It was disorienting, seeing such a modern looking city locked behind a dome of transparent energy on Ro'an.

Also, they weren't quite as present as I'd thought when I'd first noticed them.

"Are they frozen?" I asked Captain Sidhe, adjusting the Eagle Eyes enchantment I'd worked into my goggles.

"That is what I wanted you to determine. Sadly, other than myself, you are our most expert spellcaster."

She might not have thought it so sad had she realized I was actually Pegasus. Since she didn't know, I could understand her concern.

I looked over the readings brought in by the mostly repaired sensor suite at the tip of the ship. It seemed there was something interfering with them, creating a sort of blank space where the city should've been.

"It's not void," I mumbled to myself. That was too explosive to do what we were seeing.

"The important question is… can we use this?" Captain Sidhe asked, hands crossed behind her back.

"Not sure how. Wish we hadn't slipped out of the wind, honestly. It's gonna be hell to get back inside," I said, looking towards where I knew the invisible wind was whipping by a few hundred feet to the side and above.

"The monsters avoid the area. Taking our time to repair here will increase our odds of making it out of the Heart," the Captain said, turning towards me. "Or do you disagree?"

"No," I said, frowning. She was right. Still, didn't mean I had to be happy about even more time away.

She dismissed me and I sought out Kezil to give him the news.

The Captain interrupted me halfway through by putting out a ship wide announcement stating that we'd spend the next week taking rotating days off.

I thumped my head against the nearby bulkhead, earning a shoulder pat from Kezil. "Easy there lad. Your wife'll appreciate you making it home alive more'n you getting back a week early."

Nodding, I went to work. Just because she'd granted us time off, that didn't mean I had to take it.

I was proven wrong on the third day when Vaden showed up in person to physically pull me away.

At least he let me practice my storm dancing, though he put a staff in my hands. "Looks incomplete without it," had been all he'd said.

I hadn't said anything at first, but as I realized the others were going to enforce the break, I slowly softened up.

Vaden decided to teach me how to use the staff, to keep myself safe more than anything, though I started thinking of ways I might incorporate a staff and storm dancing together for casting spells.

When he wasn't with me, Vaden made regular excursions into the monster strewn area just beyond the windwall. Amusingly, the windwall meant his hunters were finally able to claim their spoils by retreating back through it.

Most monsters really did hate it there.

I couldn't blame them.

We wasted a full two months in the calm, slowly drifting along the edge. Through prolonged investigation, we determined that time inside the city wasn't frozen. It was just insanely slowed. The distortion was something like a thousand years outside for every second that passed inside. Slow, but moving.

Despite those two months of repair, the Dauntless still wasn't even halfway back to its former glory. We'd managed to repair three-quarters of the Leaves and even rigged up a simple but massive enchantment that turned the central corridor into a rough jet engine.

It was enough we could've successfully flown into the headwind and made decent time.

Still, the math said that going around would be faster.

So, after two months of staring at the frozen city, we left it behind.

Suzenne lamented the fact we hadn't even tried to send an expedition inside, but the Captain had simply pointed out that even if a person survived the transition, by the time they turned around, everything and everyone they'd ever known would be gone.

The enchanted scout we'd sent over the city had at least been able to map the dome's outer limits.

I had to wonder about the city as we navigated towards the mana-stream. What connection did the frozen city have to the Pillars? Was the barrier that held it frozen in time still intact in the real world? Had it broken when the Pillars had fallen? Were those people suddenly thrust into a world full of monsters, everything they'd once known gone in what, to them, was a handful of seconds?

Didn't matter. Not really. But it still took up a corner of my mind.

It took another three months to make it back to Terra Vista, and another two weeks to make it back to Terra Centra.

I'd spent more than half a year in compressed time. Didn't even want to imagine how bad the headache was going to be.

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Not likely as bad as the heartache.

The time hadn't been all bad. There might have only been a few 'real' people, but I'd enjoyed time with each of them. The captain had even given me more lessons in command and control, as she called it.

Still, the closer we drew to the promised safety of Terra Centra, the more I found myself growing impatient. We were safely back in Terra Vista. I hadn't needed to repair anything in weeks.

What was the trial even waiting for? For us to physically dock?

Kezil's hand landed on my shoulder. "It'll be okay, kid. Word is, our families will be waiting."

"Wait, you have a family?" I asked, turning to look at the old man, mouth agape.

"What? You think I don't have people who'd love all this?" he asked gesturing specifically to the melted half of his face.

"You've literally never mentioned them. Not once in over half a year working side by side," I said, shaking my head.

"Not all of us are bleeding hearts like you, kid," Kezil said, huffing. "Wife knows how to take care of the little ones and I know how to keep the Dauntless in the air."

"Wife… but… I know you were… you know, with those women," I said, waving in the general direction of where the stage had once been.

"What happens on the ship, stays on the ship," Kezil said, eyes narrowing. "Best you remember that, kid."

"That's awful," I said, shaking my head. "But I won't say anything."

Mostly 'cause it wouldn't matter anyway. This was all history anyway. My opinion of Kezil had fallen a lot in that short exchange though.

"Look, kid…" Kezil said, his voice quieter. "Things with my wife. They've never been good, so to say, but I love her. It's just… not all of us get the privilege of going back every week. And a man gets lonely."

