Skybound

Morgan Mackenzie was falling. Not just falling: she was tumbling through the air, thrashing in unshakable panic as the wind tore at her feathers. All semblance of control vanished as she flapped her wings frantically. She spun head over heels, the black sky overhead consuming her vision; as she kept turning, black gave way to the blue horizon and a flash of white, fluffy clouds. The sudden cold tore through her resistances, chilling her skin despite her magically-enhanced protections. For the first moments of her fall, the sorceress even forgot her fire abilities.

Clarity suddenly returned as an adrenaline-fueled Morgan slammed a hefty chunk of her mana into [Accelerate]. Her perception of time's passage slowed as the skill sped up her cognition and reflexes to an extreme degree. She knew she couldn't maintain the skill for very long, lest she run her mana dangerously low; a moment was all she needed, however, to collect her thoughts and focus her mind.

[Furl] snapped her wings out of existence, returning them to whatever ethereal place they were stored within her tattoos. Her heartbeat pulsed in her eardrums as gravity pulled her down at a glacial pace, her wavy locks of hair sliding out of her vision in slow motion. Her altered perception of time left her mind struggling to stay focused, her attention drifting between the clouds and the horizon. A small part of her noticed lavender purple flecks of color in her hair, a curious change she hadn't paid much attention to as her magic had already changed so much about her body.

[Accelerate]'s effects caused her panic to subside, and Morgan labored, now somewhat successfully, to force herself to relax and ignore the acrobatics her stomach was trying to perform in the midst of freefall. When she finally turned herself to face the cloud layer below, she let the skill fade as she spread her arms and legs to catch the wind, slightly reducing her speed and keeping herself oriented.

The rush of the wind returned, and only the instinctive weaving of air magic in front of her eyes kept them from watering to uselessness. A thrill went down Morgan's spine now that the panic had receded. She had managed to glide with limited success, after all, and now she was high enough to actually take advantage of her new appendages and possibly learn something.

If worse comes to worst, I'll just have to tank the ground with my face, she thought with a determined grin. Terminal velocity should be the same, and I've taken worse damage from rockmaws and earthwyrms. She didn't think it would come to that, however, as she wasn't lacking in other magical ways to slow down if necessary. She picked up speed as she fell, the ground still obscured by the clouds that zoomed closer every second.

Lulu gave an exuberant trill from her shoulder as wind whipped the scrubby's fronds and Morgan's hair. The Sorceress released her hold on [Furl], her wings snapping back into existence with a whoosh!  She immediately gasped from the sensory overload, and only barely managed to suppress a resurgence of panic. While the wind rushing across her naked skin was an intense sensation, it was no longer unfamiliar or strange after so many months spent getting used to her unique class. Her magical senses were more muted with the air than when she touched the ground, the nearly invisibly thin lines of her tattoos on her hands and feet more suited to providing her information through touch. As her wings spread out, Morgan's mind was inundated with a flood of new sensation.

Morgan had gained intimate knowledge of the types of magic she had experienced so far. Each element had a different set of flavors, of emotions, which she could sense to varying degrees, depending on her individual affinity for each element. Fire raged, and while it was her most instinctive power -- and the easiest for her to control -- it was also extremely unstable, and almost single-minded: it wanted to burn, to consume, and if it wasn't doing either, it was looking for a way to do so.  Water was fickle, at times flowing gently and at others raging in incomprehensible torrents. It was also supremely patient, and vastly deep; while Morgan didn't have as strong an affinity for it as for other elements, she could still sense shadows deep in the magic, hints of inexorable mass. Earth was as solid as the stones underfoot, content to merely exist, and rarely moving -- except for the times when it wasn't, and at those points it could flow as easily as water and exert awesome destructive power, especially when infused with enough mana and heat.

