The Featherflight arrived in the Seissen city of Port Masyne at noon.

The city bubbled up on the horizon like a bank of fog. It clung to the easternmost tip of the Seisse peninsula, and was the first patch of the Mainland any traveller crossing the Adryss Ocean would see. A three-hundred-foot tall lighthouse perched on a rocky jut, its enormous brazier spewing a column of black smoke high into the sky.

The land of the Seisse peninsula spread out beyond the rocky tip as far as Pirin could see, and Port Masyne covered everything. Every bay had piers and berths; every hill had a separate city district.

They needed to resupply their food and water, not to mention acquire more lyftgas to replace what they had to vent in a storm.

Pirin had thought Greanewash was a massive city. It had been the largest city he’d ever seen up to that point, but Port Masyne dwarfed it. His hands trembled thinking about just how many people lived in its sprawling houses.

Pirin counted ten airships hovering above the city—all bigger than the Featherflight—and at least twenty more airships and cargo balloons at the air harbour on a distant cliff face. At least the Featherflight would fit in, and no one would give their ship a second glance.

Pirin stood at the very front of the gondola, peering through the windows. His heart raced when they passed over the docks, and his cycling technique fell apart. He didn’t bother maintaining it.

“I…never thought I’d get to see something like this,” he breathed.

Fleets of cargo ships waited in the ports, all laden with bright-coloured wooden crates, and Dominion warships floated offshore. There were a few battleships with massive ballistae and stepped titanwood superstructures, but the real eye candy was the bird-carriers—flat decked ships with enough room to launch squadrons of rideable birds into the skies.

Alyus spun the wheel, angling the Featherflight towards the sky harbour. It waited inland a half-mile, hanging on to the side of a rocky cliff. Wooden piers jutted out into the open air, far enough from the cliff for airships to hook on to.

They approached a pier at the edge of the row. Pirin, Myraden, and Brealtod took down the sails while Nomad and Alyus hooked the ship up to the pier. Everything wooden—including the piers—was a type of black wood Pirin had never seen before. It hadn’t been painted.

Once they secured the Featherflight at the dock, they split up. Alyus waited behind with the Featherflight to guard it, and Brealtod went to gather more supplies. Alyus sent Pirin, Myraden, and Nomad to find a detailed map of the eastern half of the Mainland.

It was a bit of a make-work project for the three wizards, but Pirin couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see a new city from the ground-level. Besides, they needed to plan their next moves as wizards—and maybe Nomad would give him some advice.

They offloaded Gray and Kythen from the cargo hold. Such beasts wouldn’t cause a stir in a port city. No one would even give the gnatsnapper and bloodhorn a second glance. They’d probably just assume the creatures were chattel from a distant land.

It was Pirin who had to worry about his appearance. He pulled the hood of his coat over his head, even though the weather was temperate and pleasant in Port Masyne, and slid on his mask. He fuelled the runes on its back with Essence and formed his Reyad with Gray.

When they finally made it to street-level—after descending a stairway along the side of the cliff face—Myraden said, “Your saltfox needs a name.”

Oh! Oh! It really does need a name, Gray added. It…or he, right?

Pirin glanced down at his haversack. The little fox’s head lolled out the side, completely limp. Its fur was pure white crystal, and its eyes were dewy and clear. It had very little sapience, not since he had carved it down from a wraith and tamed it—it was no better than a normal fox, except less feral.

And it slept. A lot. It had barely let out a yip since they had left the labyrinth on Dulfer’s Reach.

“I…might have gone a little overboard with the Whisper Hitch,” Pirin said. “I scrambled him up too much…” A pang of guilt rolled through him.

Scrambled! Gray exclaimed, her voice ringing out in Pirin’s mind. If we name the fox ‘Scrambled’...but that makes me think too much of eggs…do you think they have eggs here? Or is it just rice and fish?

They walked down a broad street. Stacked wooden buildings lined the edges, with wooden walls and shingled roofs with eaves that curled up at the corners. The windows were parchment. Signs hung out into the street, and chefs chopped fish beneath them. They fried it or boiled it or served it raw, but there were enough pleasant spices and aromas to mask the stench of fish guts.

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“It is natural when taming wraiths for them to take time to recover,” said Nomad. “Let the little guy rest, and when he’s ready, he will move again.”

Well, that settles it! It’s a ‘he’, Gray nattered.

“Is there anything we can do with a wraith?” Myraden asked. “Or are we just carrying around deadweight and another mouth to feed?”

“Such cruelty.” Nomad clicked his tongue. “Don’t worry. A tamed wraith can be a powerful ally if you cultivate certain aspects of it properly.”

Myraden scowled and put her hands on her hips. “We should not trust wraiths, especially not when it comes to the king’s life.” She glanced around nervously and kept her voice low. People crowded every inch of the street, and Dominion soldiers in silver armour and white cloaks stood guard on every street corner.

Seisse was an occupied colony-nation, but unlike Aerdia, they didn’t have their own armies—only Dominion soldiers.

