Once they'd all managed to recover at least somewhat from their heart-stopping fall, they quickly took stock of their current situation. While Shia healed Reginald's arm and the rat got a stern talking to from Scule, combined with a lot of worried hugging, Vin tried to figure out their odds of survival.

Aqua Sphere would buy them time, but it wouldn't last forever. Most of the mana required for the spell was spent initially constructing the sphere of water, but it did have a small upkeep. Factoring in his natural regeneration, it was small enough that Vin had always considered it nonexistent as he'd be able to keep the spell up for literal hours before it would even make a dent in his mana pool. Once formed, it would take around an entire day for the spell to fully drain his mana reserves.

Only now, they might need every minute of that time.

Vin peered around at the simple nothingness beneath them. By the time he'd enacted his plan, they'd fallen through what looked like the very bottom of the cloud layer. There were dozens if not hundreds of clouds up above their heads, the closest ones just a few hundred feet out of reach, but absolutely nothing below them.

He still couldn't see any sort of ground, and he really didn't want to risk falling further into that vast, dark emptiness below them.

"How's survival looking?" Shia turned to ask, treading water alongside the rest of them as she finished healing Reginald's wound. "See anything useful?"

"Just a whole lot of nothing," he said, shaking his head. "Right now, I'm pretty sure our only hope of survival rests entirely in Lumel's hands. I could try using Redirect Gravity to get us closer to where we first fell, but it would pretty much run me dry, and then we'd just fall back down again."

"So staying put is our best option," she said, frowning as she furrowed her brow in concentration. "In that case, how long can you keep Aqua Sphere up?"

"About a day?" he shrugged. "Give or take a few hours. I have Bill's mana potions, so that will stretch it a little farther. My main concern now is ensuring Lumel knows how to find us. Even if she made it to the village and gathered help from the people there, it's not like we left behind any sort of marker to indicate where we fell. The sky is a big place, and we obviously left the cloud layer behind by a good bit. It might take them hours to make their way down here."

"Come on, the two of you don't have some sort of fancy magical connection or anything?" Scule asked, still tightly holding onto Reginald despite the fact it made treading water more difficult. "Nothing at all?"

"She's not an animal companion, Scule, she's my girlfriend," Vin drawled, rolling his eyes. "We'll just have to hope she comes up with something."

"So… that's it? We just float here until help comes?" Scule asked, looking between the two of them. "The two of you mages can't magic us up a better solution?"

"Once day breaks and the temperature improves, maybe you could use Redirect Gravity to get us back to one of the walkable clouds?" Shia suggested. "That would at least give you a chance to recover your mana."

"Maybe… Though I can't see any from our current position," he admitted, his eyes scanning the bottom of the cloud layer. "If those clouds are only found near the top of the cloud layer, then trying that might very well get us all killed."

"Well, we're not currently dead. Let's just take a moment to enjoy that and continue not being dead," Scule decided, finally letting go of Reginald as he flipped over and began floating on his back. "Lumel's a capable mage, I'm sure she'll come get us before we know it."

Seeing as they had nothing better to do, Vin and Shia shrugged as they also settled in for the long wait.

Minutes quickly turned into hours as the four of them treaded water, waiting patiently for Lumel to break out of the cloud layer with a small army of flight-capable people to rescue them. While Vin had more than enough endurance to continue treading water for hours on end, Scule and Reginald had to take frequent breaks atop his shoulders, and Shia was forced to spend most of her time drifting on her back, staring up at the clouds above them. Unfortunately, because he'd utilized Runic Recalibration to ensure the spell was large enough for all of them and formed far enough away that they'd hit it, Vin hadn't devoted any mana toward improving the temperature of the water. The magic seemed to prevent it from freezing solid, at the very least, but it was far too cold to be comfortable. If it weren't for the fact that they each had superhuman vitality due to their endurance and vigor attributes, they would have been in serious trouble.

Seeing as she wasn't doing anything with her own mana as they waited, Shia borrowed his fire-knife and kept it active in the water, dumping her own mana into the artifact to heighten its output and keep the water from growing cold enough to kill them. Even with their attributes, they didn't want to risk it.

A few more hours passed, and the fragment finally morphed into something closer to actual night. The sun had to be on the opposite side of the planet at this point, or however the hell the Gods had the fragments mirroring how things worked back when they were still entire worlds, because the cold kicked up another notch as well.

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"Gonna be honest with you guys… This kinda sucks," Scule said, finally breaking the silence after a couple of hours. The petian was currently huddled up on Vin's shoulder with Reginald, sharing one another's warmth. "…What if Lumel doesn't come back for us?"

"She's going to come back," Vin frowned, glaring at his companion. "How could you think she wouldn't?"

