Advance Preparation

Sebastean comes gradually awake in his bright sphere prison, surprised to hear non-Seraph voices shouting and swearing. Familiar voices, he realizes with excitement. “Oden! Kari! What are you doing here?” He shouts into the light, expecting perhaps a rescue.

“Sebastean?” Oden's voice comes back, startled. “You're in here too? I didn't see you this morning!”

“I've been here for... I have no idea how long. You didn't notice I was missing?”

Before Oden answers, a gruff Seraphic voice comes over the speakers. “Silence. We won't tolerate your conspiring aboard our ship.”

Kari's cheerful voice, bright and sunny even in captivity, laughs aloud. “Aha! So we're on a ship! Thank you kindly, mr. Guard.”

The speaker clicks off hurriedly. Sebastean grins towards the direction of Kari's voice. “Nice. Now they're good and pissed off.”

“Angry people make mistakes. What is that thing you're in? All they did was chain me. I can't see Oden.”

Oden shouts, sounding muffled. “I'm in a water tank. Up to my neck, I can channel but it just makes the water boil. Which doesn't feel good. At least they learned their lesson. Trying to fight me in the woods, what a laugh. Hope there's some town left.”

The bravado of the frightened, Sebastean decides. If Oden was that good, they wouldn't have taken him alive. Something occurs to him, something he feels guilty for not thinking of earlier. “What about Aelia? And Evan?”

“Didn't see them.”

Kari speaks up. “I think... I think Evan might have maybe stayed with Aelia. I don't know for sure.” There's a brief moment of awkward silence.

Oden speaks up, sounding amused. “Really?”

Sebastean growls and rolls his eyes. “We can gossip if we get out of here. Any ideas? Here's the thing, I think; We're all stuck, but we could all get the others out easily. Doesn't that seem weird?”

“What do you mean weird?”

He absently scratches at the light-walls of the sphere. “Weird like intentional. Like they're taunting us, like they know exactly what we're capable of and they want us to know it. Like it's personal.”

Sebastean sits down on the warm, curved floor of his sphere cell and tries, in vain, to channel. His shadow magic won't even flicker in the oppressively-lit chamber.

“We're going to get out,” Kari says after a long while. “I can already tell. It feels like a good day.”

Oden laughs, a muffled sound. “It was a great day, until someone bashed our door down with a force hammer. Finally I don't set a wake-up alarm and what happens? Someone gets me up early anyway. The world just likes me better tired, I think.”

The prisoners laugh, for the moment forgetting their bonds, and Sebastean feels the warmth of hope. Maybe there is a chance. They're still alive, which means they can still resist. Somehow.

So where are Aelia and Evan? He tries to relax, and before he knows it falls into a deep sleep. There are no dreams.

* * *

“I channeled, by the way,” Evan says, tightening the straps on his body armor. “Blew up the living room. A little.”

Aelia looks at him sideways, halfway through buckling on her own combat outfit. It's a look Evan hasn't seen on her before, and though the situation is serious and the mood is dark, he finds himself smiling a little whenever he looks at her.

Her body is wrapped in skintight black leather from the collarbone down, augmented at certain places with armored plates. A deep blue poncho wraps around her shoulders, though it ends well above her waist unlike the long ones she's fond of wearing.

Fragile- looking bracelets and necklaces adorn her wrists and neck, which Evan knows to be a collection of, in fact, weaponry. Each of the small shining charms is imbued with certain spells, created by a channeler in Halfmoon Village.

He forces himself to stop grinning when she looks at him directly. “I don't suppose you could blow up some Seraphs a little, later on?”

“Actually I don't really know how I did it. And I don't think it would have hurt anyone, unless maybe some glass got in their eyes.”

She gazes at him, seemingly at a loss for words. “Well thanks for mentioning it. I guess that makes you an Irritant-Caster or something. Lucky you.”

“There's no need to be mean. I figured you'd know what it meant.” Evan is surprised at her attitude towards him, even considering the circumstances. He checks his sword one more time, sliding it partially out of its sheath and letting it fall back in. “Is that like, a first sign of something?”

“I really don't know. Are you ready?” She mutters, sliding a pair of long knives into twin sheaths on her hips, and raising a weapon that looks shockingly like an assault rifle up to her eyes, looking down the sight. “Also how's your aim?”

“Uh... I went target shooting, once. When I was nine.”

“Super. Look, if you're not up to this, I won't hate you for staying.”

“That's not an option.” Evan says with authority, looking terrified. “Our friends have been taken and we're getting them back. And there's no way I'd... yeah I'm going.”

“No way you'd what?”

He looks around for anyone eavesdropping, sees only the dozen Pteros workers arming themselves similarly and loading a small airship, and coughs. “I was going to say I wouldn't let you go alone.” He braces himself for a tongue-lashing, but she only looks at him curiously. “Sorry. I know, stupid thing to say. I just figured, I'm a channeler, it would be kind of irresponsible to sit this out, you know?”

“That's sweet,” she says finally, her voice softening. “Just stay close to me and try not to get hurt. Let's go.”

Together, they climb the rope ladder onto the already- airborne ship, called the Silverleaf, and head up to the cockpit. Several Pteros are running through a series of system checks, and two more are hunched over a holographic map, pointing excitedly at a spot a few miles out to sea.

“What's that?” Evan asks, thinking he might already know.

“Seraph battle ship.” One of them responds. “Probably where they've got the prisoners. Pretty big, but nothing we can't handle, with a little luck.”

“How muck luck?”

The Pteros miner laughs darkly. “Just a sticking miracle. Freak accident drops all their weapons into the ocean, for instance.”

Aelia nudges into the huddle. “I can maybe arrange something like that. Where?” Someone points, and the Silverleaf whines as it picks up speed, streaking towards the Seraph warship.

“Ten minutes to contact, weapons range in nine. That means we've got sixty seconds of dodging to do before we get onboard, so buckle up.

“Let's get our friends back.”