It took them a day to cross the greenhouse and reach the foyer. Vayra and Nathariel veiled their cores as best as they could—they didn’t need to attract anymore unwanted attention. When they reached the miniature entrance of the dome, Vayra had seen no sign of Larra.

“Do you think…she’ll be at the tournament?” Vayra asked.

“We can’t worry about that right now,” Nathariel said. “And if she is, you’ll win. You’ve done it once.”

They left the dome through the main doors. Someone had wedged the doors open—probably curious God-heirs—and all the guardian vines had been ripped off it.

“Alright, Pels,” Vayra whispered. “Do your magic. Get us back to the Harmony.” A few ships had anchored in the two canals outside the dome, but the Harmony wasn’t among them.

They walked across the overgrown plains outside the dome until they reached a large boulder. Pels scrambled up atop it and looked around. After a few seconds, he let out a chuckle, then waved them to the side. “This way, all.”

As they walked, Vayra registered an emptiness beside her. Glade would have been walking there, talking only when needed in a painfully formal tone. He was just…gone.

“How’d he die?” Vayra whispered.

“We were sabotaged,” Nathariel said, understanding immediately. “A God-heir attacked us, and he had been in a temporal rift. The rift fell and collapsed prematurely—with him inside it.” A dribble of regret and remorse entered his voice. “We will need to find a new candidate for his place at the tournament, but it may be too…”

He trailed off when Pels glared at him.

“Apologies,” Nathariel said. “Too soon.”

But Vayra couldn’t help feeling a tightness around her shoulders and a pressure on her back. If she was the only one on their side entering the Skyclash tournament, then she would have to accept Talock’s Godhood. As best as she understood it, such a thing was impossible, and would destroy her if she tried.

But she pushed those thoughts aside. She shouldn’t be feeling that right now. She should be upset that Glade was gone.

All she could feel was numbness. Her mind didn’t want to process it yet.

Finally, when it was midnight and they reached the edge of the field and peered over the canal on the eastern side of the dome, she slumped down to a sitting position.

A few tears leaked out of her eyes. She wiped them away, but that only made more come. Nathariel stood tall and proud, looking side-to-side, but Pels and Phasoné’s ghostly white form knelt down on either side of her.

None of them said anything; they didn’t need to. Phasoné wrapped her arms around Vayra’s back and delivered a tight hug. Pels nodded, and she knew he was there to help.

Finally, Nathariel turned around, his arms crossed. “We need to move, before they…”

“For the Stream’s sake, let her have a minute!” Pels exclaimed.

“Vayra, I am sorry, and I understand your pain, but there is someone coming. We must keep moving.” Nathariel looked back over his shoulder. “Someone is…flying right at us.”

“Wren?” Pels asked. “The bounty hunter?”

“She’s here?” Vayra exclaimed. She wiped her eyes and jumped to her feet.

“She was the one who caused these problems in the first place,” Nathariel said. “She was the one who ambushed us and separated Glade from us, for whatever her purpose might have been.”

“I thought you hit her wing,” Pels said. “Can’t fly with a burnt wing.”

“Perhaps she found a healing elixir.”

Vayra held out her hand, ready to summon the scythe, but Nathariel held up his hand. “Wren was a First Lieutenant. This is a Third Lieutenant—at the peak of the stage, but still only a Third Lieutenant.”

Vayra scrunched her eyebrows. “It’d be suicidal to attack us.”

“Keep moving,” Nathariel said. “Pels, get us to the Harmony. If this person is truly chasing after us, they’ll follow us. If not, we won’t have to worry.”

They turned and ran along the edge of the canal, many fathoms above the freshwater-Streamwater amalgamation. Here, so far from the coast in a wide river, it was stagnant. The east side of the canal had much higher banks—so high that an entire ship, mast, and sails could hide behind the stone walls.

Pels led them to a cove along the canal’s bank—the Harmony’s crew preferred coves as a hiding spot, apparently. It didn’t look purposeful like the rest of the canal; its walls had eroded into concave slopes and there were only young roots reaching down the walls. It was only decades old, at best.

They skirted around the edge, following the curve of the shore. At the very back of the cove, the wall curved even steeper. A curtain of roots and lichen and thin shrubs draped over the edge, but it was especially thick at the back. Only when Vayra looked closely and intently at it for a few seconds did she pick out a few golden gimmers behind the curtain—and that was with the Captain-stage eyesight of her new, reforged body.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Here,” Pels said. He tapped a set of small boulders on the edge of the cove. They didn’t look out of place, and they barely peeked out of the wheat, but they must have meant something to Pels. “It’s a rough symbol we use. No one would notice it without knowing, but I do know. They brought the ship here.”

They jumped down into the cove, plummeting a mast-height and a half. The three of them hit the water with a splash, then swam over to Harmony. They peeled aside the natural curtain just enough to slip into the eroded shelter of mut and roots. A few of the ships’ sentries yelled at them—until Pels called out and identified himself.

“They’re back!” someone yelled. “Run out the oars! Get her moving!”

They climbed up the ladder on the side of the ship. Now, Vayra’s entire mechanical hand was refusing to respond to commands, and it let off a few sparks of Arcara, but she didn’t need it to help herself climb.

