The war that broke up the world, creating the floating continents and
causing most of the remaining dry land to sink beneath the ocean, happened
so long ago that few people even remember the stories about it. Humans are
so uncommon that most people think they are mythical creatures, and they've
been demonized in faerie tales.

We join Relayn in mid-raid, boarding a commercial air-freighter. For a
time, Relayn pursues a normal piratical life, looting ships, dodging the
birdman government law enforcers, getting into bar brawls and hiding out at
her secret base, a small floating inland shouded in clouds. Relayn's
younger brother Rythos, whom she has raised in the absence of their
parents, worships Relayn and wants to become a pirate himself. Relayn will
hear nothing of it: Rithos is still too young to join her crew, and she
loves him too dearly to see anything happen to him.

One day she hears a hot tip: a small passenger vessel carrying a
particularly valuable cargo is due to pass directly through her territory.
The ship turns out to be easy pickings, as expected. It had been relying on
hiding in the clouds for protection, but since Relayn knows where to look,
she is easily able to direct her crew to attack. The maneuver is completed
easily, with the beastmen crew and passengers defeated without difficulty.
The only anomaly is a robed figure who vanishes from the ship when
cornered. Fortunately, he is unable to carry with him his heavy traveling
trunk, which carries Relayn's prize: an obviously antique goblet, crafted
of ornately decorated gold and studded with jewels. Relayn and crew return
to the secret base, a job well done.

A night or two later, Relayn awakes with a start in her room at the base.
Something's amiss. Silently padding from her room, she finds several robed
figures, like the one from the passenger ship, ransacking her
supposedly secret base! She calls her crew to arms and they repel the
invaders, though it is a difficult battle: the robed figures are quite
skilled, both with sword and magic.  The figures disappear when defeated,
escaping in the same manner as the previous robed figure. Relayn gets a
glimpse under the hood of the last one to escape. Could it have been... a
human?

With the strange enemy defeated, Relayn and her crew are able to get some
uneasy sleep. The next day, however, her misfortune continues. On a routine
raid, she finds her ship surrounded by an unusually large fleet of birdman
government military vessels! It was a trap! Relayn and her crew fight
boldly, but are eventually captured and imprisoned in the brig of one of
the military vessels. Relayn is dismayed to find Rithos among the
imprisoned: he had been a stowaway abord her ship!

While imprisoned, Relayn is approached by a government official. She
recognizes him immediately as Corvid, the right-hand man of the birdmen's
leader! He takes Relayn aside and offers to strike her a deal: if she agrees
to help him in a matter of some importance to the birdman government, he
will see to it that she and her crew are pardoned and released.  Relayn
reluctantly agrees to listen to Corvid's story, hating the idea of
cooperating with the government.

Corvid tells Relayn that humans are very real, after all, and they are
scheming to destroy the world! The goblet Relayn stole is one of four
powerful ancient human artifacts, each one linked with an element. The
goblet is the water artifact, and the birdman government has already
obtained the air artifact, a sword.  If the humans are allowed to regain
all four artifacts, they will perform a ritual to drag the floating
continents from the sky, dashing them down upon the islands below and
creating a single landmass.

In addition to the destruction this would cause, Relayn also realizes it
could end her days as a sky pirate: the magical stones that lift both
airships and the floating continents interact in such a way that it's
already impossible to fly more than a small ship overland. If the humans
complete their plan, it would become impractical to use airships for cargo
transportation, and that would ruin her business!

Relayn agrees to turn over the goblet to Corvid in exchange for her own
freedom. Part of her crew, including Rithos, will be held until she
retrieves the earth artifact, a shield, from the ruins of an ancient human
temple, located on a terrestrial island. Corvid explains that the birdman
military is ill-equipped to explore the temple, which is why they needed to
enlist her services.

Traveling to the island proves difficult, as it is shrouded in storms.
Elemental monsters attack her ship during the approach, and while Relayn
and her crew are able to repel their attacks, the ship is damaged during
its landing. The ship's mechanic assures Relayn that he can repair the
ship, but she should get a moving to find the shield so the can get away
from the storms as quickly as possible. The overland journey to the
landlocked temple is a difficult one, and Relayn's party is set upon by
strange monsters and, occasionally, the now-familiar bands of robed humans.

Using the information provided by Corvid, Relayn is able to find the
temple. She and her crew fight their way through and recover the shield,
but it occurs to her that something about the temple is strange: even
though it's in ruins, it doesn't look like a temple at which
world-destroying monsters would worship. The moldering tapestries and
chipped statuary seem to portray scenes of peace.

In addition, one of her crew turns up a mostly-illegible diary in the
temple's ruined living quarters. Two entries contain barely readable text:
one midway through the book, and one towards the end. The earlier entry
reads "...invading forces breached the wall..." and "...must protect the
sacred relic..." and the later entry reads "...recovered the relic..." and
"...alas, far too late...".  The book is clearly many hundred of years old,
and falls to dust in Relayn's hands as she reads it. What could it mean?
Everyone knows the legends say humans are demonic and warlike...

