BETWEEN THREE ROGUES

By Eric 'Erico' Lawson


Forty-Three: Storm And Calm

The Valuan Continent

Above the (Destroyed) Maw of Tartas

309 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

Midday

When it came to hunting for the Moon Crystals, Vyse was perfectly happy to defer to Fina's guidance. She'd been the one to direct them towards the Temple of Pyrynn. She'd been the one to warn them about the hazards of the Lands of Ice. Yes, that had required a significant refit of the ship to accommodate for the bone-chilling climes, but it had been worth it in the end to keep the ship from freezing up and the crew relatively warm.

So when Fina had told them that they might want to look into another refit of the Delphinus before setting out for the Maw of Tartas and the elusive Yellow Moon Crystal, Vyse hadn't even blinked. Especially with her reasoning. "Nearly every time we go hunting for one of the Moon Crystals, we end up facing off against a Gigas. And I'm counting Plergoth, because I - I still ended his life. The Yellow Gigas Yeligar is a flying monstrosity that can conjure up thunderstorms and throw lightning like a toy. Supposedly, the priests and priestesses of the Silver Shrine managed to ensnare it in their magic and put it under a deep enchantment of sleep. It was locked in the Maw of Tartas beneath the Great Seal, and the Yellow Moon Crystal is embedded in it. If we're fortunate, we'll be able to get to it and remove the Crystal before it can wake up. But when it comes to Gigas, we're never fortunate. So we should prepare while we have the time."

They had prepared. They had coated the entirety of the Delphinus in a layer of tree rubber so that they couldn't be electrocuted by Yeligar's attacks because of working and fighting inside a metal ship. The real challenge there hadn't been applying the rubber. It had been in applying it in a coat thin enough to do the job, but not so thick that they would be weighed down enough to give the engines and atmospheric condensers too much trouble. Bless the Moons for Aika and Fina. It had been Fina who had shown them just how thin that coat of vulcanized latex actually needed to be, and Aika who had kept the engineering teams and the crew who helped out with it at the top of their game and safe, despite the fact that they were spraying warmed sap over a ship and then heat-treating it before it could drip off.

Vyse wished he'd thought of such a simple countermeasure, but the words of his father were a balm as always. A leader didn't have to know everything, anticipate everything. A good leader knew to rely on those who could see the angles he couldn't.

When they had met Recumen, they'd been lucky to escape its attacks alive. When they had met Grendel, it had been a game of keeping out of reach until they could bury it in a chasm. Plergoth had been a mercy killing that Fina still wept over from time to time. Bluheim had been the first time they'd fought a Gigas with the intent to kill it and even that had been a close thing that had pushed their ship and their battered crew to the ragged edge.

But now, after two days of sailing underground in the wide caverns beneath the Valuan's feet and exploring the Maw of Tartas from an entrance they'd hoped for and found in the Lower Sky on the eastern side of the continent, they were soaring through the skies above the surface again. All of Fina's careful planning and Aika's implemented defenses were paying off in spades. Yeligar hadn't been asleep when they reached it. Perhaps the magic that Fina's ancestors had worked on it had faded over the years. Perhaps it was their approach, or the presence of the other Moon Crystals in their possession that had caused it to stir. It didn't change the fact that the damn thing had woken up.

Yeligar was a monstrosity of four jagged metallic-spiked limbs and a twisted long-necked head tied to a pentagonal-shaped body. It had screamed at their approach, and the very first thing it had done after shattering the tethers of light that had bound it within its prison was to blast the Great Seal apart and fly up for the skies. Dodging the jagged pieces of falling crumbled stone that had kept it and the Yellow Moon Crystal hidden from the Valuans, the Delphinus had followed it into the air and engaged.

Bluheim had been a challenge. Fighting Yeligar, though? With all of their precautions? The people of Yafutoma had called Delphinus 'The Godslayer' in the wake of Bluheim's defeat. Here, as Yeligar screamed and thrashed in the air and threw bolt after bolt of lightning at them, or caused balls of it to cascade up in the clouds and come down on them strengthened, Vyse actually felt like the ship deserved the name.

All of the crew, not just on the bridge but throughout the ship, were equipped with rubber boots and rubber gloves. One last layer of protection in case the insulation around the ship failed. As the ship shuddered around them from the impact of another four thunderballs, Vyse hit the intercom next to the captain's chair. The lights flickered a little, but no panels had blown out on the bridge yet. "All stations, damage report!"

"Fire control, no damage!"

"Torpedo staging, no damage!"

"Moonstone Cannon watch, no damage!"

"Engine room, no damage!"

"Moonstone reactor room, no damage!"

"Marco here, captain! No fires, but we're ready!" The scrappy crewman yelled out from wherever he was, followed by Pinta's higher cry and Pow's rough barking. Vyse could only shake his head in disbelief. Yeligar was throwing raw fury at them and the Delphinus was coming out on the other side of it with no damage. The insulation was keeping them from getting electrocuted, just as Fina and Aika had anticipated, but it was the second thing that they'd hastily constructed which was shunting the bulk of Yeligar's fury away from them. Marco and Enrique, no strangers to the terrible thunderstorms that occasionally battered their fair home, had known what the towering poles over the decking and the sides of the hull were.

Lightning rods. But lightning rods only worked when they had somewhere to direct the energy to, and were they on the ground, it would be down into the ground. On a ship, they didn't have that option.

Through an assembly of leyden jars that all the lightning rods on the upper surface and the sides of the ship ran their cumbersome electrical wires to, all that gathered electrical energy the Gigas meant to fry the ship with had somewhere to travel to. Somewhere to be stored.

And through additional wiring that ran from the network of 100 leyden jars within the ship in a forward hull that had been heavily insulated to the four 'discharge lightning rods' slung under the belly of the ship, all of that dangerous power had somewhere to be dissipated from.

Yeligar cracked the sky wide open with light and thunder and hurled an endless stream of lightning at the Delphinus. They absorbed every blow, sent it to the jars that acted just like the capacitors within the Moonstone Cannon, and then spat that angry power beneath them down to the surface of the Valuan continent, scorching the land with the shunted power of the Gigas.

Over, and over, and over again.

"Just how pissed do you think that beastie is right now?" Don cackled from his place at the helm. Though he and Lawrence usually traded shifts, the younger helmsman was close at hand in case they ended up in another Bluheim-styled situation where they needed two sets of hands between the wheel and the Moonstone Cannon firing toggle.

"Oh, middling to extreme." The typically scowling mercenary replied in a laconic drawl. "I get the feeling it's not used to dealing with an enemy that's immune to its attacks." Lawrence flinched a little when another thunderball from the clouds up above them smashed into the foredeck, and caused some of the rubber coating to begin smoking before the charge was absorbed and fed into the batteries. There was a louder crack as the Delphinus discharged the gathered power into an artificial bolt that cratered into the soil far beneath the ship, and the acrid sting of burning rubber and the taste of electricity on the tongue made him cough. "Mostly immune, anyways."

Enrique and Aika were at the feeder ports, passing another charge into the ship's main cannon. The exiled prince had been grim ever since they crossed the border back into his homeland, but he was deadly focused now. "Fina, did the Gigas actually ever battle one another?" Enrique asked.

"There weren't many encounters recorded." Fina answered, half of her attention still on the thrashing Gigas in the sky ahead of them. "The Red and Green Civilizations fought defensively, and their Gigas had to do the same given their lack of flight. But there was one account of Plergoth and Yeligar encountering one another that I remember, which was said to result in a stalemate with both dealing wounds that weren't fatal before Plergoth retreated."

Vyse nodded, thinking it over. "If the Gigas were their high cards, it makes sense they wouldn't want to risk overplaying them. Send yours too far away and you'd be at the mercy of the Gigas others sent to attack you. Not being able to control them though...should've been a warning sign."

Yeligar's four arms came together, their needle-like appendages crackling with light at the tips which crackled as it channeled up more power. Vyse swore, it was trying something new here. He punched his intercom for the room they'd set up the bank of jar storage cells in, which was currently being watched over by Brabham. "Brabham, we've got a big one incoming!"

"Capacitors are fully discharged, cap'n! We're ready for it!" The old mechanic wheezed.

"Let's give the thing a bloody nose while we're at it then." Vyse resolved, changing the intercom over to the gunnery control station. "Khazim! Knock that thing around a little for me!"

"At your command, captain! Belle, fire all torpedoes! Men, commence firing!"

Four turrets with eight guns all turned on target and unloaded their powerful shells, while six torpedoes launched in unison. Vyse didn't bother watching them track in, he wasn't expecting standard ammunition to harm Yeligar any more than it had Bluheim. But it would buy them time. "Aika, Enrique, how's the charge coming?"

"Ten seconds." Aika answered, a little slow to respond. She was focused on building the charge, and there wasn't the same level of fatigue in her voice that there had been in the Bluheim engagement, in spite of the fact that this was their second shot. The first one had been fired while they had still been climbing up out of the Maw of Tartas at an obscene angle that had made Vyse very glad he'd left standing orders to keep everything that could shift heavily secured and the cookfires turned off after the first day of spelunking. They'd clipped Yeligar with that first blast, and the damn thing'd skated away once they singed the side of its body. The violent counterattack of lightning blasts and thunderballs had come after that.

"Keep the Moonstone Cannon hatch shut until he fires!" Vyse ordered, as the glow from the beast brightened to blinding levels.

Yeligar hit them with a full-powered blast that they all braced for, and crackles of power danced over the ship as their lightning rods absorbed what they could. What they couldn't raked over the protective coating of the hull and filled the air with the scent of charred rubber that had some members of the bridge crew coughing. Yeligar, a little exhausted from the blast, slumped in its hover.

