The Seatstorm had taken almost an hour to coast through, and when Adeena re-emerged onto the deck of the Brightspark her ears were still ringing from the combination of roiling thunder and Clawdia's terrified yowling. The air within the mountain's tunnels was still, and eerily quiet as they coasted forward in pitch blackness, the only sounds the creak of timber, the only light the lanterns the crew had lit and the floating crstyal buoys that shed green light out into the void. The Brightspark crawled between the tiny islands of light, keeping them firmly to port.

"Problem, Captain Yassin?" asked Captain Bloodmoon stiffly as she made her way to the bridge.

"No, just wanted some air," said Adeena, peering into the darkness and catching a glimpse of reflected light, here and there, from the dark crystalline formations embedded in the walls. "I wouldn't recommend sharing a cabin with a screaming grimalkin. I'm not in the way?"

"No, no," said Bloodmoon, her voice relaxing somewhat when she realised Adeena wasn't going to reopen their argument. "Magma tunnels are about three hundred metres across here. Most passengers find it disturbing – flying more or less blind."

On Ruvera, generally, if it was pitch black, you stayed inside and as close to a fire as you could, and waited for the Long Night to pass. Darkness was strange and frightening. Only the cave elves and the dwarves had chosen to live where the sun never shone, and most of them were dead. The dark had never held quite the same terror for Adeena as it had for many others, but it was still unsettling in its strangeness.

"I can't say I'd come here by preference," said Adeena. "And idea how long until we reach the caldera?"

"Regulations mean we have to cut speed, even while coasting, so about two hours," said Bloodmoon. "Don't worry, this is one of the well trafficked tunnels – and there hasn't been an accident in hundreds of cycles. We're safer in here than in the Seatstorm."

Ahead of them there was a faint orange glow, and slowly the shape of another ship slipped into view, coming from the other direction. Sleek and metal, it was one of the newer Imperial Airships, lit up by lanterns. There were crew dressed in similar uniforms to Bloodmoon moving about, and they saluted as they passed by. Bloodmoon returned the gesture; Adeena didn't salute.

"They're heading out this late?" asked Adeena as the glow retreated behind them. "Isn't that dangerous?"

"Newer ships can weather the first few periods of the Long Night – so long as we don't get a really bad blizzard come through," said Bloodmoon. "They're probably going to Overnight in one of the closer forts. Last minute reinforcements, maybe. There's been an uptick in monster activity the past few cycles, command is probably being extra careful."

"An uptick?" asked Adeena.

While she and other denizens of the Shattered Sea saw Imperial Forces semi-regularly, usually floating above convoys of rice, they were seeing only the tiniest fraction of their forces. The bulk of the troops and materiel were permanently deployed in the two dozen fortresses that ran along the five hundred kilometre long Wardline, where they guarded against monsters that wandered over. The Wardline stopped the Wyrd, but not the creatures who came through from the various realms where they overlapped with the Real.

"Happens from time to time," said Bloodmoon. "Unlucky convergence of realms along the border. Usually when you get too many areas of Pandemonium – the damn devils are tough and coordinated, and always try to take a fortress. That soaks up resources from the entire line, so the Fey and Shadowmere and Unseeming monsters get in further, sometimes as far as the border towns… it can be a real mess."

"Huh," said Adeena. She'd known that the Imperium, despite the massive Wardline protecting it from having its dimensions shattered, had to invest significant resources in holding the border. However, she had sort of assumed it was mainly just dealing with the odd troll or shoggoth that wandered in. But the way Bloodmoon made it sound, it seemed like keeping the peninsula safe was significantly more involved than that. Perhaps the reason for having the largest military in the world wasn't just rampant draconic paranoia?

"Or the situation we had, hmm, must be a hundred cycles ago?" continued Bloodmoon. "About ten shifts of nothing but Pandemonium and Elysium along the entire line. They were mostly trying to kill each other, but we still lost seven ships. Lord Adamantius and some of High Command had to get directly involved. It's why the Seat was moved here – rapid response, if needed."

"Huh," said Adeena again.

