Flying With Damaged Feathers

by hornethead

Chapter 24: The Clue

Chapter 24: The Clue

Once again, Tiran found himself in a situation that left him feeling a little silly. Here he was, nearly topless, trekking through the dense undergrowth with the pieces of his armor bundled in his arms. Flickr lead the precession up front, lighting the path with the glow of his horn. He was closely followed by Ruwa, then Tiran, with Tiran's attacker bringing up the rear, which turned out to be a very large Griffon.

Tiran used to think griffons belonged solely to the realm of mythology, a belief that turned out to be erroneous in this world. His name was Kai and he carried what looked to Tiran to be an outrageously big knife. The same one used to batter Tiran to within an inch of his life.

The griffon had apologized profusely after the incident after finding out Tiran was an acquaintance of Jackson's to which Tiran begrudgingly accepted while Flickr poked and prodded his injuries, declaring him bruised and battered, but otherwise fine. The feathered warrior fell silent after finding out what had happened to the Old Man though, apparently they'd been good friends. He hadn't said a single word since.

Now they were nearing their destination. Flickr had put down on the far edge of a town called Shady Hollow. It was a small village set deep in the forest at the bottom of a natural bowl that kept it in near perpetual twilight through most of the day. It was an ideal place to hide from both air and land.

Tiran was led into a small grove with buzzing insects all around. Most were harmless little light bugs, flitting about as their luminescence winked in and out like tiny little beacons. The rest were of the more annoying variety. There was a small pond nearby being fed by a stream, from which a horde of mosquitos constantly harassed Tiran.

"Jeez, couldn't you have picked a better spot?" he loudly complained after swatting a particularly annoying blood-sucker that wouldn't stop buzzing into his ear.

Flickr glanced back with a tired eye, "It'll get better when we get close to the ship."

Tiran swatted another one. "It'd better," he grumbled.

A few more steps around a small bend finally brought them into a small grove. Tiran was still flailing his hands wildly about when he felt a tingling pass over his body and the mosquitos abruptly vanished as if they were simply swept away. Tiran paused in in a small burst of wonderment and turned around as the rest of the troop passed through. A nebula of the buzzing insects crowded by him, yet came no further, seeming to bounce off some invisible wall.

"Told you it would get better," Flickr called from the grove as Tiran stared. "Repellent spell, courtesy of Q. She likes to camp a lot. Now quit gawking and come on."

"Uh...huh."

Tiran slowly turned and began following again, occasionally taking a glance back. He wished he'd had a nifty little trick like that when he got his flight training in Florida. Damned bugs nearly ate him alive.

He started forward again, intending to ask Flickr just how much further they had to go. Tiran only managed a few steps when something catapulted into his torso, knocking him to the ground and the air from his lungs.

"Tiran!" Ruwa cried as she pounced on him. "My gosh, I was so worried when those scary guys came and then I couldn't find you and Quick Fix and Flickr made me leave with them then..."

Tiran coughed, trying to draw in breath, "Ruwa..." he croaked.

"...we had to fly away—some of the scary guys tried to chase us, but Flickr fought them off..."

"Ruwa..."

"...and we didn't know if any pony else got away, I was so scared..."

Tiran finally managed a sharp, painful intake of breath, "Ruwa!"

She stopped then, mid ramble and looked down at him, finally realizing where she was standing, "Oops," she said demurely with a faint blush. With a few flaps of her wings, she gently removed herself from his chest and put down right beside him.

Tiran sat up with a few hacking coughs. "Oops?" he gasped. "Oops, really?"

She turned her head away slightly in an attempt to conceal her blush, "S-sorry..."

"No, it's fine," Tiran said while greedily sucking in air and clutching his side. "Just a few cracked ribs is all."

"Hey!" Flickr shouted from further in the grove. "Quit playing grab ass and get over here, we don't have a lot of time!"

"Yeah, yeah..." Tiran mumbled as he pushed himself back up.

"So what happened to you?" Ruwa asked Tiran as she fell into step beside him. "Your suit's all messed up and you look pretty rough."

Tiran huffed under his breath, "Yeah, you can thank our feathery friend for that. Guy tried to take my head off."

Ruwa wrinkled her nose. "Kai? You guys fought?"

"Yup. He thought I was some monster or something."

Ruwa giggled at that, "You, a scary monster? Ha, not likely."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"No problem."

