Pirin stood on the Featherflight’s top platform. His sword swished around him, and he let it. He let his arms do what they knew, and let the training slowly pour back into his limbs. But more than just knowing what to do and letting instinct take over, he needed to control it. He wouldn’t win just by not thinking.
Control the memories. Control the memories.
For the past three days, he had tried to replicate the attacks he had used at the Silversword School. He tried to replicate the feeling. He remembered exactly what he had done, and what his body wanted to do. He practiced swinging, blocking, and spinning. He practiced the flourishes and heavy swipes.
And now, he strung it all together.
Starting from the beginning, he removed his sword from his hip. He used the sheathed blade to swat away the imaginary swords of the thugs and school instructors, keeping as close as he could to the memory.
Someone had drilled each swipe into his arms hundreds of times, even if he didn’t remember. Every direction he thought of, his body knew how to manage. He concentrated on the feeling of the blade cleaving the air, and on the feeling of the air rippling around the cutting edge.
But without control, it was useless.
A few times, he tried concentrating on his muscles and the precise movements, and that never worked. He ended up stalling, his limbs reduced to an unknowing, base state. He needed to be able to think in the middle of a fight, but he couldn’t.
“What do you want to accomplish?” he asked himself softly, again and again. He could barely hear his own words over the whistling of the wind.
This time, he wanted to push through a chain of five downwards swipes, ending with his imaginary opponent reeling, and with victory guaranteed. He remembered each of the five swipes from the fight at the Silversword School, and he wanted to do them again.
When he swung, a hundred mental whispers crept into the back of his mind, fragments and feelings, and a faint trickle of the past. Unfocussed nostalgia combined with the sense of swinging a sword.
He trained in a small wooden room. He trained while running on a mountain trail. He trained in a gravel sparring ring.
The faint recollection had happened only when he did it right. If he tried to cling to the thread, it frayed, and he lost all concentration. So he tolerated the buzz in the back of his mind for the moment.
After two more hours of practice, his arms were too tired to keep swinging. His muscles ached, his shoulders burned, and halfway through, he’d forgotten to keep cycling his Essence.
He tied his sword and scabbard back to his belt and staggered over to the edge of the platform. The Featherflight sailed high above a sparsely-forested plain. The only sign of civilization was a trail running across the land.
After a few minutes, the ladder creaked, and Alyus climbed up onto the platform. He wrung his hands together. “So, elfy…we’re getting a little closer, and this forest, the Sparsecopse”—he swung his finger around in a circle, motioning around at the forest—“is known to have wind shears every once in a while. Any chance you and your ‘snapper would be willing to do some scouting for us? Your bird is meant to handle winds like that, but they won’t be kind to the Featherflight’s frame, even if it is titanwood.”
“I…uh, sure.” Pirin pushed away from the railing, shaking his arms out. For the entire morning, the winds had been rolling across the airship’s upper platform, washing him with cold air. He wasn’t exactly sweaty, but that didn’t mean his muscles weren’t tired. “Give me a minute, then we can scout around a little.”
He followed Alyus back down the ladder. When they reached the crew quarters, the ostal said, “Brealtod put on some soup for bit of a midday snack, if you’re at all inclined.”
“Thanks.” Pirin took a small bowl and ate, then walked back to the cargo hold. Brealtod met him there. The dragonfolk opened up the bottom envelope of the ship, then lowered the cargo platform just enough that Pirin and Gray could leap off.
Gray dove off the platform as soon as Pirin climbed onto the saddle. He pulled up on her nape. Flapping, she adjusted course. Her talons scraped past the bare branches of a winter tree, and the downdraft of her wings stirred up a wake of snow.
“How’s the wing doing?” Pirin yelled, regardless of whether Gray understood him. Talking to her was a habit.
He felt her neck rumble, but he didn’t hear a reply.
Still, she was flapping evenly, and she wasn’t favouring it at all.
They flew back and forth in front of the Featherflight, sweeping in wider and wider arcs away from the large airship. As they flew, he leaned to the side and held his hand out toward Gray’s head. He stared into the single beady black eye that he could see and began to use the Whisper Hitch technique to look inside her mind.
The technique only failed once before Pirin managed to hold it, but he attributed that only to luck.
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But there were other things that were in his control.
He practiced clearing his own head and pushing his thoughts away, so that only Gray’s crept through into his Essence. He felt for even a subtle twinge of pain around his shoulder—if there was any, he’d turn back. No sense in hurting Gray before the race.
But he only felt happiness and exhilaration seeping from her mind. Perfect.
Before he cut off the technique, he took a simple moment to marvel at how much more fluidly it had worked—once he had gotten the technique going.
He snapped his hand shut, dispelling the small gray orb, then placed his arms down on Gray’s neck again. She squawked cheerfully.
“I’m ready to fly, too,” Pirin whispered, leaning closer to Gray’s feathery back. “Hey, how about we practice a few fancy maneuvers? Some turns?”
