Nomad’s path to the surface was direct, but it wasn’t as easy as Pirin had hoped. They navigated around the side of the sphere, scaling a thin maintenance corridor that barely had stairs.

And if Nomad hadn’t been leading the way, opening the rune-locks at various intervals, Pirin would never have been able to make it. It wasn’t big enough for Gray to fly through, either, so she had to hop from foothold to foothold behind them.

As the adrenaline faded from his body, his chest—and other various scrapes and cuts—began to sting a lot worse. But there was no time to bandage it. If the Red Hand ventured down into the labyrinth himself, then they would have to deal with him too. Pirin wasn’t exactly sure where he compared with Nomad.

While they climbed, Pirin asked Nomad, “Do you have any idea what this place is?”

“I have my guesses,” said Nomad, leaping lazily between stone outcroppings and cracks in the wall. “But it was built well before the time of the Unbound Pact, and even with my knowledge of history, I don’t reckon I’d be able to tell you anything.”

When they reached the top of the dome, they arrived at a ring of rune-covered hatches. Above, a vast tube sprouted up to the surface, like the tunnel that Pirin had fallen through on the way down, except much wider.

“These are all vent shafts,” Nomad said. “They would have expelled pulses of Essence and accumulated natural minerals out into the air—which is a shame, because this place could have been quite the wild-treasure factory if they had designed it slightly better.”

“Maybe they weren’t trying to make…uh wild-treasures…” Pirin guessed.

“I’d hope so,” said Nomad. He pointed his staff up. “Like the shaft you fell down, this vent has long since been covered over by crystals and dirt and mud. I’ll lead the way, and I’ll break it open. There is room for you to fly in here, correct?”

“Yeah,” Pirin said, patting Gray’s saddle. “We’ll take off, build some speed, then we should be able to climb straight once you break it open.” He slipped a foot into the stirrup, about to climb up onto the saddle, but he asked, “How are you going to break it open? Are you…strong enough?”

“My modified Path of the Prairie Gap still affords me great control over wind and air,” Nomad said. “The blockage won’t stand a chance if I can hit it hard enough. And I guarantee you, I can hit hard enough.”

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When Myraden made it back to the clearing where the Featherflight waited, it was nearly midday. She barely clung to Kythen’s back. Despite her best attempts to bandage herself, she had lost a lot of blood, and everything was a little hazy. Pirin was always so much better at bandaging wounds…

But she could last a little while longer.

She dismounted from Kythen’s back with a stumble and ran to the airship’s gondola. The vessel’s flanks, while patched with mismatched tarps, were firm and rigid—as they should be—and no longer did the ship sag at its midsection. It had to be ready to take flight.

Myraden told Kythen to return to the cargo hold—the platform was still lowered. Then, she climbed up the ship’s central ladder. “Alyus? Brealtod?”

When she reached the axial catwalk, the two smugglers ran to meet her. Alyus carried a foot-long sewing needle, and Brealtod hoisted a barrel of Lyftgas.

The ostal captain looked her up and down for a moment, then said, “Ohhh, elfy’s not going to be pleased with us for letting you get hurt like this…he is right behind you, right?”

“He is still inside the labyrinth,” Myraden said. “He will be out any moment, and we need to be ready to pick him up. Can the ship fly?”

Alyus glanced back at Brealtod for a moment. The dragonfolk hissed and shrugged.

“Just need to cut the mooring lines and dump ballast. We can get up in the air, and it’s safe to say we’ll stay there,” Alyus finally said. “Provided you don’t get us shot down, that is.”

Myraden shut her eyes and ran through a short cycle of power in her body—a diagnostic checklist of sorts. Her channels were moderately strained, but they were resting and getting better. On the ride back to the airship, she had recovered a half-core full of Essence, and it would hopefully be enough to deal with any threats that came their way.

Crimson Arc, a basic bloodhorn attack technique, did well enough to knock arrows and ballista bolts off-course.

“I will keep the Featherflight safe,” she said.

“To the gondola, then,” Alyus inched past beside her, turning to stay out of the way. “You’re sure you won’t fall over and die right where you’re standing?”

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“I have survived worse.”

In truth, she wanted nothing more than to start enhancing her Flare-stage body, and be rid of her wizard’s thin-blood curse once and for all. But that was a job for the coming weeks, and not for today.

She ran down to the gondola with Alyus. While Brealtod dumped the ship’s ballast, she helped untie the mooring lines. When they unwound the last rope from the tree it had been wrapped around, the vessel lifted up. Myraden jumped back into the gondola just before it rose too high to reach.

They climbed straight up until they passed the tree line. The wind blasted against the airship’s flanks, pushing it away from the island.

“Hold the rudder wheel steady,” Alyus told her. “We need to get those sails down, and you’re in no shape to climb out on the struts.”

Myraden scowled. “I—”

“You might be a wizard, but you’re not invincible,” Alyus said. “You’re already leaking on my deck—don’t need you falling off and splatting on the ground while we try to navigate into a serviceable windstream.”

