The world was beautiful from the sky, more beautiful than Quinn could have ever imagined. The peaks and valleys, spotted with dark green trees and dusted with a thin layer of powdery snow, drifted by with a celerity reminiscent, in Quinn's mind, of the undulations of sand on the seafloor as seen from the deck of a steamboat at maximum speed. The sky was a cool gray, with ominous clouds flowing like rivers between some of the alpine valleys nearby, and in the corners of the world great fluffy pillars ascended into the overhead cloud layer as if holding the gray-white roof aloft.

  It was snowing softly, though the clumps of snowflakes melted when they struck the various leading edges around the airplane. In order to prevent a repeat of Seth's unfortunate discoveries regarding the effects of ice on the wings, Quinn had designed a system which pumped water, which was heated by the engine, through a network of metal tubes that spanned the wings and the tail surfaces. As a side-effect, the cabin of the craft was uncomfortably warm. This warmth radiated into the glass canopy, causing the incoming snow to melt and form thin streams of water which flowed aft ceaselessly.

  The broad base of Spire Renna, raw black stone shrouded in a veil of wispy clouds, rose from the emerald heartland of the Theocracy to the northeast. The other Theocracy pilots had formed into a jagged line at about the same altitude, trailing off toward the spire. One final airplane rose far above the others, gleaming chrome in the silvery light of the overcast sky. Quinn watched the thing, uncomprehending, enchanted by the self-assured beauty of the distant craft. Long streaks of pale smoke reached out like thin fingers, bending in airy parabolas toward the airplanes at the far end of the line. With two brilliant flashes of orange light, the furthest airplanes exploded. As the flaming heaps of molten ethersteel fell from the sky, they left behind plumes of billowing midnight as evidence of their passing.

  I was right, he realized. The witches have their own airplanes. He could only assume that his other theories were also correct. Namely, that White Chasm was chosen as the site for a university because of the poor flying weather.

  Two more streams of smoke lanced out, and by that time the pilots on the far eastern tip had been aroused from any semblance of calm. They maneuvered violently, pitching down and rolling in an attempt to avoid the imminent death which hunted them like some predatory bird. It was then that Quinn realized just how fast those trials of smoke were traveling. They easily closed the distance and destroyed two more airplanes, and in the final instant before impact they were still accelerating.

  It was this revelation which caused Quinn to recontextualize the shining gray airplane relative to the surrounding sky. It was further away than he realized at first. It was also much larger than he had assumed, and it was flying very, very fast. It had already overtaken the leading edge of the line formation and began to pitch up violently. Two jets of shimmering heat erupted from the craft as it looped around and began flying upside-down in the opposite direction.

  This maneuver did not last long. It tilted like a knife on edge and shrank, nose-on, into a dark silhouette against the pale clouds. It did not resemble an airplane at all. There was no propeller disk, and the wings were very tight against the sleek, flat body. It also had two vertical tail fins. The nose pitched up relative to the knife's edge, which had the effect of rotating the whole craft without any additional roll.

  The way that thing turns, Quinn thought with a shiver. Who would design it that way? And why?

  The enemy had drifted much closer. Without warning the last airplane in the line suddenly broke apart, with the body crumpling in and the wings folding tip-to-tip. The next airplane in the line suddenly broke apart in the middle, the whole tail sawed clean off as if by some invisible blade. Finally, a third airplane exploded in a ball of fire, and for the first time Quinn could make out the tiny flashes of light originating from the nose of the enemy craft, extraordinarily brief and leaving a thin trail of black smoke which quickly dissipated.

  Seven airplanes had been destroyed, out of the thirty that had managed to take off. A nearby Theocracy pilot drifted close, using the rudder to pull parallel to Quinn's own airplane. With a blast of wind-aspect ethermancy, he amplified his voice above even that of the engines.

  "Leader?" the soldier asked. "What do we do?"

  What would Seth do?

  His own airplane was armed with a single cannon on the belly, but it needed to be reloaded manually after each shot. Seth would no doubt turn to fight the thing, and Quinn suspected he would have been wrong to do so. It was too fast, powered by those strange engines which produced jets of rippling air, and from the latter three kills, Quinn assumed it had a cannon, one which could be fired rapidly without manual reloading.

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  Once again, the enemy airplane overshot the leading edge of the formation. Once again, the nose pitched up and the craft accelerated rapidly, rocketing off into a huge loop to begin the next attack. Quinn was dumbfounded by this behavior.

  Why doesn't it just slow down? he wondered.

  With a second good look at the silhouette of the enemy craft, he realized that the wings were very, very small compared to the wings on his own airplane. They were narrow, hugging the body like the fins of a fish.

  It was designed to fight, he realized.