"Silvers say they're 'working on a solution,' but 'working on' probably means it'll be done by the time my grandkids are my age," she laughed. "They don't see time the way we do. Well, you're an elf, so maybe you have some idea?"

Adeena shrugged. "I'm one and a half thousand, not a hundred thousand," she said.

"So you're a Survivor?" said Bloodmoon carefully. "Didn't think, well, based on our earlier discussion…"

"I wasn't try to paint it as sunshine and roses," said Adeena. "In some ways it was worse than…" She trailed off. "Is that another ship?"

Bloodmoon followed her gaze ahead, past two buoys and what must have been a curve in the tunnel, where a deep orange-red glow was highlighting the jagged edges. It was much stronger than the lanterns from the other ship had been, perhaps a dreadnought-

"All hands!" shouted Bloodmoon, running over and ringing the bridge's bell. "All hands, prepare for search and rescue! We have a ship down! Helm, increase speed! Communications, signal the Seat!"

Adeena stepped out of the way as the crew began running around, setting up rope ladders, bringing up medical supplies, and proving that even as commander of a postal ship, Bloodmoon trained and ran a tight crew.

There was a whirring sound as the Brightspark picked up speed, and she heard a faint groan from the ship's bound elemental. Behind her Xavier and Clawdia made their way up onto deck, flanked by Heidi and… whatever the goblin and human were called.

"Whats going on, Captain?" asked Xavier.

"Bloodmoon thinks there is a downed airship ahead, search and rescue," said Adeena. "We'll let them take the lead, but Xavier, there will be wounded; Clawdia, we'll probably need some more light. The rest of you, try not to get in the way."

"Otto can help!" said Heidi. "He's great at reconnaissance!"

"Otto?" said Adeena, looking at the goblin and human. "Which one of you is Otto?"

"I'm Lars," said the Goblin, sniffing and thumbing the hilt of his dagger.

"And I'm Karl," said the human, crossing his arms over his brand new chain-mail that for some reason he was wearing aboard a civilian ship. "You don't even remember our names?"

"No, Captain, Otto is my drone," said Heidi, reaching into her bag and pulling out a small robotic dog. Even as she watched, a propeller emerged from its back and began to whirr, lifting the deranged contraption into the air. Its glass eyes lit up blue, and it opened its mouth jerkily and produced some kind of synthetic bark. "See?"

'Karl' and 'Lars' seemed impressed, Xavier looked scandalised, and Clawdia looked disgusted – although that probably had more to do with its canine than artificial nature. Artificers, Adeena reminded herself, were very strange. Rather that just sticking to normal sorcery, they insisted on making weird half-machine, half-magic contraptions that normally no one else could even begin to figure out how to use.

"Ok, fine," said Adeena. "Just don't get in the way."

The Brightspark rounded the corner, and Adeena had just enough time to see a massive, flaming wreck of a ship before a beam of blue light erupted from the darkness and struck the hull.

The decking pitched, and Adeena lost her footing as something massive exploded at the back of the craft. And then she was falling, the world nothing but a swirling mass of burning debris and screaming people. The crystal-lined tunnel floor glowed like the Allfather's rings in the light of the cascading explosions as it raced up to meet her.

She landed with a terrible crunch and bounced, once, twice, then three times before she hit an unfortunately aligned shard of sharp crystal that rammed itself through her stomach and out the other side.

"Ow," she gasped, gripping the sharp crystal with bloodied fingers, trying and failing to pull herself off it. Her vision flickered, and within her she felt the spark within her heart surge in response. Blazing golden fire raced through her veins as she lost her grip on her consciousness, and her last thought before it consumed her was that it was going to ruin the rest of her cigars.

Then the spark ignited, and she let loose an agonised scream as she was wrenched back into full consciousness and golden fire exploded from every pore in her body. Crystalline peals of birdsong rang through the massive tunnel, so loud that they briefly drowned out the sounds of screams and exploding machinery as the rest of the Brightspark went down ahead of her.

