Chapter Two – Departure
“Isaac, this is Uncle Mark and Aunt Gloria.” Sarah introduced the pair, though she’d warned him they weren’t actually related to the Miller family. Friends of the family were a detail he’d never really considered, for obvious reasons.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Isaac said, offering a hand to each of them in turn and trying to figure out why they seemed familiar. He’d probably at least seen Mark in the papers once; the guy was the very picture of a corporate executive, from the military-precise haircut to the three-piece suit that probably cost more than most cars. Gloria, on the other hand, was plain and mousey, brown hair and glasses, with a quiet demeanor that didn’t spark any true recognition. Apparently she had a job somewhere in Star Central, so it was possible she’d been in the background somewhere and he’d just never noticed.
Regardless, he couldn’t place either of their faces so he shook off the feeling as Sally Miller, Sarah’s mother, came to greet the guests. Dinner at the Miller place was always a treat, mostly thanks to Gratin, the reptilian cook and maybe-spy that lived with the Millers in the big suite that comprised the tenth floor of the Humbert Building. Despite his diminutive size, he definitely knew how to make a mean risotto.
Sally made small talk with the two until Crash arrived only minutes later, while Isaac helped Sarah set the table. It wasn’t a purposeful exclusion, but it did make him realize that despite recent improvement in his fortunes, he didn’t really move in the same circles as people like Mark or Sally. The big movers and shakers of Star City, all the top politicians and superheroes.
“So how is Star Central?” Sally asked as they all finally sat down at the table. Gratin scurried out with the first course on a hand trolley; some sort of bisque.
“Quieter than the past few weeks,” Gloria said, her enunciation quite precise. “Enough that the Administrator has finally been persuaded to take a vacation. It’s being kept quiet officially, but it’s hard to hide it at higher levels. Glorybeam is doing a few extra rounds to make sure nothing major happens.”
Isaac exchanged a look with Sarah. That might explain Lia’s timing, and why she seemed a little rushed. Smuggling people to the moon probably was going to be easier without Administrator Ike breathing down everyone’s necks. If they were lucky – though Isaac held little hope for it – they could be there and back before the head of Star Central returned. Presenting him with a fait accompli had worked well enough with the Orrery situation, and Isaac would be perfectly fine with doing it again.
“How is Glorybeam doing?” Sarah asked. “I mean, with the whole powers thing. I guess she’s back to how she was, since we saw her shut down Blacktime a while ago, but I imagine it was still an unusual experience.” There was a bit of a polite fiction that separated Sarah from Smokeshow, and her depowerment, but Isaac was pretty sure almost anyone at the table could have guessed. So the question was less revealing than it might have been.
“There are apparently some subtle differences,” Gloria said after a moment. “But nothing that has led her to ask for any different assignments. That’s all I know. Obviously, the precise nature of a sovereign’s power is delicate.”
“Oh sure, I wasn’t asking about that,” Sarah said. “I meant more, like, going from sovereign to civilian to sovereign again must be weird.”
“Ah.” Gloria shrugged. “I couldn’t say anything about that.”
“Power is often the sort of thing you wish to have time away from,” Mark volunteered, wielding his spoon with an easy grace. “Those that don’t, often become swallowed up by that power.” That seemed surprisingly insightful for a corporate executive, but then, Isaac had heard that a surprising number of corporate types found themselves entangled with supervillains. At least Mark was dating someone from Star Central, so he probably managed to avoid that.
Once dinner was over and the guests had left, Sarah waved her mom over to join them in a side study, one of the many rooms in the expansive suite. Isaac had to guess that James usually used it, judging by the maps on the walls and the books involving trade, diplomacy, and law that lined the bookshelves. On the other hand, there weren’t any Deep Kingdom mementos, so maybe not.
“So, Isaac and I are needed on the moon,” Sarah said, and Sally tilted her head, looked between them and sighed.
