Pirin and Gray spent most of their time over the next few days patrolling the skies around the Featherflight. If they were going to find Lady Neria’s airship, they couldn’t just rely on Nomad’s senses and luck.

So Pirin and Gray, being more nimble and maneuverable, flew in a clover-leaf pattern around the airship, hunting for their prize.

Lady Neria’s ship couldn’t have been faster than the Featherflight. From the glimpses he caught of it at the Aremir estate, it was larger and less aerodynamic, and its sails weren’t nearly as large as the Featherflight’s.

While he and Gray patrolled, hunting for any sign of the vessel, they continued the process of enhancement for the Flare stage. Pirin still had wild-treasures to integrate, and he had to tie the purpose of the enhanced body to his form. He had to make it real.

At the moment, he envisioned the enhancement as a network. A bunch of fibrous strands of Essence leaked out into his newly tempered muscles, feeding and fueling them. The muscles resonated slightly, accepting the Essence. But this network wasn’t yet a part of him.

As they flew over the fields of inland Plainspar, Pirin opened his void pendant and drew out a small strand of the cloud treasure from within. He didn’t use as much as he needed for the initial enhancement, but just enough to cycle and absorb.

Along with it, he pulled out a decanter of elixir. It was a basic spirit elixir, and it would help him raise the power of his core as he cycled the wild-treasure.

He pulled the cloud in through his hand. It dissolved into aura and passed through his skin, then floated around in his Essence channels. From there, he used the same cycling technique Nomad provided to prepare his body for the advancement. It worked just as well to push the power of the wild treasures out into his muscles.

It tingled. It made it feel like ants were crawling all over his skin and into his muscles, and his mind told him to stop—more than it ever had when he experienced intense spiritual or physical pain.

He didn’t stop, of course.

On the first day, he absorbed barely a fraction of the clouds, and he didn’t really feel any difference. He’d been going slow, and he had to split his attention between the cycling technique and searching for the airship.

But on the second day, once he got a little more used to the feeling of the flesh integration, he worked faster. If he could maintain this pace, he’d consume all the treasures in three weeks, and he’d be ready to carve the runebonds and push himself to Blaze.

For a few seconds, he caught himself wondering what his runemark would be, but that was a question for future Pirin.

On the second day, when he returned to the airship, he just wanted to sleep. Mentally exhausted from cycling, physically exhausted from flying and sharing the burden of flight with Gray. He returned to the crew quarters and dropped himself down on the cot. The crystal fox crawled out from under the sheets and curled up on his chest. It dropped its head down and purred.

He wanted to sleep, and he was certainly tired enough, but the crew quarters were too busy at the moment. Nomad seasoned another pot of stew on the stove while Myraden stoked the fire in the stone-brick bottom. Containment runes covered the entire stove, holding sparks in place and preventing fires—the Featherflight flew through the Eane-fields, and as long as it was moving, the runes stayed active.

While the two wizards were trying to cook, Brealtod was trying to organize the dishes and utensils.

Pirin shut his eyes for a moment, just trying to tune them out. He cycled Essence in a basic pattern to calm himself down and relax, and he ran his fingers through the crystal fox’s fur. He purposely fuelled the Memory Chain, so that when he let himself fall asleep, he could review more of his past and re-absorb more memories he had lost.

But it wasn’t working. He opened his eyes a crack, willing the other members of the crew to quiet down…

Or to just organize themselves. They didn’t all need to be stepping on each others’ toes and accidentally pushing each other around.

The Memory Chain triggered, but not enough to grant Pirin a vision of the past. Instead, tendrils of awareness reached out from him, like he was using an incredibly advanced Whisper Hitch.

While he couldn’t see the others in his eyes, he felt a faint spiritual tug from each of them. If the eyes were the window to the soul, then…in theory, with advanced spiritual senses, he could bypass their eyes completely and just access their souls.

But his spiritual senses weren’t advanced. He only had a vague sense of their presence and the weight of their cores. Brealtod, being a mortal, had almost no spiritual weight, but his form still left a faint, misty apparition in Pirin’s consciousness. Their souls were nearby somewhere.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He didn’t exactly know what he was doing. He didn’t need to take control of them or plant thoughts in their minds. He didn’t need a full whisper hitch; he just needed to aid them a little bit.

The invisible tendrils of the Memory Chain’s power snaked through their bodies and up into their mind. Immediately, parcels of their thoughts raced through to him.