Air had always been the most difficult of her magics. She could use it, of course, but her skills which relied on it were slow to level because her understanding was so limited. With her wings, however, her senses expanded. While the tattoos on her hands and feet let her sense things through the ground, the lace-like traces threaded around and through her feathers in a way that let her feel the wind. Still diving, she brought her wings close to her body, like a falcon's, the leading edges slicing through the turbulence her body created, keeping her steady. The sensation of air slipping between and through her feathers was curious and intimate, although not of a sexual nature. There was freedom, and whimsy, in the taste of the wind.

The wind did not blaze like fire, flow like water, or sit still like the earth. It could not be controlled or commanded. Morgan knew instinctively that to try to fight the wind would send her crashing to the ground. The wind could not be tamed.

The wind danced as it willed. 

So, Morgan danced with it. The slightest twitch of her wings shifted her course, curving around faint wisps of clouds as she dropped towards the thicker layer below. She knew, without completely understanding how, just when to bank to the right to avoid the gust of a crosswind and slip between the swirls without being battered off-course. The longer pinion feathers at her wingtips splayed out gently, and the sorceress laughed as she picked up speed.

There! she thought, feeling changes in the air currents ahead of and below her.

Her wings snapped out almost of their own accord, instinct driving her as much as thought. Her joyous "Whoop!" was accompanied by Lulu's triumphant wurble as Morgan, her wings fully extended, rode the updraft to level out and glide. Muscles she still wasn't used to working kept her body almost prone with her feet behind her, but the strain on her Stamina lessened as a familiar sensation rang through her mind.

You have gained the skill [Soar]!

Morgan laughed again, before diving once more for the clouds. She could spare a little while for practice. Then, it would be time to find her friends.

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Terisa Aras carefully shifted her feet and hips, thankful for her resistances that made the cold bearable as she adjusted her position slightly so that an unfortunately-placed shard of rock no longer jabbed into her side. The terrain outside the city ruins was a marksman's dream in many ways, but a nightmare for her friends making their way up the valley towards the crumbling and half-melted gate. Torn earth, shattered stone, and massive fallen trees in various stages of rot were scattered across gullies and ridges of burnt obsidian ruin; if that weren't bad enough, all of it was now coated in treacherous ice and drifts of wind-whipped snow. The ambient mana was twisted and steeped in flavors of restless death and regret that had seeped into the ground, preventing new growth. It certainly fit the landscape, in her opinion.

"How much farther to the center?" Dana's voice broke over the silence. "Biggles looks like he's about to pass out, and Raminez will never let us hear the end of it if he has to carry him."

The engineer's voice was tinny and distant, but clear enough to Terisa's senses. The engineer had iterated upon her so-called mana radio design, and now the huntress could hear the other woman through a pair of crystals, one of which was now clipped to her ear with a curved piece of hammered bronze. She had no idea what the Worldwalker meant when she wished for plastics or polly-mers, but Kojeg's skill with fine hammerwork meant it wasn't unbearable to use as it was.

"Another hundred paces," responded the Huntress, quietly enough that the cold breeze and snow would muffle the sound and not give away her position. The Worldwalker and a shirtless warrior covered in glowing painted runes were escorting a tormented necromancer across the ruin of the old battleground. Terisa had the resistances of her high levels, and Dana had insulation in her armor to protect her, while the other man's painted sigils offered protection. Biggles, on the other hand, had problems above and beyond lacking resistance to the biting cold: attuned to death energies as he was, due to his necromancy, the young mage could feel the emotions of the unquiet dead. Or, at least the echoes of emotions; the huntress wasn't quite clear. Either way, the end result as he described it was a maddening psychic pressure.

Just then, Terisa's keen eyesight brought her attention to a ripple of movement a few dozen paces from where Dana was picking her way across a patch of scattered bones that protruded from the snow. A slow exhalation, a squeeze of her finger, and a brief pulse of dim light danced along Althenea's barrel. The suppression runes did their job, and reduced the sound of Terisa's attack to a whispery puff.