But there was so much bustle. No one would hear them. By the Eane, Pirin could barely even hear Myraden over the haggling of customers, clomping horse hooves, and sizzling fires.

“He’s the last wizard-king, mind you,” Nomad added, speaking at a normal volume. He shrugged. “You’ll find the benefits outweigh the risks.” He leaned down and patted the fox wraith’s head. “I will help Pirin with the process, but our first step—for all of you—needs to be Essence accumulation. Myraden, you are a Flare; you must prepare your body to be reforged. Pirin, you are a Catch; you must strengthen your bond between yourself and your Familiar. As you prepare yourselves, you will need more Essence. The more Essence you embed into your core, the closer you will push yourselves to advancing.”

Pirin nodded eagerly. As they walked, he began a new cycling technique that Nomad had taught him: the Gap Millstone Rotation.

According to Nomad, they both had serviceable cycling patterns, but the Gap Millstone Cycle was a specific technique for drawing in the Eane and purifying it into Essence, and it was faster than anything Pirin had ever used before. With the Memory Chain, he could double his cycling speed.

But he couldn’t use the Chain in public—that’d be too obvious. Just the Gap Millstone Rotation would do.

As they walked down the street, he activated the technique. He held his Essence close to his core until the very last moment, when he launched it across the bond between him and Gray like an arrow from a bow. He breathed quickly and firmly, clenching his gut and all his muscles (which made walking ‘normally’ a difficult proposition), and then accepted the power back from Gray when she shot it back to him.

You look like a puppet, she said. Bend your knees a little while you walk.

“Sorry,” Pirin whispered. If they did the cycling technique right, none of the Essence would be wasted. If he didn’t push hard or fast enough, some Essence manifested in the air as pale grey, half-translucent feathers.

No one saw the manifested Essence. The street was too busy, and everyone was moving too fast. Even if they did, though, the colour of the gnatsnapper-aspect Essence didn’t stand out from their surroundings.

“Keep in control,” Nomad said when a puff of feathers manifested along the invisible Reyad link between Pirin and Gray. “Your lungs are the bellows; your soul provides the strength to push the Essence. Imagine your core is a watermill, and your willpower is the river. The Eane is the wheat, and you are milling it. Essence is the flour, and everything else is the chaff.”

When Pirin exhaled, he blew waste out his mouth. It was the energy he couldn’t use, the energy incompatible with Gray’s aspect.

After a few minutes, Pirin was sweating and out of breath. He cut off the cycling technique. He had only been able to hold it for a few minutes at a time so far.

“Keep practicing until you can use it subconsciously in your sleep,” Nomad said. “Not only will it be excellent for purifying Essence, but when we steal some elixirs from my family estate in Plainspar, it will be an excellent technique to integrate their spiritual energies into your own Essence base.”

Pirin kept practicing. As they walked, Nomad gave Myraden a different technique—this one was for preparing her body to advance from Flare to Blaze. Technically, she hadn’t passed his trials, and he was only supposed to be teaching Pirin, but Nomad was the one making the rules, and they all travelled together. Myraden getting training benefitted them all.

“You will need to push your Essence out of your channels,” Nomad said. “Let it permeate your muscles and infuse them with strength. It’s almost a fortification technique, but instead of granting a temporary boost to your muscles, you want to let it soak in. You are creating a different type of foundation to build an enhanced body on.”

Pirin only half paid attention as he practiced his own technique. He worried more about where he was walking. Nomad led the way through the streets, turning at intersections and navigating down alleyways.

Myraden scratched the back of her head. Although her antlers from last year had already fallen off, two new stumps were growing in their place, and they were just now poking out of her blonde hair. “I am not getting it,” she said bluntly. “I have been pushing Essence through my channels my entire life, and now you want me to make it leave.”

Nomad gave another nonchalant shrug. “You do the same thing when you use a fortification technique.”

“It feels different,” she said. “I have a reason for using a fortification technique, but no reason for using this cycling technique, no purpose to achieve.”

Kythen bleated calmingly, and Myraden said something to him in Íshkaben, which Pirin didn’t understand.

She and Nomad spoke back and forth for a few minutes, then the conversation descended into bickering.

“Stop with the analogies,” Myraden said. “They do not help. I cannot envision my channels as rivers.”

“That seems to be a failing of your imagination, or because of the bluntness of your previous instruction.”

“My father taught me, and he taught me well!”

“You must be open to new lines of thought if you are to advance,” Nomad said. “I—”

Pirin cut off the Gap Millstone Cycle and stepped between them, holding out his arms. They didn’t stop walking, but he separated the two of them. “Now’s not the time for this,” he said. “Perhaps she needs a teacher with an Essence aspect closer to bloodhorn Essence…”

“There are no wizards left in Ískan,” Myraden spat. “The Dominion killed them all.”

“It is possible,” Nomad said, “that my teaching styles are not for everyone, and that Myraden may require instruction from elsewhere.”

Myraden stared forwards, saying nothing.

“We can try again tomorrow,” Pirin said. “Let’s just get that map and get back to the Featherflight before it’s too late.”