“Ah, I was hoping this was going to be a different kind of announcement,” she said, then continued onward as Sarah spluttered. “Who needs you on the moon and why?”
“I’ve been asked to stop the civil war,” Isaac answered for Sarah, who still needed a moment to recover from her mother’s teasing. “Not to win it, mind you, but to break the stalemate. Which I believe I can do without having to do any fighting, but something like that always has the possibility to go badly. And we didn’t want to just vanish on you.”
“Well, I appreciate that,” Sally said, completely genuine. “You have everything you need? Food, transportation? Armor and guns?”
“I do have armor for myself, and guns don’t play well with my talent, but, Sarah?” Isaac was a bit thrown by how Sally simply accepted it, but then again she was married to Crash and was high up in Star City’s government. She had to have a lot of experience with supers and metas of all sorts, even if she wasn’t one herself.
“Definitely,” Sarah said. “We have a list of supplies and such, too. We’ll be taking our raptors, and they’ll have our changes of clothes and all that, so we’re set for the basics.” She made a face. It had been fairly unpleasant having essentially one set of clothing down in the Deep Kingdoms, even with regular laundering available.
“You still remember how to open the armory?” Sally asked, taking her necklace off and twisting the medallion there to extend a strange-looking piece of metal. At Sarah’s nod, she handed it over and shooed her off. “Go get what you need.”
“Thanks, mom!” Sarah gave her mother a hug before slipping out of the room.
“We need an armory,” Isaac muttered.
“You definitely do,” Sally agreed. “If you’re going to be in the meta game, you need to play by the meta rules. You have a tinker friend, don’t you? Get him to make you something custom, something that would work with your power. It’s well worth it.”
“We were going to talk to him anyway,” Isaac agreed. “Just to make sure someone in Star Central knew what was going on in case there’s an issue.”
“I’m glad you’re taking this seriously,” Sally said, tapping a finger against her thigh as she regarded him. “Sometimes I worry Sarah doesn’t, but don’t tell her I said that.”
“Actually I’m a little surprised you’re not trying to argue us out of going,” Isaac admitted.
“My great to the something granddad founded Star City,” Sally told him. “While I’m not a meta myself, our family has a long history with them. You know my husband. I’m well aware that there are just things that metas and supers have to do. So all I ask is you do your job right and come back home.”
“That’s the plan,” Isaac said.
“Great! Now give me a hug,” Sally demanded, and Isaac suffered himself to be embraced before she let him go. “And I’ll keep this quiet unless something dramatic happens, don’t worry.”
“I appreciate that,” Isaac said, as Sally opened the study door so he could go find where Sarah had gotten to in the expansive suite. It was kind of amazing how large an entire building floor could be, once it was divided into rooms. Sally pointed him down a hallway, and he nearly bumped into Sarah as he rounded a corner. She was toting an oversized duffel, something large enough to put a rifle into — and there probably was one, if he was to judge by the collection of weapons that he’d seen the time he cleaned up Crash’s place.
“Whoops,” he said, reaching out to steady her with some extra inertia to make it easier. He was sometimes surprised at how accustomed he’d become to juggling his power in everyday situations, given how many years he had kept it discreet.
“Thanks,” Sarah said, patting her duffel cheerfully. “Got my stuff.”
“Great! Your mom suggested I try and get a weapon from Cayleb. Which, yeah, I should.” Isaac shook his head. “Would prefer not to fight, but I’d rather be prepared.” Unfortunately, the best preparation started long before it was needed; he had to get back to the gym, and look into self-defense courses, but for now something other than a length of cord or chain would be useful.
“Kind of surprised you hadn’t already,” Sarah said, bumping him with her shoulder as they walked along the hall, bouncing off his extra-invested self and then shooting him a look as he had to steady her a second time. “Since you’ve known him since you were kids.”
“Just didn’t have the resources,” he replied, and Sarah blinked, then nodded. While he wouldn’t call Sarah spoiled, not at all, she definitely forgot sometimes that limits on money were a thing.