With the shield in their possession, Relayn and her crew depart the island
and return to the skies. They arrive at Corvid's military outpost, where he
gratefully receives the shield, but brings Relayn some troubling news:
while he was transporting her crew to the outpost, a human war band captured
the ship and made off with both her crew members and the goblet. Military
intelligence has located the human's hidden base, and Corvid apologetically
offers a military escort to assist Relayn in her rescue attempt. Corvid
himself will lead the escort.

The human base is also on a terrestrial island. The military vessels are
too large to fly overland, requiring a journey on foot. The odd alliance of
pirate and soldier make their way to the base, where Relayn and Corvid
agree that Relayn's crew has a better chance of sneaking in a disabling the
base's defenses on their own, and the military can lend combat support.
Relayn and company successfully infiltrate the base and bring down the
defenses, and the military starts to move in.

While exploring the base, Relayn can't find any sign of her missing crew or
the goblet. She and Corvid come across the base's inner sanctum, where they
are faced with the leadership of the human organization. It is a fierce and
difficult battle, in no small part because the human leader wields the last
artifact: an ornately carved mage staff. When the battle is over, Corvid
wrests the staff from the human's hands. But rather than congratulating
Ralyen on a battle well fought,  he instead orders his troops to kill
Relayn and her crew while they're weakened! Another battle ensues, but
Relayn's weary crew are not match for Corvid's fresh reinforcements. Relayn
is left for dead.

Relayn awakens in an unfamiliar bed, bandaged and tended to by... humans?
After Corvid's troops departed, artifact in hand, the remaining humans
gathered their fallen and tended to the wounded, Relayn's crew included.
Relayns recognizes her nurse as the leader of humans, who introduces
himself as Orangulus. When Relayn asks why he is helping her, Orangulus
explains that it is not the humans' way to ignore the suffering of another,
and that he empathizes with Relayn's betrayal at the hands of the birdman
government.

Orangulus tells Relayn a story: the true history of the world, hundreds of
years ago. The world once had a single continent: an enormous terrestrial
island on which all the races lived in relative peace. Human were far more
common in those days, and were respected as healers and sages. They guarded
the four great relics of the elements, gifts from the gods, and used them
cautiously to alleviate hardships. The birdmen were always difficult to
deal with, arrogantly considering themselves superior to the other races,
but they had never posed a threat to the continued peace until the mad king
Avocet came to power. He had uncovered a magic ritual that, when powered by
the holy relics would give him powers unrivaled my man or god. He waged a
war against the humans in order to steal the relics, and in doing so spread
hardship and strife across the continent as he indiscriminately attacked
anyone in his path. The humans and other beast races fought valiantly, but
in the end Avocet collected the relics and performed the ritual.

The ritual did not have the effect Avocet expected. Instead of gaining the
power he desired, he conjured a storm. A storm the likes of which history
had never seen. The storm raged across the land, flooding here, burning
there. Great chunks of land were thrown into the air while others sunk
beneath the sea. The storm raged for weeks, and when it had finally
subsided, the landmasses closely resembled their modern form. Civilization
had been dealt a terrible blow, and it was centuries before it recovered.

Orangulus goes on to explain that Corvid only partially understood the
humans' intentions. His people were trying to recover the relics in order
to heal the world. Avocet's storm happened exactly 1,000 years ago, and it
will return this year if the world is not restored. Relayn is horrified
that she played a part in what may be the end of the world, and sets out to
recover the artifacts.

The last series of battles are Relayn's crew against Corvid's military, as
she recovers the relics one by one. She first assaults Corvid's outpost and
recovers both the goblet and her missing crew. Corvid withdraws from the
base when the tide of the battle turns against him, to reinforce the
defenses protecting the other artifacts. Relayn in distressed to find that
Rithos is not among her recovered crew, but pushes on to collect the
remaining artifacts.

Corvid is present at each artifact site, each time with better troops and
each time withdrawing when defeated. At the final site, however, Relayn is
confronted not only by Corvid, but by King Vultid himself. Vultid is
holding Rithos at dagger point, and demands that Relayn turns over the
artifacts if she values her brother's life. She reluctantly does so, and
once he has the artifacts in hand, Vultid laughs gloatingly and explains
that he plans to use the artifacts to harness the coming storm and succeed
in achieving godhood where Avocet failed! As he speaks, the storm starts to
arrive.

Corvid is aghast at hearing of his king's plans: Corvid thought he was
working to protect order, not aid some mad scheme. He had no knowledge of
Avocet's storm, and had believe the myths that humans were demonic
troublemakers. He tries to reason with Vultid and, failing that, tries to
take the artifacts from him. This turns out to be a foolish move, as Vultid
uses the sword of ait to cut down his faithful attendant.

The final battle is Relayn and her crew versus King Vultid, who now wields
all four artifacts. The backdrop for the battle is the onset of Avocet's
storm. If Relayn is successful, Orangulus and his followers are able to
perform the world-healing ritual while the storm rages above them. If not,
it's the end of the world.
