A flash of blue feathers whisked past the Featherflight’s gondola windows. Pirin ran to the front of the gondola, weaving between Alyus and Brealtod, who held the airship’s two control wheels, and pressed his face against the glass.

A hawk-sized bird with blue tail feathers shot past the gondola and circled around to the top of the airship. Runes glowed on its back, the Eane fields of the world powering the runes, and it carried a leather pouch in its talons. As its tail feathers quivered, they let off a soft hum, barely audible over the wind.

“Woah there, elfy,” Alyus said. “You good?” He held the rudder wheel steady, maintaining their course.

Brealtod hissed something as well, but Pirin couldn’t understand the dragonfolk language yet.

“I’ll tell you in a bit!” Pirin said, pushing away from the glass and navigating back across the gondola. He reached a ladder up to the main hull of the airship, then he climbed up, passing through the crew quarters, then ascending up through a valley of gasbags and titanwood spokes of the ship’s rigid frame.

His heart thrummed and his fingers trembled. Lesser Steppehawks were messenger birds, and it meant someone wanted to send him a message.

He pulled himself up the rungs as fast as he could, abandoning the Eane-purification cycling pattern he had been practicing for the past four weeks since they had left Dulfer’s Reach.

He passed the axial catwalk, where Nomad sat cross-legged in a meditative pose, hands folded in his lap overtop his flute-staff. His Familiar perched on his shoulder, eyes shut as well.

But Pirin wouldn’t need Nomad’s help to catch a steppehawk.

He kept climbing until he reached the airship’s upper platform. It was a square wooden deck, ten feet to a side. As soon as he poked his head through the hatch, a silver spearhead whirled toward his face, trailing sparks of crimson Essence. He ducked down, and the spearhead only took a tuft of hair off his head.

“Pirin!” Myraden exclaimed. She called her spearhead back to her, manipulating the silk rope with her Bloodline Talent. It wound up into a firm spear. “Knock next time, or you will lose your head!”

Kythen, her bloodhorn Familiar, stood on the platform behind her. He bleated in agreement.

“Sorry,” Pirin muttered as he pulled himself up the last few rungs of the ladder and jumped up onto the observation platform.

The steppehawk circled around beside the Featherflight, a black speck against the puffy clouds on the horizon and the midday blue sky. The bird dipped down for a moment, its black and blue feathers nearly blending into the ocean below before it swooped up to the other side of the Featherflight.

Pirin couldn’t recall the specific time he’d learned about steppehawks, but he had a vague recollection. They were most common in Sirdia, but other nations used them too.

He ran to the other side of the platform, tracing the hawk with his eyes as it swooped under the airship.

The hawk was following them, but it was just a hawk. It didn’t know to land on the airship.

He laid down on his stomach and leaned out off the edge of the platform. Was there some kind of call he had to make? “How does it even know how to follow us?” he asked. “What’re those runes for?”

“Messenger steppehawks always have a target,” Myraden provided. “It is likely for you; it tracked you.”

“How?”

“The runes on its tail are simple vibration runes. They should be the same as were on your signet ring; when you feed them Essence, they vibrate with the same frequency as your core.”

Pirin stared at her and blinked. Half of that went straight over his head.

“Every wizard’s core vibrates at a slightly different frequency. It is how powerful wizards with refined spiritual awareness can recognize someone by just sensing them. But you, being a king, likely had the runesmiths of Sirdia take note of a rune pattern that would vibrate at the same frequency of your core.”

“And the stepphawk tracks that frequency with the same runes as a reference…”

“You are correct. It has strong spiritual senses naturally, but once it gets close, it cannot pinpoint the source of the presence.”

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Pirin nodded. “So I need to make my core flare a little louder, and it’ll pinpoint me?”

“Yes.”

He stood up and marched back to the center of the platform. He didn’t have his Reyad with Gray active—she was still in the Featherflight’s cargo hold—so he figured that probably made his core’s presence weaker.

But he had solutions. First, he cycled Essence, pushing a lick of it up to his core and sending a pulse through his gut. He shut his eyes and concentrated on his Essence system.

His core, and Embercore, still sat in his gut, but now it rested atop a bed of foundation Timbers—seven Timbers, a very strong foundation for any wizard. With his Reyad, he could use wind-based techniques, but without it, he’d have access to violent, chaotic, and unpredictable pure-aspect Essence techniques. A blast or two, and that would have to be enough to draw the steppehawk to him.

He took a wide stance and activated the Memory Chain, his Bloodline Talent. Without a Reyad, all his magic was unstable, but he could exploit it—that was the basis for his Shattered Palm.

