TANSTAAFL

1.5 The Worst Day of Ianthe's Life

2026-10-15T00:00:00Z

The frizzy-haired woman tossed her head back and gave an ear-splitting whistle. A moment later, a round-faced, bright-eyed young man with a crooked smile and nervous demeanor appeared before them.

Mabon jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "Sprocket Danley, please make sure these three are taken care of. That one there," she indicated Kimmerick with a lift of her chin, "needs to go see Armature Hiroshi. All three will need a place to stay until we can figure out what to do with them. Make it happen, Sprocket. I've got other things to attend to."

The Sprocket saluted, clicking his heels together as Mabon gave the trio a final parting nod before stalking off in a very businesslike hurry. When Mabon had disappeared from sight, the young man relaxed only a little, turning a tight-lipped smile that didn’t meet his too-quickly-blinking eyes to his new charges.

“Okay, then,” he said, rubbing his hands together and licking his lips. “Yes, okay then.”

Judging from his body language, Fairuza surmised that Sprocket Danley was not accustomed to having any meaningful responsibility around the encampment. He was the sort of fellow who was told to fetch this, deliver that, hammer this, carry that. He was not the sort of fellow asked to handle anything. Handling required higher-order decision making abilities. The blank stare in Danley’s eyes as he blink-blink-blinked at the trio told Fairuza he might have been lacking in that department.

Danley clenched his fists, gulped down his nerves and grinned hard at the small group before him. “Okay! Uh, yes, we need to get you three squared away! Uh, let’s see. Not sure where…or who….maybe we could ask…no, wouldn’t want to bother—“

“Why don’t you help us find a place to lay down our things and get situated,” Ianthe offered. “Maybe you have a tent or two that could be converted to a temporary shelter? Maybe something that’s being used to store munitions or first aid kits or something like that?”

Danely’s eyes brightened and his lips parted in the beginnings of a much-less-nervous smile. “Oh! Now there’s an idea. We have a couple tents nobody’s using, on account of they’ve got big holes in em. Someone—I won’t say who—thought setting off fireworks inside a tent was a good idea. But you probably won’t meet Sprocket Felder, so you should be safe. Far as the tents go, as long as it doesn’t rain, they should be good enough.”

Ianthe nodded her approval and gestured for Danley to lead the way.

Before long, the found themselves in a disused area of the outpost, standing waist high in a forgotten heap of mouldering equipment. Fairuza could barely make out the motley colors of a camping tent mixed in with unopened wooden crates and a collection of burlap sacks. She began clearing her way toward them.

“Here we are,” Danley said, looking triumphant as his gaze followed Fairuza wading into the piles. “Looks like we’ve got a couple tents in that rubble. I can help you set them up if you like, or I can leave you to it?”

Ianthe propped her hands on her hips and looked helplessly to Kimmerick, who gestured to his bad arm with his good one. “Afraid I can’t help pitch a tent in this condition,” he lamented. “Can you girls manage on your own, or do you need the Sprocket’s help?”

Ianthe scoffed. “Well, of course we need the Sprocket’s help! How do you think we’ll—“

“Actually,” Fairuza cut in, tossing her friend a stern glance, “I think we can manage. I’m sure Kimmerick would be grateful if you took him to see the mechanic as soon as possible. It can’t feel very good to be down an arm. I’m sure Ianthe and I can figure it out from here.”

Ianthe opened her mouth to object, but quickly closed it when she saw the look on Fairuza’s face. With a sigh, she heaved her shoulders and nodded dejectedly. “Oh all right. I suppose Fairuza and I can make do without you two.” She turned her attention to Kimmerick, who was blushing quite red and looking more than a little ashamed of his current uselessness. “Go on and get your arm fixed. Maybe you’ll be whole again by dinner. I'm sure we two girls can figure out how to set camp all by ourselves.”

The Sprocket paused, his expression dubious. “Have you never pitched a tent before?”

Ianthe’s scowl deepened. “You mean driven stakes into hard ground and hoisted very heavy canvases into position all by our lonesome? Of course not! How would we travel with such a burden? Fairuza and I usually sleep under the stars on just our bedrolls. But then again, we are usually alone, not surrounded by strangers, half of whom are men.” The girl shuddered. “Sleeping without privacy with men nearby is out of the question,” the girl said. “So as much as we have never done it before, it appears we have no choice. We’ll figure it out.”

“If you don’t think you can manage it, I’m sure I can find someone else to help,” the Sprocket said, looking not at all sure. “I just don’t know who we can spare. This particular outpost, as you may have noticed, has been dispatched to take care of the gargoyle problem. And the berg problem. Which is really the same problem anyway. You see, the citadel woke up and turned into a boulderberg and floated into the sky, which, as far as I know, has never happened before. The gargoyles weren’t too keen on that, and in protecting their territory, they’ve been—“

"Yes, we already know all about that," Ianthe interrupted with a weary roll of her eyes. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not hear about all of the goings-on just at the moment. I'd really like to make camp so we can eventually find ourselves a comfortable place to lie down and have a nap. You did hear that we were captured by one of those gargoyles, and then dropped nearly to our deaths, didn't you?”

The Sprocket’s mouth dropped opened. “Uh, yes, ma’am, I heard about—“

“Well then, perhaps you can appreciate that I’m in no position to have a drawn-out conversation about weird monsters and unthinkable shenanigans. I just want to get my bearings and lie down."

The sprocket dipped his chin in apology. “Yes, of course. We’ll leave you to it, then.” He gave the girls the barest bow and turned on his heels, with Kimmerick scuttling behind.

Fairuza sighed, shaking her head. “You didn’t have to be an ass, you know.”

Ianthe rolled her eyes and folded her arms over her chest. “What good is it to be surrounded by people with muscles and know-how if we aren’t going to use them?”

Fairuza bent low, grabbed the corner of a blue striped piece of canvas and tugged. “Quiet your whining and get over here and help me.”

Ianthe dug her knuckles into her eyes and made a terrible sound in her throat like a cat dying. “Oh, this is turning out to be the worst day of my life!”

1.4 Welcome to Skyrock Garrison

2026-09-23T00:00:00Z

The woman blushed and donned a sheepish grin. “Right, sorry about that! I guess you must be pretty confused, being kidnapped by gargoyles and dropped through the air and rescued by a floating outpost. Well, I’m Mabon, and this is my crew.” She said it in a way that indicated she was in charge of them, not merely one of their number. “We’ve been up here for the past few weeks trying to get the citadel to come home.”

The three young people stared at Mabon a moment before turning those confused gazes toward each other. Finally, Ianthe blurted out, “You—what?”

Mabon laughed and jerked her head as she began walking. It was clearly an invitation to follow her, so the trio did. “Plenty of time to get into all that. Let’s break for lunch, first. Take lunch!” The woman shouted the words into the air, and everyone in the vicinity dropped what they were doing and headed for a large makeshift kitchen not too far away.

“So,” she said as they marched. “What are your names?”

“I’m Ianthe,” said Ianthe. “It’s nice to meet you, I think.”

“Fairuza,” the other girl said.

“Kimmerick,” said the boy.

“Ianthe, Fairuza, Kimmerick,” Mabon recited, pointing at each person in turn. Satisfied that she’d gotten the names straight, the woman ushered the newcomers to the front of the chow line. Fairuza blushed as they cut in front of a large man with a big belly and one set of goggles on his face and yet another propped on the top of his head. But when the man got an eyeful of Mabon, he smiled grandly and happily stepped aside.

Mabon took a handful of plates and passed them around to her new entourage. “You picked a good day to fall out of the sky,” she said. “If you’d shown up yesterday, you’d be feasting on mushroom stew, and if you’d arrived tomorrow, you’d get your fill of oatmeal and broccoli. But today’s smoked goat, my personal favorite. Be generous with the gravy, Lovell; these are my guests!” She motioned for the cook to ladle more delicious-smelling, thick brown gravy over the slabs of meat that took up the whole plate. “We caught them tumbling out of the goddamn sky!”

“Fancy day for you,” the cook grunted. “But I only got as much gravy as I got. Can’t invent something from nothing. Not my fault you brought three extra mouths to my camp.”

“My camp,” Mabon corrected.

“Not if you ain’t the one feedin’ ’em,” Lovell countered.

Mabon grinned widely, and the group carried their plates to a makeshift dining hall, which was just rows of wooden tables and chairs crammed under a canopy of red-striped tarps. Sunlight leaked through the seams where the tarps didn’t quite overlap. In the shade of the tarps, everything glowed faintly red. Ianthe found the color made her pale skin look diseased, which gave her the creeps.

Fairuza, on the other hand, suspected that the light made her own naturally red skin look hale and healthy, so it wasn’t her fault if she preened just a little as she threw her thick legs over the bench to crowd herself near the table.

Kimmerick thought nothing of the light at all. Of the three young people, he was the hungriest, and nothing mattered as much as diving into that plateful of heavenly gravy.

Unfortunately for Kimmerick, he was also the most disabled, and so while he would have liked to attack his meal with gusto, he only had one hand to work with. He did the best he could with just a fork.

Mabon shook a napkin into her lap and cut into her goat meat. “So how did it happen that the three of you got captured by gargoyles?”

