Emily wakes up several hours ter. A quice through the bird scout still tched to the balloon above tells her that they’re approag another desert city, Ashdon, and almost at its walls already.

  The walled city is about half the size of Eimdon: the sandy buildings follow a simir design style and yout, with the noble and trading districts being noticeable at a gnce from above. However, outside the city walls is a sprawling cluster of tents and ramshackle houses spanning a far rger area than her home city.

  Emily slides out of bed feeling refreshed. A quice at her status shows her resources filled to the maximum, including her health.

  “That’s better,” she mutters, her mind finally quiet now that the buzzing activity within has gone.

  What was my maa doing that whole time?

  With the irritation gone, she lets her curiosity get the better of her despite an instinct tellio ig. She focuses inwards on her cortex, searg for the areas affected by the ret phenomena. She quickly locates them, and the well-ordered structure along with her intimate uanding of the magical an tells her immediately what those areas could affect.

  My memories aions. Why are they being messed with, and why was it such a long process?

  Poking a little closer, memories start flickering through her mind rapidly: standing in Herber’s shop, watg her father being dispatched by the now-dead Carlos; ripping the offending mage’s master to pieces as he begs for death; c under a pile s as her birth parents are torn limb from limb; disc Juliana’s mangled corpse.

  Emily quickly opens her eyes, tearing her focus away as she reises the danger of looking through those memories again.

  However, the moment her eyes snap open, she discovers an odd discrepancy.

  I don’t feel anything.

  As opposed to the expected reignition of her deeply buried emotions, she feels a disquieting sense of calm. Cautiously, she focuses on the affected memories again, pig out a single oo relive pletely. She watches with cold apathy as she storms the Mandrago mansion, calmly judging her own as within the final melee as she rips the gathered mages to shreds, not feeling an ounce of the rage she was ed by in the moment.

  “Huh,” she mumbles, opening her eyes. “It seems like I’ve pletely separated my memories from the emotions associated with them. This could be useful.”

  Her lips curl in a satisfied grin that sends an odd pang of guilt through her core as she quickly realises why she felt flicted as the ge was happening: she feels nothing about her ret sister’s death. The thought twists her gut in self-loathing and disgust, but those emotions fade abnormally quickly as she returns to a state of calm.

  “Ah, it’s not just affeg my memories,” she mutters in realisation, a frown twisting her expression.

  This could be a problem. Just how much has it altered my emotions? Is it just f me tute out ive ones, or will it bance positive ooo?

  To test, Emily splits her focus and raises her hand, her eyes igniting with a cerulean glow as lightning flows out of her. She guides crag psma in a delicate dance, a smile creeping onto her lips as she enjoys pying with her power.

  Another core tracks her emotional state as she focuses her primary sciousness on the energy manipution, and she tinues for a few moments before dropping the maion aing her smile quickly fall batnature scowl. After pletely resetting to ral, she starts again, this time twisting the energy into a shimmering serpentine creature swimming through the air, her smile reappears and grows wider as she starts f crag scales along the illusory creature before bursting it in a fizzling dispy of light while releasing the maion again.

  It’s definitely affeg all my emotions. My normal level of enjoyment seems to be muted slightly, though less than it has been since leaving i.

  When I made the snake, my happiness peaked and seemed to reduce more slowly afterwards than it did with the first test. Does that mean I slow the bang with a strong burst either way?

  “That seems fair futing my ive emotions. As much as my anger helped me work out how to properly utilise elemental maion, I still could have dealt with that fight with the Mandragos better if I’d been calm,” she mutters. “Is this a normal ge for meics?”

  Without any way to answer her question, for now, she looks within her cortex again.

  I definitely didn’t remove the emotioed to those memories though. Where are they?

  Poking around a little, she quickly finds the answer as she reaches a dense bundle of microstructures that seems to resist her attention. With a little extra push, willing her cortex to give her access, she breaks through the weak resistance, more a suggestion than an actual boundary to her, and instantly regrets it.

  An overwhelming wave of anger, sorroiness, longing, and so many other emotions she barely differentiate washes over Emily. She instantly flinches away from the closed-off se of her cortex, resisting the urge to scream, cry, and kill someone.

  Within a few seds, the aftermath of the emotional rush fades as she bances out again and slumps bato her bed.

  Fuck me, that was awful. Let’s not do that again any time soon.

  Absentmindedly, Emily pulls her scarf up to cover her nose, breathing in the calming st aing out a rexed sigh.

  “At least I enjoy this without feeling too sad,” she mutters before a frown creases her features. “Or much at all.”

  She sits up and runs her fihrough the soft fabric as she processes the ck of aional respoo the keepsake other than a calming sense of familiarity.

  “I really am a monster,” she mutters, a lump f ihroat that she quickly swallows as she inhales agaiing the scarf rex her. “I don’t think I should test overwhelming the bang in the ive dire for now. I cry about Jules as much as I want ter. For now, we have a city to visit.”

  As if ohe ship’s horn sounds, and a familiar presence approaches her door. Emily stands up and moves to greet them.

  “Hey,” she says, swinging the door open. “Are we dog?”

  “Yeah.” Podriods, not batting ahis time at her predig his approach. “Anton asked me to e grab you. He seems to be on edge, he’s beeiless as we get closer to the dock. Also, he said you wao see the dog request drohat we use, so it’s better to get you now than to let you rest longer.”

  Emily nods as she steps past him, skipping over the ents about the drone and thinking of the captain’s unease.

  He’s definitely expeg trouble. Will they have marked our ship yet?

  “It’s been bugging me, but why do you guys always call him by his name?” Emily asks as they walk side-by-side, her curiosity peaked by the boy’s seeming ck of respect. “Wouldn’t you usually call him captain?”