When they reached the end of the first arc, Pirin tugged as gently as he could on her nape, turning her back the other direction. She turned fast, flapping and tucking one of her wings, but they could turn faster. He felt it. He knew it.
They swept out in a wider arc away from the Featherflight. Pirin barely remembered that he was supposed to be checking for wind shears, but he figured he’d know if he passed through one.
When they reached the other end of their arc, he tugged a little faster back in the other direction—and a little bit upwards.
Gray turned tighter and flapped her wings faster, stirring up another gale of snowflakes below.
When they crossed in front of the airship again, Pirin tried pulling Gray straight to the side. Instead of turning, she rolled over.
The moment she turned upside down, Pirin’s boots slipped out of their stirrups. He snapped his arms upwards and clutched onto the saddle as tight as he could. Without his hands on her neck, Gray stayed upside down.
“Gray!” Pirin yelled. “Turn over, Gray! Turn over!”
Of course, she didn’t listen. Pirin shut his eyes and cycled a few breaths of Essence. With the amount he had, now, little tendrils of energy seeped into his limbs. It wasn’t a specific technique to strengthen his body, but pushing Essence out to his limbs gave them a miniscule boost of strength.
He pulled himself up, then kicked one foot up into the stirrup and wound his foot around it to keep his leg firmly in place. He hauled the next leg up and rammed it back into the stirrup, then pulled Gray back around.
Once they were right side up, Pirin whispered, “Whoops…” He panted for a few seconds, then caught his breath and muttered, “Alright, let’s try that again. And properly, this time.”
They practiced turning sharply and rolling until the sun started to set and the horizon turned a shade of pale coral. The misty outline of the moons rose over a distant hill. Pirin and Gray turned back towards the Featherflight, which was now only a speck in the sky behind them.
When Pirin landed, he reported the two wind shears they had come across throughout the day.
All Alyus said was: “Nice flying, elfy.”
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The next week of travel whipped past in a blur. The wind was at their backs the whole way, and they didn’t stop except to sleep. Pirin and Gray scouted for windshears, practicing their maneuvers and turns, and they reported whatever they found to Alyus.
On the eighth day, they arrived.
The earth fell from the horizon, and it didn’t appear again for a few long minutes. By then, Pirin could see across the canyon. It gouged deep into the layers of gray stone, and leafless winter plants clung to its countless ledges—alongside a touch of snow. At the bottom, nearly a mile below the surface, a river flowed freely. Ice only gathered at the edges, despite the river’s slow pace.
No matter which way he looked, he couldn’t see the start or finish of the canyon. It extended as far as he could see in either direction.
They were still in Aerdia, he reminded himself, though it looked nothing like the northern forests or the Fieldband. The Elven Continent was a vast land, a larger slice of territory than any other nation, and its cities were much further apart.
“I’m supposed to unite all this?” he muttered to himself.
But that wasn’t a problem for now.
The Featherflight dipped down into the canyon. They hadn’t dumped any more ballast on the journey over, and the extra weight would make it much easier to navigate through the canyons.
Alyus manned the rudder wheel, as usual, and Brealtod held the elevator wheel. That left Pirin as the lookout. He ran back and forth from the front of the gondola to the stern, studying the canyon that he’d be racing in.
Houses clung to the canyon walls, built with wood and stone. Some leaned out over the center of the canyon, draped with tattered red tarps or suspended by wires. Fires still burned in their chimneys, puffing smoke out into the sky.
More and more buildings accumulated on the canyon walls the further they sailed, until they clogged the whole expanse, barring a single passage for airships to fit through.
“Watching for your competition?” Alyus asked. “Don’t see many riders out today.” The ostal hadn’t spoken much since they had left Laurill’s house, but when he did, it was always something mildly related to flying.
Pirin stopped pacing for just a moment. “What do you mean?”
“Other racers, elfy. I imagine they’re all waiting for the big day—tomorrow. If I’ve kept track of the date properly, that is. The Bâllenmarch Classic should be Winter Sixty-Third. In fact, it’s almost spring. Almost the new year, now that I think of it…”
They passed through the opening in the houses, then through a column of chimney smoke. Once the grey smog cleared up, they turned to the north side of the canyon, where an air-harbour occupied the widest part of the canyon. Spindly piers reached out into the air, held up only by bollards and rope rigging. Already, ten airships moored. A few looked nearly identical to the Featherflight, if only a little less tattered. Most, though, were larger passenger airships, with plain white envelopes and pristine sails.
“Seems like there’ll be a good crowd this year,” Alyus said.
They docked the Featherflight between two passenger ships, slipping just between the behemoths, and stepped off onto the pier—it lined up to the bottom of the gondola perfectly. Pirin clasped his hands together, then said, “Alright, then. I suppose we’ve gotta get registered for this race. Which…way would that be?”