Kiera was given a fancy hotel room in Spire Nydia as a temporary measure as an apartment was prepared for her in another Spire. It was more luxurious even than her own father's estate, and her father was the King of Cloudsea. She rose from her massive, frilly bed at first light and watched the sun rise from the half-hexagon turret window that seemed suspended in the open sky. The sky was the color of fire, the fog rolling in from the horizon looked like a wave of blood.

The door to her chamber opened. She gasped, and wearing only a thin shift, she tried to cover herself. It was Fiona.

"Don't bother," Fiona said. "I can see you naked anytime I would want." She tapped her finger against her eyes.

"Really?" Kiera asked.

"When you get your eyes you will know for yourself. Anyways, get dressed. We fly as soon as the fog rolls in." She threw a sack on Kiera's bed. "It's traditional to wear this when flying."

Kiera opened the sack and rifled through the clothes. "Um, are you going to give me some privacy?"

There was a light shirt, a dark blue-grey jacket, a matching pair of shorts that showed off much too much of Kiera's legs for her to be comfortable, and a matching wide-brimmed hat, tall and pointy. A witches costume. The materials were very fine, and even the smallclothes were comfortable and perfectly fitted. Fiona was waiting for her outside.

"These fit perfectly!" Kiera said.

"Yeah, we made a profile of your body and gave it to a tailor." Fiona said.

"That is, somewhat uncomfortable to think about."

"You will get used to it. Maybe it will take a few decades or centuries, but oculomancers are all women. It's really not a big deal."

Fiona led Kiera up to the upper surface of the Spire and stopped at the airlock leading out to the airport.

"Try making an environmental shield," Fiona said.

Kiera reached out and claimed some of the ether nearby. She shaped it into a shield around her, and caused the barrier to trap air, increasing the pressure. She heated it, so it would be about room temperature. The pattern, or etherweave, was relatively simple, though Kiera still whispered an incantation with her lips. "Inve pen clia eth, wea eth rarow kin, ess derarow shea, clia hearth, nia hei vin nia hei veth za za vash, nia wid veth khe declia, preah clia ess, sol vash, declia declia heara clia ess, nia tena veth za za sen, declia dekin declia."

The bubble appeared around her. Kiera was proud of it.

"A bit slow," Fiona said, as a similar bubble instantly appeared around her. "It's more important that you understand the structure of the etherweave, the actual words are not important. The words are just so you can read the research papers on new weaves and try them out yourself."

Fiona depressurized the room then opened the exterior door. There was one of those great black predatory bird-looking machines parked just short walk away. A half a dozen women fussed over the machine, walking around opening and closing panels and checking off boxes on long checklists. A pair of women with a small motorized car drove up with a long, tube-like device attached to the back. They lifted the big white tube and mounted it on a pylon on the bottom of the machine's wings. All the women had a very sharp way of moving, and they seemed to have an extremely serious look on their face, both indicators that they were very well trained soldiers. As Fiona got close the women saluted her.

Fiona walked up to one of the white tubes and unscrewed the cone on the front of the tube. It slid off, revealing a glass cone underneath. Inside the glass there was an eyeball attached to some tubes. It was an oculomancer eyeball.

"Eww!" Kiera said. The eyeball twitched.

Fiona screwed the cap back on. "Yeah, if you think that's gross, wait until you see how these missiles are made." She said. "It requires a human sacrifice. There is a beating heart of an etherborne somewhere in there, kept alive with a life support system that only lasts a few hours. These things are extremely expensive," She added. "About the cost of an entire kingdom worth of land for a single missile."

Fiona walked around the craft a few times with her own checklist and checked off boxes. Then a ladder was brought out and she climbed up to the glass canopy and climbed inside. "You're up next," She said to Kiera.

Kiera slowly ascended the steps and awkwardly climbed into her seat behind Fiona. There was a stick jutting right up between Keira's legs. There was not a great deal of space for her arms, and her legs had to be tucked down into individual compartments below her. There were a pair of pedals for each foot, one higher than the other. Kiera stretched her leg and accidentally compressed one of the pedals.

"Don't touch that," Fiona said. "In fact, don't touch anything."

"Should I take my hat off?" Kiera asked.

"Probably, yeah. We oculomancers can see straight through our hats, in fact we can see straight through the fuselage of the jet. But you don't have your eyes yet."

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An oculomancer came by and closed the canopy. She saluted Fiona one more time then the ladder was taken away.

"Pay attention to what I do, try to feel the weaves." Fiona said. "Up we go."

The craft shuttered slightly then slowly levitated straight up off the ground. Slowly, very slowly.

"What is happening?" Kiera asked.

"We are going to take the ferryway," Fiona said. "It's not something you can do on the ground, because the places where the ferry way touches the ground is blocked by the Spires. The ferryway is an ether-sien field between our planet and the Sister World. This field is shaped like a large tube between the two planets, that splits into several smaller tubes spread out across the continent. Each of those smaller tubes ends in a Spire. The Spires were created by the ferryway as the planet cooled, billions of years ago."

Kiera tried to make sense of the weaves that Fiona was using. It was more complex than a simple environmental shield. She was doing something to keep the craft moving in six dimensions.

