The air was clean and a refreshing breeze passed through the stone corridor. Cira’s dungeon beneath the palace was very well ventilated and overall at a comfortable temperature. Meanwhile the air smiled like the open wind, as if she were sitting in her garden.

Pita said he wanted to show her all the artifacts that he made, but they were aboard Cira’s newest galleon. The ship formerly known as Cap Kieran’s. So, Cira left the boy in her harem’s care for now. The women would go with him to recover his belongings and hopefully help him feel more comfortable to be on Acher.

Cira wanted him to join her students for what little training she could afford, but first came unfinished business. This brought her to the dungeon where the dredges of her recent past ended up.

This was obviously a troublesome endeavor, so Cira had everyone brought to the same room—one where the entire council was in attendance to present their decisions.

“You’re here early,” Cira approached Kuja, who placed her bookmark in an unmarked tome. “I’m surprised you’re here at all.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” She cast a youthful smile, “Evidently, I have the time to sit and witness history unfold. They may have made you empress or something, but I could never dream of something so lofty,” Kuja used her hand to fan her face, “I can sit here and record events as long as I wish then simply fly away, as it were.”

Cira knew she was jeering from the standpoint of a reader of the Sorcerer’s Compendium’s first volume.

“Fair enough.” She shrugged, “but what will you do when I myself fly away? Is that book in your hands not from the forbidden archive?”

She got a look on her face like a kid caught in the cookie jar, one Cira knew first-hand, “Y-yes. It is. So what? I’ll find other books… or things to research.”

“Hey…” Cira narrowed her gaze at the blank book. It looked like one of Gazen’s random notebooks. “What is that you’re reading?”

Nervous laughter followed and Kuja held the book close, “Nothing major… Just the basics of soul refinement—you know it’s crazy how close to the truth that necromancer’s discoveries were!” She deflected.

Cira waved her off with a wince of unforeseen pain, “Please, no more soul stuff. I don’t care if you look into it, but at best leave important documents atop the lefthand table of my forbidden archive for me to discover one day when it matters.”

“O-oh… Okay.” She looked a little uncomfortable, so Cira continued.

“Kuja…” She had actually felt incredibly bad ever since she woke up because if she had never crashed into this island, Kuja’s village would never have been burned down. “I owe you a debt I can’t possibly repay… You cherished that place. Your home… and it was burned—”

“Stop.” Kuja didn’t look upset, but as stern as any other three-hundred-year-old woman could look. “You’ve granted me a new chance at life and recovered the full wisdom of my people; even exceeding it. As if this were the tides of fate carefully woven, I have been given an opportunity to look only to the future. It does not matter if the past is muddled in soot, it still exists in the shadows of Archaeum. Memorial to skies long past. They need not steer my future. As for you—“ She paused, making Cira nervous with her gaze, “Not even you hold the power to weave the past. Why linger on it so?”

I may have accidentally done exactly that, but I see her point…

“You’re right.” Cira shook her head, sitting down at her gaudy throne. That high chancellor guy didn’t have a chair anywhere near this nice—or expensive. I’m probably a lousy ruler. “But I suppose the past is heavy.”

A stone door swung on its hinge and banged against the wall as Jimbo tumbled into the room. The prisoners who intently listening to the conversation with abject confusion were all startled back onto their asses.

“Don’t mind him,” James strode into the room and claimed a seat, “We are all present, and I believe we have come to a mutual decision.”

Cira acknowledged his words and waited for everyone else to be seated. Her imprisoned wizards in shabby clothes looked sullen and hopeless, while Captain Wick looked completely defeated. His head hung low, and he refused to meet anyone’s eyes.

“Look at me, you stupid bastard!” Jimbo shouted, startling the dethroned prisoner, but not enough to get him to look up. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you—”

“That’s enough.” Cira silenced him, “take your seat, Councilman.”

Jimbo followed orders, but not before mean mugging Wick for another few seconds. The atmosphere was tense, and there was a lot of disdain pointed toward the center of the room. Not a single smug face among all the king’s men.

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“Theodore William Wick the Second,” Dutchy rolled a scroll out before her, “As representative of the people of Acher and the former Lost Cloud, I hereby sentence you to death.”

Gasps rung out from the guilty mages and their chains rattled. They tried to move or speak to offer their support to their captain, or possibly capitulate shamefully to Cira, but found they could not move. Wick started to shake of his own accord, and slowly fell to his knees.

Well, it wasn’t hard to guess his fate, and he sure does deserve it, but it sounds so serious spoken out loud. This nation’s first—

Bang!

Even Cira winced as a flash of combustion came from the end of jimbo’s hand. Smoke rose from his pistol as Wick slumped over.

“What the hell, man?!” Dutchy sat next to him and was livid, holding her ears in pain. Most of the council was likewise upset.

Across from them was James, shaking his head with a sigh, “Seriously, Jimbo? We weren’t supposed to do it here.”