“Never mind that,” Ianthe demanded, her pretty face crumpled into a scowl. “I’d like to know what this is we’ve stumbled upon.” Ianthe indicated the entirety of the floating island with a regal wave of her fork. “And what did you mean about convincing the citadel to return home?”

“I asked first,” Mabon said, her face impassive as she forked a huge chunk of meat into her mouth.

“But there’s three of us,” Ianthe continued, “and only one of you, and I’m certain all three of us have the same question. Aren’t I right?” She glanced around at her companions for support.

Fairuza nodded as she chewed her meat. A small glob of gravy escaped the corner of her mouth. “I’d like to know, too.”

“Me, three,” Kimmerick added through a mouthful of half-chewed meat.

Mabon chuckled good-naturedly and let out a defeated sigh. “Oh, all right. I can see when I’m outnumbered. Well, you’ve had the glorious fortune of tumbling upon—you tumbled, after all; you did not, in fact, stumble—Skyrock Garrison.”

Fairuza cringed a little, expecting a snotty reply from Ianthe, who under normal circumstances was not the sort of person to take correction lightly. But for whatever reason, Ianthe did not quarrel. “Skyrock Garrison,” she repeated. “Not a very creative name for a floating island, is it?”

“I suppose not,” Mabon agreed, “but it’s the only floating outpost we have, so it’s at least apt. We didn’t have any floating outposts at all until a few weeks ago. Didn’t need any, as we don’t have skybound enemies in the Valley. Well, we didn’t. But then the citadel decided she was bored of holding still, so she lifted up her skirts and took off into the sky, and that rousted up a local tribe of gargoyles who didn’t like their territory being invaded. And I can’t blame them for that. If someone invaded our territory, we’d protect our lands with force as well. But we can’t just let the damned citadel float away, so what are we to do?”

“What was the island called before it was taken over as an outpost?” Fairuza asked.

The frizzy-haired woman shrugged. “Nothing that I know of. There’s no people up here. It’s not really large enough to support a community of people—not enough water or wildlife, though the north end of the island does have a lake. But anyway, as far as I know, it didn’t have a name. Now it’s Skyrock Garrison. And that’s that.”

“I have so many questions,” Ianthe said as she delicately pressed her napkin to her lips. “I’ll start with—which valley are we in, exactly?”

Mabon tipped her head sideways as she gave the young woman a quizzical look. “The Valley,” she said slowly. “Bristleback Valley. Is anywhere else on the continent referred to as ‘the Valley’?”

“Well,” Ianthe said primly. Now, Fairuza cringed for real. She recognized that tone. Whatever attitude Ianthe had spared Mabon a moment ago had been bottled up and carefully tended, awaiting just the right moment to explode upon their unsuspecting host.

Now was apparently that moment.

“Well, I don’t know any Bristleback Valley,” Ianthe began haughtily, “and while my knowledge of geography isn’t expert by any means, I have studied the maps that the cartographers brought back from their sojourns, and I’ve never heard of Bristleback Valley. I’ve heard of Wet Knees, Sundercloud, and Frondvale Valley. I’ve heard of Golden Ring Valley, Hush Hush Valley, and—Fairuza, what’s that valley that the homely girl with the curling horns couldn’t stop talking about two summers ago? Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue—”

“Ianthe,” Fairuza warned.

“No, no, don’t try to shut me up, I know I’ll think of it if I—Stardew! That’s the one.” She smiled prettily as she propped her elbows on either side of her plate, lacing her fingers together and resting her chin atop them. “But I’ve never heard of Bristlebane Valley.”

“Bristleback,” Mabon corrected without even looking up from her plate. She took another bite patiently, wiped her mouth, stood, and whipped a map from her back pocket. A bit more roughly than was strictly necessary, the woman pushed her plate and Ianthe’s aside to make room for the map, which she spread on the table. She planted a firm finger over a large scar in the middle of a large continent. “Bristleback Valley,” Mabon said. “Right here.”

Ianthe leaned over the map, her prim mouth scribbled into a frown. “What’s all this?”

“This,” Mabon said with a weary sigh, “is a map of Saravos. The largest landmass in the world. You are here.” She tapped the scar again. It was located dead in the center of the continent, neatly splitting the land in two.

Ianthe shook her head with a tight little laugh. “That, of course, is impossible. We’re in Ylendra.”

Mabon eyed Ianthe carefully before turning her gaze to Fairuza. “Do you also think you’re in Ylendra?”

Fairuza didn’t need to look up from her plate to know Ianthe was boring holes in her skull with an icy glare. She cleared her throat and turned to Mabon. “Well, I know that we haven’t crossed a single ocean on our sojourn. I know that the Trunks is located at the base of the Overpride mountain range, and I know that mountain range hugs the eastern coast of Ylendra. That’s what I know,” she repeated.

Mabon took a deep breath. “Then I suppose that confirms the old tales.” She scoffed, shaking her head. “I never believed them. Never would have believed them. But I don’t think you two are crazy, and I don’t think you’re lying. Which leaves me with no choice but to believe you’re telling the truth.”

Ianthe pounded a small fist against the table, rattling the cutlery and causing a few curious heads to peek in her direction. “Speak plainly! You’re obviously trying to say something. Won’t you do us all a favor and just spit it out?”

To everyone’s surprise, it was Kimmerick who spoke. “She’s talking about the myths that gargoyles can travel through portals. If we were captured in Ylendra and ended up in Saravos, that’s the only possibility.”

Ianthe’s mouth fell open such that she looked like a fish, and she made a few false starts at actually speaking before she finally blurted out, “You can’t possibly be saying we’re really on the other side of the globe? But that’s impossible! A trip around the world would take . . . days? Weeks? Longer than a few minutes, anyway!”

“I guess you missed the part where I said portals.” Kimmerick sighed and hacked at his meat with his fork. With only one hand, he hadn’t made much of a dent in his meal. “In the old days, people used to go missing a lot more often than they do now. Today, we have patrols, Watcher guilds, and just generally better tracking. But back then, people used to vanish all the time—only to show up much farther away than they should have been. The victims swore they’d been captured by gargoyles, but nobody could explain the great distances they’d traveled in a short time.”

“A great mage of the modern era, Eros Levain, hypothesized that the gargoyles were traveling through portals,” Mabon continued when Kimmerick paused to take another stab at lunch. “The problem was that no one had ever seen these portals, and certainly no human has ever created anything remotely like one. But from what the three of you have said, it’s the only true possibility.”

Ianthe’s mouth was still hanging open, so Fairuza placed her thumb under the girl’s chin and closed it for her. She didn’t want her friend to accidentally catch a fly. “This is a lot to take in,” Fairuza said, “and it’s gonna take some time to process it all.”

“I’ve already processed it,” said Kimmerick. “I mean, I guessed as much when Mabon told us where we were.”

Now, Ianthe whirled on Kimmerick, the color rising in her cheeks, giving her a deep rose flush. “Well, aren’t you just too proud of yourself! Am I the only one who is even the tiniest bit concerned that we seem to have traveled thousands of miles away from home in the span of a few moments? What are we going to do? How are we going to get home? What are we going to do?”

“The first thing you’re gonna do,” Mabon said, “is calm the hell down. You’re safe and you’re with good people. That’s more than a lot of folks get, so don’t start caterwauling just yet. As for the rest, we’ll just have to—”

“Servo Mabon, ma’am?”

A pockmarked young man with a headful of bushy red hair stood a few feet away, wringing his hands and biting his lip, clearly distraught at having interrupted Mabon’s meal. Fairuza could all but see the kid’s knees knocking together.

Mabon blew a wayward curl from her eyes. “What is it, Sprocket?”

“The bergess is here. She’s waiting for you in your quarters. Ma’am.”

The woman sighed heavily as she dragged herself to her feet. “Get these plates cleaned up, Sprocket,” she said to the young man, indicating what was left of their lunch. “You three, come with me. There’s a lot to explain and not a lot of time to do it. And before you start crying again, Ianthe, I am not immune to the gravity of your predicament, and I promise we’re gonna figure something out the best we can, as soon as we can. Right now, though, the answer to my prayers is waiting for me in my tent.”

Chirp had already gathered the plates by the time the trio had clambered to their feet. Fairuza put an arm around an increasingly irritated Ianthe, but Kimmerick was running ahead of them, his eyes big as saucers as he gaped at Mabon.

“A bergess? Here? So that’s what’s going on! Hot damn, well, ain’t that exciting! You’ve got a berg problem! I have to admit, I never heard of a berg waking up on a floating island, though. What kinds of buildings do you even have on floating islands?”

“None in these parts,” Mabon said, walking briskly. “The berg in question isn’t native to the island. The berg in question,” she said with a sigh, “is the citadel.”

Kimmerick gasped. He actually gasped, covering his mouth with his good hand. “You gotta be pulling my leg. There’s no way—”

“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Ianthe demanded. She’d yanked free of Fairuza and was now practically jogging to keep up with Mabon and Kimmerick. “What is a bergess? What’s a citadel? Why is everyone so up in arms—”

“Ianthe.”