They stopped long enough to say goodbye to Sally and Gratin – her brother, James, hadn’t been able to make it – before returning home. There he put in a call to Cayleb, who had provided him with a direct switchboard number so he wouldn’t have to wait on Star Central’s answering system.
In fact, Isaac wouldn’t have been surprised if Cayleb had been involved in some phone system upgrades. They had to get hundreds of calls a day, and the general public shouldn’t be able to call supers directly for a myriad reasons. However it worked, the number and extension Cayleb had given him rang, whirred, clicked, whirred again, and finally rang a different way before Cayleb picked up the phone.
“Hey bro, what’s up?”
“Hey man,” Isaac said. “I was wondering if I couldn’t commission a gun or something from you. Something that works with my talents, you know? We can chat when you come by.”
“Oh, that would be cool! I bet mechanical stuff would do better for you,” Cayleb said thoughtfully. “But that’s not my thing. I’m sure I can figure something out anyway. I’ll stop by tomorrow with something.”
“That soon? Appreciate it,” Isaac said, bidding farewell before hanging up and heading down to the stables to settle Shay and Astoria for the night. The pair definitely appreciated having access to wide open spaces, though he could feel Shay’s smug superiority over cars whenever he and Sarah went out into the city. He had the feeling he’d need them for the moon, too, because he didn’t trust that either he or Sarah would be able to drive any rune-operated vehicles that might be around.
To Isaac’s surprise, Cayleb actually showed up in the morning of the next day, so technically during work hours. When he let his brother in, Isaac could see the telltale signs of an all-nighter in Cayleb’s face – a constant problem for tinkers – but Cayleb was cheerful regardless. He had with him a case rather than bag, something clearly from the depths of Star Central’s storage.
“Morning!” Cayleb said cheerfully, waving to Sarah as she poked her head into the living room. “Got your order here!”
“That was fast,” Isaac said, gesturing for Cayleb to sit in one of the armchairs.
“Well, I had a bout of inspiration,” Cayleb replied, dropping into the chair in a way that made Isaac wince, but Cayleb had no problem thanks to the reinforced material. Even if they weren’t rooming together anymore, Isaac was glad to see how far his brother had come, where he didn’t need to be so self-conscious about every movement. The tinker put the case on the coffee table and flipped it open, revealing a single pistol.
“Now, I only made the one, ‘cause we’ll have to see how well it works overall, but it’s really only going to work for you.” He picked up the gun and handed it to Isaac, who immediately surrendered it to Sarah’s grabby hands. Sarah was a bit of a gun girl, while he was more or less indifferent.
“It’s basically a miniature coilgun,” Cayleb continued. “Which doesn’t work that well at that size, and the muzzle velocity isn’t really that fast, basically subsonic. Even then it’d fly apart normally, but since you can enhance the inertia on it? Well, I tweaked it so it’s really only dependent on the electromagnetic fields, so it’ll fling darts no matter what inertia you put in them. Well, unless you go too high but…” Cayleb waved it away. “Anyhow, each time it cycles a dart, the end will stick out the back there, see? The prong there lets you touch it so you can adjust the inertia before it fires.
Sarah reached out for the weird, flat magazine and slotted it into the gun, cycling it once before ejecting the dart and handing it to Isaac. He took it from her, repeating her actions with a bit less finesse and feeling it out with his power. It was a stocky, sturdily-built thing, surprisingly heavy, but that meant that his reinforcement would make it very robust indeed. The darts were less hearty, but if he fully invested them he’d have to be very careful about using it.
“This is great,” Isaac said, and meant it. Having a weapon that looked like a weapon could do a lot to stop certain types of behavior. He’d seen more than one idiot at the hospital get into completely pointless spats with one of the superpowered orderlies who looked like a beanpole — and then be completely cowed by a much larger guy who didn’t have any superpowers at all. It really made him appreciate the ikiski viewpoint, in hindsight, and how for them size was power. Certainly made things easier.
