The long, lopsided arm of the Stone Elemental reached up toward the open canopy once again, and Vaska climbed onto its hand. Three tilt-rotors flew in formation overhead, slowly descending as the pylons began to rotate. A single Skinny Meg fighter jet approached the runway with flaps fully extended. A Fat Meg fighter, tires compressed and wings heavy with a full complement of hypersonic missiles, rolled up alongside Ingrid's Blackfire and came to a stop.

Vaska stepped down onto the rotting pink flower petals on the ground with a squish. "Help! I'm sinking!"

"Hey!" Reese called down from the open canopy. "Could I get a lift?" Ingrid pointed to the woman, and the Stone Elemental lurched forward toward the Fat Meg fighter. The Skinny Meg made a somewhat rough landing on the runway beyond.

"Ingrid! You need to carry me!" Vaska insisted.

Ashe fluttered off Ingrid's shoulder and began to grow to full size. "I think I'll walk," she said.

Glenice, Vladimir, and two more Imperial Marines approached the taxiway with their weapons pointed at the ground. Glenice seemed to be carrying a sniper rifle of some sort. "Princess," Glenice said, "Lady Ghost. Welcome. The site is secure. We found Amadeo Yorath, and he insisted on fighting one of our Marines in a duel. He ended up being hacked to pieces with a saber. The rest of his family has been... dealt with."

"Excellent!" Vaska said. "We win! Our enemies are dead!"

"While I admire your bloodlust Vaska," Ashe said, "I still don't understand why you are so obsessed with those other families. What did they do to you?"

"I have to think about the future," Vaska said. "A thousand years from now, will my family still exist? When will the other houses invade and exterminate us? Look what happened to Ingrid's ancestors!"

"Did you find them?" Reese asked as she stepped down from the Stone Elemental's hand.

"We did," Vladimir replied. "However the warehouse has been cleared and then sealed."

"We don't want anyone inside when we open the doors," Glenice added.

A rumble approached from beyond the threshold of the runway. Ingrid turned around to see it. A twin-propeller, high-wing, strut-braced airplane was descending on final approach. Ingrid had flown on one of those airplanes before, when she had flown to the Emperor's lodge with Vaska. The Skinny Meg fighter jet rolled up, and Ingrid approached it with her Stone Elemental. The pilots named Task and Zakx climbed out.

"How does the search go?" Ingrid asked.

"Resort flat!" Task began in heavily accented Imperial. "Land airplane in wave, big! Big! Hard... hard."

"Is it difficult to land the Island Hopper in large waves?" Ingrid asked. The plump man nodded.

"Is good to again fly fighter jet!" Zakx said.

Two more twin-propeller airplanes landed. The three airplanes were packed full of former sacrifices and a handful of exiled Matrons. Natasha was the last to land, and the rest of the White Ravens remained on patrol in the sky above. A small army of Marines arrived to organize and escort the group of sacrifices, which swelled to nearly a hundred people.

Vaska insisted on riding the shoulder of Ingrid's Stone Elemental as they crossed the thick blanket of rotting pink flowers. Natasha walked ahead with Glenice, but Ingrid remained behind and walked in somber silence. Imperial Marines stalked through the streets, clearing away the bodies of enemy soldiers. Dozens of enemy soldiers were still alive, chained together in long lines, waiting to be taken away by FIA agents for interrogation. Fragments of destroyed turrets and enemy fighter jets were strewn about on the road, and more than one building had been ripped open by a bomb.

They arrived at a large bunker, partially submerged into the stone and fortified with anti-aircraft turrets. There were long smears of blood leading out of the door, ending in a pile of corpses nearby. The former sacrifices were clearly uneasy being led into the structure.

