Pippen was dangerously playful throughout the ascent — performing backflips on the railings, ignoring his father's desperate attempts to keep him down. He recognized Brixton immediately, and his father recognized him too (though tried to hide it). Brixton gave Pippen a coin stamped with the Gilded Wake logo — a silent instruction to keep it hidden.

When the Stillforge boarding began and a guard demanded the satyr family's papers, Pippen's father fumbled. The guard turned to the boy — and Pippen, emboldened by the Gilded Wake coin and a child's belief in heroes, stuck out his tongue and threw the papers off the side of the lift into the river below.

The guard grabbed him and dangled him over the rail.

Vael locked the guard's arm from behind. Bodrin tried to pull the guard's other arm. Brixton went for the rail to vault up and grab Pippen — slipped — and in that fraction of a second revealed his aasimar wings to catch himself and haul Pippen to safety, landing with the boy on the other side of the deck where Prill stood frozen.

Pippen clung to Brixton like a drowning child to driftwood, and stared at his wings as if expecting them to vanish.

His father found him afterwards and held him so hard it was almost painful to watch.