On the eighth day, the fox took off with a fresh posture, looking almost better than it had at the beginning of the migration.
Setting off early – just hours after mid day – it rode the thermals high up to eight thousand feet, and afterwards kept climbing.
Cas was surprised when they passed ten thousand feet, and astounded at fifteen, and, by the time they’d climbed up to twenty thousand feet, Cas had abandoned all expectations and simply looked forward at the fox, who – despite its monstrous exertion – continued flapping.
They’d flown ten miles by the time they’d reached this altitude. Their flight path up to this point had been convoluted and meandering. The fox would often change direction suddenly, chasing scant thermals and advantageous headwinds that might aid its record breaking climb.
Cas was too far behind the fox to take the same advantage. Whatever spurious aid the wind had granted usually petered out by the time she arrived in its place, but she had the good fortune of not getting exhausted, and simply rose by brute effort. Doing this, she followed the fox up a final three thousand feet, where, for the moment, it seemed to be content with the results of its efforts.
At this height, things on the ground were very difficult to make out. The sea of glowing flowers turned into a field of congealed blobs, and she could see greater patterns in the whole, like the borders of a large, dark spot in the land, about the shape of a jagged scythe, where no flowers bloomed.
Even the sky was of a different character.
The winds were faster up here, much faster.
And, unlike lower winds, which were marked for their whimsy, the winds up here were straight shots. cutting through the air like it was a straw, and the fox had been smart about choosing the right one to enter into.
The air was intensely chilly. It bit and stabbed at her with icicles as it swooned over her form, tearing away at whatever warmth lay in her body and forcing Cas to call upon her aura to warm herself.
She worried for the fox.
Cas didn’t need oxygen, and cold was only an issue as far as it stiffened her wings. Bats, however, were notoriously vulnerable to cold, she knew. Unlike birds, their thin skin-flaps lost heat like radiators, and she doubted the physics were any different here. With growing anxiety, she flattened a window and looked out for the fox.
She was surprised to discover that the Foxbat's character sheet was suddenly brighter.
image [https://i.imgur.com/IISCN8M.png]
Despite the distance between them, the contents of the sheet were somehow clearly visible to her mind’s eye. And new details were forthcoming in that apparation. More than that… the fox’s aura felt just so much more salient. Ignoring the sheet for the moment and focusing on the fox itself. Cas saw that a slight, indescribable color shrouded its figure, looking almost like a jacket and perhaps acting like one, too.
Using aura like a jacket. Cas picked up on the idea and extended he aura past her body, feeling the winds chill touch grow blunted as the aura enveloped her.
It seemed animals could control their auras, too. And exerting one's auras created a stronger signal. That was probably what allowed Cas to read the fox's stats. It looked like hiding information became harder whenever you exerted yourself.
Cas could feel a pit of worry stake itself in her at this. She was bound to run into people at some point, would every use of her aura reveal too much?
This point of consideration, thankfully, didn’t bother Cas for too much longer, as something looming over the horizon overshadowed it. It was a small thing, really. It was the bladed tip of a mountain, peeking over the curvature of the earth. Barely perceptible, it looked like the size of a quarter from this distance.
That mountain top was over 360 miles away.
It was a strange feature of Cas's eye that it could tell distance so accurately. It gave her an instinctual perspective that was hard to get used to. As a human on Earth, distant mountains had looked small, even if Cas knew them to be large. Here, however, with every foot of distance accounted for and instinctually known, that diminutive mountain top in the distance felt immense, almost crushing Cas with the weight of its presence as she looked worriedly over at her guide. Would it even be able to muster the energy to climb over that thing?
The winds carried them on a straight shot to the mountain range. The mountain top swung up into view as the earth turned beneath them, standing high like a lifted barn-wall until it towered up into the heavens, its top rising above their altitude, obscured by four-thousand feet of distance. And it was only just the centerpiece. A massive line of snow-peaks stretched out like frosted wings to either side, disappearing behind both horizons.
The fox, with the unimpressed ease of a veteran, ignored the flashy peak, and detoured to the left, running them on an angle that just barely allowed them to crest over a particularly low saddle between the summits. Drifting left and right, they dodged past a rocky alcove, passed by two hundred feet of descending rock and, in the space of three wingbeats, found themselves transported to the other side.
Over the past week, Cas had been excited about what she might find. She hadn’t put much more thought into it than that. What she couldn’t have expected, however, was for the floor to be only three hundred feet below them. A floor of white clouds that stretched to every horizon and blanketed the world.
Losing focus for the first time in two weeks, Cas forgot the fox as she took in the sight, having to quickly regain her wits as her guide descended, dipping into the clouds and disappearing from sight.
Cas dove after it, finding herself suddenly enveloped in a white haze.
At first worried she might lose it in the cloud, she was surprised to find tracking it was an easy task. With its aura still flaring, it felt like she knew where it was, more than she saw it. Paying enough attention, she could even see an outline of its flapping figure in the haze.