"I don't usually take the ferryway, but I doubt your body is ready for the acceleration of a normal takeoff right now." Fiona said.

After a long while the craft began to move up at an angle. By then the Spire was far below them, and an endless blanket of fog extended over the entire world below. Only the Spires penetrated up from the fog, Spire Nydia below and Spire Lin far to the south. Spire Erika, a seventy thousand foot monster of a Spire, loomed in the distance to the southwest, beyond Spire Lin.

The nose of the aircraft was pointed directly at Spire Erika.

"Now we are going towards the Great Ferryway and Spire Erika," Fiona said. "If we kept going we would end up on the Sister World."

"Really?" Kiera asked. "Have you ever been to the moon?"

"Obviously," Fiona said. "These eyes of mine are not from this planet. Now pay attention, I am going to lead you through the startup procedures for our kerosene turbines. Pay careful attention to the weaves I use, I am going to start the right engine."

Kiera felt Fiona claim nearby ether and use it to spin something on the right side, of the craft, behind them. Lights began to activate inside the chamber where Kiera was sitting, and gauges began to snap and twitch behind small, round pieces of glass.

"This is the mechanical-electricity generator," Fiona said. "It's relatively easy to start, just use ether to spin it really fast until this gauge here is in the green," she said. Kiera had to peer over Fiona's shoulder to see the gauge she was pointing at. "Then, open this red guard here," She said, pointing to to a wide red case covering some switches, "except yours will be on the left because you will be starting the left engine. Finally press this button for three seconds. When this gauge is in the green here, then you can stop using ether to spin the generator. It will run on it's own from the turbine's power."

The engine behind them began to make a whirling, spinning sound, followed by a campfire roaring in a howling blizzard. Half the gauges started moving. Suddenly it got quiet. "I created a sound bubble around us so our ears are not injured by the sounds of the engines," Fiona said. "But we can still talk to each other. Go ahead and start your engine, now."

Kiera did the same steps that Fiona had done. It was surprisingly difficult to get the generator to spin fast enough for the gauge to reach the green area. After she held the right button down, the other half of the gauges started moving. Soon, they were all in the green zone.

"My airplane," Fiona said. "I am going to take us out of the ferryway." Kiera felt the stick between her legs move forward slightly. Suddenly Kiera understood why her uniform's shorts showed off so much of her legs. A nice long skirt would make it impossible to handle the stick.

The nose of the aircraft dropped, and they were almost pointed at the ground. The plane began to pick up speed. Then suddenly they dropped like a rock, falling out of the sky rapidly. "We have left the ferryway," Fiona said. "We need to gain some airspeed and the fastest way is to point the nose at the ground."

After a short while the nose rotated back up at the horizon. The world rushed past below. By the time they were level they were closer to Spire Lin than they were to Spire Nydia. Still they gained speed. Kiera looked behind them and saw two long trails of white smoke extending off into the distance. They were far above the clouds. The sky had become a pure blue color, like a vast bowl made of smooth, polished sapphire.

"Altitude fifty-five thousand feet, speed Mach two point seven, we are less than one hundred miles from the target," Fiona said. She reached back and handed Kiera a piece of paper with some numbers written on it. "See this console here?" She said, pointing to some keys with numbers on them. "Press this button, then type those numbers into that console, then let go of the button."

Kiera did so. The buttons seem to fight back as she tried to press them down, but made a clicking sound when fully pressed. When she released the button a red light began flashing.

"Do you feel the trigger on the stick? It is almost like a rifle trigger." Fiona asked.

"Yeah."

"When the light turns green pull the trigger."

"Okay," Kiera said. She felt a bit uneasy. Is this a weapon of some sort? she wondered.

When the light turned green Kiera pulled on the trigger. Suddenly the white tube on the right side of the craft detached from the pylon and fell away, then rocketed rapidly down towards the ground. Kiera gasped. Then she saw, and felt, something truly horrible. A heinous, revolting red aura of some sort started burning around the tube as it fell. Even from the vast distance between her and the tube, Kiera knew that something was very wrong with that thing.

"What is that?!" Kiera said.

"A burning crysien entropic field," Fiona said. "It disables etherborne powers, that missile is designed for killing witches."

"Wait, that is going to kill a witch?" Kiera asked.

"Yeah, a witch that would have been more powerful than the Elder Saint, by quite a bit. But, it's best not to think about it."

The missile vanished into the fog. There was a flash of light, then nothing.

"No trace of etherborne powers anymore," Fiona said. "Mission success, Kiera. I'll tell the Elder Saint that you have helped subjugate the etherborne. She will be very pleased with your progress."

"Who, who did I just kill?" She asked.

"His powers were about to manifest, he was about twenty-two years old. Lived alone in the woods, a hunter. That missile should not have hit anyone else. As I said before, we have a short window of a few weeks where we can see his powers before they actually manifest. Timing for this sort of thing is very important. A strike mission like this is ideal for witches that manifest in rural areas."

"Do you know his name?"

"No, the oculomancers in the spy aircraft can see things like relative age and sex but we don't ever get close enough to them to really know who they are. Not unless they live in a major city in which case we can't exactly blow them up with a missile."

Kiera shivered. Maybe Fiona was right. Maybe it was best to just, not think about it.