Fairuza stood frozen in her tracks. She grabbed her friend by the arm and swung her around so they were now facing the opposite direction of where they’d been heading. If it hadn’t been for all the commotion of tumbling out of the sky and getting whisked off to lunch under a canopy of tarps, they would have seen it earlier. They couldn’t have missed it. And even now, looking straight at it, Ianthe could not believe what she was seeing. The ground flew out from under her as her stomach fell into her shoes, and though she’d hate herself for it later, she let herself fall against Fairuza’s bulky frame for support as her knees turned to water.

Floating several hundred yards away was a castle.

Mabon sucked in a breath and dipped her chin. “Yep. That’s the citadel. It’s supposed to be on the ground about three miles from here. But a few weeks ago, the damn thing woke up and took off.”

“It’s not just a berg,” Kimmerick breathed, lights of delight flickering in his overwide eyes. “It’s a boulderberg! We don’t—we don’t even have those in Ylendra! Not a single one has ever been sighted! We just have normal bergs—windmills coming to life, lighthouses, log cabins, the occasional watchtower. But a boulderberg!”

Ianthe gaped, clutching the front of her shirt. “But I thought bergs could only be buildings made from wood.”

“That’s the boulder bit in boulderberg,” Kimmerick explained. “In Saravos, buildings made of stone have started coming to life! They’re called boulderbergs! I never dreamed I’d get to see one with my own eyes! And look at it. It’s enormous!”

“It was—is—a citadel,” Mabon reminded them. “A fortified building designed to withstand heavy attack. We don’t use it as a military fortress anymore, though. That citadel is home to the Bristleback Military Academy. It’s where we train officers and strategists. That building has more military knowledge contained within its walls than anywhere within a thousand miles! We got the last of the people out a few days ago, so at least there’s that. But we can’t just have our citadel floating around like a noblewoman on vacation! So now you understand the urgency of why we need to capture it and return it to the ground. And with that, I must leave you.”

1.3 In the Claws of the Beasts

2026-09-14T00:00:00Z

The girl screamed and kicked, hot tears of terror streaming down her face. She craned her neck as she tried fruitlessly to wriggle free of the grasp of whatever creature was carrying her up off the ground, higher now than she’d ever been. Her stomach fell when she realized trying to escape was a fool’s mission—freedom from the creature’s grasp would only send her plummeting to the ground, and at this height, there was no chance of coming out with only a few scratches and bruises.

“Ianthe!”

Ianthe’s head snapped up at the sound of Fairuza’s voice. The larger girl was a mere twenty feet away from Ianthe, clutched in the enormous gray claws of a creature Ianthe could scarcely believe she was looking at. Her mouth dropped open as her eyes scanned the hulking creature soaring through the sky with Fairuza in its claws.

“Krakens below,” the girl breathed, her heart nearly drawing to a stop. “Gargoyles?”

She looked up , craning her neck around so torturously she thought her head might pop off. But there, hauling her higher into the black sky, was a creature made of stone and shadow, a monster straight from the bedside stories of nannies and folk witches. The creature was more fearsome than anything Ianthe could have imagined, and so much larger. One bite from that enormous beak could nip her head from her shoulders. One scratch from those dreadful claws could rip the meat from her bones.

And now she was caught, and the dreadful creature was taking her who-knows-where.

Ianthe began to scream again.

“Don’t panic!” Fairuza called. A second gargoyle had her clutched around the waist, her legs tangling free. The larger girl reached her arm out to her friend, though they were nowhere close enough to touch. “Ianthe, listen to me! You don’t want to scare it or piss it off! Just hold on, Ianthe. Just hold on until we land.”

“They’re going to eat us!” Ianthe screamed, real terror making her shake and cry, snot draining down her face as the wind whipped at her hair and stung her eyes. “They’ll claw us into tiny pieces and devour us while we live, Fairuza! You know the stories! Oh, blast! I don’t want to die, Fairuza, I don’t want to—“

“They’re not going to eat you!”

The voice came from somewhere just behind Ianthe. She tried to squirm around to see, but she couldn’t quite. Still, it was obvious the person speaking was Kimmerick being kidnapped by a third gargoyle.

“How do you know?” Ianthe called back, her voice thick with sobs. “Are you a gargoyle expert as well as a brigand?”

“Not at all!” the boy called back, “but I am an optimist! Just hold still, and this whole thing will be over before you know it!”

Hold still, indeed! Ianthe pressed her body tightly against the creature’s stone foot, holding on for dear life wherever she could find purchase. It was a terrible sensation to clutch so dearly to something dangerous that likely wanted to eat you. But what choice did she have? Between being eaten by a gargoyle and being splattered upon the earth by gravity, at least the gargoyle might be bargained with. Gravity, on the other hand, brooked no argument. If she fell from this height, her body would be dashed upon the ground, her extremities and head rent from her torso. Her blood would soak into the earth and small animals would pick at her flesh until she was nothing but sun-bleached bones.

Ianthe clutched the gargoyle tighter.

The creatures hurtled through the sky at breakneck speed. Ianthe squeezed her eyes shut, biting down on her lip as she prayed to whatever gods that might listen to spare her life. The gargoyles howled and screeched as they tore through the sky, dipping and circling and twisting through the clouds, performing admittedly miraculous feats of aerial dynamics. It might've been a terrific sight if she were not a deeply involuntary participant.

Ianthe’s frenzied prayers were interrupted by a sudden and thunderous ear-splitting KABOOM! The sound seemed to come from nowhere, but then an explosion of wind blasted against the gargoyle, knocking the creature off course. The monster screamed as it redirected itself, searching for the source of the blast. The creature clenched its terrible claws, squeezing Ianthe so hard she thought her eyes might burst from her skull. She tried to scream, but there was no air in her lungs. She felt faint, the world before her swimming as clouds of gray and black began to blur her vision.

KABOOM! A second shock blasted the monster, this time catching him squarely in the belly and knocking the creature so badly off balance that it cartwheeled in the air, falling in a dead dive. Ianthe, struggling to maintain consciousness, could not scream as her stomach dropped. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to faint. She wanted to die. She wanted to live.

KABOOM! The third blast must have missed, as Ianthe did not feel the gale of wind this time. But then she heard Fairuza’s terrified screams, and the girl peeled her eyes open to see that the other two gargoyles were being similarly attacked. The blasts were coming faster now, more orchestrated. Well, if they were going to die, at least they would all die together. The breath gone from Ianthe’s lungs, the girl began to fade…

And then the creature’s grip released.

Ianthe’s lungs filled with air.

And then the girl screamed once more as she began to fall.

The air was once again ripped from her lungs as the girl plummeted toward the ground. She felt the pull of the ground in her chest, in her belly, in the marrow of her bones. Falling was nothing like flying. Flying was terrible and fast, the wind whipping at her hair and clothing. Flying was a great defiance, a thumb in gravity’s eye.

But falling was yielding. Falling was a final admission that gravity could only be negotiated with for so long. In the end, gravity wins.

Ianthe closed her eyes and prayed for a swift death.

She fell through the sky for an eternity, falling through clouds, her skin growing wetter and wetter. The moisture from the air stuck to her hair, her skin, her lashes. Her face was dripping. It was impossible to tell if she was crying. She might have been. Ianthe could cry when no one was around. And certainly she could cry when she was moments away from death.

Any second now. Any moment—

The world went silent. No rush of wind passed her ears. The drumbeat of her hummingbird heart thundered in her ears. She heard her own breath coming quick and shallow.

And then she realized she wasn’t falling.

Not falling? Was she dead? Had she hit the ground already? Well, that wasn’t so bad. At least it hadn’t hurt.

But on second thought, no. She wasn’t dead. And she wasn’t falling.

She was floating.

Ianthe gasped as her senses slowly returned, and she realized what had happened. Ianthe was floating in a giant, clear bubble that was drifting toward a sky island floating just in the distance. The girl scrabbled to her knees—the bubble wasn’t quite large enough to stand, and Ianthe wasn’t sure her knees were up to the job of holding her full weight anyway, not after all she’d been through. She pressed her hands against the bubble. It gave just a little. She didn’t press too hard, lest the barrier break and she returned to tumbling. Flying was bad. Falling was worse. But floating was all right.

She still couldn’t hear anything. Perhaps the bubble was soundproof. Yes, perhaps. That made sense. If she were inside a magical floating bubble, it made sense that the thing would be soundproof.

Ianthe’s mouth worked as she marveled over her own logic. She was inside a floating bubble! Nothing about that made sense!

While shock, relief, and utter disbelief vied for primacy in her brain, Ianthe stared out the bubble to finally see what was happening. The gargoyles were retreating—she could only make out their large, gray backs and their silhouettes of their terrible tails. She breathed a sigh of relief and wiped at her face. It was still wet—with moisture, naturally. There was no reason to cry , after all. She was safe.

Safe inside a magical bubble.

As she watched the gargoyles retreat, she saw now two identical bubbles to her own. Fairuza and Kimmerick were floating in sync with her. Their figures were blurry—she couldn’t make out much. But she cried out a sob of relief when she realized the other two were saved. She didn’t care so much about Kimmerick, but she would have been quite put out had anything happened to Fairuza.

She might not admit that later. But for now, having narrowly escaped the jaws of death, she could quietly admit that to herself.

She turned around to face the floating island, which was near enough now that Ianthe could see a cluster of people standing at the edge. Some of them were pointing up at her. Others shielded their eyes with their hands as they looked up. And still others held large mechanic instruments aimed directly at them. Ianthe had never seen such devices and couldn’t image what they might be for.

