It was windy the morning after the White Chasm Aviation Club finally finished the third prototype. The sky was dark and angry with only a few gaps between the shifting clouds where rivers of blue sky shone through. The tall grasses in the University Fjord swayed in fits and starts, faster than any ocean wave. Quinn shivered as the cold seeped into his light jacket.

Irene's white lab coat sharply contrasted her obsidian skin. She called out each item on their safety checklist as Seth inspected the craft. A small crowd of students and professors watched them with interest. The ethermancy professor, Atlas vin Truscae, stood at the front of the crowd, watching the shifting clouds with a grave expression on his face. Vince, who was not participating in the safety checklists, stood beside an easel atop a nearby knoll. In one hand the man held a palette loaded with globs of oil paint, and in the other hand he held one of his bird-watching spyglasses.

"I don't like this weather," Professor Atlas said.

Irene's too-gold eyes suddenly darted to Seth as he tested the flight control surfaces. "I agree," she said. "I would not leave harbor in this weather. It's bad luck."

"Sailors are a superstitious bunch," Seth said.

"Sailing traditions have withstood the test of time," Irene insisted.

"Such as trusting the captain's decision," Seth finished. "What's next on the checklist?"

"The last item on the list should be the temperature check," Quinn said. "I just added it recently."

"I'll go get a thermometer," Bjorn said.

When the hulking redhead returned he was carrying a metal bucket filled with water. One of the shiny new thermometers from the lab was resting at the bottom, fully submerged by the chilly water.

"It's water from the fountain in the quad," Bjorn explained. "It should tell us the temperature of the air more quickly than simply leaving the thermometer exposed to the air."

Bjorn fished the device out of the bucket and handed it to Quinn. The temperature read fifty degrees.

"Fifty degrees. Bjorn, what is the safe flight ceiling?" Quinn asked.

Bjorn quickly sketched out some calculations on a piece of paper. "Much higher than this thing has any business flying," he said.

"Don't fly too high," Quinn said.

Seth smiled and said, "I take my own risks, brother."

After one final walk-around, Seth strapped himself into the pilot's seat and gestured to Bjorn. "Clear prop!" Bjorn cried. Quinn and Irene both backed away as Bjorn reached out to grasp the closest blade with both hands. "Start the weaves."

Quinn felt the unmistakable sense of ether being consumed. The central boiler chamber began to glow with a dull, metallic heat. "Weaves started," Seth reported.

With a grunt, Bjorn heaved the propeller up and then ducked away. This triggered the piston cycle, and after a brief drumroll hiss, the propeller began rapidly spinning on its own.

Atlas vin Truscae approached Quinn. "Your skill at ferromancy is rather impressive," he said. "Many fourth year students would not have been able to construct such a device."

"Not many fourth year students share my dream," Quinn said.

"Thankfully."

Ever so slowly, the craft began to slide forward on the skids, leaving a pair of depressions in the tall grass. Faster and faster it trailed away, struggling against gravity as it ascended the gentle slope, but beating against the wind, lending airspeed to the wings. The nose tipped up and the craft left the ground, knocked about for a few moments before Seth used the rudder to straighten the nose. Then it was gone; up and up and up it went.

There were gasps from the crowd. Several students trotted off after the craft for a little ways before giving up as it picked up speed.

"It actually left the ground," Professor Morne said.

"That's not very surprising," Professor Atlas said.

Seth banked to the west, away from the approaching wall of clouds and into the sun-shafts which illuminated the Spine Range on the western edge of the University Fjord. The sudden change in direction, and the resulting drop in airspeed, caused the nose of the craft to droop, but Seth was flying fast enough to quickly recover. Far overhead and to the west, against a deep blue sky, there were a few of those long, slash-like clouds which seemed to converge near Spire Lyn.

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Quinn felt a chill down his spine. His intuition was telling him that something was very, very wrong, and the sight of Seth's craft juxtaposed against those high clouds made it worse. It was, Quinn realized, too easy.

There's no way they didn't figure this out, Quinn thought as he glanced up at the ivory city at the top of Spire Lyn. There is absolutely no way that the witches haven't discovered this yet. Those clouds, those are not natural, are they?

"I've seen that look before," Professor Atlas said. "You understand now, don't you? Heh."

Quinn did not reply. He turned on his heels to continue to follow Seth as he flew above the western fjord. He banked again, cutting across the campus toward the eastern cloud front while passing directly over the crowd gathered on the lawn. Seth's little airplane grew smaller and smaller as he passed over the town to the north of campus, skirting around the branches of the huge crystal tree. Thankfully, he wasn't flying too high above the ground.

