Shane rested one hand against the blue crystal railing and looked out over the blanket of clouds. It was a beautiful railing, a worthy addition to his private balcony. The supports featured the likeness of drakes twisting in combat, their jaws snapping at each other where the crystal bulged in the middle. Such detail was far beyond his own capacity. Prince Kai was responsible for creating most of the architectural features in the city of Bastion. He had somehow seized control of Shane's connections, and the resulting Wish created blue crystal instead of purple.
Rhythmic footsteps announced the arrival of a soldier. A very young messenger, perhaps sixteen years old. He wore his long blue hair in a bun as was the custom for nobility in the south.
"Chief of Chiefs," the boy said. "The enemy has been spotted. A large force of airplanes, more than four hundred strong, and several airships."
"I heard the sirens. Am I needed?"
"No sir! Knight Captain Fintan said you would like to know the specifics."
"Carry on then."
The messenger saluted and then marched off.
The sky was always filled with the sound of at least a few airplanes. The pilots trained all day, and even into the night. Shane was in the habit of using his sorcery to dampen the sound of the propellers, but it was not enough to block the cacophony of dozens, and then hundreds of engines starting at the same time. A more aggressive wind barrier was needed. As such, when Shane saw a familiar shadow approach, he could not hear his brother's soft footsteps until the man passed through the barrier.
"So this is it," Bran said. "The battle that will decide the fate of our nation. Will you be fighting, brother?"
Shane shook his head. "I trust our pilots, but I am afraid I will not be useful once the fighting starts. I came here to observe their departure."
"Is that true?"
With a flash of gold, the Light Elemental appeared beside Shane. She tilted her head quizzically.
"I'm just wondering if you have other reasons for not fighting."
"The psychologist at work," Shane said. "Yes, I have another reason as well. I have contemplated that the Purple Dragon does not want me to directly interfere with the battle."
"I would hear your contemplation."
"In my own mind, the Purple Dragon is attempting to breed a race of skilled pilots. Furthermore, her actions can only exist within a real environment. If the environment is false, then the wrong pilots will be selected. I myself am not a very skilled pilot, and even if I decided to take wing and fight, I would stand out during the battle. If threatened, I would need to use sorcery that the enemy does not have access to. I would be providing an incorrect threshold, an incorrect selection factor for the enemy pilots."
Bran sighed. "Your reasoning is sound. I am, however, deeply concerned about the Purple Dragon's strategy for dealing with our race. Does she know that eugenics never works?"
"Eugenics?" Shane asked.
"Sorry, it is a word they use in the Physical World to describe breeding programs for humans. It does not exist in our language. Either way, eugenics programs have been attempted many, many times in the Physical World, but it is always motivated by pseudoscience, usually at the command of some tyrannical charlatan. The human scientists acknowledge that they do not fully understand their own mating behavior, and eugenics is generally not respected."
"Princess Astrid is a Fate Binder," Shane added. "Perhaps there is something we don't understand about our own mating behavior? How are traits passed between generations when fates are involved? What if a Fate Binder can guarantee that offspring will be born with the exact traits that allowed a pilot to survive a battle?"
Bran's too-familiar face suddenly contorted. "I find this thought deeply disturbing, brother. If we contemplate this line of thinking, then we must conclude that the Purple Dragon will succeed. She will change our people, and at what cost? I can imagine future generations of Rilnese who are exceptional pilots, physically healthy with excellent vision and high intelligence, but who suffer from some malady, such as psychosis or a fundamental inability to love."
"We are not exactly a peaceful people anyway," Shane said. "Nor are northerners. Ashe, the Queen of Darkness, had her own eugenics program here on this continent for centuries."
"And do you think the Purple Dragon will succeed where Ashe failed?"
"Something needs to change, brother. Anything! We cannot live under the perpetual risk of genocide forever."
"You did not answer my question," Bran observed.
"Ashe is an Elemental, and furthermore she is completely insane. Her legacy is not exactly insurmountable. Princes Astrid has proven to be quite clever in the past, and we can only assume that our continent is not special. House Anna-Rhea has Fate Binders on many continents, uplifting entire civilizations into the Golden Age of Flight."
Bran did not reply.
They stood in silence for a few moments, watching the squadrons of airplanes rise up out of the fog. Finally Bran said: "Many of them will never return. And nobody will remember them."
"Prince Kai will remember them," Shane said. "He will enter their names into The Book of Dead Pilots. Some of them will have their names and faces included in his museum."
"That may be true, brother, but nobody will remember the pilot who screams for his mother just before hitting the ground. Nobody will remember the image of a mountain, or a tree, appearing out of the fog, with a single moment of fear before instant death. Nobody will remember that feeling of being imprisoned in burning wood. Someday, they will forget these pilots ever lived, and they will call it a Golden Age."
