Ahia woke up, but she wasn't sure if she was alive.
There was no ground beneath her. She was suspended in a cage made of solidified grey mist, hovering over a drop that went down forever. Below her, through the gaps in the smoke, she could see the distant, glittering lights of Akogwa. It looked like a spilled jewelry box.
"Don't look down, little root," a raspy voice drifted from the shadows. "Gravity is just a suggestion up here."
Ahia gripped the bars of her cloud-cage. Her fingers passed partially through them, feeling a sting of freezing cold Iku.
She looked around. She was in the Dildillaac—the invisible superstructure that oppressed the earth. It wasn't a city of stone; it was a city of storms. The buildings were shifting columns of thunderheads, connected by bridges of lightning.
Drifting toward her was a figure that seemed to be made of rags and rain. He was a Kifofirist—a Mufarikha who had cheated death to become an undead spirit.
"Welcome to the ceiling of the world," the creature said. He didn't have a face, just a swirling vortex of gray vapor where a head should be. "I am called Sirocco. I am the hunger of the wind."
"Why am I here?" Ahia demanded. She tried to summon her Manomi powers, to reach out to any plant life, but there was nothing here. No Ase. Only Iku—entropy, the blue-black smoke of sin. The air tasted stale, recycled a thousand times.
"Because you are a wire," Sirocco hissed, gliding closer. "A live wire connected to the main generator."
He reached out a smoky hand and tapped the air in front of her chest. Ahia gasped as her Heart Chakra flared green involuntarily.
"The Ifunanya," Sirocco murmured, savoring the word like a delicacy. "The Heart-Echo. You are bonded to the Servitor Supreme. Your Dapabie leaks into his, and his leaks into yours."
"So?" Ahia trembled. "You want to ransom me?"
"Ransom?" Sirocco laughed, the sound like dry thunder. "No. We practice Utupu—Nothingness. We want to sever the Sky from the Earth. If we drain you... if we consume your Huenergy slowly enough... the King will feel every drop leave you. We will drink the Sky dry through the straw that is your soul."
Ahia stared at him in horror. They were going to use her as a conduit to vampirize the King.
"He will come for me," Ahia whispered. "He is the storm that brings the rain."
"Let him come," Sirocco hissed, turning to look at the army of Kifofirists gathering in the thunderheads behind him. "We are the storm that never ends."
The Imperial Palace – The Strategy Room
The heavy doors of the Strategy Room were kicked open—literally.
Libaax Akoma strode in, still wearing his dust-covered combat gear. The entire High Table was already assembled, roused from their sleep by the explosion in the hallway.
Azure Oba, the Authority on Military Might, stood at the head of the tactical map table. The Sanguine giant looked up, his Red Aura blazing with anticipation.
"You made a mess of the hallway, My Lord," Azure rumbled, though a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. "And you punched a member of the Council. Vhuthu is currently in the infirmary with a spiritual concussion."
"She stood in the way of a threat to the Empire," Libaax said, his voice flat and cold. He walked to the table and slammed his hand down on the map of the sky. "The threat is not on the border, Azure. It is above us."
"The Dildillaac?" Alem Amari, the Albino law-keeper, adjusted his glasses nervously. "Attacking the spirit realm is... legally complex. The Treaty of Clouds—"
"Burn the treaty," Libaax commanded. "They have taken a citizen of Akogwa. They have attacked a Royal Manomi facility. And they have declared war on the Crown."
He looked Azure Oba in the eye.
"Mobilize the Jeshilaanga," Libaax ordered. "I want the Air Force in the sky within the hour."
Azure Oba's grin widened, revealing white teeth against his red clay skin. He had been waiting for this order for decades.
"The Jeshilaanga are ready, My Lord," Azure said. "The Akins are already donning their Yacouba masquerades. The gliders are fueled with cosmic energy. But..."
Azure paused, tapping his tusk artifact, Elao.
"The Dildillaac is invisible to the naked eye. We can fly up there, but we cannot hit what we cannot see. We need a spotter. Someone who can see through the veil of Iku."
Libaax turned toward the shadows of the room.
"Arora," he said.
Arora Lakshmi, the Dravidian Dibia, stepped forward. Her sari rustled like dry leaves. Her Prismatic White Aura—the rarest of all, containing the full spectrum of Ase—shimmered around her.
"The Vajra bell can part the veil," Arora said softly, her voice melodic. "But the Dildillaac is a place of pure entropy. To enter it is to invite madness."
"I am not asking you to enter it," Libaax said, his eyes burning with blue fire. "I am asking you to light it up. Paint the target, Arora. Azure and I will do the rest."
"You?" Azure raised an eyebrow. "The Servitor Supreme does not lead the vanguard."
"Today he does," Libaax said, turning back to the balcony where the golden light of dawn was just beginning to crack the horizon. "I am an Akin before I am a King. And they have something of mine."
Azure Oba chuckled, a deep, earth-shaking sound. He pulled a massive, curved sword from the rack—a weapon that hummed with the 'Oomphness' of a master Akin.
"Then let us go hunting, My Lord," Azure roared. "The Jeshilaanga flies at dawn!"
The Hangar Bay
The morning air screamed with the sound of engines.
The Jeshilaanga fleet was a terrifying sight. The non-Akin soldiers, dressed like Shina warriors in aerodynamic leather armor, were strapped into single-man gliders.
Leading them were the Akins. They hovered in the air without gliders, sustained by their Passive Weapon Art of Flight (derived from the conceptual feather of an arrow). They wore terrifying Yacouba masquerades.
Libaax stood on the lead skiff, flanked by Azure Oba.
Arora Lakshmi sat in the center of the skiff, her legs crossed in meditation. She held the Vajra bell, an ornate bronze bell with a Vajra thunderbolt handle.
"Ready?" Libaax asked.
Arora opened her eyes. They were a glowing prism of white.
"The Nommo is spoken," she whispered. "The logic is sound. Let the invisible be seen."
She rang the bell.
DOOOOOM.
A ripple of pure white soundwave shot upward, piercing the clouds.
High above, the sky tore. The invisibility cloak of the Dildillaac shattered.
Suddenly, the horrific, swirling storm-city was visible to everyone in Akogwa. It hung like a cancerous tumor in the sky, a mass of grey rot and lightning.
"Target sighted!" Azure Oba bellowed, his voice amplified by his Red Aura. "Jeshilaanga! ATTACK!"
Hundreds of gliders and flying Akins surged upward, a swarm of angry hornets flying straight into the eye of the storm.