Inside the bunker was a dim underground warehouse, lit by narrow skylights. Thousands of color-coded metal boxes were piled up throughout the warehouse. A network of tubes connected the boxes to a steam engine in one corner. Vladimir grabbed one of the boxes and snapped the hinges with a serrated dagger. One panel fell away, revealing the contents of the box. Hundreds of tiny brass components whirred in steam-powered clockwork pumps. Transparent tubes of glass were filled with flowing blood, a human brain was contained in some sort of yellowish liquid in another glass compartment, and finally a human heart, still beating, was housed in a misshapen glass chest cavity.

The Marine held the apparatus above his head so the sacrifices could get a clear look at the contents.

"Reese, please translate for me," Vaska said. "This is what our enemy has done to your people. Some of you have visited the empty cities in the Plane of Fire. You have seen the giant piles of corpses. This is what they were creating. You have proof right here."

Reese translated this for the sacrifices. They remained silent and almost perfectly still, their eyes fixed on the strange steam-powered device.

Vaska turned to Glenice. "Bring him here," she said.

Glenice nodded and then stalked off through the hallway. When she returned, two Marines accompanied her, prodding an old man in chains to walk in front of them.

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"Professor Makari," Vaska said.

"Imperial Princess Vaska Maryy," the man said. He did not look up to meet Vaska's eyes. "It is such an honor. I believe this is the first time we have met."

"It is. I generally avoid that species of charlatan that infests the universities."

"Your work," the old man rasped, "on the design of fighter jets... is remarkable. Truly, remarkable."

"Thank you sir," Vaska said. "Reese, tell the sacrifices that this man invented the canisters."

"What are we going to do to him?" Ashe whispered in a mischievous voice as Reese began to address the crowd.

"You are not going to do anything to him," Vaska whispered. Among the sacrifices, the men became very animated. The women mostly remained silent.

"That mask," Makari said, "are you a worshiper of the Queen of Darkness?"

"I am the Queen of Darkness you idiot," Ashe snapped.

"They say they want to kill him," Reese said. "The men are deciding who gets to kill him, and how."

"Tell them that they can kill him in any way that pleases them," Vaska said.

"What courage!" the man exclaimed. "Such courage to kill an old man like me! Hah!"

Vaska shrugged. "You betrayed the Empire. It is well within my rights to execute you myself. However, you have made an enemy of these people, and it will be great propaganda to allow them to decide your fate."

"The men have decided that they want to take him outside and burn him alive with their Fire Elementals," Reese said.

"A bad way to go..." the man muttered.

"That's not a problem at all," Vaska said. She gestured to the Marines and they dragged the man back out into the hallway. Among the sacrifices, most of the men and a few women followed them.

"What are we going to do about them?" Ingrid asked, waving her hand out toward the massive piles of canisters. "Is there anything we can do to help them?"

"Glenice, did you find the Light Crystal?" Vaska asked.

"It is here," Glenice replied, handing the crystal to Ingrid.

"Light!" Ingrid said. "Show yourself!" The heavily-armored woman materialized in front of Ingrid, filling the dim warehouse with an oily light.

"Can you summon the contracts?" Vaska asked.

I cannot, the Light Elemental replied. The man named Amadeo Yorath commanded me thus, to cease my claims on those contracts. They cannot be summoned.

"Exactly like the Light Elementals used by House Rosalia and House Demetra," Vaska said. "We are going to need to destroy them. All of them. It is the only way to disable the contracts. Ingrid, go ahead and purify this one."

The screams of the Light Elemental drowned out the mad death throes of the old man being burned alive outside.

After Ingrid bonded the purified Elemental, Ashe changed once again. Her skull mask changed so that it exposed one half of her face as well as her entire mouth. Her dress changed to white with red, purple, and black diamonds. Her fangs had grown longer, and she tilted her head back with a wicked smile. "Thank you, Ingrid," Ashe said.

Glenice started giving orders to the Marines. Sappers entered the warehouse carrying crates of explosives and tanks of gasoline. Ingrid wandered off into the middle of the warehouse, gazing around at the countless canisters, and Ashe followed. The nearby stacks were marked with red paint. Sacrifices from the Elemental Plane of Fire. Some of those boxes contained the brains and hearts of bodies she had seen with her own eyes, piled high in the city streets, slowly being buried in snow.