Before she could protest, he let go of the rudder wheel and ran to the ladder, then ascended up into the main hull of the airship, leaving Myraden with no choice but to grip the rudder wheel.

Every minute, the airship began to pick up speed. At first, the sails luffed, but Myraden tilted the wheel slightly, turning them until the wind blasted directly at the stern.

While she waited for the smugglers, she asked Kythen if he could still hear her.

I still hear you, he said. Trying to get a glimpse of the outside, but I can’t see much.

Myraden turned the wheel again, trying to shift the airship around. They had risen to a steady altitude, hovering just above the peak of the mountain island, but they needed to get around to the other side of the island so they could see the Saltspray camp. If Pirin was going to exit the labyrinth anywhere, it would be there.

He knows the Hand is watching that exit, Kythen said.

But there was no other exit.

Finally, Alyus and Brealtod returned to the gondola. Myraden gladly relinquished the wheel; it was heavy and her strength was quickly fading. Activating the Tundra Veins took significant effort, and it had to be a last resort.

She still had a job to do, though. She staggered to the exposed rear balcony of the gondola and leaned out. By now, they had almost circled around a quarter of the island, and she could see the port in the distance. A few angular, wooden ships floated at the piers, with boxy superstructures and pronounced ballista platforms.

“Alyus, there are Dominion warships in the port!” Myraden yelled back into the gondola, raising her voice over the wind.

“Aye, they’ll pose a slight problem!” he called back. “When they spot us, you’ll need to keep the ballista bolts away. You can manage that, Antlers?”

Grabbing the edge of the gondola door, she steadied herself. “I can do that.”

The warships would attack. She didn’t have a doubt in her mind that they would. The Red Hand knew what their airship looked like, and word spread fast around here. Chances are, the sailors in port already knew what to look for. The moment someone spotted them, the barrage would begin.

No matter how much she wanted to look down at the camp and search for any sign of Pirin, she had to keep her eyes on the warships.

Sure enough, the first ship, a small two-ballista escort ship, fired a bolt. The first flew much too low—so much that the shot arced down and blasted the island flank well before it even got near the Featherflight. It struck the mud, kicking up a wave of debris before the alchemical bomb at its tip ignited and exploded.

One hit, even indirect, and they would go down in a flaming mess. There was a reason airships weren’t used in war.

The next shot flew closer to the airship, too close to leave up to chance. Myraden thrust her arm out, blasting a concentrated wave of Bloodhorn Essence through the air at it. The wave kept a concentrated tip, and when it collided with the bolt, it knocked it off-course.

A third bolt followed, this time fired from a different ship. It flew straight towards the stern fin, and if Myraden didn’t act fast, she wouldn’t have a good angle on it. She blasted out another arc of Essence.

The Essence met the ballista bolt mid-air and flooded the runes of the alchemical warhead. Fifty feet away from the airship, the bolt exploded, raining flaming shrapnel down onto the island. Nothing hit the airship.

Myraden cycled Essence desperately, trying to prepare another attack, when Brealtod began hissing. He pointed a clawed finger out at the island, but not at the Saltspray camp. He was pointing at the island’s mountain summit.

Myraden spared just a glance at it. A few hundred feet down from the rocky peak, the land shifted. It heaved, like a volcano about to erupt, but there was no smoke.

Then, with a soundless wave, the entire face of dirt and stone exploded outwards. A wash of wind blew away from it, making the Featherflight shudder, and a vast plume of dirt and crystalline debris rose up into the sky. It left an empty, yawning hole in the center of the mountain.

A second later, a small dark speck blasted out of the hole. It spread its wings, and a tiny figure sat on its back.

Pirin and Gray!

Unless there was someone else in those caverns with a gnatsnapper as a Familiar, which was unlikely.

Alyus spun the wheel, carrying them closer to the explosion. He must have come to the same conclusion.

Myraden turned back, facing the warships and the incoming ballista bolts. Pirin was important, yes, but so was their survival. She blasted two more arcs of Essence into the air—one to deflect a bolt, and one to detonate a bolt prematurely.

Pirin flew Gray up to the stern balcony of the gondola. They approached at a steep angle, slowing down before they landed so they didn’t need a run-out. The gnatsnapper gripped the balcony with her talons, and Pirin hopped off.

Just in time for another ballista bolt to race towards them.

Myraden was about to throw out one more Crimson Arc, but before she could release the technique, the ballista bolt stopped, as if the air around it had turned to ice. The air pressed in on it, compressing it until it was nothing but dust.

“Was that you?” she asked Pirin.

He shook his head. “Not me.”

A pair of heavy boots thudded on the balcony behind her, followed by a swirl of wind that felt less like the regular just and more like a miniature hurricane behind her. She whirled around, arms up and ready to fight.

It was Nomad.

Pirin said, “I, uh…found a friend.”