Vyse grinned under his black tricorn hat that had been passed down from Daccat. "Now." He snarled.

Yeligar was already smoking from the impacts of the shells and torpedoes that Belle and Khazim's teams had slammed into it. When the forward hatch of the Delphinus slammed open on its hydraulics and the barrel extended, already glowing with a nimbus of purple light around it, the Gigas must have realized what they planned to do. It jerked its head up and tried to turn, but it had put too much of its strength in that last attack and it was sluggish.

"Compensating." Don growled, ticking the wheel over just enough to keep the Gigas lined up in the projected firing reticule on their forward window. Lawrence didn't even sound off an answer, he just punched the firing trigger.

Yeligar was speared through by the angry and focused beam, and the pain of its wounds finally kicked it to move. The beam kept firing even as it moved, and a twist of its body spared the bulk of it from being struck at the cost of an arm, which was lopped off cleanly by the last gasp of the blast. The bulk of it, needle extension and all, plummeted to the ground far beneath them, leaving a cauterized and smoking stump behind.

Yeligar screamed, and the stormclouds darkened all around them, rumbling ominously.

"Well. He's pissed now." Aika huffed, sweating a little. "Fina? Tag in for me."

"Yes." The Silvite said, grim but calm. Focused and confident in a way that Vyse realized came from her emulating him. She slid into place where Aika had been standing and the two women reached for each other's hands and squeezed gently before Aika backed away. Fina smiled at their redheaded lover before looking back over her shoulder to Vyse. "Captain, would you care to assist?"

Like hell Vyse was going to let Fina bear the brunt of charging the Moonstone Cannon all on her own. He hopped down from the captain's chair and fixed his gaze on the exiled prince. "Enrique? Take command."

"I have command." Enrique instantly replied, walking up to the captain's seat and settling into place. There was no protest, no shift or change in the attitude of the rest of the crew on the bridge. Enrique was one of them. He had the full faith of Vyse and every Blue Rogue behind him, and Vyse had trained him for this. "Keep after it, Don."

"Aye, your highness!" Don laughed, already turning the wheel to keep on Yeligar's tail as it tried to retreat from them.

Enrique flipped the intercom toggle with a crisp snap as Vyse slotted into place next to Fina and took her hand, resting the other on the second feeder port. "Bridge to gunnery control. Khazim, how's the reload coming along?" The exiled prince asked.

"Thirty-four more seconds for the auto-loaders to complete their cycle! Belle has two torpedoes loaded, it'll be another minute and a half for the other four." The boisterous Nasrian replied.

Vyse smiled and looked over to Fina, who looked back at him with a silvery glow ringing around her blue eyes. Her hand felt so soft and so warm in his, and the trust in her stance sent a shiver down his tailbone. "Together, Fina?" He asked her softly.

The Silvite subtly leaned in towards him, until her hip came to rest against his thigh. There were times he loved how he was just a head taller than her, because of how it made it so easy for her to cuddle up under his chin at night, or when they had a moment's respite to doze in the early morning. In this moment, it meant she could linger close to him and come close to cuddling and nobody would think anything about it.

"Always." She answered, and turned her blazing silver aura loose. Vyse met it with a burst of his own blue aura, and he turned his senses to the ship, guided by Fina's steadfast control. He felt his power pouring into the ship, and diverted a part of it to enhancing the conduits in the turrets and torpedo tubes.

Through his connection to the ship and to Fina, he felt a wave of amusement from his blond-haired lover. "Showing off again, are we?" She asked him quietly.

"Leveling the playing field." Vyse responded, and she giggled a little.

"We need to hurry and end this." Enrique said aloud. "Yeligar made a pillar of light when he broke free of the Great Seal. There's no way that the Admiralty's lookouts could have missed it, we're likely only minutes from a task force coming to investigate."

Vyse kept feeding his strength through Fina and into the ship's heart. The moonstone reservoir drank deep of his spiritual power, and deeper still of Fina's much more significant reserves. Down to three arms and its head, Yeligar flew into the heart of the storm, perhaps trying to regain its strength, or seeking cover. For a time it worked, with Enrique refusing to take the bait, keeping them on a careful approach that avoided flying directly into the heart of the still growing thunderstorms.

Yeligar must have grown impatient, because it turned around and came straight at them, wrapping itself around the nose of the vessel with two arms and shrieking at the bridge windows while the third of its needle-like appendages started stabbing into the hull.

"Captain, something just poked a huge hole in us! It looked like a giant needle!" Marco screamed, terrified from his position which had apparently been too close to where one of the arms had punched through.

"Fuck!" Don shouted, and the wheel shook in his hands. "It's got us pinned!"

"Khazim!" Enrique yelled over the intercom. "Point blank range! Fire! Fire everything!"

The guns unloaded their ammunition straight into the neck and chest of the lumbering beast, glowing with the added firepower that Vyse's spell of Increm had boosted the cannons with. The damage was minimal, but the force of the impacts jarred it back enough that when the torpedoes fired, they were able to rocket clear and reach boost phase before turning back around and smashing into the thing's skull. Rattled by the blows, Yeligar's three arms fell back away and it fell away from the Delphinus.

Fina's aura blazed hotter than Vyse had ever seen it go before, and she howled as she capped off the reservoir in an instant.

"Charge ready!" Vyse shouted, grabbing at Fina as she stumbled back away from the feeder ports, dizzy and rattled.

"FIRE!" Enrique thundered. For the third time, the Delphinus opened its nose and readied the Moonstone Cannon. The end of the barrel buried into the thing's gut, and the glow dimmed for just a blink of an eye as it prepared to discharge.

Yeligar didn't stand a chance. The blast penetrated it and struck at the core of the Gigas. The beast thrashed in place and fell limp even before the blast cut off, then fell away from the Delphinus to careen for the ground, crackling with yellow light the entire time.

"Oh, I think we hit something vital there…" Vyse hissed, looking to Don and Lawrence sharply. The helmsmen read his intent quickly.

"Hang on to your teeth, everyone!" Don bellowed into the intercom next to the telemotor, already pushing the ship to gain altitude and turn away from the Gigas. It was just enough to get them out of the heart of the blast when Yeligar's corpse hit the ground and exploded. It rattled the ship from stem to stern, and Fina collapsed into Vyse's arms as he lost his footing and went to the floor. The effort of defeating Yeligar had clearly winded the Silvite, but she wasn't unconscious like the last time. It had the effect of making her look particularly beautiful as she blinked dazedly up at him with her soft blue eyes.

Vyse laughed. "Falling for me again, are you?" He teased her. Fina wasn't quite so gone that she couldn't catch the joke, and she snorted and smacked her forehead against his chest.

"Vyse, you're terrible." She sighed.

"Love me anyways?" He asked lightly, and Fina sighed and relaxed against him. Aika chose that moment to come over and punch him in the shoulder, which made Fina mumble something unintelligible.

"I think we ought to do something about that massive ego you're developing, Vyse." The redhead sniped at him. Her irritation faded as she knelt beside them and stroked Fina's cheek with the back of her hand. "But we beat it. You did so well, Fina." She praised their lover, and Fina blushed, hiding away under Vyse's chin. "Problem though. You said that Yeligar had the Yellow Moon Crystal, right?" Her nose and face brushing up at Vyse's throat, the woman gave a gentle nod that did things to him.

"Enrique." Vyse said, looking back to the exiled prince. Enrique rose to his feet cautiously. "Get to a runabout. Fly down there to the impact site and find that Moon Crystal. Make it fast, take Lawrence with you. We need to be moving before the Armada shows up."

"And they will show up, I can promise you that." Enrique nodded sharply, glancing to the helm for half a second before dashing for the hatch that led off of the bridge. "Come on, Lawrence!"

"Right with you, sir." Lawrence rumbled, a purple blur that passed by them. Don circled the Delphinus back around while Vyse sat Fina in his chair to rest and then communicated with everyone on board for damage checks and casualties. Amazingly, no one was harmed, though Brabham warned them that their leyden jar array's cabling was pretty much burned out. Yeligar's thrashing had damaged the lightning rods spaced around the hull, including the emitters along the ventral hull. As for the hull's outer rubber insulation, that had taken enough damage that entire sections had been flash-fried, charred, or had flaked off completely.

Nine minutes later, Tikatika called down from his enclosed lookout tower to report that he'd sighted two heavy Valuan battleships and four supporting cruisers coming in their direction from the direction of the capital and the Grand Fortress. At least Enrique and Lawrence had finished their search of the crater that Yeligar had left behind and were flying back to the ship.

"We'll be cutting this close, captain. The runabouts aren't near as fast as those Valuan warships are!" Tikatika called down.

Vyse edged closer towards the helm, looking out the window as Don turned them so the incoming Valuan force was off the port side. He dialed in his telescopic goggle, zooming in to identify their features. "What do you suppose they're more mad about, Don? That we're here or there was a fight and they missed it?"

The old Esparanzan sailor chuckled. "Honestly, I think they're going to be more pissed off once they get here and realize that we've blown through the Great Seal and not only neutralized the Gigas, but scarpered off with the Moon Crystal."

Vyse hummed. "Assuming Enrique found it intact and the damn thing didn't blow up with that monster."

"...assuming that, yes." Don agreed, a little more deflated. Vyse hummed and toggled the helm intercom.

"Bridge to runabout bay. I want to know the second that Enrique and Lawrence are back aboard, we're going to be cutting this escape close." He switched channels right after. "Khazim?"

