When Pirin reached Gray, he found her pecking at a gobbart’s face. She had pinned the creature’s wood-shielded body under her talons, and was driving her beak into its head like a woodpecker. After a few seconds, the gobbart stopped writhing.
Ducking under a branch, Pirin sprinted the last short distance to Gray, then impaled a gobbart that approached from the opposite side with his sword. It flailed its arms and died quickly.
Behind him, the trees rustled and shook, and the forest screeched. The rest of the gobbarts were almost here. There was no time to pause, no time to search inside the creatures’ minds and learn anything. There was only enough time to scramble up onto Gray’s saddle. He rammed his feet into the stirrups, swinging his sword at the gobbarts that drew anywhere close.
The sword felt comfortable in his hand. It fit into his palm like he had practiced using it a thousand times over, though he couldn’t remember a specific instance of training—only that his body knew what to do. He blocked a gobbart’s club, then deflected a swipe from a cruel, rusty blade.
But, no matter what his body knew how to do, he wasn’t under any illusion that he could defeat all of the gobbarts. He tapped his legs gently against Gray’s flanks. The gnatsnapper rose to her feet, and when Pirin tightened his knees, she began to sprint. He didn’t need to guide her through the trees; she navigated around the trunks well enough on her own.
She plowed through a gobbart, and Pirin cut down another. As soon as the foothill began to slope downwards again, the trees thinned. Up ahead, Pirin spotted a ledge, and, clutching the nape of Gray’s neck, he guided her towards it. The wind began to whistle around his ears. She bounded off the edge. Pirin set his elbows down on the back of her neck, and she fluttered her wings. They shot up into the sky.
For a moment, Pirin breathed deeply. He’d lost focus on his breathing technique back in the forest—and he hadn’t noticed—but now he resumed the slow breaths.
Besides, the gobbarts weren’t his only problem. The storm was even closer now. Already, snowflakes whirled through the air, and tendrils of cloud reached out towards him. It was horrible weather to fly in, but if they landed anywhere nearby, the gobbarts would find them.
If he had been a proper wizard, he could have defeated the gobbarts easily. But the only proper wizards were far, far away, hidden in Aerdia, or far across the Adryss Ocean. Taking on a pack of gobbarts was a big ask. The best he could do was run.
He tucked his sword back into its sheath and leaned closer to Gray. They could head east, away from the storm, but that would put them further away from their destination, and there was no guarantee of escaping the gobbarts that way. West, and they’d head straight into the storm. North or south, it’d catch up either way—so they may as well head south, over the mountains. They had to make it across in one go.
“Alright, Gray,” he whispered. “Let’s do this.”
This time, gliding wasn’t an option. The wind hammered them from the right. Gray flapped faster and harder just to fly in a straight line. The sky darkened, and snowflakes whipped all around him. He squinted and raised his hand, but the snowflake still crashed into his eyes. The dark claws of the mountains rushed past below, barely silhouettes in the dim light.
After a half-hour, Gray’s wingbeats began to slow down. She was getting tired—he didn’t need to be psychic to tell that. They weren’t past the mountains, though, and the storm was growing worse.
They could land on a mountain ledge and wait out the storm. But these were mountains, after all, and that was where gobbarts came from. The beasts would emerge from the stone and take him and Gray into deep caves. They’d probably eat Gray like she was a chicken. As for Pirin…he didn’t want to think about what his fate would be. No, he and Gray had to stay in the air.
Leaning around the side of Gray’s neck, Pirin stared into her eyes. She blinked fast, keeping them clear of snow.
If Pirin could reach inside a karebain’s mind, he’d surely be able to look inside a creature who hadn’t been gathering Essence her entire life. Better yet, he could encourage Gray with his own thoughts and bolster her will to…not crash.
But only if he could just get his damn Essence to not rebel for one moment.
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That was too much to ask. As soon as he held his hand out, a burning tingle blasted through his veins and invisible barbed wires snaked through his muscles. He screamed, he was certain, and his voice disappeared into the wind.
Through gritted teeth, he hissed to himself, “Cycle, Pirin. Keep the technique…keep it going.”