At least, until a bonewraith exploded into slivers of calcified shards covered in gore, followed by the crack of the bullet's passing. According to Dana's explanation, the supersonic rounds travelled faster than sound and could not be muffled in the same way as slower projectiles. Magical methods for dampening the sound were certainly possible, both Terisa and the engineer knew, but neither of the two women were experts in magical theories of high arcana.

Dana barely registered surprise at the results of the shot. "That's three in the past hour," she muttered, just barely loud enough to be audible over the link. The huntress was already moving, her high levels and experience allowing her to cross the dips in the terrain with silent ease. The Worldwalker had called it overwatch, and the term certainly fit her current job. The group was making good time since abandoning the airship, and Terisa actually felt useful again as she ghosted through the field of the bones of long-dead drakes and partially melted and broken machines. She paid as much attention to the sky as she did her own footsteps.

Chimaera were rare, even in the Wildlands, but the Expedition's luck had turned and the storm must have pushed the airship into the territory of a mated pair. [Celestial Shot] had proven more than enough to deal with the first (and smaller) of the two monsters, but even with a few extra levels and Althenea's upgraded form, she had still been unable to use the skill for several days. As her most powerful ability, it drew upon both her mana and stamina, focused with her will combined with Althenea's. It was a strain upon them both, and using it again too soon could result in the skill simply failing, or worse, risk a permanent reduction in her core attributes such as Strength and Vitality.

Using her most powerful ability on the first monster had turned out to be a mistake: the other had become enraged and had pursued the airship far beyond the territory of its home mountain range. Of well over a hundred beings that had made it out of the valley the Sorceress had claimed, they were now down to a handful over three score. After leaving the airship with all they could carry, they had continued towards the signal Dana had been following for weeks. The ruined city in the distance would have provided cover with walls of stone to give the huntress time to recuperate and recharge her skill, but they would never be able to cross the clearing to get there.

Not because of the chimaera.

Because of the dead.

"Have I told you how terrible an idea this is?" whined Biggles, clutching his head as he stumbled after Dana. The painted human warrior hooked one hand under the necromancer's arm, preventing the man from sprawling across the icy stones underfoot. "This is where the crusade ended! They have been here for over two centuries, stewing in regret and the overcharged magic of the Wildlands!"

"You said it yourself," snapped Dana, her voice clearer to Terisa's ear thanks to the crystals. Biggles sounded farther away and distant, as if talking from inside a tunnel. The engineer didn't break stride, skittering forwards on four eerily quiet legs of gleaming metal as she spoke. "We'd never make it across without their permission. Well, tough luck, you're the only one who can talk to them."

"You don't talk to shades this old. You bind, you bargain, or you bow. It would take a demi-lich or a full cabal to bind things as old and powerful as what I'm sensing, even if anyone were stupid enough to get on the Oracle's bad side." His voice rose in pitch with every word, nearing a screech as he continued. "We have no idea what they might ask for, and to surrender is to be consumed!" Terisa could actually hear the tail end of it over the moaning of the frozen winds as she slid to a stop next to a jagged protrusion of obsidian that thrust its way out of the snow to curve towards the overcast sky.

Even as she stopped moving Althenea returned to her rifle form, and yet another muffled shot destroyed yet another bonewraith as it attempted to sneak up on the trio. The remnants of the ghostly reptilian skeleton had not even dissipated into the ether before Dana blurred to the side, spinning blades of crackling plasma reducing another to pieces.

"They're getting bigger," said the Worldwalker. "How much longer til these guys are awake enough to sense we're here?"

"Oh, they already know we're here," snapped the necromancer. "But they've been asleep a long time. I'm more amazed you can't feel them stirring. They won't really get to moving until they realize the wraiths aren't enough to take us down for their next meal."

"I can feel my sigils pushing the death magic away," noted Raminez, the dark paints on his skin giving off motes of protective energies as they conflicted with the ambient mana. "There's certainly something more than just the bonewraiths here. I know you need another to channel mana, but the runes will only hold a short time."