“Charge?” Sarah asked, breaking Isaac from his idle fiddling with the gun, though he’d been very careful to keep his fingers away from the trigger.
“Not as much as I’d like,” Cayleb admitted. “It’ll last you that magazine, but not much more. I’m still working on a recharger pack, but since I don’t have extra ammunition either…”
“Got it,” Isaac said, not too worried. That was always the problem with tinker work — it was all bespoke, and making something that could be reused was more difficult than just making something. But if the gun somehow ran out, it wasn’t like he didn’t have experience improvising. Besides, his greatest contribution to a fight wasn’t in direct firepower but in adjusting the way it could change. His talent certainly wasn’t all-powerful, but most people didn’t have any protections against what it did, or even a way to sense it. “Thanks, Cayleb.”
“Yeah, sure!” Cayleb said happily before lifting his finger to point at the two of them. “What’s up, though? I don’t think this came outta nowhere.”
“You’re going to have to keep it from Star Central, at least for a bit,” Isaac told him, and Cayleb shrugged.
“As long as I’m not doing something in my official capacity as Machine Head, the separation holds,” he said. By law and custom, supers and their civilian personas were effectively different people, which complicated matters at some points but it did mean there weren’t super-fights exploding in food courts or movie theatres. Most of the time, anyway. The fact that Star Central sometimes skirted those rules was a big reason he found it hard to trust them.
“Right, well, Sarah and I are headed to the moon,” Isaac said. “We’ve been asked to stop the civil war there, and I think I’ve got at least a chance.”
“Whew!” Cayleb whistled, leaning back into the armchair’s plush corduroy. “I guess you might at that? But which side? I mean, it has to be one or the other, right?”
“I don’t think it does,” Isaac said, shaking his head. “First of all, it’s not my business, but second of all, it’s not really in my power anyway. I can make things change, and I’d be happy if it turned out there was some way to broker peace rather than it being a one or the other thing, but…” He trailed off and then shrugged. “Everything about the war seems to be based on runes, and I’ve looked. I literally can’t tell one from another, so I’m not qualified to judge and maybe I shouldn’t try. But it has been going on a long time, and probably does need to end.”
“Well, good luck for sure,” Cayleb said, shaking his oversized head. “And I thought you didn’t want to do the superhero thing.”
“Given that we don’t know how much of a mess this is going to make, I doubt that it’s hero work,” Isaac said dryly. That was the one thing that made him second-guess his agreement, that things could go very badly and he wouldn’t have any control over them. The Tyrant might have been able to do it, in the hazy recollection Isaac had of that moment, but the moonies were the ones who needed to find the solution, not him. “Plus apparently most people have a natural antipathy to moonies because rune magic and human magic aren’t friends or something.” He glanced at Sarah, who definitely had run into that. “I’m not a wizard, I don’t quite get it.”
“Wizards,” Cayleb muttered, rolling his eyes. “Give me good old electricity and circuits any day.”
“Magic supers are pretty weird,” Sarah agreed, taking the gun back from Isaac since he’d finished playing with it. He smiled as he watched her fiddle with the magazine, loading the ejected darts back in. “Tweak it?” She suggested, and Isaac put his hand on the weapon, reducing its resistance to being changed into smoke.
“So that’s the plan,” Isaac said as Sarah cycled it between smoke and solidity. While he intended to carry the weapon himself, there were some very obvious benefits to making it so Sarah could convert it to smoke. “Inasmuch as there is a plan. Not going onto the front lines, not getting into the fighting really, just involved enough to make it possible to change.”
“Huh. Sounds a bit like Captain Daring and the Ivory Kingdom,” Cayleb muttered, watching Sarah use her power with a confounded look on his face. Isaac stared.
“I didn’t know you read those,” Isaac said.
“Hey, you left them out and there’s not much to do when it’s three in the morning and you’re waiting for your homemade soldering iron to cool,” Cayleb said defensively.