Vaska walked up behind Ingrid and wrapped her arms around Ingrid's waist. "Are you alright?" she asked.

"I just really wish there is something we could do to help them," Ingrid said.

"Ask your new Elementals," Ashe said. "You both bonded a pair, right?"

"Oh yeah," Vaska said. Then, in a low whisper, she added: "The High Daughters of the new Elemental Queens."

"High Daughter of the Queen of Dreams," Ingrid whispered. "And the Queen of Spirit as well, is there anything that we can do to help these people?"

They are trapped within a deep sleep, the High Daughter of Dreams replied. We can create a shared dream, one last dream before they are destroyed.

"One last dream?" Ingrid asked.

Their last memories were... being cut apart while fully awake, the High Daughter of Spirits said. Their spirits are ravaged, malicious things. They have no peace. They will be remembered forever, if only in the way they have darkened Mother's creation, the Plane of Spirit.

"If my last memory was... being chopped to pieces," Vaska said, "I doubt there is any final dream that would satisfy me."

"I will do the best I can," Ingrid said. "Vaska, tell the others that I need to rest after purifying the Light Elemental."

"If anyone asks," Vaska said.

Ingrid sank down onto the warehouse floor, with her head resting in Vaska's lap. Vaska stroked the nape of Ingrid's neck.

Ingrid closed her eyes. "I'm ready."

You will sleep now, and I will bring all of the sacrifice into your dream.

Clouds.

A landscape of pale gray clouds stretched out below. There were valleys, mountains, and pillars the size of planets. The sky above was a vibrant blue, and cut with extraordinary golden arcs. A distant sun gleamed through a gap in those arcs. Another planet. A real planet, one that Ingrid had learned about as a child. She had never seen it through a telescope, but she had seen paintings. This planet was surrounded by rings. She was in the sky of that planet, looking up at the rings.

Pink jellyfish the size of cities appeared in the sky all around, dancing near the pillars of clouds. Huge watermelon-colored, blimp-like creatures appeared. They had immense, gaping mouths and glassy eyes, and they roamed about devouring the jellyfish. Sleek, predatory creatures lurked below. They had four wings arranged in an X-shape, and their bulbous heads seemed to glow with an inner orange light.

A glass canopy began to form, as well as the rest of the cabin of a fighter jet. The nose, the wings, the tail fins, the sounds of the engines... It all began to form from her countless memories of flight. This was the Falling Leaf fighter, the one she flew when she was the Left Wing of the White Ravens. Thousands of identical craft began to appear in the sky all around.

They flew, and were free for a time.

Ingrid pointed the nose of her fighter down at the clouds below. It took a very long time to fall into the clouds. As with a lucid dream, Ingrid willed her fighter jet to fly faster. She flew so fast that the airspeed indicator could no longer represent her speed. The clouds grew dimmer and dimmer, until Ingrid was consumed in total darkness. And still she flew, without striking the ground, until the clouds opened into a vast spherical chamber. In the center of the chamber was a small orange planet, which cast undulations of orange light upon the dark purple clouds that lined the inner surface of the sphere. She flew down to that planet, and thousands of fighter jets followed her.

"Let us go!" Ingrid shouted, and she knew that all the others heard her. "Let's go explore!"

Ingrid could not quite remember what awaited her on that planet once she began to wake. Vaska looked down at her with a warm smile on her face.

"You are so adorable when you smile!" Vaska said.

"I was smiling?" Ingrid asked.

"It must have been one hell of a dream. You were grinning the entire time."

"High Daughter of Spirit," Ingrid said. "Did that help at all?"

In a small way, yes.

A sapper walked by with a crate of explosives. "You should clear out Princess," the man said. "You too, Lady Ghost."

Ingrid sighed.

"Let's go home," Vaska said.