“You see,” Isai started as he put his bowl down on a cluttered workbench, before wiping his hands ‘clean’ on the legs of his tan britches. “The major problem with the Shepherd right now is that the floaters are, in a word, fogged. Most of the tarpaulin of the starboard one was literally shredded, so we decided to cut our losses and repurpose the tattered parts into tents. Meanwhile, the portside floater snapped right off during the crash. That’s actually a good thing, however. While it’s structurally unsound, at least its tarpaulin came out with only a couple of tears, meaning we can reuse it on the new topside floater Nazyr is building. We won’t be able to get it fogtight, but as long as we actively keep condensing any fog that leaks in, it should suffice as a temporary measure.”

  Next to Rylan, Tamina was still testing her arm, having moved on to flexing and unflexing individual digits. With some effort, he managed to drag his eyes away and pay attention to the professor as the man walked up to the covered device, gesticulating wildly while continuing to speak.

  “So, the challenge is to generate as much lift with a single floater—or close to it, at least—as we previously did with two. That’s where this device comes in.”

  With dramatic flair, Isai yanked off the tarp, revealing a mesh of gleaming yellow metal. It took Rylan a moment to parse that the complicated structure sprang forth from a cylindrical steel base below—a base that was covered in engravings filled in with the same coppery, mana-conducting alloy that made up the wires used in Tamina’s prosthetic.

  “Is that whole mesh made of skymetal?” Rylan asked in surprise.

  “Sure is,” Isai replied as he fished a glowing Cube out of his brown waistcoat’s front pocket, and inserted it into a runed cubical recess in the steel platform below. “Watch this.”

  He flicked a switch, and stepped back as the coppery runes covering the metal base lit up with an orange-tinted glow. After a moment, the whole thing started to hum, and then, the skymetal on top began to move. Rylan watched, fascinated, as the mesh started to shift and unfold, rapidly expanding upward into an ovoid shape that took up most of the available space between the floor and the ceiling of the room.

  “Mind you, this is just a model,” the professor said, raising his voice over the humming and creaking of metal. “A proof of concept, if you will. The real thing will be about six times higher, big enough to fill up the entirety of the new floater.”

  “But what is it for?” Rylan called back. “What does it do?”

  Isai grinned. “Step closer, and you’ll find out. Go on, don’t be shy!”

  Rylan hesitantly glanced at Tamina, but she met his gaze impassively, her face seeming to say that he’d cooked his rice, and now he’d better eat it.

  Swallowing, Rylan took a step closer, then another. The first thing he noticed were the flaxy strands of hair hanging over his eyes starting to rise. His next step felt a lot lighter, and on the one after that, his toes were scraping the floor. “Woah!” he exclaimed, laughing at the swoop in his stomach as he gently pushed off and grabbed onto the side of the mesh, now fully floating. The skymetal hummed pleasantly beneath his fingers, slightly warm to the touch.

  “Pure Aetherium, as most folks know, is weightless,” Isai explained as Rylan grabbed onto the mesh with more confidence, and began to turn himself upside down. “This is not its natural state, however; it’s an effect that only occurs in the presence of mana. When isolated in a mana-free environment, Aetherium weighs about a third as much as iron does—admittedly still quite light for a metal, but not exactly weightless. When saturated with mana, on the other hand, Aetherium extends its weightlessness to its immediate surroundings. An effect that can be enhanced and guided with the help of a well-crafted runework.”

  Hanging upside down from his toes, Rylan waved at Tamina, who returned his wide grin with a lopsided smile of her own, shaking her head.

  “All right, I’m going to shut it off again, now,” Isai warned.

  Rylan hurriedly turned himself back around and pushed off. As he gained some distance from the grid, gravity rapidly returned, and he swiftly floated back down to the floor.

  Meanwhile, the professor flicked the switch and pocketed the Cube, causing the machine to power down and the mesh to start folding back in on itself.

  “So,” Rylan said, having finally taken a moment to process what the professor had said. “By creating this rig inside the floater... you can turn all the air inside of it weightless!”

