The Gale Temple in the southeast of the Theocracy was a holy site built into a natural tunnel. The tunnel was long and broad enough to fit a small down inside. The ground was made from beach sand, and the mountain above the tunnel was capped with a small tropical forest. One end of the tunnel faced the ocean and the other end faced a shallow marsh. The holy site had to be destroyed to make way for a massive wooden terrace that spanned the full length of the tunnel. It was sturdy and smooth and raised above the sane with stilts.

Quinn stood on one end of the terrace and watch the sun rise. Pilots gained experience flying the new warbirds by doing laps. They would leave the tunnel exit facing the ocean, into the wind. They would loop around over the marsh and then land against the wind that was funneled through the tunnel.

The sun was rising, and the wall of fog loomed on the horizon. They trained the pilots at this time of day because it was light enough to see and generally the weather was clear, but the oculomancers didn't like flying in the morning because they would be too easy to see. They hoped that their flight tests would go unnoticed. All the auras in this area could easily be explained by the old Gale Temple that had occupied this area. The Blue Wolf was moving her armies across the Ash Sea, and Claire Aden and the armies of Lin were moving through the undefended heartland to the west.

Quinn watched the little airplanes do their laps with envy until Maxius the Younger arrived and addressed him. "Quinn, we need to get you to someplace safe up here on the surface," he said. "Something happened. I think you are in danger."

"I disagree," Quinn said. "But before that, tell me what happened."

"The western enclave of engineers is gone. Wiped out. They were being guarded by members of the Lawgiver's Templar, and they all had auras. None of the knights or engineers survived."

"Was it the ghost?" Quinn asked. "Did they die of heart attacks?"

"No, I think this might be unrelated to the ghost," Maxius said. "Many years ago we found out that the Emperor was married to a witch, but they sealed away her powers with a special aura. There was a plan to kidnap her daughter Alyesha and bring her down here into our breeding colonies. This plan backfired because the girl bribed the castle garrison while she was on the way into the Underground. One of the guards must have told her what they intended to do and why, because now everyone calls her the Blue Wolf and she is an existential threat to the Theocracy.

"That's less interesting than what happened after. The Emperor demanded satisfaction. He sent his Knight and brother, Sir Zachary, to the local Church temple to make an example of them. The temple was guarded by Lawgiver's Templar, just like our engineers. The Templar and all the people worshipping inside the temple were all slaughtered. And our spies discovered that the templar had been killed with a crysien ethersteel sword. Those weapons are extremely rare and generally only the witches have access to such weapons, but Sir Zachary is known to have one."

"So you are saying this Sir Zachary has been sent by the Empress to murder the Messiahs?" Quinn asked, and then said "wait... the Messiahs were killed by a simple Knight?"

"I don't know," Maxius said, "As I said the ghost might be a second individual. Sir Zachary was the Emperor's blade in the dark. He must have been sent ahead by the Blue Wolf woman to soften us up before her armies march in here and smoke us out. She must know what we are doing down here. She might even know that we are making these warbirds. So we need to move you to a safehouse somewhere else in the Theocracy before Sir Zachary finds you."

"Maxius I am tired of running. I think it's time that I took a risk." Quinn pointed at the warbird that was barreling down the terrace. "If the Empress is looking for me, then I can hide in one of those."

"That is a stupid idea Quinn," Maxius said. "The goal is to keep you alive. We anticipate a ninety percent fatality rate for this mission."

"I know that," Quinn said. "I am tired of running and I just really, really want to fly."

Maxius sighed. "That is a huge risk, but I suppose that's a bit of a surprise. You don't believe in the lawgiver. What happens if you die?"

"I have no opinions about your god," Quinn said. "He doesn't seem to value his Messiahs very much. Either way, it has nothing to do with religion. I have been in these caves for months being shuffled around randomly to different workshops. And how helpful will I be in some safehouse without access to the mines and factories of the Underground? You just said that the Empress is going to smoke us out of these caves anyways. So any contributions that I can possibly make to the design of the warbirds is not going to be worth much moving forward."

"I guess there is no point in trying to argue with you Quinn. Very well, I'll talk to the air sergeant. I guess it makes some sense that the last place they would expect to find you is up in the sky."

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They trained Quinn in a wind tunnel first with only two axis of control. The nose of the thing was tethered to a post by a rope. The wooden mockup would leave the ground briefly and Quinn's job was to keep the craft straight for a few seconds before both the craft and the post sank down.

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Maxius and his subordinates had been given most of the Renna family auras. Only Maxius had the skill to subdivide auras, and the family auras could only be subdivided into about three dozen auras that were still large enough to fly with. When Maxius gave Quinn an aura he was surprised at just how big it was compared to the tiny aura that he used in White Chasm.