"I know what you are going to say, captain. We have all guns reloaded, but only two torpedoes with normal warheads. The other four we have loaded with...something the Chief Engineer cooked up with Belle."

Vyse looked over his shoulder back to Aika, who paused in her muttering and ship status logs to blink, recall something, and then smile. "Aika? Something I should know about?"

"Relax, Vyse. It's nothing too dangerous with the proper precautions. Just an experiment that Fina and I wanted to try." Vyse kept looking at her and she winked. "Just tell Khazim to fire them for the lead ships and set the fuze for one second before impact."

They all waited anxiously for Enrique's runabout to make it back, with the Armada coming closer every second. At long last, the message came up that Enrique and Lawrence were back aboard. All Vyse had to do was look at Don, and the aged sailor threw the Delphinus into flank speed and banked them north, away from their pursuers.

"Bearing 181, range 4300!" Tikatika shouted, his own intercom broadcasting over the whole of the ship by accident due to his excitement.

"Firing!" Khazim's response was almost immediate, he must have kept his hands at the controls just waiting for those last adjustments. The four forward torpedo hatches swung open and their payloads discharged, rocketing up into the sky on plumes of fire as they arced back behind the ship.

"They're firing torpedoes, captain!" Tikatika warned them.

"We'll outpace them, don't worry." Vyse said, reassuring the lookout and everyone else on the bridge. They would outpace them, the Delphinus was a fast ship after all.

A fast ship with mild to moderate hull damage and close to ten thousand pounds of added dead weight from their modifications.

"Come on, big D, fly…" Vyse heard Domingo hiss under his breath. The Blue Rogue shook his head and focused on the internal countdown he'd matched to the fired torpedoes. They should be reaching their target in four, three, two…

Tikatika let out a shout of alarm from his intercom, and every head turned slightly so they could hear his voice coming from the bridge speakers. "I have dark spots in my eyes, captain! Those torpedoes, when they exploded, they filled the sky with light!"

Vyse looked over to Aika, and the redhead shrugged easily. "Flares. Three magnitudes stronger."

"Exponentially." Fina said smugly from her spot in the captain's chair, and Vyse contemplated the fact that they had flare torpedoes eight times as bright and blinding as the standard phosphorus flares used in Mid-Ocean. He tapped the helm intercom.

"Are the Valuans still pursuing?"

"No, captain! They are slowing down and leveling off!" Which was a clear sign that the explosion of bright light had so thoroughly blinded and disabled the crew on the bridge of those Valuan ships that none of them were capable of giving chase, and had come to a stop to keep from crashing into each other or the ground.

"Good. Get us above the clouds, Don!" Vyse ordered. "We'll disappear in the Upper Sky!"

Valua's skies were almost always a shade of dark and gray, something that Don had told Vyse hadn't always been the case. The old helmsman had bit his lip hard the first time they'd flown through and found the land spoiled and the skies dark. Drachma had also been terribly bitter about it as well, putting the blame on the factories and the strip-mining of moonstones that fed the military machine.

The storms conjured up by Yeligar had subsided after its demise, but the dark clouds had still remained. When the Delphinus broke through the top layer and reached into the thinner atmosphere of the Upper Sky, they finally saw a more familiar dark blue.

The hatch to the bridge swung open with a turn of the wheel lock, and a breathless Enrique and Lawrence stumbled in. The mercenary helmsman moved to rejoin Don at the telemotor, giving Vyse a nod as he passed. Enrique swallowed twice, smiled, and held up a small sack in one hand. He reached inside of it with the other and produced a glowing cube, a yellow Crystal cube filled with light and endless possibility.

"It survived the death of Yeligar, captain." Enrique declared triumphantly. "Finding it in the crater it left behind, though, was…"

"Incoming captain, port-side!" Tikatika shrieked, the susurrus over the intercom, and Vyse spun to the windows, sighting in on something moving very fast and screaming at them right where their lookout had said it would be. It was metallic. It was huge. It looked like a ball with a long and winding tail.

"Full stop and DIVE!" Vyse shouted, and Don and Lawrence both swore in the same fashion and moved to carry out the order. The Delphinus shuddered as the four main propellor shafts ground back on themselves to halt its momentum, and the nose banked down hard, throwing everyone forward as they struggled to grab for handholds on the bridge consoles and the mapping table. The Yellow Moon Crystal flew out of Enrique's hand, and Vyse just managed to stop it with his rubber boot before it could slide forward and hit the glass.

The massive object flew just shy of the ship's long nose, and the dip of it kept the tail end of it from striking them. There was a burst of displaced air in its wake, and then all was silent again. Nobody spoke, everyone held their breath waiting to see if something else might jump up at them. Nothing did.

Vyse exhaled. "Secure neutral attitude. Anyone have any idea what that was?"

"To be honest, Vyse, it resembled a ball and chain to me." Enrique said, as the ship slowly pitched up to an even platform again. "There was a little toggle at the end of its tail."

"A flail, maybe." Domingo frowned, righting the goggles set in his hair. "A Flying Flail?"

"Wonderful. Another mystery to solve." Vyse muttered, because there was the matter of how the thing was flying, and why something that large had been put into motion. And how long it had been flying, for that matter. "Later. Log the Discovery for now, Domingo, and chart us a course for home with a diversion into the Frontier Lands. In case any Valuans can see us, I don't want them getting ideas. Enrique, you have the bridge. Aika, Fina, with me. Let's see how bad we damaged the ship this time."


Crescent Island

312 Days After the (First) Grand Fortress Escape

Afternoon

Their return to Crescent Island was jubilant in spite of the damage to the ship. It didn't escape anyone's notice that there were two other ships docked in the underground base, and the presence of the Claudia and the Primrose made it clear just who had come to pay a visit to their fellow Blue Rogues.

It didn't make the reunion any less joyful when Vyse, Aika, Fina, Enrique and Moegi walked off of the Delphinus gangplank. Claudia cried out the names of his two lovers and broke away from Gilder's side to race towards them. Fina and Aika shouted out hers in unison and did the same, and the three met in the middle of the drydock, hugging each other tightly.

"You look so happy!" Aika praised the older redhead, who did in fact have an unceasing smile as she hugged the two younger women back. "Don't you think, Fina?"

"She's glowing." The Silvite agreed, looking past her to Gilder. "I take it Gilder's been treating you well?"

"Oh, very well." Clara winked suggestively, and all three of them devolved into giggles. Gilder just sighed and looked over to Vyse. Their eyes met and the older air pirate squinted through his pince-nez glasses and shrugged. What can you do, he seemed to ask silently. Vyse had to chuckle at him, and Gilder walked over, offering his hand.

"Captain Vyse." Gilder greeted him. Vyse took his hand and gripped it firmly.

"Captain Gilder." He returned the greeting, sparing a nod to Enrique and Moegi as the pair of royals passed by them sedately to join the reunion of female Blue Rogues taking place. "It's good to see you again, sir."

"Good to see you too, kid." Gilder grinned. "Been getting into all kinds of trouble since I last saw you, from what I hear."

"Takes a troublemaker to know one." Vyse countered, sizing up Gilder a little more carefully. If Clara seemed giddy, Gilder seemed...settled. At peace in a way that Vyse had never seen him before. "So, what are you here for Gilder? Business or pleasure?"

"A little of both." Gilder said, taking Vyse by the arm and pulling him forward. "But I'm hungry. There's been some more changes to this place since we dropped off Belle and some of the other cannon girls from Clara's crew. Since I saw them running off the ship earlier I imagine things are fine there. Some of the new architecture is surprising, though...Not like any design I've ever seen around Mid-Ocean."

"It's Yafutoman, you wouldn't have ever seen it before." Vyse chuckled, waving to Aika and Fina as they hauled Clara and Enrique and Moegi in a different direction for their own business.

"Huh. So the tavern looks Yafutoman then." Gilder mused. "How's the food?"

Vyse chuckled. They'd run with a smaller crew for their journey into Valuan airspace so there would be people on the island to keep tabs on the Nasrian orphans that Marco had rescued. Urala had been part of the contingent that had stayed on, and she'd been experimenting lately with Nasrian spices and seasonings to interesting effect.

"Oh, you're in for a treat Gilder."


Crescent Island Tavern

Gilder leaned back in his chair and let out a long, satisfied yawn. His plate was emptied of all but a few traces of sauce from his dish, and he laughed. "Boy. If you eat this good all the time, Vyse, how is it you keep in such good shape?"

"Training and spending most of my time moving around checking on things." Vyse explained. "Have you met the kids from Nasrad yet?"

"You mean Salas and his bunch." Gilder reached for a toothpick and set to work on pulling out a persistent flake of something. "Yeah, I have. They knew about Clara, so when your crew here on the island introduced us, things got a lot easier. She's fallen in love with one or two of the girls, but they're insistent on staying together. For now, anyways."

"Do you think you'll have any troubles getting them to Centime?" Vyse asked. "It's a long trip from here to Ixa'taka, you're crossing half the world either direction."

"Clara and I know a couple of good routes through Mid-Ocean now that we can fly through the sky rifts." Gilder reassured him. "We know where and when to fly to avoid the Valuan patrol routes. And we also know where and when not to." Vyse looked up from the last dregs of his hot and sour soup to cock an eyebrow over his goggle, and Gilder smiled. "Pleasure before business. We can talk about it tonight once things settle down. Right now, your crew and ours are busy throwing a party and swapping stories. There's just one question I have for you at the moment."

Vyse frowned, looking around the tavern to make sure everyone else was too busy with their own meals and celebrating to bother to listen in before he shook his head. And he still spoke with a soft, but hard voice. "I'm not discussing bedroom stuff with you, Gilder."