  “Not only that,” Isai said. “The mesh will also unfold and shape itself along the exterior of any cargo which we store inside the floater, to reduce weight further. Like the propulsion device I built from scratch.”

  “What did you use to propel the ship before?” Rylan asked, before his eyes widened. “You... you didn’t have anything pulling it, did you?”

  “Hah!” Isai barked. “No, thankfully not. That would’ve made our landing even messier. No, I’ve always found freight animals too unreliable in a pinch. We had an Aetherium drive—that’s a more advanced use of Aetherium, which requires a far more complicated runework—but it got busted up in the crash. Could have tried to fix it, I suppose, but I needed the Aetherium to build this. So instead, I made a putt-putt engine.”

  The professor pointed at something behind Tamina, and when Rylan spun to take a look, he was surprised to see nothing but a steel tank with two pipes pointed in the same direction.

  “It’s a pretty simple engine,” Isai continued as he walked over to his bowl and resumed eating. “Technically doesn’t even require any mana. You just fill the tank partially with water and apply heat—I’ll be confiscating your stove at some point to do some testing. The resulting steam comes out in puffs that push the ship forward. I’ll need to install it roughly at the centre of mass of the new vessel, so it’ll probably end up at the bottom of the new floater, with the pipes coming out just behind the captain’s cabin.”

  “Great. So when are we getting out of here?” Tamina asked.

  The professor sucked in a breath, leaning back against the workbench he’d fixed Tamina’s arm on, not seeming to notice or care about the oil dripping off its edge. “Well, there’s three problems. First of all, I don’t have enough resources to build the full-sized version of the mesh. I can only tool my Aetherium into wire so thin before it loses its structural integrity. I have about eight ingots worth of the stuff, but I need a bunch more. You three wouldn’t happen to have brought about a dozen ingots of Aetherium with you, right?”

  Upon seeing his hopeful look, Rylan could only smile wryly and shake his head.

  Isai sighed. “It was worth a shot. Well, then we’ll just have to scrounge something up from the ruins. There’s bound to be some Aetherium squirrelled away somewhere. The Hermeans definitely knew how to use it, and no one leaves the stuff out in the open; it tends to float off.”

  “What’s the second problem?” Tamina asked with a frown.

  The professor clicked his tongue in an annoyed fashion. “Well, even if I finish the full-sized version, she won’t be able to just straight-up fly—I can’t lower the weight that far—so we’d still need fog on the outside to help get the ship off the ground. Which means we’d either need to move the entire ship out of the bubble, or find whatever’s repelling the fog and make it stop. Either way, we expose ourselves to problem number three.”

  Rylan’s stomach clenched. “Dreadmaw.”

  Isai nodded soberly. “Exactly. The beast appears to be the grudge-holding type, so we don’t expect it to be leaving anytime soon. Though Dreadmaw might be both problem and solution in a way; if we manage to take it down, we’d have ourselves a lovely Hectocube to power the full-sized version of this machine. I’d prefer to just use a big array of Cubes or Decacubes, of course, as its rather wasteful to use a Hectocube for something like this, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “Professor, I’ve actually been wondering about that,” Rylan said. “If a Decacube contains only ten times the Quintessence of a regular Cube, why is it worth fifty times as much on the market?”

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  “Stability, my boy,” Isai said with a smile, tapping his temple with his spoon, not seeming to notice or care that he was leaving smudges there. “As I’m sure you know, a regular Cube can be converted to about 1000 points of mana, but, what many people don’t realise, is that that’s an upper limit, only achieved when the Cube is drained at a trickle. The faster you try to pull mana from a Cube, the faster it’ll disintegrate. When used all in one shot, a Cube might only supply as little as 10 mana! The bigger Cubes, however, are more stable, and therefore better at maintaining their integrity while being drained at higher speeds.”

  “So that’s why,” Rylan mused. “But that seems like a pretty niche application, doesn’t it?”

  “It has its uses,” the professor replied cryptically.

  “The Thorns buy them all up,” Tamina supplied. “They’re the ones who drive up the price.”

  Isai’s eyes flicked over to her. “Hmm, yes. Anyway, if you don’t mind leaving, I seem to have finished my bowl, and I’d like to get back out there and see if there’s any eel left or if those pigs inhaled all of it in our absence.”

