At half past 3 in the morning, Caen made his way to the city airdock. He'd taken his temperature regulation pills, then donned his breastplate—opting to wear the rest of his armor after the trip. He'd worn his utility belt with his holsters and belt bag, his bandolier fitted with various combat items, and then his coat. He carried his sheathed glaive in one hand.

So dark and early in the day, there were hardly any rickshaws or carriages waiting at well-lit street corners. City patrollers made their rounds, blowing shrill whistles every half hour to pass on cryptic messages to their comrades.

Caen paid nearly triple the price of basic transport, which was essentially all of his remaining money. The rickshaw cyclist insisted that since Caen was his only passenger, going all the way to the eastway was not worth it.

The airdock was a large, open field at the eastern edge of Drenlin, surrounded by a mesh fence. Once every two years, the elders of his commune rented an airship that transported several of them to Chrenai. Besides that, Caen rarely had reason to come down here.

There were fewer buildings and street lamps nearby, though a few powerful lamps sat atop poles around the airdock, offering more lighting than the pale moonslight above. Caen hopped off the rickshaw and made his way through the mesh fence of the airdock. Airships, each one as tall as his family home and several times as long, sat evenly spaced on the open field.

A single airship sat away from the others. It was tethered to the ground by anchors, and technicians loitered about, performing last-minute checks on it.

There was a canopy erected in the ground, and beneath it, people slept on benches or on the dew-touched ground. Most of them wore armor and used their bags for pillows. He counted twenty-odd people beneath the canopy. Many of them had hard-edged looks. The ones that were asleep seemed to be doing so with extra caution. Caen walked around the canopy to sit on the edge of a bench upon which an unarmored, blond-haired man with a strong jawline lay hurdled, most of his face concealed by a blue jacket made of tough fabric.

Caen stuck his hand in his coat pocket using his whorl-gem. At the same time, he used Soul-sense to observe the people here. Only one woman on the floor had an active cluster. Her eyes were closed, and she looked to be asleep, which led Caen to suspect that she might have been using Dream-guarding. He wondered whether going into Grat would make someone's Dream-guarding thread cluster flare on their soul structure.

Caen moved on to examine his own soul structure as the morning wore on. Some time later, a short man with a majestic mustache and in military uniform walked into the canopy, clapping his hands to get everyone's attention. He didn't flinch at the murderous looks some of the suddenly roused people gave him.

“The airship is ready for transport,” the man said in a high, clear voice. “But we'll be waiting for the others to get here. There’ll be two lines. One for combatants and the other for non-combat support. Takeoff time is exactly 5 after midnight.”

“Wait, how do we tell the time?” someone asked. “There's no clock here.”

“What kind of idiot doesn't use a watch?” Caen's bench mate mumbled, sitting up and pulling away the jacket covering her face.

Caen had mistaken her for a man. She looked to be about his age. She had frizzy, curly blond hair that stopped around her shoulders. Light green eyes, lush eyebrows, and prominent cheekbones. Something about her features tickled the edge of his recollection. Almost like he'd seen her somewhere before.

“You don't,” the boy leaning against the other end of her bench said.

“‘Idiot’, I said,” the girl replied. “I asked ‘what kind of idiot’. And I'm not one.”

The boy snorted and leaned back against the bench. “Just wake me up when it's time,” he said.

More people poured in as the minutes ticked by. A good portion of them seemed to lack the hard edge and brawniness of the earliest arrivals, also most of them weren't dressed for combat.

Two separate tables were set up at the front of the canopy, and that mustached military official from earlier started clapping his hands loudly to wake people up again. Space was cleared, the benches stacked to the side, and two attendants took their places at the tables, lugging boxes, tomes, and writing materials with them.

“Combatants, form a line there,” the man announced, pointing to one table. “Non-combat support, line up here.” He pointed to the other table.

People jostled to do as they'd been told. The girl who Caen had been sharing a bench with hurried over to the combatant line along with her friend. Caen was already standing on the non-combat support line, one of the first in his queue.

He soon got to speak with the attendant at the table. She checked a document for his name when he gave it, tracking his details quickly. “You're a registered healer-in-training at the tri-clinic. Spirit-healing and… mundane healing?”

“Yes,” he said.

She gave him a skeptical look over, particularly eyeing the glaive in his hand and his combat gear. “A healer, huh? Summons scare you that much?”

“They don't scare you?” he asked back.

She chuckled and began rummaging through a box filled with wooden badges. “I choose to work behind a desk for a reason.” She retrieved one of the badges and hurriedly scrawled something on it with a stylus.

“I'm also registered as a Valiant,” Caen said. “I hope it's okay to participate as both combat and non-combat support.”

“That’s fine. They'll sort you out in Odaton. Here.” She handed the badge to him with one hand while taking notes in the column of the document she'd consulted.

The badge was rectangular and made of treated wood with tiny spiral patterns lining the edges. On it were written the words, ‘Healer: Spirit-healing, mundane healing’, followed by a string of numbers.

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“Don't lose that,” she said. “Do not exchange it with anyone else's, and make sure you carry it with you at all times.” She tilted her head backwards. “You can go on in. Good luck.”

Up ahead, the airship was making a loud whirring sound. It was floating ten or so feet off the floor but had been fitted with a boarding ramp that went up to the cabin area.

Inside, he noticed that handholds had been attached to the ceiling of the cabin along the aisle and the entry area. There weren't even four people here yet.

Caen picked a window seat at the very back. He put his backpack and bag of holding beneath his chair, took off his coat, and placed his glaive against the window.

