The blue crystal tree was so tall that the upper branches scraped the lower surface of the cloud layer. Felix was missing one of his flaps, so he was forced to fly much faster than the other airplanes. He took a forward position, scouting far ahead of the fleet. The surviving enemy airplanes were flying in a ring around the trunk of the massive tree. The roots of the tree rested upon a plateau, and a large town had grown up to the very edge. Though he was far away, he could make out the unmistakable features of a runway cutting through the center of the town.

Sudden motion caught his eye. Six azure streams of light flashed up across the near edge of the plateau. Six at a time, at least two dozen new airplanes ascended to reinforce the survivors flying above. Felix turned to follow a path parallel to the dry river valley below the plateau. To the north, the six airships and the escort airplanes were fast approaching. Even with those reinforcements, it would not be enough to stop the invasion.

Without warning, the world went mad.

A sorcerer of overwhelming power was connecting to the Realms somewhere in the center of that runway. It was not nearly as much power as Prince Kai could draw through his connections, but it was at least half. "Another Dragon?" Felix hissed.

No, his Light Elemental said. That is without a doubt your companion, Shane. He is bonded to a Shadow Hunter, and the Purple Dragons never consent to bonds with Dark Elementals.

Flashes of magenta light began to appear throughout the branches of the crystal tree. Dozens, then hundreds of magenta sunbursts. Small flying things transitioning from the Elemental Plane of Spirits. Gigantic bees, floating trees, huge eagles, giant women with wings for arms. An entire army of flying monsters appeared high overhead. And then, all at once, they began to fly directly in his direction, a convergence in three dimensions.

Then he heard the voice of Princess Astrid in his mind: You should be careful. Those creatures will not hesitate to attack you.

He continued turning, until the tree was directly behind him. Then, he smashed the throttle to max, brought the fleet into the center of his propeller disk, and then craned his neck around to watch the creatures approach. They were slightly slower than his airplane, so the distance between them began to grow.

He dropped down low and waited until the lead squadrons passed overhead. They were all flying with full flaps, much slower than his own airplane, so he was able to ascend in a half-loop and pull in behind one of the diamond formations. The Lord Paladin's airship was repeating the same signal over and over: Advance! Advance! Advance!

Before the fleet had a chance to cross half the distance to the crystal tree, more blue lines began to ascend from the base of the plateau. Wave after wave, with six airplanes in each wave. After twenty waves Felix felt a sudden creeping fear.

Immediately his training kicked in. Hesitation was death.

At least one hundred and twenty airplanes, fresh fighters to reinforce the survivors of the previous battle, in addition to hundreds of flying monsters protecting the tree itself. If his airplanes faced such overwhelming enemy force, they would not last long enough to make much of a difference. The mission to protect the airships would necessarily end in failure, and everyone on board would die anyway.

Felix could not see any upside to fighting, so he amplified his voice using wind magic: "This is a direct order from your commanding officer. Ignore all signals from the Paladin's Revenge. Abort the mission. All pilots are commanded to retreat from this battle, return to the forward staging base, and await Lieutenant General Neasa's auxiliaries. Spread out and repeat my words to the other pilots."

He pulled up into a half-loop and then rolled upright.

Unexpected, but not unwelcome, Astrid said, her voice a soft whisper in his mind. Thank you, for saving the lives of your pilots. For some reason I cannot explain, I care about them. Brother, is this what you wanted? Is this how I was before?

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

I was expecting him to stay and fight, Shane thought as he stood near the edge of the plateau, watching the enemy airplanes retreat.

More waves of Rilnese airplanes raced up into view, climbing nearly vertically into the sky, leaving long trails of azure flames behind them. There was nothing standing in the way. Without an escort of airplanes, all those other flying machines would be vulnerable. The danger, Shane knew, had passed. Everything else was just hard work, and a whole lot of killing.

"Something is coming," the Spirit of Riln warned, unable to hide the panic in her voice. "A terrible, terrible Spirit!"

Shane froze.

There was a flash of magenta light somewhere behind him. He twisted around to face the city of Bastion, nestled into the feet of the great blue crystal tree. Princess Astrid, the Purple Dragon, slowly glided forward. Her mother-of-pearl dress fluttered in the cold desert wind.

