Walking with all the rest -- with Jiehong and Whiskey, plus her Scouts, and Winters with his men; not to mention the civilians rescued from the viceroy's villa -- Zan had felt trepidation at leaving the wizard tower. He had a fear the moment they left the tower, the New Woodland Expanse airship would be waiting for them and drop a crude explosive on them, killing them all. No such thing happened, though.

Leaving the tower, the group had come upon the tower's final defensive wall. At a call from the office, the wall brought the gate low, its cast-iron visage lowering into the ground like an earth imp returning to the soil. Fresh air whooshed over everyone's sweaty skins. It smells so sweet, Zan thought as he freely breathed the air and found himself psychologically bandaged.

And no airship! Not yet...

Leaving the inner grounds of the wizard tower, Zan was happy to be outside again. He would not be truly happy, however, until the trading corridor lay behind them; too much had Zan and Company seen inside of the tower, too many monsters, somehow, too much unskilled labor. He felt fuzzy through the whole tower escapade. Zan wanted nothing more than to never again return to these Wizard Towers. Whatever they were, they did not agree with his fragile constitution.

Ahead, the territory (proper) of the Kingship -- and the war, Zan bitterly knew.

The first time the group spotted the Expanse airship, they had left the inner property of the trading corridor. The cast-iron gate lay behind them as a smudge on the horizon while the Kingship lay as another smudge but only to their north. In the distance, the airship clinked to the border between Sunstar Industries property, where Zan and Everyone were currently traversing, and the war-torn lands of Zan's homeland, the Kingship. Once we cross over, Zan told himself, we will be fair game. That's why the airship is hovering so far away. It's waiting for us...

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Colonel Winters broke Zan out of his reverie. He was using the echo-beetle to communicate. "We are going to have to confront that airship. Any ideas? I'm also concerned about the civilians. How are we going to protect them?"

Winters brought to light important questions. Zan had never thought about how to fight an airship. Why would he? If Winters was right, no one even knew, until now, the Expanse was capable of building airships. Wasting time on theoretical confrontations didn't behoove anyone.

And yet... here they were. Now in the position of not only needing to battle one but do so while protecting non-combatants. With their destination a day or less away, Zan felt too close to their goal for them to give up their bellies. They would fight. They would protect. But the question remained. How?

Zan and Company exchanged opinions with Winters through their own echo-beetles. Unfortunately, no one had any bright ideas. How could a ground force oppose an air-force? They might get away with hiding the civilians in the bushes. Maybe if they were lucky, the enemy would let a civilian caravan pass to a protected zone without harassment. Yet it was a risk they couldn't take, for if they were wrong, then dozens would be murdered.

"If we don't have a better idea then we will have to risk the woods," Winters said.

The Woods. Zan remembered back to the start of the invasion. When he was tangling with that four-legged siege engine. The people from his village were open and vulnerable. They had hid in the woods. It worked back then, but this was different, Zan knew. An airship was different from a walker.

"What is that?" Jiehong asked. "There. In the distance."