Dear Reader, let me take you back for a moment to a moment that perhaps still puzzles you: the explosion of the Rex Ventorum. Perhaps you have wondered what exactly happened to Eva while Finn and Nora were standing on the plateau, trying to come to terms with the loss of their beloved airship.
Eva had her eyes firmly closed when the light of the explosion engulfed everything around her. For a moment she thought that everything would end now, but then she felt an enormous force, like an invisible hand grasping her and pulling her into the air. It was an almost floating state that made her feel dizzy despite its gentleness. She opened her eyes, but the light that surrounded her was so bright that she quickly closed them again. ‘Nora? Finn?’ she called cautiously, but her words were lost in the intense hum that surrounded her. She tried to move, but she was suspended in mid-air, as if she were a marionette tied to ropes.
And hello again. I completely forgot to explain the situation Eva was in. Imagine you were seized by a sphere of pure energy, generated by a core of rotating metal deep inside a volcano. Difficult, isn’t it? She once described it to her friend Finn: Imagine you are a pickled sardine attached to a merry-go-round that is being spun around in a tornado while that tornado is being pureed in a blender. That’s roughly what it felt like. Sounds absurd? It certainly was.
Eva was lost in a dream. While her body felt as if it were being torn apart by the centrifugal force, the world seemed to stand still inside her. But then, like a stone dropping into a calm pond, images began flickering before her mind’s eye – fragmentary at first, then becoming clearer and clearer, like a sequence of photographs coming together like a film.
She saw millennia pass. Moss and ferns crept like a thick veil over the black crater rim, while volcanoes erupted behind it, hurling ash and rock into the sky. Violent storms raged over the land, uprooting the few trees that grew on it, but she, hidden deep in the crater, remained untouched. The island recovered, nature returned, only to be destroyed again by lava eruptions. Then humans appeared, equipped with strange devices and weapons. Eva recognised the uniforms of the Order of Pilots, saw them in desperate aerial battles against attackers who wanted to take control of the Heart. There was a squad of masked men who tried to reach for her with huge copper pincers, only to be beaten back by a coordinated attack by the pilots. One of the defenders – a young man with scars across his forehead – flew just above the attackers in a daring manoeuvre to block their vision while his comrades struck. Later, she saw a woman standing at the edge of the crater, wearing a cloak that shimmered like a starry sky. She was giving a speech to a group of young recruits who listened attentively. ‘The Heart is our compass, our source of energy, our spark of life. Protecting it means preserving the Cloud Islands.‘ ‘Conclave Aeris Fidelium!’ the recruits shouted as one.
Finally, Kael appeared in the images, looking a little older each time she saw him. In his last appearance, he was serious and visibly marked by the years. Eva held her breath as she saw her parents, Aurelia and Cassian, step up beside him. Kael spoke to them firmly: ‘We have no choice. The Heart is too exposed and our order is only a shadow of itself. We must try to shield it as best we can.’ He handed them something and Eva realised that it was an Orbis Arcanum, whose rings turned lazily into each other. ‘Fly into the storm zones, charge the Orbis with the energy and return,’ Kael said emphatically. “What are we supposed to do with it then?” Eva heard her mother ask, her voice calm, but there was a hint of worry in her eyes. The Grand Master hesitated before answering, as if he were weighing whether to speak the truth. Finally, he said, ‘If you throw it at the core, it will create a connection. The energy of the storm zones and the magnetosphere will stabilise each other – for a moment. This creates a kind of protective shield, a field that isolates the core and triggers thermal storms that make this island impassable. I will leave a map so that the heir of our order can find the way.’
‘For a moment?’ her father asked, frowning. “And after that?” “After that, the Orbis will dissolve,” Kael explained, his voice growing quieter. “The resulting energy discharge will be fatal for anyone in the vicinity. You must leave the island as quickly as possible afterward.” Aurelia and Cassian exchanged a long look, a wordless agreement. ‘So this could be our last flight,’ Aurelia said, without a hint of fear in her voice. The image remained for a moment, frozen like a photograph. Eva felt her chest contract. Her parents had managed to protect the Heart – but had they died in the attempt?
The light began to pulsate more intensely and Eva felt a new power stirring within her. It was as if she suddenly had a deeper understanding of the world around her – of the air currents, the paths of the wind, even the rhythm of the Cloud Islands themselves. Then, with a final, intense impulse, the heart released her. Eva felt gravity return and she plunged out of the sphere towards the crater floor. But instead of landing on hard rock, she was caught by a current of air that gently deposited her on a narrow stone slab.
With a jolt, as if getting off a merry-go-round, everything spun around her and Eva plopped down on her bottom. When the spinning in her head finally stopped, she looked around. She had landed at the edge of the crater she had just seen in her memories – and in its centre lay the Heart of Heaven, it couldn’t be anything else. Voices startled her. ‘Controlling the heart means having the power to create this world,’ she heard Leander say. Leander? What was the madman doing here? She rose cautiously and crept around the large boulders towards the voices. ‘No, you’re an idiot, Leander!’ It was Finn! She peeked around a corner and found herself standing behind her friends, who were being threatened by Leander and the air pirate. ‘Insult me all you want,’ the nobleman said, “but we’ll see what happens in a moment. Now, enough chit-chat, give me your Orbis, navigator.” “You’d like that,” Nora spat, ’but we don’t have it anymore. It was on our ship, and you know that ship exploded.’
‘Sad, desperate lies. Why would a navigator leave his navigational instrument behind? Give it to me. Now.’ ‘I won’t,’ Finn said, pulling the Orbis out of his pocket. ‘I’ll rather destroy it.’ Thoughts raced through Eva’s mind. How could she get behind the attackers to take them down? She silently bent down and crawled to a low rock. She heard Leander sigh in mock dismay. ‘Oh, why do that? Just look at it, it’s a work of art! Give it to me and no one here will be hurt.’ Eva took a careful look at the scene. The nobleman was now within reach. If she made a bold leap forward, she would be able to overpower him. But wait – where was Mara? The pirate was no longer at his side.
And before Eva could lift a finger, she was yanked up onto her feet by a strong hand on her collar. The smell of storm leather, firebreeze and old tobacco smoke filled her nostrils and a cutting voice said close to her ear: ‘Gotcha.’