The world soul chimed softly in my head and I stopped in surprise.

<{Arcanist} Advanced to level 7. For binding the fragment of Oak to yourself and for escaping the trap that the sylvani laid, you have advanced to {Arcanist:7}>

Somehow, it wasn’t as enjoyable a thrill as the previous ones. I felt like I’d failed somehow. What would happen now in the sylvani empire? Would the queen be overthrown? Should I have stayed? I did want to get the next arcanum, and if my intuition was right Deacon was at this very moment shoveling souls into his Arcanum to fuel his evil plans. I wasn’t terribly worried about the access key that only sylvani technology could unlock, if it was technology, then Lakshmi would find her way past it.

I just… I can’t solve every problem. Even if there’s a plot, or a ‘groove’ in the world as Soriya puts it, I can’t just hang out and do sidequests. Real people are really dying!

I shook my head in frustration and pushed off the bulkhead where I’d slouched while the World Soul informed me of my upgrade.

I will deal with this, the way I’ve dealt with everything else. The best I can. A bad decision just means I was using Best Available Data. That’s why it’s B.A.D. I told myself.

I peered out the portal to see the endless sea of green racing past us below. Clearly Lakshmi was wasting no time. I made it to the lounge only to find Lakshmi standing in the small amount of free space and pacing. Scattered around the room were the round fuel drums of condensed mana, glowing a soft blue.

Lakshmi spun to me as I entered. “Ah, Lily! You’re here, great! I mean, I know you had to be onboard but- nevermind, look at this!” She held up a small twig with a single green leaf on it.

I blinked in surprise. Oh. I guess that means Camaxtli is piloting then. I stepped closer, to peer at the leaf, then suddenly smiled. I looked up at Lakshmi and giggled. “You stole sylvani tech. So that’s what you meant when you said you’d ‘worked out a few bits’ of the tech.”

Lakshmi jerked and scowled at me. “I didn’t steal it! It was everywhere, and we were given access to everywhere in the palace!”

I gave her a smile. “And you specifically asked about taking this?”

“Well, no, but it was implied! I was supposed to pilot an airship, a girl’s got a right to ask a few questions! Hey, who’s the former princess here! I totally know how castles and royalty work!”

I nodded, pressing my lips together to stop another giggle. “So, former princess Captain Lakshmi needs my help with the totally not stolen sylvani tech?”

“Yes, exactly! I’m certain that they used that Arcanum of yours as the basis of their tech, it’s too… Ancient-y! I can find traces of mana channels interwoven in everything! Just like you find in all the Ancient’s ruins!”

I paused, struck by a thought. I looked around, and didn’t see Eshaan anywhere. I lowered my voice. “Lakshmi, Eshaan really likes Ancient stuff, right?”

Lakshmi blinked and furrowed her brow in confusion, clearly confused by my sudden shift in topic. “What? Why are you asking? Are you planning on getting your boyfriend a gift?”

I flushed. “Uh… sort of, but not…” I stomped my foot. “Not the point! He talks to you about Ancient’s stuff, right?”

Lakshmi nodded, clearly confused with where I was going.

“So…? How is he? You study ancients, how does he strike you?”

Lakshmi shrugged casually. “He’s ok. Better than some of those useless researchers I tried to work with in the palace, but that’s a low bar.”

I frowned, unsure how to ask what I really wanted to know. Yes, but… how smart is he?! Not that this would help, Lakshmi was one of the smartest idiots I’d ever met. In her own way, she was just as clueless as Eshaan!

I sighed, and nodded. “Thanks.”

“Sure? He’s really interested in the architecting of the mana flows, the way the Ancient’s alloy causes a natural flux.” She said, still clearly trying to suggest gifts. “It’s really quite fascinating, they induced the mana currents in the metal itself by careful application of irregularities in the metal! He’d probably like a clockwork device that uses those channels in something. It’s a real pity that the Ancient’s didn’t use blades, you could just get him a sword.”

“So… kind of like Camaxtli’s blade?” I asked, giving her a slight smile.

Lakshmi got a distant look in her eyes. “Now there’s a thought…”

I grabbed her hands before she could get lost again. “Lakshmi. The sylvani tech. What do you need from me?”

“Oh! Right! So… you have the Arcanum in you, or at least a part of it. How that works I’d love to know! Soriya thinks it’s an imprint from an Astral layer, kind of like how the Wake exists, only acting as a forward… right, sorry.” She caught her breath. “I want you to call up Oak for me, and I can ask it questions. I hope!”

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“Ah. Well… considering that the sylvani said that we’d need their tech to access the labyrinth dungeon thing, that seems sound. And we’re going to be flying for quite some time, so… sure. Let’s do this.”

I closed my eyes, and clutched my staff, calling on Oak to manifest. The inside of my eyelids filled with green and gold sparkles, and then the softest of faint whispers floated in the air.

“I have come, Child of Æther. What do you wish of me?” The voice barely loud enough to hear over the soft hum of the Sparrowhawk’s engines.

My eyes popped open to see a green and gold dragon, slowly coiling around itself. It didn’t look much like a tree, but it did look vibrantly alive. Odd patches and parts of its body were so translucent as to be almost transparent, though there was nothing precisely inside them. The patches moved slowly in random patterns across Oak’s body. It was eerie and beautiful and very strange to see.

“Oak, my friend wishes to ask you some questions. No, not about Arcanum locations, she wishes to know…”

I turned to Lakshmi. “Well, actually, why don’t you just ask?” I said to her.

