Pirin and Gray swerved to the side immediately. The other circling Dominion pilots fired a volley of arrows, but they were aiming where he had been, not where he was. The arrows whistled harmlessly through the air.
“How do we stack up against a rockwing for speed?” Pirin asked, leaning into Gray’s neck.
Dunno, but we’ve got a chance to find out! Gray exclaimed.
A rockwing fluttered along ahead of them. He centered it in his vision, then urged Gray to chase after it. It dipped down, swerving under the envelope of the Featherflight, then circled back up.
Three more pilots broke off to chase Pirin. One nocked another arrow in his bow, but before he could loose the arrow, Nomad shredded him with a column of air. Motes of pale blue Essence swirled in the bar of wind, miniature claws, and they ripped apart the rider’s armour and flesh. He and his mount fell, dead before they hit the ground.
Pirin ducked down to avoid a second arrow, but it never came. The two riders still on his tail fired arrows at Nomad instead. The wizard still stood on the back platform of the Featherflight’s gondola, and the wind whipped his coat into a flurry.
Pale, pure-aspect Essence swirled through his limbs—a fortification technique like Myraden’s Tundra Veins. He snatched the arrows out of the air in a blink of an eye, moving so fast his limbs blurred. He tightened his grip on them, and the shafts snapped into dust.
A pure-aspect fortification technique. Pirin blinked. He’d need one of those…
Eyes on the target, Pirin, Gray said, snapping his mind to the present.
They shot out on the other side of the Featherflight’s envelope. The rockwing rider ahead of them was faster on the climb, but Gray could dive faster than they could. That’s how they’d catch their prey.
Alyus blasted the two riders behind Pirin, reducing them to a puff of feathers and red mist.
Pirin and Gray lagged behind their target as it climbed up above the upper platform. He swung his sword through the empty air ahead of him, sending a slice of air and manifested Essence-feathers flying toward the foe. It struck the rockwing’s tail with a blunt impact, but the bird shifted and spiralled, then its rider pulled it into a dive.
Pirin ducked down and shrouded himself in a shield of air once more. He turned his blunt body into an aerodynamic wedge. Like this, Gray could dive as fast as an unburdened gnatsnapper.
They caught up to the rockwing pilot in seconds. Pirin leaned off the side of his saddle and drove his sword through the enemy pilot’s neck. The pilot died in seconds, slumping to the side and sending his mount spiralling out of control.
Four riders left.
He and Gray had dipped far below the Featherflight, but there was still a long way to the ground. He pulled back on Gray’s nape, and she climbed back to the rest of the pilots.
One of the rockwing riders swooped at the Featherflight’s tail fin, the giant bird’s talons poised to rip through the fabric, but Alyus fired the airship’s heavy repeating crossbow and skewered the bird with a pair of bolts. Its limp body skidded along the outer envelope, then tumbled down to the ground below.
Myraden had jumped up onto the top platform to help as well. She unfurled her spear and used it like a rope-dart, controlling the unwound silk shaft with her Essence and her bloodline talent. She impaled a bird that strayed too close, then spun around and, fortifying her arm with Essence, heaved the spear through the air. The silk straitened up into a spear shaft as it flew, and it impaled the rider nearest to Pirin.
He pulled Gray to the side, taking a detour, and snatched the spear out of the rider’s flank. Without Myraden’s control, it fell into a limp strand of silk.
She’s never thrown it before, Gray commented.
“She knew I’d grab it, maybe?”
She seemed pretty mad.
“Or she trusts me more.”
I don’t think you understand women very well…
“You do?”
Gray was silent for a few seconds, but she kept fluttering up toward the fight. There was only one rockwing left, and its pilot knew better than to circle down into Nomad’s field of fire. Alyus spun the mounted crossbow and fired another bolt at it, but missed.
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Alright, I don’t know much about them, Gray admitted. But I do know that she’s mad about something.
Pirin threw the limp strand of silk and the dangling spearhead down to Myraden, and she caught it. “You dropped something!” That spear had a name, and it rested on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t recall it.
Myraden said nothing.
Pirin flourished his sword. They had climbed above the last rider now. They needed a burst of speed, and they could take him out.
“Alright, Gray, wanna try something?”
Is it gonna get us killed?
“Not if you cycle quickly and help me out.”
Ah, yes, that’s reassuring…
Pirin pushed a coating of wind around his body, then crafted it into a wedge ahead of him—his pseudo-fortification technique. But Gray needed it too. He pushed their Essence into a faster loop, synchronizing their breathing patterns. It travelled all the way out to her wings. He lent some of the strength of his soul, helping push the Essence faster on the way up and bolster the wind under her wings.