The fox shot a straight line through the cloud layer, diving quickly.
Cas, seeing the inevitable, just decided to enjoy living out her dream of flying through a cloud and dove into the white fog below.
It was different than she'd expected. Unlike their appearance, clouds weren't soft in the slightest. Rather it felt like she'd dived into a pool of Sprite, stinging nettles prickling at her skin as if hit by a pressure mister.
With all her surroundings obscured by cloud cover, Cas's natural speedometer had ceased to function. But, the stinging shower of water dropllets was enough to let her guess thirty miles per hour.
Cas pierced through the cloud celling in ten secondss, soaked in a layer of condensation and fond memories.
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Cas followed the fox for the next week, going at a more relaxed pace.
The environment here were grasslands, quite calm and unassuming from this altitude. Occasionally, she could spot large creatures lumbering through the endless fields.
Their pit-stop accommodations were accordingly more hospitable. Treetops and burrows – often stolen from a suddenly dead mole-rat like creature – replaced caves and dirt boxes. To Cas, who hadn’t cared about comfort in a long time, it felt good to rest in a treetop. Killer of omens had an easy time perching, and the views could be quite magnificent.
The water sources were fresher as well, though, again, Cas had trouble finding any preference in her actual taste whenever she drank. Mud water, to her, merely had a different taste and more minerals than the pristine lakes they frequented now.
This went on for some time, and Cas… still freshly sensitive to everything meteorological, found a sudden shift in the atmosphere telling.
There was this constant, cool wind that seemed to be coming from the east, and it seemed to be coming from everywhere in the morning. The culprit was soon made apparent. In the distance, a spot of blue appeared; it grew as they approached, and never stopped growing.
Soon, the fox had alighted on a weathered, stone cave, watching Cas splash through the tide-pools, looking back with some disappointment in the prudish fox who didn’t seem to want to touch the water.
The Ocean!
Cas turned on four legs, facing soft sounds of crashing waves.
Waves!
The thoughts were simple, but quite powerful. Cas had forgotten so much water could exist in one place. She forgot that it somehow never stopped moving! It was like some massive, living creature! Another crash of waves sounded, a white carpet of foam reaching across the sands, just barely missing the stony edge of the muddy tide-pools Cas was busy splashing about in. Cas danced a bit, but then she stopped. Her curiosity got the better of her.
After all…
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Cas dipped a forefoot into one of the brine pools, sucking up the water.
+100 Sea Creatures Defeated!
XP Gained: +0.019
+100 Sea Creatures Defeated!
XP Gained: +0.009
+13 Sea Creatures Defeated!
XP Gained: +0.0015
Cas leapt back from the pool like it was a hot stove, jogging back onto land as she tried to process the burst of information.
“Sea creatures?”
With an investgative posture, Her eye swam through her interior, focusing on the cloudy section in her foot where salt water had mixed with her gelatin. There, with some clever manipulation of her interior, she focused an image just enough to discern…
Plankton!
At least, they kind of looked like the shrimpy things. Probably tasted like them, too, Cas thought with a happy much, swirling up the salt water into herself and dissolving them.
The water tasted… salty. That was expected, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Although, it might be dangerous for her to drink too much. Was it possible for her to overload on minerals. Even if it was, couldn't she just...
With a thought, she hardened a section of herself, but doing so unevenly, calling only the salt minerals and coalescing a mass of brine that, with a hiccup, she spat onto the floor like a brown loogie.
Huh, so she could filter salt water. That was useful.
The happy thought was clouded over by another premonition, however.
She looked at the fox, sitting obliviously in its cave and realized something. She… didn’t need to follow the fox anymore. In fact, she hadn’t needed to follow the fox for a while, now. Water was plentiful on this side of the mountains. She’d just stayed with the fox because… well, she stayed out of habit, she supposed. The fox knew where it was going, but Cas didn't really have any destinations or even plans. She hadn't planned for the fact that they had to separate eventually.
The fact that she could drink saltwater only made this fact more salient. Water was essentially an infinite resource for her, now. She could follow the coasts and circle the continent without stopping for a single second if she wanted to. In fact, following the coast was probably be a better bet for finding a city, considering how port-heavy the eastern side of the continent was.
The fox licked at itself, sitting couchant on a dry stone. It noticed her staring and gave her a flat expression.
Cas guessed it would be goodbye, soon, though she wasn’t sure how to say it to an animal.
----------------------------------------
Despite herself, Cas dallied a day, making an excuse out of studying the tidal habitats and waiting until the fox took flight to take off herself.
Cas followed it as long as she could, but a hundred miles passed by in a flash and, eventually the coast began to curve right.
At the same time, Fox turned banked left, heading inland.
Cas followed the coast.
For the first time in three weeks, the sky was empty. The fox had disappeared from it.
Of course she wanted to look back at it, see how it was doing.
