After a tough negotiation, they agree upon a yearly supply of twenty greater crystals of Emily’s choice of elements, and a plethora of other materials, a painful but acceptable loss for the country. With the war discussions finished and Elisime’s departure from Liberte set for a week later, giving the combatants who will be involved time to prepare and get into position, Emily distributes communicators to the Elders who don’t already have them.

After warping everyone back into the palace, the council disperses, and Emily and Pod follow Minerva on a tour through the labs, workshops, and studies being used for the country’s development, taking advantage of their new right to information. Their tour ends with a trip down into the massive chamber beneath the palace that holds the city’s main defensive array.

The large cavern is lit by twisting crystal structures sprawling across the ceiling in their natural formations, untouched by mages’ hands. They glow with a milky-blue hue that reflects off the dazzling white sand lining a pool, which is filled with crystal-clear water below.

The water and air are both alive with a twisting matrix of runes that draw mana from below the water and push it up into the crystals on the roof, forming a strange, reversed waterfall of energy.

“So, can you do it?” Minerva asks hopefully, having relaxed considerably throughout the course of their tour.

“Yes.” Emily nods, drinking in the fascinating array and immediately starting to break it down in her mind. “Give me a day.”

She doesn’t wait for a response, walking out onto the water’s surface and heading to the centre of the chamber as Pod and Minerva settle on the shore. Settling down, Emily falls into a meditative state, quickly performing her promised task and reworking the oasis barrier to ward off electromagnetic detection before pursuing her real goal.

She focuses on the rich natural water mana bubbling up from the vein pulsing through the white sands, deepening her understanding of the element as she reaches for a connection. The soothing mana diverts from the array, temporarily weakening the city’s barrier and worrying Minerva, but she doesn’t stop Emily drawing energy into her circles, gaining strength at a frightening rate.

A little over twenty hours after sitting down, Emily’s eyes snap open with a cerulean glow as the oasis’s water curls around her affectionately. Her lips part in a satisfied grin, and she quickly releases the elemental state as her expression returns to normal.

“What was that?” Minerva asks with wonder, accepting a stack of parchment on which Emily writes her reworked design of their barrier.

“An elemental connection,” Emily explains freely, taking the lead as she heads for the door. “With a high enough affinity, you can forge a more personal relationship with your chosen element, or elements, and use that as a medium for your spellcasting.”

“Incredible! I’ve never heard of such a casting method before. Have you forged connections with any other elements? What methods have you found to deepen your connections? Is this limited to high-level mages?” Minerva hits her with a barrage of questions while frantically switching her focus between Emily and the array blueprints in her hands.

“Clearly, my favoured element isn’t water, so yes. Lightning was my first, and metal my second. As far as I know, it’s only possible to forge a true connection from the third circle and onwards, and you can deepen your connection through meditation and elixirs, just like with circle growth.”

Emily glances at her system stats as she explains, seeing that opening the new connection has increased her intelligence by five. After answering a few more of Minerva’s questions, they finish their visit and say goodbye in the main entrance hall before Emily and Pod head back to Elisime to use her onboard workshops while they wait out the countdown before they set off to end the war.

***

Days later, Emily finally receives a message from Beau informing her that everyone else is either already in place or nearing it. She thanks them and lets them know she’ll be setting off soon before driving another hollow needle through her nose.

Blood runs down her chin, but Emily doesn’t bat an eye as she slides a ring into place in her septum, adding to her newest embellishments. Though it barely contributes towards her progression goal, she has added two new studs on either side of her nose, connected to a bar between her eyes by two fine chains of carved crystal.

Thanks to a little experimentation with her new circle’s power, Emily has discovered a forceful but effective method of compressing lesser crystals with her mana as she carves them, holding them together and letting her reshape them freely. Unfortunately, it won’t be particularly useful until she returns to her factory where she can use the force of a mana vein to help her carve greater crystals, but the glistening chain of lesser lightning crystals contouring her nose are still traced with the fine runework to conjure a last-ditch defensive barrier in an instant, strong enough to block a third circle spell head-on.

Emily wipes the blood from her chin and pushes herself up, striding out of her private workroom and flexing her machina, notifying Pod and setting the ship’s course in the same breath. He leaves a room opposite Emily’s and jogs after her, falling in step beside her as they head for the cockpit.

“You don’t have to join me,” Emily says without turning her head. “I still have spellwork to prepare, but you need a workshop to make the most of your time.”

“I’ll be fine.” Pod shrugs. “I’m as prepared as I can be. An extra six hours of work won’t make much of a difference.”

Emily nods in understanding, respecting the young man’s decision and turning her focus to the Spellweave as Elisime cuts through the air towards the south of the city. The second they pass through the city barrier, which Minerva will remake using Emily’s modifications after the conclusion of the coming assault, Elisime’s engines quickly ramp up in speed, building up to a howling screech as the ship is propelled through the air at a little over four hundred kilometres per hour.

Pod lets out an impressed whistle, firmly grasping the armrests of his chair and feeling the deep rumbling passing through the ship as it forcefully carves a path through the sky.

“It’s a lot slower than the Cutters, but this ship’s a whole different kind of impressive,” he chatters with glee as one of Emily’s secondary cores takes over control of her body to check the ship’s energy consumption.

“We’re burning charge at almost five times the rate we produce it though,” she mutters under her breath. “She can’t maintain full-power flight for more than a day.”

