Arriving at Airspire was a simple affair, after the experience at Cloudreach. Maeryn reluctantly decided to wear her uncomfortable Zephyrian Airship Captain outfit in order to speed things along and not give away their Geovan origins. She was wearing her vambraces underneath the jacket, which made it bulge slightly, but not enough for a casual observer to notice. As a result, nobody looked at her or her crew twice as they landed, filled out the relevant paperwork, and walked away towards the airfield.

  Unlike Cloudreach, the airfield was positively bustling, with airships constantly leaving or arriving, and the streets were crowded with people. Even on their way out of the airfield, two teams of researchers rolled carts of who-knew-what past them towards different airships. It was immediately and easily believable that this flying city was a hub for transportation and research, and if the others didn’t stay close Maeryn was halfway nervous she’d lose them in the crowd.

  “So, I guess this is it,” Terrance muttered, giving them a half-smile. “Thanks for taking me out this way. I’m going to go look around, and see what Airspire’s up to regarding the Mist and mana depletion problems.”

  Dan and Frankie looked at Maeryn questioningly, but she didn’t blink. “We’ll see each other again,” she said confidently. “In the meantime, good hunting.”

  Terrance’s smile smoothed out, becoming a bit more genuine. “We certainly will. Good hunting,” he replied, and he ducked into a nearby crowd, rapidly vanishing from sight.

  “So, what was that about?” Frankie asked.

  “Yeah, that was a bit odd, I think,” Dan agreed.

  Maeryn shook her head. “Terrance is thinking about joining us, but wants to see if there’s anyone here in Airspire who’s made real progress on the Mist or mana depletion before he does. But… he’ll be back. I’m sure of it.” She glanced at where Dan had disappeared from sight. “I think it’s been too long since he had a friend in his corner.”

  Dan nodded agreeably. “We could use someone of his talents, and like he said before, rogues and alchemists work very well together. I have no objections.”

  Frankie shrugged, clearly not caring one way or another. “As long as he pulls his weight, I’m fine with whatever you decide. So, what’s the plan, Rin?”

  Maeryn shook her head, trying to clear it of stray musings. “Right. First we get our research delivery out of the way. Lorn’s copy of the research had a note on who it was supposed to go to, right? Let’s do that, find a meeting point, then split up like we did on Cloudreach. I’ll find us a place to stay, Dan will go mingle with researchers and see what he can find, and you restock on what we need for Stonewing and see what kind of information you can scrounge up from the civilians.” She reached into a pouch on her belt and pulled out some of the money that Lorn had given them back on Cloudreach, passing some to each of her companions.

  “Got it,” Dan and Frankie acknowledged together.

  “Let’s get to it. Dan, do you have the research folder? Please pull out the sheet that tells us where it’s supposed to go.”

  With a nod, Dan tugged off his pack, reached into it, and pulled out the folder. He flipped through it for a moment, then deftly withdrew the requested paper before replacing the folder into his pack. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” Maeryn scanned it briefly. “Looks like… we’re delivering it to Zephyr Research Central. Kind of a bland name.”

  “Might be an administration branch,” Dan suggested. “If this is a research capital, they probably need people to monitor the various research teams.”

  “That would make sense,” Maeryn admitted. “Well, let’s be off.”

  They began to walk deeper into the city, and Maeryn began to immediately note some of the differences between Airspire and Cloudreach. Like she’d noticed before, Airspire was incredibly busy, but she hadn’t noticed until now that Airpire didn’t have a top “layer” dedicated to farming like Cloudreach did. Maeryn wondered how they managed their food supplies, since it seemed incredibly inefficient and expensive to have all of their food imported via airship, but figured they must have some alternative somewhere.

  She snorted to herself. Seeing whatever solution they had would probably be incredible, and amazing, but it wasn’t their priority. Maybe she’d ask around if there was time tomorrow.

  Because there wasn’t a hard limit on how tall the buildings could get, Airspire seemed to be a cluster of different styles of structures, as though a bunch of engineers who couldn’t get along had decided to compete with each other. No matter how Maeryn looked at what she was seeing, it just didn’t make any sense to her. There were some buildings with only two floors, and at least two that Maeryn could see offhand that had a dozen. Some of the buildings were simple, rectangular blocks with windows, while others were curved and domed with oddities on their roofs. One particularly memorable building seemed to have glass walls, which sounded like an enormous hazard to Maeryn - what if someone tripped and fell against the glass hard enough to break it?

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  She carefully steered clear of that one nervously, walking on the other side of the street and trying not to think about what would happen if the building collapsed suddenly. She wasn’t very successful.

  At least the road seemed to be straight, interspersed with fountains like Cloudreach had been. Maybe that was a consistent characteristic of Zephyrian cities, Maeryn mused. “I wonder if there’s some cultural reason for the fountains…?”

