Chapter 2: Dangerous Skies

Winter 89, Year 1610

"To all airships flying within Selphia's air space and the surrounding area, we advise you to turn back and avoid coming into the area this afternoon. A warship from the Sechs Empire has been spotted flying there and has not responded to Norad Air Control Center with answers to their intent. They may have only been targeting a royal vessel scheduled to fly today, but we cannot be certain how aggressive they may be. Again, please retreat from Selphia air space. Continuing to travel is at your own risk."

"I wonder if they know about us too," Lest thought aloud. Turning his attention from watching the land below, he headed over to the pilot's loft at the front of the ship.

Up the short flight of stairs, the navigator and pilot were also wondering about the radio warning. "What a day to have the same flight time as a royal ship with the Sechs watching like a hawk," the navigator said, nervous but determined not to let that feeling interfere with the task.

"NACC would know about that, but they wouldn't know about our cargo," the pilot said, even more determined. She had long black hair streaked with icy blue, wearing a headband with an insignia of Terrable readily visible. While it often seemed odd to others that an earth focused earthmate was an airship pilot, Helena would laugh and say it was all in the machinery.

That, and her loyal navigator Nem was wind focused; the pair were getting famous for their skills with an airship, even outside of the great kingdom of Norad. "Maybe," Nem said, glancing aside and nodding at their passenger. "What do you think, Lest? Should we press on? We're only a few minutes from Sephia's air field."

"You two would know better than me," Lest said. "Although if we're that close, we might as well rush for it. The mission is going to take a while and I'd rather there not be too many delays."

Helena grinned as soon as Lest mentioned rushing. "Right. Besides, it'll take us longer to get out of the danger zone than to just get there first. I'm pushing the speed up a notch, so you better not have anything loose on ya."

Below them, the wooden deck of the airship throbbed between the surrounding air turbulence and the increased rumble of the engines below them. There was an air shield around the ship to keep things from blowing away, but at the speeds Helena was bringing them to, some cool wind slipped past and blew through their hair and clothes. Lest looked ahead at the banks of white puffy clouds in the sky. Since it was mostly clear blue sky, they should be able to spot a warship before it got too close. He clutched the leather bag with the rune spheres close to his side; a sparkling blue mist leaked out from the top no matter how tightly he knotted it.

He saw something just above the nearby rail that disrupted his thoughts. A tall tower? Going over to the front, he saw that it was a tower, a few miles from the castle at Selphia's center. It looked ancient even from this distance, monumental stones and statues rising far above the earth like a fox watching the land. Yet there was something strange about the way runes were moving around it. It surrounded the tower in a dark mist and at points, there seemed to be a forest past the thickly clustered runes instead of a tower.

Nem came up beside him, her brown hair tied up into a bun as she always did while working. "Isn't that an unexpected sight? I nearly slipped off the ship trying to get a good look at it the first time I flew by here."

"What's with that place?" Lest asked, shifting the bangs of his hair aside trying to keep them from blowing into his eyes. "The flow of the runes is all knotted up, like some kind of critical mistake was made in setting up a large enchantment. It's Leon Karnak Tower, isn't it?"

"Yeah. It's even worse than your disasters, huh?" she asked, smiling to let him know it was in jest (although he'd know even without).

He laughed in embarrassment. "That's true. I've certainly not caused anything that tremendous."

Nem put a hand to her cheek. "I asked around and apparently it's something that's been building up slowly. The initial descriptions were that it was simple illusions while passing through Karnak Tower. Over time, the illusions became more dangerous, manifesting as actual monsters. These days, people are forbidden from going anywhere near the tower because there've been many deaths from people trying to explore the place and fix whatever went wrong." She shook her head. "Really stinks for the guy it was named for, you know? Because people revere him as a saint and martyr, but then that place has such a powerful curse on it."

"Is it a minor flaw that built up into something major?" Lest asked. Enchantments that went wrong, especially spectacularly so like Karnak Tower, always did so for a reason. Of course, there was always the possibility of, "Or because of Ventuswill?"

"Never found anything definite, but neither answer would surprise me," Nem said, then waved a hand at the sky. "You can tell that the flow of runes here is stagnant."

He nodded. "Right, and it's spreading all over. I heard they finally got the Sharance Tree to bloom, but it was just barely and took a lot of persistent effort. Even the elder isn't sure how long that can last unless..."