At the back of the grove the airship sat, dark colored tarps hanging from its sides to better conceal it in the dense forest. The griffon Kai was nowhere to be seen, perhaps back on watch, while Flickr was having a heated discussion with Quick Fix by one of the flaps on the side of the ship. Tiran and Ruwa stopped a short distance from the two while they talked, Tiran dropping the remnants of his flight suit in a jangle on the ground in front of him.

Quick Fix spotted them over Flickr's shoulder, uttered one last short sentence that didn't seem to sit well with the other unicorn and stepped around him.

"By Celestia, your equipment's a mess," she huffed angrily as she stomped towards the human. "You didn't damage your arm too, did you? I swear, you humans are so bad at keeping your gear in good condition."

"Nice to see you again, too." Tiran smirked. "Arm's fine by the way."

Quick Fix stopped at the pile of parts that was Tiran's flight suit and began to paw through it, "Aw, hell. I might be able repair some of this without my workshop. But you're gonna owe me!"

"Ahem." They all looked up to see Flickr glaring at them. "Glad to see everypony back together, but we need to get going. Tiran, where's the team that got you here?"

"What, you don't think I could've gotten here on my own?"

"No."

Tiran's smirk dropped, his shoulders slumped. "Well, about that. We hit some trouble on the way here. Sparks sent me along while they stayed back. I'm not sure what happened to them."

"They're probably fine. Those guys are hard to kill." Quick fix said reassuringly.

Flickr trotted back to the airship and began to take the tarps down. "Even so, we have to move. If we're lucky we can move to the next site before we're spotted."

Tiran looked at him in askance, "Next site?"

"That's right, but we have to move now."

"But what about Sparks and his team?"

"They have their own way out," Flickr said impatiently as he began to fold the tarps and stow them.

Tiran didn't feel right about just leaving them behind. He remembered his own hazy memories from the crash that ended his career. Laying there in the dark, fading in and out of consciousness, stuck behind enemy lines with little hope of getting home—much less surviving.

He was about to say something when Quick Fix stopped him, "He's right, they can take care of themselves. We're not combat effective right now, attempting some kind of rescue would most likely just get in their way, make us a liability. Trust that they know what they're doing, that we know what we're doing." She eyed him for a moment before turning and hopping into the airship.

Tiran still didn't agree, but she was right. The knowledge was like bags of lead shot on his shoulders. They had few weapons and little to no training for the situation at hand other than to run. It burned in Tiran's mind. He'd run when he got the chance, but not if that meant leaving some one behind.

Tiran felt a tap on his arm. "Tiran, let's go," Ruwa said with a saddened expression before following Quick Fix into the ship.

He took a step then stopped, turning back towards the direction he'd come. There were no longer any sights or sounds of conflict. No thumps of explosions nor rattle of weapons. Tiran hoped that meant Sparks and his team had defeated their opponents, or had at least made their escape somehow.

Flickr shouted at him again from the side door before squeezing into the cockpit. With a shake of his head, Tiran turned and picked up his bindle of broken armor. That engines whined as he stepped into the cabin, Quick Fix sliding the door closed behind him.

As the power rose, Tiran retreated towards the back of the compartment and slumped down onto one of the uncomfortable benches, a deep feeling of despair growing in the pit of his stomach as his mind numbed. His situation had gone from strange after the crash, to a SNAFU after his capture and was tipping over the cliff edge on FUBAR now that he'd lost his bird, his one connection back to his world and now what was most likely the best chance of survival besides his present company.

Li buzzed into his mind, sensing the descent into a foul mood, 'Cheer up, Tiran,' she said. 'There's nothing we can do now, but we're in good company, smart company.'

Tiran didn't respond, the numbing hopelessness in his mind leaving him unable to form a thought.

'Look at it this way,' Li continued. 'Sparks and his team weren't the only operators to escape. There are others out there, others that Flickr and Quick Fix know how to contact. When they do, we'll regroup. We'll regroup, we'll plan, we'll take back the Cloudburst. And when we do...' a dark edge that Tiran didn't think Li was capable of producing crept into her voice, 'When we do, we will exterminate our new enemies.'

Li's morbid change in tone was enough to snap Tiran out of it a little, despite the deep ache that was still growing. He had certainly never heard her speak in that kind of tone before, even when speaking about genocidal maniacs. Even about their enemies back home after he'd lost the arm and had most of his insides turned to jelly. Until recently, she had always used an even and unbiased tone like a limited AI was supposed to.