He rammed his Essence through the edge of the Memory Chain as fast as it could, immediately destabilizing all of his techniques without actually drawing on the memories of his ancestors. His Essence shook and shuddered, then rebelled against him.

Unstable pure Essence gathered on his fingertips. He thrust his hand out, blasting the unstable pure Essence outwards. With a faint blue flash and a deep boom, his Essence coursed out into the open air.

They were still a few days from making landfall, and there was no one around to notice his display of power. There hadn’t even been a single seagull yet.

The Steppehawk let out a shrill caw, then made a sharp turn and fluttered towards the Featherflight.

Pirin unleashed a chain of ten more Shattered Palms. With his foundation set, and after all the practice he had done, his channels could weather more Shattered Palms before the spiritual strain became too intense and he had to recover.

He used both hands to launch technique after technique, guiding his Essence with perfect precision. He never failed a destabilization maneuver anymore. Between manipulating the Memory Chain and purposely making his cycling pattern choppy, his Shattered Palms released like an arrow from a bow.

The steppehawk climbed, fluttering its wings and soaring over to the upper platform of the Featherflight. It perched on the edge and landed, then dropped its leather pouch. Pirin approached slowly so he didn’t spook it. It wasn’t a Familiar, and it wasn’t sapient, and if he moved too abruptly, it would fly away.

He bent down. The hawk was well-trained, and it let him take the pouch without a fight. Pirin whispered, “Good boy.”

As soon as he stood up, he veiled his core—keeping his breaths tight and controlled, and not letting his Essence move inside his body. With no core to follow anymore, and no pouch to hold, the hawk took off and fluttered away.

“You talk to birds like they are dogs,” said Myraden.

Pirin snorted, then said, “They’re still intelligent. Sometimes more than dogs. But all creatures deserve respect.”

“If you say so.” She shrugged. “What is in the pouch?”

He pulled on the drawstring and took a single look inside, then tightened it and shut it. “We need to go inside.”

He turned back to the hatch and descended all the way to the Featherflight’s gondola. Alyus and Brealtod still manned the ship’s wheels. A few seconds later, Nomad and Myraden joined them—but Kythen and Gray were too big to fit in the gondola. As it was, trying to fit five people was pushing it.

Pirin pulled open the pouch and set it down on the floor. The leather folded open, revealing a rune-covered tablet and a Smoke-cloth wound up in the center. Permanently manifested Essence fuelled the runes, but it was flame-aspect Essence, and would only work in the presence of fire.

It was a message.

Sirdia didn’t have any wizards, aside from Myraden and Pirin, but you didn’t need to be a wizard to make a Smoke. You just had to be wealthy enough to purchase a supply of manifested flame-aspect Essence, not to mention have a host of runesmiths under your command and a Smoke-crafting apparatus.

It was from someone important.

“That’s not gonna spark, is it?” Alyus asked. The lyftgas was incredibly flammable, and a single misplaced spark could destroy the airship.

“If there is a spark,” said Nomad, resting on his flute-staff, “I will snuff it in an instant. Light it.”

Pirin set the wooden tablet, a palm-sized chunk of wood, on the deck, then pulled the tip of the Smoke-cloth up a few inches. He lit the tip with one of the ship’s lanterns (which had containment seals on them to prevent sparks) and let it simmer.

A cloud of smoke formed above the tablet, then burst apart and formed a statuesque bust of an aging elf with long hair and sideways-pointing ears. The runes manipulated the ash cloud, triggered by the heat and burning, and the manifested Essence was consumed like the wick of a candle.

Pirin leaned back, staring. The bust was of Chancellor Ivescent. Pirin tapped his foot anxiously inside his boot.

“Who’s that?” Alyus asked. “Another of your pointy-eared friends? A lord of some sort?”

“It is the Chancellor of Sirdia,” Myraden provided. “Current ruler of the land. He has been in power for nearly twenty years; well before Pirin came into the picture.”

The Smoke cloth fizzled, and the strands rippled, sawing across each other so quickly that they shook—a hundred tiny violins playing a complex melody.

It turned into a voice.

“Hello Pirin,” the Chancellor said, the lips of the smoky apparition moving in time with his voice. “I hope this message finds you well, or at least, in a better state than your nation is in.”

Pirin gulped. He wanted to ask the Chancellor exactly what was wrong and demand answers, but he knew the recording wouldn’t respond. It was just a message, and Pirin had to listen.

“We need you back, Pirin,” the Chancellor said. “We need the strength of our wizard-king.”