"Kezil, I'm not here to judge you," I said, though I couldn't help but wonder if that was true. Would my judgment affect his fate? I honestly didn't know. "And you think I haven't been lonely? Yet you haven't seen me seeking out Suzenne's bed, have you?"

"Woulda done you both a world of good, if you had. Girl's wound tighter than a Forgeborn's sphincter," Kezil grunted.

"Just… just forget it," I said. I could almost picture Tamrie standing at the dockyard, Bevel and Arizar beside her, waving as the Dauntless pulled in. Inertia would be there too, Tresla trying to keep her from rooting through whatever the local enchantineers had left laying about.

And Calbern, standing silently, radiating grace and diligence.

Only thing was. They wouldn't be waiting there. Nor would they have felt months of separation. For them… I'd have been gone for seconds, maybe a few minutes. Even the sight of Terra Centra wasn't quite enough to draw me out of my mood, not completely.

The city was built in tiers with spokes poking out of it at all angles, like several bicycle wheels stacked on top of each other with the outer rim removed. It wasn't as impressive as Spellford, though it was still quite the sight.

Terra Centra was a city of circles, mostly in the stacked rings that climbed higher and higher, but also in the docking rings that jutted out of its upper levels.

It was apparent as we approached that Dauntless was special. There were more airships moving about around the tiered city than I'd ever seen before but even the largest of them was less than half Dauntless's size.

I'd known there was a narrow margin of size that most airships stuck to, but it was strange to see so starkly.

Size was defense. Monsters instinctively avoided ships over a certain size. Well, unless you made the mistake of passing over the Front and into the Heart.

Still, bigger ships meant more expensive. Usually in a way that didn't scale smoothly. Which meant that the value dropped off rapidly after getting past that safety threshold.

The aerial dockyards around Terra Centra spoke to that, most of them sized for the standard large-but-much smaller airship.

Dauntless had one of its own. The dock was the most alive part of the city, swarming with what have been thousands upon thousands of workers waiting for us.

As the spindly spokes swung inward, clamps securing us to the dock, I closed my eyes, waiting for the trial to end, for the headache to slam into place.

Yet even then, I was denied. We'd successfully gotten Dauntless back, yet I was still trapped.

Taking a deep breath, I followed the others off the ship. True to his word, Kezil's family was waiting. As was Vaden's. Suzenne stood awkwardly with me as we waited for the Captain. I wasn't certain why we were waiting, she'd simply told us that there was one more thing we needed to do right as we'd been disembarking.

Unfortunately, she'd then been immediately surrounded by a group of guards who started asking angry questions. After nearly an hour, she emerged from her meeting with the group of guards who'd come to interrogate her.

And to take us into custody, it seemed.

The five of us were escorted by those same guards further into Terra Centra. I couldn't help but note the disdain they were treating us with. As if us returning was somehow spitting on their honor.

I had a bad feeling about where this was going.

We were marched along an austere corridor, into a set of rooms that had no windows. There was a man in a uniform similar to the captain's waiting for us, though his had more shiny bits of metal on the shoulders.

"Captain Sidhe," he said, leaning forward, a too wide grin on his face. "So nice of you to return to us."

"Arch-Madrigal Torven," Sidhe replied, snapping off a crisp salute.

A salute we did our best to mirror. That Kezil had the best salute among us said everything that needed to be said about how well we pulled it off.

"You know, it's not often that a ship that was lost with all hands returns from beyond the grave," the man said, taking stepping forward until he was breathing into the Captain's face. "Even rarer, when it's a ship with the prestige of the Dauntless. And to return after being lost inside the Front? Unprecedented."

"It occurs to me, Arch-Madrigal, that you don't sound pleased by this development," Captain Sidhe said.

"Quite astute of you, Captain. Same political acumen that allowed you to get that monstrosity of yours built in the first place," Torven said, stepping away from her. "While your return might have captured the imagination of the people, your failure has doomed any hopes you might've had of remaining in command."

"I understand," Sidhe said, nodding.

"Do you? I'll admit, I didn't expect you to take it with grace. Guess you learned your lesson the hard way," he said, face twisting into a grimace. "How many thousands died for your arrogance, Captain Sidhe?"

"Nine-thousand, three-hundred and forty-two, that I'm aware of, Arch-Madrigal," Sidhe replied, tone even though I could feel the ache just beneath.

"All but ten thousand. And you returned with less than a thousand and a cannibalized corpse," he said, shaking his head.

"Sir. I understand why I'm here. But why did you ask for these people to join me? They're not even officers."

"You didn't think you'd be enough for them, did you, Captain? The council needs their heads."

Suzenne broke into tears and I found myself putting my arm around her, offering her the little comfort I could as I traded a glance with Vaden.

"What? We did it all right!" Kezil protested, stepping forward. "Wouldn't have been a single man who'd made it back, if not for us."

"And you have my sincere thanks for that, enchantineer," Torven said, the anger in his voice fading.

"What about my family?" Kezil demanded, his fists curled, a single step from swinging.

"I'm afraid you've misunderstood. This isn't a death sentence. It's far worse."

I felt a tug then, and I realized, at long last, I was being returned to reality. As I was, one last sentence echoed through the room.

"You've all been enlisted to join the real fight."

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