Gilder blinked, snorted, and slapped the table lightly. "First time I've heard it called that before." He countered quietly. "Relax, Vyse. I don't discuss the pillow talk I have with Clara with anyone else either." That did make Vyse feel a little bit better, though Gilder still had a mischievous look on his face that kept him from reaching for his drink. Gilder's face fell once he realized that Vyse was waiting on him. "Spoilsport."

"You think I'm not used to people saying things to make me choke on my smallbeer?" Vyse asked. "Please. My father could teach a master class in it. And Aika and Fina have gotten really good at it. Almost good enough to trip me up."

"True." Gilder hummed. "But I have the feeling it's more because of what they do rather than say half the time." Vyse had to chuckle at that, and Gilder joined in, raising his mug in salute.

"You wouldn't be wrong." Vyse said, clinking his own mug against Gilder's. "I'm glad that things are going better with Clara, though. It's nice to know you were willing to listen to some good advice on love."

"What can I say?" Gilder airily droned, waving a hand in front of him. "She's a good partner, and running schemes is a lot easier with a second ship. Plus, it's been wonderful having someone to share a bed with every night."

Vyse nodded, because he knew that as truth. It was also something he'd never be able to say out loud in front of anyone on the crew while the ridiculous bet was still going on, because they would hound him unceasingly to figure out how he knew that, and who he was doing it with. Still, he caught something in Gilder's reticence. "You can't bring yourself to say it, can you?"

"Say what?" Gilder inquired, and Vyse might almost have believed that the air pirate was clueless about his meaning if he hadn't flinched a little first. So Vyse just kept looking at him until Gilder sighed and looked away. "If I say it, you have to as…"

"I love them." Vyse cut him off and said it without hesitation. Gilder stared at him. "I love them with every inch of me."

Gilder's face turned smug. "I'll just bet they love every inch of you too." Vyse blushed a little, but he held his stare steady. Gilder wilted. "Fine. I love her. You were right, okay? Clara's the best thing that ever happened to me, and I don't deserve her."

"Then live so you're worthy of her." Vyse said. "Tell her that you love her every day...and mean it when you do."

Gilder snorted. "Do you?"

"Yes." Vyse confirmed flatly. Gilder stared at him again and groaned.

"Kid, you're something else."

"I'm trying to be." Vyse smiled, and took another drink. "So, why don't we plan on meeting in the planning room tonight after dinner?"

"I figured you'd be pushing for a full meeting sooner than that, now that I've eaten at your expense."

"The crew may be on light duty and we may be saving the bulk of our repairs for tomorrow, but there are some things that we can't skip on." Vyse advised him.

"Like what?" Gilder asked, genuinely curious.

Vyse tapped his palm on the hilt of his primary cutlass. "Practice."


There was sword training and then there was sword training. The first had been what Vyse studied under his father, a seasoned Blue Rogue who preferred pistols but knew his way around a cutlass. The dual-wielding style that Vyse came to favor was something that had been mostly self-taught, steeped in the basics of single cutlass combat. It was a battle skill that had taken Vyse years to get decent at, but he enjoyed the flexibility of defense and attack that his crosshand style gave him. It flummoxed almost every Valuan opponent he ever strayed across, and gave him an advantage on those who had only ever faced a single blade.

The second kind of sword training was what he'd been learning under Enrique, and they sparred every day when circumstances allowed for it. The time he'd spent in Aika and Fina's company away from Crescent Island and everything else had cut into that, but a couple of hours of being tossed around the dueling circle by Enrique had sharpened him back up to his previous level. And perhaps a little bit better. Vyse had stripped to the waist to spare the need to run another load of laundry, but Enrique in a rare show of fatigue had removed his outer jacket and his beret. They didn't usually have an audience either, but they weren't in the section of the rec room they'd set up inside the Delphinus, and were instead dueling in one of the larger hollowed out spaces inside of the mountain. The glow of the artificial lighting was close enough to the ship, but fighting on solid ground instead of hardwood built over deck plating on a ship that constantly hummed with movement had taken a moment's adjustment. The lighting also had the effect of showing just how thin Enrique's shirt was, now that it was soaked through with sweat and plastered to his body.

Moegi seemed to appreciate it. Her ladies-in-waiting certainly did, if their sighs and whatever they whispered to Moegi that had the poor woman blushing madly and hissing back at them were anything to go off of.

Enrique's Bluheim-forged rapier, blunted with a thin sheen of yellow light, flashed towards his head and Vyse ducked it. He hissed when the side of the blade skated by his arm and gave him a zap, a side effect of the elemental magic that was Enrique's birthright and specialty.

"Focus, Vyse." Enrique admonished him. "You can't let yourself become distracted. Gregorio always waited for such an opening to strike, and Galcian is twice as opportunistic. The Lord Admiral is an expert at creating his own openings in an opponent's defense, you can't afford to just give them to him!"

"Not used to fighting with an audience." Vyse growled, falling back into a guarded stance and turning his eyes back on Enrique. Watch the eyes, his father had told him long ago. You watched where someone directed their attention and you could predict where they would strike. In Enrique's case, it was just much harder. He didn't cue his strikes.

"As the son of the Empress, do you think I was ever truly left alone?" Enrique asked, coming at him with a flurry of lancing stabs at differing heights that kept Vyse pressed. "My whole life was spent under observation. I didn't have any real privacy except for when Uncle Gregorio spent time with me."

Vyse let the words roll off of him, let Enrique rant away while he gauged his options. Every opponent was different, and Enrique was the best he'd ever gone up against. He braced himself, waited for the next strike to come in at chest level.

It came. Vyse deflected it to the side and stepped in, slashing up. Enrique fell back, pulled his arm and his sword to try for a grazing blow on the retreat. Vyse knocked his rapier up, blue crashing against yellow, and stabbed straight at him. Enrique pirouetted about to get clear of the blade and slammed the tang of his rapier against the cutlass when Vyse brought it about to slash at his back.

Vyse snapped his other sword up and trapped Enrique's between his two, pulling hard. Again, Enrique tried to step back to clear his weapon, but this time Vyse followed it with a kick to the chest from his boot that sent the exiled prince stumbling, his eyes wide.

Enrique fought with the speed and grace of a trained master duelist. At the last, Vyse had come to a decision. He couldn't beat Valuans if he fought like a Valuan. He was a Blue Rogue, he could not afford to be so limited.

His twin cutlasses glowed brighter as he channeled his spiritual power into them, and while Enrique was still off-balance, Vyse hurled a sickle blade of energy at him. Enrique leapt to the side in a stilted jump and started to get his feet back under him, but a second slash of air and power forced him to bring his rapier down in a low block to dissipate it.

Vyse was on top of him before he could bring it back to center. Another parry, a stilted thrust, a twist of his wrist to spin his primary cutlass about so he gripped it by one side of the blade guard instead of the hilt, followed by a sweeping punch that had the blunted edge of the blade sailing for Enrique's neck. The prince let out a strangled noise and ducked it on instinct, and Vyse finished by bringing his knee and the hilt of his off-hand weapon together, smashing Enrique's wrist between them. The prince's hand spasmed and his rapier fell to the ground, and Vyse's blades leveled at the neck of his kneeling sparring partner. To the side, he heard gasps coming from Moegi and her two aides.

Enrique stared at the swords with wide, stunned eyes. Vyse huffed once and then smiled. "Match."

"That was - Vyse!" Enrique sputtered, once Vyse pulled his swords back and slipped them into their scabbards. "What in blazes? Dirty pool!"

"Was it?" Vyse countered. "Are you going to tell me that Galcian wouldn't fight like that? I was just creating openings, after all."

Enrique shook his head, then threw it back and laughed, which caused the women openly ogling them to start clapping and cheering in their native tongue. Vyse grinned and held out a hand, pulling him up on his feet. "Well. A lesson learned on my part, it seems. And a good reminder about not getting stuck in my ways. You've never done that move with your main cutlass, it's usually your off-hand you use that strange grip with."

Vyse nodded. "So. What do you think, 'rique? Am I ready to cross swords with Galcian and that oversized meat cleaver of his?"

Enrique thought about it. "Possibly. But not on your own."

Vyse shivered. "Moons, no. I want you right at my side if it comes to that."

"And I will be." Enrique promised him, patting his shoulder. Then the prince made a face and went over to his discarded jacket, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his hand. "Now wipe all that glistening sweat from your body and put a shirt on, you strutting peacock."

Vyse glanced over to Moegi and her ladies-in-waiting again, to see Moegi still blushing with her eyes averted and her aides openly admiring his form. Vyse blinked, smirked, and then rolled his shoulders to broaden his chest. The two women thrilled at the sight and he grinned back at them, which lasted until a towel smacked him hard in the face. Vyse sputtered and pulled it off to glare at Enrique, who pretended to look entirely innocent. Then he sighed and started to wipe himself down.

A minute later, he had his shirt tucked into his trousers again and was doing up the buttons on his blue overcoat. Enrique stood close by, taking slow sips from his canteen. Vyse considered his sparring partner, and found himself considering another question.

"Am I ready for Ramirez?" He asked bluntly. Enrique flinched a little at that, and he tried to hide it, but Vyse saw it anyways.

"On the few occasions that I dueled him...I never proved his match." Enrique confessed. "There's a pressure to swordfighters. Uncle Gregorio always described Galcian's presence as that of an encroaching mountain, mighty and forever bearing down on you. But Ramirez...It's nothing so direct. One moment, I felt nothing from him. And in the next, something changed in his eyes and I could not breathe." Enrique's eyes were cold as he ensured Vyse understood the severity of it.