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The horizon was a thin strip of deep blue where the two layers of cloud converged, slashed by drooping clouds which resembled inverted shark fins. Felix could barely see the flashes of blue light from the tiny black dots on the horizon. Hundreds of enemy airplanes, directly ahead, flying in force. The tiny black shapes moved closer, and by degrees Felix began to make out the slightly-upturned wings, the needle-like tail fins, and finally the dark disk of the propellers.
The Rilnese had managed to develop airplane factories, though their understanding of air combat had not developed beyond their old strategies, from the era of the blue drakes. There were four waves of airplanes, with at least a hundred airplanes in each wave, flying in a loose cloud. At least twenty-four Quarian pilots were skilled enough to fly in diamond formations, and the remainder of the airplanes were all flying at the same altitude, careful to leave room above and below in case the circles became vertical. Large gaps between the diamond formations reduced the chance of collisions and friendly fire.
Felix flew alone, as he had done during the Battle of the Teeth. He flew very high, and slightly ahead of the rest of the Quarian forces.
An enemy airplane loomed directly ahead, at the very top of the enemy cluster, growing closer and closer. However, Felix was patient. A flash of blue light blotted out the nose of the airplane, and Felix rolled out of the way, in the direction of the engine torque. The plume of Azure flame lanced under the belly of his airplane, just out of sight. Continuing to use the engine torque, his airplane quickly righted itself, and the enemy airplane rushed by. The outer surface of the other craft was sanded wood, as if it had never been painted.
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Enemy airplanes flew past Felix in every direction, above and below, and a quick twist of the neck revealed that several airplanes behind him were beginning to circle. He eased back on the throttle to the lowest setting. The airspeed indicator began to drop. When the needle fell into the red zone, the entire airplane began to shutter. Gently, he pulled up on the stick, then kicked the rudder as hard as possible. This caused his airplane to depart flight into a flat spin, in the direction of his engine torque.
"We'll see how they like this," he said. It was the most insulting maneuver he could imagine.
He punched the throttle to full power, and the torque of the engine's turbine added itself to his existing rotation. The nose came up to face the blue horizon, sandwiched between the two layers of white, and he fell in an almost-horizontal spin. Then, just ahead, he blasted the empty sky with a lance of draconic fire.
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Near the leading waves of airplanes, a red-painted Quarian airplane fell out of the sky in a flat spin.
"Poor fellow," Maeve said with a scowl.
And then the spinning airplane spat out a massive plume of crimson fire. This created a burning cyclone, sending arcs of flame in every direction. One friendly airplane, which apparently had been attempting to merge with the enemy, flew straight into the edge of the cyclone and disintegrated. Perhaps because they were not paying attention, or perhaps because they had been so unskilled during training that they had been placed on the front lines to die, half a dozen other Rilnese pilots flew right into the cyclone. One airplane lost a wing, one lost the empennage, and one was even cut in half lengthwise, causing the two halves to spin independently with opposite rotations.
Many pilots however, made the opposite mistake. They saw the danger and they fled to the sides, exposing their bellies to the Quarian forces. Maeve was not an expert pilot, but she was fairly certain that blocking your own vision of the enemy with a wooden hull was a bad idea. Some of the enemy airplanes were clustered in very tight diamond formations, and with extreme discipline they began ascending, arcing up in unison, leaving crimson streams of flame in their wakes. And then, using combined fire, they began to obliterate the pilots in the upper regions of the Rilnese cluster.
Part of her wanted to drop down and chase the airplane in a flat spin. Perhaps if she was able to position herself vertically above his head, she could avoid the flaming cyclone and take shots at him from above. At full power she could fly downward much faster than he was falling. But something about that stupid maneuver made her hesitate.
"Shadow Hunter! Is that pilot bonded to a Shadow Hunter as well?" Maeve asked.
That pilot is bonded to a Light Elemental, the Shadow Hunter hissed.
"The Flameraker!" she said. She could not let that man near the city, near her daughters. She pointed her nose at the spinning airplane and began to chase him.
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Felix had fallen below the lowest airplanes in the Rilnese cluster, only a few hundred feet above the lower cloud layer. This gave him a chance to look up and survey the battle. The diamond formations had all ascended, building up energy that they could use to drop through the cluster at an angle, intercepting the largest number of enemies possible. Three airplanes were cautiously lingering above, ready to give chase.
Felix eased off the throttle, and the loss of the engine torque allowed the nose to drop below the horizon. He pushed down on the stick and waited. The wind caught the elevator and the tail rose, causing the nose to drop further. Finally, he kicked the rudder in the opposite direction of the spin, and the airspeed increased above the threshold for coordinated flight. He was able to level off just before dropping into the lower cloud layer, blotting out the sky. Immediately, long streams of water began to condense on the canopy.
He poked above the clouds, and craned his neck around to look above and behind. The three enemies were still chasing him. The leading enemy was uncharacteristically coated in bright blue paint.