When they reached the Harmony’s main deck, the ship was starting to pull out of the cove. There wasn’t any wind this deep in the cove, but the sailors pushed oars out the gun ports and rowed the ship out into the canal—with no sails on the mast whatsoever.

Pels ran up to the ship’s quarterdeck and shouted out commands to the crew, then took the wheel himself and steered.

“Any word on that Third Lieutenant?” Vayra asked Nathariel softly.

“Still approaching,” said Nathariel. “Altered course to match us, and is now flying down the canal towards us.”

Vayra ran back to the Harmony’s quarterdeck, then all the way to the stern railing. She leaned out between the lanterns and stared as far back as she could. The Harmony pulled out of the cove and sloshed into the canal beyond, swaying gently as the sailors rowed.

Nathariel stood a few steps behind her, his fingertips glowing orange. “It is a sword-Path…God-heir?” He narrowed his eyes, then his face softened. A few seconds later, he raised his eyebrows. “Your senses should be starting to develop, now. Tell me what you feel.”

Vayra tried to lock onto the distant pressure that this person exerted. In the canal, flying just above the water, someone approached. He had the physique of a man, and he stood on a five-foot-long giant sword with a splayed tip. A wake of water rose behind him. He was catching up…

‘You spiritual senses, Vayra,’ Phasoné reminded her.

Right.

She focussed on the pressure. From Nathariel, there was an immense weight—and an immense sense of potential. From the approaching God-heir, there was only a minor pressure, and almost no sense of potential.

From the mortal officers and sailors on the quarterdeck, she felt absolutely no pressure, and potential so small it may as well have been non-existent.

“So…he’s not a God-heir,” Vayra breathed, turning her attention back to the stern of the ship. A tattered black coat fluttered behind the man, and a longsword hung at his hip. His hair was white, but it wasn’t a wig. “It’s…it’s Glade?”

image [https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_2bcdeab6626a49c1bc2fa21d230a67c6~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_560,h_281,al_c,lg_1,q_85,enc_auto/ship%20better.png]

Glade had stayed in the fortress with Ameena until she woke up. He’d offered to bring her with him, but she said she’d rather stay behind and look for some more weapons and elixirs, so they parted ways.

She was looking to reach Captain soon, too.

Glade himself had spent a few more hours searching the fortress, and he’d found a few powerful elixirs and spirit wines in the old mess hall. He had loaded them all into his newly-acquired voidhorn before setting off.

He flew through the night, standing on the back of the swordwyrm. The wyrm still controlled the giant sword, but it responded to Glade’s signals diligently. When he shifted his weight forwards, it flew forwards, and when he leaned side-to-side, the weapon obeyed just as well.

As he flew, he slalomed for practice. He wove a complex path through the air as he crossed the dome, feeling how the swordwyrm responded to him. He tucked his hands behind his back—it was easier to consolidate his weight that way.

Just before midnight, he reached the edge of the greenhouse. He tucked his head and flew through the foyer and out into the empty air of the night.

The central wall of the facility had fallen, and that had to have been Vayra’s doing. She would be outside somewhere—with how much extra time he had spent in the fortress, she would have made it outside already.

He had to catch up before they left without him. They thought he was dead.

When he saw a glimmer of pure white light on the edge of the eastern canal, he knew he’d found her.

He navigated down the canal, passing between two smaller sloops belonging to a few low-tier God-heirs, before dipping down and skimmed along the surface of the water. He bent down lower on the swordwyrm and patted the tip. “Think we can get going any faster?”

The swordwyrm tipped forward further. Glade widened his stance, and the weapon shot off, creating a wake behind them.

The Harmony dipped out of a cove, oars poking out of its gunports. On the planetary sea, its speed was no match for the swordwyrm. Glade stayed low until the last moment, then shifted his weight and angled the sword up. They pulled into a steep ascent, barely clearing the stern railing. Glade hopped off the blade and landed in a crouch on the quarterdeck. The swordwyrm flipped around and stood upright, hovering in the air behind him.

Vayra and Nathariel stood at the stern railing, staring at him.

Before he could open his mouth, Vayra ran towards him and grabbed him in a tight hug. Her lip quivered, but she said nothing.

“We thought you had died, boy,” Nathariel said. Still, his shoulders relaxed, and his face shifted with relief.

When Vayra finally pulled away, Glade nodded. “I am sorry for the scare. But I made it out of the rift just before it closed. There was no way I would catch up to you, so I made the most of my time on the ground.”

“Lieutenant?” Vayra asked, stepping back.

Something was different about her. Her face was the same shape, and she was clearly the same person—not accounting for the new feathery accents—but her features were more refined and elegant. No longer did he see a terrified street rat, but a competent and refined young woman.

She had made it to Captain. He didn’t need any fancy senses to tell that. He offered a smile, then dipped his head respectfully. “Congratulations.”

“We…we have a little ways to go, still, if we want to raise you up in time for the tournament,” Vayra said.

Nathariel turned away from the railing and motioned with his hand. “Come along, both of you. Vayra, we need to fix your hand. Glade, we have work to do. And we still have a few days before we make it back to the coast. It’d be a shame to let them go to waste.”