Pirin sprinted over to Gray and wrapped his arms around her neck. “Are you alright?”

I’m good! she said. Time to fly, right?

Pirin hopped up into the saddle, then looked back at Nomad and Myraden. “You guys can make it back to the Featherflight, right?”

“When you land, let off a Shattered Palm and let us know you’ve arrived,” Nomad said. “And we’ll see the ship through the cloud.”

Pirin dipped his head, then tightened his legs. Gray leapt off the edge of the platform with a thunderous flutter of wingbeats.

He held tight to Gray’s nape and helped her shoot through the air. As they flew, he cycled and harvested a little more pure Essence. None of his gnatsnapper techniques manifested bright Essence, so he’d need something to make a light with.

They puffed into the clouds. Moisture condensed all over Pirin, and with the wind, he began to shiver. In a few seconds, the dark shadow of the Featherflight appeared up ahead. He and Gray aimed for the cargo hold and landed. As soon as Gray was secure, Pirin climbed off the saddle and leaned down into the open air outside the hold. He let off a Shattered Palm into the clouds, and it flashed like lightning, illuminating the Featherflight for a brief moment.

A few seconds later, Nomad and Myraden leapt. Nomad thumped down atop the Featherflight’s upper platform. Myraden bolted through the air, but she was a little too slow and came up short. She’d graze the bottom of the ship and plummet.

Pirin activated the Fracturenet, but he’d only have a few seconds before he ran out of pure Essence. He held onto the cargo platform with one hand and reached down with the other, and when Myraden brushed past, he caught her hand.

The Fracturenet gave out as soon as he caught her grip, but she swung a hand up just in time and activated her own fortification technique, gripping onto the platform and pulling them up.

“Thanks,” she said, looking down a little sheepishly. Kythen, who still stood in the cargo hold, bleated with concern. She added, “Do not tell Nomad.”

Pirin whispered, “Not a word. Besides, you did half the work. It was barely an assist.”

Once the Familiars settled down and they closed the cargo hold’s bottom floor, they both navigated through the airship to the gondola.

Myraden set the map down on the little table at the center of the gondola, then spread it out. Pirin and Nomad pinned it down, while Alyus and Brealtod held the wheels steady.

“We don’t have an Unbound Lord on our tail, now do we?” Alyus asked. “Do I need to get the wind-boys to fill our sails again?”

“Myraden did a decent job at slowing their airship,” Nomad said. “And given Lord Three’s Path, I doubt he’ll be flying after us on his own—not while trying to hold together an airship and save Lady Neria. We’re free.”

Pirin leaned over the map. “We just need to figure out where we’re heading next.” It was a relatively new scroll of parchment with crisp ink on it, and it depicted the eastern half of the Mainland.

Nomad tapped the northernmost regions of the continent. “This is Ískan, home of the Sprites.” He dragged his finger down across a large bay. “The Bay of Greatsaad, and the formerly independent nation along its coast.” At the bottom tip of Greatsaad, the land jutted out into a vast peninsula. “The Seisse Peninsula.” When the land swooped west beneath the peninsula, lines marked out a less populated swath. “Plainspar, where we are.”

Then he dragged his finger down, straight off Plainspar’s southern coast. The sea continued for a few inches of space on the map, before the entire bottom faded away into the Stormwall.

There was a pinhole in the map that neither Pirin nor Alyus had made. It stuck only a few hairs north of the Stormwall.

Normally, Pirin might have assumed that it was just from navigators pinning the map down, but it wasn’t at an even interval across the page nor in a corner.

He tapped it with his finger. “There.”

“You’re certain?” Nomad asked.

“I saw the memories of one of Neria’s underlings,” Pirin said. “I think I saw a patch of the Stormwall. That’s the place. I’m certain.”

“If she was building an army in secret,” Myraden added, “that would be the best place to do it.”

“Then we have our course!” Alyus exclaimed, glancing over his shoulder. “South it is?” He spun the rudder wheel, then let off a laugh. “Who am I kidding? South it is!”

Myraden crossed her arms. “But why was Lady Neria heading west?”

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Nomad shook his head. “She’s not going to inspect her army. She’s going to take out the other Unbound Lords.”

image [https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_5e221995337243e6a7d4250b55d3aeea~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_280,h_232,al_c,lg_1,q_85,enc_auto/embercore%20sigil.png]

The Red Hand took the best horse the Aremir family could offer him. It wasn’t anyone’s Familiar, and they had been saving it for an especially promising disciple, but Ethelvaed allowed him to take it without question.

He had ridden the horse for three days straight, now. He skirted around a mountain range and splashed through the fenlands of west Plainspar, until he reached the river that separated Plainspar from Ostanor proper—the true homeland of the ostal race and the birthland of the Dominion.

He crossed over a mighty bridge of white stone and passed between two statues of ancient ostal kings from millennia ago—wizard-kings who had ruled long before the Dominion.

