Lady Neria and three company guards ducked into cover in an office and shut the door. The guards barred it and drew their swords, ready to attack any intruders. Lady Neria unhooked a crossbow from the far wall and loaded it, then pointed it at the door. If any of the weavelings tried to break in, she’d rip them apart before they got to her.

Blood ran from a slash on her forehead and her arms ached. She was sure a rib had broken, and she’d need a healer to tell her what else was wrong.

But she knew when to cut her losses. The black-haired elf was taking the army, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

As soon as he’d started his speech, she ordered the place destroyed—she ordered them to drop the alchemical bombs and start the chain reaction. Nothing happened. They’d disabled that, too.

Now, the boy’s speech was done, and weavelings thundered through the hallways, the weapons and armour she’d made for them clanking.

It wasn’t over. The Dominion still had more than enough resources to crush Sirdia and the elves and she’d make them pay for this disaster ten times over. Sure, she might have to leave some soldiers behind to maintain control of the Mainland, but she had wizards, and they were strong enough to wipe out the elven armies.

Pirin would suffer for this, and so would everyone he cared about.

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As soon as the weavelings began running, Pirin and Gray sprinted out of the control room. They navigated against the flow, sprinting back toward the Featherflight. There weren’t many weavelings on this platform—most were aboard the other platforms—but there had been enough to leave a trail of destruction.

Workers and guards’ bodies lay strewn about through the hallways, dead or dying. They had no threat to hold above their slave army anymore, and they didn’t have the numbers to keep the weavelings in check physically.

He found Myraden and Kythen in the hallway where they’d been separated. She stood over the body of Khara, panting and bleeding, but radiating the strength of a Blaze. Her antlers had grown to their full height and turned to blood-red crystal, just like Kythen’s horns—her bondmark.

Without saying anything, they shared a nod, then sprinted back toward the Featherflight. They crossed over a walkway and onto the first platform.

The floor shook and shuddered, and the walls heaved. More than just lightning boomed outside. Techniques crashed together. Flashes of green and purple light shone so bright that they pierced the walls of the facility, seeping through the cracks in the boards.

Three heavy spiritual presences weighed down on Pirin and Myraden, exerting pressure. These were Wildflames, but no longer did they make him want to collapse and die immediately from their sheer presence. His foundation didn’t feel like it was going to crack and shatter at a moment’s notice.

They were, however, still well above his strength. “Nomad is fighting!” Pirin yelled.

“He is fighting Neria’s Unbound Lords!” Myraden yelled back.

Göttrur scampered off Pirin’s shoulder and leapt to Gray’s saddle, then ducked into the saddle pouch, quivering and shaking.

“We need to get the Featherflight in the air and help!” Pirin yelled.

Myraden glanced back at Kythen, then said, “We are exhausted, and we are almost out of Essence. You feel near-empty and tired, too.”

Pirin shut his eyes. She was right—his two types of Essence were both nearly depleted. “If we leave him, he’ll die! We don’t have to kill the Unbound Lords; we just have to get out of here!”

They sprinted back to the gate they’d pushed through on their way in, then ran out across to the Featherflight’s landing pad.

A different landing pad jutted out, a third of the way around the larger platform. Lady Neria’s larger airship clung to it, but the ship wouldn’t fly again any time soon. Its gasbags had deflated entirely, and its frame crumpled at the center. The tail fins bent down, misshapen.

Nomad exchanged blows with the Unbound Lords. He stood on the walkway between the platform and the airship’s landing pad, and the two Lords advanced on him. He met dragon-bat blood silhouettes with blasts of air, and he deflected swipes from a chain-scythe with a twirl of his staff. Purple flower petals and magenta Essence sparked against the empty air.

Pirin didn’t need perfect spiritual senses to know that Nomad was exhausted. His breaths heaved, and his techniques flashed out slower than normal. A gash ran down his arm, and another down the side of his face. Blood dribbled from a deep wound in his gut.

“Nomad!” Pirin shouted, but the wind stole his voice.

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Still, Nomad spared a glance toward them. Was that a smirk on the man’s face?

“Pirin!” Myraden grabbed his arm and dragged him back toward the Featherflight. “We need to get the ship up! We will grab him on the way!”

Pirin turned away from Nomad and sprinted after her down the walkway—toward the Featherflight. “If we don’t deal with the Unbound, they’ll follow us!”

“Scan his spirit!” she called. Thunder rumbled, then techniques bashed together and Essence washed over the platform, ripping boards off it. “I think he has something planned!”

When they reached the Featherflight’s landing platform, Pirin spun around and stared at Nomad. He let his spiritual sight seep deep into the man’s flesh.

Nomad was cycling differently. His Essence travelled around his body in a different pattern, and it pulled at his core, drawing every last bit of power out of it. He was pushing it into the tips of his limbs and to the edges of his channels. It was an unstable pattern, and Nomad was emptying his core.

