A sword made of pure, blazing flames pierced the corrupted Light Elemental. It shuttered and danced violently, like a marionette with broken strings. Oily blackness spilled out of the burning wound, and was rapidly washed away with waves of water. Ingrid had grown to expect the flash of light that allowed her to see the veins in her own body. The Emperor betrayed no surprise. When the light dimmed and Ingrid's vision returned to normal, the Light Elemental from the Bank of Taisia knelt on the ground.

Emperor Artem Maryy approached the Elemental in the field of snow. As always when vacationing at his cabin, he wore hunter's clothes. Without ceremony, he reached out and touched the Elemental with one palm. "I will bond you," he said. Then he turned away, leaving a fresh trail of footprints toward the cabin door. The Elemental vanished as he passed through the threshold.

"Ashe?" Ingrid asked.

The Queen of Darkness had become perhaps as old as Natasha was, not quite thirty years of age. Her tight black dress had grown more revealing. Her lips grew a darker red, and when she smiled she revealed a pair of sharp fangs. "Ah, such strength," Ashe said. "I cannot wait to be restored. What fun it will be!"

Vaska crunched through the snow behind them. "I have failed to disconfirm the hypothesis," she said. "Which means the hypothesis stands. The metal walls of an airplane do, in fact, block the light of a purified Elemental."

"The mystery is solved," Ashe noted.

"So, Ashe," Vaska said, "do you think you are strong enough now, to reshape your realm?"

"Maybe. Actually yes, I think so."

"Any new workshops or runways that we create in our world... could end up being spotted by spies or enemy aircraft. Any portals we open to the Elemental Planes will cause the Queen of Light to instantly know the exact location."

"Ah, you want to build a workshop in my realm," Ashe said.

The door to the lodge opened once again and the Emperor reappeared. He held his hunting rifle slung over one shoulder. His loyal dog trotted at his side, panting happily. "Enjoy your hunt, father!" Vaska cried. He waved, but otherwise stalked into the snowy forest in silence.

"The Plane of Darkness is all twisted up, right?" Ingrid asked. "You can travel quickly if you know the path. What if the enemy stumbles on the workshop while wandering around?"

"I can create a place in my realm that has no incoming paths," Ashe said. "Only my first daughter would be able to find her way inside."

"What about the airspace overhead?" Ingrid asked. "You will want to test airplanes at your workshop right? That means the airspace near the workshop also needs to be inaccessible."

Ashe frowned. "I can try."

"Keep us updated on your status," Vaska said. "And no rivers of blood nearby, please." Ashe vanished in a puff of black smoke. A dark portal appeared directly behind Vaska. "Let's return to the Ten Skies."

The map room was quite occupied when Ingrid stepped back out of the Plane of Darkness. Elizabeth, Ivan, Glenice, Reese, and Mia sat around the table. The engineer named Jack Vail stood near the porthole, sipping on coffee and watching the White Ravens practice maneuvers in the sky.

"Where is Ashe?" Elizabeth asked after the portal closed behind them.

"Occupied," Vaska said. "If all goes well, we will be creating a new workshop in her realm. I'm sorry to have missed most of your meeting Elizabeth. What is our status?"

"Mia does not know how to read or write," Elizabeth said, "and our interviews with the other sacrifices have yielded similar answers. Your idea to drop propaganda from aircraft is, unfortunately, not likely to have any real impact."

"Then we will need to resume our conventional methods. The sacrifices need to be made to understand the danger."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Does this mean we are going to start recruiting in other Elemental Planes?" Ingrid asked.

"My hands are tied for now," Elizabeth said. "Natasha's orders. We cannot recruit outside of the Plane of Shadow, unless we can somehow reach Federation territory. We have scouts inside all of the Elemental Planes that we have visited so far, hiding from sight. Our enemy has heavy air defenses around the cities they control."

"The longer we wait," Ingrid said, "the higher the count of innocent people butchered to make canisters."

