He was late.
He'd missed them.
Lindon stormed through the door, hoping against hope that they'd decided to wait a few hours for him.
The instant he opened a crack, air blasted him in the face, shoving the door all the way open and slamming it against the frame. The wind was almost strong enough to push him off his feet, Iron body or no, and the light was blinding.
He had to throw up his arm against the all-present light, which surrounded him as though he’d been tossed into the sun.
When his eyes finally adjusted and the gusts slowed for a moment, he squinted into the brightness and saw...not the dusty yard outside the barn. Not the collection of ramshackle buildings making up the Five Factions Alliance.
An endless ocean of sunlit clouds, stretching out beneath him.
Lindon shouted and fell backwards, kicking the door shut, trying to catch his breath. The barn was in the sky. In the heavens, maybe? Had Suriel grabbed this whole building and lifted it from the earth?
He grabbed the warm glass marble from his pocket and rubbed it between his hands to comfort himself. As his breath and mind settled, he started to notice details he hadn't before: the floor dipped and sagged beneath him, like he was lying on a boat drifting over a lake. Wind whistled through and around the barn.
Lindon leaned on a wooden dummy to prop himself up, catching his breath and staring at the door as though it might open and drag him out into open air.
Wood creaked, and he turned to see the back door swinging open. Eithan stuck his head in, smiling.
“A good morning to you!” he said cheerily. “Come join us for breakfast.”
Lindon took a deep breath before answering. “You didn’t leave me.” He closed his eyes and took another breath. “This one thanks you, honored Underlord.”
“I kept an eye on you after I left. I could tell you'd made up your mind, so when you didn't make it on time, I decided to drag you along.”
Following the Underlord, Lindon pushed open the back door of the flying barn. It swung open into bright lights and furious wind, but there was another door only a foot or two away. This door was painted dark blue, with a black crescent at eye level, and the frame was all white. The colors of the Arelius family.
Between him and the door was a stretch of dense blue cloud. To the left and right, he saw nothing but endless sky and white fluff. Beneath him, a soft blue carpet.
Lindon hesitated, but Eithan didn't. He was already striding across the cloud with full confidence, his steps pressing down as though he walked across a mattress.
It's a Thousand-Mile Cloud, Lindon reassured himself, just...bigger. Big enough to carry two buildings.
If he'd needed an illustration of the Arelius family’s wealth and power, this would do.
Eithan held the door for him as Lindon fought the wind to enter.
He stepped into a cozy sitting room, all decorated in Arelius colors. Dark blue chairs and couches were arranged into a half-circle around a fireplace of black metal. A spiral staircase led up to a second story, and a pair of tall, arched windows spilled sunlight into the whole space.
Through an open doorway against the other wall, Lindon saw into a second room, this one surrounded entirely in glass that looked out over the clouds. Cassias stood in the glass room over a podium that looked like the control panel for the training course. As Lindon watched, he spread his hand and injected a pulse of madra speckled with silver. Circles lit up one after another on the polished board.
The house veered to the right, cutting through the clouds like a ship through waves.
Yerin had her legs crossed on one fluffy chair, her hands on her knees and breathing measured. When Lindon crossed the doorway, she cracked her eyes open and gave him a little smile.
“Sharp decision,” she said.
“I fell asleep.”
Eithan hopped over the polished wooden counter that separated the rest of the room from a wall of brightly colored bottles, then started fixing himself a drink. “This is Sky's Mercy, the personal cloudship of the family's Patriarch. It serves us as a mobile base when we need to take our business outside of the usual territory.”
Cassias didn't turn from his controls, shouting over his shoulder to Lindon. “We stay as high as we can, for the sake of stealth. Sometimes we must fly lower, when there are dangers in the skies or the vital aura runs low. That’s when we risk being spotted.”
Lindon took a few more seconds to process the sea of gleaming clouds outside the windows. “The Cloud Hammer School spotted you, then?” They were the ones who had first spread the word of the Arelius family’s coming.
“I passed through a group of their disciples cycling up here,” Cassias responded. “I’m sure they intended no harm, but there's no such thing as a secret.”
The floor rose and dipped slowly, as though the cloud breathed beneath them. At the bar, Eithan was pouring two bottles into a third. He didn't spill a drop.
Lindon turned to the Underlord, imagination wrestling with the possibilities of flying buildings. “You lifted the entire barn off the ground?” If the family could build this, he could only imagine what other treasures they were hiding.
“I dropped quite a few scales for the Fisher to build that training facility,” Eithan said, flipping the bottles into the air and catching all three. “It would be a waste to just leave it behind. We had to expand the cloud base a bit, but it's well within acceptable limits.”
“Not well within,” Cassias responded, but Eithan pointed to the top of the staircase.
“And look who else came with us! Fisher Gesha, how are you feeling?”
A few hairs had come loose from the old woman's bun, her wrinkled face looked pale, and she rested heavily on the bannister, which was shaped like a serpentine dragon's head. She didn't look as though she had the strength to walk down the stairs, but she was standing on her drudge. The eight long spider legs dragged her down the stairs smoothly, as though she were gliding down.
“I apologize for showing you this sight, Underlord,” she panted. When she saw Lindon staring, a drop of acid entered her voice, and she snapped, “Can't stand boats, can I? I stay off the water, thank you very much, and sailing on the clouds is just the same as sailing anywhere. Hm? You have something to say?”
Lindon leaned closer to her, more concerned about her presence than her tone. “Fisher Gesha, did you...choose to come along?” He didn't want to say too much, because Cassias and Eithan could hear him perfectly well, but he could too-easily picture Eithan snatching up the Soulsmith on a whim.