At first Quinn was only allowed to move quickly down the terrace. The warbird did not have any breaks or a ground steering mechanism. Everything was human-powered, with people holding the tips of the wings and running to help keep the nose straight as the plane first started moving. The entire ice protection system was just some ethersteel wires along the leading edges of the craft, and the pilot needed to use ethermancy to heat them up to high temperatures. The most important thing, the more experienced pilots insisted, was to carefully manage airspeed. This was the only instrument inside the airplane, and it was connected to a single pitot tube.

They allowed Quinn to sit in one of the only two-seater trainer craft to learn to take off and fly around. They used ethermancy to create a sound bubble around them, so that the more experienced pilot could give Quinn instructions. Taking off and steering was extremely easy. Keeping the plane straight was easy, and even the rare instances when he had to use the rudder was easy to identify. Sometimes while turning the nose would drift in the opposite direction slightly, and he would need to kick the rudder to correct it.

Landing, however, was extremely difficult. They had to lower the flaps and manage airspeed according to a specific schedule. The general goal was to not stall and fall out of the sky while approaching the terrace, and also not be traveling too fast and fly straight through the tunnel and fall into the ocean on the other side. Fly too low, and you crashed into the swamp. Fly too high, and you smacked into the mountain.

It took Quinn about twenty attempts before his instructor was happy with his landings. They were not perfect, but the people on the terrace would run out and grab the wings to prevent him from going side to side after he slowed down a little. The men must have been brave to run at a spinning propeller like that.

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One morning they woke Quinn up abruptly before dawn. They were being deployed to the battlefield. The pilots all lined up and got briefed by the air sergeant.

"Follow your flight commander and stay in formation. Many of you have practiced formation flying but many have not. Stay in formation! If your commander flies into the ground and dies, then you also fly into the ground and die. The Primarch has already said that anyone who dies on this mission will instantly go to Paradise. Now go and report to your commander."

It took a long time before Quinn's aircraft was dragged out into the terrace. Only four aircraft at a time would fit on the big lift from the hangar down in the underground. Then the planes had to be carried on carts to the tunnel and set up on the terrace. Though they did not run out of fuel once airborne, because there was plenty of ether, so once Quinn was actually in the sky he had to fly around in circles following his commander until they were ready to fly to the battlefield.

The fog rolled in below. Their only sources of navigation were the peaks and Spire Renna looming to the north. Spire Lin could barely be seen in the far west. Suddenly the commander veered up and faced Spire Renna. Gleaming lights were approaching.

Fast. Very fast.

He followed his commander up to meet the lights, but they were so high up in the sky that the warbirds would start to stall out as they tried to climb higher and higher. They needed to wait until those lights came lower. And the lights were coming lower. For some reason. Quinn assumed that they had long range missiles that they used to murder witches in rural areas. The logical thing to do was to fly up into the sky, not down. However, if those missiles were extremely expensive, then maybe they were going to get closer and use shorter range guns.

And they did have shorter range guns. And they began to use them.

It seemed impossible. They were still very high up but they were lobbing very accurate streams of white hot bullets down at the warbirds. There were two enemy fighter jets, silvery, mean looking and predatory. They hunted together. They killed together.

The first volley of bullets took out no less than four warbirds. The pilots of the warbirds quickly took advantage of their smaller size and smaller momentum. Shooting down at an angle was likely difficult, especially when the warbirds started swerving around chaotically.

Then the fighter jets got in behind another pack and took out six more. This cost them, because they needed to descend quite a ways in order to get a nice clean line up. Quinn's commander took advantage of this to move in behind one of the jets from one side. Quinn wondered if she knew that they were coming.

Each of the warbirds was mounted with a single large grapeshot cannon integrated into the body below the pilot. The bottom of the propeller was just above the lip of the cannon. Quinn lined up the gunsight and pulled the trigger when the enemy airplane was nearly filling his entire gunsight. His entire plane shook and lost airspeed, reeling to one side. As instructed by the other pilots he pointed the nose down and used the rudder to prevent a spin. His shot was too low, however.

Between his legs there was the canister release and reload levers. While holding onto the stick with one hand, he went through the arduous process of reloading the craft. It took a lot of his attention and he even started to lose power. It was important to pulse the engine to prevent a loss of airspeed as you rapidly reloaded the gun. Quinn regrouped with the commander and followed him as he approached the enemy jets again. They had moved quite far away and were moving fast.

The jets must have ran out of ammo, because they pointed their noses at the sky and rocketed off at tens of thousands of feet per minute. They left a long trail of smoke behind them far into the sky, towards Spire Renna.

There wasn't any time. They were going to return with higher numbers and half the warbirds had already been shot down. His commander must have been thinking the same thing because they immediately started flying north towards the battlefield. Quinn just hoped that they arrived at the battlefield and at least did something before those jets came back and murdered them.