He was about to use an entire core’s worth of Essence in a single unstable technique. He wasn’t passing it over to his racoon-cat—it was pure-aspect Essence. The spiritual damage would render him…crippled, or worse.

“No…” Pirin breathed. “No!”

Myraden grabbed him by the arm and pulled him through the Featherflight’s gondola’s open door. “Get us in the air!” she called.

“Aye!” Alyus shouted. “I’ll get the ropes untied!” He ran to the center of the gondola and looked up through the hole in the ceiling. “Brealtod! Drop ballast and loosen the ballonets! We need height, and now!”

Kythen scampered up onto the cargo platform, and Myraden raised it up and secured the hold. Gray fluttered up to the ship’s upper platform.

Both Pirin and Myraden worked on either side of the ship, unfurling the sails while Brealtod dropped the ship’s ballast. Water poured out a hole in the ship’s prow, lightening them, and the Featherflight strained against the mooring lines. Alyus untied them, then leapt back into the gondola. The ship listed to the side, but Alyus spun the rudder wheel, and they turned away from the storm.

Pirin scrambled off a sail spar and up to the upper platform, where Gray waited. The Featherflight was going to take a wide loop around the duelling Wildflames, then head north. But that wasn’t good enough for Pirin.

Even if Nomad had a plan, Pirin wasn’t leaving him behind.

“You don’t have to come,” Pirin told Gray.

I’m not leaving him, either, she said.

He climbed up into Gray’s saddle as Nomad unleashed his final technique. The Unbound Lords, who unleashed technique after technique, pounding and hammering Nomad, were too focussed on the fight to tell a difference in Nomad’s cycling pattern—until it was too late.

Pirin and Gray took off. Gray leapt off the side

A blast of pure Essence washed off Nomad’s body in a wave, smashing into the Unbound Lords. It pushed them both back along the walkway, ripping and their skin and slashing at their flesh. But as a physical attack, it was disappointingly mild.

Until Essence leaked out the backs of both the Unbound Lords. A flare of green dragon-bat Essence flashed out of one Lord, and magenta scorpion Essence out the other. They shot through the air like both Lords had sprouted wings, searing the rain and dispersing into multicoloured sparks—gone forever.

Nomad had emptied both of their cores. They had nothing left to fight with, and nothing to chase after the Featherflight or the weaveling fleet.

But before all of his Essence escaped, Lord Three unleashed one last technique. A spear of raw blood-Essence mixture raced straight for Nomad.

Nomad’s spirit was collapsing, and he had no Essence left to defend himself.

Pirin and Gray swooped down along the walkway, inserting themselves between the Wildflame’s technique and Nomad. Pirin swept his hand up, unleashing a Shattered Palm. An arc of blue Essence split the technique, scattering the green blood and dulling the dragon-bat Essence into just a stream of aspects.

The Essence washed over him and Gray, physically harmless, but it was entirely stronger than anything Pirin’s channels had felt before. He cycled quickly, but some dragon Essence still seeped into him and Gray.

He pushed it down and away. They needed to get out. Lady Neria’s airship wouldn’t fly again for weeks and the Unbound Lords weren’t in any condition to give chase. Pirin looked at Nomad and shouted, “Get on!”

Groaning, the man staggered along the walkway. His racoon-cat clung to his shoulder as if its life depended on it. Pirin extended a hand, and Nomad took it. He pulled Nomad up onto Gray’s saddle, and Gray took off.

“Are you alright, Gray?” Pirin shouted.

Never better! I feel like I could annihilate an entire empire and watch my enemies burn to dust!

“Gray?”

Never better!

Pirin blinked in shock, but he had more pressing concerns. They navigated back toward the Featherflight with Nomad in-tow, then swooped up under the cargo hold and landed on the cargo platform. In the dim light of the airship’s cargo hold, Gray’s twig-like spirit growths were glowing green, and her eyes were glassier than normal.

He put on his mask, then held out his hand and formed a Whisper Hitch with her.

A second soul duelled with her mind, snarling and whispering like a dragon-wraith. Pirin’s stomach dropped. They’d taken a direct hit of dragon-aspect Essence, and the dragon-wraith inside Gray had eaten it all up.

It had gotten much stronger.

“Hang in there, Gray,” Pirin whispered. “We’ll fix you up.”

He helped Nomad off the saddle, then threw the man’s limp arm over his shoulder. Nomad was muttering something incomprehensible. Pirin helped the man climb the ladder, then dragged his half-limp body along the axial catwalk and down again to the crew quarters. He set Nomad down on the bottom bunk, then descended one more level to the gondola.

“Are you alright?” Myraden asked. “Is Nomad?”

“I’m good,” Pirin said. “Nomad? He’ll live if I can patch him up.”

The wind blasted the Featherflight from behind, and they flew northeast. The cleared the first platform of the facility with ease, but the wind blew them back toward the rest of the platforms. Waves crashed and smashed against them, but a flotilla of lights shone below.

The weavelings were leaving.