Ethelvaed.

Pirin didn’t stop. There was no point. He knew what the man wanted, and there was no point in waiting to let him prepare a technique.

Pirin was a stage below, anyway. He needed every advantage he could get against a Blaze.

Ethelvaed drew a short Plainsparan sword with horseheads encircling the guard. He slashed up at Pirin, whipping an arc of horse Essence at Pirin, but Pirin spilt it in half with a slash of his own sword. The pale green energy smashed through the wooden walls behind, tearing into the hull of the ship and shattering a bulwark.

They might not have been Wildflames yet, but they could still do damage to a ship if they so chose.

But the last thing Pirin needed was to sink the Control Dagger to the bottom of the ocean.

He dove to the side, rolling along the floor, and launched a Winged Fist back at Ethelvaed. The man braced himself, and he didn’t even stumble. But it stopped him from launching a technique.

There was no reason to stay and fight. Pirin didn’t need to kill Ethelvaed; he needed the dagger.

He’s not going to give up! Gray said.

Either she guessed what had happened, or he was transmitting thoughts across to her. Or she was reading his mind.

All three! Gray called. Time to try forming a predictive model of a real opponent?

Pirin clutched Göttrur tight to his shoulder and sprinted down the hallway. The wind pulled back against him, trying to tug him back toward Ethelvaed, but Pirin formed his own wedge through the wind, manipulating it with gnatsnapper Essence.

Horse Essence had wind aspects, being of a windswept prairie, and like with Nomad, most horse mages controlled wind. But bird Essence was a purely wind-focussed aspect. Birds existed in the air; they lived there; they controlled it. Pirin’s authority over wind was equal, if not greater, than Ethelvaed’s, despite being weaker.

When Pirin broke through Ethelvaed’s technique, he pushed from behind with a burst of wind, and with his enhanced body, he sprinted down the hallway in a matter of seconds. The horseman matched his speed. Even though Ethelvaed’s Familiar couldn’t fit in the hallway, the man still had horse-aspects on his Path. He propelled himself down the hall with the speed and strength of a charging stallion, and Pirin had to leap away. Ethelvaed plowed through a bulkhead and smashed a stack of barrels before coming to a halt.

I really think you should start developing a model of him! Gray exclaimed.

“I can’t do that until I know more and have a better grasp on how he fights!” Pirin whispered. “Otherwise, I’ll have nothing to feed the Memory Chain while searching!”

Ethelvaed led with broad, powerful swings. Each slash of his sword trailed horse Essence. It manifested as glowing, pale green hairs in the air along the path of the swipe. Pirin ducked out of the way, pushing with wind. Whenever Pirin tried to move, Ethelvaed pushed air in the opposite direction. Pirin contested it with his own authority, but it used twice as much Essence as it should have.

Essence feathers manifested along Pirin’s limbs when he cycled Essence through them, guiding the wind around him. Some of the glowing feather-shaped Essence broke off and swirled in the wind, and he whipped them at Ethelvaed.

The man held up his forearms, and a fortification technique of pure Essence swirled around his skin—almost exactly like Nomad’s. The manifested feathers slashed him like knives, but they didn’t cut deep, and wouldn’t do any meaningful damage.

Ethelvaed’s arm snapped outward in a blink of light, almost too fast for Pirin to comprehend, and grabbed Pirin by the throat. His fingers tightened, but Göttrur climbed up Pirin’s neck and bit the man’s hand. Pirin kicked, driving a pulse of air into the man’s ribs. Coughing, Ethelvaed loosened his grip, but he didn’t let go.

He threw Pirin down into the ground. The boards of the deck, though titanwood, shattered under the impact, and Pirin fell to the final, bottom deck of the ship. He landed hard on his back, but his enhanced body absorbed most of the blow. His shoulder ached, and a shard of wood had torn a deep gash in his flank, but it wasn’t life-threatening, and his enhanced body would heal it soon enough.

The bottom deck of the ship was open and broad, but stacks of crates and barrels crowded the edges, and cubicles cordoned off some of the most precious cargo. Sailors sprinted through the hold, securing cargo and gathering equipment for repairs. Most stopped what they were doing to stare at the two wizards.

Pirin scrambled back to his feet as Ethelvael floated down through the hole in the deck. “An Embercore has no right to rule. What do you know of strength?”

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Pirin stepped back, holding his sword ahead of him. He just needed a gap to break away from the man. If the dagger was anywhere, it’d be in the storage cubicles. They would be the hardest to reach for an outsider—in theory, the best protected.

“I know strength isn’t just the ability to dominate others,” Pirin said. “I know what it’s like to be weak and normal. Hell, less than normal.”

Ethelvaed whipped an arc of green Essence at Pirin, but Pirin stepped aside. Pirin continued, “If you continue like this, you’ll be the end of your family and clan. Chances are, it’s exactly what Lady Neria wants from you.”