"You know what I mean. What if she can't come back for some reason? The bird-people turn out to be hostile and refuse to help her, or she ran out of mana on her way over there and fell through the sky just like we did? We have no idea what could have happened!"

"Lumel had her own set of mana potions, thanks to all the help she did during the battle for wave four," Shia pointed out, shivering in the water despite the still active fire-knife bubbling away in her hands. "We have no way of knowing how the winged-people will react when she shows up, but I'm confident that at the very least, she made it to the village. She's shy, but she's determined. Maybe it's her royal blood, but I don't think that girl will give up quite so easily. Maybe she'll conquer the village and force them to come rescue us!"

"Wouldn't that be a sight," Scule snorted, pulling out his comb and grooming Reginald for the fourth time that evening, more to just keep his hands busy than anything. "Lumel with a dozen winged-people all working together to pull a cart toward us or something, each of them bound by chains, and the mage cracking a whip to keep them in line. Huh, I think I might have just discovered something about myself."

"Scule, I know you're scared and just trying to fill the silence, but please keep your fantasies away from my girlfriend," Vin said, squeezing his eyes shut as he resisted the familiar urge to flick the petian from his shoulder like always.

If he did, he'd probably never see the tiny man again.

"Sorry, not my intention," Scule coughed, at least having the decency to look embarrassed. "If it helps, I'm not really into any of you 'giant-types.' I want to find a nice, regular-sized gal to settle down with someday. You know, someone I can spend my golden years stealing with who gets me. And after all this, if she happens to be able to fly on top of being gorgeous, that would just be icing on the cake."

"Are there many other petians in the citadel?" Shia asked, no doubt surprised to hear Scule actually talk about himself in such a way. Even after all this time, the petian had continued to be the most tight-lipped member of their team. Vin had to admit he knew little about the man beyond his connection with Reginald, and the recent discovery that he had a family back in the citadel he was helping provide for.

Figured it took drifting in a small orb of water above an abyss of utter nothingness for hours on end with potentially no rescue in sight to get the guy to actually talk about himself.

"Not that many, no," Scule sighed as he absentmindedly brushed Reginald, his mind clearly elsewhere. "We have a small community tucked away deep within the citadel, and when I say small, I mean small, even for us. From what I've been told, we used to have a decent-sized village we lived in years ago, but it was overrun by monsters and destroyed. My people fled and took refuge within the citadel, and we've lived there ever since. I was only about three or four when it happened, so I can't really remember much about the village. Anyway, now we're down to only a few hundred of us, and we pretty much all know one another by name. I may or may not exactly have the greatest relations with all of them."

"So they know you're a Rogue," Vin deduced.

"Yeah… Most of them have more respectable classes, and they make it quite clear their thoughts on my choice of profession. Even my own parents, which is why I only visit them once a month. Granted, that doesn't stop them from taking what I offer when I do show up. Greedy bastards…"

"Why do they need your help in the first place?" Shia asked.

"Dad lost his arm while escaping from the monsters, and we couldn't afford to have it healed up by any of the divine classes," he said, frowning at the thought. "Mom tries to provide for them both now, but they have my siblings to worry about as well."

"You have siblings?!" Vin and Shia shouted simultaneously, staring at Scule in shock.

"Yeah… a younger brother and sister. Both born in the citadel proper and quite a bit younger than me. They don't have any memories of our old village, not even scattered ones like I do. Honestly, they're the main reason why I bother showing back up each month. If it were just my parents, I'd probably let them rot at this point with how often they talk down about my class, but my siblings never do anything like that. They're always asking me to show them tricks, or demanding I tell them stories about my heists. In fact, the reason I was gone for so long when I vanished was because I made the mistake of telling them about you guys and some of the stuff we've done, and they all but forced me to stay and tell them everything we've been doing out in Edregon from the very beginning!"

The more Scule spoke, the more his annoyed frown turned into a warm smile as he talked about his brother and sister, until he was positively beaming and laughing at the thought of them. "You guys wouldn't believe it, but we practically have our own fan club at this point. The looks on their faces when I told them about how we narrowly got out of the floating library with our lives, or how we managed to bring Alka sorta back from the dead… Let's just say they are desperate for me to show back up and regale them with more of our adventures. You know, assuming we survive this…"

All at once, Scule's brilliant smile shattered, and he sighed as he stopped brushing Reginald. His voice dropped low, and he spoke with what very well may have been the most raw emotion Vin had ever heard from the petian.

"I don't want to die here and leave my siblings wondering about what happened to us… No matter what, we have to make it out of this, alright?"

"We will. I promise," Vin said with a lot more confidence than he actually felt, earning a small smile from his shoulder companion. Surprised that Shia wasn't chiming in with reassurances as well, he turned toward her, only to find her frowning and staring down into the seemingly infinite darkness below them.

"Guys… I know we're having a moment and all… But do you see something moving down there?"

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