After he failed to finish that, Nem put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm really sorry that you had to end up with this mission. If it ended up in my hands, I'd be all kinds of nervous about it failing. Such dangerous places to go, even there."

"Even if you are better aligned for it?" Lest asked, looking down at the railing. "I want to fulfill my family's dream, but I practically just learned about it this season. It's an awful lot of weight passed down through the years."

"Hey, you can at least look on the bright side of things," Helena called from the pilot's wheel. "You get out of that stuffy old town to a place where nobody knows what to expect out of you, a fresh restart in life. Sure you've got this big thing hanging over you, but you're out of those critical eyes and where you're freer to be yourself. I'm sure you can get things done that way; you always seem to get things done best once you get out of Grelin."

"I guess so," Lest said, feeling better.

Nem brightened at some thought. "You do! And don't worry too much about that marriage deadline. Love will find you when it's ready, not caring how much time you have or if you're even ready to realize it yourself."

"Father says he won't let me inherit anything if I don't get married in five years. Although if I'm getting a fresh start, maybe that won't matter as much." Then he laughed. "And sure, you tell me that after you made most of the tribe mad at you for what you realized."

The two women laughed with him, Nem blushing a little. "Well that's what I found to be true."

"Bah, who cares what those stuffy folks think?" Helena asked. With fewer connections there, she had an easier time not caring. "They made up that ruling trying to get everyone born into the tribe married by twenty-five, but I think they've lost sight of what really makes an earthmate. That majority hardly has any power left to them while I came in without an earthmate to be seen in the family tree. Sure, our numbers are dwindling, but it's more their beliefs and misunderstanding than anything else."

"That's what Frey would say," Nem said, nodding. "And she's the one they called a sage before she was an adult."

"Right," Lest said. Funny how he'd been anxious about this mission ever since he was assigned it, but these two were making him feel more confident about it in a few hours. It didn't change the solemn nature of it, finding a way to strengthen the runes of the world from something that seemed like a sickness of the earth itself. But it had to be done. "They at least seem to be realizing it, even apologizing to me before I left town."

"That's wonderful," Nem said warmly.

He looked back out at the landscape, including the tower of twisted runes. Maybe this could fix even that. Wanting to talk of lighter things before they had to part again, he said, "Besides, if they really want me to follow their marriage ruling, I had to leave Grelin at some point. The only marriageable girls in town were my sister and you, and you've always been more like another sister to me. And Gwynn, I suppose, but by the time she gets old enough to be married, I'd be right up by the deadline. Might as well be somewhere without much of an earthmate presence like Selphia."

"Just don't be mentioning that law to anybody you meet in Selphia, brother," Nem said, half teasing him. But she was serious as she added, "Because really, if you're going to marry someone, the law should only be a small portion of why."

"I'd even say try to put it out of mind entirely," Helena added. "You don't want that kind of pressure pushing you into a choice you'll regret later on."

"Thanks, I'll try to do that," Lest said. "I'll just use white paint over any lines in letters I get from my father asking me about that."

Helena laughed with him. "Good idea! But do you want to be changing out of that skirt before you get into town?"

"I probably should," he said with a played up resistance. "It's just so comfortable."

The pilot winked. "You know Lest, if you want to make that change in your life, we're one hundred percent behind you. And this would be the perfect time to start, telling all these folks you've never met your true gender identity. Got a girl's name picked out for yourself yet?"

However, Nem was distracted and that distracted him from the joke. She looked out towards a cloud they were approaching, increasingly concerned. Seeing that in her runes, Lest felt worried before she hurried back over to Helena's side. "Lena, they're cloaking the warship in that cloud!"

"How're they cloaking with a cloud?" Helena said, narrowing her eyes and shifting out of her loose hold on the steering wheel. Her nerves were like steel and it showed in times like this. "They don't have magic."

"The air currents flow around something too heavy for a normal airship," Nem said. "If they're going to approach us, they'll do so in a couple of minutes."

"We look like a normal private airship, don't we?" Lest asked.

"Might recognize the colors from recent races, but we don't have anything like the royal flags," Helena said. "Shift into the landing angle early to get some better distance?"

"Give it a try," Nem said, looking back to the cloud. "If we do get into trouble, I can always cast a featherfall spell on Lest and have him jump."

"Are you sure about that?" Lest asked, moving closer to them.

"We really need to get you and the rune spheres into Selphia to start your mission as soon as possible," Nem said, her face calm but her fingers twiddling and betraying some anxiety.