Shane fell to one knee and lowered his head. Long, light-blue hair collapsed across his shoulders.

"Flee!" the Spirit of Riln insisted. "Flee! FLEE!"

"Retainer Shane, your performance here in the south has, once again, exceeded my most ambitious expectations."

"I'm afraid," the Spirit whispered in his ear.

"Before," the Purple Dragon continued, "you would have absolutely been killed had you attempted to summon your Fire Elemental. But now, with help from an ally on the other side, it should be safe to summon her. Furthermore, now that Felix has wisely elected to retreat from this battle, I can imagine no downside to simply ending this battle before it even begins. Therefore, I grant you permission to call upon your Greater Daughter of Fire, for the purpose of helping to defend this city. I must warn you, however, that the sight of her might restore a small portion of your memories, and those memories might be extremely painful."

The Purple Dragon lifted one arm and pointed toward an empty desert hilltop across the dry river bed.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Elvira says that there is room over there to summon her, without damaging the nearby buildings."

Shane pointed to the same hill, and focused his mind on the apex. "Greater Daughter of Fire! Show yourself!"

The shrubs and withered trees atop the arid knoll caught fire. The air began to ripple, and in a sudden flash of gold-pink light, burning wings materialized in the distance. The Elemental was shaped like a huge bird, with a proud breast coated with shining gold and orange plumage, flaming orange wings that slowly tapered off to a dull red-orange, and violent magenta wing tips. The plumage of her extremely long tail followed the same pattern: gold to orange to red-orange to magenta. She turned to face Shane with dark triangular eyes which betrayed ancient intelligence.

It has been a thousand years since we have flown together, the Elemental whispered in his mind.

Her voice held some of the same steamy hissing tone common to the Fire Elementals in the Realm of Fire. But her voice was also more feminine, more human, and disturbingly familiar.

Sudden images assaulted him.

He stood at the edge of a snowy island in the sky, overlooking the Elemental Plane of Fire. He was old, well into his eighties, one of the elder masters capable of visiting the Dreaming Goddess and stealing some of her power. Felix, his old friend, stood at his side. They flew together often, dodging between the snow-clad trees, across frozen lakes, under the shadow of planet-sized volcanoes. They both loved to fly. It was then, in those days before, when they both developed the love of flying, a love that became branded into their souls by the Luck Elemental, Titania.

Felix lifted his half gold, half burgundy mask, revealing a bald, spotted pate, sunken eyes and sagging skin. A toothless mouth gaped at the beautiful machines in the sky.

"They have come to kill us at last," Shane had said.

"They are beautiful dreams," Felix had replied.

When they arrived, with their tilt-rotors and their fighter jets, they transformed everyone into barely-alive boxes filled with organs. They preserved the blood, to prevent it from returning to Ashe, using a steam-powered life support system. Shane floated outside his box, barely aware, always exhausted, somewhere in the Elemental Plane of Stone.

Then Vaska's sappers came and blew the whole place sky high.

But Shane remembered one last flight with his old friend. The Spirit Ingrid used her High Daughter to create a new dreamworld for Shane and Felix to fly through. Towering cloud-pillars the size of planets, winds powerful enough to evaporate oceans, shining golden rings in the sky, like the rings around the gas giants in the Physical World.

"Shane!" the Spirit of Riln screamed. "Shane! Come back to me!"

The sight of the Purple Dragon brought back another memory.

"You don't remember him," she had said. "But you have lost a dear friend. You will fly together once again, someday soon. I have foreseen it."

"What do I need to do?" Shane had asked.

"Third High Daughter of the Queen of Dreams. I Wish he would die."

The whirring sound of propellers caught his attention. He looked up to admire the storm sorcerers as they advanced toward their enemy in a loose formations of airplanes.

"How long did it take you to find us?" Shane asked.

"My brother spoke to me about this continent about thirty years ago," Princess Astrid said. "It took me four years to find Felix, and then it took me four more years to find you. That is why he is four years older than you. He reincarnated here first."

"But Zakx was still alive."