Then the fire retreated back into her body, and Adeena slumped to the charred ground. The crystal that had been sticking through her stomach was in a million pieces all around her, and the skin it had pierced was smooth and whole, visible through the hole in her favourite jacket which, like every item of clothing she owned was, by necessity, enchanted to be fireproof.

She closed her eyes and lay still as the all-too-familiar post-resurrection pains took over: a deep, throbbing, jagged ache in every part of her body.

There was a flapping sound, and she cracked an eye open to see a large tawny owl land next to her.

"We both know you're faking, Captain," said Xavier.

The owl's its form shifted and twisted, resolving into the familiar shape of Xavier, who squatted next to her and placing his hands on her shoulders.

"Fuck you," she said weakly as soothing green magic washed over her, banishing the worst of the aching pain and the intense fatigue. "You have no idea how much that hurts."

"Oh yes, 'woe is me, pity this poor immortal,'" he said, releasing his spell. "There, better?"

"A bit," she said grimacing. "What's going on? Status?"

"The gnome had some kind of slow-fall belt – I told her to head in this direction. Clawdia cast that ridiculous bouncing shield – she's probably a couple of miles down the tunnel by now, the damn idiot," he said, before pausing. "Lost sight of the human and the goblin."

"Find them – I need a moment," she said, levering herself carefully into a sitting position. "And figure out what shot us down if you can."

Xavier nodded and transformed again, taking off and vanishing into the darkness. Her friend's spell had taken the worst of the pain away, and over the next minute she managed to coax her complaining body into standing. Time was, she'd have just healed herself, but those days were behind her, and her Oathsworn powers rarely heeded her anymore.

"Captain! You're OK!" came Heidi's voice a minute or so later. "I thought for sure you were dead! You were falling at such an extreme velocity-"

"Tougher than I look," she said. "Report, Private Hammerschmidt."

Heidi saluted. "Yes, Captain!"

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"Don't do that!" snapped Adeena, before rubbing her forehead. "Sorry, I just hate saluting – go on."

"Um, yes ma'am, sorry ma'am," Heidi said. "From what I saw, the bulk of the Brightspark crashed into the side of the tunnel approximately five hundred and twelve meters from this position. I saw First Lieutenant Clawdia use some kind of shield to protect herself, and Vice-Captain Xavier took owl form and directed me 'towards the birdsong.' I am unsure as to the whereabouts of Private Grimstar and Private Blackstone, although given what I know of their abilities, it seems, erm, unlikely they survived."

"Did you see what shot us down?" asked Adeena.

"No, although my goggles registered the energy wave as hyper-entropic in nature," said the surprisingly competent gnome. "Which means, assuming it was not a mage, it is likely a creature of the-"

"-Unseeming," completed Adeena. "What the hell is one of them doing underneath the Seat of the Stars?"

"I have no idea, Captain, only empty conjecture," said the gnome. There was a ping sound, and she pulled her goggles down. "Captain, Otto has located Private Blackstone. He…"

Her voice faltered.

"He appears to be deceased," said Heidi in a weak voice as she pulled the goggles back onto her forehead.

"Appears?" said Adeena. "What does that mean?"

"He is… in several pieces," said Heidi.

A familiar tightness settled in her chest. This wasn't even the mission, and she was already losing people. She couldn't have predicted they'd be shot down, that wasn't a foreseeable risk, but all the same, she still felt guilty. She always felt guilty. She was their Captain, it was her job to look after them, and Karl, like so many, was someone she'd let down…

It hadn't always been like this, had it? She never remembered it being so hard back in the golden cycles.

Stupid kid, she remembered from his interview that he'd been full of heroic tales of monster-slaying and finding treasure in the 'Old World.' Barely a hundred and thirty cycles, a veritable baby. She should have knocked him back, told him to go see a bit more of the world, try to get an apprenticeship or something. But he'd been so eager, and had begged her for a chance to 'let him prove himself,' and she, stupid old woman she was, hadn't been able to say no.