"We understand that," Vaska said. "However my sister is correct. Even if we wanted to... butcher our own sacrifices, we don't have the technology right now. And we absolutely do not want to destroy our entire economy without first destroying our enemy. Our current strategic advantage is our near-monopoly on the Plane of Darkness. Ashe can warn us when portals open to her realm, and she can send monsters to slow down invaders. It is fair to assume that we will be able to tap into the entire population of sacrifices, people who feel betrayed and who are willing to fight and die in our war."

"There is the language barrier," Elizabeth said. "They speak a strange language that Elementals cannot translate. We found two other exiled Matrons sailing in the Plane of Water, which means there are three people who can give them commands. Mia is struggling to learn our language, and it could take her up to a year to be fluent. At best, we have three commanders who can lead the new recruits. At worst, they immediately mutiny and only add to our problems."

As they spoke, Reese was whispering in Mia's ear. Finally the young woman began to speak in her language. "Mia has something to say," Reese announced. They turned to look at Mia as she spoke. Her hands were animated, pointing around the room and then to herself. "She says that she knows it is frightening, the way the world is changing. The people living on the outside are afraid. However, if any of you happened to be born in her world, then you would definitely want to be rescued."

"I agree," Ingrid said. "Vaska, your father mentioned that there were people in the Bank of Heylin who wanted to create a new currency. Who are those people? Can we contact them?"

"I will... explore that possibility," Vaska said. "Once we know who those people are, we need to make sure that they are put in positions of power and that their critics are silenced, permanently."

"We cannot forget our other advantages," Jack Vail said. He stepped away from the porthole to face the group. His somewhat bland face was framed by salt-and-pepper hair, and his eyes betrayed a condition of perpetual insomnia. "We need to massively increase production of our hypersonic missiles and HY-7 'Fat Meg' airplanes."

Ingrid giggled.

"It is safe to assume that the Queen of Lightning will prevent our enemy from discovering the principles of electricity independently of summoning colored orbs," Jack continued. "And without access to Dark-Three missiles, our radar-guided missiles will provide a significant short-term advantage. We should press the attack."

"There is another side to that argument," Elizabeth added. "They may contemplate a massive attack, and prepare a clever trap for us. Alternatively, they may contemplate their own weakness, and conclude that they need to launch a massive surprise invasion of the Plane of Darkness, to capture the sacrifices quickly."

"We also do not know how long it will take Kanti to use their own green Colored Orbs to invent radar," Jack said. "For all we know, they might have already deduced its existence from the few times that we killed their pilots with hypersonic missiles."

"They know we control the Plane of Darkness," Ingrid said. "Maybe they will assume that we are using some sort of new, long-range shadow hunter?"

"Kanti tends to assign probabilities to outcomes," Vaska said. "Government decisions are based on 'more probable than not' assumptions. The types and abilities of demons were well-understood long before Ashe was sealed away. We can only assume that they will have contemplated the existence of radar. Elizabeth, you are the expert in taking risks with your soldiers. I will leave the decision in your hands."

"I think that we should launch a massive invasion of a single Elemental Plane," Elizabeth said, "one that is critical to the operation of fighter jets. We should bet everything on a single roll of the dice. We need to gain a monopoly on the Elemental Plane of Fire."

"I trust your judgment Elizabeth. Ivan and Glenice. You have both been very quiet."

"We need more flight instructors," Ivan said. "Desperately."

"I agree," Glenice said. "We need to tap into civilian flight schools, hobby aviation clubs, even other branches of the military. Anyone who knows how a rudder works needs to be conscripted immediately."

"I am putting you in charge of that effort, Glenice," Vaska said. "Use your Marines to kidnap flight instructors if needed. Ivan, continue focusing your efforts on Ingrid's dogfighting skills. Ingrid, keep practicing formation flying with the White Ravens. Reese, continue parading Mia around in the Plane of Darkness. I am going to steal the keystones to the Elemental Plane of Fire, as well as establish new contacts in the bank of Heylin."

A shadow began to form on the center of the table. Ashe, in her tiny winged form, soon materialized and danced around on a map of the Plane of Lightning, smiling like a child. "I did it!" Ashe said.

"Jack," Vaska said. "Prepare the other engineers to move. Once you have established a workshop in the new site, begin researching radar-absorbing materials."