As soon as Pirin told everyone aboard the Featherflight that he’d spotted Lady Neria’s airship, the three wizards veiled themselves.

“Lord Three will be with them,” Nomad explained. “As best I gather, he’s acting as her lapdog. Frankly, that’s how I remember him. Always the servant, never the master. Always said that it’s better to be second in command than the schemer, to ride on the coattails of success.”

They were standing in the crew quarters. Pirin tightened his tattered coat overtop a simple tunic. It’d be simple and light gear for riding. He strapped his haversack across his shoulder on one side and sheathed his sword on the other side, and fastened his stolen void pendant back around his neck. Finally, he fastened his umberstone mask to his face and made sure his Reyad was full and active.

“Can we hide ourselves from someone that powerful?” Myraden asked. She was fastening her cuirass and single shoulder pauldron, and she’d donned her sleeveless gambeson.

“Few can. Not even mortals, who can’t even use a lick of magic, can evade his senses.” Nomad clicked his tongue. “But lucky for you, you have me.” Nomad gestured to himself and grinned. “Like at the Aremir estate, I will muddle Lord Three’s senses and stick close to him. So long as you two don’t make too much trouble, no one will get wise of our presence.”

“What are we looking for?” Pirin asked. He tapped his fingers together. “We need to know where her army is, what it is, and how to control it? So we can snatch it out from under her nose?”

“Precisely.” Nomad nodded.

“We will find that information on her airship?” Myraden tilted her head.

“I don’t suppose she just leaves it lying around in a neat journal,” said Nomad. “But I also reckon she’ll have people aboard who might know something.”

“I’ll use the Whisper Hitch on them,” Pirin said. He walked over to the cot and picked up the Göttrur. The fox was spending most of the day awake, now, and he could perch on Pirin’s shoulder with ease. He clung to the strap of the haversack, and it wasn’t going anywhere. “I’ll figure out what the army actually is and how Lady Neria, a mortal, could assert absolute control over it.”

“I will go to the control gondola,” Myraden said. “I will find a logbook or a map. If Lady Neria travels to inspect her army often, she will have to have its location marked somewhere and somehow.”

Nomad nodded. “Very good. Keep quiet, and don’t cause much of a ruckus. If Three joins the action, neither of you will last long, and if I must fight him, we’ll tear both airships out of the sky. Not good for either party.” He needed no change in attire. He still wore a chainmail hauberk and a dirty coat. His racoon-cat perched on his shoulder, and his flute-staff hung off his back.

“Alright, you three!” Alyus yelled from the gondola below. “We’re getting close! I can see them, and if I don’t pull back soon, they’ll see us!”

Pirin poked his head down through the hole in the floor and stared out the gondola’s windows. Billowing white clouds surrounded them, clinging to the windows and bubbling around them. But, to the left side, the clouds were thinning, and once again, Lady Neria’s airship peered through the clouds.

“I’ll meet you aboard,” Pirin said to Nomad and Myraden, pulling his head back up into the crew quarters. Alone, he navigated back to the cargo hold and opened it, then hopped back in Gray’s saddle. “Ready?”

Yessir! she replied.

“Hold on tight,” Pirin whispered to Göttrur.

He and Gray leapt off, slipping between the frame of the airship and the edge of the cargo platform. They dove, building speed, then levelled out.

They only had a few seconds before Neria’s airship’s watchmen would notice them, so Pirin had to make it count. He tucked his head down and pushed them from behind with wind, then cleaved through the air ahead with his own wedge of wind.

They burst out of the cloudbank, trailing white mist behind them. They closed the distance between the clouds and the airship in a matter of seconds.

Lady Neria’s airship had an upper platform just like the Featherflight, only it was a little larger. Three watchmen stood atop it, surveying the skies. One of them pointed at Pirin and shouted, but it was too late. Gray caught the mortal man in her talons and pinned him to the deck.

Pirin leapt out of the saddle and blasted another of the Neria company guards off the platform. They wore white coats and light armour, and they carried longbows on their shoulders, but the real weapons were a trio of repeating crossbows. The last guard swivelled one of the repeating crossbows toward them and fired.

With his enhanced body, and a cloak of wind still swirling around him, Pirin slashed the crossbow bolt out the air. The guard fired two more, and Pirin cut them both down, before slashing the guard’s head off in a clean killing blow. His body tumbled off the side of the airship.

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Pirin and Gray stepped back to the far side of the platform, and just in time.

Myraden and Nomad both leapt across the gap. They had bodies better suited for strength rather than speed, but if Pirin hadn’t cleared the way, the two other wizards would’ve been spotted too soon.

Myraden’s Tundra Veins flashed, as did Nomad’s fortification technique, giving an extra boost of strength atop their enhanced bodies. They leapt from the Featherflight’s gondola across to the upper platform of Neria’s airship. Nomad caught them both with a bed of wind before they landed, so their boots didn’t even thud against the wood.

