Of all the academies at the University of White Chasm, Quinn's favorite by far was the Academy of Special Sciences. The offices and lecture halls could be found among the noble minarets and towering belfries of the southern quarter. While the wooden and stone buildings felt neglected at best, or haunted at worst, the marble buildings in the far south were warm, well-lit, and comfortable.

They found Professor Atlas vin Truscae alone in his office behind a massive, mirror-like black desk. The ancient fossil of a man was bald except for a few gray whiskers above his ears. Huge round spectacles magnified the man's eyes to comical proportions as he watched Seth and Quinn shuffle in. In addition to huge stacks of paper, the professor also had a burning ether candle in the corner of his desk, filling the room with a subtle cyan haze.

"Professor Atlas?" Quinn asked. "Professor Morne told us your office hours are today."

Professor Atlas shuffled through his desk and produced a flip-open chronometer. When he opened the thing, it made a rhythmic ticking sound. He stuffed the device back in his desk and said, "A few minutes early, but I'm not picky. Please have a seat. Are you thinking of joining my class?"

"If there is room."

"The class takes place outdoors, rain or shine. We practice ethermancy on the field to the south, between here and the town. There is a guided self-study for students looking for job training. Once you have learned how to use the etherscribe, you will be responsible for loading the correct weaves into your aura before each class."

"In that case we would like to join," Quinn said. "Unfortunately, we are behind the rest of the class already."

"We were hoping you would be able to help us get caught up," Seth added.

"Of course, that is precisely the purpose of these office hours."

The professor hobbled to his feet and stalked over to the blackboard on the far wall. Every inch of the dark green surface was coated in some type of arcane equation. The professor gave the blackboard a swift upward heave, and it began to slide effortlessly along clever tracks, all the way to the roof of the office, revealing a perfectly clean blackboard underneath.

"The special science of ethermancy is an interaction between two fundamental forces," Professor Atlas began.

He drew two huge circles using white chalk. In the middle of the left circle, he drew a filled-in circle using blue chalk. He made an identical pink ball in the right circle.

"The two forces are dream-ether and spirit-ether," the professor continued. He pointed to the blue ball. "The geologists say that deep down in the very center of our world, which is shaped like a sphere, there is an inexhaustible source of dream-ether. It bleeds up through the stone into our atmosphere, where it becomes available for use in ethermancy." Next he pointed to the pink ball. "By contrast, the Sister World contains an inexhaustible source of spirit-ether. Spirit-ether can be arranged into a sphere, called an aura, and the inner surface of the sphere can be inscribed with weaves."

He began drawing a maze-like pattern in one corner, with the word "weave" nearby.

"Once the aura has been inscribed with a weave, dream-ether can be claimed and consumed in order to activate the weave. Activating weaves at will is called ethermancy. Weaves are generally used to create fire for steam engines, but there are many other types of weave as well."

"Professor?" Quinn asked. "If all the spirit-ether is on the Sister World, then how did the banks get it?"

"Very inquisitive! If only my other students shared your curiosity. They are too preoccupied with their job training. Hah!" He drew what appeared to be a lightning bolt between the two white circles. "It is simple. Dream-ether interacts with spirit-ether in strange ways. Very high concentrations of dream-ether can attract free spirit-ether at a distance. Geologists believe that during some super ancient era, long before human settlers came to this world, high concentrations of dream-ether in the atmosphere occurred perhaps once every one hundred thousand years. The exact opposite of Ethersleep. Such concentrations would occur at random, and they would feed on themselves, drawing more and more dream-ether into a shining sun, until one day a bolt of spirit-ether spanned the gap between the two worlds, causing both types of ether to disperse throughout the atmosphere."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"So the banks went around collecting all the spirit-ether?" Quinn asked.

"Yes, though they kept well hidden the methods they used. It is not known whether there is more spirit-ether in the upper atmosphere, or if it has all been collected already. Either way, the banks have a monopoly on the stuff. The oculomancers can see auras at a distance, which allows them to keep track of where people take them."