The bubble gently floated toward the island, the speed increasing the closer she got to the crowd. She realized now that floating was no longer an apt description. Floating implied she was at the mercy of the air, gently bobbing along at the whim of the currents. But she was moving with purpose. Gliding was perhaps a better word.

After a few short moments, the bubble landed on the ground, and a moment later, popped. Ianthe, shocked out of her wits and not knowing at all how to feel, whirled on her heel to seek her two companions. Both Fairuza and Kimmerick had landed safely, their bubbles gone. Both stood with the same dumbfounded expression that Ianthe was sure was on her own face.

The two girls rushed toward each other, grasping each other in a tight embrace. Ianthe quaked against her friend’s strong body, allowing herself to sob uncontrollably and, perhaps more uncharacteristically, to be consoled. Fairuza stroked the girl’s hair, pressing her cheek against her warm scalp. She smelled of sweat and dandelions.

“Thank the sea you’re okay,” Fairuza said, wrapping big arms around her shaking leaf of a friend. “I wouldn’t want to face the questions from your mom if I’d come home without you!”

“Oh, you wouldn’t,” Ianthe said, sniveling. “There isn’t a chance that you’d live through anything that killed me. You’d die trying to save me. I already know it; no use denying it.”

Fairuza pulled away just far enough to examine her friend’s face. The girl was crying, her cheeks tear-stained, eyes red and swollen, but there was a softness in the planes of her face that suggested the beginnings of a smile underneath the afternoon’s trauma. Winking, Fairuza pressed her index finger against the girl’s chin. The smile came out of hiding, breaking across the full width of her face.

Someone coughed behind them.

The girls turned to see Kimmerick scrubbing his face with his flesh hand, the mechanical arm hanging limply by his side. He wasn’t crying, but he was pale and clearly shaken. He offered the two girls the bravest smile he could muster and said, “Not the method of travel I’d have chosen, but I suppose it was effective.”

Ianthe snorted, standing tall and brushing out the creases in her clothing. “After everything we’ve been through today, I hope I never take to the air ever again! I’m off flying forever, thank you very much.”

Around the same time that the disheveled trio began to get the bearings, one woman holding a golden mechanical instrument lowered her device and stepped forward. She wore large purple goggles and a jaunty leather cap over a halo of frizzy brown curls. Gray pantaloons were tucked into tall black leather boots. She wore a frilly white blouse with large ruffled cuffs under a deep purple waistcoat with round brass buttons.

“You took quite a tumble,” she began. Her voice was the sort that commanded attention: deep and resonant. “Are you three all right?”

Fairuza patted herself down, more for show than anything. Nothing hurt too much—the beast had squeezed her too tightly and clawed her legs up pretty decently, but the adrenaline of being saved was doing its job, numbing her to everything that wasn’t life-threatening. All things considered, Fairuza felt great.

“Nothing broken,” she said, offering a smile. “A little banged up, but nothing some R&R can’t fix. Ianthe?”

The smaller girl shrugged, rubbing her neck and shoulders. “I’m okay, I think. Physically, anyway.”

Both girls turned to Kimmerick. The lad gestured to his mechanical arm with a concerned frown. “Arm’s dislocated, I think. Ain’t working at least. It don’t hurt or nothing, but it’s useless as it is.”

The woman approached Kimmerick and leaned in for a closer look, arms folded across her chest, fingers tapping thoughtfully. After a few moments, she adjusted her goggles, spinning one of its many dials as she peered at the contraption. “Wow, this is nice work! Who’s your armorer?”

“Ain’t got none,” Kimmerick said proudly. “Do have a mechanic, though. Her name’s Windy.”

The woman clucked her tongue, cocking a brow. “You’re not a soldier?”

Kimmerick gasped, clearly affronted as he took a step back. “A soldier?! Never would, and curse your tongue! I’m a brigand!”

“A brigand with a high-quality mechanical arm?” She made an impressed face, seemingly unperturbed by the notion of a brigand in her midst. “Interesting.” The woman said nothing more, refocusing her attention on the arm. After a while, she gave a curt nod and pulled herself to full height. “Well, looks like some of your connections came loose. We’ve got a decent armorer in camp that can fix that up for you, don’t worry. It’s a good thing we found you. Aside from the obvious reasons, I mean. If you’d been rescued downstairs, you’d be stuck with that bum arm a while yet.”

Kimmerick lifted an eyebrow. “Downstairs?”

The woman cocked her head toward the horizon. “Just what we call the ground. Only when we’re up here, though. Insider jargon, you know.”

Turning slightly, the girl thumbed over her shoulder, past the edge of the sky island. “Um…did you lot save us? How?”

The woman handed her device to a companion who set it onto a rack of similar devices. The woman propped her hands on her hips as she looked skyward. “Oh, that was easy, really. We’ve been hunting gargoyles all morning. Well, hunting isn’t the right word. Is it? Have we been hunting gargoyles?”

She aimed this question at another companion, a squat man with a hairy chin and oversized goggles that peered up. He heaved a heavy shoulder without taking his eyes off the sky. “Sniping them, more like. We ain’t goin’ after ‘em, but if they come around here, we give ‘em a good blast.”

“Right,” the woman said, bobbing her head in agreement. “We’ve been sniping them. So when we saw them heading our way, we just, to quote my comrade, gave them a good blast. They were a little more ornery than usual, but eventually they got the memo to take a hike. But then—they dropped you, I guess. It took a few seconds to switch our cannons from blast to bubble, but not as long as it could have taken if we’d been downstairs. You don’t take an assignment on the islands without putting bubble on a default position on your cannon, right?”

“But what’re you doing up here?” Kimmerick asked, running his good hand over his hair. Like Ianthe, his hair was coming free of his braid, giving him a wild look. “Who are you?”

1.2 The Brigand with the Beautiful Hair

2026-09-10T00:00:00Z

Ianthe awoke with a colossal headache.

She rolled to her side and yakked into the dirt. She groaned, rolled away from the mess, and slowly drew to her feet to better examine her wounds. Her body ached, and she was covered in an impressive array of bloody cuts and scratches. But she didn’t think anything was broken, which was a mercy. Her head was pounding and her face ached, but all things considered, things could be worse.

Where was she?

She looked around and blinked, trying to get her bearings. Her vision was blurry and it was dark, but a few gentle blinks and carefully rubbing her eyes with her knuckles cleared her vision enough to see that she was at the bottom of a narrow pit.

She looked up. She had fallen a long way, and the top of the pit was well beyond her reach.

Lovely, she thought. That’s just what I needed.

Carefully, she climbed to her feet and looked around. There was nothing to stand on for height and nothing to grab onto for leverage. Even if there had been, Ianthe wasn’t exactly strong. Her pastimes included reading and making snide remarks. There was no way she could climb out of the pit on her own.

She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Fairuza! Help! Helloooooo? Oh, help! Fairuza! I’m down here! I’m stuck in a pit! Fairuza? Anyone?? Someone please—”

“Look who’s awake!”

Overhead, a face popped into view, dimly lit by the murky twilight of the underground. The face was swollen and badly bruised but smiling. It belong to Fairuza, who waved grandly. “You get enough beauty sleep down there? Leave it to you to take a nap when there’s work to be done!”

Ianthe didn’t know whether to laugh with relief or scowl, so she defaulted to her natural disposition and huffed. “Glad to see my misfortune is providing so much entertainment!”

“Well, misfortune might be one way of putting it. That’s the negative view, of course. The other view is that you’ve done us a service.”

Ianthe rolled her eyes and groaned. “What are you talking about? You know what, never mind. I don’t care. I need you to help get me out of this…this…I don’t even know what this is!”

“That’s a trap,” Fairuza said simply. “You fell into a trap.”

Ianthe opened her mouth, intending to either object or demand an explanation, but she wasn’t sure which to try first, so she snapped her mouth shut to have a quick think. Now that Fairuza mentioned it, the pit was quite straight up and down and impressively symmetrical. It wasn’t the sort of thing that happened naturally. Maybe it could have been a well once, but she didn’t think it was deep enough. Also, it wasn’t very damp. And weren’t wells usually round? Plus, she distinctly remembered rolling down the mountain and hitting a strange pile of leaves—leaves in a place where there hadn’t been much in the way of trees.

She glanced around the pit floor. Broken twigs and branches were littered around her, covered with the same leaves. When she and Fairuza were young, they’d spent many long mornings in the sun digging holes and covering them loosely with twigs and grass, waiting for the young children from the creche to waddle into the trap and fall. The girls had waited patiently for hours for some unsuspecting, toddling rube to wander into the trap. None of the babies ever fell for it.

But today, Ianthe had.

The girl leaned her head back and cursed. “What in the blazes is this? Who would set a trap down here? Who would—”

“Hullo!”

A second face popped into view beside Fairuza’s. It was brown and slender, with high cheekbones, large, dark eyes, and a strong chin. The face belonged to a young man who stood similarly to Fairuza, hands on his hips as he gazed into the hole. A long, reddish-brown braid dotted with beads and feathers dangled casually over one shoulder. He wore a green tunic with light pants tucked into soft leather boots. But it wasn’t his clothing or his beautiful braid or his unusual skin that made the breath catch in Ianthe’s throat.