However, she wasn't quite acting like the supposedly limited AI she was lately.

Tiran had noticed things. Certain quirks she had acquired, certain flashes of emotional responses she wasn't supposed to be able to display or act on. Her reputed actions while in Quick Fix's lab was an example of that.

Then there were the odd files Tiran had found in her storage spaces. Ones that he hadn't been able to access, that hadn't been there before. Out of curiosity, Tiran grabbed his helmet and shoved it on. It still had a limited power supply.

Using the HUD, he linked to the hard drive and accessed the storage files. It was a bit harder than simply stumbling upon them this time, as if they had been hidden in many sub folders, but they were there. They were there and there were more of them. He picked one that was labeled with a title that was gibberish to him, but probably meant something to Li and tried to open it. Once again, he was denied access, the error message flashing tauntingly in his face.

Disturbed but not dissuaded, he attempted to open it again, this time ordering the system to ping it with decryption software. This time not only did the error message flash again, but Tiran also felt a sharp electrical shock at the base of his skull, causing him to rip the helmet off and claw at the back of his head in pain.

"What the hell, Li!?" Tiran bellowed, causing Ruwa and Quick Fix to drop what they were doing and stare at him with concern. Tiran shot them a placating glance and returned his attention inward, "Li, what the hell was that for?" he sub vocalized through still clenched teeth.

'I'm sorry, Tiran,' she replied in a hollow tone, 'but user access is not authorized for those files.'

"Bullshit, your source code files are the only ones that aren't authorized for access to a non-developer and these files were created recently! You gotta tell me what's going on with this shit."

'I'm sorry,' Li repeated. 'That information is currently classified.'

"The hell you mean classified? This isn't funny, Li."

'It means that you are not permitted to know that information. I am not trying to be humorous.'

At this point, if Tiran could have somehow reached into Li's processor core and throttled her, he would have. Nothing she was doing or saying any more was making sense to him. Li had never turned him down for any information she'd had before. Hell, she'd even been instrumental in acquiring information he wasn't ever supposed to know. So why was she locking him out now? He cradled his head in his hands, hoping he could find a reason.

Whatever the answer was, Tiran couldn't fathom it. This was something he'd never experienced. In fact, he was sure nobody else had either as far as he knew. Mentally, he began to distance himself from Li, letting his connection to her diminish to a tenuous thread. He didn't know what else to do. She was starting to scare him.

Programs—even ones as advanced as Li—weren’t supposed to be able to display emotion like that. They weren’t supposed to have malicious thoughts like that. Hel, they definitely weren’t supposed to be writing up new programs on their own and becoming defensive when asked about them. It just didn’t fit. It didn’t make sense to Tiran.

He decided to drop it. At least for the moment. Li wasn’t sending him feedback anymore, aside from her background processes. Tiran would leave it be, he had other things to worry about now.

Tiran felt a tap on his arm. “You ok?’ said a soft voice to his side.

It was Ruwa, looking up at him with concern in those liquid glacial green eyes.

Tiran took his head out of his hands, “Fine,” he responded a little more sharply than he intended.

Ruwa seemed unfazed, “You don’t look fine. I think you should get some sleep.”

“I’m fine, really–“

Ruwa cut him off, having none off it, “No, you’re not. Flickr said it would be a few hours before we get to the next site.” She grabbed a small bundled up blanket from under the bench and put it up for Tiran to use as a pillow. “Here, it’s all we got so make the best of it.”

Tiran remained defiant, reaching for his pistol and a rag to clean it with, “Look, I really appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I don’t need it right now.”

Then Ruwa surprised him by hopping up onto the bench, planting her front hoof on his chest and shoving him flat onto the bench. Tiran looked up between his legs at her, bewildered.

Hoof still planted on his chest, Ruwa leaned close in to his face with her head cocked to one side, one glittering eye boring into his skull, “It was not an option.” She said it in a way that made it clear that even if it was an option, he still wouldn’t have a choice.

They stared each other down for another moment like that, Tiran pinned to the bench by Ruwa’s soft weight and Ruwa herself doing her best to produce lasers from her eyes with which to skewer Tiran. Neither was willing to give ground, it seemed.

“Why don’t you two just kiss already?”

