“We need to decide what to do,” I said to the gathered high council. “Whether to try and make contact with this storm lord, or no.”

I was back in the cave speaking with the high council, minus Valir. I had explained everything regarding my meeting with the air elemental, and my promise to return. We stood in a small circle in the cave’s main chamber, near Hassina’s ever-growing slate of numbers.

“And Valir doesn’t need to be here?” Seriana asked.

Zirilla laughed. “He’ll just agree with Aziriel. There’s no need to call him back.”

“All right then,” said Hassina. “But just a note before we start.”

“Go ahead,” I told her.

“Obviously, Mirio is very young and probably doesn’t even know the full implications of the storm lord’s presence,” said Hassina. “We should explain it all to him just so we’re all caught up.”

“Actually,” Mirio said, not seeming to have taken offense at all. “I’m quite familiar with skyborne elemental mechanics—you need to be, to be a archdruid.”

“She’s joking, Mirio,” I said. “She’s in need of the lesson herself.” I glanced at Hassina. Smiled. “She’s only three hundred, after all.”

“—and twenty,” Hassina added, somewhat reminding me of a small child who was proud to add a half-year to their age.

“It won’t take long to explain,” said Zirilla. She turned to Hassina. “Air and water elementals degrade quickly as a consequence of their fluid forms. This means they have short life span, but they can extend that life span by consuming skill keys. They can coalesce [Air] out of air that’s abundant with aspect, just like we can, but when the aspect of [Air] starts to thin, only the intelligent ones can figure out how to siphon it and take more. When we discovered that the atmosphere had been siphoned of its aspect, we figured there were intelligent air elementals, here.”

“That’s… a lot of elementals,” Hassina said, her eyes widening.

“Likely many hundreds of millions,” said Zirilla. “And my guess is that perhaps ten million or more of them intelligent.” She shrugged. “Who knows? They are no threat to us, really: it’s not in their nature to form societies, draw borders, or dominate others. Aziriel knew we’d find the air elementals, but what she and I have really been worried about are storm lords.”

“So what you’re saying is that we’re in the worst-case scenario,” Hassina said.

Zirilla nodded. “For a storm lord to arise, you need a stable, intelligent elemental of air and lightning that survives long enough to dominate, then cultivates a population of more air and lightning elementals over time, slowly spreading their presence across the skies.” She made a vague gesture, seemingly unsure of how to explain what came next. “Lightning elementals tend to consume themselves within milliseconds of forming. We’re not really sure about this next part, but the leading theory is that extraordinary circumstances can lead to a lightning elemental stabilizing as an elemental of lightning and air. One forms, throws itself randomly—which is what they do—and manages to hit some high-essence target, kills it, then changes into something more stable by taking a new class the instant before it finishes consuming itself.”

Zirilla shrugged. “It’s a set of events that have a freakishly small chance of occurring. But with a lot of atmosphere, and a lot of time… the prevailing theory in the old realms is that this has happened once, on Teriax. All storm lords that we know of can be traced back to that realm.” She fixed Hassina with a significant look. “Bear in mind, though—this is all just theory. We don’t really know where they come from.”

“All right,” Hassina said. “You said they survive long enough to dominate. Will they always dominate? Even here, with more essence, more mana, seemingly different possibilities for life?”

Zirilla nodded. “I see no reason why not. [Lightning] is too great an advantage, and the mana-dense air will make it stronger. Once a stable elemental can throw lighting, the others stand no chance against them. Air elementals are made of air and mana. The air offers no defense against lightning, which eats the mana as fuel. Beasts of the sky may fare a little better, but also have no offense capable of harming a creature made of pure air. Hence, wherever they are found, storm lords rule the skies.”

Hassina listened to all of this, her expression become graver as she looked around at all our faces. “And we’re not going to be changing that, I take it.”

“No,” Zirilla and I both said at once. But it was her area: I nodded for her to speak.

“Aziriel has fought a storm lord three times without the aide of one of the manahearts,” said Zirilla. “She won once. And these were not the elementals of this world, which is drowning in power. Against powerful elementals, we must rely on the mages.”

