He who stood on top of the Skies

## 1 - Elassus VemHawth

My mother always said I would be special. She was a good woman. Loose strings of grey hair always used to fall out from behind her ears in front of her eyes. One of my earliest memories is reaching up to grab her hair. She was a good woman, an honest woman, and true woman. A better mother no one could ever ask.

I am none of those now, to the point where I wonder if my mother would recognize me. I doubt that I will ever see that wonderful woman again. Maybe one day, long from now, I will return home to sleep, to rest. That day is far off.

I was born in the higher district of Alu, Hoya Koku. From an early age, the only thing I ever cared about was climbing higher. I loved scaling the mountain sides. as soon as i could grab, i was finding handholds in the stone cliffs, pulling myself higher. I remember the first time I reached the summit of Alu. It was late in the afternoon, not long before sunset. The HighSky wind that swept around me filled with with a clear focus. from the peak of the spire, I could see the brothers to my spire, to the east, to the north  and more tucked behind them. Up high, everything was clear. I knew then that I wanted to stand on the highest peak I could find.

It was only inevitable that once I was grown, I thought only of making it to the centre of the skies, to Dalaam, where the tallest spire stood with the King's court at the pinnacle. I left Alu as a deckhand to a passing merchant when I was fourteen. I spent the next three years trading captains until I found a ship headed to Dalaam. Another year apprenticing under as a soldier of fortune to a privateer, Captain Francis Ebon, who acted as a local escort to nobles. Ebon made sure his crew was useful beyond able hands, training every deck hand and crewman to their nature. The Captain found me suitable at combat, though I never had a particular taste for it. For me, I was happiest sitting in the ship's crows nest, looking far out to soar, occasionally persuading whoever was at the wheel to climb higher.

"Why shouldn't we fly in HighSky, Capatin? Or above Highsky?" I remember asking on one memorable occasion. I was nearly thrown over board after playing with the elevation console.  Ebon was good to me. I was in good health, as sound a mind as I had ever been, and was slowly crawling closer to the highest peak at the centre of the skies.

Disaster struck when a corrupt Blue raided our ship and Ebon was forced to cut him down after the Blue tried the blackmail one of his crew, a marvellous and attractive rigger called Jolie. The Blue tried to take her as payment, but the captain couldn't stand slavery. It was a losing fight from there. the Blue's hunter carved up our boat, leaving us to sink beneath the cloudfloor. we had to scuttle our boat's balloons and drift through LowSky until we found land, at which point we were effectively marooned.

I spent a month on a spit of rock sharply jutting up not fifty feet above the white of oblivion. Curiosity turned the three crew mates who had drifted with me on the balloon. Before long, each decided they were better off discovering the mystery of what lies beneath, and climbed down the spire, disappearing beneath the cloudfloor. For my part, I turned my time spent marooned into a chance to sharpen myself. I fasted, more out of necessity than desire. I trained my body. My muscle became taut and my form lithe. It was a hard month, and fortune saved me at my last legs, when all I desired was to see the light of HighSky once more before falling through the wind to the next life. But I was saved, pulled from my rock by a passing fishing boat that ferried me to the nearest settlement.

I was given a fresh start and made use of it. I could have found honest work, but no. I cleaned myself up on the generosity of my rescuers, walked into the local outpost and demanded safe passage to the capital. I somehow managed to convince them I was a noble dignitary that had been attacked and stranded, and just like that, I started again, this time at the top. I arrange new papers through the office, identification, appropriate documentation, opened a line of credit and was soon scheduled to return to my "home."

Dalaam, the centre of the Skies. I arrived at the docks and found lodgings. I found a job, work to support myself, with every intention of climbing higher. Higher and higher until I reached the top. But that isn't how life works. I could fake stature only so far, and once I reached that ceiling, reality took hold. Lodging, work, acquaintances and even friends. The days slipped past, altogether too fast to think on. Before I realized what had happened, it was years later. I was no longer a child gone out to sky for adventure; I was a young man. Absorbed and distracted. Passionate, yes, but I had seen just enough of the world to think I was world-weary and could afford to slow down.

Change always takes upheaval. It always takes a sparking event to unfold through its myriad configurations. Upheaval did not hit me, but my neighbour. I left for my comfortable station of work one morning to find him, a portly man who worked as a sail sewer, kneeling in the streets. He was begging for his son's life, his boy was no older than nine and had been apprehended for trespassing. The boy had been unlucky, and now the father was pleading his son's life. Once I saw the blue of the royal guard's uniform—polished banded mail, rich-coloured cape and bright sword and helm—I knew as everyone around knew that the family would not survive. The son would be confined, the father judged and pronounced in the streets. The poor mother would be left with the burden and so the family would be destroyed after being irrevocably shattered. This we saw and witnessed, and took it as one more change in the landscape. There was nothing to be done.

The experience lingered. It sat with me and ate away at my comfort. A month of storm followed, when only the hardiest of vessels made port and the rest were anchored until the strong winds past. I made my resolves.