Pirin pulled off his mask, then launched a Shattered Palm into the roof. If smashed a beam, and the ceiling collapsed between them, blocking Ethelvaed’s path for a few seconds. It was just long enough.

Pirin turned and sprinted through the cargo hold, pushing aside bewildered workers and jumping over loose cargo.

A Neria company guard charged him, but he sidestepped and impaled the ostal man, then kept running.

Whenever he passed a cubicle, he peered inside it. Now that he was closer—hopefully—his spiritual senses should be able to pick something out. The first cubicle just had barrels of elixir. He couldn’t see them through the walls, but the barrels themselves weren’t thick enough to restrict his spiritual sight. They glowed faintly; they weren’t too powerful.

Pirin figured Lady Neria was saving her best elixirs to bribe the Unbound Lords.

He moved on. Most of the cubicles had food or water, and some had extra handheld weapons, but no fancy, rune-scripted daggers.

At the very prow of the ship was a larger cubicle. Three company guards stood in front of it, all armed with longswords and plated in steel. They’d have kept any sailors from getting uppity, but clearly Lady Neria hadn’t been expecting a Flare-stage wizard to find her ship, much less raid it.

He knocked two of the guards out with a Shattered Palm. The last guard opened the cubicle’s door and ducked inside, then slammed it behind him. A lock latched, but the wall was just wood. Pirin activated his Fracturenet and punched through the wall. He grabbed the guard by the shoulder and pulled him back through the wall, then flung the man down the hallway at Ethelvaed.

The horselord was sprinting down the center of the cargo hold after Pirin. Pirin had no illusions that the remains of the final cubicle’s door would protect him, but he pushed it open and slammed the splintered wood behind himself anyway.

There was only one piece of cargo in the final hold, and it was a pedestal. An altar of green wood, it displayed an ornate fresco of warring ships on its sides. Atop it was an embroidered cloth, and finally, a golden dagger resting on a stand.

His spiritual senses screamed out. Something with immense weight and power awaited him. A pressure bore down on his core, trying to thrust it down and out of his body, but his foundation Timbers resisted it. If he had just been a mortal, the effort it took would’ve required him to sleep for a week after.

Its blade rippled and shone like solid Ichor, and it very well may have been. Inactive circles of runes ran down the half-foot long blade, so small and thin and accurately chiselled that they just looked like decorative swirls. A half-circle block separated the hilt from the blade. The only ornamentation on the block was a green gemstone that, compared to the rest of the blade, couldn’t have been too valuable.

He sprinted across the room and grabbed it by the hilt. He was expecting an immediate sensation of weight and strain of some sort from holding it—it was a magic weapon, wasn’t it?—but there was nothing.

Either the black silk binding of the dagger’s hilt was protecting him, or it just didn’t require any arcane strength to carry—only to be in its presence.

But there was no time to find out. Ethelvaed kicked down the room’s door, and he immediately flung a crescent of Essence off the tip of his sword at Pirin. Pirin ducked under one blast, then deflected the next with his sword. It chewed into the wall and splintered the hull. Water shot through papercut-thin gashes, but the flow was just starting.

Pirin had the dagger, though. It was time to go.

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Myraden ran through the hallways of the superstructure, holding her spear out in front of her. She’d already incapacitated or killed two crewmen who tried to stop her, and she’d kill more if she had to. But she’d rather move fast.

She didn’t go inside ships often, and she usually despised them. The rolling and shuddering of the waves made her stomach churn, and reminded her of memories she’d rather purge from her mind.

After Ískan had been destroyed, the Sprites who survived sailed across the sea. They had spent weeks on tiny boats, tossed around uncaringly by the waves.

She had every right to hate boats.

This one had low ceilings and tight hallways, and it limited her ability with a spear. The best she could do was jab, especially when Kythen wasn’t present and she couldn’t easily produce any more bloodhorn Essence.

She searched the bottom floor of the superstructure, but turned up nothing. Only cabins and portholes for archers to shoot out of. But the archers, though they launched volley after volley at the Featherflight, hit nothing. Nomad protected the airship, and he didn’t need Myraden’s help dealing with them.

She climbed up to the second level of the superstructure. Carpenters and gunners scurried through the tunnels, trying to repair the ballistae, and Myraden let them. They wouldn’t fix the ship’s main weapons in time.

She just needed to know if the dagger was up here.

When she climbed up to the third floor, though, a dark shadow waited for her at the top of the stairs. The woman wore a white Dominion cloak and the overlapping gray leather armour of Dominion wizards, and a technique of red boar Essence glimmered on her fingers.

Khara.

She’d advanced to Blaze since Myraden had last seen her. Golden tattoos ran along her skin, and two boar tusks now stuck up from her bottom jaw.

“Leursyn,” Khara said. “Fancy seeing you here.”