The green and gold dragon slowly turned in the air to look at Lakshmi.

“Hail, child of the System. What do you wish to know?” It said in that soft whispery voice.

Lakshmi held up the twig. “Can you tell me how this works?!” She asked excitedly.

“Yes.” Said Oak softly, and then fell silent.

“Well?!” Lakshmi burst out after a long silence.

“I do not understand your question.” Oak whispered.

Lakshmi’s cheeks turned a reddish purple, but before she could explode, I said quickly said “Please tell us how the sylvani tech works.”

“All living creatures have mana capacity within them. When a living thing is growing, the channels that mana flows in can be woven into the living being. Depending on how the channels are structured, they can be flexible, multipurpose, or fixed in effect. The desired template must be selected before growth.”

“That sounds like you’re describing mana vessels.” Lakshmi said.

“Mana channels take that form in animal life forms. In plant matter, they take a different but similar form. Both are living creatures.”

Lakshmi heaved a sigh of irritation at the stilted and obviously slightly damaged Oak’s descriptions.

By slow fits and starts, and with much back and forth, Lakshmi slowly teased out the method of growth that put mana vessels into plants. Or rather, allowed them to be used in a way that people could understand.

By the time I was able to let Oak go, several hours had passed. Lakshmi had stacks of paper filled with notes and diagrams that didn’t make the slightest sense to me, but Soriya seemed excited by several of the ideas, and to my shock, Eshaan was showing real interest in the diagrams as well.

I coughed. “I don’t know how long this will take, but I do know we’ve got a long trip. If the maps that I saw back in Zaachila are anything to go on, it’s even further to Bekent than it was from the coast of the Empire to Zaachila. I’m grateful to the Cloudhearts for their supplies, but nobody is going to want to eat mutton for five days.”

Eshaan bravely defended me. “No way, Lily, you could make anything taste good!”

I smiled at him and shook my head. “Let me rephrase. I do not want to eat mutton for five days. There must be towns here that aren’t sylvani…” I called out to Camaxtli in the cockpit.

“Is that true, were there humans on this continent?” I asked.

Camaxtli looked back over his shoulder, and spoke up. “There were humans, monan, sylvani, and zookani on all the contients. Civilization was widespread in my time.”

“So there’s probably people who aren’t Sylvani here! We need to keep an eye out for a city.”

“In theory there must be a port of some kind,” Daniyel said “As it is at least known that there is a western continent, and people claim to have visited it. But how would we find a city?”

Eshaan laughed. “Oh come on, this is easy! It’s a port city!”

Everyone looked at him blankly. He frowned, waving his hands.

“A port city? On the water? We just fly along the coastline, and we’re sure to see it?”

I blinked and then laughed in surprise. “Speaks the fisherman!”

Eshaan wrinkled his nose. “Uh, please don’t remind me.”

“Do you not like where you came from, Eshaan?” Asked Lakshmi.

He shook his head. “It’s not that. I like my family just fine, it’s fish that I can’t stand.” He turned to me and waved his hands expressively. “If you think you’re tired of mutton after five days, imagine how I feel about fish after fifteen years!”

I grimaced. “Point taken.”

I felt the shift as the Sparrowhawk banked into a slow turn. Camaxtli announced “I shall set a course for the coast. With luck, we shall have supplies and an answer shortly.”

“I hope that we can stay outside the reach of the sylvani navy.” Soriya said.

Lakshmi spoke up heatedly. “The Sparrowhawk is faster than any of the sylvani ships!” She paused. “Probably.” She added in a quieter voice.

I groaned and said “Ok, so we’re definitely inside the reach of the air fleet. I guess we’ll have to hope that they’re fooled by our illusion and the explosion of the mothship for long enough for us to set down and vanish. It’s a big world, hopefully we can vanish in it.” I pressed my lips together. “And if not, then I guess we’ll have to fight it out.”

“Don’t worry, Lily! We took on Isha, we can defeat one of those mothships!” Announced Eshaan proudly.

I sighed. “I hope you’re right, Eshaan. I hope you’re right.”

The plan made, we settled in for a flight of unknown duration. The endless rolling forest slowly gave way to flat plains, rivers and swampland under us.

I’d gotten the Sparrowhawk stocked with a few supplies before we took off, but of course I hadn’t been able to do a full restock without arousing suspicion. That meant that while I was able to make a glowberry and bug souffle (which came out very nicely) I could hardly keep all of us fed unless we resorted to mutton jerky. And maybe cloud wool, frankly, with how tired we all be of the taste.

My worries proved unfounded, and I heaved a sigh of relief and a prayer of gratitude to the spirits. Maybe I should be thanking the System? I shook my head. My religious beliefs, on both sides of my personality, had been proven utterly wrong. I suppose I could start up the cult of Saintess Lilyanna. I thought dryly But if I did that, I think the plot would demand that I become a cackling villain, or killed by the person who I trusted enough to put in charge of the whole thing. No thank you.

As the sun was setting over the seemingly endless horizon of swamp and rivers, Camaxtli announced “I have a city in view. It does not appear to show the same characteristic structure as the sylvani city we so recently left. Shall I prepare for landing?”

I looked around at everyone, gathering tense and expectant faces. One by one, they all nodded agreement. I turned to Camaxtli and nodded. “Take us in. Lets see what the System has in store for us here.”