Pirin pulled open the hatch in the center of the platform, and Göttrur let out a crystalline snicker.

Pirin whispered, “Quiet, now…” to the little creature. “Stealth.” He wasn’t sure if it understood him, but if not, he could tuck it into his void pendant. “You’re good here, Gray?” The hatch was too small for her to come with them.

I’ll cling on.

He descended down the ladder into the airship first. It passed between a pair of enormous gasbags, and Pirin still shuddered at the thought of them being made of wyvern intestines. But it was the only material that held lyftgas, so he tolerated it.

When they reached the axial catwalk, they stopped. It was wider than the Featherflight’s catwalk, but both ships seemed to have a similar overall internal design. Pirin glanced back and forth along the walkway.

Deep in the airship’s stern, another pair of guards patrolled, each carrying a rune-scripted lantern of their own. Pirin launched a thin, contained bar of wind down the hallway at them, striking them both in the chests. It knocked them to the ground. He sprinted over and turned their lanterns upright before they leaked any wax or set anything alight, then struck them on the tops of their heads with the pommel of his sword.

When Myraden and Nomad caught up, he said, “I’ll check the stern rooms first and see if I can find someone higher-ranking.”

Nomad swished his finger around lazily. “I’ve put a shroud on Lord Three. He’s sleeping and recovering Essence from his fight, but we can’t afford to wake him. We get in and out of here, and by the time they notice we’ve been here, we need to be long gone.”

Myraden delivered a dutiful nod. “I will raid the gondola.”

Pirin and Myraden both ran in opposite directions, and Nomad strolled down the hall, moving vaguely aftward.

Stairways clung to the edge of the axial catwalk, slipping between each enormous gasbag. The airship’s only rooms were along the bottom of the envelope, and the axial catwalk was mainly for maintenance purposes.

Pirin took a thin titanwood stairway down a few storeys worth of stairs. This airship was over twice as large as the Featherflight, and he couldn’t really appreciate its size until he was inside it. He kept his sword ahead of him as he descended into a clump of rooms near the stern of the vessel. They all had fabric and parchment walls with wood frames and lightweight furniture.

Pirin arrived in a hallway with rooms on both sides. Most were small closets for officers and higher-ranking crew. There was a workshop at one end for repairing the airship’s equipment in-flight, and on the opposite side, a nondescript mailroom.

The presence of a wizard emanated from the mailroom. A flare.

If anyone knew anything, they’d be in there. Besides, Pirin would have to deal with the low-stage wizard at some point. He pushed open the door and slipped inside.

A mortal guard stood just inside the door, but before the ostal man could act, Pirin grabbed him by the horns and slammed him into the doorframe. He collapsed on the spot.

A single wizard stood inside the chamber. Judging by the weight of his core, he was a Flare, but he didn’t have any markings of an enhanced body and he didn’t appear especially strong.

He was an ostal, of course, and he cowered behind his workbench. Letters lay scattered across the wooden table, their parchment stamped and in the process of being sealed. Not exactly a task fit for a wizard…

After a few seconds, the Flare raised his hands and said meekly, “Please. I’m just a worker. Whatever your feud with Lady Neria is, I have no part in it.”

Like all ostal, he had brown hair and sallow eyes. He wore a simple white coat, what seemed to be a standard uniform of company workers.

Pirin stepped into the room and pointed his sword at the man’s forehead. “Who are you?”

“Laive Besseau of the Neria Company, sir,” he said. “I’m just a worker.”

Pirin pushed the door shut behind him, then peered around the corner. There was no one else in the room, and though his spiritual sight wasn’t perfect, he couldn’t pick out any obvious traps or alarm systems.

The walls were bare white fabric, save for the wall opposite of Pirin, which sloped outward. There was a lattice window in it, which looked down over the Plaisparan countryside. Shelves of ink lined the walls.

“Wizards aren’t commonly workers, correct?” Pirin approached the table in the center. Quills surrounded a guttering lantern, and the letters waited in neat stacks. He pointed his sword at the man’s throat. “Speak honestly.”

To make sure the man told the truth, Pirin held his left hand behind his back and activated the Whisper Hitch.

This wizard wasn’t a combat-oriented wizard, and he had very little willpower to resist Pirin with. The crystal fox sorted the man’s thoughts into parcels, and Pirin concentrated on the truthfulness aspect. If the man lied, Pirin would know.

“If they’re from Greatsaad and have any potential, the Neria Company snaps us up,” the man said.

“And what do you do?”

“We serve her. Aboard her airship, my core’s frequency allows us to receive letters, but most wizards help in…other ways.”

Pirin caught a whiff of hesitance from the man. He narrowed his eyes and said, “Don’t be vague. I have questions that need answering, and you will give me what I need. Understood?”

“I understand, sir,” the wizard said.

“First, then: are the wizards building Lady Neria’s army?”