“Well, I guess it is a bit like the comic, at that.” He hadn’t thought of Captain Daring for ages. “Hopefully it doesn’t turn out the same way.” Given that the titular Ivory Kingdom had ended up sunk under the earth, lost for all time, the comparison wasn’t exactly auspicious.
Once Cayleb left, they really didn’t have any more excuses to delay. There was just the matter of packing the last few things and some final power management before they called Lia. One specific tweak he wanted to try before he committed himself to going elsewhere.
“I really hope this works,” Isaac muttered, sitting across the dining room table from Sarah.
“It’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t,” she points out. “We got through the Deep Kingdoms without it.”
“Sure,” Isaac agree. “But it’s worth a try.” He put the pocketwatch on the table between them and reached out with his power. While he’d found it was essentially impossible to block the natural changes of the physical world, such as forcing a lightbulb to stay on once the power was removed, when it came to metaphysical states things were a bit squishier. More malleable.
In this case, his connection with Sarah. He was pretty deeply involved with her, and that meant if he approached it right he could apply his alterations to her without even needing to physically touch her. It wasn’t as easy or straightforward to do it that way, operating at a remove as he was, but past experimentation had shown it was possible. But if they got separated, especially for any length of time, he had no idea if that would hold.
The pocketwatch ticked suddenly, clicking away as he groped around to find the link between them and make the link itself resistant to change. It wasn’t something he wanted to keep indefinitely, since he would worry what repercussions it would have on their relationship, but for the purposes of going into a dangerous area it would serve.
“I think that’s done it,” he said as the ticking faded away. He checked the dial, seeing a series of thin spikes stretching outward from the ring toward both him and Sarah, which was reassuring confirmation that his power had latched onto something that existed.
“So we’re tied together forever and ever?” Sarah teased, taking his hand from across the table, her arm thinned into smoke so she could reach the distance.
“That’s the plan,” he smiled, squeezing back.
Once they felt ready on their end, he called Lia. They’d already delayed several days and either through his talent or just from the usual feeling of having unfinished business, he could feel the press of time. He still suspected that if he’d given the moonie a flat refusal, there’d be some attempt to force the issue, and he didn’t want things to come to that. After all, he did want to help, just on his own terms.
He dialed the number on the card Lia had given him what seemed like ages ago, hearing it ring precisely three times before there was a click.
“Alianora,” she said, answering the phone more formally than when she coordinated at Justice for Hire.
“It’s Isaac,” he said, watching Sarah fuss over their raptors as he spoke. “We’re ready.”
“Good. I will be there at six this evening,” she said, and hung up. Isaac blinked and cradled the receiver, looking over at Sarah.
“Bit abrupt, but we’ve got until six.”
“Well, if we’ve got that long, let’s go see a movie,” Sarah suggested. “At the drive-in.”
“Sounds good to me,” Isaac agreed easily. It’d be something to take his mind off the upcoming trip, and besides, Shay and Astoria seemed to like movies almost as much as Isaac and Sarah did. He didn’t know how much they understood, but they were happy to watch the big screen regardless, and crystaltech picked up radio signals just fine. The audio for the big projected movie came from a tiny speaker on Astoria’s barding, which was perfectly clear despite its size.
The movie was profoundly mediocre, but spending time cuddled up with Sarah and mocking the cheesy dialogue was a pleasant way to fill the hours until the appointed moment rolled around. Everything was packed into the saddlebags, and what wasn’t there Sarah had stored as smoke. He had his gun at his waist under his shirt, which was a custom-made thick fabric uniform with a few coils of cord and chain, all of which responded exceedingly well to inertial investment. Sarah was wearing something from the armory, a kind of bodysuit that went under her normal clothing with a deployable helmet packed into the collar. Neither of them looked suited for war as such, but they were far more prepared than they’d been when things went down in the Deep Kingdoms.
Lia arrived precisely at six, atop her riding raptor. She had her duffel with her as before, filled with mysterious items, and she looked a little strained. It was hard to tell with moonie expressions.