They both guided the wind from behind, turning themselves into a dart. Pirin held his sword out to the side.
The pilot swerved to the side, and instead of hitting the rider, Pirin slashed through the rockwing’s wingtip. The bird shrieked, but the rider hauled the beast under control, asserting an absolute will over the beast.
Then the pilot fired an arrow. Pirin ducked, but the arrow clipped the edge of his mask, knocking it off his face and deactivating the runes. He leaned back and caught it before it tumbled to the ground below, and Gray rolled to the side, slipping away from the next shot.
Pirin didn’t have a mental link, but he still had his physical controls. He nudged Gray to the side, swooping under the rockwing and rising up on the other side. He couldn’t use any gnatsnapper techniques steadily, but he traded sword arms and swung at the pilot.
The pilot was racing away from the Featherflight, slowly losing altitude. They flew west, probably heading back to the airfield. Pirin couldn’t let the pilot get away, or squadrons would chase after them.
Good thing Gray was faster than a wounded bird. She chirped, then fluttered her wings. Even without her Reyad, she was more intelligent than an average beast. She understood the mission.
Pirin reached out and swung at the rider, but he wasn’t fast enough. The rider dipped to the side.
Oh, what he’d give for a pure-Essence fortification technique…
The pilot fired an arrow back at him, and he used a Shattered Palm to deflect it. He tightened his fist. If this went on any longer, Gray was going to get hurt.
But he had flown birds a lot longer than he’d been using magic. He tucked his mask back into his haversack and leaned down closer to Gray. “Alright,” he whispered. She wouldn’t understand, but that didn’t matter. He had always talked to birds. “We can take him.”
The pilot dipped, continually losing altitude. The Featherflight was only a speck behind them, now. Pirin kept him and Gray level, holding their position until the Dominion pilot was a few hundred feet below them. Then he held his sword out to the side and dove. Gray tucked her wings and Pirin tucked his head.
He slashed through the rider’s neck, then the wounded rockwing’s spine, giving them both a quick death. They plummeted to the ground.
“Good work,” he whispered to Gray, then swerved around, angling back to the Featherflight.
They caught up with the airship in a few minutes and landed in the cargo hold. They dipped down below the ship and pulled up at the last minute, and gravity slowed them down enough that Gray could hook her talons onto the cargo elevator’s edge.
Pirin slipped out of the saddle and sheathed his sword, then hauled on a rope to close the envelope doors below them. Once the doors closed, he hooked the rope on the wall, locking the doors in place.
After a few seconds, Myraden and Nomad descended down the ladder and met him in the cargo hold. Myraden wore her spear like a sash, and Nomad still looked like as much of a vagabond as ever—just a windblown vagabond.
Pirin exhaled, still out of breath from the battle, then dropped to a knee. “Nomad, sir, I need to learn a fortification technique with pure Essence.”
Nomad laughed.
“Sir?”
“That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” Nomad asked. “You did well, Pirin, and your control over your wind techniques are improving greatly.”
“But if I run out of gnatsnapper Essence, or if I have to deactivate the Reyad for a Shattered Palm, I’ll want some other techniques to use then, too.”
“That will be a challenge, now, won’t it?” Nomad tucked his hands behind his back. “You can’t make more pure Essence when you have your Reyad active, and if you try to cycle it—which you’ll need to do to activate a technique—you’ll end up tainting it with gnatsnapper Essence, so it won’t be a pure aspect technique.”
Pirin nodded. “I thought about that, sir, but it would have to be something that works without my Reyad active. That means it has to work with my Embercore, too.” His Shattered Palm was a technique that only worked for an Embercore, using his unstable core to launch a technique. If he could exploit his Embercore the same way with a fortification technique, it would work.
“An unstable fortification technique?” Nomad scratched his chin. “I don’t suppose you want something that only works for a few seconds before falling apart, or a technique that falls apart when your spirit rebels on you.”
“I’d prefer not, sir. But…I did notice, your fortification technique uses pure-aspect Essence, correct?”
Myraden leaned against the wall, looking at the both of them with curiosity. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then walked off along the cargo elevator to talk with Kythen in Íshkaben.
“Like you, my Familiar’s Essence is good for wind techniques, though it also grants a little authority over nature. But my only fortification technique is a stable pure Essence technique. It means that, to use it, I have to draw in Essence from outside. That Essence gets aspect-bent soon, and I have to draw in more.”
“I shouldn’t have that problem,” Pirin said. “Please, sir, I would be grateful if you could teach me your technique…”
“Yes, yes,” Nomad said. “But tomorrow. You need to sleep, and I need you to cycle all night. Stock up on as much pure-Essence as you can, because you’ll need it all.”