"Come on, don'tcha trust your sisters?" Helena asked, a dangerous smile on her face. She liked this danger on some level, but her concern was real as well.

"I trust you two not to mess up," Lest said. "But I'm a rune breaker."

"If it's for your safety, I'll make it as strong as I can," Nem said, bringing a hand to her chest. "Just trust me; that may hold the spell together long enough."

It was unsettling that even she couldn't say that for certain. All of his life, Lest had been far better at breaking spells than making them, with years of training going into trying to cast a few simple coherent spells. But with his survival on the line, he might just be able to hold back long enough to keep her spell together. "All right, if we must."

At that point, it became obvious even to the two of them not as attuned to wind that something was fishy with that cloud. It was not moving with the air currents as it should be. Instead, it was headed directly for them, picking up speed. Helena made some quick decisions, twisting a few dials that pulled more heat into their balloon and shifted the propellers so they made a quick rise. This move saved them when the Sechs warship burst out of its cover in an attempt to ram them. Still, that wouldn't buy them much time. Nem's airship Graceful Schooner was unarmed, while the metal-plated warship was bristling with spikes and cannon ports.

Nem picked up the radio handset and, after taking a deep breath, transmitted in a flustered tone. "Ah, we-we're sorry if we've disrupted something! Pl-please, let us through to the air field, we're just a civilian vessel."

Unlike with NACC's announcement, the warship responded to their transmission. "We know you're not," a deep raspy voice said over the radio. "You will hand over the rune spheres that you're transporting. There is no other option."

The three of them looked to each other, Lest being sure they had the same questions as him. How did the Sechs know about the rune spheres? Their creation had been a guarded secret within Grelin as the answer to a long standing problem. While Helena and Nem were partial outcasts, they only knew because Lest had told them. He'd even insisted on them flying him to Selphia rather than hiring a pilot outside the tribe. They wouldn't have had time to let the information slip and he was certain they would not as they knew the importance of his mission. But those bandits had known too.

"Right, we're gunning for over Selphia Castle itself," Helena said, determined to finish her part in this. Her hands flowed over the controls rapidly, with only a slight delay in the airship following along. "You better get ready because we're gonna get there fast."

"There's going to be an increase in turbulence, Karnak at 85 degrees starboard," Nem said in warning. Then she took Lest by the arm and went with him to the lower central part of the deck. "Sorry we have to literally drop you in this time, but Grace is going to have a rough time outmaneuvering a Sechs warship and its fire."

"It's fine," Lest said as his heart began racing. Jumping off an airship, even with a successful featherfall spell on him, was something he'd never even imagined doing. He smiled to shake off that fear. "I don't know any other crew that would have gotten this close with the danger of a warship being about."

"Are you calling us brave or stupid?" Nem asked happily. "This is for a brighter future, I'm sure of it."

There was a bone rumbling boom in the air as the warship fired its first shot at them, although it must have missed as the ship Grace didn't tremble at all. "That's the reason I'm willing to go this far before I've even started," Lest said, putting a hand on the rail. "And I know your spell should work."

"You take care of yourself," Nem said, lines of green chi starting to appear on her arms as she began her spellwork. "Lena and I will try to check up on you as soon as we can safely get back here. Whenever we drop in, the people of Selphia are really nice, so I'm sure you'll be fine for a few days."

"I'll do my best," he said, shifting his hold on his two bags so he could feel one of the rune spheres. 'Help me hold this together and survive,' he thought as the green lines left Nem's skin to weave a pattern around his body. 'I need to get you where you belong.'

When the pattern was complete, runes flashed within it and made him feel like someone was clasping him tenderly. "This should slow as you approach the ground," Nem said. "But if you end up at a roof top, you can kick yourself away as long as you only make contact with one foot. Both will make the spell assume you landed safely, so try to do that when you're on a secure surface."

"Okay," Lest said, although more cannon fire disrupted him. Pulling himself up on the railing, he looked down to see where he was over. The castle and the small town around it was rapidly approaching. It would be a beautiful sight to admire while landing. With the warship firing on them, there was no time to sightsee, only to sight for a possible safe landing spot. "I'll see you two later! Get out of here safely!"

"You too!" Helena called, although most of her attention was on keeping the ship away from the warship's fire.

"Time to prove the doubters wrong," Nem said in encouragement. "You can do this, Lest."

"Thanks for everything, Nem," he replied, smiling and hoping that what fear he had wasn't visible. Then he jumped off the ship.