"Wait!" Quinn said, suddenly excited. "On clear days, I can see a long conduit of air leading to the Sister World. Is it possible to fly there?"

"Fly?" the professor asked. "You mean fly with a flying machine? I don't think so. I flew on one once, up to the greenhouses on the side of Spire Lyn. It was a gigantic balloon filled with hot air. I swore to never ride on one of those death traps ever again. They are hard enough to navigate even with ropes and soldiers on the ground guiding them."

"Not that kind of flying machine," Quinn said. He slipped the design for Seth's kite out of his jacket and set it on the professor's desk. "Something more like this, with wings like a bird."

"Oh! Yes, if you could construct such a craft, you could fly to the Sister World. However, such a trip would be pointless. Aura maidens need to spend a great deal of dream-ether just to transfer spirit-ether to another person. In other words, it costs dream-ether to collect and transfer spirit-ether. You would need to somehow carry an entire steamboat worth of ether candles just to attract a tiny aura on the Sister World. And I don't think this little kite of yours would be able to lift cargo with that weight. Also, the Sister World is believed to be a huge, inhospitable desert, so much of your cargo space would be occupied with food and water. Finally, after expending the resources of an entire kingdom for each trip, you would end up with a tiny aura, insignificant when compared to the vast auras of the Heritors."

"But it is possible, right?" Quinn asked.

"Yes it is possible, but it would be so uneconomical that even the witches at the top of the spires would never do such a thing. Think about it. The witches and their oculomancer servants have had centuries of time and vast resources to throw at the problem of inventing flying machines. If it was economical to fetch spirit-ether from the Sister World using that method, they certainly would have done so by now."

"How do we know they aren't doing that already?" Seth asked.

"I believe that the witches, along with their banks, Heritors, and oculomancers, have a strong incentive to not search for new sources of spirit-ether. They control all the stuff already, which means they can literally charge whatever they want. If they were somehow getting more spirit-ether from the Sister World, then what you would expect to see is a reduction in price over time, or an increase in the number of Heritors, or an increase in the size or quantity of the auras on the market."

"That's fair," Seth admitted.

"What if the witches are simply hoarding it for themselves?" Quinn asked. "Without giving it to the banks."

"For what purpose?" the professor asked. "They are witches! They don't need auras to use ethermancy. They can just consume dream-ether directly."

"So the only people in the world with an incentive and the resources to invent new flying machines," Quinn said, "would be the Heritors. And they have sworn oaths to never invent new flying machines!"

Quinn suddenly felt stupid for admitting his knowledge of the Heritor oaths.

The professor looked dumbfounded. "I did not know that Heritors swore such oaths," he said. "It may be as you say. They have resources and perhaps they might succumb to the temptation to try to compete with the witches." He shrugged. "Either way, flying machines are very dangerous things. Please, follow me, there is something I want to show you."

He led them through the campus to the far north-eastern corner. There he showed them a small graveyard deep in the shadow of the eastern bluffs. The tombstones were shattered, ancient things, coated in moss and lichens.

"Please take a look around and read the headstones," Professor Atlas said.

Seth and Quinn did so, taking different paths through the graveyard, reading the inscriptions.

Here rests Marty, who looked to the sky and dreamed to fly, one inscription read.

Rest in peace Chad, who paid the blood price of the sky.

All of the gravestones had the same theme. They all mentioned the sky, or flying, or dreaming of new business ventures on the Sister World.

Professor Atlas beckoned them over to the gate where he stood, his voice muffled by the fog and light snow.

"This is a special graveyard for the students at the University who died trying to invent flying machines," the professor said. "It's just an old tradition. You are not the first students to look to the Sister World with dreams of tapping into that vast wealth. Many students attempt to solve the problem, and they either give up or they end up buried here." He shrugged again. "It's up to you though. Nobody is going to try to stop you from pursuing this venture."

The professor turned and walked away.

"One more thing," he rasped. "Don't let Dean Yana Justicia Sophia find out about your plans. She will make you pay all four years of tuition up front. Haha!"