“That’s plenty, right?” Pod asks, hearing her loud and clear. “We’ll reach the border in less than six hours at this rate, and, not accounting for interruptions, Rizenford in nine.”

“As long as we manage the use of the main railguns, yes,” Emily responds, immediately pulling two more cores into the task as she begins simulating the coming battle with the help of the ship’s Logic Core.

A quiet air of anticipation settles over Elisime’s cockpit as Pod connects to the Logic Core as well, and they silently exchange information while rapidly approaching no-man’s-land. Several messages pass through their communicators as the Elders taking part in the operation make the most of Emily’s well-protected, private network to coordinate their movements, watching the location ping she has set up to track her assault with bated breath as it approaches the battlefront.

They charge through a sandstorm on the way to the border, their speed never dipping as they climb in altitude to avoid the violent winds and beasts thriving in the moving natural threat. Elisime turns heads at every city she passes thanks to the thunderous roar of her engines, but Emily doesn’t lift a finger to change that as they shoot past Bastilo and approach the friendly outposts bordering the war zone, letting her sing proudly and announce their presence.

“We’re approaching no-man’s-land now,” Emily warns her apprentice as they pass over a military encampment hidden from normal perception but blatantly obvious on their radar. “Brace and prepare for the first layer of defences.”

It doesn’t take long for her warning to become necessary as, a couple of minutes later, Elisime’s external sensors pick up a massive influx of sound and motion scattered across the dunes below them. Emily fills the screens around her with camera feeds of the outside world, and she easily spots tens of pits being uncovered, letting sand drop into their hidey-holes as the long barrels of artillery cannons poke out and fire away.

Most of the first wave of shots burst before reaching Elisime as the guns’ operators misjudge her altitude, but the few shells that do reach them pepper the hull harmlessly with shrapnel, unable to break through its magically-reinforced alloy.

“Buried artillery unit located, marking all targets now,” Pod says beside her, his hands blurring and sparking as he taps away at the screens around him and sends a flurry of commands to the ship’s core. “Deploying a squad of sominal drones.”

Emily charges the outer hull with a slow flow of her metal mana, reinforcing it against a second volley of shells as a flock of metal birds takes off from a bay beneath them. The small drones beat their metal wings and shoot off, tracing pre-set paths through the sky and periodically dropping small, fist-sized bombs that plummet to the ground, slipping through the open shooting windows and burying them with a thump and a spray of sand.

The guns fall silent halfway through their third volley, and Elisime continues her ceaseless charge as the sominal drones catch up and dock.

“They’re not taking our entrance lightly,” Pod says, tapping away frantically, somewhere between excited and nervous. “Eight motion markers ahead within only a thirty-kilometre scan.”

Emily watches the markers pop up in real time, calmly designating the response to each as they appear before letting the ship loose.

The railguns at Elisime’s sides begin charging and turning, targeting a set of large interceptor airships rising from a dock disguised as a sand dune. Two mirrored panels near the rear of the ship open up before the firing sequence finishes, and two sets of magnetic rails slide out, cutting the ship’s speed for a moment.

The instant she slows, Elisime’s railguns roar and two armour-piercing shells slam into the enchanted hulls of the interceptors, punching large holes through them. The ships waver but continue ascending to join Elisime as she charges two more shots for them.

The rails extending from her rear spark with mana and electricity before firing two processor-controlled Cutters that immediately tilt into sharp turns, curving around to chase after Elisime. Their engines kick up a notch, and the jets shoot out, overtaking Elisime and separating to head towards different contingents of mages, soldiers, and heavy infantry vehicles that have revealed themselves to try and block Emily and Pod’s advance.

Two barriers, one made of wind and one of water, form in front of the two interceptors as the crack of railgun fire rings out across the desert again, but they both shatter against the coming shells’ impacts. The projectiles deform and fragment before getting stuck in the ships’ outer platings.

Emily adjusts her aim, and the fifth and sixth shots from Elisime tear through the interceptors’ engines, causing them to open fire with their cannons in a futile hope of doing some damage as they helplessly lose altitude. The guns, designed to rip an airship down from close range, barely even scratch the hull of Emily’s ship as they cruise past, and she turns her focus to the Cutters ahead of her, dropping bombs on the troops below.

Two or three small payloads drop on each clustered group, shredding the few barriers that get thrown up to protect them and turning the men and women on foot into red paste. Each group with a vehicle or artillery emplacement gets an extra bomb or two, reducing them to rubble.

After all but one of the motion alerts on their monitors have vanished, Emily recalls her attack ships to restock, turning Elisime’s railguns to the final earthbound target. A flicker of machina sets the mechanical limbs by the guns’ breeches to grab from a different belt feeding them ammunition, and another reduces the guns’ intended launch velocity.

Several elemental projectiles shoot towards the ship from the cluster of armoured trucks racing across the sand towards them, but they burst against the hull, without leaving a mark.

The railguns fire, sending two shells spiralling towards the ground and carving two thick wakes. The shells, traced with glowing orange and green runes, shatter the moment they impact, erupting with mana and swallowing the trucks in two balls of churning fire.

“Pausing Cutter recharging,” Pod says, relaxing into his seat and barely glancing at the fire lighting the sands below. “I’ll keep checking the secondary processes draining the main batteries for you.”

“Thanks,” Emily hums, sending a burst of machina through the ship to help her regain her lost speed as five more clusters of enemy movement pop up ahead.