It was a lot like falling in a dream, in a slow manner where the wind itself seemed to be guiding him down. This would work, it would work. As long as he kept thinking positively and trusting his friends, this would work. Lest brought the bag with the rune spheres to his chest to secure it, only to notice that the knot had begun unwinding. That would not do. He went to grab for it with his other hand and make sure it stayed closed until he could get back on solid ground and tighten it. However, the powerful air moving all around him slowed his movements and quickened the knot's unraveling.

Then the tremendous boom of the warship's largest cannon sounded again, the shockwaves of its energy hindering him more. Lest looked up and saw the last of the bright trail of energy from the cannon pass by the Graceful Schooner. Next, he saw the gaping hole it had left in the lower decks of the airship. Had it taken out the lower engines? Could they still fly? The answer to the latter question shifted quickly towards no as flames erupted around the edges of the hole.

"You two better jump too," Lest said, trying not to become frantic. But they wouldn't be in this danger if he hadn't asked them to come, or even to continue not that long ago. He just wanted to get things started quickly; was all that a mistake?

Then a flash of blue nearly hit him in the chin as the knot completely unraveled and sent the rune spheres flying in all directions. This was turning into a real disaster, like anything he tried to do as an earthmate. Like how Nem's runes were beginning to unravel the longer they spent around his rune breaker power. The wind clenched its grip tighter, but he was slipping through and falling faster now. No, stay together! He tried to will it to do so, will his own runes to not interfere with the featherfall enchantment.

Two tall spires appeared at either side around him, shimmering in the sunlight with long flags waving in the turbulent wind. Spires? Those were at the sides of Selphia Castle, weren't they? Remembering Nem's advice, he tried to turn himself back upright and find a decently flat space to land even if he was going to end up on the roof. And right as he noticed he was directly above a peculiar huge gap in the roof with a mound of mostly green in the center, the featherfall spell failed completely and he wasn't given a moment to think before crashing onto some large creature and bouncing off to hit the hard marble flooring.

Lest barely hear the creature's yelp and screams of surprise as intense pain filled him. But he was alive. That much had worked. As large feathers brushed against him, he tried to move out of the way. His body didn't want to work as battered as it was, taking a great deal of effort just to shift himself onto his back. Cold snow started soaking through his clothes, but it was only a discomfort and therefore minor. The colorful feathered wing by him was attached to a large body with grassy green scales, but held a comparatively strong flow of runes through its native wind power. Wind? Was this Ventuswill?

"I'll go get Jones," a man said quickly as what seemed to be his footsteps started running off.

"Be careful out there!" another man called in a booming voice. After a dazed moment, Lest found an older man with bushy hair and eyebrows leaning over him. He wore a formal black suit coat with a blue tie, as well as a floating armband that momentarily fascinated Lest. "Are you alive?" Another boom from the warship's cannon caused him to look overhead in worry.

"Ye-yeah, mostly," Lest said, not feeling well in trying to speak. He ran his thumb under his fingers on both hands, going through a ritual he used to get around his rune breaking power to cast spells. Normally he didn't need it these days, but he had a better chance of living past this if he could get a healing spell on himself. It was uncertain in any unknown place how many people could use magic.

"G-good heavens, was that a person who fell on me?" the dragon said, shifting her body away from Lest. Even her natural runes radiated her flustered state.

"Did you get hurt too, Lady Ventuswill?" the man asked, looking up at her. A girl with spiky gray hair was briefly in Lest's vision, along with possibly other people. Taking shelter from the warship?

"It might ache a little while, but, er, I mean," Lest didn't feel like moving, but he could just about see Ventuswill rubbing a wing against her snout. "I will be fine," she said, in a deeper more regal tone. "He could be in trouble, though."

Lest finally managed to cast the healing spell he knew; his sister Frey could have cast it in a snap, even under similar circumstances. While it turned down the intensity of the pain, the fact that it was still there told him that this was a more serious injury than he could handle. Definitely at least one broken bone, probably more. It might hurt to talk, but he was worried enough not to care. "M-maybe, but... my friends..."

"You probably shouldn't talk," the man suggested.

"Lena and Nem were still on the ship when it caught on fire," he forced himself to say. "They got me off... might have jumped with featherfall too, hopefully."

"But that's earthmate magic," Ventuswill mumbled, seeming to not realize it was audible. But then Lest's vision blurred further and his mind went blank.

