37th of Season of Earth, 58th year of the 32nd cycle

  The blue skies—were not. Instead of a deep blue, blackness welcomed Newt and his five fellow disciples as they climbed out of the cargo hold. They gasped at the sight. There was light. They could see everything just fine, but the sky had taken on the color of the night.

  “Did we stumble upon a secret realm,” Aura asked.

  Newt did not know. It was certainly possible for a secret realm’s sky to be black or green or pink. But could a giant airship enter a secret realm? How big did it have to be for the ship to maintain its breakneck speed and not hit a realm barrier?

  “Look down.” Sharpcut pointed towards the ground after approaching the window.

  The five cultivators crowded around the windows, down below stretched a vast expanse of green smeared with yellow and red, checkered with blue blots. Fire suddenly started dancing around the airship, and with increasing terror, the cultivators realized there was no spiritual energy in the air.

  They watched the outside in stunned silence, their stomachs rising and falling and flipping. A faint breeze startled them, and everyone spun to stare at Aura.

  “What’s happening?” she asked, but nobody offered a response. They just kept staring at her with suspicion. “I just tried to summon a gust of wind, but the technique failed.”

  Newt summoned his lighter. The tiny blowtorch worked just fine, a sharp flame dancing atop his finger with no visible difficulty.

  “My technique seems to work without issues.” While Newt spoke, Aura and Sharpcut grabbed their chests, gasping like fish on dry land.

  “Can’t breathe.” Aura collapsed first, and Sharpcut followed.

  The only ones standing were Elder Alabaster’s four disciples, who exchanged confused looks.

  Shrugging, Newt exhaled and inhaled.

  “The air is too thin,” he said. What breath he had in him should keep him alive for at least an hour, but then he would pass out. “Don’t talk, I guess that’s how they lost the air and why they collapsed so quickly.”

  Newt looked at his prone sect members with surprising calm. He had already wasted his breath, and it was too late for changes.

  Somewhere in the back of his head panic stewed, but after surviving the battle and watching his fellow disciples and elders fall under the bloody blades, the prospect suddenly seemed a lot less terrifying.

  “Do you think one of them is a traitor?”

  Greenbow shook her head, but the other two shrugged.

  “Anything we can do right now?”

  Three shrugs, and Newt nodded. They were helpless, flying in an airship, which seemed out of spiritual energy, or perhaps they flew through an entire area void of spiritual energy.

  “How long do you think you can keep your defensive techniques active with no fresh spiritual energy entering your bodies?”

  Two shrugs and Emeraldstreak raised seven fingers. She guessed a week. For some reason, her knowing something as absurd did not seem odd to Newt.

  “Does anyone have any ideas?”

  Greenbow went to the command room and started searching it, then the other three followed. They had no idea what they might find, but it was better than sitting around doing nothing. At some point, Newt’s mind blurred, then everything turned black.

  Uncomfortable heat spread across Newt’s back and awoke him. The sky had turned lighter. He stood. A glance out the window told him that the green below had grown larger. He could breathe again, and spiritual energy was present once more.

  “Around twenty hours,” Greenbow answered the unformed question.

  How long was I out?

  Oh.

  The ship was hot, its glorious outside melted and scraped. Newt recalled dropping the shield for a moment, and, thanks to the circumstances, felt less guilty about it. The heat had done the poor thing countless times greater damage than his botched attempt at activating the already active shields.

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  “Thank you, Greenbow. I knew you would endure.”

  “Actually, I passed out for half an hour about two hours ago. Emeraldstreak was the one watching over us.”

  Newt nodded. He could guess several things from that. Assuming there was a traitor aboard, Emeraldstreak was not the person. She could have killed them all in their sleep. Or she is the traitor and has some other purpose for them, which may be revealed later.

  These thoughts are getting me nowhere. He focused on another, more frustrating thought. I could have stayed conscious had I not wasted my breath on talking.

  “Did you reach any conclusions while I was sleeping? Found the stowaway or any evidence—”

  Greenbow shook her head, and Newt’s words died.

  “We concluded we were really high up, and now we’re falling down. The shields burned away or got damaged in some other manner. It was really hot at one point, and we had to use a bit of spiritual energy to protect Aura and Sharpcut.”