  They didn’t do any training that evening, exhausted as they were from the impressions of the day.

  Yuel had come through with a large piece of tarpaulin from the Shepherd’s shredded starboard floater, and enough broken fogwhale ribs and rope to set it up as a makeshift tent. More importantly, he’d dug up some spare bedrolls, meaning for the first time since they landed down in the cloudsea, Rylan had a bed of his own.

  It'd be a bit chillier without someone to share it with, of course, but the fact that it was dry more than made up for that fact. Besides, his companions were still close by. In fact, that night, he went to sleep right in between them. He’d been worried he might lay awake for a while after all the excitement, but in the end, he was out like a candle.

  Over the days that followed, they gradually eased into a new routine.

  In the morning, Rylan went into the kitchen with Nazyr to make a simple breakfast, like sweetened congee or pan-baked rice cakes. After that, he generally went out looking for food around the camp to use for the day’s meals, things like edible plants and mushrooms, and eventually, eggs. Because apparently, a flock of gulls had picked one of the higher mounds of rubble as their nesting ground. With the colder seasons approaching, their nesting season would end pretty soon, but for now they were thankfully still active.

  The addition of omelettes and scrambled eggs to the breakfast and lunch menus were highly appreciated—as were all the change and variety Rylan was adding.

  Apparently, Nazyr had just been serving plain cooked rice for breakfast before.

  Most afternoons, he, Yuel, and Tamina took a longer trip to go hunting. Whenever they went out into the fog, Rylan took special care to take note in what direction the tingles were pointing, but they always seemed to lead straight back to the centre of the bubble.

  He relayed his findings to Tamina, but when she reluctantly suggested to Yuel that they look there for prey, the former pirate informed them that the city centre was mostly an impassible mound of rubble and therefore not exactly an inviting hunting ground.

  Put simply, it was too hard for most prey to traverse, and too difficult for them to give chase to any that could. The closest they managed to get to it was hunting for suitable prey around the outskirts of the centre when it had been spotted, but even from there, Rylan couldn’t sense anything unusual, nor spot any path deeper in.

  While they occasionally found tracks from the ramtusks, the animals themselves proved elusive, which Rylan felt was rather a shame. They did come across a lone coralbou once, but the majestic creature got spooked before they could get close enough and ran off. Rylan was secretly a bit glad to see its glittering, deep-red antlers disappear in the distance. Killing it would have felt almost sacrilegious. Also, he hadn’t looked forward to trying to carry it back, let alone skinning it!

  Rylan did eventually have to get his cleaver wet, when they managed to find and take down a mature foghorn, though not before the odd goat managed to blow into one of its curved, hollow horns with holes in the side, and warned the rest of its flock with a haunting, reverberating note.

  Thankfully, back on Thistlebloom, Ava had tasked Rylan with helping her skin and prepare a mistsheep a few times, so he knew what to do—more or less. He ultimately decided to add the gamey, pungent meat to a stew, and it turned out quite well.

  Somehow, despite all of the time he spent in the kitchen, Rylan found he was enjoying himself rather a lot. It helped that he got to boss Nazyr around, and it helped even more when Tamina developed a habit of dropping in on the kitchen during dinner prep to land a hand.

  However, the help wasn’t the main thing he enjoyed. It was the gratitude he saw on everyone’s faces every day, the compliments he kept receiving. The appreciation.

  In the evening, they trained. Rylan was mainly working on his mana-exercises, on overcharging Jump, and on trying to control the rotation of his knives in mid-air.

  Aside from that last one, it was going quite well.

  He was also still sparring with Tamina, working towards Knife-Fighting while she tried to get Sword-Fighting. If Rylan had to guess, he’d say she was getting pretty darn close, just needed the right opportunity to show Ethereon what she could do. He himself, was not that close yet, but getting closer every day.

  Training was also the only time they got to see Soren—who was also still working on the Overcharge Augmentation for his new Skill—as the young noble was helping Captain Hammermore explore the city during the day, looking for Aetherium.