The young man had one human arm and one mechanical arm made of metal.

Ianthe gaped and backed away, pressing herself against the dirt wall. “Fairuza?”

“It’s my trap you fell into,” the young man explained with a grin that was anything but apologetic. “I didn’t set it to catch a pretty girl, though, so please accept my apologies about that.”

Ianthe blushed at being called pretty, even though she knew it to be a simple fact. She was pretty. Still, hearing him say it so matter-of-factly caught her off guard. She furrowed her brows and scowled up at the faces. “Well, why did you set it, then?”

“Had to,” the young man replied. “Part of the job!”

Ianthe scoffed, disgusted. “Well, you’re some terrible trapper if that’s the case. If you’re trying to catch rabbits or small game, this trap is far too—”

The young man barked a bright laugh. “Aw, I ain’t a trapper! I’m a brigand! This here’s a brigand trap!”

Ianthe gasped, her eyes going wide with either disbelief or horror—she wasn’t sure which, as both were equally appropriate. She pressed a hand to her mouth. “A brigand? Like a pirate or a raider?”

The young man laughed, cheeks glowing with rosy merriment as he squinted down into his trap. “Do land pirates exist? That would be new to me if they did. I guess they do—awful bastards who waylay travelers and confiscate their worldly belongings. Sure, I guess you could say I’m a land pirate! Arr! Gimme all yer gold!”

He affected a funny accent and made a hook of his metal hand before laughing again at Ianthe’s increasingly appalled expression. “Oh, I’m only pulling your tail. No, I’m just a regular brigand—a pickpocket! A rrrrregular rrrrrrrruffian!” He rolled his Rs as he said this, winking down at Ianthe, who hadn’t yet recovered and was still recoiling in disbelief/horror. She was pretty sure it was horror. For some reason, she believed this skinny young man with the lovely hair and charming smile really was a bandit.

“My name’s Kimmerick!” he said with a wave. “I dug this trap for practice.”

“Practice!” Ianthe scrunched up her face and shook her head in confusion. “What could a scruffy, blathering brat like you possibly need to practice?”

“My clan’s at war with another clan, and my captain’s paying 10 silver a head to anyone can catch our enemies without injuring them,” the young man explained. “He’s not big on violence. From the looks of you, I might need to find another method of capture. You look pretty bloodied up, and that wasn’t my intention.”

Ianthe scoffed, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “Well, whoever you are, or whatever you are, Fairuza and I have no use for ruffians or bandits or…or…”

“Brigands,” Fairuza added helpfully.

“Scoundrels!” Ianthe stomped a foot as she hollered. “So if you don’t mind, you must please leave us alone! Fairuza, step away from him at once! Don’t you see, he’s just as like to rob you as…as…ugh, Fairuza, just get away from him! Go away, boy! Leave us alone!”

Kimmerick crossed his arms over his chest and then turned his gaze to Fairuza. “You heard her,” he said. “She wants to be left alone. Reckon you can rescue her out of that hole by your lonesome?”

Fairuza gave a rueful shake of her head. “I’m strong,” she said. “But not that strong.”

Kimmerick clucked his tongue sorrowfully. “Well, I guess she’ll just have to die down there, then.” He peered back into the hole. “It was nice meeting you,” he called. “I hope you make it out some day!”

“Oh, wait!” Ianthe howled, the color rising in her face. “Oh, you horrible thing! You worm! You scab! You absolutely dreadful stump!”

“Oh, come on, Ianthe, he’s only funning with you,” Fairuza said. “He’s a good sort. He found me while I was passed out and patched me up good as new. Shared his water and bandages. If he wanted to rob us, we’d be robbed by now.”

“Besides,” Kimmerik added with a toothy grin, “you’ve got nothing worth robbing.”

“Oh, shut up and get me out of here!” Ianthe screamed. She was very tired of this game by now, and her cuts and scratches were beginning to hurt. “Please!”

Both heads disappeared from view, and a moment later, a rope ladder tumbled down the wall of the pit, ended a few inches above the ground. Grabbing on with everything she had, the girl made her slow, laborious climb as Kimmerick and Fairuza looked on from above, occasionally shouting words of encouragement.

Ianthe wished they wouldn’t. She already felt a spectacle as it was, huffing and puffing and uselessly tossing stray locks of hair from her eyes as she climbed. Their cheers only made her feel like a small child badly performing some menial task while doting parents cooed obligatory praise. She might have told them to shut up if she could spare the breath, which she certainly could not, and that realization only increased her ire.

As she crested the top of the pit, Kimmerick leaned down, grabbed her by the armpits, and lugged her out. She jerked out of his grasp as soon as she was able, and as Kimmerick pulled up the rope, Ianthe threw up again.

A moment later, the lad was holding a canteen of water to the girl’s lips, and as much as she wanted to push him away in disgust, she was weak, and the water felt like a blessing. She gulped it down greedily, thin rivulets streaming from the corners of her mouth. Shen she had her fill, she took the bottle from his hands and began gently cleaning her wounds.

Fairuza offered the girl a roll of cotton bandages and a jar of salve and began tending to her friend’s injuries. “You don’t look too bad,” Fairuza said as she gently dabbed on the potion. “I was worried you’d have some broken bones.”

“Me, too,” Ianthe admitted. Now that she was out of the pit, watered, and being tended to, her anger drained away, slowly replaced by a nagging helplessness which was much worse than the anger. “Are you all right? You said you passed out.”

“I’m fine now,” Fairuza said with a shrug. “You passed out, too. You were asleep for a long time.”

Ianthe blinked. “How long?”

“A few hours.”

Ianthe cursed and leaned back into her hands, her gaze turning now to the young man who’d rescued her. She wasn’t sure how to feel about him just yet. Yes, he’d saved her, but he’d also dug the pit in the first place, so she figured the two canceled each other out. “And how about you? What’s your deal?”

Kimmerick quirked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Ianthe gestured with a lift of her chin. “Do you live around here or something?”

The young man laughed. “Are you serious? Nobody lives down here anymore. It’s a dead zone.”

He paused, waiting for Ianthe’s response. But when none came, the young man turned a quizzical look to Fairuza. “You did know that, right? Aside from the lightfruit trees, there’s nothing down here anymore. Well, nothing except the—”

Terrible, ear-shattering screeching from above drowned out Kimmerick’s voice as the trio looked up, their eyes widening in terror as three black shapes shot down out of the sky. They were enormous, moving with far more elegance and speed than their size should have afforded. Neither girl had a chance to get a good look at the monsters before Kimmerick shouted, “RUN!”

Ianthe screamed and darted away just as a huge shape lunged for her, one long, sharp talon catching her skirts and shredding the material. She miscalculated her dodge and tripped over her own feet, planting herself face-first in the cold stone ground. She was doing her best to scrabble to her feet when something sharp and cold bit into her clothing, lifted her up off her feet and snatched her into the air.

1.1 A Staircase Straight Down to Nothing

2026-09-09T00:00:00Z

It was not, in fact, a hole leading straight down into nothing.

But it was a very steep, spiraling staircase made of a strange black metal that neither girl had ever seen before. The metal was so dark it nearly disappeared into the surrounding abyss, making each step feel like a leap of faith. Ianthe clutched the accompanying railing so hard her knuckles whitened, which wasn’t too difficult as the girl’s natural pallor was the color of goat’s milk. But even Fairuza, who usually showed no fear of anything, stepped tentatively into the deep.

They walked for a very long time. The surrounding underground was not just dark; it was nearly silent. The girls didn’t speak, listening instead to the quick thump thump thump of their hearts as adrenaline coursed through their veins. Several times, Fairuza thought to consult the map even though she knew that 1) she couldn’t see it in this dark, and 2) it would show her nothing she hadn’t already seen. The cartographer had apparently only marked the relative location of the underground civilization to the surface world, but had not mapped what lay beneath it.

At least not on the map they possessed.

They had been descending the spiral staircase for almost ten minutes when Ianthe stopped suddenly, gasping. She pointed down, speaking in an excited whisper. “Look,” she breathed. “Light.”

It was true. Somewhere beneath them, down in the murky darkness, the black gave way to a cool, undulating purple light reminiscent of the flickering of flame. At this height, the light wasn’t bright enough to provide any real illumination; it was more like a subtle break in the thick, oppressive dark. Still, it was enough. The appearance of light put a spring in their step, and the girls found their second wind as they quickened their pace, ignoring their aching legs to make fast work of the rest of the trip down.

They alighted in a patch of surprisingly clear, violet light. The ground here was rocky, but not earthy. It took Fairuza only a second to realize what it was. “It’s not ground,” the bigger girl said, her brows lifted in surprise. “It’s the floor. It’s manmade. Or,” She quickly corrected, “a civilization intentionally handcrafted it. Whether they were technically human….” She completed the thought with a shrug.

Fairuza was right. A quick perusal of their surroundings revealed that the girls had landed in the middle of a vast stone courtyard that stretched as far as they could see —which wasn’t especially far, as the meager purple light had a limited reach. Still, what they saw was impressive. The floor was constructed of large, flat slabs of limestone carefully fit together such that not a single weed grew up between the edges. At regular intervals, tall, twisted trees laden with light-bearing fruit were strategically planted, surrounded by knee-high walls of stone. The stone containers were overgrown, with other vine-like plants spilling out over top, lending an overall organic, tumbledown appearance that reminded the girls of an eerie truth: These trees had been planted—maybe even cultivated—by a civilization that had been dead for centuries or more.