“Thank you for agreeing,” Lia said, shifting her duffel from one shoulder to another. “This will work best if it has a view of the sky.”
“We’ve got roof access in the back,” Isaac offered, since he was pretty sure that however they were getting to the moon wasn’t something to be demonstrated out on the street. The demuto clicked softly as he approached her, and he took it out to see a pair of spikes pointing in the general direction of Lia and her raptor. He’d nearly forgotten about it, but the pair were still inertially divested, just a bit, from back in the Deep Kingdoms. But Lia hadn’t asked for a change, so he left it alone, tucking the demuto back in his pocket.
“That will work,” she said, and Isaac climbed up the crystal wing panels onto Shay’s back. Sarah followed suit, the three of them guiding their raptors to the stairs at the back of the stables. The outer wall was basically flush with the roof of the second story, looking out over chokingly thick green mountains, but the druids kept control over the more fearsome beasts so the wall was more of a property line than true defense.
The roof itself was bare and almost flat, a single piece of shaped stone from some construction super or another, so it had plenty of space for Lia to lay down a ribbon of rune-inscribed links. It wasn’t metal, or even cloth. It reminded Isaac more of rubber than anything else, except it was a chalky off-white, shading into pink or purple. Lia kept glancing up at the moon in the sky and making adjustments, flipping the links to one side or the other in accordance with whatever esoteric requirements rune magic had.
“This is an old artifact,” Lia said after she had it to her liking. “The type we can’t make anymore. The materials just don’t exist.” She paused for a moment, though Isaac couldn’t tell if it was just from emotion or because she expected a question, then continued on. “When I activate it, we should be transported to the top of what you call Mount Bradley. From there, we can go to the nearest town and begin.”
“Seems reasonable,” Isaac said, eyeing the ribbon. There was, unfortunately, no other feasible way to get to the moon. Mechaniacal could have managed it, probably, but breaching the crystal spheres was just too much of an ask for most. Lia gestured for them to join her at the ribbon, and then the runes lit up.
Instead of the teleportation he was half-expecting, a shimmering effect like an aurora rose from the ribbon, glowing in pale pastels before clearing to show a landscape full of equally pale flora. It shifted uncertainly, rippling like cloth in the wind, but Lia just gestured for them to go through. With a little bit of trepidation, Isaac urged Shay forward into the light.
The transition was like pushing through one of the bead curtains that MetaFiCon sometimes used. Something brushing against him, a moment of obscured vision, and he was somewhere else. A warm breeze blew past, much more temperate than the almost-winter in Star City, carrying floral scents he didn’t recognize. The scrape of talons on stone announced the arrival of Sarah and Astoria next to him, and then Lia came through the curtain with her raptor close behind, still in the process of stuffing the ribbon back in her sports duffel.
Shay snuffled at the air with interest as Isaac looked around. The sky was still blue, but a few shades too pale, joining the rest of the moon in being just slightly washed out. High in the sky there was a crescent of blue, the Earth illuminated by a sun that was getting close to being directly behind it. Even as he looked around, the rippling haze they had come through vanished, leaving a weathered rock marked with runes of a distinctly different style than the ones he’d seen from Lia.
The quiet was interrupted by the snap of a shutter as Sarah took pictures, sweeping her camera over the flat-topped vegetation and the distant rivers of something that was obviously not water. Isaac didn’t blame her; the moon was strikingly alien, even more than the Deep Kingdoms despite having a horizon that curved the right way. If anything, that just made it even odder, as the horizon was far closer and the curve far more distinct from the mountain vantage.
“Muiraton is down there, that’s our goal,” Lia said, this time in lunarian. The run surprised him with how much meaning was packed behind the words, far more than there had been on Earth, including precise directions. Squinting down the slopes he saw a huddle of spires and domes, arched roofs of stone barely visible behind the haze of a waterfall, or whatever they were called on the moon.
