Through the slight distortion of her spyglass lens, Kirris watched two well-dressed members of high society hand their ticket stubs over. An attractive galdar wearing a feminine demi delicately recieved them, and after comparing the numbers they bore to figures in a heavy ledger, smiled prettily and welcomed the guests. The two humans – no surprises there, they invented high society after all – grinned and advanced onto the railinged walkway beyond the galdar, stepping softly as it flexed in the fast wind.
The walkway, of course, was attached to the gondola of a luxury airship.
Wonders of this “Age of Steam”, as many were now calling it, the airships were powered by steam-driven propellers, their huge rubbery envelopes filled with a gas lighter than air, which Kirris supposed provided only slightly more buoyancy than the vacuous heads of the people she was watching. She snorted in amusement and lowered her spyglass. It was high time she found someone to listen to her shrewd observations, but she’d make do with infiltrating a well-to-do airborne gala instead.
Having seen no other socialites on their way, and with the galdar host nodding in a satisfied manner at the ledger, Kirris embraced the Aether. She reached for the purple resonance inside her… and the walkway, the galdar, and the airship all vanished. But only because she was now inside of it, a sharp violet smoke dissipating around her.
Her surroundings were replaced with lush carpet and soft walls, aluminium framing everything that could be framed. A disgusting show of wealth in her opinion, but let them try and figure out who was richer while she snuck around and took what she wanted. The sound of crisp, purposeful footsteps alerted her to the galdar stepping onto the walkway. Kirris darted along the corridor to her right, keeping low to avoid being seen through the windows. When she came to a mahogany door that led deeper into the beast, she jumped upwards, peering through its round glazing, using her ethereal ability to step inside without even trying the handle.
Its grimy metal shelving and close walls suggested that this was a room for the hosting staff. In the relative gloom, Kirris unfurled a piece of paper, and studied the badly drawn diagram. It detailed the layout of the airship, the Razorwind apparently, as well as showing a couple of suggested ways of reaching the viewing room, where her prize was located. Rubies and emeralds were nothing compared to some of the tech that was being invented of late.
She followed the dashed line on her map, crouching into the shadows of the maze-like employee area, keeping still when she heard voices or the clanking of some trolley laden with grossly opulent foodstuffs. The hum of the engines had only just started up by the time she reached the viewing room.
Thick blue curtains that could be drawn across its centre were currently tied to the sides, allowing an easy view of the thick steel bars that partitioned it. On this side were doors leading into the warren she had emerged from, and one that led into some kind of ball room, through which the sounds of hoity-toity laughter and a string quartet drifted. But she had not come skulking just to find a side way into the entertainment.
No, what she couldn’t tear her eyes from was resting on a central narrow pedestal on the other side of the bars. It resembled the dreamcatchers that had recently flooded the markets due to some expansion of imperial land across the ocean, but it was all thin metal wires, none with the same colour or gleam, and had a strange backlighting to it. Purple, the same exact shade that she experienced when phasewalking. This was an Aether-trap.
As she appraised it, the shadows around her seemed to… solidify.