I was frantically organising supplies on the flying boat in the middle of the night when I heard footsteps behind me. I froze and tried to press myself between the crates.
It was Balcus. He stood silently for half a minute, then turned around and went inside.
I sat down for a couple of minutes, trying to calm myself. Then I went to the spot where Balcus had been standing and turned around to look at the boat. It was well-lit by moonlight. There was no way Balcus could have missed my pathetic attempts at playing hide-and-seek.
A bitter taste filled my mouth. For years, I had been trying to ignore my parents. Their country bumpkin ways and submissiveness towards Zola always put me off. I learned to love and care for my siblings, even the male ones, but I could never think of Balcus and Luce as my real parents.
However, it seemed like they cared for me much more than I did for them.
The journey to Elven Island was both challenging and tedious. To distract myself from the guilt of commandeering a valuable family asset and the fear of potential failure, I immersed myself in thoughts about flying technology.
In the 66th millennia, approximately six thousand years ago, the old-fashioned landscapes broke up into flying islands. The destruction of infrastructure and the isolation of survivors pushed humanity to the brink of extinction. The cause of this catastrophe remained unknown, and the knowledge of the preceding civilisation was extremely limited.
The flying stones that held the islands aloft quickly became the basis for new transportation technology.
If you were to dig a tunnel through a flying island, you would notice that some debris rises to the ceiling. Collecting this debris allows you to neutralize that pesky gravity.
Naturally, you could achieve the same effect with lighter-than-air gas, but the use of flying stones enables the construction of ships that are smaller and sturdier than dirigibles. Additionally, the stones do not seep through the pores of balloons nor do they burn.
With flying stones you could make a simple flying boat with stone age technology level. But flying it would be tricky.
Complex interactions between minus billions tons of flying stones inside islands maintain their height and relative positions, adjusting the lifting force accordingly.
Thankfully it does not go that way for small amounts of flying stone. Their lifting force is constant - otherwise air would be cluttered by flying boulders. But that means that flying ships have virtually no means of controlling the lifting force.
If your ship becomes too heavy, you can drop some inexpensive ballast. However, if it becomes too light, you must angle your propellers downwards. If the propellers fail to counteract the ascent, you have no choice but to release some costly flying stones; otherwise, the ship will continue soaring straight into space!
Armours do not have propellers but they still keep themselves afloat via propelling air downwards with magic. Sorry, no magical antigravity engines for you. So even if you were to make your cabin airtight, there would be no way to control a ship in space using magic.
Several courageous explorers attempted to reach low Earth orbit, but the majority of them either suffocated or burned during reentry. Only a fortunate few returned, only to find themselves thousands of kilometers away from home.
Nevertheless, we know that flying stones continue to function even in the depths of space. One of the unfortunate researchers that found himself rapidly flying away from Earth threw out some salted water. It created small artificial comet tails that were large enough to be seen from Earth. He had lots of water - he hoped to use steam exhaust to control the flight, so he managed to send his observations and farewell despite having no radio.
Well, let's now go back to Earth.
The air boat keeps getting lighter as my body burns food, evaporates water, and the engine consumes its fuel. Since the engine on my boat was relatively weak, I had to be very careful to balance weight and lifting force. Half of my time was spent calculating the current weight and making careful adjustments.
To obtain some ballast, I dived into clouds, spread out my spare blanket, and wrung it out to collect water.
The thought of venturing into rocky "uninhabited" islands didn't even cross my mind. Most of these islands lack sufficient vegetation to make them interesting for civilised people, but they typically contain small patches of grass capable of sustaining a handful of people. The isolation and constant threat of pirates often render these tiny barbaric societies extremely paranoid and hostile toward outsiders.
Finally, I arrived at the Elven island under the cover of darkness and concealed my boat within the forest.
For nearly a week, I dedicated my time and depleted all my food supplies to meticulously stalk the elves around the ancient laboratory.
Characters in books never spend days crouched under bushes, painstakingly documenting their observations while enduring mosquito bites - that is too boring.
Yet, I endured what was undoubtedly the most tedious week of both my lives and I was able to get into laboratory unnoticed by anyone.
"We all lived on a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine. We all lived..." I continued singing in English. The idea was to show the AI that I am someone interesting so that it would not shoot me without warning. And I really needed to hear human's voice after that long week.
My efforts were rewarded when I was greeted by a stereotypical mechanical voice, "Who are you, and how do you possess knowledge of one of the languages of the Old Humanity?"
"Creare! It's great to see ... err, hear you! I am a person with Old Human genes and memories, so you have to work with me! If you want proof I can..."
"Understood. Acknowledging you as my new Master." That went well. AI did not even ask how I know it's name.
Meanwhile, AI went on. "Initiating self-destruct sequence."
"Wait a second! Stop it. No self-destruction. That's an order!"
AI did no budge. "Unable to dismiss previous orders. Proceeding with self destruction."
"How long do I have? At least let me grab some loot!"
"Unable to disclose secret information. I would advise moving to safe distance immediately."
I grabbed a microscope and a mirror and rushed outside. AI's floating sphere followed after me. Within 15 minutes, I had nearly reached my boat when I felt the ground beneath my boots tremble. Looking back, I witnessed a slender mushroom cloud ascending from the location of the laboratory. I dove behind a large boulder, getting cover from the shockwave.
Staying around to deal with angry and scared elves was obviously a bad idea so I flew away as quickly as I could.
I managed to sell looted mirror at the town nearby. Nobody was interested in buying a microscope there.
I was able to buy enough food and fuel to last me a little more.
Creare was almost useless as all it's equipment was left behind and destroyed by the explosion.
But AI had a map of restricted airspaces from the time of Old Humanity! Surely nobody would allow to fly over spaceport base. There were too many of restricted areas but I already had a map of my own with some guesses about Luxion location.
Luxion could not be too far from my home, it could not be too close to trade routes and inhabited islands and there were some areas that were too dangerous to visit alone on tiny flying boat.
One of the three remaining restricted areas was too small to accommodate Luxion, another way too big for me to search. The third one was marked on my map as square 19-89. Could it be some meaningful date for original Leon? I decided to check it out.
Another arduous and monotonous flight plus crash-landing later I found myself on the top of the giant heap of wreckage. I was hungry, bruised and smiling - that was definitely Luxion's base.
Creare deactivated the guardian robots and we marched straight to the hangar.
It was completely empty and gates were wide open.