Sir Zachary sat in the chair next to Empress Sasha. She had the window seat, and was eagerly looking out the window at the clear sky outside. Structures on the wings began to groan and move. The wings changed shape, transforming into an array of horizontal planes. The engines roared. Suddenly the runway at the top of the Spire rushed past them in a perfect blur below. The wheels struck the runway and the reverse thrust began, causing Sasha to lurch forward in her seat.

"Welcome to Spire Nydia" the captain announced in a calm voice over the loudspeaker. Zachary thought that she sounded like an older woman. "Weather is clear, elevation twenty-two thousand feet. Please wait for an ethermancer to provide environmental shielding before leaving the aircraft."

"That was the shortest flight I have ever been on!" Kiera said from behind. She poked her head around the chair near Sasha. Her long blonde hair draped across Zachary's armchair. Kiera's eyes looked the same color as the sky.

"The flight to Spire Lin is a few minutes shorter," Lucia said.

After collecting their luggage the quartet moved down to the ground level where transport cars awaited them. Sasha's car was long and sleek and ornate inside, with beverages hidden away under the armchairs. Kiera sipped on a cherry wine as they drove. She looked nervous.

As the transport moved across the airport, Zachary watched in fascination as the oculomancers on the runway ran about in a frenzy. "Stop!" Kiera cried, and the car screeched to a halt. Sasha looked uneasy at the disturbance.

"Yes Heritor Kiera?" The driver asked. Zachary looked out the window of the car.

The oculomancers on the runway were busying themselves laying out cables. "What are they doing?" Kiera asked.

"Oh," the driver said, like the pilot of the airplane she was an older woman. "Heritor Keira, those women are preparing for the arrival of one of the etherborne. The craft they fly require cables to stop in the distance of these short runways, unless they use the ferryway, which is very slow."

"Is it Fiona?" Kiera asked.

"I believe so," the driver said.

"I wish to see the landing," Kiera said. "Empress Sasha, is this agreeable?"

Sasha nodded then reached for the latch on the door.

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"I cannot let you leave until environmental shielding is provided," the driver said.

"We are all Heritors," Sasha said. "We have our own auras, thank you."

"I don't," Kiera said. "I mean, I can't use mine."

"I will shield everyone myself," Sasha said. "It's my ether, nobody else claim any."

Zachary climbed out first, over the women, and led them one at a time by the hand out of the car. The three women walked off the road and stood at the edge of the fence marking the airport. They all looked east towards the direction of the flashing light on the horizon. Their hair seemed to flow with the wind. Kiera with long blond hair, Empress Sasha with salmon-brown, and Lucia with the jet black hair common to the Aden clan.

Zachary steeled himself. He heard something. Something familiar.

It was a low hiss at first, then it became the sound of a campfire mixed with the sound of a roaring river. A sleek, angular, black shape came closer and closer.

Kiera gasped. "That thing," she said, "looks like a predator."

"It's a fighter," Sasha said. "The witches use those things to fly around. They are old military equipment from the war with the Charlatan King, over a thousand years ago."

"My family remembers very little from that time," Kiera said.

The fighter smashed into the runway, catching a cable and screeching to a halt. The wind passed over the road where Zachary was standing. It felt cold.

The quartet shuffled back into the safety of their car. The diver resumed her course, taking them to the airlock on the north side of the Spire.

The interior of the Spire at this level was a vast inverted pyramid, with glowing teal constructs hanging from the solid, transparent teal runway embedded into the ceiling far above. The oculomancers led Sasha through winding corridors to the the inverse apex of the room, where a figure in silver robes sat on a throne.

Her face was shrouded by a silver hood, though Zachary could see the faint teal glow of oculomancer scars on her shadowed cheeks. "Heritor Kiera," the woman said in a voice devoid of emotion. "Thank you for answering my summons. Why are these other Heritors here?"

Empress Sasha bowed slightly, then began to speak. "If I may, Elder Saint," she began, "as Heritor of the Varelion clan, and Empress of Nydia, I..."

"I care not what petty title you have given yourself Heritor Alyesha." The Elder Saint snapped.

Sasha reeled back at first, then steadied herself. "I wish, to request aid in my war against the Theocracy of the Lawgiver, Great Elder Saint. It is in the best interest of humanity, if I should be successful in my quest. Pease..."

"I will subjugate the Etherborne," the Elder Saint said, her face still shrouded by the silvery hood. "I will subjugate the Etherborne, and you will aid me, or you will not. You can quarrel with the other Heritors if you wish. It is not forbidden to you. Remember your oaths."

"I think you would be wasting your time trying to negotiate with this creature," Zachary said to Sasha.

She nodded, then bowed to the Elder Saint. "I am sorry," she said. "I have overstepped."

The Elder Saint said nothing, her head did not even move.

"Your father made similar requests to that creature," Zachary whispered to the Empress. "Back the she responded the same way. 'I subjugate the etherborne.'"

An oculomancer with long blue hair entered the chamber.

Mother Summer, Zachary thought.