Archmage Seriana let out a humorless note of laughter. “And we can’t bind a storm lord. Not in our current state, and never permanently.” She looked at me. “Even if we had the strength to bind one enough that it could be seriously harmed or destroyed, Zirilla made it clear that there will be more. In my experience they are hierarchical when it comes to species—even the natural rivalries that develop between storm lords will be set aside to punish us if we dare to kill one of them. The whole of their race would see cause to reassert the proper order of things.”

“That’s….” Hassina worked her mouth, frowned, apparently at a loss to comment.

“That’s where we are,” said Zirilla. “We need the air keys, but we can’t coalesce them. And while we may trade the air elementals for them, to do so will draw the attention of a being with enough power to utterly destroy us—a being whose temperament and motives we know very little of.”

“But not nothing,” said Seriana. “The storm lords of other realms have some in common—though you’d know more on that matter than I, Zirilla.”

“They have a dual nature,” Zirilla said. “Split between the carelessness, the curiousness, and the frivolity of air elementals—and the domineering ambition of lightning. This latter temperament is fearsome, but it is again two-sided. Storm lords form hierarchies. Most would see destroying us as beneath them, a sign that they fear creatures from the surface, which they pride themselves in caring little for. Relating to us more as a lord to their subjects would, in my experience, be more satisfactory.”

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“If I may….” It was Mirio. All of us turned to him and he seemed to deflate under the attention. “I, ah, only wanted to say that this world is ripe with power. It may well be that these storm lords have more to fear from the surface than any we’ve known, and have adjusted accordingly. Also, if our current theory is that all known storm lords spread forth from the realm of Teriax, and this is true, then the known storm lords might have many commonalities to their nature that we can’t rely on, here.”

“He’s right,” I said. “There are a lot of unknowns, here.”

“With all that said, I think we should avoid contact,” said Seriana. “Even a sliver of a chance that our colony is destroyed is too great.”

Zirilla shook her head. “We’re weak and vulnerable as it is,” she said. “Both to disasters, and to monsters. [Air] keys will help us find the safest ground, and hunt the best prey, fastest. [Air] keys would help us dispense with all the other chances the colony gets destroyed.”

“I thought the risk posed by monsters was slim,” said Seriana. She didn’t sound accusatory, just curious. “Aziriel was strong enough to kill Palefang, and has only grown stronger since. What exactly are we afraid of, when you say monsters?”

“We are afraid of the things that primeval convergences are made to deter,” said Mirio. “Roaming predators, or packs of predators, who have grown strong over time, who move about and kill as they wish, devastating entire ecologies. We don’t know how slim the chance is—whether Palefang had to frequently hide from a roving beast or not, we can’t say.”

“Hm,” said Hassina. “It seems to me that all our fears are chances whose likelihoods we can’t even guess at. Not exactly an ideal position.”

“No,” I said. “Ultimately, we have two options. We can avoid further contact with elementals. We don’t seek to draw the storm lord’s attention, and any further [Air] keys we gain from killing creatures such as the wyverns. Seven and a half thousand [Air 2]’s will meet the needs of the current population when it comes to developing air power.”

“Which at the current rate,” Hassina said. “Is twenty three and a half thousand wyverns.”

Mirio was shaking his head. “Even using the most generous estimates for population per peak, and allowing for total depletion of populations, that’s still a great many mountains to scour. And I don’t see us finding many other options—our being so near to mountains covered in [Air 2] keys already feels like a fortunate happenstance. We can’t expect to find them in the forests or the swamps.”

“Hunting the peaks is also a dangerous proposition,” I said. “Palefang deliberately culled any threats to his dominance that arose on this mountain. The other mountains will bear stronger beasts, be further from our settlement, and potentially lie under the skies of more hostile storm lords. The creatures I met even today made one thing clear to me: the windcallers we send ranging into new territories will need more than just basic flight, more than just the skills needed to keep them in the air permanently. They’ll need to be fast, and have deterrents in the case of attack.”

“Normally I’d suggest going higher,” said Zirilla. She shook her head. “But you said that by the storm lord’s decree, they need to fly beneath the third mist layer—thicker air, closer to the ground, more predators.”

