Chapter 82
“Good job convincing the captain to not skin us,” Adam joked as they soared through the air on a barrier, the other two stretched to be longer and curved around them in half-circle screens. They were constantly moving to not block their view of the surroundings, but Adam had given them the command to fly out to intercept any projectile if it came within 10 metres. He wasn’t entirely sure the complex command would work, but if it did it would basically be like reactive armour, which was pretty cool.
“The trick with the Stages from here on is to play within their rules and lore,” Emelia said. She was sitting in front of him on the flat barrier, between his legs, which made it a bit hard for him to concentrate. Especially since she kept shifting and pressing herself against him.
“How do you mean?” he asked, trying to distract himself.
“So, since those idiots stole the map, it was easy to claim they did it out of greed. Especially since it has treasures marked on it. As you know, within this Stage, greed is often a side-effect of someone succumbing to the Gold-cursed affliction. Using that bit of Stage lore, we could give a plausible explanation for why we aren’t associated with their actions. Of course, it might have worked without that, but we’d have needed to spend more time pleading our case.”
“Still, despite how fast we were able to get out of Windtop, I don’t see them anywhere,” Adam remarked.
There were the distant silhouettes of islands around them, but he couldn’t see the shadows of any airships. The gold-tinged clouds covered everywhere the eye could see, and the unseen sun’s light warmed him while the wind played with his hair. Emelia’s platinum-blonde hair kept blowing back into his face, tickling his skin.
“It sounded like the White Flags got one of their airships after them, so it should be easy enough to spot. And I doubt they’d have gone in any other direction than straight away from the settlement, so it’s only a matter of time before we spot them,” Emelia said.
“If we land somewhere, I can double-fuse my barriers and give us more speed.”
“That might be a good idea. If you can control it.”