And Vyse did. He remembered the feeling of Ramirez's presence when they stood on the ruined docks of a burning Nasrad, with the silver-haired man pointing his strangely forged blade at them and demanding their surrender. He remembered how afraid Fina had been, afraid for them. How she'd been so certain that the other Silvite would kill them.

"Do you know what I mean?" Enrique asked him.

Vyse breathed in deeply and let it out in a prolonged exhale. "Yeah." He said. "Yeah, I do." He finished buttoning his coat and mustered up a smile again. "Thanks for the practice, Enrique."

"My pleasure, captain." Enrique said, and when Vyse raised an eyebrow to argue against the formality, the blond-haired man just grinned at him, earning a snort. "Would you care to come with us, now that you're more properly attired? I believe that Merida has been practicing a formal Yafutoman fan dance, and she was going to put on a show to start off tonight's festivities. She wished to dedicate it to you especially, Vyse."

Vyse chuckled. Ixa'takan dancers learning Yafutoman dances. Yafutoman crewmembers learning the Mid-Ocean tongue. Ixa'takan warriors and leaders at last having autonomy in their lives, rebuilding and learning to stand as equals on the world stage. Old forgotten sailors returned to the skies they knew and burning with new life and purpose. They lived in strange and wondrous times, and he was fortunate to see it all happening firsthand. He was a little curious to see how Merida, a young woman who had faith enough to trust a plea for help to the winds, would do with her new dance. But he was the captain, and there were priorities.

None more important at this moment than to see to the welfare of Aika and Fina. It was a gentle and steady tugging on his senses, a pull towards them that he couldn't explain. It was a need, as simple as breathing air, and it wouldn't be sated until he could see them turning to smile at him. Until he could hold them in his arms and feel that he was home again.

"I'll have to pass." He told Enrique. "I have some other errands to take care of while I can."

"As you say, captain." The exiled prince fixed his beret back in place and winked at him, the cheeky beggar, then walked over to Moegi and held out the crook of his arm. "My dearest, would you allow me the honor of escorting you to the pavilion?"

The light in Moegi's eyes shone bright as she tried to hide them under the bangs of her black hair. She controlled her smile and slid her arm through his, pulling up close to his side. "Let us go then, my prince."

"So it's My Prince now, is it?" Vyse murmured lowly as Enrique and the Yafutoman women walked by him. At Enrique's look of exasperation, which just screamed as if you had room to talk, Vyse allowed himself a small chortle. Enrique went one direction, and he went another.

They both followed their hearts.


Looking for Aika and Fina could have been easier if Vyse had bothered to ask for directions, but the curious and evaluative looks that the crew kept constantly giving him put a pin in that idea all too quickly. Besides, he'd learned from his father how to make a stumbling search look like a rehearsed and practiced patrol of his domain. There were stories that Briggs had told him where Dyne had simply been bored and unable to sleep and had caused the night shift back on Windmill Island to snap to attention and busy themselves with odd chores long put off. He wasn't quite to that level himself, but he was able to keep the few crewmembers within Crescent Island's underground base from bothering him.

His winding search finally brought him to the small garden that Ilchymis, Fina, and Urala of all people had set up outside of the mountain proper, close to the fortuneteller Kalifa's tent. Vyse heard Fina's gentle voice speaking and he slowed down, stepping softly so as not to interrupt. He could hear Aika as well, frustrated where Fina was calm. The approach he took allowed him to linger behind a small stack of emptied wooden crates, and neither of them were turned in his direction. Vyse could have kept walking towards them, interrupted and let them know he was there. Curiosity made him slow down and wait, and he saw a weak magical aura flickering around Aika's hands, a strange mixture of her characteristic red and silver from the spell she must have been trying to work over a withered stalk marred in brown spots. A dead plant, Vyse realized.

"You can do this, Aika." Fina told her, kneeling down in the soil beside the redhead. "You know this spell. You've watched me do it more than a dozen times. You know what it felt like. You know how to visualize it."

"Yeah." Aika snapped, and the magic around her hand faded. "It's not like I haven't tried this a dozen times myself, Fina. And every time I...It just doesn't work." She shook her head. "Maybe we're just fooling ourselves. Green magic I get, I can work with it. But every time I reach for silver magic, it just…" She wiggled her fingers, mimicking sand slipping through her fingers.

"It took me a long time to master it." Fina reassured her lover. "Nobody is expecting you to get this overnight."

"You've been trying to teach me for months now, though." Aika argued, and the bitterness in her voice as she dug her hands in the ground and slouched over the dead flower. Fina's hand was on her back, rubbing it sympathetically even as Aika turned her anger inwards. "Shouldn't there be some kind of a sign that it's working?"

The Silvite sighed, and the tilt of her head was one Vyse knew. It was the one she used when she was trying to decide how to phrase something delicately. She'd had the same head tilt when she walked them through her lesson on the world being round. "I told you before that silver magic is...tenuous at best." Fina said. "What I didn't tell you was that I was the only priestess of the Silver Shrine." Aika's head jerked up at that, and Fina nodded. "It was just me and Ramirez, and the Elders. None of the Elders could use silver magic at all, everything I learned about casting it came from - from books, and from the notes of priests and priestesses before me. I was self-taught. It took me years, Aika, because there was nobody who could help me." Fina looked Aika straight on. "But you have a resource I didn't. You have me. That's why I know you'll get this. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But sooner than I did."

"You said it took you years. So what's the goal, Princess?"

"There is no deadline to meet. It will take as long as it needs to." Fina told her. "It doesn't mean you can't do this. I know you can Aika, there isn't a thing you've faced in your life that you didn't overcome. You will master this too."

"When?" Aika asked miserably, and Fina pulled her into a hug, with the two women resting their heads on the other's shoulder.

"When you are ready, my Valkyrie." She promised, and Aika's hand stroked up and down her back in turn.

"Why plants?" Aika mumbled, and Vyse almost didn't hear her say it. "Why do we always practice on plants?"

"Because it was what I learned on. Because there was nothing else when I trained in the Silver Shrine that I could apply my power to, and nobody who died that I could try and revive." Fina laughed softly. "Better a plant than a person, isn't it?"

"Just...can we not talk about this right now?" Aika begged her. "I'm tired of failing. I'm tired of thinking about failing. I'm scared of thinking about it."

"We can stop." Fina reassured the redhead. "What do you want to do instead?"

Aika brushed some loose hair away from Fina's face and nibbled on her lip. "Can we just lie here for a while? Look up at the sky?"

"Like you and Vyse used to back on your island?" The Silvite guessed, and Aika nodded. Fina pushed her shoulder and Aika eased to lie back in the loose soil, and Fina curled up beside her, tucking her head under Aika's chin. "I could do that." She said softly. Aika smiled and pet the top of her head through her silver veil, then settled on stroking her arm.

It was a quiet moment of intimacy that left Vyse feeling both settled and intrusive, so he stepped back away, hiding his footfalls in the gusts of wind over the island. He was out of earshot of the two weary women soon enough, but he'd forgotten who else he was close to when he moved around from the back of Kalifa's elaborate tent that was both her home and workplace to the side, and the seer herself appeared. She blocked his path to the main path by the central pavilion and smiled as she held a cup of spiced black Nasrian tea in one hand.

"Greetings, Lord of Rogues." Kalifa said, and Vyse shivered in spite of himself. "Have you come seeking the wisdom and guidance of the Moons?"

"No, I haven't." He quickly shook his head, and made to walk past her. Kalifa's free arm shot out to the side to stop him, and he found himself looking back at her. For a moment, whether by the tilt of the enigmatic woman's head or the time of day, he was able to see past the translucency of her thick glasses and catch sight of her eyes for just a moment before the light flickered and they were hidden again. It happened so fast that he almost couldn't place what he'd seen. Brilliant green, but there had been the impression of the glow of starlight as well, but it had all gone by so fast that he blinked and immediately dismissed it as impossibility.

"Perhaps a cup of tea and conversation instead then?" Kalifa inquired innocently. Vyse hesitated to refuse, and...and why would he tell her no? Because he did not understand her? Because the things she said often left him shivering? How was that fair to her, when she had never harmed anyone in the crew, and had in fact told him things that were useful before?

"I could stand to have some tea." He conceded. When Kalifa smiled then, it lacked her usual air of mysterious omniscience. The woman seemed relieved that he had said yes, and it struck him as odd that she hadn't foreseen it. She turned and beckoned him to follow, and Vyse did so.

Maybe the fortuneteller didn't predict everything that would happen. Maybe she didn't want to.

Maybe she couldn't.


Kalifa set the small teapot down but kept her hand on the lid, waiting patiently as Vyse lifted his ceramic cup to his lips and took a sip of the steaming hot liquid. A strong flavor and spiced as well, but not overwhelming. It was a far cry from the dark and bitter brew of the coffee that Fina couldn't start her day without, and Vyse had to admit that she'd slowly worked Aika and himself around to enjoying a mug of it every so often.

"It's good." He said, and Kalifa's hand moved away from the pot as she inclined her head slightly in acknowledgement. Vyse took another sip to moisten his throat. "So how have you been, Kalifa? Any problems? Do you have everything you need?"

"Mistress Kalifa has her freedom, a busy betting ledger, and a host of customers both devoted and merely curious." She emptied her own cup in a long double swallow and set it down with a sigh. "Kalifa gives thanks for the larger tent. A proper pavilion has done much to improve Kalifa's concentration and mood."

"Why do you always talk about yourself in the third person?" Vyse asked her, deciding to solve one question he'd never bothered to seek the answer for properly before.