Brealtod’s came first. He had no defenses against Pirin’s magic, nor a strong enough will to resist. He didn’t even know what was happening. His thoughts flooded into Pirin’s Essence and mind, and Pirin relied on the organizing presence of the crystal fox to sort them into neat, manageable packets separate from his own thoughts. He didn’t hold onto them or modify them (and he doubted he could without a direct line of sight) but he just neatened them up and fed them back.

Then he latched onto Myraden as well. She felt his presence and recognized it, and she allowed him in subconsciously. He wouldn’t betray her trust. He didn’t even spy on her thoughts; he just fed them back in a loop.

But he interlaced her parcels of thought with Brealtod’s. Subconsciously, she knew where Brealtod was going to step and what he was going to reach for, and whether she was aware of it or not, she knew where he was going to open drawers or place dishes.

Lastly was Nomad. He was consciously aware of Pirin’s influence, but he allowed Pirin in anyway. Pirin didn’t have a contest with his will—it wouldn’t be a contest—but he still organized and neatened Nomad’s thoughts.

He lent all three of them his cognition and the organizational powers of the fox, and they began to work like a well-practiced looming team. They weaved between each other without getting in the way and reached without interfering with one another’s task.

Pirin understood exactly what he was doing, now.

Battle meditation.

They finished their tasks within a half-minute. Myraden and Brealtod looked at each other curiously. They had noticed something different, but they couldn’t pinpoint it. Nomad glanced at Pirin and delivered a congratulatory and thankful nod.

Afterward, Pirin made sure to give Göttrur a few good scratches between the ears and antlers. The little fox chittered and purred louder.

Beaming, Pirin said, “Good work, bud. Thanks for the assist.”

Wha—what was that? Gray asked from within the cargo hold, across the airship. She wouldn’t be able to see, but she could still communicate. I was trying to sleep, and you’re using techniques?

“I was trying to sleep, too,” Pirin muttered, but sent the words back through their bond with intent so they’d reach her. “Now we should have some peace and quiet.”

Alright, then…just don’t overload your Essence in the middle of the night and wake me up with a fright!

“I won’t, Gray,” Pirin said.

With that, he laid his head back and fell asleep.

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On the third day, Pirin spotted a rockwing-rider in the distance while he was patrolling the sky around the Featherflight. There were no villages around, and only empty roads, so if the pilot had been from anywhere nearby, it had to be an airship of some sort. If Nomad was right and the birds had shorter ranges than most, they had to be close to Lady Neria’s airship.

He kept his distance, making sure the bird stayed just a speck in the distance. Chances were, the pilot wasn’t a wizard. Pirin’s enhanced body’s eyesight should have been better than a mortal man’s, but he also hadn’t been starting off with the best eyesight.

But look on the bright side! Gray said. At least now, you don’t need glasses!

“That is…a bright side.” Still, Pirin stuck his hand in his pocket and rubbed his old eyeglasses. They had been a gift from his old teacher, Mr. Regos. He wouldn’t let them disappear.

Just touching them stirred up a little heat in his chest. The Dominion had killed Mr. Regos.

Right. Bad memories. Gray whistled through her beak awkwardly. Shouldn’t have said anything. Sorry.

Pirin shook his head and turned his attention back to the skies. If the rockwing pilot saw him, there was no sign of it. Eventually, the pilot turned, and Pirin followed.

After a half-hour of flying, a distant shape looming in the sky, floating amongst the clouds. It was vaguely egg-shaped, but elongated. Just like the Featherflight, except larger. Ridges ran along its side where the outer envelope pressed against wooden beams. Spars reached out its sides, bearing sails.

Its outer envelope was pristine white fabric, save for a simple crest on the side: a gold and brown circle with a spool of rope and a log in the center.

Pirin didn’t know what the Neria family crest looked like, but if he had to guess, this was it. She ran a shipbuilding company, so the crest lined up.

He turned away from Neria’s airship and pulled up into a bank of clouds to hide. As soon as he could, he and Gray navigated back to the Featherflight. They flew as fast as they could, and with the help of Pirin (pushing from behind with wind and making a wedge of air in front of them) they reached the smaller airship in a matter of minutes. They landed in the cargo hold, and Pirin sprinted forward to the Featherflight’s gondola. “Alyus! Captain Alyus!”

“Found something?”

“It has to be Neria’s airship. Turn south-southeast, and we’ll run up behind it. There’s a fogbank we can hide in, but we’ve gotta go fast.”

Alyus nodded, then spun the rudder wheel. “Hold on tight. We’ll have the wind directly astern, and the ride might get a little rough.”