Usually, she said some small prayer to whatever God they followed, but she hadn't even learnt if he worshipped, let alone who. A proper burial and a letter to his next of kin, that was all she could see to now – once the crisis was over. She could already see the words in her head: I am regretfully writing to inform you-

She pushed away the thought; now was not the time.

"Make… make a note of the location," said Adeena, ignoring her still aching body and drawing her sword as she stood. "We're heading for the wreckage. Keep a lookout for survivors, and stay vigilant. Whatever shot us down is still out there, and it can probably see a lot better in the dark than we can. I'm not planning on losing any more people today."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Moving through the forest of crystalline outcroppings was eerie. Ahead of them the wreck of the Brightspark burned, periodic explosions sending gouts of flame and debris high into the air. Some ways up and to their left the first, larger wreck continued to burn, and strange, eldritch, wet-sounding gurgles filled the air, along with the occasional scream that confirmed there were some survivors – at least, for the moment. However, the sounds grew progressively more infrequent as Adeena and Heidi approached what remained of the Brightspark, until they faded away entirely as they stepped into the circle of firelight.

The Brightspark had broken apart on impact, and was strewn across a hundred or so meters. There were bodies here and there, some very obviously dead, others perhaps clinging to life. She moved to the closest of them, a goblin man face down in the dirt and unrecognisable beneath a thin later of ash and dirt. She checked for a pulse and found one – faint, but definitely there.

"He's alive," said Adeena, gently rolling them over and wiping some ash from their face. It wasn't Lars. He had several broken bones, and did not stir. "Barely."

"Private Grimstar?" asked Heidi.

"No," she said, standing back up. "Another passenger, from the looks."

"But you're an incredibly powerful Oathsworn, right?" said Heidi. "You can heal him?"

"No, I can't," said Adeena, wiping her filthy hands clean on her jacket.

"But I read-"

"That was a long time ago," said Adeena, putting her fingers to her lips and letting loose a short, sharp whistle.

"What was that?" asked Heidi.

Approaching wing-beats answered her question, and the large tawny owl reappeared, shifting into Xavier a moment later.

"Got a live one," said Adeena. "What did you find out?"

"No sign of Lars or Karl," said Xavier, kneeling next to the goblin man and pushing soothing green light into his body. His breaths came less shallowly, but he still didn't stir. Stabilised, better than nothing.

"Hammerschmidt spotted Blackstone – dead," said Adeena, forcing herself to keep a level voice. "Anything else?"

"You're not going to like it," said Xavier. "Vodyanoy – I counted seven of them. But there could be more, and they're headed towards the Brightspark – I'd give us twenty minutes."

Adeena hissed, and resisted the urge to begin swearing like a sailor. Heidi seemed to be handling everything better than could be expected for a new blood, but Adeena had been a commander for long enough to know that showing fear was a surefire way to immediately break whatever morale remained in a situation like this.

"Let's err on the side of fifteen," said Adeena.

"What's a Vodyanoy?" asked Heidi.

"They look a bit like walking toads – creatures of the Unseeming," said Xavier. "Powerful magic, and they hypnotise you if you look them in the eye. So don't."

"Alright, Hammerschmidt, bring him – we need to locate whatever survivors we can, and then get as far away from the other wreck as possible," she said. "Fifteen minutes, then hells or high water, we're out of here."

She took point as they made their way up the trail of wreckage. The aches and pains had mostly faded, although they left behind them a kind of washed out, stretched too thin feeling that she knew from experience wouldn't disappear for several periods.

They found many more dead bodies, but also signs of others being dragged away, further up the wreckage, and after a few minutes of walking they heard voices – thankfully intelligible, and not the twisted, mind-bending speech of the Unseeming.

Some thirty odd survivors were clustered around several shattered crates, which seemed to contain medical supplies – much of it burnt, but some of it salvageable. About a third of them were some degree of ambulatory, and were seeing to their immobile fellows. At the sound of Adeena and the other's approaching footsteps, a few make-shift weapons were raised, but then lowered.