The woman hummed and made to refill her cup. She didn't meet his eyes, Vyse realized. "It sells the act. Few bother to look past it." She paused when the cup was half full. "And there are times I feel as though I am outside of myself, looking in, instead of the opposite."

"Sounds confusing." Vyse said, and the woman made a single, sharp noise that might have been a laugh. He pushed past it. "Speaking of your betting ledger…"

"You wish to know if anyone has placed a wager on the truth of who shares your bed and your heart?" Kalifa inquired. "That both Aika and Fina have joined with you?" Vyse froze up at that, because it was confirmation of something he'd long suspected. Kalifa had known. He nodded, and she smiled. "Just one person has wagered correctly, and that was done in secret during our most recent voyage."

"...Was it Marco?" He guessed, and Kalifa smiled wider. "Figures. The little bastard." He huffed, and raised his cup up to hide the small grin that remark inspired in him.

"Will you be revealing the truth of your hearts to the crew soon?"

"Not just yet." Vyse told her. "Soon, but...not quite yet." She hummed and he changed the subject. "I know you've been gathering stories from the crew, but I don't think I've heard yours. I don't know very much about you, Kalifa, outside of the fact that you're Nasrian and lived and worked in Maramba, and that you can see things that are often accurate."

Kalifa stared down at the crystal octahedron resting on the table between them. "My story is not important."

"Why not?" Vyse pressed her. "Why are you here?"

"To witness your story. To record the accounts of everyone who sails under the Lord of Rogues. The Moons commanded this of me. Kalifa moves as the Moons beckon."

"But why?" He set his teacup down and rested an elbow on the table, leaning forward slightly. "You have a choice. If you want to be here, then we're glad to have you. But if you feel like you're only here because of some obligation, then I can release you from it. Blue Rogues fly free, Kalifa. That includes you. Don't let anyone, not even the Moons if you're religious, tell you otherwise."

The woman laughed, shaking her head. She took another sip of her tea to steady herself, and Vyse could tell she was struggling. "You do not understand, Lord of Rogues. I have long been at the mercy of the Moons. The Moons, and the gift that they forced onto me when I was just a girl."

Vyse cocked his head to the side. "For the longest time, I thought you just told fortunes and made stuff up. Even when you read my fortune and it turned out to be advice about fighting the 2nd Fleet, I thought...I thought you just got lucky." Kalifa said nothing, turning the teacup in her hands around and around. Waiting. Dreading what he would say next. Vyse felt a cold sensation pass down his back, and rolled his shoulders a little to push it off. "But you don't just get lucky, do you? You actually see things." Kalifa waited for a second, then slowly nodded her head. "Do you have any control over them?"

The fortuneteller shrugged. "When Kalifa was very young, she did not. The friends I did have drifted away from me. My strange predictions kept me from making more. Maramba is where you found me. It was not where I was born. People either feared Kalifa, or they coveted her gifts." She was slipping in and out of her pattern of speech, Vyse realized, losing herself in the telling of her past. "I learned to hide it. To control it, to make it part of the act. People always ask about love, or money, and those are easy enough to lie about when my gift was silent. But when it pushes forward, when it demands to be used and the Moons demand to be heard, then I use it and pass the message on. What I see adds to the mystique. Kalifa...does not see everything. But she sees enough."

When she had used her powers to foretell the coming battle with Gregorio's fleet, it had left her worn out and exhausted. It was concerning, but she must have had a handle on it. She never spoke of it fatiguing her too badly. She hadn't spoken of it harming her here. Vyse took another drink of tea to brace himself, noting how quickly it had cooled off.

"I will never order you to use your power, you know." Vyse said to her. "I still don't know if I want to believe that you have the kind of foresight others fear or covet. But I trust you. You are a Blue Rogue and a member of my crew and you have a place here if you wish to stay. You have friends here."

Kalifa cocked her head at an angle. "I know." She said evenly. "You have made me feel safe and welcomed and warm. I was told by the Moons that I needed to come with you, travel with you and the others. I was told that what you did would be important. I stayed because I learned to love you."

Vyse's eyes went wide. What? "Um. I'm happily...taken, you know."

Kalifa laughed softly. "Yes, Kalifa knows this. You are taken, and your heart belongs to those two women. This was not the love I meant. Do you know what you mean to the people who serve under you, Vyse?" The question made him blink. "Do you know what you did for them? What you are still doing for them?" Vyse blinked, and Kalifa sighed. "Drink your tea, captain." He did so, still confused, and when he finished it, he refused a refill.

"Good talk?" He asked the Maramban fortuneteller after, as he rose to his feet.

"Good enough." The woman said, her smile back to its enigmatic shape. "I am where I need to be, captain. And it is a good place to be, among your followers. Even if the Moons had not commanded it of me, I would still stay." She offered a silent prayer after in a gesture, and Vyse left with a final nod of his head, feeling less unsettled than usual after a meeting with the bespectacled woman. He would take it. There was more work to be done on repairing the ship, and he still had a meeting tonight while everyone else celebrated their most recent victory. A victory made not only possible, but easy because people from across the world had gathered together in one place, had become something greater. They had become Blue Rogues, and Rogues of a breed like nothing the world had ever seen.

Maybe we really are changing the world, Vyse smiled. His footsteps felt lighter after.


Evening

The night sky was a deep blue that bordered on black, lit up solely by the glow of the red moon overhead and the twinkling of the night stars. Vyse looked up at them for a few more seconds before he reluctantly walked back into the conference room through the door they'd left open to allow in a breeze. Outside and looking up at the stars, he could almost forget the weight of all of his responsibilities bearing down on him, and just be himself instead of a captain in the Blue Rogues.

Inside, Gilder and Clara sat side by side on one side of the table while Aika and Fina and Enrique were arranged on the other. There was a chest on the floor behind the visiting power couple that neither had bothered to explain yet, which Vyse eyed again briefly. On the table between the gathered Blue Rogues were the five Moon Crystals that they had struggled and fought and sacrificed to collect, the prize that Valua hungered for more than anything. A blue teardrop, a red pyramid, a yellow cube, a purple prism, and a green octahedron sat clustered together, pulsing in time with each other. Gilder looked astonished, and Clara was grinning with pride to match the looks on Enrique and Aika's faces. Strangely, it was Fina who seemed unenthusiastic about them.

"So you actually did it." Gilder marveled, lifting a hand as if to touch the powerful gems, but stopping and pulling his hand back soon after. "Five Moon Crystals. Five. That's all of them that you were looking for, right?"

"The sixth one, the Silver Moon Crystal, is kept in the possession of the Silvite Elders." Fina nodded. "And that one is out of the reach of Valua. Just like these would be...if I could get back to the Silver Shrine."

Vyse tensed up, watching as Aika's back straightened. "If?" She repeated warily. "What do you mean, if? Fina?"

The Silvite exhaled and walked over to the conference room's window. With a small tug she opened the wooden blinds, then looked up at the sky as well. "We told each other we would keep no secrets from each other, and I have done my best to hold to that. But there was one last thing I haven't told you yet. One last secret that didn't matter up to now, because there was nothing to be done about it." She turned her head back around and nodded slightly. "I grew up and lived all my life in the Silver Shrine, a hidden sanctum that our ancestors retreated to during the Rains of Destruction. The Silvians, who became the Silvites, have always lived there. It's a place hidden from the rest of the world, but more than that, it's a place that Valua couldn't reach."

Fina shook her head sadly. "That's the problem. Nobody can reach it. Not even me now." She pointed to the sky. "That's where the Silver Shrine is. You all thought it was somewhere hidden in Mid-Ocean, around where Admiral Alfonso captured me and shot down my ship. I never said anything differently. But it's up there." She pointed to the night sky. "High, high above the clouds close to Windmill Island, beyond where even the Delphinus can fly. So high up that you feel like you could touch the Moons. So high up that you can't breathe. My ship could get there easily, but it sank into the abyss. The Silver Shrine lingers on the edge of the world, orbiting around Arcadia where the planet and space meet."

Vyse was shocked, and he must have looked a sight at the revelation. He knew Aika did.

"You've been keeping this from us?" Aika murmured, and Fina looked stricken.

"I had to, until now." The Silvite hurriedly told them. "Telling you the world was round was revolutionary. I had to work you two up to where the Silver Shrine was. If we hadn't done everything we've achieved so far, would you have believed me?"

"Yes." Vyse said, quickly, instinctively. Aika and Fina both turned to look at him and he shrugged. "Fina, we believed you when you told us what your mission was. We believed you when you told us the world was round. I've never doubted you."

The blond ducked her head, blushing. "I should have told you before. I'm sorry. But that's my last secret, Vyse. That's the very last thing I haven't told you."

Aika leaned in close to her and put an arm around her waist. "You promise, babe?"

"Yes." Fina sighed, letting the other woman hold her close. "I was sent by the Elders from the Silver Shrine in orbit around Arcadia to find the Moon Crystals and bring them back. And you both know that I'm not leaving you. My orders said nothing about staying there after. My home is wherever you two are, and if they don't like it, then that's their problem." Clara let out a soft coo that made Vyse smirk a little, and Fina paused. "Moot point anyways, if I can never get back there."

"So the primary means of keeping the Moon Crystals from Valua's in flux. We'll adapt. We'll figure out an answer, we always do." Vyse comforted her. He turned and looked over to Gilder and Clara, and to the chest that Gilder had dragged up along with them. "Which brings me to the next point. What's that behind you two?"

"Something we wanted you to have a look at." Clara explained. "On another one of our raids, we came across some new machines that the Valuan resupply ship was bringing to one of the outlying patrol bases. The crew didn't say anything about them, but the manifest said that they were due to be installed on every Valuan military vessel that checked in."

