"Absolutely not," Vaska said. "This has been a disaster so far. The only person in the world who can close the portals... needing to be rescued! If Ingrid died the Order of the Ten Skies would immediately fall apart. As such, I'm imposing a new rule. Ingrid is not allowed to fly with the scouting party ever again. In fact, Ingrid will be allowed to close the portal... only when the area is proven to be very secure."
"That seems reasonable," Ivan said.
"How can we ask our soldiers to put themselves at risk," Ingrid asked, "if we are not able to take those same risks. We would be no better than that Lieutenant who sacrificed the recruits from my hometown."
"Your concerns are noted," Vaska said. "The new rule stands. The rest of you, leave us."
Ivan and Elizabeth stood up from their seats in the map room and left. Vaska stood up and walked over to Ingrid.
"Do you know what would happen to me if you died?" she asked.
Ingrid said nothing.
"I told you about my curse," Vaska said. "Everything good in my life goes away."
"You once said, that true things do not let others die on their behalf." Ingrid said.
"Then we will change the oaths. New recruits will be warned! They must take the risks that you cannot take. That way, people will decide not to join the Order if they disagree with our rules." She turned to leave.
"Wait," Ingrid said. "My Elemental is no longer trying to murder you. I think. Do you know why?"
"After you showed me the light crystal," Vaska said, "I told my father about you. I included the detail that your Elemental wanted to murder me. Then, it stopped."
"When it first transformed, it said that I was the only one 'they' could agree on. Do you have any idea who 'they' could be?"
"Whoever 'they' are, it is possible that my father knows them, or is one of them," Vaska said. She went silent for a time, one hand on her chin. "Perhaps, when the first portal opened, 'they' contacted my father somehow. They offered to make a new light crystal, but my father did not have time to give the Elemental very clear orders."
"Can somebody else give my Elemental orders?!" Ingrid asked.
"Straightforwardly yes," Vaska said. "It works for any Elemental really, as long as those orders do not contradict the wishes of the binder. Unless you command it to not follow any orders from anyone else. Maybe there was not enough time to give very clear orders to your Elemental, and then my father clarified later that she was not allowed to murder me."
"If your father is involved..."
"That would help explain why he was willing to recognize you as the Princess of the Ten Skies, without even negotiating. At least, that is my working hypothesis. We need an experiment that disconfirms this hypothesis."
"What about the people with the masks?" Ingrid asked. "Why would my Elemental want to murder them?"
"We still have one of them as a prisoner," Vaska said. "We have a linguist, a bit of a savant, who is trying to communicate with her. It would help if we could hear her talking with another person. She doesn't say much, and I think she might have figured out that we are trying to study her language."
----------------------------------------
As the tilt-rotor reached the peak of the portal from the inside, Ingrid bonded the last of the three crystals and looked out over the Elemental Plane of Life towards the enemy airship in the distance. A quick glance through a telescope revealed that it was moving towards them, billowing black smoke, while being chased by birds. The sky around the portal had been cleared, however the sky surrounding Elizabeth's airship, which had been renamed Ten Skies, was filled with black smoke as well. Rockets exploded in the air above the airship, leaving small spheres of fire and smoke, and making a loud pop that seemed to scare away the birds.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
"That's all of them," Ingrid said.
"Mission complete," the commander of the Marines said. "We are returning."
The rotors began to tilt vertically and the airplane descended towards the deck. The airship began to rotate to the left. Ingrid took one last glance through her telescope at the enemy airship. It seemed to be heading straight for the portal. As soon as her foot hit the deck she sprinted off towards the command deck, taking the steps two at a time up the stairs.
"Elizabeth, we need to go back," Ingrid said. The Captain regarded her.
"What's this about?" the Captain asked.
"There could be people alive on that airship. If we close the portal, they will be stranded here with these monsters. They will all die horribly."
"They are the enemy," Elizabeth said. "Nobody forced them to open this portal and fly in here."
"We can take them prisoner. Maybe there are some officers that are still alive, noblemen that we can hold for ransom. It would be a waste to leave that ransom money here in this Plane."
"Would you risk our own soldiers to save the enemy?" Elizabeth asked.
"Take a good look at their airship," Ingrid said, "and then tell me those men are a risk to anyone."
"Report, what is the status of the Ayaru airship?"
"Captain, the enemy airship is under assault by birds. No signs of life on board the craft, though it is still steering in the right sense. There are no enemy aircraft defending it."
Elizabeth nodded. "Very well. Turn the ship around. Prepare the flak cannons. I want every soldier with a rifle on deck. Space out the tilt-rotors on deck, and get those propellers spinning."
Ingrid watched through a porthole from the command deck as Ivan took off in his warbird and the tilt-rotors began to spool up.
"The colors Captain!" the communications officer said, peering through a telescope. "The enemy airship has stricken their colors! They are surrendering!"
"Send a message to the enemy airship, tell them that we accept their surrender, however we will be engaging with our weapons against the birds. If they fire on us, we will shoot them down without hesitation."
The communications officer began rapidly flashing a bright light through the porthole. The room was silent until he received a reply.
"The crew is almost entirely dead, Captain. There are less than fifty men alive, and they need the tilt-rotors to come rescue them."
"When the sky is clear, tell the Marines to land on their ship."
The birds began to notice the approach of the Ten Skies and diverted their flights to intercept. They were moving fast, as fast as a fighter jet. The gun commanders were patient, however, and the flak cannons did not fire. The birds began to coalesce into a swirling, undulating swarm, as thick as a school of fish. The torrent of their wings began to form a violent cyclone, drawing the Ten Skies closer.
Suddenly all the flak cannons fired at once, filling the vortex with fire and shrapnel. The birds were ripped apart, like the red mist from grapes in a wine press. Soldiers on the deck fired their rifles in a great volley, sending a deadly wall of bullets into the survivors. Rockets lanced out, filling the sky with sound. Finally, Ivan flew over the deck of the ship, the eight cannons on his wings glowing white hot as he shot the birds out of the sky.
A cluster of birds evaded the massacre and bravely assaulted the deck, only to meet the whirling propellers of the tilt-rotors spaced out to protect the soldiers. They danced about, uncertain, even as they were plucked out of the sky by marksmen.
"This," Elizabeth said, "is why we will no longer be allowing you to join the scouts. I do not trust anyone in the world more than the crew of this airship. Once we have a strategy, we can be certain that you will be safe in the sky. And now I, too, ask you to trust them."
The Marines landed on the enemy airship after the birds had fled. For a half an hour they waited and scoured the derelict ship for survivors before returning to the Ten Skies. Ingrid went down to the deck to see them.
Only about thirty enemy airmen and half a dozen officers emerged from those tilt-rotors. They were haggard, clothes torn to shreds and bleeding. Grown men were sobbing, lamenting the deaths of their friends and fellow crew. Ingrid remembered the great horse-like beast down in the jungle, and shivered.
Later she watched from the command deck as the main cannons of the Ten Skies scuttled the enemy airship. The door swung open and a soldier appeared on deck. "Captain!" he said, pointing behind him to a man in chains. Ervin Dren, the man Ingrid had captured in the Plane of Wind, stood in his prisoner's uniform.
"What is the meaning of this, soldier?" Elizabeth asked.
"Captain, he demanded to see the Princess of the Ten Skies. He said it is his right as a nobleman! Prisoner," the soldier said. "Tell the Captain what you said to me."
"I said," Dren drawled, "that I know things that you will want to know. I will tell you everything."
"In exchange for what?" Elizabeth asked.
Dren looked straight at Ingrid. "Allow me, and the rescued men, to swear oaths of service to the Order of the Ten Skies."