She ignored the instinct. It was just an animal. What? Was five minutes without its constant presence enough to make her look for it again like a lost child? She was an adult for goodness's sake, and she had everything she could possibly need.
Still, the sky did feel lonelier, somehow. More than that, much as Cas hated to acknowledge it, the bigger reason for wanting to look back was that is felt rude to leave without saying good-bye.
A painful memory of Kari snapped in her mind.
She’d… apparently made a habit of leaving without proper goodbyes.
Of course it was stupid, saying goodbye to an animal, but… Cas looked back anyway. She was surprised to find the fox circling in the distance, looking back at her..
It seemed to hold there, circling for an expectant moment, dipping its wings in a way that seemed impatient. It seemed to be waiting for something, waiting for her.
Cas dipped her wings in a mirror motion, and, purposefully turned her body further away, following the coast.
The fox waited for several more minutes, receding from her as she continued her retreat. And then it turned and went its own way.
As with all things regarding the fox, it was unceremonious.
Still, that had felt like a proper goodbye. And, who knows, maybe she’d see each other again. It wasn’t so bad. They could explore more of the world apart than together. Maybe they could trade stories.
Cas immediately shut off that monologue, feeling embarrassed for putting so much meaning into an interaction with a ‘zanzibat’ of all things. She’d killed those things by the thousands in Siablo! Why was she reminiscing about one now?
It was just an animal, and she was above thinking animals could be her friends. It was pathetic. She’d be better off talking to a volleyball with a face painted onto it! At least then, she could plead insanity or something.
She looked back again, at where the fox had last been, but it was already gone.
----------------------------------------
The coast soon turned northward.
Outside of the desert, the climate was far more temperate, and any water loss she suffered could be immediately fixed by a quick glide across the ocean, she wouldn’t even have to stop to take the drink. On top of this, the coastal were beautifully consistent. Flying without rest and finding generally favorable, north-ward winds at her altitude, Cas was making breakneck pace across the continent. She’d crossed eight hundred miles before the first day was up, and over the course of the sun’s set and rise, the land below her shifted towards darker hues, as grasslands gave way to Mediterranean vines, which themselves were soon replaced by forests.
The forests at, first, were sparse collections of trees that dotted the inland, growing denser and denser the further north she travelled until, the ground disappeared beneath an endless sea of canopy.
Cas again, didn’t make much notice of this until two hundred miles later, when she noticed that the previously unbroken forest showed some slight signs of scarring.
It wasn’t everywhere, and it wasn’t obvious, but whenever Cas flew low enough, she noticed occasional clear spots breaking up the dense pack of forest.
This was strange enough.
Stranger still was that, on closer inspection, these scars generally appeared in straight, unbroken lines, seeming to run for miles without pause.
Someone’s been building a road network.
Cas dove, falling through ten thousand feet of rushing air, curving up to follow one of these scars in the forest, excitement building as she fell lower, until she was just a hundred feet over the rustling tips of the trees, able from her vantage point to get a clear view of the path.
Bare dirt greeted her.
Cas was a bit disappointed. She hadn’t been asking for highway 66, but she’d expected to see something a bit more obviously engineered. Some stone tiling or even packed gravel would have been enough to satisfy her excitement. She wanted something that would promise her civilization on the other end. As it was, this was just a dirt line worn out of the forest from overuse; it could have been a game trail for all she knew.
And then a great roar sounded, and interrupted her musings.
The right side of the world suddenly turned to day-light.
Black shadows stabbed, stretching horrendously away from the trees, and stamping a silhouette of her flying figure onto the canopy below her.
Off to her right, a thousand feet in the distance, a ball of white flame ballooned into the air. It roared like a tiger and clouds lighted up with its reflected light.
Then the bubble popped, and the clouds flickered like broken electrical signs as the balloon warped and bubbled before popping into a conflagration of thunder and static that, after a moment of pause, exploded.
----------------------------------------
Cas dove under before the blast hit, hugging the ground and turtling up into a hardened sphere.
The shockwave was powerful, but vanishingly brief, washing over her like a shout that shook the earth rocked the trees. Every loose leaf and branch seemed to fall all at once around her, burying her in the clutter of wood.
Crying out with electric shrieks, a thousand flocks of birds darkened the sky.
Cas was one among them.
Hurrying back into the air, she looked at where the flame ball had been.
A column of dust and wood-chips hung in its place.
Turning right, Cas performed a steep, climbing turn, racing towards the landmark.
A painfully long minute passed before Cas reached the site. By now she was a thousand feet high, scanning sporadically to see that she was too late. The clearing was littered with bodies, all of them spilling like tic-tacs from the exploded guts of a covered wagon.
Cas hesitated. She could fly lower to search the area. But that exploded clearing, quite small and sterile from this height – warned against further encroachment.
And then she heard a screaming.
More than a scream, a human scream, distorted by the distance and wind, coming from the forest not too far away.