A/N:  Sorry for the late update.  Thanks so much for sticking with me on this journey (even though I've been so flaky about posting).  I really appreciate all the comments and subscriptions.  You guys are so encouraging to me!!  Thanks and enjoy the chapter!!

The scouting mission she had been assigned would take her far deeper into Tu territory than anyone had gone before (at least since the war started).  Sae knew that there was a good chance she would never return to her people.  She also knew that it was her duty to find the subjects of their experiment before it was ruined.  It was the only chance her people had left.  Sure, they never aged, but they died of sickness or injury just like any other race.  If they were forever unable to have children, the Elanari would die out.  Maybe not for many millennia, but eventually.  Their race was doomed.  They had to discover what had caused their infertility and correct it. 

“It is very likely that the subjects have been taken to the Homeworld.  You will need to be very careful.  The spells the Tu’s ancestors wove to protect their Homeworld – though faded – are still likely to be rather potent.  They used to be very adept in the magical arts.”  Sae’s mentor Jielin wanted to make sure she did not underestimate her foes.  He – more than any of her previous lovers – seemed to care whether or not she came back to him.  She had begun to think he really loved her.  Maybe, one day, he would ask her to marry him.  Of course, she wouldn’t ever really consider marrying him (his prestige was far too low for her to consider marriage; it was really a wonder that he was chosen as a mentor at all), but she would be flattered.  He was sweet, in his own little way. 

“Are you sure you want to do this, Sae-eltia?”  He used a very intimate honorific.  She had not expressly given permission for him to use the –eltia with her name as was required (since her prestige was so much higher than his) but she didn’t correct him.  There was a chance she wouldn’t come back.  She might as well allow him his small comforts.  At least while they were alone. 

“It is an honor to be chosen for this mission, Jielin.  My prestige will increase to the next Yailn if I return with the subjects.  I would say that is worth the risk.”  Sae – since she was of the Ja Yailn (Jielin was of the Nur Yailn) – could call Jielin by name with no honorifics.  It was an insult to call someone of the same Yailn without honorifics and an offense punishable by a decrease in Yailn to call someone of a higher Yailn without honorifics.  But, for those of lower Yailns, it was expected.  They were of lesser prestige and, therefore, did not deserve the honor.  To call a person of a lower Yailn with an honorific was to show them great honor.  Do it five times in front of a witness, and you increase their Yailn by one. 

Jielin’s blue skin (the mark of his Yailn) gained a purple tint – a sign of his displeasure.  His necklaces and earrings jingled as he shook his head.  He didn’t give voice to whatever arguments he was thinking, though.  That was probably for the best.  She didn’t really want to argue with her mentor the day before she left for her mission. 

Sae turned away from him and walked to her window.  They were in her rooms on Elanar.  The entire planet was one large city, the natural ecosystem only preserved in large domes built specifically for that purpose.  Her – those under the Elanari treaty would call it a house, for lack of a better word – home was situated at the very edge of one of those domes.  All of the windows of her home looked out into the dome.  The dome itself was made of magic and was perfectly clear.  One would not know it was there until one ran into it, and no one was allowed inside. 

This dome contained a forest of plants that looked vaguely like 50 ft tall, multicolored jellyfish (as Earthlings would describe them) that served as trees.  The head of the tree performed photosynthesis and was able to change colors to absorb whatever wavelength of light was most prevalent at the time, and the base (consisting of what would be considered the ‘tentacles’ of the jellyfish) served as the trunk and root system.  A long, winding river flowed through the forest and came to an abrupt stop at the dome’s boundary.  It’s current, with the help of Elanari magic, flowed as if there was no dome and the river was able to continue all the way to the ocean (which no longer existed on Elanar).  Small animals and birds darted around and through the bases of the trees. 

Looking at the domes calmed her.  Sae loved seeing what her planet looked like before they covered it with their city.  Jielin didn’t appreciate the nature.  Every time he spent the night, he always closed the screens on her windows, claiming that the light from the glow of the trees interfered with his meditation – the only kind of sleep they needed.  Sae, however, found the glow restful.  Perhaps, that was why she felt less rested from her meditation when she stayed with him.  Perhaps, it was time to find a new lover; one who appreciated the domes as much as she did. 

