The five travelers left Poppyville in high spirits, carrying an air of excitement from the previous day’s festivities as well as having rested in comfortable beds behind protected walls rather than camping outside. They traveled close to the river, knowing that it would eventually lead to the Castle of Docrun that they could now see at a distance ahead of them.

Fran, Gorb, and Rep were discussing the games they participated in the day before. Zalan was feeling inspired after having watched so many Elemental professionals the previous day and was spending all his focus trying to imbue his blade with lightning. Yelsa watched him work intently, but quietly, kept a modest distance away to not be affected by errant sparks and shocks. He could get the lightning to stick to the tip for a good two seconds, but nothing as robust as the fully imbued blade Fran could summon at a whim. It was nice to see some progress, as tiny as it was. A few seconds of the tip of a sword was better than not being able to do it at all. Even in his small acknowledgement of success, he felt Yelsa watching from over his shoulder. It felt weird for her to watch him without offering advice like the others in his group normally did.

“So, what are you gonna do once you get home?” Zalan asked, becoming shy with her silence.

“What do you mean?” Yelsa asked.

“I mean what’s the goal once you’re home with the Homeseeker? What next?” Zalan asked.

“The goal is to go home. That is everything,” Yelsa replied.

“You’re not planning on visiting people or anything like that? Just home?” Zalan asked, clicking his tongue as he was unable to keep the lightning any further than just the end of the blade.

“Once I am home, visiting all of my friends and family will be trivial, given that they are also at my home,” Yelsa said. “What about you, what are your plans for when you return?”

“I uhhh… I was gonna visit my mom,” Zalan said, his voice low.

“An admirable goal,” Yelsa said. “What is your mother like?”

A frown on Zalan’s face was the instinctual response to her question. Then, he took a few moments to reflect. Slowly, a faint smile crawled its way to his face.

“Loving. Super generous. A doctor too. She taught me everything she could about healing others. And her smile… just the best. I felt like I could do no wrong in her company. I was supposed to visit her a lot sooner, but…” Zalan trailed, a lump of guilt appearing in his chest. Yelsa looked pleased, seeming satisfied by his reply.

“Visiting must be nice. Where I am from, everyone is always nearby, right at home.”

Zalan lowered his sword to look at her.

“Everyone is at home? Don’t people ever leave?” Zalan asked.

“No,” Yelsa replied with certainty.

Zalan gave her a funny look, confused by her response.

“What about you? You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t leave, right?” Zalan asked.

Yelsa’s face didn’t show any emotion, but she cracked a few knuckles in response. Zalan raised an eyebrow at her, urging the question.

“Yelsa, are you really from a city in the sky?” Zalan asked.

“Yes! I knew Gorbonifus and Fran would try to convince you otherwise! Of course I am!” Yelsa snapped. “Why would I want to get the Homeseeker if my end goal was not to return home?”

“How should I know? But alright, fine. I still believe you’re from the cloud city. But then why are you here? On the ground and not in the sky?” Zalan asked.

“I did something foolish,” Yelsa said in a low, shameful voice. She popped another few knuckles and Zalan could tell he was stressing her out. He brought his voice down to prevent eavesdropping and tried to be more calming.

“What happened?” he asked, burning with curiosity.

“Have you ever heard of a man named Morloch?” she asked.

“No, should I?” Zalan asked.

“I do not know. I hope not. He lived on Aetheria with us. An excellent archer and a master swordsman. He actually taught me how to fight, not that it was necessary to learn in Aetheria. But he taught me everything I know about the bow. He always talked about gaining power and how Aetheria limited his ability to grow. He was not much of an orator, but he was very good at convincing people in other ways. Small, slight nudges to make you change your mind on things that you would never have considered acting upon yourself. And he…” Yelsa turned away.

It became immediately clear to Zalan that she was holding back tears, so Zalan turned forward to take in the sight of the castle that was now growing as they drew closer.

The Castle of Docrun was more a citadel than a single building. It looked as though it had several rooms on many different floors, with points jutting out from different towers to express its grandness. It could easily house an entire town within its tall walls, though the castle was worn down from years of abandonment. Vines slid up and down rusted metal windows on many different floors and tiny pieces of the upper towers were chipping off, giving the feeling that some of them were ready to crumble and collapse. On the highest floor, in the center of the castle was a large circular dome that had a massive hole in it and clear evidence of something having burned the edges of the hole while flying in or out.

The dragon’s lair.

Yelsa had gained her composure and rubbed her arm against her nose as she sniffed.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Just trying to take in the area,” Zalan said nonchalantly, pretending not to have noticed her tears.

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“He convinced me to jump off,” Yelsa said, so quietly that Zalan almost didn’t hear. He immediately lowered his gaze from the castle and looked at her. He first wanted to express bafflement that she could survive jumping off a city floating in the sky, but the look of shame and remorse on her face made him hold his tongue. He tried a different approach, giving her the benefit of the doubt.

“You’re pretty strong willed. How did Morloch force you to do that?” Zalan asked, phrasing his question in such a way that he hoped it was a compliment.

“I was not forced,” Yelsa corrected. “I had to do it of my own free will. You see, he discovered an Air Elemental in our city. And its challenge was to convince someone to jump off the city of their own volition.”

Zalan widened his eyes. The Elemental asked for its challenger to harm someone else. The challenge sounded like it would be impossible for Zalan to take on. How could he live with himself after sending someone plunging to their death? What kind of person was this Morloch that could both take the challenge and execute it? Unless Morloch wasn’t a rare type of person. What if there were others who had discovered the Elemental and sent people off the city like Yelsa? Was there always a looming threat of being told to jump off the city so someone else could get power?

“Was he the only person to find the Elemental?” Zalan asked, hoping to get a few answers to his questions.