Caen's former bench mate, the blond girl with green eyes, walked in with her friend, who looked around the cabin.

“Wow, classy,” she said, as she and her friend glanced around. Together, they made their way to the seats beside Caen.

Caen nodded at them in greeting. They nodded back, though the girl had a brow raised. Caen hadn't worn his vambraces this morning, and now, with his coat off, his Valiant insignia was bare. Her eyes moved from the fitted bandolier on his chest to linger on the glaive. “That looks pretty neat,” she said, jutting her chin at the sheathed weapon. “Are you any good with it?”

“Passably,” Caen admitted. “But it's the weapon I'm most trained at. I'm Caen, by the way.”

“Awesome. Guinevere, but my friends call me Gwen,” she said, then jabbed a thumb at her friend, “The boy beside me is called Kiddo.”

The boy punched her arm, laughing. “Don’t be a dipshit.” He leaned forward to wave at Caen and introduced himself. “Tilin.”

“I’m certain I saw you on the non-combatant line,” Guinevere said, glancing once more at Caen's Valiant insignia and his arms.

“Healer-in-training. Registered Gatherer too.” He didn't exactly feel embarrassed to mention that he was an F-rank Valiant, but it was a reminder of how weak he was compared to other Valiants.

Not for long, he promised himself.

“Ice magic,” Tilin said, placing a hand on his chest.

“Body-enhancement and just a little bit of Wind magic,” Gwen said, holding her thumb and index finger together.

“Are you both registered as Valiants too?” Caen asked them.

“E-ranks, actually,” Tilin said with some measure of pride.

Caen made an appreciable sound just to be polite.

Tilin began shoving his bag beneath his own chair.

Guinevere didn't have any armor on or weapons strapped, which seemed a little irresponsible. But now that he was looking at her closely, he noticed that she didn't have any luggage, other than a pouch on her belt. Which made Caen suspect it was some sort of spatial storage. He kept that observation to himself, however.

“You asked about my glaive,” Caen said to Guinevere. “Are you interested in weapons?”

She grinned. “Just the one.”

His brows creased in confusion. “The… one?”

“You know? Queen of all weapons?”

Tilin groaned. “There she goes again.”

“I'm talking about the sword,” Gwen said, ignoring her friend.

“Hmm.” Caen put a hand to his chin. “Traditional, straightforward, and dependable. It loses to the glaive in reach and maneuverability, though.”

“Kill me now,” Tilin groaned. “Now there's two of you.”

“Bah,” she said, waving a dismissive hand, but smiling nonetheless. “Polearms are just glorified spears. No guards worthy of mention. Easy way to lose your fingers.”

“Fair point to the finger problem,” Caen said with a chuckle. “But how can swords be the queen of all weapons when guns exist?”

“Oh, please. I've seen people who can move faster than you can pull a trigger.”

“Not faster than a bullet, though,” Caen countered.

Gwen laughed. “Oh, my sweet summer child. Something my parents say a lot,” she added when Caen looked at her quizzically. “There are enhancements that can slow down perceived time to a crawl, you know that, right?”

Caen had read about spells of that caliber in Uncle Vai's library, but of course, they'd all been high-level Dream-guarding spells. He strongly doubted that Body-enhancement could achieve that. “This still doesn't account for reaction time.”

“What are you even saying? Have you never heard of an archmage before?”

They continued to bicker as the airship filled up with passengers. Two other people joined them on their row, and not long after, the airship was crammed full. Latecomers had to stand, and many of them clearly weren't happy about it.

“Hey, come on! None of you lovely early birds looking to use the loo?” a large man with blue-dyed braids asked, and a lot of seated people chuckled at that.

“It's going to be a long flight, friend,” someone else called. More people laughed.

If anyone left their seat to use the toilet, they wouldn't be getting it back. The airship took off just at the crack of dawn, a full hour after the military official had claimed it would.

* * *

Caen spent the four hours of flight observing his soul structure and trying to pick apart the nuances and elements of each affinity cluster.

A lot of the seated passengers were sleeping, to the apparent disgruntlement of those standing. He occasionally looked out his window, but there wasn't much else to see beyond rolling plains, settlements, and rock structures.

At one point, Caen looked out his window to see a vast, looming cloud in the distance that moved in a very peculiar twisting motion. His eyes widened. This was a cloud elemental. He connected to it.

A huge tapestry of myriad sensations wrapped the elemental’s form. The cord between them stretched from his midsection to all the way out there. There wasn't anything exceptional or grand about the elemental's soul structure, however. Beyond being excessively large—with a few minor differences here and there—it was pretty similar to everything he'd seen so far. Two very distinct thread clusters stood out to his senses. Caen imagined that they might be Liquid and Wind magic. He spent a good while isolating one of these. Just as he was about to start imitating its affinity cluster, the airship gained too much distance from the elemental, and their connection started fraying.

“No, no, no,” Caen groaned quietly in dismay. He could not halt the unraveling, try as hard as he might. Soon, the elemental was completely out of sight, their connection lost.

The airship began its descent at about 10 in the morning. The standing passengers cheered heartily and stamped their feet in celebration.

Caen looked out his window once more. Odaton lay sprawled below in a copious scattering of tents and lush vegetation. It resembled a camp more than it did a town.

A single roofless building lay at the center, with suspiciously ample space between it and everything else. A high stone fence surrounded it, and as the airship lost altitude, Caen could see that there were guards in military uniform, stationed around the fence.

They had arrived.