“Sae-eltia, someone has come to take you to the Elanta.”

She sighed.  It was time.  She would spend the next night being cleansed at the Elanta, the center of magic on Elanar, before setting out on her mission.  She turned around and ignored the hopeful look on her mentor’s face.  She couldn’t be distracted, even by Jielin.  Hopefully, she would be declared a master of magic when she returned and could leave her nearly 1,000 year long mentorship behind.  Surely, she would.  If she succeeded. 

 Sae’s magical shields were buzzing.  That was fine.  As long as the shields surrounding her ship merely buzzed, she had not been detected.  She was a tad worried that her shields buzzed this far from the Tu Homeworld.  She had over a light year to go before she was close enough to scan the surface, and another half a light year until she actually reached the planet.  No one would have predicted that the Tu’s web of detection and guard spells remained this potent so far from their planet.  It appeared that, although their magical talent dwindled with each passing generation, they had managed to maintain the spells by laying layer upon layer of patches.  The spells contained magic from so many!  There must’ve been thousands of different individuals that had worked on them.  Sae would not have thought to layer the spells.  No Elanari would.  Sure, they worked together to create works of great magnitude; but only when the work required more magic than one alone could hope to possess.  Never would an Elanari layer their magic over another’s.  However, it seemed to strengthen the spells in a way Sae would never have imagined.

Suddenly, she felt a shudder run through her magical connection to her shields.  She shook her head.  There was no way the spells, potent as they were, had detected her.  No, something else was out there.  Something else had found her ship when it was equipped with the best shields the Elanari possessed and enhanced with her own concealment talent!  How was this possible?  She let her magic fan out around the ship as far as she could.  There was nothing there!  Nothing but the Tu’s protection spells and dust particles floating through empty space.  What could possibly have detected her?  For surely, she had been detected with the way her shields shuddered their alarm. 

She frantically narrowed her search to the area immediately surrounding her ship, hoping that the higher concentration of her magic would help her to sense whatever it was that was out there.  Nothing.  She sent it a little further out, losing her sense of the area she had just searched.  Nothing there, either.  There had to be something.  She moved her concentrated ring of magic out even further, nearly to the limit of her abilities.  Starting to think that her shields’ alarm was malfunctioning, she began to pull her magic back to herself.  There.  There was something off her starboard side that seemed to hang on her magic as she pulled it back.  Curious, she pushed her magic back out and started to pull it in again.  There it was again.  Something tugged on her magic as she pulled it towards her. 

She started to push her magic out again when she was hit by some kind of concentrated high-energy particle beam, just like the weapons the Tu had recently used against them in battle.  Her shields held, so she focused on finding this strangely cloaked Tu ship that had fired upon her.  After all, it would do her no good to retaliate if she only knew the general area upon which to fire.  She pulled her magic over the Tu ship one more time, concentrating harder than before.  This time, her magic gave her a picture of the ship and an exact location.  She smiled to herself.  Now, she could destroy this lowly ship and go on with her mission. 

It took several shots from her ship’s onboard magically guided missiles, but the next time she swept her magic back over it, the Tu ship had disintegrated.  Well, at least now she knew how to find them.  But, how did they manage to cloak themselves so well?  Sae’s major talent was concealment, but that also included an uncanny ability to find things that others could not.  The Tu ship should not have been able to hide from her magic so long, not even cloaked as it was. 

Sae resumed her original course (albeit with a few slight modifications in case the Tu ship had managed to transmit her coordinates or projected path before it was destroyed) as her shields quieted back down to that annoying low buzz.  As soon as she was a safe distance away from the radiation left by her battle, she began scanning the area, determined to avoid any more ‘surprises’.  Just as she entered scanning range of the Tu homeworld, her magic alerted her to another cloaked ship.  She didn’t even have time to wonder at how the ship had managed to get so close without her sensing it before her ship shook and everything went black…