Felix sat behind the ebony table in his office, reading through Neasa's new checklists, which now included icing conditions, visibility, and emergency landing sections. She even included a small mock-up engineering diagram: a series of tubes filled with water, heated and circulated by the engine, which exchange heat across the leading edges of the wings and the tail. The geomancer named Cliona had succeeded in installing one such system inside an airplane.

There was a light knocking at the door. Felix stood and opened the door himself. A pair of bright red eyes peered back at him, framed by a heavily-padded leather helmet lined with white fur. "I was wondering where you ran off to," Felix said. "Come in." He gestured to the empty chair by his desk.

Alice shook her head. "No Felix, you need to come with me."

"Absolutely, where are we going?"

She spoke in a light whisper: "We are going to be flying to another world. You may be gone for some time, several weeks at least, maybe much longer."

His face must have betrayed surprise because Alice lowered her eyes.

"I am going to assume that Astrid planned this for us?"

She nodded. "I will be taking you to her now."

"Give me a moment," Felix said. He walked down the hallway to Neasa's office. She was sitting across from another woman, who appeared to be wearing the uniform of the Second Army. "Lieutenant General, sorry to interrupt. This is important. The Purple Dragon is sending me away for a few weeks, maybe longer. You have command of the Air Force until I return."

"Yes commander," Neasa said.

He led the way outside, with Alice following behind. Few soldiers roamed around the large crystal platform, which was being assaulted by cold wind and snow. "Wait," Alice said. "It is too cold on this side." Remarkably, she summoned a black portal, lined with magenta light. A moment later, Felix was pulled to the other side with a flash of light.

That dull, cloudless, sunless magenta sky was devoid of weather. Everything was shaded with a slight, foggy darkness. The spire was still underfoot, but the military buildings were gone completely. Ghostly figures wandered around on the upper floors, suspended in midair. Felix could see snow on the distant mountaintops, but the snow which had accumulated on the platform was suspiciously absent.

The sound of a horse snorting caused Felix to jump. He spun around to see Alice gently petting a white horse. A horse, Felix realized, equipped with a pair of massive feathered wings, and a second smaller pair in the back, for stability. Alice deftly hopped up into the saddle, then she reached down and offered her hand.

"This is my Pegasus," Alice said. "Her name is Mercy. She will be able to carry both of us back to the spire."

Felix grabbed Alice by the arm and their hands locked palm-to-wrist. Alice, with her frail, spindly frame, effortlessly hauled Felix clear up onto the back of the Pegasus, just in front of her.

"How did you get so strong?" Felix gasped.

Alice giggled. "It's a secret. Now strap yourself in, the forces on the body are enough to break your arms if you just try to hold on."

There appeared to be two straps, one for each leg, as well as a thick belt. "There is only one harness built into the saddle," Felix protested.

"I said the forces would be enough to break your arms," Alice said.

After Felix strapped himself in, the Pegasus trotted forward, spread her wings, and leapt off the edge of the red crystal platform. Her wings flapped as fast as a scaled-up bird, and Felix felt an intense backward force on his upper body and neck. He pressed up against Alice, who was shoving him forward with extraordinary strength. They flew over the forest, not nearly as fast as an airplane, but much faster than an airship.

After a few minutes they descended toward the clearing with the purple crystal spire. Brigid, fully transformed into a purple drake, was resting on the ground in front of the spire. The Pegasus fully stretched her wings and configured her smaller tail wings for a gentle descending glide. The creature landed the way a drake might land, by flapping her wings to dump airspeed just as her hoofs clattered onto the dusty ground.

Astrid the Purple Dragon stood near the opening to the spire. Elvira stood by her side, singing the haunting songs that allowed Astrid to see.

"It is time to embark on a most remarkable journey," the Purple Dragon said. "Conditions are very good in the north, and they are getting better in the south as we speak. The war cannot resume until the winter ends, which gives you plenty of time to complete your tasks. But first we must travel to the south to fetch Shane."