"Captain Yassin," said one of the survivors, a goblin woman who it took Adeena a few moments to realise was Captain Bloodmoon. She was covered in ash and no small amount of blood. One of her arms was clearly broken, and she had a whole host of nasty burns on her legs. "Glad to see you survived, now, make yourself useful-"

"We need to move," said Adeena, checking her antique pocket watch, which unlike the more modern ones with eight hour, shift long inner faces, was from Hal'varia and had just four hours, and six divisions of each period, rather than three in its outer ring. Ten minutes.

Bloodmoon scoffed. "Move? We can't move, some of these people wouldn't survive-"

"We have at least seven Vodyanoy incoming," said Adeena. "Even with my entire company, I wouldn't take those odds any period of a phase, and I'm down half – including my sorceress."

"Vodyanoy, you're sure?" said Bloodmoon.

"Saw them myself, might be even more," said Xavier.

"Grab what weapons you can," said Bloodmoon, speaking to her crew-mates.

"Are you mad? We need to retreat," said Adeena. "I don't think you understand how dangerous-"

"I served on the Wardline for nearly four hundred cycles, I know what a Vodyanoy is," said Bloodmoon sharply. "But we cannot move these people, not without killing half of them. I don't know how you do things in the Shattered Sea, but in the Imperium we leave no one behind. We hold this position until reinforcements arrive, or we die trying. If that is not agreeable to you, Captain Yassin, I am in no position to stop you being a coward."

Adeena snorted and shook her head.

"You stay here, you die," said Adeena, addressing all the survivors. "Come with me, and you might live."

A few of the crew and passengers looked between Adeena and Bloodmoon, but none of them moved.

Adeena shook her head again. Fools. Fools. Couldn't they see this was not a winnable fight? "So be it. Xavier, Hammerschmidt, with me."

Xavier fell in behind her, Heidi following a moment later as they began to move into the gloom on the other side of the wreck, away from the Unseeming monsters.

"Captain," said Heidi after a few moments.

"What?" said Adeena, turning to see that the gnome has stopped near the edge of the light cast by the burning wreck.

"We can't leave them," she said, gesturing back into the firelight, where the crew under the direction of Bloodmoon were grabbing pieces of metal and wood to use as clubs. "They'll be slaughtered. We need to help them!"

"That isn't my fault," said Adeena. "I offered them a chance to survive, they didn't take it. Now come on, Private, we don't have time for this."

"But- but-" said Heidi, stamping her small foot. "You're the Captain Yassin! You don't run away! You stay and fight the good fight, always! I grew up reading about you!"

Adeena groaned. A fan-girl? How had she missed that during the recruitment interviews? Had she been that desperate for another spellcaster? What was wrong with her?

"Those so called 'accounts' of my life are hogwash," snapped Adeena. "Serials written by people I've never met eager to make some coin. I'm not ten feet tall, I don't have lightning in my eyes, and I'm a sellsword – not a hero."

"During the Huxbridge revolt, you came to aide of the peasants even knowing they had nothing to pay you with!" said Heidi. "That wasn't in a novel, I read that in a history book! The Huxbridge republic put up a statue to you! The- the Captain Yassin I read about would never just leave these people behind!"

Adeena's eye twitched. What did this whelpling know of Huxbridge? Of the Adeena that had been?

"I am not losing more of my people," said Adeena. "Not one more, not if I can help it."

"But-"

"No buts," said Adeena. "You are a soldier, Private Hammerschmidt, and I am your commander. This is not a winnable engagement, so either you walk away, or I drag you."

"You know this is wrong-"

Adeena snapped.

"I have lost so many people!" shouted Adeena, grasping Heidi by the front of her tunic and pulling her onto the tips of her toes. "So many good people dead; people who put their faith in me to lead them. No. No more. I will not throw away more lives trying to save people who cannot be saved!"

"And don't we get a say?" said Heidi.

"Typically, no," said Xavier. "She's the Captain, Hammerschmidt, she's just looking out for us. Keeping us out of danger-"

"I signed up for this adventure knowing it wouldn't be safe! Knowing that I might never come back," said Heidi, taking a deep breath before continuing. "If you say retreat, then- then I will follow your orders. But staying is the right thing to do, and I think you know that too. You used to, at least."