Gilder picked up the thread of the conversation. "The last time that they had something like that going on, it was those engine modifications that let them sail through the sky rifts. But this didn't look like a weapon. Mind clearing the table for me?" Aika and Fina quickly collected the Moon Crystals, storing them back in Aika's satchel for safekeeping, and Gilder lugged the chest up onto the table with a grunt. After opening it up, he produced a strange metal box with some kind of antenna on it, along with a smaller device that reminded Vyse of a signal lamp's tap board.

Vyse stared at it and wondered what it did. Aika did the same, and muttered the question aloud. Fina was the one who gaped as if she'd seen a ghost. "Fina?"

"Oh, tell me that they haven't…" Fina whispered, shaking her head. A second or two later, her blue eyes swiveled to Gilder. "The power source. Where's the power source?"

"Um. What?" Gilder blinked. "There wasn't one, although there's these wires here at the back?" He lifted one up and twirled it in his fingers. "They were supposed to be installed on ships, maybe they'd get their power there?"

Fina turned to Aika. "Get me one of those small yellow moonstone power generators. The ones we used for the portable space heaters."

"Sure. Why? What is this thing, Fina?" Aika asked carefully. Fina shook her head and shivered.

"If I'm right, it's how Valua plans to keep one step ahead of the rest of the world."


Ten minutes later, after carefully determining how much of a charge to feed into the strange device thanks to the engraved power diagram at the back of the unit, the power generator was glowing a gentle yellow and the machine slowly began to power up, collecting a charge.

"Arcadia is a big world, and there's a lot of space between the different lands." Fina said, eyes focused on the machine and its dials and buttons. She'd slipped back into her lecturer's mode, Vyse recognized. "When Valua has wanted to send orders and communicate with the Armada, it's been limited to mailbags, messenger ships, flag signals, and the signal lamps that we used on the Delphinus inside of the Grand Fortress. They have wired systems like the intercom on the Delphinus, but nothing over great distances. In the time of the Old World, the Civilizations had found ways to send messages, instantly, from one part of the world to another. Imagine being able to look at someone through a special kind of window and see them as clearly as if they were in the same room as you, hear them as clearly as if they were in arm's reach. That's the kind of communications technology that the Civilizations had back then, and was lost when the Rains of Destruction wiped out everything." The humming from the box picked up, and Fina reached to one of the dials marked 'volume'. She turned and looked at them. "It seems Valua is moving ahead with a different kind of arms race." She turned the dial, and the humming of the machine was replaced by a beeping coming from the speaker on the side of the box. A beeping that seemed to have some sort of a sequence to it.

A beeping that Vyse found himself leaning forward and listening to intently, as did Enrique. "I feel like I should know this." Vyse said quietly, not wanting to speak over the strange beeping.

"You should. If my guess is right, Valua adapted their signal lamp code to this." Fina mused. "Wireless telegraph."

"Oh. Ohh." Enrique breathed loudly. "Yes. If that's the case, then…" He listened in. "Yes, there are breaks. Like the breaks between letters in signal lamp code. And if the length of these sounds…" He went silent and kept listening, and then jumped up and raced to the side of the room, grabbing for a pencil and paper.

He came back and started writing, and Vyse tried to follow along himself. Signal lamp code was something he'd learned, but it was a skill he was rusty at. Enrique did much better with it, and after a minute and a half of listening, he spun the paper around to show everyone else the message.

-LL SHIPS IN AREA SILVER HEREBY ORDERED TO REPORT TO STATION DANGRAL FOR FURTHER ORDERS. PRIORITIZE SUPPLIES TO OPERATION ABYSS.

"That's wireless telegraph, all right." Fina sighed. "You understood it then, Enrique?"

"Yes." Enrique shook his head. "This is amazing. How are they doing this?"

"Conceivably, every ship equipped with one of these units is capable of a small broadcast radius." The Silvite said carefully. "But Valua is likely broadcasting this particular message from the Grand Fortress. Every ship of theirs that has one of these units can hear this message. If they have a big enough and powerful enough transmission tower, then they could reach every ship of theirs in Mid-Ocean. You see what I mean, though? With this, they can give orders to every ship in the Armada simultaneously without waiting days for one of their faster messenger ships to reach them. Every ship that has one of these can call for help as soon as they're in trouble, and every other ship close by can hear them and come to render assistance."

Vyse heard her words and shuddered when he felt the potential of the wireless telegraph. "They could coordinate themselves."

"Any ship we attacked could have reinforcements barreling down on our heads in hours." Gilder pointed out, going a shade paler. "If they can call for help, they could even tell the others when they sight air pirates. Or Blue Rogues." Vyse nodded, and Gilder scowled. "Things just got a lot more difficult, didn't they?"

"Not necessarily. It's a double-edged sword." Vyse temporized. "Right now, it's an edge and an advantage they think they have total control over. But right now, we're listening in and Enrique translated their message." He looked over to Enrique and nodded. "If you keep this up, we'll know what they're up to. We'll know what ships are where, what their orders are."

Enrique smirked. "And we can take advantage of that." He tapped on the paper. "Still, here's a mystery. What's Area Silver? And Station Dangral?"

"They might be talking about Dangral Island." Aika suggested. When she had everyone's attention, the redhead kept on. "Dangral Island is a patch of mostly barren rock in the Lower Sky not far from Shrine Island. That's in our old backyard, under the silver moon's patch of sky. If they don't think anyone else is listening in, then they wouldn't be trying to encode the message with ciphers like they would their written correspondence, right? So I'll bet that they're up to something on Dangral Island in silver moon territory."

"What, though?" Enrique asked. Vyse sucked on his teeth.

"Question of the evening, Enrique."

Fina kept staring at the machine, and her face steadily turned more and more bitter. Aika patted her shoulder. "It's okay, Princess. We're used to Valua coming up with useful toys. We'll adapt."

"It's not that." Fina muttered, clearly more irritated than they had thought. "I've seen their technology. They're capable of so much more than this. It's another step, but they could skip ahead if Ramirez was honestly helping them."

"Skip ahead?" Aika's pigtails moved in time with the tilt of her head. "To what?"

Fina looked back at her and smiled. "AM Radio. Shortwave." The words flew over Vyse's head as well as everyone else's, and the Silvite laughed. "What's better than sending a signal code over Mid-Ocean? How about transmitting the sound of your voice half a world away?"

The question sounded so innocent, and Vyse just stared at her. "You can do that?"

Fina shrugged. "It's going to take us a few days for the crew to finish repairs on the Delphinus. I'm running off of what I read years ago, ancient technology that my people haven't used in forever, but I've got an idea about the rudiments of it. What I don't know, Aika and her engineers can help us with. Valua thinks they have the best communications in the world right now. I'd like to prove them wrong. And we even have a better transmission tower than they do."

"We do?" Aika blinked. "Where?"

Fina pointed towards the ceiling, and then tracked her finger southwards, towards Nasrad. "Remember the Iron Star?"

"That floating metal thing with the blinking light?" Vyse clarified. "Yeah, I do. Are you saying we can use that?"

The Silvite laughed. "Oh, Vyse. It's a low-atmospheric satellite, a remnant of the Old World that's somehow still hanging on. It can do so much more than you know."

"Well, terrific." Gilder hummed. "So. What's the plan from here then? Where do you need us, captain?" And when the air pirate said us, he reached for Clara and took the woman's hand, unaware of how her smile brightened in response.

"With your permission, Vyse, I'd like them to stay for a while." Fina said.

"Hm? Well, sure, it's fine by me if our friends sleep over, but why?" Vyse asked her.

"How many telegraph units like this did you capture, Gilder?" Fina asked the air pirate in the red duster. Gilder adjusted his pince-nez glasses and looked to Clara for confirmation as he made a tally in his head.

"Oh...What would you say, Clara? Around two dozen or so?"

Vyse caught on quickly then. "You want to work on them, don't you?"

"I'd like to give our allies the means to listen in on Valua." Fina nodded. "And more importantly...I want to have the edge on Valua for a change. I want them to be able to communicate with each other, if they can. With us."

It was a plan that made far too much sense to refuse. "Fina? Aika? Make it happen. Borrow whoever you need to. I don't mind making this a priority, it'll be worth it." He ordered, and the two women smiled and nodded. Vyse turned to Gilder and Clara. "In the meantime, if we could borrow some of your crews for the repairs? And Salas and the other orphans could use some more time to get used to you before you take them to Centime, so the break will work out. Once we're finished with the repairs and Fina and Aika have your machines…"

"Radios." Fina corrected him.

"...radios ready, then you'll sail straight for Ixa'taka. You can have Centime distribute them to King Ixa'taka's resistance fighters, but make sure that some of them make their way to Yafutoma and Prince Daigo. We have people there who are our allies in this fight as well. I'll make it our responsibility to get a few of them to Admiral Komullah as well."

"We'll see it done, Vyse." Clara reassured him. "And what will you do then, since you have the Moon Crystals, but lack the means to deliver them to the Silver Shrine?"

"Soldier on for now, I guess." Vyse said, glancing at the written note Enrique had transcribed. "I find myself curious what the Valuans are up to on Dangral Island. And what this 'Operation Abyss' is. While we have Valua reeling from us killing Yeligar and swiping the Yellow Moon Crystal out from under their noses, we ought to take advantage of them scrambling to find us."

"Be strong where the enemy is weak?" Enrique suggested. Vyse looked at him in askance, and the prince shrugged. "A Yafutoman treatise on war, a very old one. In this case, it means we move where they don't expect us."

