Men in the camp flocked around the airship yard. Air sailors and soldiers alike looked at the sailboard with interest.
Who would have thought such a contraption could be ridden?
As Radeon waited for the six outlier elders, he saw them don heavy forged armor, and he frowned.
He knew each set weighed over two grown mortal men. The ship would not perform its duty with such weight.
Radeon looked to Commander Kiel, letting his anxiety drip from his eyes.
Kiel was not an oblivious man. He beckoned Radeon aside, away from listening ears.
"Speak plain, sky-sailor. What stays your hand?" His voice stayed patient, but it carried a quiet insistence that Radeon give him face before he spoke.
"The men aren't light enough, sir. It's their shells that sink us. The board was never meant to haul such burden." Radeon said, making sure not to point any blame upon the commander.
Kiel understood at once. It was not his misjudgment, nor his place to give orders to sectarians.
The commander smiled at the six men and beckoned them back to camp.
After a dozen breaths, the six men stepped into view again, their heavy alloy shells gone.
Simple robes hung from their shoulders. Leather armor was begrudgingly worn underneath.
Radeon stepped onto the sailboard first. He needed to leave another impression, one the camp would not forget once the reports started to sour.
His hands settled on the array core's panel. He pushed qi into the etched lines and let the spirit energy flow.
Just before the energy kissed the wind stone, he held the charge for a couple heartbeats and let it build.
That pause had never been part of the design.
The sailboard roared like a caged beast that had finally smelled open sky.
Wind pummeled the men behind him, and some were even blown back. For a breath, the whole camp stood in a stupor.
Even the Commander Kiel stared, he was a man. What man doesn't marvel at machines?
"All aboard, sers," Radeon said, grinning with Sail Knife's yellowed teeth.
Radeon instructed them carefully where to hold and what to protect. He did not want a hitch, or questions later.
Once they understood, Radeon began parading the ship around the camp as if the sailboard needed a runway.
Cultivators who did not see such spectacle so commonly followed.
Radeon traded high fives with Captain Todd and his crew, while the five elders understood exactly what he was about.
What was fame? This was fame. Wouldn't the crowd remember them with a trick like this? So they allowed it.
After one small circle around the camp, Radeon signaled the men to make way.
The array roared again and they accelerated. Tents were blown aside.
Then they sliced like a crescent of sword energy into the darkness of night.
In open sky, a swift white glare traced across the clouds, here and gone like a comet, leaving only a thin tail as the air tore open for them.
The sword masters held fast, bodies steady even as cold condensation beaded on the pores of their exposed skin.
Radeon watched their eyes, not the horizon. Their vision sharpened with each pass, sweeping the land below.
One by one, they spotted opposing scouts creeping toward the hidden camp.
Their faces hardened. They had thought the count exaggerated, but the number of cultists surpassed it all the same.
They took out a brush, feet planted firm with qi. They took note of the composition of every cultist they encountered.
When they reached the edge of the marked mapping zone, qi bolts snapped into view.
Hundreds of bloody lights climbed the air in front of them, hard points of killing intent.
"So then, sirs, where do we cast our eyes first?" Radeon kept his tone flat.
"Set your worry aside. Our strength will hold. Press forward, sky sailor." one of the sword master said.
"I'll need a hand. This ship won't stomach even one good hit." Radeon said, hinting at the swordsmen.
The six men wrapped the board in their qi, forming a shifting barrier of energy.
Radeon shoved the nose down. Projectiles slid past them in streaks of red.
Then they arrived at a rock face. There up top, ballista bolts started locking in.
Radeon and the six swordsman saw a blood art being conjured. Then the ballista fired.
It chased them through the air. Then another fired.
"We can't go on like this, sers! Someone's got to swat them aside by hand!" Radeon barked as the ship rolled into a hard, midair somersault.
The outlier elders did not disappoint. One climbed to the masthead and drove a three-bladed sword into the wood.
The metal bit deep and glowed. The swordsmen lifted from the deck, robes snapping in the wind, and circled the ship like pale hawks.
A bloodied ballista bolt came screaming in, trailing red and splinters. The elder met it with one clean cut.
Steel kissed iron. The bolt split, and the force trapped inside it burst free in midair.
Light flared. Air punched outward.
The shockwave slammed the hull hard enough to make the ship wobble.
"Everything alright, sky sailor?" one of the elders yelled.
Radeon did not answer. Smaller crossbow bolts began to rain up at him from the deck below.
He did not bother dodging. He climbed. Bolts flashed the sailboard he rose, close enough to hear their fletching bite the wind.
When the shooters below widened their spread to catch him, Radeon took it as permission.
He dove. His pupils opened wide until the world thinned to lines and pulses. With his ability, he mapped where vitality gathered and where it did not.
He aimed for the hollow places, the blind gaps people forgot to guard. The sailboard screamed as he drove straight toward the ballista line.
Six swordsmen saw him coming and went pale. Eight ballista along the rail began to glow crimson in the dusk, then fired.
Radeon snapped the sailboard into a hard left tilt. The first bolt met a swordsman's swing and burst apart in sparks.
Before the second could be answered, Radeon killed the array. The sailboard slowed as if it had struck deep water, and the timing shifted.
The second bolt reached the line a breath early and another swordsman had to take it, blade flashing.
Radeon reignited the array. The remaining bolts came in a tighter wave.
He could not angle them all into perfect misery in time.
Four swordsmen reacted together and cut four bolts out of the air in a single frantic rhythm.
That left one gap. Radeon rode the momentum he had saved and guided a bolt between the mast and the sail.
It slipped into the ship's body, angling down toward him.
A hilt strike clipped the bolt's tail and slammed it away.
The last bolt. Three swordsmen rushed for it at once. Radeon knew it was already too late.
He rolled the sailboard, brought the thickest edge around, and let the bolt slam.
The three swordsman didn't let it. Qi erupted across the deck.
Three different currents surged at once as the defenders tried to save their ship.
The explosion answered them. Blast and qi wrestled in a violent knot. Planks were shaved thin.
Splinters and smoke scattered into the air. The structure held, barely.
In the thick of it, Radeon let his head loll as if the fatigue had finally caught him.
He sagged in the saddle of the sailboard, shoulders loose, mouth half open, the picture of a man about to faint.
Then he let himself be thrown. Midair, he slipped free and tumbled over the side.
It looked ugly. It looked accidental. That was the point.
He had already altered the array. A single command sat buried beneath the rest. Take the previous route. Return.
He needed witnesses. A word in the crowd. A story that would survive him.
Not the truth, just something people could repeat with excitement and certainty.
The board shot upward without him, rising like a startled gull.
Then it swung back, clawing for the sky, accelerating as it followed the fixed line of its former path.
Faster and faster it went, higher and higher, until it became only a dark mark against the dusk.
The swordsmen's voices tore at his ears as he fell, sharp with alarm and disbelief.
But the sailboard was already far ahead.
Radeon dropped alone through open air, the ship shrinking above him, the ground rushing up to meet his borrowed death.