to cake the raiders' transports. This depleted the last of the nearby ambient prana, allowing Jalten and his settlers to escape unimpeded.
After passing by over ten orbs, they touched down on a barren orb where Shanna waited with her transport squad and the children. In shock at the destruction of their second settlement so soon, everyone remained listless.
The next day, the dreary monotony broke when they received a hail. Kedan came back.