A sudden gust of wind struck the fjord, tearing at Quinn's jacket and causing several students to lose their hats. The wall of clouds overhead crept forward, casting a shadow across the Spine Range. To the north, Seth was beginning to fly a little too close to the apex of White Chasm, where the two cliff faces met and the chasm dropped away. That was where the waterfall of air had sucked the second prototype down into the chasm. Seth turned the craft toward the east, no doubt in an attempt to avoid repeating his adventure in the chasm, however the storm front had shifted even as he banked. The craft vanished into the cloud.

Suddenly the crowd went silent. A few students whispered to each other as they waited for Seth to reappear. Still the clouds shifted to the west where they began to pour over the escarpments into the White Chasm.

"He must be lost by now," Irene said.

Quinn realized with horror that she was right. If Seth was trying to escape the clouds, he would need to fly due west as fast as possible. Without being able to see the ground, it would be easy to lose track of which direction was up. To further complicate things, there was real danger that Seth would leave the clouds right into the branches of the crystal tree. He would need to memorize the distance, against the wind, without any visibility.

"Up there!" one of the students cried, pointing to the south-east. Quinn craned his neck around to check the sky where the other students were pointing. Seth had looped back behind them and was approaching from the direction of the campus. He was flying directly over the quad, away from the clouds and into the sun shafts. The light caught the craft at the perfect angle, shining like a mirror on a clear day, glowing brilliant white.

It should not be white.

Panicking, Quinn jogged over to where Vince stood beside his easel. The man's mouth was agape, speechless, with the spyglass hovering loosely just a few inches away from his eye. He did not resist as Quinn yanked the spyglass free from his grip.

Within a few seconds Quinn had managed to track the little airplane and refocus the lenses. Seth's craft was completely covered in a thick coating of ice. He was clearly struggling, and because of the ice on his body, he had removed his brass-rimmed glass goggles. He held one hand in front of his face, no doubt in an attempt to block the incoming stream of cold air.

Perhaps because the craft hit a low pressure bubble, or perhaps because a sudden gust struck the tail, the plane descended in a temporary freefall. Perhaps by instinct, or perhaps by design, Seth pulled up hard on the stick. As the craft recovered from the freefall, the left wing snapped clean off, rose by itself in a twisting helix, spewing shattered wood and fragments of stiff cloth into the sky. The remainder of the craft immediately began to spin as the lone wing rose to one side while the body fell to the other side.

In a sudden flurry of motion, Seth began to unstrap himself from the hapless machine even as it broke apart around him. Quinn lowered his spyglass and started running towards the falling wreckage. "BROTHER!"

Seth SCREAMED.

It happened so fast. Seth vanished beyond one of the belfries at the edge of campus. The screaming stopped.

The students, the professors, and the members of the Aviation Club rushed towards the campus. By the time they arrived, the clouds had descended to obscure their vision. Quinn stepped cautiously through the dense fog, feeling his way across the cobblestones with one foot, narrowly dodging the fragments of shattered wood. He felt something squish under his boot.

It was an eyeball.

"Father Winter!" one student cried. "He's here! Oh! Father Winter!"

Irene screamed.

Turning into the sound, Quinn came across Seth's body. He had exploded into a mass of meat and bones and blood which spanned much of the campus quad. The broken, frozen wreck of the airplane had crashed into the fountain, though the fountain did not look damaged.

Quinn fell to his knees. "Brother," he whispered. A tear trickled down one cheek, but it froze before it could fall free.

A caring hand grabbed his shoulder.

"Another one for the graveyard," Professor Atlas said, shaking his head. "'I take my own risks, brother.' It's the perfect epitaph for his gravestone."

Faster than anyone could have possibly reported the incident, Aden family soldiers marched into the quad, evicting the students and clearing the scene. Shadows shifted through the fog. Billowing black robes worn by figures with glowing purple eyes. They surrounded Quinn. Then, they began to draw their blades, longswords of red crystal and singing blue ethersteel. Quinn saw their inhuman eyes even through his tears.

"Quinn," one of the oculomancers said. "Brother of Seth, the Flying Man. You are accused of committing life insurance fraud. The local constabulary is here to arrest you."

"The Morning Mist has not returned," another oculomancer protested.

"Yana agrees," the first oculomancer said. "It doesn't matter."

Quinn fell limp as the Aden soldiers lifted him off the bloody cobblestones by his arms and hauled him away.