Men in the camp flocked around the launch site, murmuring under their breath. This was no regular camp. Their silence was a shared pact not to offend anyone in this crowd.

The lone sailboard stood straight beside the racks. To Radeon its frame was a sword of qi already drawn, ready to cut down whatever it met.

The only thing he disliked was the alloy armor on the outlier elders. Each suit looked as if it weighed two grown mortal men. Dead weight to the board. Dead weight to his speed.

Radeon caught the commander watching him and let his worry show in his eyes. Calling the elders a burden would cut the wrong way, so he just tightened his jaw and waited.

The commander was not an oblivious man. He beckoned Radeon aside, away from the listening ears.

"Speak plain, sky sailor. What stays your hand?" His voice stayed patient, but the stiffness in his shoulders spoke of pride and the crowd behind them.

"The men are light enough, sir. It's their shells that sink us. Those suits weigh near two men apiece, the board was never meant to haul such burden." Radeon chose each word as if it might explode.

The commander understood at once. If this failed because of a simple weight misjudgment, it would be written as a small mistake.

The crack in the camp's trust in him would not be small. It would spread through morale like frost. He waved toward the six armored elders.

"You six. With me."

They traded confused looks at the tent. In their minds everything was already in place.

Metal rang out a moment later, hard and insistent, each clang feeding the camp's anticipation.

When the six men stepped back into view their heavy alloy shells were gone.

Simple robes hung from their shoulders. Dark scales gleamed along their bare forearms, tight and flexible. The true armor had been hiding underneath all along.

"Aye, that'll serve well enough. Let me have a look at the board first."

He stepped onto the sailboard first. He needed to leave another impression, one the camp would not forget once the reports started to sour.

His hands settled on the core panel. He pushed qi into the etched lines and let the spirit energy from the array flow.

Just before it kissed the windstone he held the charge for a heartbeat and let it build. That pause had never been part of the design.

The sailboard roared like a caged beast that had finally smelled open sky. Wind pummeled the men behind him and flattened robes against armor scales. For a breath the whole camp stood in a stupor.

No one had known the little ship could scream like that. Even the commander stared, eyes narrowed with a pinch of envy he tried to hide.

"Well, don't just stand there gaping. To your places, sirs. Time we were about it."

The six elders moved into place, three on each side, hands gripping the central mast.

The board had only a narrow strip to stand on. Radeon alone had a small seat barely worth half an ass.

He drove the board forward and used the length of the camp as a runway, giving them one last show before the real work.

The sail cut the air, the seven of them a single stroke of sword light that seemed to pierce heaven and earth.

Then they were in open sky.

A swift white glare traced across the clouds, here and gone like a comet, leaving only a thin tail as the air tore open for them. The elders held fast, bodies steady even as cold condensation beaded on the pores of their exposed skin.

Radeon watched their eyes, not the horizon. Their vision sharpened with each pass, sweeping the land below. One by one they spotted opposing scouts creeping toward the hidden camp.

Radeon did not mark them all. He let his finger drift past the largest clusters and pointed out only the thinner teams. The elders dutifully took note.

The rest he left alive in his mind. A thinner screen now meant thicker blood later. Every future death would feed someone. Better it fed him.

When they reached the edge of the marked mapping zone, qi bolts snapped into view.

Hundreds of bloody lights climbed the air in front of them, hard points of killing intent.

"So then, sirs, where do we cast our eyes first?" Radeon kept his tone flat.

"Set your worry aside. Our strength will hold. Drive on, sky sailor."

Of course they were strong. That was why he had chosen them.

"Then throw your strength round the sail," Radeon said. "Let it lean on your backs, not its own."

The six men wrapped the board in their auras, forming a shifting barrier of force.

Radeon shoved the nose down. The array howled through the wooden frame.

Projectiles slid past them in streaks of red and iron as Radeon knifed the board through the storm.

"If you take three good hits, let your shield breathe and let another back bear the strain."

The men did not question the sky sailor. They let their shields flare and fade in turn, trading places when the impacts grew heavy.

They could all feel it, even if they did not name it. Each strike they absorbed bled a little of their strength into the array beneath their feet.

There was no visible downside to his request. That was enough for them. For Radeon it was profit.

They shot past cages hanging off the cliff walls, the iron bars shaking from the wind of their passage. The sun had already begun to sink, its rim kissing the horizon.

On the smaller peaks ahead, fires sparked to life one after another. Signal flames. Someone was calling the mountain to war.

"What's the plan, sir?" Radeon called.

"Onward, sky sailor. We do not balk at a little fire," another answered, pride beating over caution.

Radeon drove the ship faster. The men worked in pairs and trios, qi and thin threads of telekinesis guiding their pens as they sketched in the gaps of the old map.

Ink lines crawled across the scroll between them, every ridge and ravine captured as quickly as their hands could move.

As they approached the far side of the zone, fog rolled up to meet them. Radeon dipped lower and cut through it.

What met them beyond was not some gentle sea of cloud. It was a mountain snapped in half long before the first cloud had learned its name.

Slabs of stone leaned against one another in bad balance. Cracks gaped like old teeth. Every ledge was littered with crumbs of broken rock that had nowhere else to go.

From below the slope looked bruised. Long streaks of iron rust bled down the rock face. As they drew closer the air grew dry and metallic in his nose, like dust in an old forge.

"Is this the mark, sirs? Have we flown to the right place?" Radeon asked without turning.

The men exchanged glances. They had been sent as support, but none of them truly knew what waited beyond this point. A few miles closer and their skin began to crawl.

Radeon felt it first. His eyes narrowed. Ahead of them the world went black in his senses, as if some giant hand had wiped the lines from the map. A few breaths more and they would be gone.

He wrenched the sailboard around. The sudden turn slammed them sideways. The elders clung to the mast so hard their fingers left pale prints in the wood.

None of them shouted. Every instinct they had was telling them to leave this place.

Then the javelins came.

Blood colored spears tore the air, dozens of them, all hissing with killing intent.

The six elders met them with drawn swords. Steel rang as blade hit javelin.

Each impact punched the board into a wild spin, throwing the sky around them into a storm of up and down and side and side.

Radeon pulled the sail in. Cloth folded tight against the mast. The board dropped like a stone. With no spread sail there was little for the wind to grab.

The spin slowed, then settled into a hard plunge. The men kept their grips, nails biting into the mast until wood creaked.

He had not come here to save them. He had come here to finish a design.

Runes he had carved along the frame earlier now drank in everything.

He had changed the array before they ever left the camp. Once he let it fully awaken it would no longer turn on a whim.

It would only accelerate in the direction its nose faced, until the charge ran dry or the frame broke.

All he had to do now was wait for the falling board to line up with home.

Radeon let his head loll as if dizzy. The instant the nose swung toward where the camp lay hidden beyond the horizon, the engine beneath the deck flared with white light.

The board shot upward, then forward, clawing for the sky. It went faster and faster, climbing higher, then driving along that fixed line.

His nose began to bleed. His vision filled with stars. That was the cost for pushing the array past what it was meant to hold. It was a fair price.

When the pull grew too sharp he let go. The sky tilted. The board screamed away without him, a bright streak locked on course. The voices of the elders tore at his ears as he fell.

They called his name. Nobody answered.

For Radeon, the righteous camp had already given all it had to give. He had taken their trust, their energy, their best elders, and folded them into the array.

Whatever happened when that streak finally reached home would only grow the harvest.

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