The mountains curved south, so the Hand altered his course as well, passing through plains and avoiding all smaller cities. (Smaller was relative; these cities were still sprawling metropolises that had long since outgrown their castle walls and saw no need to build new fortifications. Columns of smoke rose from their chimneys, visible for miles in every direction.)

On the fourth day, the Hand arrived at the top of a rocky ridge. The weather had grown more pleasant with every day, and now, they were nearing the equator. In the very distance, a wall of clouds lingered on the southern horizon. They were pale orange in the summertime heat and midday light, but he knew he was looking upon the violent shroud of the Stormwall.

The Ostanor Isthmus was the only piece of land that passed beneath the Stormwall, but no one had ever crossed it since the ancient wizards raised the wall. Still, the city of Rasis Nureans-Ost stood at the brink of the isthmus, watching over the rocky fields with its mile-high towers and enormous walls.

The main city had perfectly circular walls of pale grey stone, growing taller the closer the got to the interior of the city, until the central towers of lords and the palaces and offices of nobility shrouded everything. They cast a pillar of shade over the shorter, comparatively flat outer districts, like the entire city was a massive sundial.

The Hand snapped his horse’s reins and urged the creature down the ridge. They arrived on the flat plain of the isthmus, mountains looming to the north and Stormwall to the south.

He rode directly for the capital city of the Dominion. The outer hovels and structures appeared outside the walls slowly. He barely noticed them at first, until suddenly, three-storey houses shaded the streets.

At the first wall, the gate guards—Dominion soldiers in silver armour and green cloaks—dipped their heads to him, as they would to any traveller. The Hand tucked his gloved hand into his cloak to hide it from sight. Few would recognize him outside the city center, and even then, it had been a long while since he had shown his face in the capital.

He passed through three more sets of city walls before arriving at the central ring. A set of guards tried to leap into his path and stop him, demanding identification, but they weren’t mounted, and this horse knew how to charge. The guards were only there to stop honest civilians.

The Hand rode along the brick streets of the central city, dodging merchants and civilians. Dominion banners fluttered in the wind, and lumawhale oil signs glimmered in the shade. Smoke projections burned on every corner, advertising wares or spreading imperial-approved news to the civilians.

At the very center of the city stood the Emperor’s palace. A proper wall had once surrounded it, making a cylinder taller than the rest of the city’s outer defences, but so many emperors had built additions to the palace that the structure overflowed from the keep’s walls like foam in an ale mug. Still, a central tower rose higher than the rest of the city combined.

The Hand arrived at a massive gate, each of its doors nearly four storeys tall. It was open, but a line of imperial guards in jadesteel armour stood outside the gate. Wolf Familiars curled at their feet.

The Hand dismounted in front of them and bowed at the waist. “I seek an audience with the honoured Emperor Tarren Kar.”

“Leave us, vagrant,” said a guard, “or I will make you wish you had never approached this palace.”

He stayed bowed and repeated, “I seek an audience with the honoured Emperor Tarren Kar.”

The guard in the lead laughed and approached, drawing his Dominion longsting sword. His wolf growled. He raised the blade, ready to cut the Hand down. Before the guard could even start to swing, the Hand slashed. His blade was a blur, and Reign glinted on the sword’s edge. It hacked right through the guard’s armour and cut from his shoulder to his hip. The top half of his body slid off, lifeless, and the wolf Familiar dropped dead in an instant.

“I seek an audience with the honoured Emperor Tarren Kar. Tell him that the Red Hand has returned.” He held out his glove to them.

After a few seconds of silence, another guard said, “Come with us.”

They formed a protective box around him, all marching with their swords drawn, and dragged him through the palace.

After a few minutes of traversing corridors and halls, they arrived at the main hall of the Emperor.

The Emperor was older than the Hand remembered, but otherwise, he recognized the mortal ostal’s every feature. Someone must have informed him of the situation, for he was already standing halfway across the hall with a line of imperial guards in front of him.

“Present the head of the black-haired elf,” the Emperor demanded. “Or die.”

“I don’t have it,” the hand said, dropping to a knee. “I beg your forgiveness, honoured Emperor, but I come with more important matters.”

“Kill him,” said the Emperor, flicking his hand casually.

The four imperial guards around the Hand pointed their swords, but it only took four swipes to kill them and their Familiars. They were only Flares. The Blazes in front of the emperor would be a bigger problem.

“Emperor, you must listen!” the Hand shouted. “I am your faithful servant, as always, but you are in danger! Lady Neria is killing the Unbound Lords. In hours, messengers will arrive, bearing news of Lord One’s death. If you do not act, she will depose you and take the throne!”

He dropped to his knees and pressed his forehead to the floor. “Emperor, judge me as you see fit, but do not waste your life. Lady Neria will be the death of you and the Dominion.”

Again, the Emperor snorted. “I appreciate the warning, but I cannot allow this insolence and violation of my will. If you will not obey your exile, you will die. If an emperor’s will is not absolute, then it is nothing. You are hereby stripped of all rank and privilege, and you are no longer my Red Hand.” He motioned to his remaining guards. “Kill him.”