  Her words were lost, unheard in the sheer noise of the crowd around them as they made it to the first fountain. Immediately on arrival, the smells of different foods became much clearer, and Maeryn could see at least a dozen food stands hawking their wares. Much to her relief, there was also a large structure with a sign labeled: “Lost? Ask for Directions Here!”

  “I’ll get directions. You two can get some food if you want.”

  “You’re the best,” Frankie said thankfully with a grin, immediately breaking off towards a delicious-smelling stand that looked like it was selling pastries.

  Dan chuckled wryly. “Yeah, I think I’ll do the same. See you in a minute.”

  “See you in a minute.” Maeryn watched Dan head towards a sandwich stand, and did her best to ignore her stomach growling as she got into line for directions.

  She wasn’t in line long, and soon enough she was given a simple map of Airspire and directions on how to get to Zephyr Research Central. She did end up detouring towards the pastry stand afterwards, though; her stomach had started becoming embarrassingly loud.

  It took the better part of an hour to finally reach their destination, but as soon as they walked through the door, all of the sounds from outside quieted to a barely audible murmur. Maeryn sighed in relief, glad to be out of the constant noise, noting that Dan mimicked her while Frankie seemed utterly indifferent.

  “Welcome to Zephyr Research Central,” a man’s voice offered, his tone immediately identifiable as one who had spent years in customer service… or perhaps he was just at the end of a very long shift. He sounded like he barely had the energy to sound pleasantly professional, and when Maeryn glanced up to look at him, even his smile seemed thin. “How can I help you today?”

  “We’re from Cloudreach. Delivering a copy of our latest research notes,” Maeryn explained, gesturing to Dan. The alchemist quickly brought out the folder and passed it over to the man.

  The receptionist didn’t even look at the notes. “Research topic?”

  “Mist elimination and mana depletion.”

  “Of course it is.” The man sighed, picking up the folder. “Just a moment, please.” He took the folder and disappeared through a door behind him, reemerging thirty seconds later with a singular sheet of paper. “Your certified receipt that you delivered your research here. It will be copied and distributed to all teams performing research into your specified topic. Which is all of them.” The man briefly looked miserable, then collected himself and plastered on that thin smile again. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Yes, actually,” Dan agreed. “I need to look at the latest research on the Mist and mana depletion issues from the other teams so I can take it back to Cloudreach.”

  The man winced. “You… don’t know what you’re asking for.”

  Dan and Maeryn exchanged glances. “Could you explain?”

  The receptionist sighed heavily. “There are so many branches of research being done on the Mist alone. How it’s created, the movement patterns on the surface, how to destroy it, how to store it, and that’s without going into the experiments being done on how to resolve the problem in temporary and permanent fashions. Mana barriers, alchemic reactions to change the Mist into something that doesn’t harm people, devices that can absorb Mist in an area, there are so many avenues of research being actively developed that it’s impossible to take a copy of it all anywhere unless you have somehow created a portable library.”

  “Ah. I see the issue,” Dan acknowledged in understanding. “In that case, I need to see the latest summaries from a small subset of those research branches. I may need more in-depth records on a smaller subset later. Is that possible?”

  The man slumped in very visible relief. “That’s much more doable, yes. If it would be helpful, I can allocate one of the research librarians to assist you.”

  Dan brightened. “That would be very helpful indeed! What’s the current rate?”

  “Four bronze per hour, though it is customary to tip based on service of course.”

  Dan nodded. “That’s very reasonable. In that case, I’ll prepay for three hours as a test run. If the research librarian works out, then I’ll likely be paying for the next couple of days as well.” He pulled out twelve bronze coins and placed them on the counter.

  The receptionist didn’t even glance at the money before taking it and placing it in a drawer under the counter. “Excellent. One moment, please.” The receptionist left again through the same door as before, coming back a minute later with a young boy who couldn’t be older than twelve. “This is Luke. Luke, these are your clients. They’ve paid for three hours of time. The current time is…” The receptionist looked to the side at a clock on the wall, “... ten twenty-two. So please assist them until one twenty-two.”

  “Got it, Jake!” Luke answered with a big smile. One of his front teeth was missing, giving him a crooked smile, but he looked and sounded earnest enough. He wore a simple uniform with the Zephyr Research Central emblem, and his enthusiasm was infectious. Maeryn couldn’t help the fond smile that that pulled at her lips. Had she ever been that young and eager to please?

  The boy’s chipper attitude seemed to drain Jake even more, but the man pulled himself together. “Will there be anything else?”

  It was obvious that Jake very much wanted the answer to be no. Luckily for him, that was exactly the case, and Dan went off with Luke to… go assimilate some research, Maeryn guessed. “I guess we’ll meet back here at sunset?”

  “Works for me,” Frankie agreed. “Good luck finding us a place to stay.”

  “Thanks. Have fun socializing.”

  Frankie grinned. “I definitely will.”