  Some nights, the captain came and watched them spar and practise, and even gave some tips. Though she would boast and make fun of them just as often, albeit in a teasing manner.

  Days passed like that, and while the stores of rice and dried mushrooms were slowly decreasing, Rylan wasn’t too worried yet. They were supplementing their rations with a lot of game and wild plants these days, and the little bamboo garden Halloth had started to provide Nazyr material to repair the ship with was growing well, so they were even adding fresh shoots to every other meal now.

  The construction of the new floater and the repairs on the hull beneath were coming along nicely too, though the ship’s quarters were apparently going to be a lot smaller and more cramped than they used to be. This was mostly due to Nazyr and Halloth spending a decent portion of their time tearing off entire rooms at the back before shoring up what remained into a new hull in an effort to trim as much weight as they could.

  Because unfortunately, the search for Aetherium hadn’t turned anything up yet.

  Rylan’s secret search for the mysterious being that called to him every time he entered the fog hadn’t progressed much either. The city centre was simply too big, and their opportunities to go there too slim.

  At some point, he even suggested sneaking out during the night to go looking. Tamina was understandably disapproving of the idea, as she still wasn’t fully on board with his quest to find his ‘spirit friend,’ and found unexpected support from Soren. The young noble had been adamant that they couldn’t risk being caught, lest they be forced to tell the truth about how they’d ended up in the city.

  And since the crew of the Black Sheep had rotating guard shifts each night, even Rylan had to begrudgingly admit that the risk was significant.

  Days passed by like this without significant events. All until one day, when Rylan was out hunting in the fog with Yuel and Tamina.

  They hadn’t been having much luck, and had thus ended up deciding to venture out a bit further than usual.

  Rylan took in the unfamiliar surroundings with a healthy sense of trepidation. It was honestly difficult to distinguish between sections of the mossy, coral-covered ruins, but it was just different enough to feel strange.

  He’d be worried about getting lost out here, if it wasn’t for the tingles, which were pointing him back towards the bubble with little urgency. If anything there was a sense of... quiet resignation to them. He wasn’t sure what to make of that, but he also couldn’t pay too much attention to it.

  For out in the fog, there were bigger dangers than getting lost.

  Rylan’s breath hitched as he felt a subtle pressure settle over him. Immediately frozen in his tracks, he held up a hand and started carefully scanning his surroundings, specifically up.

  From the corners of his eyes, he saw his companions do much the same. While they were always on the lookout for predators out here, there was naturally one they feared the most.

  Dreadmaw!

  A big shadow blocked out the light filtering through the fog overhead, and while Rylan wasn’t actually sure if it was the massive Ruby-Grade gapejaw shark or not, he wasn’t about to take any chances. And neither was Tamina.

  “This way!” she hissed, darting off into a passageway between two overgrown buildings.

  Rylan rushed after her, followed closely by Yuel.

  The shadows of the alley deepened as the creature looming overhead followed them, the shadow it cast making it harder to avoid the various obstacles cluttering the narrow passage.

  With his heart drumming in his throat, Rylan glanced around wildly, looking for a way into one of the ruins on either side. If it really was Dreadmaw, then the narrow alley would be of little help to protect them; it could just suck them right out.

  And if it wasn’t then it could still be a creature with tentacles, or a long, thin neck...

  Unfortunately, all of the former doorways and windows they sprinted past were either blocked by rubble or fully overgrown by corals or plants.

  Fog! Can we make it back to the bubble from here? We’re out farther than normal but—

  Rylan blinked, confused. During the frantic rush, he’d missed the moment the tingles had changed, but they had. Not only had they grown in frequency and urgency, but he also would’ve sworn they had been pointing to the right of his current orientation before, yet they were now clearly pointing to the left...

  Is it... trying to lead us somewhere safe?

  In front of him, Tamina stumbled out into a brighter, more open area on the other side of the passage, her head snapping from left to right, before seeming to settle on the right.

  Rylan made a snap decision. He sprang past her, grabbing onto her metal wrist in passing and whisper-shouting, “Follow me!” as he pulled her to the left instead.

  And so he blindly ran off into the fog, once more putting his faith in the benevolence of the mysterious being communicating with him.

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