  Greenbow glanced towards the sleeping duo, and Newt followed her gaze. His sisters and brother wrapped them in blankets, and Newt could not help but notice he did not receive a similar treatment.

  “We discussed what had happened at the sect. Somehow, those madmen had bypassed the barrier while it was still active. They obviously had agents inside the sect, and their elders or leaders had intentionally chosen to fight away from the ground. If their purpose was to exterminate us, it makes more sense for a handful of elders to attack all out, wipe us out, and retreat.

  “Then there’s the problem with the airship. If they really wanted to prevent our escape, the saboteurs could have just destroyed the command board during the battle.”

  Newt nodded and considered the question that has been bothering him from the start.

  “Why did they attack during the day?”

  “Most sect warfare is conducted during the day,” Stegorock said. “We, cultivators I mean, care little about the light, we’re awake day or night, so there’s no surprising the sleeping enemy. But at night, explosions and bright flashes are visible from a greater distance. Allies or opportunists would have an easier time realizing something was amiss. And even if they can’t help, they can ambush or cut off the attacker’s retreat.”

  Newt nodded.

  “Do you know who they were?”

  Stegorock and Greenbow shook their heads.

  “The Blood Cult,” Emeraldstreak spat the name, then spat for real. “Those scum destroyed my clan when I was a little girl. I survived by dumb luck. They couldn’t locate a mortal child hidden in a closet.”

  She looked at Newt. “When that madman pointed a finger towards our group, I thought they were after me. But then he said, ‘him,’ and I knew they were after you. Why would their leader want your head?”

  With all the adrenaline, death, and chaos, Newt had completely forgotten about that. Yes, the Blood Cult had come after him. The sect may have fallen, all those elders and disciples had died… All because of him.

  “I don’t know.” Newt’s hands trembled. He was a star of misfortune. Everything around him fell apart. His family, his clan, his sect. For the first time in ages, sweat marred his brow.

  Wherever I go, destruction follows. Dandelion and Everlast nearly died with me in that cave.

  He escaped the self-accusations and focused.

  “The Blood Cult had attacked my clan the last time I visited. I killed the cultists. That’s all.” Newt recalled fighting the Blood Cult in his vision during the summer solstice, but the cultists had no way of knowing that.

  “Maybe you killed someone important?”

  Newt wanted to shake his head, but considered Emeraldstreak’s question. He recalled the scene. There were certain oddities about the encounter.

  The cultists seemed all too ready to die for the fatty leading them. That nightmare-fuel basement was incredibly abnormal. At the time, Newt thought that maybe all blood cult members could make something like that, but the majority of those who attacked Explorer’s Gate were raving madmen. He doubted they could scribe letters, let alone runecraft.

  “Maybe they had someone important with them. Something like a master or grandmaster scribe. What they had set up near my clanhold was definitely an aberrant—”

  Newt wanted to say spell formation, but those maddening smears of blood and whatever lurked beyond them were no spell formation. He did not know what they were, but they were not spell formations. His art was incapable of such travesty.

  “—thing,” he finished weakly.

  Emeraldstreak nodded, her face like stone. The senior brother and sister, on the other hand, paled at the implication.

  “They were after you?” Stegorock said, failing to conceal the accusation in his voice.

  “Shush,” Greenbow rebuked. “Aura is stirring.”

  Silence filled the vacuum, and minutes flowed as the four brothers and sisters waited for the two outsiders to awaken.

  “What’s happening?” Aura stood and regarded them.

  “We’re falling or flying downward to be more exact, but we’re still really high up, and our speed is ridiculous.” Greenbow explained the situation in one line.

  It was a difficult sentence to process, and Aura opened and closed her mouth a crack as she digested the information. She paled, and Newt figured that meant she understood how bad things were.

  “What are we going to do?”

  Greenbow shrugged. “We’re above the Savage Wood. We can gather everything useful from the ship and jump, but we will be scattered all over the most dangerous territory known to man, or we could risk it, stay with the ship, hopefully survive the crash and handle things together. You’re the only one who can really glide amongst us, so if you think you can’t survive the fall, you should get out as soon as possible, but even if you do, you will land in the jungle, or a wandering pterosaur might snatch you from the air.”

  Aura bit her lip, staring out the window, but Newt had a feeling she wanted to curl up and hug her knees in the corner.