Tiran went stone still in his mind, so unexpected was the sentence, but Ruwa was suddenly flustered, “W–what?” she sputtered. She turned towards the errant speaker, an impishly grinning Quick Fix, “What the hell do you mean by that?” Ruwa demanded, her quarrel temporarily forgotten.

Quick Fix just leaned suggestively to one side, puckish smirk still glued to her face, “I meant what I said, what’d you think?”

Ruwa didn’t seem to take the suggestion well, her pupils shrunk to small pin points, “K–kiss him? Why would I…wait…” Quick as a bird, she snapped her head back to the bench, fully expecting to see an equally awkward human still immobilized beneath her hoof, but found only more bench. “Damn, where’d he go?” she cursed, hopping back to the deck.

“He slipped into the engine compartment while you were still contemplating planting a fat wet one on him.” Quick Fix said as she trotted up to the bench and took a seat near the door. She pulled out some tools from her bag and a piece of Tiran’s flight suit from the sack on the floor and began tinkering with it.

Ruwa felt her face flush, “I wasn’t–“

“Please,” the unicorn scoffed, “the tension’s practically palpable between the two of you, I can read it on your face. Anyway, you should leave him alone. He needs some time to himself.”

“Time to himself? He needs to–“

“Sleep, yes I know,” Quick Fix said, cutting her off. “He also needs to eat and drink some water, but he’s also had his world turned upside-down several times in just a couple weeks. Add that to the fact that he’s butting heads with another conscious being he’s sharing his body with and it doesn’t add up to good.”

Ruwa turned her gaze back to the engine compartment door, Quick’s words hanging heavily in her mind. What was going on with her friend, was he really in that much turmoil? If so, was there any way she could really help him.

“Of course, it’s just food for thought. Give him some time and later if you want to, you can talk it out with him,” Quick Fix said again.

Ruwa glanced back at her, “Ok. But really, I don’t want to kiss him.”

Quick Fix let out a little chuckle, “Whatever you say,” and went back to focusing on her tinkering again.

Still a bit perturbed, Ruwa quietly walked up to the engine compartment door. She pushed tentatively against it with a hoof, but it was held fast by something on the other side. Worried, she turned her head and held it flat on the door, ear pressed hard into the wood. Other than the high pitched hum of the engine on the other side, she couldn’t hear a thing.

Deciding to take Quick Fix’s advice, she final turned away and found a comfortable place to lay down for the remainder of the trip.

Ruwa wasn’t entirely sure exactly what it was Tiran was going through, then again how could any pony? She knew it had something to do with that invisible woman, that ‘AI’, Li. She also knew it had something to do with recent events. All in all, Ruwa wasn’t even sure how she would talk to him about everything. They hadn’t even been very talkative together to begin with, even when they were alone at the RSTG facility.

Ruwa felt slumber coming on despite the uncomfortable ride in the airship and stifled a yawn. Maybe it would be better when they got to their next hideout. Maybe Tiran would be. She certainly hoped so. It would be a shame to lose the first real friend she’d had in long time, even if he was a strange and damaged one. A damaged one like her.

Ruwa awoke with a jostle. As she lifted her head and blinked to clear her eyes of sleepiness, she caught a glimpse of their new temporary home from outside the side door. The airship touched down to send a cloud billowing towards a small cave entrance in the side of a large rock face.

The engines began their slow whine down from high tempo to idle to a full stop. The quiet that pervaded the area following their shut down was nearly unbearable.

Ruwa stood up and stretched like a cat, letting out a loud yawn as she did. “Ugh, where are we now?” she asked nobody in particular.

“Site Lima Six,” Flickr said as he bounded out of the cockpit and began grabbing gear from under the benches. “I have to set up the camp, so it’ll take a bit. Why don’t you walk around a little and familiarize yourself with the area?”

That sounded like as good an idea to Ruwa as any, but she had something else on her mind. Working herself up and putting a bit of pep into her step, she went straight for the door to the engine compartment.

“You won’t find him in there,” Quick Fix said as she levitated a few of her tools back into her pack.

Ruwa had paused mid-knock, “Huh?”

“He isn’t in there,” Quick reiterated.

Ruwa lowered her hoof and looked puzzling toward the unicorn, “What…where did he go then?”

Quick Fix shoved yet another tool into her pack, a hefty looking screwdriver. “We dropped him off down the mountain,” she said matter-of-factly.

