It's meet that the second attempt at Beatrice's ritual begins where the first one ended: On the Iron Steppes, stalking the elusive Prince of Noon and Nephele's last precious airship.
The storms clogging the sky above and the war raging through the grass below it makes the expedition's path to Noon perforce an indirect one. To get to him and his airship, they need to defeat the Prince of Thundering and his Court; to challenge the Court of Thundering, they must cross miles of hostile territory, through slashing rain and driving wind and punishing hail, beset on all sides by furious dryads.
In this first challenge, a curse of the Waking World's Season of Tears proves a blessing instead: Chara, attacked by dryads and livid with hatred, summons a swarm of giant mantids--mantids like enough the dryads' missing symbiotic hama to check the raging plant-folk. The resemblance is sufficient to win the expedition a narrow corridor of safe passage--so long as one of their Darkbloods can keep up a suitable manifestation of insects. Two of the sapient plants (a yew and an ash, scarred in the bark from years of war) even condescend to act as an escort into the deeper Steppes. Their assistance is part-sentimental, largely pragmatic; they lead the expedition on a zig-zagging route between outposts of Thundering's Court and watch any ensuing slaughter with grim and dark and satisfied eyes.
2.1 The Princes of Thundering and Noon
The storms clogging the sky above and the war raging through the grass below it makes the expedition's path to Noon perforce an indirect one. To get to him and his airship, they need to defeat the Prince of Thundering and his Court; to challenge the Court of Thundering, they must cross miles of hostile territory, through slashing rain and driving wind and punishing hail, beset on all sides by furious dryads.
In this first challenge, a curse of the Waking World's Season of Tears proves a blessing instead: Chara, attacked by dryads and livid with hatred, summons a swarm of giant mantids--mantids like enough the dryads' missing symbiotic hama to check the raging plant-folk. The resemblance is sufficient to win the expedition a narrow corridor of safe passage--so long as one of their Darkbloods can keep up a suitable manifestation of insects. Two of the sapient plants (a yew and an ash, scarred in the bark from years of war) even condescend to act as an escort into the deeper Steppes. Their assistance is part-sentimental, largely pragmatic; they lead the expedition on a zig-zagging route between outposts of Thundering's Court and watch any ensuing slaughter with grim and dark and satisfied eyes.