  “I tried to when I first joihe crew.” Podrick shrugs, a pyful smile creeping onto his face. “But he told me it’s too annoyingly formal: we’re not noble pricks so why bother.”

  He says the st part while making his voice deeper in a poor impression of the man.

  “Haha,” Emily chuckles lightly before quickly falling silent again.

  Podrick pauses and, after taking a few more steps without him, Emily gnces over her shoulder with a raised brow. Podrick is standing, staring at her with his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide in shock.

  “What?” Emily asks, tilting her head as she halts for a moment.

  “N-nothing,” Podrick stutters, a red tint to his cheeks as he breaks out of his shod hurries baatch pace with her. “I just think that’s the first time I’ve seen you ugh.”

  Emily rolls her eyes and tinues walking. Podrick guides her in a different dire from the bridge, takio a small room around the midpoint of the ship where Emily knows a vertical hatch is installed. They ehe room to find Ash and Anton waiting for them.

  “Sup,” Emily greets them, her attention quickly falling on the dog-sized object covered in fabric between them, sitting on top of the room’s hatch. “This our drone?”

  “Indeed, it is,” Ash says, lifting up the fabric to reveal a boxy metal shape with several grills and pipes along the sides and a few propellers on the bad stig out of the sides. “It’s not pretty, but it does the job.”

  Emily nods, approag and pg her hand on the droo s it. She realises the fabric is an uninfted balloon, and she finds a half-det miniature steam ehin, along with a ste partment big enough to carry an ingot of metal. She frowns as she looks at the internals, a question immediately rising to the forefront of her mind.

  “How do you trol this thing?” she asks, looking up at Ash and pletely ign Anton beside them, awkwardly trying to find a moment to butt in. “It looks like it will just go in a straight line.”

  “It does,” Ash replies with an exasperated sigh. “These things are kind of useless. They only go in a straight line aher up or down as they do. It’s only helpful fetting messages to and from the docks without having to nd, and even that we have to do by attag that.”

  They gesture over their shoulder to an obvious winch system bolted to the floor and wall, powered by a pipe ing from the ship’s e has a rge spool of thin, finger-width cable with a clip on the end that’s attached to a mounting point on top of the drone, between the body and the balloon.

  Emily grimaces at the solution, her mind spinning to create methods to trol a drone.

  I could do it with magic, but that defeats the purpose. Maybe I could do something with electricity? The universal transmitter works on long-distanunication, so maybe I pick that apart and make a she version for sending instrus to maes. I’ll need a specialised workshop to start w on that though, and I’m still not quite sure how I’m meant to trol the transmitter itself, or even how to receive the data they send. The blueprints mention data e points to link to other systems, but nothing about those systems. It’s like I’m still missing key information.

  “Emily?” Anton says, snapping her out of her thoughts and drawing her gaze away from the disappointingly basic drone. “ we send it now?”

  “Oh, sure,” she says with a dismissive wave, stepping back to let Ash get it running. “I was just thinking about ways to improve it.”

  Anton nods and takes out a folded letter from the spatial pouch tied at his waist, croug down to pce it into the drone’s ste partment as Ash loads the eh coal and fires it up. The balloon slowly inftes as they all watch, and Podrick turns to Emily with curiosity.

  “How do you want to improve the drone?” he asks.

  “Well, other than refining the visual design so it isn’t so ugly, I was thinking about how to send ands to it remotely so we trol it,” she replies without a thought. “I think I have some blueprints that may help me, but I don’t have a crete way to do it without using magic at the moment. I’ll have to think about it.”

  Podriods and falls silent, a thoughtful look on his face.

  After the drone’s balloon is filled, Ash flips a selector swit the side, redireg the steam flow from the balloon to the propellers, before turning a dial on the side to set off a timer ected to the stops holding said propellers still. Moving quickly, they move to a lever beside the hatd flip it, opening a hole in the floor aing the drone slowly float down through it as the attached spool unreels.

  Emily steps up to the edge, gazing down the long drop to the ground far below and watg as, a few seds after clearing the ship, the drone’s propellers start spinning. The miniature airship slowly chugs forward, l down slowly as it heads towards the city walls.

  “Are you sure the city will be the oo receive it?” Emily asks, notig the ramshackle housing spreading out from the wall even in front of the docks.

  “They should be,” Anton answers. “The sed they see a ship h nearby to request dog they send a guard out to receive the drone, and it’s a criminal offence for anyone else to interfere. There have been a few cases where the guards have been zy and people have tried to steal the drones, but it’s quite rare.”

  Emily nods in uanding.

  “How e you don’t know this?” Podrick asks curiously. “Wasn’t it the same in Eimdon?”

  “No.” She shakes her head in respohe scrap and slums are only on the south side of the city, and the docks are in the east. It’s illegal to get within a certain distance of them outside the walls, and the city guards were stantly patrolling there. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure the Mandragos were paranoid about their magical resources being stolen in transit.”

  “Is that what the deliveries they sent with guards will have been?” Anton asks, a light of realisation fshing in his eyes.

  “Probably. Now, how long will we be waiting for a reply?” Emily asks.

  “They should send the drone ba twenty to thirty mihen, we’ll either be told which hangar to do now, or to wait nearby for a certain amount of time until one is free. I’m hoping we won’t have to wait: it looks unlikely, judging by the ck of other ships hanging around, but if we do, and it’s more than a few hours, we just keep moving. We’re only about six hours from the closest stop on our route.”

  “Well, for noait.” Emily nods and turns to Ash, pulling a clockwork bird from thin air. “Here, I made this for you st night.”

  She passes the bird and a small windio them, watg their eyes light up with i as they take it.

  “Thank you,” they say with a warm smile.

  “No problem. I’m always happy to share my babies with people reciate them,” Emily responds with a matg smile of her own.

  KeroKeron