“I’ll have to agree,” Cira spoke with a frown, releasing her grasp on the other prisoners, “Get them out of here. Jimbo, you’re cleaning up.”

The mages and unruly pirates were still chained, but half of them were in hysterics as their captain’s blood reached their feet. Not a very hardened bunch, Cira thought, but she was starting to feel sick.

__

After some time, the meeting continued in a different part of the dungeon. Jimbo was not present, for he was busy with something else and not necessary to the delivery of justice. The remaining prisoners were visibly shaken, but some seemed resigned. A shell like their former captain.

I honestly expected to at least hear something from Wick. Some final words, defiant complaints perhaps. But… Maybe it’s better to be done with it.

“For the rest of you lot,” Their dulled gazes all lifted up to listen to Dutchy, who turned to Cira, “Can you destroy their auras?”

“Hmm…” Cira rested her chin on her fist and leaned on the arm of her golden throne. She had no intention of cursing them en masse, so it wouldn’t be permanent. While she deliberated, the mages begged—only a couple looked at her with abject disdain, “It would be the same as if they expended them to the point of breaking. So, their auras will return eventually.”

“That’s assuming they make it.” Ripley clicked his tongue, dogging the mages in Jimbo’s place.

“What do you mean…?” Cira could understand wanting to cripple their mana, but it wasn’t exactly a lethal process.

“For sharing your captain’s crimes,” Dutchy continued as the mages hung on her words, “You will be stripped of your auras and sentenced to exile.”

___

Exile in a place long known as the pirate kingdom worked a little different than Cira was used to. She expected them to get shipped down the Boreal or something, but the reality was far worse. A thought occurred that maybe Wick got a lighter punishment than the rest.

“How is this any different from a sky burial?” Cira asked, watching the mages line up along the cliffside, gliders strapped to their backs.

“They have a chance.” James replied in an uncharacteristically cold tone. He just finished getting the prisoners ready. They each held a pistol with a single shot in one hand and a sword in the other.

“Do they, though?” The mist was thin up here, but the cloudy abyss below was dense. Still, they could see nimbus sharks swirling around as silhouettes. These bluffs were commonly avoided by residents of this island as the sharks’ breeding grounds and was also known as the Cliffs of Exile. A name which existed long before Wick. The only way to leave Lost Cloud alive, so they said.

This was a tradition that the council wanted to die with the last dregs of the royal faction. So, that would make this Acher’s first and only sky burial. Cira had mixed feelings, but just like Stygian Deep, the choices here were in the hands of the people.

“I was exiled once.” Jimbo replied, “Did I never tell you that? First time I ever set foot on Fount Salt.”

Evidently, he bought his way back with prima salt, “No… I can’t say you mentioned that one.”

I hate to say it, but that’s an impressive feat. What is with this guy’s luck?

“Wouldn’t do it again though.” He stepped forward and shot a gun into the air, “Alright, boys! Closest land’s about a day and a half that way!”

Tawny held out her staff of wind and a gale pushed at their backs. All at once, the sixteen closest to Captain Wick were thrown off. Their screams faded surprisingly fast as the wind picked up. Everyone stood in silence for a moment. A few distant gunshots sounded off from below, and this island was finally free.

“Like cuttin’ off a royal tumor,” Dutchy spat over the edge.

“Good riddance,” Jimbo hacked up a lung and followed suit.

Soon all the councilmen and everyone present took turns spitting off the cliff. Cira was the only one who abstained. She was surprised to see even James doing it.

“Is that part of the tradition too?” Cira asked, a little hesitant to join.

“No, but they deserve it.”

___

Cira watched them spit in the wind for a while, then everybody packed up and headed back to the palace, a weight removed from their shoulders.

“This country’s a week old,” Cira complained, “How many damn meeting rooms do you have?”

“You built them all.” James shot back.

“I’ll have you know this was intended to be a multi-purpose communal rec-room. Large doors for bringing in tables or equipment to host events, just a short hall from the main kitchen and directly adjacent to a guard post.” Cira counted off on both hands, “In everyday use, it was poised to act as a spacious foyer so anyone employed within or visiting this spire can come and go as they please without getting in each other’s way. I mean, the front door is right there—”

“This is my tower, and I’ll do what I want with it, Missy.” Doctor Larry glowered, “I don’t want people getting too close. Why the hell are we meetin’ here anyway?”

Jimbo just shrugged, “Your meeting room was closest to the courtyard.”

Larry buried his face in one hand while another grasped a bottle. “Just get on with it then.”

“Yeah, what’s this about?” Cira looked over her council.

“You tell us,” James countered, “That concludes your business here, right? I got a weird feeling you’ll disappear in the night if we don’t ask.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Cira in fact did dream of it quite vividly during the short nap she took in Stygian Deep. “Though I am leaving Acher tonight.” She looked at Jimbo and Captain Shores, who stood behind him—an envious non-member of the council, “I need all my students and everyone who still wishes to see Paradise to meet me at Green Pit in the morning.”