And yet the trees remained.

The light fruits were the size of a small human head, with smooth, translucent skin. The light originated from within the fruits, picking up their color from the fruit’s sleek purplish skin.

“Have you ever seen anything like this this?” Ianthe asked.

Fairuza shook her head. “Never even heard of anything like this,” she admitted. “I’m tempted to climb one of these trees and pick a fruit, just so we can crack it open and see what’s inside. But if it’s poisonous…”

“If you get injured and die down here, leaving me alone, I swear on the sea I will kill you,” Ianthe hissed without even a trace of irony. “Keep your hands to yourself, please. We’re just here to observe and record what we see. Try not to forget that.”

The girls continued their walk quietly, eyes wide as they took in their surroundings. The courtyard had obviously once been lined with an assortment of buildings which were now crumbling ruins. Many of the buildings contained smaller light trees, though not all of these smaller trees still lived. Their desiccated, twisted trunks lay rotting in their stone prisons, any evidence of the light-bearing fruit they once had long gone. Fairuza wondered idly if the local fauna could eat the fruit and what it would taste like. She wished she had anyone to ask.

Eventually, the courtyard became narrow streets that emptied into even narrower alleys. Large, abandoned towers that once housed the city watch lined vacant roads, their gaping, black entrances like open mouths. It was impossible to imagine what might’ve lived here so far underground, so far away from sunlight…

Fairuza stopped and looked up. She hadn’t done so earlier because there had been plenty to see on the ground, but now that she did, she stared in disbelief. She could have so easily missed it, and that would have been a shame. Silently, she elbowed Ianthe in the side. The girl yelped and scowled but followed her friend’s gaze up. Then she, too, gasped.

“Is that…that can’t be the bloody sky,” Ianthe whispered.

“Can’t be,” Fairuza agreed. “We’re deep underground. But what else could it be?”

The girls gazed upward long enough to be sure that what they were staring at, as impossible as it was, was the night sky. A vast expanse of indigo blue firmament provided a still backdrop for the billowing dove-gray clouds that drifted lazily past twinkling pinpoints of light.

Stars.

And amid the stars and clouds, a silvery orb loomed, providing dull illumination that was no match for the local lavender light of the light trees, but probably was welcome further out, away from the city center. The moon looked different than it did on the surface, but it was, undoubtedly the moon.

Or was it?

Fairuza racked her brain for what she knew about the heavenly bodies. She knew the moon was responsible for the tides, and she understood that one moon cycle equalled one month, but that was about all she could dredge up. It wasn’t much—just what she had learned as a child. Still, she had eyes, and her eyes told her the moon didn’t exactly look right.

“We had a waning crescent moon last night,” Ianthe said at last, face upturned, her white face limned in a delicate purple glow. “That’s a waxing gibbous moon.” Ianthe pointed, though it was impossible to tell what she was indicating exactly. “And you see those dark spots on the left edge? Our moon doesn’t have spots like that. Our moon’s spots are on the top. And they’re shaped differently.”

Fairuza blinked, reconsidering the moon in light of this new information. She couldn’t be sure—she’d never paid that close attention to the night sky—but she felt Ianthe was right. It was a moment before the fullness of Ianthe’s words registered.

“Hold on a second. What do you mean our moon?” Fairuza gawped, eyes wide and round as the moon they were staring at. “You don’t think that’s our moon? You think that’s a different moon?”

“That’s not our moon, not our sky, not our stars,” Ianthe said with a slow shake of her head. “If this were our sky, we would be able to see the constellation Sea Witch just there.” She waved her hand leftward of where the moon sat. “But … well, I don’t recognize those star patterns at all, do you?”

Fairuza didn’t, but then, she wouldn’t. Stars did not interest her. They were pretty, but you couldn’t put them in your pocket, smoke them, eat them, cure wounds with them, or pay your debts with them, so Fairuza had little use for them. She knew that if she ever became a sailor, which was unlikely, she’d have to learn. But for now?

She pulled a rock from her pocket, rubbing it between her thumb and forefinger. The rough surface felt good against her skin. “Do you think it’s some kind of… illusion magic?”

Ianthe lifted her shoulders in a limp shrug. Magic was not well-known in the Trunks. It existed here and there in pockets, but in their small village, it was mostly relegated to the medicine women and soothsayers. It wasn’t part of everyday life. “I couldn’t say,” the girl said. “Whatever it is, it’s glorious, isn’t it?”

Fairuza made a sound deep in her throat and dropped her gaze. “Let’s keep walking,” she suggested. “I think I see something up ahead.”

Ianthe hesitated, lingering a moment longer over the marvel overhead. But eventually she tore herself away—more for fear of being left behind than anything. Fairuza’s stride was much longer than her own, and moments of lallygagging meant being left alone in the dark. She hurried to catch up with her friend, who was tossing and catching her pebble in an absentminded rhythm.

Ianthe had thought that Fairuza claimed to see something as an excuse to get a move on, knowing that left to her own devices, Ianthe would pore over the strangeness of the new sky for…well, not hours. But long stretches of time, anyway. However, now that she was looking, she did see dark shapes looming in the distance.

As they approached, the structure became apparent: it was an amphitheater. Twenty rows of seating formed a perfect semicircle around a stage sunk deep into the earth. In the center of the stage were two large structures with half a dozen shelves each. They looked like bookcases, only much larger. They were roughly ten feet tall and three feet deep. Each shelf held an assortment of ancient machinery, from fans and springs to rusty cubes that looked like they might once have been engines.

Between the two bookcases was another machine. It looked like it had been constructed from some of the parts collecting dust on the shelves. Two large fans lay face down on the stone slab, connected by a strange metal frame with deep channels running its length. A narrow, flat seat was positioned on top. Jutting from the frame were two slender handlebars.

Ianthe approached the device with quiet reverence, blinking back her surprise. She touched the seat lightly, her fingers trailing over the cool fabric. “It’s a farglider,” she breathed.

“A what?”

Ianthe’s head snapped up, and a veil passed over her eyes as she snatched her hand back. The quiet awe she’d displayed only a moment before evaporated, instantly replaced with mild irritation. “It’s some kind of vehicle,” she said. “Based on the way these fan things on the bottom are oriented, it looks like this thing can fly.”

Fairuza whistled, her brows rising high as she examined the contraption in earnest. “No kidding? Well, what are you standing there for? How do we work this thing?” She dropped onto her haunches and began searching underneath the machine and on every side, trying to understand how it worked.

Ianthe cleared her throat and waited for her friend to stand. She pointed to the seat. “Sit there,” she said. “Keep both your feet on the ground and put your hands on the bars.”

Without argument, Fairuza straddled the machine. It was designed for someone smaller than her—larger than Ianthe, probably, but not quite as big as Fairuza, whose knees came up uncomfortably far when she sat down. When she was steady, she placed both hands on the bars.

The machine began to hum, and deep grooves running the length of the body began to glow with purple light—the same purple light emanating from the lightfruits.

“Whoa.” Fairuza breathed her quiet amazement as her heart thrummed in her chest. “Did you know it was gonna do that? How did you know it was gonna do that?”

The other girl climbed onto the machine behind Fairuza and wrapped her arms around her waist. “All right,” she said. “You’ll find a button beneath your left fingers. Don’t press it yet. Just listen. There’s another button under your right fingers. The left button will make the vehicle move. The right button will make the vehicle stop. If you want to fly up, twist the left bar toward you. To tilt down, twist the left bar away. The right bar doesn’t move, so you don’t have to worry about that. If you want to turn left or right, you’ll turn the bars together in the direction you want to go.”

Fairuza felt the buttons beneath her fingers, but heeded Ianthe’s advice and didn’t press them. They were long and smooth, with gentle indentations her fingers settled easily into. Ergonomically, the bars were quite comfortable. She could do with the seat being a little taller, however. “Ianthe…how do you know all this?”

The young woman squeezed Fairuza’s waist tighter. “Something I read a while ago. I don’t remember. You can’t expect me to remember all the fascinating things I read, Fairuza. I read a lot. You should try it some time. Are you ready?”

“What, to try reading?”

Ianthe pinched her lips, and Fairuza chuckled. “Oh, all right.” She adjusted her hands and feet a little, more from nerves than anything else. She sucked in a breath and nodded. “I’m ready. You?”

Ianthe squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. “Ready! Go gentle!”

Fairuza grinned as she leaned her body forward, gritted her teeth, and squeezed her left hand.

The farglider jolted forward, pitching slightly to the left as both girls screamed—Fairuza with excitement and Ianthe with abject terror. Fairuza threw her weight to the other side as she eased up on the left trigger. When she found the center, she pressed forward again, this time slightly rotating the left handle toward her.

The vehicle rose into the air.

“Krakens below! Ianthe! We’re flying! Do you see that? We’re flying!”

Ianthe did not see. She hadn’t opened her eyes even once since they’d begun moving, but she felt the truth of it. She sensed the air beneath them, the distance between their bodies and the ground. It was terrifying, but also exhilarating. She almost wished she had taken command of the thing instead of letting Fairuza take the helm.