“Let’s go then,” Isaac said, turning Shay in the proper direction. If they’d had to hike that distance it would have been a long slog, if not outright dangerous, but all three of them had flying dinosaurs. Shay’s crystal wings rose into position, the crystaltech humming as the floating blades locked, before the raptor crouched and then leapt into the air. There was no need to change inertia as he had before, especially with the moon’s lower gravity.
He hadn’t had a chance to take Shay flying too much in the city. It was possible, but between super traffic, high-end hovercars, close quarters, and no pressing need to fight air traffic, it just hadn’t come up much. Banking through the air high above the moon’s surface was quite the experience, though, as Shay gloried in having a lot of empty space to bank, swoop, and dive.
Sarah and Astoria joined him, flitting this way and that over the faded pastel slopes. He let Shay have her head to do whatever she liked; barrel rolls and loop-de-loops, dives that skimmed the flat-topped trees, close enough to startle long and lanky bird-equivalents nesting within, and other, less describable aerial acrobatics. Fortunately, he now knew how to adjust the crystaltech barding so he was fully secure and in no danger of falling off from the exercises. Not that a fall would be dangerous to him, especially in the low gravity of the moon.
Isaac heard Sarah laughing wildly during the flight, and the bracelet let him know that Shay was having just as much fun. He wasn’t hooting and hollering, but Isaac had to admit he understood the allure of flight far more, and reconsider his priorities in the future. Most of his experiences so far had been an incidental part of super-fights and getting flung into the air not of his own accord, which had generally put him off the experience. Behind them, Lia and her raptor followed more sedately, obsidian wing-plates locked into a glide that easily kept up with his and Sarah’s more energetic but less direct flight.
Muiraton was only a few minutes away, even with the distractions of flying around under low gravity and taking in the sights. He could smell the waterfall as they got closer, not just the normal clean scent of water on stone but also something faintly floral, like the park in spring. In fact, upon closer look, it behaved like it was significantly thicker than normal water, low gravity notwithstanding. The plunge pool for the waterfall had a standing wave of ripples radiating out from the falling not-water, rendering the surface almost glassy and clear, broken only by the occasional drop of spray.
A gaggle of moonies was grouped around the shore of the plunge pool, dropping straight into the town as it did, and there was an obvious reaction at the sight of flying dinosaurs appearing in the sky above. Several glowing domes appeared as people cast defensive spells, while others simply fled back into the cluster of buildings. As tall as the buildings were, three or five stories, there weren’t very many of them, to the point where Isaac doubted there were more than a few hundred moonies in the whole town. Fortunately, Lia pulled ahead before the reactions could develop into an actual firefight, extending a hand to cast a series of colored balls in some kind of signal.
“We can land down there,” she called to them, once again the moonie language conveying more than the words seemed to be able to manage, the exact location of a plaza not far from the plunge pool. Isaac conveyed the impression to Shay, and the crystalline panels shifted as she darted around a tower to the stretch of stone in question. Sarah landed a bare instant after he did, Astoria’s claws scraping on the stone, the two raptors turning their heads this way and that to look at the moonies standing at the edge of the plaza with interest. One of them took a step back as Shay stared at him, and Isaac’s raptor snorted in amusement.
Lia hopped down the moment she landed, beckoning one particular cluster of lunarians forward. As they approached, Isaac realized how scrawny they looked compared to Lia. Not that their guide was bulging with muscle, but the natives were twig-thin, stretched out, their large heads putting him more in mind of Cayleb than anything. They’d probably have just collapsed in Earth gravity.
“Alianora,” one of the moonies said, though the syllables that came from his mouth were not Lia’s name. Most of it was carried through the concepts transmitted by the sigil on Isaac’s wrist. “What is this?” It was a question that Isaac figured it was better to answer himself.
“I am The Custodian,” Isaac said letting the translation spell push the concepts out to the other moonies, then waved his hand at Sarah. “This is Scheherazade. We’re here to end the war.”