Crackling with storm sorcery, the purple-haired giantess floated into the saddle on Brigid's back. Elvira followed.

"She does not have the strength to fly with both of us on her back, not all the way across the continent," Alice said. "You must fly with them."

----------------------------------------

Shane heard the unmistakable scream of a squadron of four Knights flying outside. He glanced through the fine window of his hotel room, watching the eight streaks of azure flame race across the night sky. It seems dangerous to be practicing at night, he thought. He turned back to his desk. Seven copies of the schematics, each bound in cloth and translated into Rilnese, were sprawled out in front of him. He had triple checked the contents of each. The translation was accurate, and the monks who made the copies were very accurate with their lightboxes.

"Everything is taken care of," he sighed. "I should leave this city soon."

The sound of crackling energy caused him to snap around. A black portal appeared adjacent to his bed, rimmed by a bird's nest of magenta light. A flash of light filled the room, banishing the shadows. The hulking red-haired figure of Felix appeared.

"I did not expect her to send you to the south," Shane said.

"Pack your things, then meet us on the other side," Felix growled. With a second flash, the man vanished.

Strangely enough, when Shane passed through to the Elemental Plane of Spirits, he appeared down on the street, outside the hotel. It did not surprise Shane to find Astrid, Elvira, and Brigid on the other side. He was shocked, however, to see that Alice had returned. In one arm, the woman held an extremely long spear, crafted from the same shining metal and purple crystal as the greatsword carried by Felix. She carried a round shield attached to her opposite arm. But most astonishing of all, she sat atop a winged horse.

"I feel like there is a story here," Shane said.

"There will be plenty of time for stories as you travel," Astrid said.

Both Felix and Shane prostrated themselves on the ground in front of the Purple Dragon.

"It is good to see you again Shane," the Purple Dragon began. "I am happy that you are making progress on your task. Both of you have worked very hard to bring the dream of flight to your people. Normally, I would need to be more involved in your various efforts, but conditions have changed, and the timeline can be accelerated. I am sending you to the city of Twin Fates, with guaranteed safe passage through the Elemental Plane of Darkness."

"You are invited to rise," Brigid said. When Shane was on his feet, the purple-haired bodyguard offered him a golden certificate, stamped with the skull of a horned beast. "Wear this on your person at all times. You may find yourself in danger if you lose it."

"Does it need to be visible?" Shane asked. Brigid shook her head, so he stuffed the thing in his jacket.

"Third High Daughter of the Elemental Queen of Spirits!" Elvira shouted. The ringlets of her long purple hair bounced as she raised her arms. The towering magenta High Daughter materialized beside Elvira. "Open a portal to the Physical World!"

A huge portal formed, shaped like a doorway, foggy and rimmed with magenta light. The gray began to undulate and break with flashes of magenta. It glowed, brighter and brighter, until a bright green landscape appeared beyond. The portal shimmered like heated air. The winged horse galloped straight through the portal to the other side, and Alice beckoned them to follow.

Uneasily, Shane passed through the portal. There were no flashes of light as he crossed the threshold. A grassy green hill waited on the other side, under a vast blue sky. He turned around and looked through the portal as Felix followed. Shane could see the dark landscape within, the sunless magenta sky, and the Purple Dragons watching him from beyond. After Felix crossed, the portal vanished, revealing a field of flowers, an ocean that stretched to the horizon, and an airplane parked in the grass.

Two young women approached. The closest woman had dark brown hair and eyes of the same shade. Shockingly, she did not have shining scales on her forehead or her cheekbones. She was wearing a thin white dress that looked a bit scandalous. The other woman was even more bizarre. Her hair was reddish orange, and her eyes were blue. Shane could not think of a Dragon tribe with such a clash between hair and eye color. In addition to a white blouse and a black skirt, the woman wore a leather cap with brass-rimmed goggles.

The woman with orange hair is a pilot, just like Lady Maeve, Shane thought. Aloud he asked: "You are not whelps, are you?"

The woman with brown hair chuckled. "No, we are humans."