Adeena released her grip on the smaller woman and turned away, pulling her glasses up and rubbing her eyes. Being lectured on cowardice by a woman barely grown? Time was, she would have laughed at the very idea.

Was she being a coward? Perhaps she was. Not in the sense that she was afraid for herself, difficult given what she was, but she'd seen where Heidi's naivety and lack of proper risk assessment ended up, where the Captain Bloodmoon's logic of holding the line no matter what led – she'd seen both back in Chace. Heidi didn't understand, Bloodmoon didn't understand. You couldn't always save everyone, you couldn't always do the right thing, sometimes all you could do was run. That was the lesson that life had taught her in an ocean of her people's blood. Extreme risk was for cards, not when the lives of others were in play – especially those she was responsible for.

Heidi and Xavier; it wasn't her life she was risking, it was theirs. If she retreated, they would survive, she just had to give the word…

Adeena's gaze wandered back to the lines of injured survivors, the third that was mobile, and the two thirds that weren't. Thirty two people, she counted. Yes, she'd be condemning them to death. She saw one or two aether-pistols at the waists of the officers, but beyond that, they were armed with sticks and broken wreckage. They'd be slaughtered. She'd tried to get the idiots to leave, to save themselves. It wasn't her fault.

Oh sure, if she stayed there was a chance they'd live. They were literally in the capital of the Imperium, reinforcements would be coming. They were on their way already, most likely; they might not need to hold for long…

She took a step away, then stopped.

"Hells," swore Adeena, looking back at the injured.

Was she seriously considering it? Just because a whelp of a girl had struck a nerve? It was stupid. Sure, once she wouldn't have hesitated to play hero, but she wasn't that Adeena anymore. She was a wise and seasoned mercenary captain, not the idealistic young woman who 'always did what was right,' as those stupid books put it-

"Hells," she swore again, softer.

Was that really what she'd become? A cynical old woman who would let a bunch of innocents be slaughtered because the odds weren't that good? Her younger self would have hated her…

She glanced sideways at Xavier.

"You think I should help them, don't you?" she asked, using the in soft, flowing High Elvish that almost no one outside of the closed kingdom of Hal'varia spoke anymore.

"I followed you to Chace with open eyes, we all did," he replied. "I'm still here, Captain. I'll follow you lead."

"The odds are bad," she said.

"Then make them better," he said.

Better? What could she use to make those odds better? The survivors were unarmed-

Well, there were at the moment. But Adeena had shot down an Imperium airship in her time, and unless they'd removed it, the Brightspark would have had an armoury. An armoury filled with aether rifles that even the slowest witted of civilians could use at short range. It was probably somewhere in the flaming wreckage, but that was less of a problem for her than most.

Yes… she could make the odds better. It was still risky, yes, but this wasn't an unwinnable engagement; this wasn't Chace, this wasn't her nightmare. They didn't need to hold forever against unwinnable odds, they just needed to hold until the reinforcements got there.

Within her heart she felt a flicker of warmth stir, an ember of what she had once been as a plan began forming in her mind.

"Private Hammerschmidt, use that drone of yours, I want plenty of warning before those toads get here," said Adeena, striding back towards the wreckage.

"Yes, ma'am!" said Heidi in a worryingly excited voice.

"Xavier, the wounded, as many as you can get fit to hold a rifle," said Adeena. "Even if you have to drag them into position."

"Aye, Captain," said Xavier, trailing after her.

Bloodmoon looked up with a frown as Adeena approached again, and opened her mouth to speak.

"Bloodmoon, do all Imperium ships still have an armoury?" asked Adeena, cutting her off. "Sealed with magic? Hard to break into? Hard to destroy? Probably survived the crash? Full of rifles?"

"What? I- yes," said the goblin, gesturing to a burning section of the hull toward the front of the vessel. "It's probably still intact-"

"Perfect," said Adeena.

"But unless you're fireproof-"

"I'll need the key," said Adeena, holding out her palm.