“You know, I’m getting a sense of deja vu…” Mori stated, sitting at the dining hall table, fully alert and ready, “Whatever… alright, let’s go over this one more time, everyone. First, we get to the mountains. That’s about a half hour away. Once we get there, we have very little time. We have to salvage this skiff for anything essential or hard to replace. Fara already modified the personal skiffs for that-”

“You’re not getting my personal one,” Fara firmly said.

“I know, Fara. I wouldn’t think of touching it. Now, once we get everything we need onto the skiffs, we are going to book it into the mountains. From there… we’ll just ab lib it.”

They all chuckled or snorted, Eva rolling her eyes all the while, “Isn’t it better to just say ‘wing it?’”

“Too boring. Now then, we’ve still got some time to spend, what do we do to have fun around here?” Mori asked.

They all gave her blank looks, pondering the exact same thing. VII, however, was the first to speak up, “It may not be the best time to have fun, but I may as well suggest some stories to tell. It’s better than just waiting for something to happen, after all.”

“You’ve had experience in that?” Eva asked, tilting her head, “Seems kinda hard to believe, miss divine princess,” she joked with a smile.

Rolling her eyes, VII leaned her head on her hand, “Well, me and my siblings would tell stories of those sorts of things to pass the time. I have a favorite story to tell, personally, but it’s not one of the ones that actually happened.”

They all shifted a bit to get comfortable as VII began to tell her story, “Like I said, this one isn’t real, but it’s a pretty popular folk tale in… I forgot the world’s name, but that’s fine. Anyway, the story goes like this: One day, an explorer was earning her pay, exploring the ruins of an ancient lost city, when she came upon a large, very heavy door in those ruins.

“As an explorer, her job and passion was to find new, incredible things. Because of that, she really wanted to open those doors, but nothing she did worked . She tried to pry it open, find a lock to pick, and even tried to blast the door open with fireballs. Again, nothing she did worked. Just as she was about to go find help, she noticed a line of old, discolored stone in the wall. Three of them, in fact. She followed the closest one and, after finding a hidden route through the ruins, found a large room filled with flowers, divided up into nine segments with flowers of specific colors. The room excited the explorer enough already, but in the center of the room was an orrery.”

“‘Cause it’s always an orrery…” Mori muttered low enough for only her to hear it.

“The orrery had nine arms, each corresponding to a color of flower around the room. She arranged the orrery so that it pointed at each segment of flowers with the corresponding arm, but nothing happened. After checking to make sure that nothing was wrong, the explorer decided to follow another one of the paths, leading her to a second room of flowers, with another orrery in the middle. She did the same with the third path, leading to a very similar room with a very similar orrery.

“As she explored the rooms, she noticed something interesting: she noticed how each of the orreries had a different symbol etched onto them. Sensing something with her intuition, the explorer found that, in every patch of flowers, there was a symbol somewhere in the patch, be it on a rock or stone or even made up of slightly taller flowers.

“You can guess where this is going; she lined up each of the arms with the patches of their corresponding colors and symbols, opening the door. In the room beyond, she found a large scale with two things on it, one on each end. The first was a book, large and heavy. The other, however, was a large jewel, large enough to buy a whole kingdom with it. The explorer, however, found the book a more worthy treasure, plucking it from its place and barely sparing a glance at the jewel dropping into a great abyss. The book was filled with ancient knowledge, which jump started the world into a golden age  where peace reigned supreme. That’s it.”

“VII… I think that’s a children’s story,” Mori said with a grin on her face.

The Clockwork lady growled at Mori, “I know that! I like it because of what it teaches. It says that only looking for wealth is shortsighted. It says that knowledge is the greatest treasure. It says that such knowledge should be shared. It has a clever hero, an interesting puzzle, and a good message. That’s why I like it.”

“That’s fair,” Fara replied, shrugging, “I think the story was good.”

VII chuckled, “Thank you.”