"Humans are mythological creatures," Felix said.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"In our world Dragons are mythological creatures," the woman replied.

"You must be Felix," the orange-haired woman said as she pointed to the hulking Paladin. "And you must be Shane. Alice told us all about you. My name is Ingrid, and my companion here is Vaska."

"Hey Felix," Vaska said. "Would you be willing to take off your clothes? I need nude anatomical diagrams for a book I am writing."

"Sure," Felix replied with a shrug.

"No!" Ingrid snapped. "We are leaving. Fully clothed, thank you." She pointed to the airplane parked nearby.

I wish to meet them.

Shane heard a familiar voice in his mind, the delicate girl-child voice of Titania.

"Fine," Ingrid said. "Titania, show yourself!"

With a flash of golden light beside Ingrid, the Elemental appeared. Made from pale gold light, she was about the size of a normal girl, perhaps ten years old at most. Her flowing dress appeared to be incorporated into her body, and it fluttered in some unseen wind. She floated a few feet off the ground, but her coppery hair was so long that it almost reached the ground below her feet. Upon that crown of hair she wore a radiant crown of gold.

The girl-child floated playfully, zipping around Shane and Felix and Alice in turn, flowing through the air like a fish through water. She cast no shadow. Instead, the light of the sun was broken into crystalline rainbows, as if her whole body was a prism.

I am Titania the Luck Elemental, High Daughter of the Elemental Queen of Light. It is a pleasure to finally meet the three of you. The dream of flight is the dream of all worlds. I invite you to fly with me, into another sky.

Shane wanted to fly with the little Luck Elemental. Instinctively, he reached out and attempted to connect to his Realms. He found... nothing. At first he felt panic, but then his panic transformed into a sinking feeling. In this world, storm sorcery didn't work.

"Is something wrong, Shane?" Alice asked. "You look distraught."

The imbecile tried to use fake magic from the Plane of Dreams.

It was the voice of a second girl-child, sinister, sneering, and cruel. All-consuming darkness exploded in surging waves near Vaska, coagulating and forming into another girl-child. At a sight Shane instantly recognized the semblance between this Elemental and the creature named Ashe. Pale translucent skin, lavender eyes, a frilly black dress, and a dagger in one hand, dripping with blood. Like Titania, this Elemental had raven-black hair that was much longer than she was tall.

I am Erika the Curse Elemental, Mistress of Blood and Madness, Firstborn of the High Daughters. I invite you to fall from the sky with me, and return your heart's blood to the Domain of Mother Ashe.

"Don't listen to her!" Ingrid insisted. "The airplane is perfectly safe."

"I think what the Firstborn was trying to say," Vaska said, "is that the Realms cannot be accessed here."

Shane glanced suspiciously at Alice, who was still sitting on top of her winged horse. She looked down with realization, muttered something to herself, and then plopped down in the grass after the beast faded and vanished.

"There will be time to explain how Elementals work in the Physical World," Vaska continued, "once we are in the air."

----------------------------------------

The woman named Ingrid led the group toward a massive metal airplane resting on a field of flowers. Felix glanced around, noting the perfectly flat strip of grass leading away from the nose of the aircraft. The airplane was so big that it had two engines. Each engine was mounted on a pylon on one of the wings, spaced away from the body so that the propellers could spin freely. It also had two vertical fins with two rudders.

"An astonishing craft," Felix said.

Ingrid laughed. "This airplane was ancient history back when Ivan was alive." Suddenly her face betrayed a deep sadness for a moment or so. Then she recovered. "It was almost buried under a sand dune in the desert, rusty and covered in verdigris. I needed to summon a Metal Elemental with plenty of fresh metal ingots to get her flying again."

She pulled a lever on the side of the craft and opened a full person-sized door. A door on the side of an airplane!