“You mean to ask if others have jumped off my city?” Yelsa asked.

“Kinda,” Zalan admitted abashedly.

“I am the only one I know of,” Yelsa said, with further humiliation injected into her words. She popped more knuckles. A thought popped into Zalan’s head.

“Didn’t that Elemental ask for someone to get help to achieve their goal? I thought you were supposed to take on the challenge alone,” Zalan mentioned.

“That is what I believed as well. But I thought about it further. He never told me about the challenge. Morloch convinced me without ever bringing up the Elemental. I suspect that one of the conditions of the challenge was that the nature of it was to remain secret to the victim,” Yelsa said thoughtfully.

“Is the city not that high off the ground?” Zalan asked, trying to give her even more benefit of the doubt.

“Thousands of feet in the air. It floats among the clouds,” Yelsa replied.

Zalan lowered his sword, no longer interested in trying to imbue it. He couldn’t think of a good way to phrase his next question.

“How did he convince you to throw your life away?” Zalan finally asked.

“Thankfully, my story is not filled with that much foolishness. He did not tell me to hurt myself. I knew I would survive the fall unscathed. That was partly why I made the jump.”

“What? How did you know you’d survive?”

“He gave me an Artifact. The Drop Coin. You could fall from any height and not be in any pain. He gave it to me after a few months of training together. He made a show of how proud he was to have me as a pupil and then lamented that I would never be able to use my abilities in combat. There are errant monsters that fly around Aetheria, but he often would handle those creatures himself. In fact, killing one of those monsters was where he originally found the Drop Coin. He put the idea in my head that I wanted to experience a true adventure on the surface. Many of our training days were spent with him bemoaning how little use I could get out of my excellent form and abilities with the bow. Days later, I told him that I would use the Drop Coin to jump off of Aetheria in search of real adventure. As if it were my own idea! What a foolish girl I am,” Yelsa scoffed.

Zalan didn’t know how to reply to that. But to his relief, Yelsa had more to say,

“I still clearly remember standing on the edge of Aetheria and looking down at the world beneath the clouds with Morloch standing there beside me. Goading me. I wanted to turn around, but his words were so frantic then. ‘Listen to me! If you do not then this will all have been for nothing!’ I thought he was talking about me, but of course he meant the long-stoking plan of bending my mind to his will. He spent so long talking about my potential! I really thought it was such a serious thing to him! I thought that he… cared about me. And then I jumped. And regretted it immediately. I screamed the whole way down. And when I landed softly thanks to the Artifact, I laid down and cried, knowing that there was no chance of my going back home.”

“Oh,” Zalan said, the story feeling so much more real now. The dream world wasn’t just filled with random people. They had serious problems.

“Oh?” Yelsa repeated, a sour look on her face. “Is that all you have to offer? No sympathies, not promises to avenge me. Just a dull, dimwitted, ‘oh?’ You really are an ignorant man.”

“Sorry, I’m not really good with emotions,” Zalan expressed.

“Not many are,” Yelsa sighed. “But at least you listen to me like you believe me. That brings me some comfort.”

“I do believe you,” Zalan said sincerely.

Yelsa smiled warmly. Zalan smiled back for a moment. Maybe he could make friends in this world. Then, another question came to mind.

“How did you know that Morloch was after an Elemental’s challenge? Did the Elemental appear to you afterward or something?” Zalan asked.

“If only!” Yelsa scoffed. “Morloch himself jumped off the city once he received the power. He was already at Level Eleven from his years of obsessive monster hunting in the skies around Atheria, so he had high Wisdom and could easily catch himself before he hit the ground, even without the Drop Coin. I do not think he originally intended to see me after I jumped off. But when he left Atheria with his new power, he happened to see me curled up as he spun down from the sky with glee. He came to me to gloat. He explained that he found an Elemental within the city, but would not tell me where. He could now achieve his goal to gather as many powers from all the Elementals of the world. Then he ran off at incredible speed, aided by the wind at his back. He left me the Drop Coin, which still had a few uses. I do not think he remembered that Artifact when he came to laugh in my face. It made me a small fortune when I sold it.”

“So Morloch is out of the sky, too?” Zalan asked.

“He is,” Yelsa nodded gravely. “This was years ago, and I doubt he looks like he once did. He would likely disguise himself, but be wary of anyone you see that can use Air Elemental Power.”

Zalan’s eyes involuntarily shifted to Gorb and Yelsa laughed.

“Anyone that is a high Level and can use Air Elemental power,” she clarified.

“Right, I knew that,” Zalan said quickly, trying to save face.

“Glad we reached it,” Yelsa nodded.

Zalan looked at her with a slight frown, trying to understand what she had just said.

“What?” he asked.

“The Castle of Docrun,” she indicated ahead to reveal the top of the gates on a hill on the horizon.

Zalan looked ahead at the massive, bygone castle standing tall above the river. Then he turned back to Yelsa.

“I might be bad at expressing emotions, but you’re terrible at specifying stuff you’re pointing at,” Zalan pointed out.

“Noted,” Yelsa said, distracted by something else ahead of them.

Zalan looked forward and saw the other three companions had stopped progressing and knelt down low. Zalan and Yelsa looked at one another and lowered themselves, inching forward until they could speak quietly to their friends.

“What is it?” Zalan asked.

“There is a Narg sleeping against the gate,” Fran whispered.

“Any way around it?” Yelsa asked.

“Not that we can tell,” Rep replied.

“But there is a way though it,” Fran smiled.

“We should not rush into battle a Narg,” Gorb chastised.

“I am not talking about rushing in!” Fran countered. “If we lay out a plan where each of us takes a part in the battle, I think we can take it on without it dealing us any harm.”

Zalan took one look at the Narg and wasn’t sure that he was as confident as Fran.