"Nobody expects the Blue Rogues." Vyse hummed, getting up from the table. "All right then. Dismissed, everyone. We'll start up tomorrow."

"Excellent! Leaves tonight for the partying, right Clara?" Gilder said cheerfully, earning a giggle from his lady love and a shove for good measure.

"Not too much now, you know how flirty you get with a few too many drinks in you." She admonished him lightly, winking at Aika and Fina. "Besides, I have better uses for his mouth."

"Clara!" Aika gasped, going bright red. So did Gilder, for that matter, and Enrique politely looked away. Fina just laughed, loudly and openly, and the rest soon followed.

"How about you, Vyse?" Gilder asked, after shifting in his seat a little and tugging at his collar. "Planning on joining the party?"

"No, I thought I'd turn in early." Vyse said. "Get some sleep while I can." He gently nudged Aika. "You too, Aika. Don't forget, I know how you get when you're working on a new project."

"You think you know everything about me, don't you?" The redhead pouted, trying to keep it up when Fina giggled and hugged her gently, kissing her cheek for good measure. Vyse couldn't help the pleasure the sight of his Princess holding his Valkyrie gave him.

"No, I don't." He told her softly. "But I plan on spending the rest of my life finding it out." Aika bit her lip and blushed hard at that, and Clara cooed again, even louder than before. Gilder scowled and muttered something disparaging under his breath, but Vyse didn't bother trying to listen in and understand it. He kept his eyes on Aika and Fina as they looked back at him in delight, and found he didn't want to look away.


Valua had been denied its prize. The Moon Crystals were out of their reach, but their war machine had forged on regardless. It hadn't been enough. In every corner of Arcadia that they had stretched their poisonous reach to, the long campaign of resistance and a resurgence in the power of the Blue Rogues had won out results. Forced out of Ixa'taka, a renewed push by the combined forces of Yafutoma and the Ixa'takan guerilla fighters under Centime had closed off the lands of the Green Moon and the North Ocean to their hold. Under Clara and Gilder, the nascent freed provinces and islands that had been absorbed by Valua early on had rallied and thrown back the Armada's stalwart forces. From the ashes of Nasrad, Admiral Komullah flew the flag of Nasr and the Blue Rogues both, and his Remnant Fleet roared to victory after victory, pushing the Valuans back to the North Danel Strait and then past it. It had been a three-pronged assault, planned and coordinated for long, long months and seasons. For years. The Armada had been backed into a corner, and Vyse and his crew had taken the Delphinus and cut off their assets in the gouged out ruins of their homeland, striking at the home guard with impunity. With nowhere left to run, the Armada and Admiral Galcian had been forced into hiding within the Grand Fortress, their every thrust out of it quickly stopped and reversed.

Now, everyone that had been hurt by Valua, everyone that bayed for the blood of the Empress and the Admiralty and for every soldier who ever carried out cold-blooded murder or theft or brutalization just because they could stood together. Today the last defense would crumble. Today, the walls would fall. Today, the Imperial Palace would burn and their leaders would hang in the Coliseum by a noose made of their own entrails.

He stood on the bridge of the Delphinus, with both shifts on duty for this last push. Vyse spoke for all to hear. "This has been a fight 20 years in the making. All of us have been hurt by the Empire. Today we hurt them back, and we make sure that Valua will never rise up to harm anyone on Arcadia ever again!" A cheer rose up and Vyse let it wash over him before he gave a nod that sent everyone to their positions.

Everyone except for Aika, who sauntered over to lean against the side of the captain's chair as he sat back in it. "I can't believe it's happening."

"It's happening. We made it happen." Vyse said to her, proud of them. Proud of all that they had achieved, proud of the hearts they had changed, proud of the love between them. "All three of us."

"Three?" Aika sounded surprised by that number. But why? It had always been three. Ever since the beginning, since the first time they'd escaped the Grand Fortress on the wings of the Little Jack and a prayer.

"Yes, three. You, me, and Fina." Vyse told her. He wasn't expecting Aika's face to fall into sadness at that.

"Oh, Vyse." The redhead said, her sorrowful tone muted by the sound of cannons firing as the final assault on Valua began. "Fina's gone. Don't you remember?"

Vyse blinked, and suddenly everything felt wrong when he really processed Aika's words. What did she mean Fina was gone? Everything around him started to turn hazy, and it hurt to look at. The sounds of the cannons faded. The hum of the ship muffled and vanished.

He turned to Aika, who was the only person or object that didn't strain his eyes to look at. "Aika? What do you mean Fina's gone? Where is she?" He grabbed at Aika's shoulders, holding her while the world faded around them to darkness. "Where's Fina?!"

"She left us, Vyse." Aika told him, and a loud crack sounded from somewhere. Then Aika too lost coherency, and the blurry dust of her form slipped through his fingers.

He whirled around and screamed their names, but Aika didn't answer him, and Fina wasn't there.

She wasn't…


Crescent Island

Vyse's Stateroom, 2nd Floor

Had Vyse been more awake, he might have screamed as his breathing choked up on him and he snapped to the waking world with a jolt that made his back bounce off of the mattress a little bit. His eyes were only a little bit opened and the blinds were drawn with the slats pointing the dim starlight upwards to the ceiling like they had every night since Vyse caught Marco spying on them.

Them. Aika. Fina.

Her name prompted a fresh wave of terror to run down his spine, and his eyes opened the rest of the way, darting everywhere.

She was there. Next to him, lying in the treasured middle position between Vyse and Aika, wearing the thin Ixa'takan nightgown she preferred when they bothered with smallclothes at all in a bed that was always warm. Aika's arm was curled around her waist, a small lumpy rise beneath the covers, and the redhead's nose was curled up against the back of their dear Fina's neck, her breathing slow and even.

She was there and she was sleeping on her side, one outstretched hand pressed up against Vyse's bare chest. That should have been enough to reassure him, to make him relax and know that the world hadn't fallen apart. In the wake of that terrible dream that he already couldn't remember the details of, it wasn't. He found himself reaching out with trembling fingers to stroke the side of her face.

His touch woke her up within seconds, but he didn't stop running his thumb underneath her eye as she sleepily blinked to focus and looked back at him.

"Vyse?" She whispered, blinking a little more. "What's wrong, my love?"

"I...You…" He tried to explain, and failed to. He ended up shaking his head a little. "Bad dream."

"What happened?" She asked, calm and settled where he wasn't, and her delicate hand gently stroked the coarse hairs on his bare chest to soothe him.

"I don't remember." Vyse confessed. "But - you weren't there. That's the only thing I remember, you weren't there."

"Dreams can reflect your worries, the tensions of the day." Fina explained. "It's your mind, looping through your memories and your imagination and jumbling them up into something else. It's just a dream. It wasn't real."

"It felt real." He insisted, and Fina sighed and closed her eyes.

"I'm here." She told him wearily. "Vyse, feel me. I'm right here." His hand drifted down to her chest and he settled his palm in the small valley between her breasts. When he felt her heartbeat, slow and steady and sure thumping against his hand, he finally started to relax again. She sighed again. "Better?"

"Yes." He blinked, still too awake to sleep so quickly. "I'm sorry."

"I put a lot on your plate last night. I'm sorry. I should've expected you wouldn't get over it quickly." Fina apologized. And when Vyse thought about it, he could see why her revealing her last secret, the truth of where home had been for her, would unsettle him. The Silver Shrine was in a place he could not reach, that nobody could.

It was an irrational fear. He'd dreamed of her being gone and it terrified him, but how many times had she tearfully told him, told Aika that she could not return to her old life after everything? That her home was with them now?

His hand moved away from her chest and cupped the side of her face. "I'm sorry I woke you up. I shouldn't heap my fears and worries on you."

"You dreamed that I wasn't there and it scared you so badly that you had to wake me up." She told him, her sleepy blue eyes already beginning to drift shut again. Moons, she was so beautiful, so open and devoid of artifice. Her blond hair was slowly getting longer after his confession to her in their second journey through the Southern Ocean that he wanted her to grow it out, and a little of it caught in Aika's face when she moved her head slightly. "I want to know when you're worried, when you're scared Vyse. How else can I help you face it? I love you, you stupid pirate." She went on, yawning. "I love you. I'm not leaving you, I'm not leaving Aika. Ever."

"Promise?" He whispered, and she smiled, then winced a little in a way that had him worried all over again. "Fina?"

"Cramps." She huffed, and Vyse nodded. Aika and Fina's moonbloods had synchronized, and the both of them were going through it tonight, which was the reason why they were dressed and hadn't done anything more than snuggle. Vyse inched in a little closer and lined up his body with hers, letting his warmth surround her body a little bit more to ease the pain. She sighed in relief and smiled with her eyes shut as he leaned in and kissed her forehead, and behind them, Aika grumbled something in her sleep and curled into Fina even harder.

"I swear, the two of you." Fina teased him with a little giggle. "So glompy."

"Glompy?" Vyse repeated the unfamiliar word, and Fina hummed as her breathing deepened again. She was back asleep in under a minute.

Vyse exhaled out the last of his tension and felt sleep and weariness settle back into his bones. With Fina cuddled and trapped between him and Aika, he took one last look at the two women he loved more than anything else in the world and smiled.

"I'm going to marry you two some day." He promised in the dark of the night. If either of them heard him, they were too sleepy to reply. Vyse closed his eyes and joined them in rest.

On Crescent Island, everyone slept peacefully.


Author's Note: Just a reminder that this story gets cross-posted on Archive Of Our Own, where you can see additional features, like more in-depth author's footnotes as well as other errata. And if anyone's got a good eye and a steady hand, I sure would love to see some fanart. You can even put it in the story over there!