It was dark inside. Benches lined either side of the interior, furnished with black leather cushions. Ingrid led Felix up to the front of the craft where there were two seats arranged side-by-side. Felix instantly recognized the familiar stick-and-rudder controls, though he wondered why each seat had a duplicate copy. The dashboard in front of the seats was plastered with circular white instruments, each protected by a thin layer of glass. All around each seat there were dozens of levers, buttons, switches, and knobs. In between the seats Felix recognized a throttle, but he found the small wheel-like contraptions to be baffling.

"Pick a seat that allows you to rest your hand on the throttle in a way that is comfortable," Ingrid said.

Felix picked the seat on the right side, so that his left hand rested on the throttle. He struggled to slip into the chair, and once he was seated, he struggled to work the clasps on the harness that held him fast inside his seat. The airplane had obviously been designed for much smaller pilots. No matter how much he twisted and wiggled, he could not quite sink down into his seat enough to be comfortable. Perhaps that is a good thing, Felix thought. It will keep me alert.

"Good," Ingrid said as she effortlessly slipped into the left seat. "I'm in the commander's chair, and you are in the copilot's chair. If one of us falls asleep or needs to use the bathroom, then there will be a second pilot to keep flying. You probably don't have two-pilot airplanes yet, do you?"

Felix looked back to see Alice, Shane, and Vaska as they worked to buckle themselves into their seats. The Luck Elemental and the Curse Elemental had vanished at some point. The door on the side of the airplane was still open.

"Well," Felix said, "this airplane doesn't seem like it would survive very long in a fight. Why would I want to make something so big?"

"Fair enough. This was the only airplane that Ashe would let me use."

"Do you worship Ashe?" Felix asked.

Ingrid nodded. "In a way. It will take a while to explain. Let's start the engines."

She started rapidly flipping switches and pulling levers. Felix took the time to inspect the strange circles on the dashboard. They all appeared to be marked with some type of number, with a compass needle pegged to the center.

"High Daughter of Fire!" Ingrid cried, "Summon two Fire Elementals, one for each engine! High Daughter of Wind, summon a Wind Elemental to provide atmospheric and noise protection! High Daughter of Water! Summon a Water Elemental to provide hydraulics!"

When the litany of summons concluded, the engines began to spool, and the propellers began to spin. The sound of the propellers began to dampen. Ingrid slipped out of her chair and dashed outside the craft. "Felix! Pull on the stick!"

He did so.

"Now push! Good! Now stick left! Good! Stick right! Good! Left rudder! Good! Right rudder! Great!"

The little orange-haired woman slammed the door shut and locked it with a click. Then she slipped back into the commander's chair and strapped herself in. She fiddled with the little wheel between the seats, until two white markers aligned.

"Elevator trim set to takeoff and parking brake released. I think we are ready to go. Felix, take us up. Full throttle until the tail starts flying, then pull back gently."

"Certainly," Felix said as he pushed the throttle forward.

The engines roared. The airplane lurched forward in the grass, and Felix used the rudder to stay straight. The needles began to rise, and Felix recognized that one of the gauges was marked with green, yellow, and red ranges. He assumed that it was the airspeed indicator. Felix felt the tail rise, and the nose leveled off, at about the time that the needle passed into the green zone. He pulled on the stick and the grass vanished. The trees on the edge of the glade began to sink.

Up he flew, into another sky.

He could not help himself. He began to test the various characteristics of flight. He rolled, pitched up and down, and kicked the rudder a few times. The motions felt very familiar, different in a way that made perfect sense given the size of the craft. It felt like strapping on a different pair of wings.

"Having fun?" Ingrid asked.

"If you kick the rudder too hard you'll go outside the flight envelope!" Vaska cried from the cabin behind them.

"What is a 'flight envelope?'" Felix asked.

"She is an aeronautical engineer," Ingrid said. "Don't mind her, if you do anything stupid I'll disconnect your controls and fix it myself."

The airplane felt sluggish. It was clearly not a machine of war. Felix assumed that it was a machine designed to allow the nation's wealthy elites to travel quickly in comfort. It also didn't seem to have any trouble taking off from remote strips of grass, so perhaps it would also be suited for ferrying General Officers to various military camps.

