Ruta Skadi, clan queen of the witches of Latvia, dipped her cloud pine branch lower in the harsh winds. If she were the sort to believe that weather could be something other than natural, she would have told her sisters to be even more wary of the object they flew toward. But Ruta Skadi knew things like wind and rain as well as she knew the soul that flew beside her. The Clouded Mountain jumped into view again in front of the flyers. At their height, not a mountain at all, but a distortion of metals and life forms forced into a space too small for them to both occupy only compromising in a decision to occupy each other. Metal shoots pointed at them and hovered on Asriel's assembled defending flyers before blinking violently and sending them hurtling into the rocky ground below. Ruta had seen rifles, mainly used by hunters seeking furs and oils. These were not the same. The guns of the Clouded Mountain were massive orange stained creations formed of rust and malice. She had never believed before that a weapon had only the intent to kill. Her own bow had saved her life twice during an expedition to a Southern based witch clan. Her bow had taught a tribe of Northern Tartars of their independence. The ring of tiger teeth braced on the crown of her head told of that. The weapons in front of her only killed. She saw this as plain as the moonlight and felt it as naturally as well.
"Sisters!" She wheeled in mid-flight and brought her cloud pine around to face the rest of the clan. They looked to her with compassion. It took much from a clan queen to encourage an event which all her sisters would not return from. But Ruta Skadi was passionate. Not because she was young and did not realize danger and chance, but because her love and certainty of life cancelled out any doubt she could have. Her sisters respected her for it. "Our world is the film of old. We do not live with the humans; we do not live with the bears. We live alone as witches, as we have for centuries and as will continue for longer. It has never been ours to partake in the business of others. But tonight we join the war. This war is not for humans or bears or the creatures that fly beside us and walk below us, this is for every living soul among us who wishes for the right to live. To this obstacle, many of our sisters have fallen. Across the worlds our sisters, yes, and even brothers; the men we take as lovers, and the children we bear to them – this Chariot, this horror; it's guns make them into targets. It's preaching sends us to depths we know not of and care not to explore. By this we have been condemned to death across the worlds, to rejection and forced slavery in others, in our own world to separation.
She paused, blinking in the wind while a few sisters let lose a wild yell. Her dæmon, Sergi, ceased his flapping and took sheltered landing on a protrusion from the cloud pine branch. She looked once more at the faces surrounding her; the stuff of passion.
"And, sisters, this is why we are strong. The Authority fights for stagnation, but we fight for change! We fight for something better! To war!" She cried, and began a howling ululation before turning and scratching a line in the sky toward their target – The Chariot, The Clouded Mountain, the home of The Authority.