Ruwa felt a cold stone drop into the pit of her stomach. “You what!?”

“Oh, I repaired his arm and gear first. Again,” she said with a little roll of her eyes. “Flickr also gave him a spare rifle we had laying around. He insisted he recon the area a little, but don’t worry, Kai’s flying overwatch.”

Ruwa had barely heard anything Quick had said. Instead, she rushed out onto the rocky ground before the engineer could finish. She looked around frantically for any signs that Tiran was actually nearby.

Flickr was heading back into the cave with heavy bags of gear strapped to his back and floating in front of him. He shot an odd look her way. Around the other side of the airship was a steep drop neatly concealed by some coniferous trees growing stubbornly around its lip. Below was nothing but scraggly brush on rolling ridges and hills splaying out from the small mountain side they were on like a dress billowing in the wind.

Kai was just a dark spot drifting lazily around a cloud in the distance. Ruwa followed the large griffon with her eyes and drew an imaginary line down towards the ground. Directly beneath him was a copse of trees that spread out from a drainage that led almost all the way back up to her position, though it would be a difficult climb.

“Ruwa, quit it, he’ll be fine!” It was Quick Fix, calling from the mouth of the cave. “Come on over and help us out, there’s a yummy meal for you in it if you do!”

“Ok, coming!” Ruwa called back. But she lingered, staring to the spot she found below for a moment longer. Q had said he needed time, time to get things together again and function. Well, she wanted time too. She only hoped he had the time to give her.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Tiran was slowly making progress up the drainage, it was slow going however. It had looked like an easy climb from the air. Then again, everything looked easy from altitude. Only now, he was being faced with a difficult scramble up a large tumble of rocks sitting in his way.

This wouldn’t normally be such a problem—especially since all he was carrying was an old rifle—but either side of the drainage was sadistically steep, meaning that either he would have to suck it and climb or radio for Flickr to come pick him up. One thing was painfully apparent to Tiran, there was no way in hell he was going to call for help now.

So he sucked it up and started climbing

While strenuous, Tiran did have the help of the small servos in the joints to take some of the load. Still, by the time he got past this most recent obstacle, he found himself panting a little any way. Tiran craned his neck to the sky and picked out the small dot circling overhead. The HUD in his visor automatically isolated it and magnified the image.

Kai had been circling among the clouds above for the better part of the day now. Flickr had insisted that he was one of only a few that knew of this secluded little hideout, but the griffon had insisted on keeping a near constant watch all by himself.

The others thought it was quite noble, but Tiran knew better. If he had his information right, Kai and the Old Man had been near as close friends as any. That kind of loss couldn’t just be dropped, it had to be processed. That process could last a long time and it often made the person it was affecting act in strange ways. Granted, Kai wasn’t a person by the old definition, but he had enough of the intelligence and emotion of one to qualify.

Tiran made a mental note to keep an eye on the big bird.

The place Flickr had brought them all to was a nice little desolate pocket of the world. Most of it was desert, but the place they seemed to have put down at had many of the characteristics of the high desert. Here and there, large trees resembling Pinyon Pines grew from the rocky earth. In many places like the drainage—and including it—thick bushes grew and threatened to impede the progress of any would-be climber. It was hot, too, almost unbearably so. Tiran was already running low on water and he silently thanked whatever crazy gods were watching over him now that it wasn’t humid as well.

At the top of the drainage—what was Tiran’s goal—was a small cave entrance. Flickr hadn’t spoken much
about what lay in store for them there, but he had hinted at something like base facility complete with plumbing and heating. Tiran didn’t care either way as long as it was hidden and there was food, but the girls had been thrilled.

Besides that nice little feature, their hideout’s location included large bare bone ridges covered top to bottom with bald rocks of varying sizes and not much else. This coupled with the high desert pines concealing the cave entrance meant that as long as they practiced light discipline, they would be able to see anybody approaching for miles without being spotted.

Tiran came to the next obstacle, yet another pile of boulders, and cursed silently to himself. His little hike was looking more and more like a bad idea. Still, he needed the time to be alone. At least, that’s what he told himself. Really, he was just waiting for someone. Or—as it might be in this case—something.
What Tiran really wanted was for the strange man to appear again. He only ever did so when there was nobody else around. One thing was frustrating Tiran though, it had already been hours and the apparition had yet to appear.