I nodded. “Our second option, then, is that we try to stick to what the plan would be if there were no storm lord. We arrange a concert, hoping to negotiate for [Air] keys. But we take precautions in case of attack.”

“Given what I know, that’s the option I favor,” said Zirilla. “For one thing, the air elementals themselves can freely gather their own [Air] keys, and at least some of them will be willing to trade for music, I’m sure. For another, even with all the unknowns, I still don’t think that the storm lord will wish to destroy us. If Aziriel makes her rendezvous tomorrow, she can probe to determine this storm lord’s personality.”

“A domineering lord can be negotiated with,” I said, thinking. “Our interests can be made to align, and their ego satiated. A capricious and temperamental lord wouldn’t be ideal, but could still work for us.” I shook my head. “No, it’s paranoia that I think we have to fear. A paranoid storm lord can’t have long-term relations with a growing civilization. He will look upon us someday and, in a flash of sudden fear at our progress, seek to destroy us.”

“All right, then,” said Seriana. “I still have my reservations, but knowledge is our best defense, and I at least see that we have a great deal of this new world to scout and assess before we can truly feel secure. If Zirilla and Aziriel are for it, so am I.”

“Then Fireesha will make me an artifact of [Elemental Telepathy],” I said, nodding. “And I’ll go ahead with the plan.”

“One more thing,” Zirilla said, eying me. “I’d say it bears mentioning now.”

I knew what she was getting at. She nodded to me, apparently considering this my area of expertise, not hers—though whether that was because I was foremost in the current, temporary high council and decider of civic matters, or foremost in powers of lightning, I couldn’t say.

“We don’t share our secrets of lightning,” I said. “We don’t allude to them, either. The storm lords will easily assume that we have nothing to teach them of their own great weaponry—and this isn’t an assumption we will correct. If we should furnish the lord of these skies with new powers that draw the attentions of his territorial kin, we could find ourselves objects of their desire—and at the center of a devastating war for territory. For now my lightning is nothing impressive, but more aspects, more skills, and I’ll have powers I won’t wish to use above the mist layers.”

“Obviously that command is more for the elementalists than for everyone,” said Zirilla. “But it’s best to be clear on the policy from the first.” She paused, seemed to consider something, then turned to Hassina. “You know that if everything goes according to plan, it’s all going to fall on you, your holiness?”

“That much has been made clear,” Hassina said coolly.

Zirilla’s expression became a challenge. “And you have no issue with this—this, too, is an occasion that warrants your courage?”

I frowned, glancing over at Zirilla. Her voice had held a note of casual hostility to it.

Hassina’s face was statuesque. “I will see to my duties, as always.”

It was Hassina’s story, I realized. Zirilla was angry at her for telling the tale of Narana at Ithmel Bel.

I felt the corner of my mouth twitch with displeasure. Was this something I would have to deal with?

“Not just her,” I said, moving past the problem for now. “Seriana as well. In the event of a concert and negotiations, we need the mages to compose a binding spell meant to hold the storm lord long enough that our people can retreat as the colony is led deeper into the earth.”

“Storing the mana could be seen as a threat,” Seriana said. “But if can access the site beforehand, we can build a conduit from mana wells underground. As for the spell… we’re only going to be able to do so much.”

“We’ll only need a few moments to pull the orchestra back into the tunnels,” I said. “If need be, a carven shaft with some windcallers at the bottom will have to do.”

“At this point we’re getting into minutiae,” said Zirilla. “The plan is set for now, and we’re all busy enough as it is.” She turned to me. “Dismissed?”

“Yes, but you stay,” I said. “I need you and Hassina for a moment.”

Zirilla seemed to hesitate as the others took off. She spared an impatient glance toward the high priest. “What is it, Aziriel?”

Her worry was unfounded—I didn’t want to talk about the story, not yet at least. I smiled. “I said earlier that I met some creatures that left me worried. Really, it was only one creature.”

Zirilla eyed me—and as realization dawned on her face, she slowly matched my smile. “Aziriel.”

I returned her smile. “You and I are going on a hunt.”