She waved her hand dismissively. "He was afraid of the humans in the north, so he spent a few decades developing his intelligence network."

"Then he decided to try his experiment," Shane said. "A test to see if Mia was dead."

"And when you were born," Astrid said, "with your soul bonded to a Phoenix Elemental, he knew something was deeply wrong."

Shane turned and stepped off the edge of the plateau. He reached out and connected to his Realms, and with the power of his Spirit partner, he drew a hundred, or a thousand times the normal amount of power. But still he fell, vertically, following the escarpment almost to the dry river, where, in a sudden burst of power, he raced forward, barely skimming the ground.

Felix always liked to fly high, he thought. While I always enjoyed flying just over the snowfields, kissing the treetops, surfing on rivers of lava.

When he reached that distant hilltop, he slipped up past the Phoenix Elemental, and then settled down atop her head, reaching his arms deep into her flaming feathers. But those flames, he knew, could not hurt him, because of the soul-bond that they shared. As he moved his head, the Phoenix also moved her head, to directly face the six airships just a stone's throw away.

Huge wings began to flap, leaving long magenta waves in the sky. They flapped so fast, like skyscrapers in an earthquake. She could no doubt sense the burning heart of that nearby airship, so she reached out for it, puncturing her flaming beak right up into the helium envelope, to reveal the steam engine room deep inside. A member of the old Heritage Militia, an enlisted man who Shane recognized from Needlewood, stood slack-jawed, holding a shovel full of coal just inches from the flickering maw of the furnace. The Phoenix Elemental opened her mouth and breathed, twisting her neck back, like a sword of pure flame, splitting the entire airship in half.

Falling.

Above, the airship resembled the fractal features that the mathematicians in the Physical World had named the "seahorse valley." Writhing in superheated air which disintegrated without creating smoke. Hundreds, if not thousands of Heritage Militia soldiers had been huddled on the lower airplane deck, and those men had all instantly transformed into ash, their mirage-like bodies evaporating into the writhing swirls of steam.

Shane almost felt bad for them.

If their invasion had succeeded, they would have not shown any mercy.

The Phoenix performed a twisting maneuver that Felix would recognize as a split-S. The next and largest airship was just ahead. Wind beat against Shane's face as the Phoenix Elemental flapped those huge orange-magenta wings, scorching the salt flats far below.

I wonder if the Lord Paladin is on that ship? Shane wondered.

This question restrained the Phoenix Elemental. She pointed her beak at the rear of the airship, at a huge glass construct that dangled below. She inverted and reached huge talons up into the belly of the airship, then pulled her neck up, smashing her beak through the glass. Shane blasted the shrapnel away with wind magic, and found himself at one end of an extremely long table. A dozen men in ornate uniforms occupied the seats with their arms covering their eyes. The fat, bald Lord Paladin sat at the head of the table with a crystal cup of amber liquid in one hand.

The man barely seemed lucid.

"Is that you Doomsayer?" the Lord Paladin asked. "Have you seen Felix? Where is that boy?"

The weight of the burning Phoenix Elemental began to drag the entire airship down, and the room was filled with the sound of shattering glass, melting and bending metal. Horrified, all of the other officers scrambled out of the room.

"Felix has quit the field," Shane said as he stumbled forward.

"That doesn't sound like him!" the Lord Paladin said. "Good for him though! Retreat is just another tool, after all. And a commander needs to have practice with their tools. Do you want a drink?"

"Certainly," Shane replied.

The Lord Paladin offered a mostly-empty bottle of the amber liquid.

Shane grabbed the bottle and took a sniff. It smelled like fire.

"Is that a bird?" the Lord Paladin asked, pointing to the twitching head of the Phoenix Elemental that had punched up through the floor at the end of the table. Her beady eyes regarded them.

"Fire isn't a very nice way to die," Shane said.

He smashed the bottle against the table, while simultaneously blasting the fragments away from his own body with wind magic. He reached out and slammed his palm against the Lord Paladin's spotted pate, snapping his head back. Then, Shane punched the jagged wreck of the brandy bottle through the other man's throat.

The Lord Paladin lurched back into his chair. Instinctively, he raised his glass to his lips and feebly attempted to take one last drink.