"You are doing good, Felix. Keep climbing, I will tell you when to stop."

"So you were saying something about Ashe before," Felix said.

"Right! The Elemental Queen of Darkness and the Elemental Queen of Light work together to create free will in my world. The Elemental Plane of Dreams is a little different. The souls there have a specific fate, and the Elemental Plane itself changes in very slight ways to make that fate more probable. And then, also, there are those creepy Purple Dragons roaming around changing fates and devouring mortal souls." The woman visibly cringed at this thought. "Anyways, Queen Ashe is evil, but the alternative is worse. Ashe is the best option available. She protects the dark powers that drive her to madness, and no other Elemental, and certainly no mortal, could ever hope to do a better job than she does."

"Eeeeep!" Alice shrieked. She shuffled forward into the pilot's cabin and grasped the seats on either side. Her face was flushed bright red. "Ingrid, make him stop!"

"Vaska, what are you doing back there?"

Felix twisted his head around and peered back into the main cabin. Shane was standing in the middle of the aisle completely naked, head held high and chest puffed up. The light pouring through the windows glistened against the shining scales on his chest and hips. Vaska was looking at the nude man like an artist might contemplate the form of a piece of fruit or a particularly impressive cloud, furiously scribbling away on her notepad. Felix turned around and resumed his flight, out over the ocean.

"Vaska?" Ingrid shouted. "Vaska!?"

----------------------------------------

Shane felt the familiar sensation of descent. The ground outside was a blur in the windows, and then the wheels stuck the ground, pulling Shane down into his seat. The craft rattled and shook, however the tail was still flying. After a few moments the tail stalled and collapsed, causing the trailing wheel to strike the ground. They kept rolling.

"Anyways," Vaska said, "in those days people needed to travel across the void to the Sixth Goddess and steal some spiritual energy in order to use a bond with an Elemental. The people who were born in the Elemental Planes were forced to do this, and they were forced to provide access to their bonded Elementals through crystal contracts. But when me and Ingrid purified the Queen of Light, she used the power of forgiveness to break those contracts."

The airplane creaked to a stop and the engines began to spool down. The propellers abruptly halted outside the windows. The woman named Ingrid slipped into the main cabin and released the door. It slammed open with a gust of wind outside.

"This is close enough," she said. "Chilly! Vaska, get out there and open a portal. I'm cold!"

Felix clambered out of the pilot's cabin. His foot caught in a strap and he faceplanted onto the rug in the center of the aisle. Shane heard the hulking man mumbling into the floor, but he could not make out the words.

"Do you need help?" Alice asked. She reached down and lifted the man clear of the floor as if he was a toddler.

How the hell did she get so strong? Shane wondered.

Suddenly the aircraft began to lurch backwards and rotate. Shane hopped out through the door to get a better look. They had landed on another grass airstrip on a different island, closer to the ocean than the first. Ingrid, the skinny, spindly orange-haired woman, was busy hauling the tail of the craft around with one hand.

"Alice," Shane said, "are you bonded to a Life Elemental?"

"That's right!" Alice replied, patting Felix on the back.

And Ingrid must have a High Daughter of the Elemental Queen of Life, Shane thought. "Ingrid, how many High Daughters are you bonded with?"

"Eleven," Vaska said.

"Eleven High Daughters!?"

"Yeah," Vaska said. "Ashe only made one High Daughter, the very first subordinate Elemental ever created. She is bonded with me."

A thin, vertical line of absolute darkness appeared behind Vaska. It grew to either side, into the shape of a rectangle. Vaska backed into the darkness and vanished. Whatever that dark portal was, it remained standing even after Vaska was gone.

Alice plucked her spear and shield from the cargo bay, and Ingrid slammed it shut. She locked the door tight, and then marched through the dark portal herself. The winged horse named Mercy appeared on the field, and Alice hopped up on her back, armed with her spear and shield. She drove the horse into a gallop and disappeared into the darkness.

"Well," Felix said. "I guess we should probably follow them."

Shane nodded. "Into yet another world."