Shadow looked ahead of the airship, there was a front of dark storm clouds shortly ahead of them, occasionally lit up by lightning arcing inside the clouds and striking the ground below. The airship was already being thrown around by gusts of wind, Brad tried his best to keep it steady. Even with all the wind and lightning, it was oddly quiet inside the airship, outside sounds were muffled by the glass.

Brad yelled: "I can't change course, we'll have to go through the clouds. As long as this isn't a magical storm from the Witch's Cauldron we should be fine."

Shadow felt out for any magical anomalies nearby. She was relieved to see that this was just a regular storm.

Fire instructed everyone to strap themselves to the seats with the provided belts. They were glad they did, the next turbulence would have sent them flying out of their seats into the ceiling.

Ambigious asked: "We'll be safe, right? In case this thing goes down you'll be able to do some magic stuff, right?"

Shadow nodded. "I'll probably be able to brake a fall to the point where it won't be fatal. Assuming nothing happens to us before that."

Ambigious gave her a grim look but said nothing.

They were now inside the storm clouds, lightning was arcing all around them and they were being thrown about even more.

Brad muttered: "Note to self, find a way to make the next airship more stable."

Fire yelled: "Secondary balloons and a redstone gyroscope maybe?"

Brad replied: "Good idea. We'll have to find a way to make it autonomous though. I know a master circuit maker living in Treetop, she could come up with something if I asked."

freeZe interjected: "Are you two seriously discussing airship design right now?"

"Yes."

A moment later a lightning bolt struck the firesteel balloon, it sent vibrations through the entire airship and left everyone with ringing ears. At the same time the airship was violently lifted upwards, pushing them into their seats. One of the gauges on Brad's console exploded.

Unchosen asked: "What the hell is going on?"

Brad's hands were flying all over his console trying to regain control over the airship and stop it from rising. Then he suddenly stopped and slowly said: "Why didn't we think of that? Of course the mixture in the balloon won't respond well to lightning."

"What?" freeZe asked.

Fire now also seemed to understand, he explained: "The lift created by the mixture is controlled by a redstone current of varying strength. The lightning strike supercharged the redstone and now we're rising. Add redstone overflow capacitors to the list of additions."

One advantage of being lifted so quickly was that the airship was otherwise stable, Shadow saw how Brad investigated the damage done by the power surge, it seemed that everything except that one gauge was still intact.

As they rose up more lightning struck the balloon, which was pulling them even faster, after the third strike the balloon started glowing red. Shadow contemplated magically cooling it down but then decided against it since she didn't know what other effects that might have.

In the next few minutes the lightning strikes thinned out as they came closer to the top of the storm clouds, eventually they broke through and were above the storm. The airship was still rising at a high speed.

TehLulz asked: "So, what now?"

Fire answered: "We wait. Eventually the balloon will cool down and we'll sink again. That will take some time though. Until then we'll just keep rising."

"Won't there be a problem with the air getting thin?" TehLulz asked.

Just the moment TehLulz spoke the airship slowed down, a few minutes later they were at a stable altitude again.

Brad said: "I guess we reached the maximum height this thing can lift us to. Now we'll just have to wait until the balloon cools down enough that it responds to my redstone signal again."

Shadow took a look out the windows. The view was breathtaking, they were so high up that even the storm below them looked small. Multiple biomes were in her field of view. She could see Drandin off in the distance, even further away on the opposite side she could see the black, shimmering walls of Rockhaven.

Her observations were interrupted by Ambigious. "So, does anyone have a set of cards so that we have something to do while waiting for this thing to cool down?"

Shadow just smiled and shook several freshly projected cards out of her sleeves.

The group spent hours high above the world, playing cards and watching the red glow of the balloon slowly die down. Even Brad had climbed out of his cabin and joined them. He had roughly calculated the time it would take for the mixture to return to operating temperature and it wouldn't be long until that happened.

After another game of cards had been concluded with Unchosen as the winner, Ambigious asked Fire: "So… I have been wondering about this for some time now. And I'm thinking it's the last opportunity to ask before we have to go roleplay."

Fire turned to him. "Hm?"

"How do Mencur-Besh… err… reproduce?"

The question provoked several chuckles from the group but Fire answered the question like any other: "Magically, for the most part. Though a Mencur-Besh embryo is created how you would expect, the Mencur-Besh body structure makes a humanlike pregnancy impossible. The embryo is born after only a few days. Reproduction takes place in incubation caves deep underground, in those caves the embryo grows up in a capsule made from artificial bedrock suspended in Heavybrew. It must be fed life force regularly or it will die, there are always several Mencur-Besh in those caves taking care of the offspring. It takes about fifty years for an embryo to mature, they grow straight into an adult. After they have matured, the lid of the capsule is removed. The new Mencur-Besh then establishes their connection to the network, from there they gain all their skills and knowledge. Afterwards they leave the cave and do whatever they need to."

"Wow." Ambigious said. "I get now why you can't go to war with the humans. You can't replenish your numbers at all."

Fire nodded. "Exactly."

freeZe asked: "What determines the element of the offspring?"

Fire said: "Chance, mostly. Mencur-Besh DNA has the required genes for all of the elements and one takes priority. You can of course increase the chance of a certain element developing by channeling it into the capsule along with the raw life force."

Just as freeZe was about to ask another question, a jolt went through the airship as it started sinking.

Brad announced: "Looks like we're ready to go again, time to take this baby down."

The airship started sinking at a rapid rate, the storm had long gone away. Brad had used the rear propeller to steer the airship closer to Rockhaven while they had been height-locked so that he would only have to take it down vertically. It took about an hour to bring the airship down to ground level, Brad gently set it down in a clearing of a forest.

Shadow opened the door and stepped out first. It was good for her to have solid ground under her feet again, naturally she trusted Brad as a pilot and engineer but she just liked staying on the ground better. She had liberally used flight spells in the past but perhaps she had grown tired of them.

Brad stepped out last and took a quick look at the airship. "The balloon seems to be fine but the redstone pipes haven't taken kindly to the shock therapy. They'll still be enough to get me home but we'll have to make some serious changes in the next version."

Fire said: "Thanks for flying us Brad."

Brad climbed back into the airship and said: "No problem."

Fire pointed forward. "Rockhaven is about an hour's march in that direction, we should get going, the sun is setting and we don't want to be caught out at night." With a smile he added: "Don't forget to play your roles when we arrive at the gate."