to shove us down your throat until you’re sick of us.”
Mercy ran over to throw her arms around Yerin’s neck, but Lindon’s attention was grabbed by a bright ring. It didn’t sound like a bell so much as the resonant sound of a script activating.
“I believe Ziel wants in,” Eithan put in, though Lindon had already sensed the same thing.
Dross activated a projection construct, showing the image of Ziel slumped at their front door. A gray cloak hung from his shoulders, and he was leaning with his forehead against the doorframe, his emerald horns digging into the wood.
With a halfhearted shrug of his spirit, Ziel activated the alarm script again.
“You can let him in, Dross,” Lindon said.
[I’m just savoring the moment. You know, if I didn’t open the door, he couldn’t get in? That means I, and I alone, have the power to determine his fate. It feels good. What do you call that?]
“Megalomania?” Eithan suggested.
[Oh, I like that word. Let’s go with that.]
A ring echoed through the home again, and this time Lindon manually sent his own madra through the correct scripts.
Below, the door unlocked.
[Everything I do for fun, you just…crush it.]
“Since everyone’s here, we might as well all go together,” Lindon said. He had to admit, the presence of the others was keeping his mind off of Sacred Valley. They left together, meeting Ziel halfway up the stairs.
“…I could have waited for you outside,” Ziel muttered.
A “cloud fortress” was just a type of cloudship designed for permanence rather than mobility. The Skysworn city of Stormrock was technically a cloud fortress, though on a much larger scale. Lindon thought of them as flying islands more than cloudships.
Though he had spent quite a bit of time negotiating extra speed for his. The basic navigation and propulsion systems came standard on all cloud fortresses produced by the Ninecloud Court, but Lindon had found that many of the exact features were up for negotiation. As long as you were willing to give up a few things.
No sooner had they left the house than Eithan asked, “So, first things first: what did you decide to name this place?”
Yerin gestured to Lindon with open hands, offering him the chance to explain.
“Well, the only cloudships we’ve ever spent significant time on were Stormrock and your Sky’s Mercy,” Lindon said to Eithan. “But many of our memories on Stormrock were unpleasant, and we didn’t want to presume to name the island after Mercy.”
“Aw,” Mercy said, disappointed.
“Ultimately, we felt that this place was a result of our good fortune,” Lindon continued.
“And we’ll take all the luck we can scrape up,” Yerin added.
“So we decided to call this fortress Windfall.”
It had taken hours of off-and-on discussion to land on that name, and Lindon was proud of it.
“Eh,” Ziel said.
Mercy clapped her hands. “I like it! But are you sure you want to have ‘fall’ in the name? Seems like tempting fate, you know?”
“I’m just sad that I wasn’t consulted,” Eithan said with a sigh. “Since I own a third of the island, I think I should at least get a vote…”
Yerin’s sword-arms bristled. “You take your third and walk it half a mile off the edge, and you can call it what you want.”
“It’s a good name,” Lindon insisted.
Mercy nodded eagerly. “It is! I’m sorry I said anything, it’s a good name.”
“How about Eithan’s Rest?” Eithan suggested.
Yerin jabbed at him with her sword.
He slipped to the side and regarded her oddly. “You do know I’m teasing you, right? You have to know that at this point. I find this violence disproportionate.”
“Oh, I know,” Yerin muttered. “It just scrapes me raw more than usual. Couldn’t tell you why.”
Eithan leaned in close to examine Yerin’s eyes. “Ruby?” he asked.
“Her too.”
She stabbed at him again, and he danced away.
Most of the open space on Windfall was rolling grassland. Lindon had initially tried to fill in the open space, but he needed the cycling mountain to be far enough away from the house that its aura wouldn’t interfere with any scripts, and Lindon had been more concerned with the inner workings of the cloud fortress itself than the features on the surface.
Their first stop on the tour was the miniature mountain that would serve as their aura source. It resembled a rocky peak of dark stone, but only twice as wide as the house and half again as tall. The top belched smoke and flame, and if Lindon opened his aura sight, he could see the powers of fire and destruction braided