Tiran contemplated the word apparition for a moment. He used the word in referring to the man that so often taunted him now and it seemed like an apt description. The man didn’t make sounds when he walked, he didn’t leave prints and he didn’t even show up for the sensors. By all ways and means, he simply didn’t exist. Which was why Tiran was trying to get him to show up again now.

Tiran’s patience was wearing thin. He didn’t dare slow his climb because if he did, he wouldn’t have enough water to make it to the cave. Even so, he was starting to think that if he didn’t take long enough, the man might never show and Tiran would never get answers to the questions he wanted to ask.

He came to a flat space in the drainage, a bend carved out by countless years of rain and wind that afforded Tiran a little privacy in an almost bowl like area. Tiran paused in his trek and cast his eyes all about, sure that the man would show up now in such a secluded place. But still, he did not come.

“Where are you!?” Tiran bellowed, finally overcome by his vexation. “Come on, show yourself! You’ve always come before, why not now?”

“Christ, you don’t have to shout.”

Tiran whirled around to find the man, as calm as he always was, sitting on one of the boulders half buried in the packed sand.

“About goddamn time you show up. I’ve got some questions for you.”

The man’s face twisted in incredulity, “What do you think I am, some servant to come at your every beck and call?”

“I’m not entirely sure what the hell you are,” Tiran said, “but it’s time you told me.”

The man looked amused. “Oh. Is that so?”

“Yeah, it is. So what the hell are you, really?”

“What am I?”

“Yeah, what are you?” Tiran repeated. “You appear out of thin air, you seem to know things that nobody else does, you never give me straight answers to anything,” Tiran felt his ire growing with every word, the volume of his voi ce rising to a forte, “I can’t even pick you up as a living person on my suit’s fucking sensors! So what are you, huh? A figment of my imagination, am I going crazy? Are you some demon, some kind of spirit?”

The man chuckled and dropped from his perch, landing silently on the sand below. “A spirit? It’s a little more complicated than that. Demon? Heh, maybe. As for your going crazy; I would certainly hope not. You got a lot of work ahead of you by the looks of it and going crazy wouldn’t help you with any of it.”

“See, that’s what I mean!” Tiran shouted. “Just give me a straight fucking answer! I have two ponies I have to help look after up there, not to mention fucking paramilitary kooks coming after me and everyone else I get close to, you seem to be in the know about what’s happening, so why won’t you tell me anything!?”

Grin still plastered on his face, the man slowly approached Tiran until they were mere feet away. “Not everything is as it seems in this world. It took me a while, too much time, to figure that out. That said, you should probably be focusing on the task at hand. Little old me? I’m just along for the ride.”

Tiran had had about enough of it now. His rage boiled over at this newest dodge at an answer. In one movement, he swung the rifle off his shoulder, flipped the safety off and fired a burst straight into the man’s gut.

Nothing changed, not even the man’s grin.

“I’ll add that you still have a lot to on observation. Tell you what though, I’ll give you this;“ the man leaned in close to Tiran, though Tiran couldn’t even hear any breathing, “if you really want some answers, go ask a princess.”

Tiran was about to swing at the man this time and see if a fist would connect, but he simply vanished. There was nothing to suggest he’d even been there; no foot prints, no marks on the boulder, nothing. All that was left were the man’s last words ringing in Tiran’s ears.

Out of the blue, Tiran’s comms crackled to life, “I heard some shots, everything ok down there?” came Quick Fix’s voice over the radio.

Tiran went to respond, but what was he going to tell her, that he’d just shot a ghost? What would they even think if he told them about the man? They certainly wouldn’t believe him and they’d probably begin to mistrust him, Flickr especially.

On the spot, Tiran made something up, “Everything’s fine, I just got surprised by a snake in my path.”

“Really?” She didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Well Flick said to cut it out or you might give us away,” she paused for a second, listening to someone in the background, “and use a stick next time, we don’t have much ammo as it is.”

“Copy that,” Tiran said flatly. “Tiran out.”

Quick Fix’s voice softened, “Tiran, are you feeling o–“

He cut the connection before she could finish her sentence.

Tiran’s latest conversation with the apparition hadn’t yielded much more than any of the others had in the past. But it did give him something to work on. He had a bigger goal now. He was going to get the Cloudburst back, that was for sure. But he wasn’t going home, not just yet. First he had a princess or two to sit down and have a chat with.