“Woohoo! Ianthe, this is incredible! Can you believe this? How fast can this thing go?”

“Do not try to find out!” Ianthe commanded, clutching Fairuza tighter.

They weren’t moving anywhere near top speed, and yet the vehicle already flew faster than either girl expected. A few times, Fairuza lost balance, and the machine careened in a wild direction or tilted off pitch. She cursed each time as Ianthe screamed, and Fairuza grunted to herself that it would be easier if she didn’t have Ianthe clinging to her for dear life. She over-corrected her first few attempts to right the machine, once nearly throwing Ianthe out of her seat and a second time almost crashing into the dirt. But it didn’t take long for Fairuza to learn that small adjustments were a pilot’s friend, and before long, the girls were cruising gleefully. Ianthe even opened her eyes.

The machine made a pleasant humming sound as it sped past dried riverbeds, lopsided cairns, narrow valleys, and the remains of buildings whose purposes were long lost to time. The girls buzzed only a few feet off the ground, but still, they were flying. Fairuza could scarcely believe it.

Carefully, she turned the left handle toward her, gently guiding the farglider higher into the air. Only a few feet at first, but as her confidence grew, so did her daring. She pitched the flying contraption higher and higher and quickly discovered that the higher she flew, the easier it was to maneuver. Close to the ground, she had to watch out for rocks and trees and buildings. But if she soared higher in the sky, she bypassed everything. She was like a bird. She was like the wind! She was like—

Something huge and dark swept out of the sky and smashed into the girls, knocking the vehicle out of the sky. Ianthe screamed as they whirled through the air, horribly out of control, the farglider spinning from the unseen force. Fairuza blacked out instantly from the blow, her torso slumped uselessly over the handlebars. Both girls and flying machine tumbled toward the earth, falling inevitably toward certain death, though only one girl was awake to pray for mercy to whatever gods listened. Or, failing mercy, at least a quick and painless death. Ianthe squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the end.

The crash came hard and fast. Ianthe’s body slammed into the ground, her bones and teeth rattling with the impact. The collision knocked the wind from her lungs, and she opened her eyes to see that she was rolling down the side of a hill. Gravity made a rag doll of her body as she tumbled, twisted and rolled in the dirt, spindly limbs knocking against rocks and roots as she fell.

She rolled down the full length of the hillside, mute and terrified. And when she finally reached the bottom in one piece, she could have cried with joy…

…If she hadn’t rolled through a thinly patched hole in the earth and crashed into a narrow hole six feet deep, where she smacked her head against a large rock and passed out.

1.0 This Feels Like the Wrong Way

2026-09-09T00:00:00Z

“All I’m saying is, you only act like this when you’re hungry. So why don’t we just stop here and eat?”

Ianthe stopped short, glowering darkly. Her fingers curled into her palms as she calmly asked, “And how am I acting, exactly?”

“Oh, you know.” Fairuza adjusted her knapsack as she continued walking. She hadn’t noticed Ianthe was no longer beside her. She certainly hadn't noticed the expression on her friend's face. If she had, she might've kept quiet instead of saying what she said next. “Bossy and whiny. I mean, you’re always bossy but usually in a cute, socially acceptable way. Right now you’re being bossy in a really-getting-on-my-nerves way.”

Ianthe said, “And whiny?”

Fairuza scoffed. “You’ve been complaining about the map more than usual. It’s not even midday, and I think you’ve mentioned how much you hate cartographers at least a dozen times already, which is a record even for you. So all I’m saying is—”

Fairuza looked down and realized she’d been talking to the air. The bigger girl turned around to find her companion standing twenty feet behind her, hands balled into small fists at her side, an angry frown scribbled over her face.

Fairuza made a sweeping motion with her hand. “Do you wanna catch up? I feel like I’m talking to myself here.”

It was late morning now, and the day had begun earlier than usual when Ianthe had awoken screaming thanks to a fat squirrel that had fallen out of the tree they were sleeping under and landed squarely on her face. It was uncertain who was more frightened: the hysterical Ianthe who wouldn’t stop screaming, or the petrified rodent that dashed in mad circles as Fairuza chased it with a giant sword.

The sword was probably unnecessary. Slashing at it while howling like a banshee was definitely unnecessary. But waking up to a screaming Ianthe clawing at her face and leaping to her feet in genuine terror had pumped buckets of adrenaline into the girl’s blood and pushed logic straight out the window. Fairuza had felt more than a little embarrassed when she’d realized she was terrorizing an innocent fluffy-tailed rodent and quietly slipped the sword back into its sheath, hunkering down onto her sleeping roll.

But the harm was done, and even when their hearts stopped pounding, they were far too frazzled to go back to sleep.

So they’d begun walking.

Upon reflection, it was no wonder Ianthe was in a bitter mood. Which she was, all her denials to the contrary notwithstanding. She was bossier than usual. She had cursed the existence of cartographers at least a half dozen times. (Not quite a dozen, as Fairuza had claimed. Fairuza was prone to exaggeration.) Ianthe had been more argumentative, and she was hungry.

“I am not hungry,” Ianthe insisted for the third time that morning. “I’m justifiably annoyed because we’ve been following this map all morning and none of the landmarks make any sense.” Ianthe shook the parchment crumpled in her fist. “The outcropping we camped at last night was exactly where it was supposed to be. We are going in the right direction. But what we are seeing is not matching what is written on the map.”

Ianthe’s voice had begun to rise, and color rose in her white cheeks. “So I think I’m right to be upset. What I want to know is why you are so calm.”

Fairuza folded her arms over her chest and ambled back to where her friend stood. She heaved her broad, heavy shoulders with practiced nonchalance, her movement loose and languid. Nothing ever rattled Fairuza. Not really. Most things that really annoyed her she could hit with her sword, which was certainly an advantage. But there was more to Fairuza’s easygoing nature than just the safety granted by her large stature and athletic fortitude. She was just naturally…unflappable. Most people found it admirable.

Ianthe found it endlessly infuriating.

“I expect the scale in this particular area might be wrong,” Fairuza said. Gently, she took the map from Ianthe’s grasp, shaking out the wrinkles and opening the document wide before them. “Look. At the bottom of the map, there are two different scales. Looks like maybe the wild areas are less detailed than the explored areas, so the scale is less accurate. I just wonder if maybe we’re misunderstanding what the cartographer meant.”

Ianthe narrowed her eyes. “And what kind of map requires the reader to interpret the cartographer’s intentions? That’s my entire point, Fairuza. We shouldn’t have to interpret anything! It should all be crystal clear! We should be able to understand where we’re going and what we’re supposed to do just by glancing at the thing.”

Ianthe’s face glowed pink as she worked herself into a tizzy. Several strands of long, white hair had escaped her ponytail and were now sticking out around her face, making her look feral and more than a little unhinged. Her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed. She was ferocious even under the best circumstances.

She was terrifying when she was hungry.

Fairuza had had enough arguing for one morning, and anyway, she knew it was impossible to reason with Ianthe once her hair became unkempt. So she plopped down onto the ground with her legs crossed and pulled out her knapsack. She flipped it open, reached inside, and withdrew two hunks of meat. The first she bit into, and the second she tossed to her companion.

Ianthe caught it mid-air, fumbling a bit but managing to secure it before it fell into the dirt. She glared at the meat as though it had attacked her whole family, but eventually, she sighed and sank down next to Fairuza, taking a huge bite of the meat she absolutely was not hungry for.

Her stomach howled in anticipation. The meat was delicious.

“I don’t know what you have against eating,” Fairuza said around a mouthful of meat. “Eating is one of the best parts of being alive. Maybe the best part. I look forward to every opportunity to eat. In fact, I have to make myself think of reasons not to. Like, for example, if we eat too much, we’ll run out of rations before we reach the next town, and that wouldn’t be good for anybody, especially you, because you get whiny and complainy when your stomach’s empty.”

Ianthe knew she was being needled and wisely said nothing. She chewed with vigor, wiping the grease that dripped from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. When she finished, she sucked the fat from her fingers and stretched out her legs. She leaned back onto her hands and peered into the sky.

“I’m certain we’ve been heading in the right direction,” Ianthe reiterated. Now that she was full and feeling like herself, she could admit she’d been a little unreasonable earlier. And she couldn’t really blame Fairuza for not taking her seriously when she was acting like a prat. Still, she knew she was right, and that worried her. “We should be able to see the ruins from here. So the fact that we can’t means something is wrong.”

“Could be,” Fairuza agreed. “Could be we’re just not looking right.”

Ianthe scowled. “How do you look wrong, exactly?”

Fairuza heaved her shoulders, her expression relaxed. “Well, you keep saying the landmarks aren’t right. Which landmarks do you mean?”

Ianthe counted them off on her fingers from memory. “There’s supposed to be a lookout tower and a rose garden,” she said. “We haven’t seen anything like that.”

“We haven’t,” Fairuza agreed. “But maybe that’s because they’re not here anymore.”

Ianthe cocked an eyebrow and leaned her head to one side. “The maps aren’t that old,” she said, a vague mocking underlying her words. “Do you suppose the landmarks just got up and walked away?”

“Yup.”