“Then it’s my turn, then?” Mori asked.

They nodded, all but Fara because of her admittedly poor storytelling skills, but when she was about to think of a story or myth to tell, Aerolat condensed in front of the table, “I must ask you to wait, mistress. We are almost to the mountains. And… the drones are gathering far behind us.”

Mori nodded, followed by the rest of them. In only a few minutes, they were all on the deck, ready to repel another attack. This time, however, the Cyst did not show itself. Mori knew that the thing was flying somewhere beyond their sight, perhaps just over the horizon or even just behind them, but they had no way of finding it. It was built for stealth, after all.

The odd thing was, however, that the drones stayed just out of their normal range. Mori could have theoretically sent a few light lances their way, but she refrained. The shadow of drones loomed over them as they reached the mountain, buzzing like a festering hive of wasps as Fara brough the skiff to a halt at the point where the sand changed to craggy, weathered rock.

“Get everything ready! Ally, Mae, you two are with me,” Mori commanded, turning back to the swarm as the two death knights flew up beside her “Make sure they don’t try anything funny. If they get any illusions that we won’t down them if they come close, make them regret it.”

The two nodded, keeping their eyes on the sky, “Hey, mistress, what are you going to do if they get too close? I doubt you can’t hit them from over her already. Especially when they’re all bunched up like that,” Ally asked, raising her borrowed rifle up to bear.

“Play with a little idea I had, that’s what,” Mori replied, “ I’ve been playing with some ideas and one of them bore fruit in the form of a pretty basic ‘Sharp’ mana. Add that to a beam of light that I can make as small as I want and…”

“They get sliced to pieces,” Mae finished, “But what do you mean by ‘Sharp?’ Just the idea of sharpness?”

Mori smiled, pulling up her faceplate, “Sharpness is, in effect, how effective one molecular structure is at splitting another molecular structure. There’s also the idea of division, separation, or destruction, but those are a bit too complicated for this one. If I had more time and more reason, I could have made the mana type a bit   More esoteric, but what’s done is done. This can hopefully cut swathes through these things.”

Mae nodded and Mori turned back just in time to see a bright flash of light come from beside her, followed by a drone falling to the ground dead and shattered, “Mistress, they’re on their way.” Aerolat opened up with the two tower turrets, blowing straight through multiple drones at a time, as both Mae and Ally began firing wildly into the descending swarm above them. Despite the massive damage her death knights did, the swarm of drones with tiny guns crudely attached to their bases came ever closer.

Seeing the come a bit close for comfort, even to the point where a few fired horribly inaccurate pot shots, Mori gathered the mana around her and compressed it all into a sigil on her palm, the one with the metal slate, and fired the beam of light into the swarm.

The light did not do anything flashy, simply existing for a distance then fading away-- which was good for Mori, as she did not want to cleave grooves into planets-- and sliced into any Clockworks in the way. A fair few fell, but most were simply left going slower, which was not good for Mori. She put more enhancement mana into the spell, earning her more fallen drones, but not enough to push them back.

Her efforts, however, did put the swarm’s advance into a standstill. She kept up the effort, cutting swathes out of the swarm’s pure metal mass, before the familiar thunder of cannons washed over them once again.

Without thinking, Mori pushed out a barrier with her internal mana reserves. The explosion slammed into her barrier and almost swept her off of her feet, but she barely managed to stabilize herself on the Kharon’s outer wall. Mori immediately searched for the Cyst, finding it off in the horizon. She growled and readied another barrier when she heard a deafening crack. It did not come from the Cyst, the drone swarm, nor the Kharon.

Mori took a quick look back to see everyone still getting everything needed for their flight on personal skiffs. None had anything to create such a deafening crack. Then she heard another crack. Then a third. Then the ground beneath them caved in, and the Kharon was sent falling into the darkness. Mori only had one thought as she felt the pull of gravity take her, ‘Again? I just broke my “breaking every bone of my body” streak…’