When he felt alert again, there were two men carefully shifting him onto a rolling bed. The one who seemed to be the doctor from the equipment bags at his side looked over how he was set. "Good, but we'll need to keep him under a roof here in the castle for the moment. The streets are too rough to take him over in this condition. I'll have to bring over some equipment; do you have a spare room with the space?"

"We can shift the furniture around in the bedroom to make space," the other man said in a hearty voice. He seemed to be the one from earlier.

"It'll have to do," the doctor said, then made eye contact with him. He seemed to have pale skin, as well as an underlying anxiety he was trying to restrain. But maybe Lest was imagining that as he was. "Oh, you're awake again. Try to relax and get to sleep for now. You need the time to heal."

"All right," Lest said, starting to feel drowsy now that the doctor had mentioned it. "But..."

"I sent some folks out to search for the crew of the downed airship," the larger man said. "Still, if you made the descent, I'm sure they made it somehow as well. Focus on getting yourself back together. What's your name, if you don't mind?"

Maybe it was the man's formal dress or maybe it was his shaken state of mind. Either way, he started to say his full name even as he felt his voice and energy taper off. "Arthur Lest Nolan."

And maybe the doctor had given him some medicine already, as he couldn't resist falling asleep any longer.


Her room was buzzing with activity and gossip, something that Ventuswill hadn't seen for a while. In the past, she might have enjoyed the scene even if it was caused by serious trouble. An alarm had sounded through town when a flying warship, bristling with spikes and loaded with strange weaponry, had been spotted overhead waiting in a suspicious fashion. Most of the people in town had come into the castle for safety, although others were still in the clinic due to Clorica being wounded. But it turned out that the warship wasn't interested in what happened on the ground. When it finally attacked, its attention was on another airship trying to slip by onto the town's airfield.

However, Ventuswill felt as if she'd just woken up from a really long sleep, not able to invest herself in the scene enough to have any opinions on it. Not even someone dropping right on top of her could keep her mind stirred for long. She was tempted to just put the whole thing out of mind and go back to sleep. It was a lot easier than letting her thoughts go on for very long.

But there were too many strange things about this to make it easy to let go. First of all that he'd fallen right on top of her. Very few people came in the entrance up in the roof and those who did (like birds) usually were capable of landing without hurting themselves. Then there were the gold chi lines on his skin when he tried to heal himself. That was an earthmate trait. She shouldn't have any problems this time, as there was no one she could think of that would be endangered with an earthmate around. Still, they had a knack for getting into and causing trouble. Ventuswill was going to have to be cautious... if she could keep awake long enough to be cautious.

There was also the oddity that the townsfolk were most interested, the fact that this fellow had dropped in wearing a schoolgirl's uniform, skirt and all. "Um, Lady Ventuswill?" the girl named Xiao asked nervously. She wasn't sure if she should bother her with the question. "Are you sure that was a certain man that fell over here?"

"Very sure," she replied. "His runes showed him male in body, mind, and soul." Occasionally you got a human who had mixed genders in those three aspects, but most were the same in all three.

"But then what was he doing dressed as a girl?" Xiao asked, profoundly puzzled by this.

"I wouldn't be able to speak for him on that query," Ventuswill said.

"I've met a few guys like that," Xiao's mother Lin Fa said, smiling at some memory. "It's either they lost a bet or are completely confident in themselves and feel unrestrained by normal expectations."

"It could also be a disguise," the elf Illuminata said, with a spark of eagerness triggered in her. "It's an ideal distraction if your enemy knows who you are. If they expect a man, appear as a woman. If they expect a woman, appear as a man. If they expect an elf, appear as a dwarf."

There just happened to be two dwarves in the room. One merely gave her a strange look while the blacksmith Bado laughed. "That last one would work up until you started talking," he said.

"An expert would be able to pass that test even," Illuminata said in glee. But not very well in tones that mimicked a dwarf.

"Maybe he knows that he's so beautiful that he has to show it off properly," the portly Porcoline suggested as a joke. "Although it's hard to say that when we've only seen him injured."

"What's wrong with a guy striving to look beautiful as a guy?" the other elf in the room, Margaret, said. "Though you have to give him some respect to be brave enough to flaunt normal dress codes."

"Or to jump off of a flying airship in the middle of battle," Xiao said. "If it comes to be that he did jump. It may just be that he got knocked off in the big blast."