Biggles gave an exasperated sigh, closing his eyes with his head tilted to the side. "We're far enough from the others; they should be safe, if we're really doing this." He pulled a handful of carved sticks from somewhere inside of his robes. One end of each was sharpened and partially charred by fire, the other ends all sporting a small twine and bone fetish with intricate scrimshaw etching carved into the material. He walked in a circle as Dana and the warrior stood guard, placing them point first into the ground every three or so paces. Greyish black shadows swirled around the sticks, the tips piercing into the frozen and stony ground with the same ease as if they stood on sand or mud. "You don't want to be outside the circle, Terisa. Once I knock on the door it'll get quite uncomfortable for the living, even at your levels."

Terisa hurried towards the group, keeping an eye out for more wraiths and other threats. 

"What makes these shades so powerful?" Dana asked. "Just being in the wildlands?"

"When an intelligent being dies with an unfulfilled purpose, or gripped by extreme anger, or certain other emotions, a shade is born," Biggles replied, an exasperated, harried note in his voice, like an aggrieved professor. "In this case? This many drakes? It can only be the Storm Legion: Drakenth's mighty army of legend that never returned from the Steel Crusade. Oh, if only you weren't so dead-set on talking to them; I'd love to take notes about the ruins here!"

"The skies are clearing up," interrupted Terisa as she stepped over the line of sticks to join them in the circle. "If you don't hurry, the Chimaera will kill us before you have time to negotiate with them at all."

"You can't rush a ritual of this magnit-"

The ground shook, cutting off the necromancer mid-sentence.

"Quickly! Charge the circle!" he half-shouted, necromantic power burgeoning around his hands as his eyes darkened with shadow. Raminez followed suit, pouring his own mana into the spell, though his magic gave off wisps of green more akin to nature spells that Terisa was familiar with: death was a natural part of the cycle, after all. The fetish sticks began to glow, grey-black ethereal chains writhing around the top of each before reaching out to link one after the other, slowly closing the area in which they stood.

The shaking immediately calmed, at least within the bounds of the ritual. Biggles seemed to relax slightly, and the painted man seemed unaffected entirely by the drain on his mana. "Not long now," said the necromancer wearily as the giant bones around them started to shake and shift. "They seem more curious than angry. Almost hopeful."

"That's a good thing, right?" asked Dana, her many metal legs and arms fidgeting slightly as she stood in place. The engineer always did better with an enemy she could actually hit, and the rising currents of mana outside the circle were not a problem she could solve.

"Unless what they want is our lives to sate their hunger, maybe," answered Biggles. "They want something, for sure. Getting them to tell us instead of killing us is the hard part."

"So how much longer did you say this would take?" asked Terisa as the wind died, and the ground outside the circle stilled with it. Biggles and the warrior were both looking in her direction, but the huntress had eyes only for Dana, who had frozen completely still while staring at a shadowy form just outside the ritual's boundaries.

"Once they calm down a bit more, I still need to open a door so one of them can manifest. Hopefully a rider instead of a drake. Better chance of a human spirit actually talking instead of skipping right to the devouring."

"That will not be necessary," said a softly echoing voice that left even Althenea radiating fear in the huntress' hands. "We do not require your doors."

Biggles turned slowly, the shadow becoming more detailed with every heartbeat. It resolved into translucent outlines of a man in leather and drake-scale armor, with eyes that burned with black flame. Across the blasted section of once-forest around them, skeletons burst from the ground in rumbling cascades of ice and snow and cracking stone. Grim wingbeats made no sound as the calcified obsidian bodies shook themselves free of the torpor of the grave. Biggles stared open-mouthed at the figure for a hand of heartbeats before finally managing a semblance of speech.

"Godshit."

"Not quite," said the figure, looking the necromancer in the eyes. And then he laughed with his oily, echoing voice.

Terisa wished she'd never heard that.