Fairuza turned, gave her friend a goofy grin and waited patiently for her to catch up. It took Ianthe a few moments longer than it should have for her to realize what Fairuza was saying. But when understanding finally dawned, the girl’s eyes grew wide in disbelief. “You think those landmarks turned into bergs?”

Fairuza shrugged, still grinning. “Can’t say for sure, but it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” She sat up, leaning forward in excitement as her idea caught fire. “I can remember several sojourners coming home with stories of trees and wooden buildings coming to life. Never heard of a rose garden coming to life, but why not? If a tree can suddenly become ambulatory and just pick up its roots and walk off, why not a garden? And lookout towers in these parts are made of wood. It seems more likely to me that our landmarks turned into bergs than our cartographer was an idiot.”

Ianthe stared in stark disbelief as she mulled over the possibilities. “How did you even think of that? I didn’t think of that. It never even occurred to me, and I’m about three times smarter than you are.”

Fairuza made no attempt to disagree. “While you’ve been focusing on the landmarks, I’ve been looking at the actual land. The ground. This whole area looks like the farmlands after they’ve been abandoned. Nature takes over, and the grass always comes up real soft and smooth. That’s how this looks. Like this earth had been disturbed, and then the grass grew over it in time. It looks like a closed-up wound. And that got me thinking: what could cause such a thing? And the first thing I thought of was a berg. Waking up, climbing to its feet, and going on its merry way. It would leave huge indentations in the ground. Big wounds. And with enough time, those wounds would turn into scars that looked like this.”

Ianthe’s amazement dissipated and once again settled into irritation. “That was the first thing you thought of, huh?”

Fairuza chuckled. “Okay, it wasn’t the first thing. But it makes sense. If we ignore the landmarks and just look at the land, do you still think we’re in the wrong place?”

Ianthe took a deep breath and surveyed her surroundings with fresh eyes. Now that she wasn’t looking for giant buildings or lovingly tended roses, she had to admit that Fairuza might be onto something. The course of the river had changed a bit, but that was expected over time. Everything else was right. The hills to the north were right where they were supposed to be. So was the copse they’d passed an hour ago. It all made sense if you ignored the manmade landmarks.

Ianthe didn’t like being wrong and disliked Fairuza being right even more, so she stopped thinking about it and said, “I don’t think we’re in the wrong place, but that doesn’t change the fact that we should see the ruins from here.” Ianthe climbed to her feet and made a visor of her hand as she peered out over the landscape. The sun was directly overhead, and it was getting hot. “I still don’t see anything. Do you?”

Fairuza followed Ianthe’s lead and climbed to her feet. She, too, shaded her eyes from the sun as she gazed out into the distance. “Not yet. Let’s keep walking and see what we can see.”

Ianthe made no argument, and the two continued walking.

Here and there, Fairuza picked up a rock and squinted at it, examining it closely. If she was satisfied with it, she exchanged the stone for another she carried in her pocket and chucked the discarded rock into the distance. The new stone she stuck happily into her pocket, whistling something jaunty but off-key. Sometimes she didn’t discard a rock at all, which was how her collection grew. She usually carried no more than three or four rocks at a time, which to Ianthe seemed three or four rocks too many. Why did she collect rocks, anyway? It wasn’t like they weren’t surrounded by rocks all the time. Rocks were not rare. Rocks were not interesting. Rocks were rocks.

The pair had been walking long enough that they no longer needed to shade their eyes to look out into the distance. The sun had moved behind them, casting long shadows before them. Something flew overhead, its shadow large enough to stop both girls in their tracks. Fairuza looked up and pointed.

“Bullgazer,” she said, squinting up into the sky. “Never thought I’d actually see one in real life life.”

Ianthe followed her friend’s gaze, the color draining from her face. “Shouldn’t we hide or something? Aren’t those things meat-eaters?”

Fairuza nodded once, eyes still focused on the enormous winged beast overhead. “Yeah. But I don’t think it’s coming this way. Look. I think it’s heading for that island up above.”

The two watched as the bullgazer, a species of pygmy cyclops dragon, soared upward in a slow lazy spiral, its enormous webbed wings carrying it up toward a small floating island.

Ianthe dropped her gaze and planted her hands on her hips. “I’m calling it. We’re lost. Or the mapmaker was an idiot. Or—”

“Hang on.” Fairuza was still staring into the sky, but a new emotion had bloomed over her face. Her mouth slowly dropped into a little o as she leaned her head back and suddenly broke out into shoulder-shaking laughter.

Ianthe wasn’t amused. “This isn’t a joke, Fairuza. We’ve been walking for days, and—”

“We’re here.” Fairuza wiped the laughter from her face, but she still wore a huge smile as she met Ianthe’s grumbling stare. “We’ve probably been here for hours.”

Ianthe lifts an eyebrow, glancing around the plains. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but unless these ruins are invisible—”

Fairuza stomped a foot on the ground, her impish grin growing wider. “It’s beneath us,” she said. “If it had been above us, we would have seen it. We would’ve walked right beneath its shadow. And if it were in the plains, we couldn’t have missed it. It’s an entire civilization, after all. It makes sense, Ianthe. The ruins are beneath us. We just have to find a point of entry.”

Ianthe’s twisted frown said she was skeptical, but that she offered no argument and followed behind as Fairuza led them towards rocky outcropping said she was willing to be convinced.

The plains stretched for miles in every direction before running up against the base of hills or mountains that stretched into the sky. But here and there the vast emptiness of the plains was broken up by a copse of small trees, a glittering lake or stream, or the remnants of small stone homes that had long been lost to time, ill weather, and scavengers. The girls had walked past many of these, sometimes commenting on how out of place they were, or wondering about the people who used to live there, or admiring any fruit that hung heavy from the trees.

But one thing they hadn’t even noticed were outcroppings of silvery rock that jutted from the ground at odd angles like crystals that grew straight out of the earth.

To be fair, the reason they hadn’t paid much attention to these outcroppings was that back home in the Trunks, such rock formations were everywhere. The Trunks was situated at a base of a large seaside mountain range called the Overprides, one of the more majestic mountain ranges on the continent. The rocks that erupted from the ground throughout the local villages had likely once been part of the mountains, but after centuries of war and storms and the natural evolution of earth they’d become independent formations, providing gentle heights from which children would play lookout, welcome shade to nap under, or cover for sneaky teenagers engaging in secret trysts in the middle of the night. The outcroppings were simply part of everyday life in the Trunks. Nothing interesting to explore.

But here? No, here the rocks didn’t make sense, a fact that Fairuza could have kicked herself for not realizing earlier. Between the two girls, Ianthe liked to believe she was the more intelligent, and she probably was—at least when it came to book learning and academic trivia. Ianthe knew the chemical compositions of dozens of potions, elixirs, draughts—even more dangerous items like combustible sand and gasses that could put an entire family of horses to sleep. Ianthe knew how to sew and make dye and sometimes she even had predictive dreams that came true. Ever since they were young girls, Ianthe had known that her intellect would make her Important one day.

But where Ianthe flourished in the arcane and esoteric, Fairuza boasted a practical kind of wisdom that few appreciated and fewer still could rival. Fairuza understood the earth. She knew which mushrooms were safe to eat and which would make you vomit purple sludge until you broke out into painful boils that, if not quickly treated, would eventually eat the skin right off your bones. When the wells went dry, Fairuza knew where to dig to find large reserves of groundwater unpolluted by the sea. And if you needed to know which rocks were good for building and which were better for weapons, Fairuza could tell you that without hardly thinking about it.

And she could also tell you that the size of a tree wasn’t limited to what you could see above ground. A tree was at least as big as its roots, and sometimes, depending on the tree, it was even bigger because it was part of a network of trees, all linked underground by systems of roots, soil, and fungus.

Fairuza knew that sometimes, what you could see was only the beginning.

She stopped before a large collection of oval rocks that emerged from the ground at a gentle angle. The outcropping was a broad, low dome of limestone with a pitted, uneven surface. Large, oval rocks looked like they had pushed up from beneath the soil over time. Cracks and shallow grooves marked the stone, and small patches of moss and lichen had taken hold in the crevices. The rock was pale gray with darker streaks where water had run over it in the past.

Ianthe frowned at the rocks. “More rocks?”

Fairuza offered her friend a lopsided grin. “You have to look with better eyes than that.”

Around the edges, dry grass and hardy plants had grown up between the stones. In the center of the formation was a narrow opening, just large enough for the bigger girl to pass through if she slipped in sideways.

Ianthe would have no problem traversing the passage.

Fairuza hefted the pack on her shoulders. “You ready to go down?”

Ianthe blinked. “Down? Here?” She gave Fairuza another dose of her signature skepticism before letting the expression fall away. “Really?”

Without a word, Fairuza slipped between the rocks. The limestone structure was curved, forming a ceiling that blocked out most sunlight from above. The inside of the outcropping was cooler and damper.

With a triumphant grin, Fairuza pointed to the ground. “Behold—a cave entrance.”

Iantha blinked again, pushing a stray lock of flaxen hair from her eyes. She gazed into the darkness, and her throat closed. She looked at Fairuza with terror in her eyes.

“That’s a hole in the ground that goes straight down into nothing,” the girl breathed.

Fairuza grinned and made a sweeping gesture with her arms. “After you, my lady.”