"Oh no, I'm certain he jumped," Illuminata said, tapping her monocle. "I identified the runes about him and there were fragments of a featherfall enchantment on him. But some nefarious scheme on part of his enemies must have ruined him on the way down." She paused, starting to pace. "An excellent but difficult scheme because in order to undo a spell while he was falling, his enemy must have incredible range and precision in not just spell casting, but rune breaking."

"It's hard enough to break runes when your target is an unmoving object," a young man Kiel said, having followed the conversation with strong interest. "The bonds between them don't like being broken once they've been made. It must take a master to disenchant someone who's falling, even slowed down with something like featherfall."

"I've got it!" Illuminata said, pounding one fist into the other. "That has to be our new prince!"

"What?!" most of the people in the room asked, amazed at her intuition or floored by her insane jump of logic to that conclusion.

She chuckled, pleased with herself. "Well that's just how the pieces line up. That warship was waiting up there, waiting for someone to arrive. The only person we were expecting to arrive today was the prince, so perhaps the empire decided to interfere as an act of war. They did blast that airship to pieces without giving them a chance to explain themselves."

"The prince wasn't going to arrive today," Kiel said. "My sister said that the royal airship headed back to the capitol once reports of the warship arrived by telegram from us. They decided it was too dangerous to fly with such an important person on board."

"Well that's just what they wanted the Sechs Empire to hear," Illuminata said, pacing again. "They even prepared two airships to come out, the obvious royal airship and this second unmarked airship which would actually carry the prince, a classic switcheroo. However, the empire seems to be cleverer than NACC expected as they managed to guess which ship the prince was actually on and fired on it as soon as it showed. But the prince is apparently so dedicated to his duty that he literally jumped ship to make sure that he could arrive, only for an enemy mage to undo the spell that was to bring him here safely."

"Then why was he dressed as a girl?" Xiao asked, still stumped by that point.

"Further confusion on where the prince was," Illuminata replied as if it was an obvious answer. "Doesn't work so well when you're trying to hide the identity of someone on one airship and your enemy is on a whole different airship cloaked in a cloud."

"That would be an amazing story," Kiel said, intrigued.

"Except that the Sechs Empire is known for being strongly against magic," the other dwarf Doug said, the first time he'd spoken up the whole afternoon. "They couldn't produce a mage capable of the feat you suggest."

"Well how much do we really know about them?" Illuminata insisted. "For all we know, their guns could be based in magic too."

Well the conversation and fabrications were interesting, Ventuswill mused. They had yet to bring up the fact that the young man was an earthmate, and a rune breaker at that. However, it was unlikely that any in the room aside from herself could tell that already. That gave the simpler explanation that he'd used the featherfall enchantment in desperation even knowing that his own runes would start undoing it as soon as he set it. Still, she liked Illuminata's version of events for how dramatic it was.

Jones and Volkanon then came back into the room, the former waving to Bado to act as extra security as he headed back to his clinic. The town knight Forte had apparently stayed over there to guard the patient, nurse, and white witch who were staying over there. "How is our fallen guest?" Ventuswill asked her butler.

He had a serious look on his face; the fact that they were dealing with a man dressed as a woman didn't sit well with him although most of the others didn't seem all that bothered. "We've got him stable, but he's going to be in a dangerous state for a little while yet," Volkanon said. "He did come back around and give us his name."

"Is it Prince Arthur?" Illuminata asked, jumping at the statement.

After a sigh, Volkanon nodded. "Yes... it's Arthur."

Even Ventuswill widened her eyes on hearing this. So that was the prince that the royal court had sent them to rule over Selphia and try to save the weakened community? It was strange as none of the talk about this in front of her had mentioned that the prince was an earthmate. For that matter, none of the talk she heard on the wind mentioned that fact either. All the talk had said was that he had a very good reputation as an educated and intelligent young man. And dressing as a schoolgirl usually didn't make for a man's reputation rated at very good.

"Wow, I think things are about to get quite interesting in the future indeed," Xiao said.

"No kidding," Volkanon said.


A/N: I'm a bit eager to get this story rolling; updates should appear weekly after this point.

Xiao Pai is a bit of a pain to write for, even though I have a reference for it. One of my friends speaks like her; she's a really intelligent woman who knows five languages, but English was her first Latin derived language and she'd only known it for a couple of years when I first met her. But going off some advice, I don't plan on mangling all her lines with her speech impediment, just enough for some color.

Rune Factory technology is lots of fun to guess at and work with, on the other hand.