  Quinn immediately considered the implications of that wing shape and size. Seth's craft, and by extension Quinn's own ethersteel airplane, was designed with lift as the primary purpose. For the fighting airplane, lift was likely a secondary consideration to raw offensive power. It was flying fast because that was the only speed which allowed it to stay aloft. And if the thing could not fly slow, then the pilot would not likely be comfortable flying very close to the obstacles on the ground.

  Quinn amplified his voice in turn. "We need to go down. Hug the trees, the mountains, the chasms. Just try not to get lost in the fog. If the enemy gets too close, slow down and hope they overshoot."

  "Affirmative!" the soldier replied. He drifted off to the east to relay this order to the others. Hopefully some of them survived.

  Quinn pushed forward on the stick. It did not feel like the airplane was changing direction, instead it felt like the whole world rotated around him. To either side the horizon tipped, drunkenly tilting until the nose was vertical. The trees directly below resembled a bed of nails when viewed from above, dark spikes dusted with snow. The cramped ethersteel prison of the cabin began to rattle and buckle with the intense forces of the rapid descent. The airspeed was increasing rapidly, and the wing tips were beginning to bend and rock. Quinn eased off on the engine power, which caused the propeller to begin to slow down. He realized, looking down through the dark disk at the forest below, that the propeller would act like a huge brake. He strained his neck to glance back up at the formation through the slick glass.

  The other soldiers were following his example, even the ones who were very far away. Quinn pulled up on the stick to level before reaching the ground. The airspeed began to fall rapidly. Going up requires more power, going down requires less power. Makes sense. So much tacit knowledge had been lost when Seth died. They managed to build a mock-up so the other soldiers could practice the very basic controls, but unfortunately the limited training hadn't been enough. Three airplanes continued their descent into the forest and exploded.

  Only twenty left.

  There was a chasm between two bluffs to the north, an ancient wash winding within a snowclad plateau in the Theocracy highlands. Quinn was in the lead, so he tipped his nose to one side with a touch of roll, and pulled the mouth of the canyon into the center of his propeller disk. He didn't commit to being inside or above the canyon, because he could not see the twists and turns ahead, and because it was unnecessary. The enemy fighter was trailing the pack, ripping more airplanes to pieces with its cannon. One, two, three, four more kills. Two more fingers of pale smoke reached out and exploded. Less than half the Theocracy pilots remained.

  I'm lucky I was in the west of the formation, Quinn reflected.

  An outrageous roaring sound filled the sky, dominating the sound of Quinn's propeller. The sight of the two orange jets shooting from the tail of the fighter made Quinn aware of the campfire crackle in that sound. He got a very good look at the thing in that instant. It was shaped like an arrowhead with two square openings near the cone-like nose, swept-back wings, two tails with two rudders, and a pair of huge horizontal surfaces at the rear which no doubt required the force of a steamboat engine to operate.

  Two thick spear-like objects were hanging from one wing, and with a flash of light one of the two lanced forward, arcing toward the airplane trailing Quinn's own. Like the others, this flying spear left a trail of smoke as it flew, and its path was indirect, falling too far down and then pulling up to smash into the Theocracy airplane right at the engine. The second spear left the fighter's wing, dipped, and pointed its nose straight at Quinn himself.

  His mind was racing. Too many thoughts. The engine! It hit the engine! Only two possibilities, heat or ethermancy. Heat or ethermancy!

  Quinn dismissed the weave that created heat, while simultaneously pushing down on the stick. The flying spear dutifully continued to follow. A blast of water-aspect ethermancy on the steam in the tubes caused the whole engine to freeze up and lose power. Finally, Quinn dismissed all weaves, even the wind-aspect weaves designed to protect his ears. It was still following, but at a very slight angle.

  He kicked the rudder.

  The nose jolted to one side and the wings rolled over violently. The deadly rocket continued on its original path, straight into the chasm wall behind Quinn, detonating and blasting shattered stone out in a huge plume. Quinn's airplane shuttered and began to sag. The nose felt heavy. With another blast of ethermancy Quinn began to restore the engine. The enemy fighter flew directly overhead, nose rising, leaving two shimmering jets in its wake. It kept going, smaller and smaller, until it vanished into the gray overcast and was gone.

  As Quinn was recovering from his self-induced engine failure, one of the other Theocracy pilots caught up to him.

  "Where did the enemy go?" Quinn asked.

  "Probably ran out of ammo," the soldier replied. It was a fair answer.

  Thankfully, the chasm opened up to the north, so there was plenty of time to recover to normal flight. Directly ahead, where the plateau dropped away to reveal the green valley beyond, there, surrounded by rolling hills of dark forests, the armies of the Blue Wolf were fielded on a gentle knoll which gleamed flowery yellow in the sunlight.