The pilot of that blue aircraft... she is bonded to a Shadow Hunter, his Light Elemental reported.
"An officer?" Felix asked.
I do not know. However, I will be able to protect you from her Shadow Hunter if she gets close.
Felix punched the throttle to full and began to ascend, barely skirting the edge of their attack range. Ahead, the battle raged in the sky. The six Quarian diamond formations were cutting a massive swath through the Rilnese forces. There were hundreds of plumes of colorful flame, azure and crimson from airplanes, and orange from burning wood. Shattered fuselages, severed wings, and burning pilots rained down.
Felix pointed his nose at the sky and fled, just barely keeping ahead of the enemy. Nearby Rilnese airplanes began to join their companions, intercepting from the sides or falling into the train. However the sky directly above was clear of enemies, though he expected no help from the waves of Quarian airplanes. They would not be able to see him approach from below, and they were most likely too focused on the enemy just ahead to roll over and check under their bellies.
The blue-painted airplane was determined to chase him. Even after the other airplanes broke away to take cheap shots at the Quarian airplanes from below, the woman with the Shadow Hunter would not relent. At full throttle, Felix ascended up over the friendly formations, up and up, until he got the uncanny feeling that he was forgetting something. He rapidly scanned the instruments on the dashboard. The cabin thermometer had dropped below freezing, and was rapidly descending. Even in the freezing air, that fool woman kept on chasing him.
"She is trying to keep me out of the fight," he complained. "I could have scored a dozen kills by now!"
It was no use. She was very patient, following him perfectly, just out of range. One mistake would earn him a plume of fire across the empennage. Directly above, like an inverted shark fin, the giant drooping underside of a roiling gray cloud seemed to creep towards him.
"I wonder how reckless she is?"
He kicked the rudder and barely dodged the cloud, following the misty edge in an upward arc, inverted relative to the ground. Then he pulled hard on the stick, fully inverting his airplane and plunging the nose straight into the cloud.
Immediately the canopy frosted over with a thick layer of crystalline teal-white shards of ice. The entire airplane began to rattle, as if it was being assaulted by a hail storm, and the stick froze in place. For all his strength, Felix knew he could not force the stick to move without snapping the cables. The engine propeller froze, the engine air intakes clogged up with ice, and the engine itself died. Without the sound of his own propeller, there was no need to keep the wind barrier in place, so he let it fade away.
Silence.
Then, the amused voice of the Purple Dragon spoke in his mind: There is only so far that reality will bend for you, Felix.
Inverted, with wings flat relative to the horizon and elevator frozen at maximum pitch, the airplane followed a smooth arc out of the cloud into the open sky once again. Suddenly the cabin brightened. Patiently, Felix listened. He began to make out a whirring sound, growing closer and closer. If her propeller was still running that means she did not take the bait. She could have simply turned away, and flown around the cloud.
"Not my best idea," he admitted.
Suddenly his vision was consumed with bright blue light. The whole airplane rocked to the right and started spinning again. It was extraordinarily disorienting because Felix could not see the horizon. The instruments on the dashboard began to spin wildly, and without the wind barrier Felix could hear the angry draconic sorcery assaulting his craft. Cracking, like the sound of shattering ice, the hiss of vapor, and the sudden change in the sound of the propeller as her airplane zoomed past.
She overshot him.
And he was still alive.
Gaps appeared in the ice coating on the canopy as chunks of ice slid across the meltwater. Soon he could see out the left side of his canopy, and remarkably, the wing on that side was intact, still coated in frost in places, but steaming in other places, and even scorched just below the canopy. The flap on that side of the airplane had been destroyed, but the aileron still appeared functional. He quickly tested the stick and rudder. There was some resistance at first, but after a few shakes the controls felt normal.
The coating of ice, he realized, had protected the airplane from the draconic flames.
It occurred to Felix that he should never mention this incident. He did not want trainees to consider it a valid strategy for surviving an attack.
With the horizon visible again, Felix was able to orient himself and restore the aircraft to straight and level flight. The blue-painted airplane was directly ahead. She was experienced enough, or perhaps afraid enough, to understand that he would have a significant advantage chasing her from behind. Perhaps if they ended up in a circle, the ice coating on his own craft would slow him down enough to allow her to win. If she considered this possibility, Felix could not tell, because she simply fled, racing away toward the incoming waves of Rilnese airplanes below. By the time Felix figured out a way to start his engine, she was long gone.
The rear waves of Quarian and Rilnese airplanes had smashed into each other. The airspace between the two forces was filled with plumes of red and blue fire, like two lines of pikemen locked in an outrageous slaughter. But the diamond formations had thinned the Rilnese forces too much, and they began to relent. Even from up high and far away, Felix could see clearly that the battle was won. The surviving enemy pilots did not continue to circle. Instead, like that woman with the Shadow Hunter, they began to flee.