A wall of wind and ice slammed into them, and before he could begin the pattern again, they dipped. The air rushed out of his mouth. It took all his wit to pull up on Gray’s nape, and his breathing technique disintegrated. A rigid shadow, the summit of a mountain, blocked their path. He guided Gray to the right, and she barely swerved around it.
They needed to climb, and Gray needed his help. He forced himself to cycle his Essence. Then, he leaned to the side again and found her eyes. Reaching out, he kept trying and trying and trying to see inside her mind, until finally, a swirl of grey mist appeared above the palm of his hand. There it was.
He couldn’t understand a bird’s thoughts like he could read an elf’s mind, but he could sense Gray’s feelings. They were more like motifs than proper thoughts—she wasn’t a Familiar yet. Exhaustion, desperation, fear. She felt that these mountains would be their doom.
Pirin could change all of that. Yes, exhaustion resided in muscles, but also in the mind, and a body could usually be pushed further than the mind would let it. If he could just turn off her exhaustion and absorb it, he could keep them in the air.
Blocking thoughts and stimuli was beyond Pirin—at the moment. But drowning out the tiredness with his own, not-exhausted thoughts? That, he could do.
“We’re like a leaf in a tornado up here!” Pirin yelled. “I’ll do my best! Keep us in the air!”
He concentrated on the blood flowing to his head, on the Essence in it. There was more Essence available this time, and he let it absorb his thoughts like they were heat radiating off a fire. Then he pushed the thoughts-and-Essence mixture through his body.
Once the solution reached his hand, he forced the Essence to stay in place. It gathered in his skin and veins, still holding his thoughts. As long as they stayed in his hand, they would seep up into the accumulation of Gray’s mind.
It wasn’t fast, and he couldn’t always focus entirely on the technique. Sometimes, he had to guide Gray around mountains, or dip through snowy valleys.
He filled his Essence with his own motifs, concentrating on his somewhat fresh, not-tired body. The thoughts radiated up into her mind, overpowering her weary and drained thoughts. She began to flap faster again, and they climbed.
But the longer Pirin held the technique, the more chances there were for it to fail. Every second, he increased the risk of his Essence revolting against him. It would start fighting back. It was only a matter of time.
A minute later, his hold on Gray’s mind began to fail. Blue sparks of pure-aspect Essence gathered at the tips of his fingers, and if he forced the technique any further, he could damage his mind worse than he already had. Or, worse, he could damage Gray’s mind. He released the technique. As soon as the misty orb of thoughts dissipated, his hand exploded backward. Blue sparks fizzled through the air, and pain surged through his bones.
Gray began to dip again. Pirin had to keep trying.
For an hour, the process continued. Pirin would attempt to reach inside Gray’s mind, and four times out of five, the technique failed before he could even begin to gather the gnatsnapper’s faculties in his hand. When he did manage to hold it in place for a few minutes, he overpowered her tired thoughts with his own, pushing her to fly higher and faster.
There were times, between the reprieves that Pirin could give Gray, that they dipped down low enough for him to touch the tips of the trees. He had to navigate her through sharp peaks and narrow crevices to keep them from crashing.
Even worse, when Pirin donated his fresh, unwearied thoughts to Gray, his Essence absorbed some of hers. When it passed through his heart and back up to his head, it transferred her fatigue into his mind. An ache built in his arms and back. To filter it out took more effort than he could give. Even immersed in the mountain air, he was sweating. His coat was soaked on the inside and icing over on the outside.
Pirin’s Essence rebelled one last time, forcing him out of Gray’s mind. The explosion of blue sparks seared his skin, but it was nothing compared to the horrible jolt he felt inside his spirit. He blinked his eyes, pushing away the pain. He’d almost gone too far. Dark spots whirled in front of his eyes and his head felt lighter than air.
This time, he was certain he had nothing else to give Gray. He’d spent every fresh thought in his mind, and now, he just wanted to sleep. He blinked again, this time to keep himself awake.
It wasn’t working. His body was shutting down and there was nothing he could do about it.
As they descended, the mountains below shortened and the summits smoothed, then faded away altogether into high plains. Ahead, there were no rock summits to crash into or valleys to tumble down. Only flat fields of snow and mud.
They had made it. At that comforting thought, darkness fell across his vision even faster, goading him into complacency. He slipped out of the saddle. The last memory to pass through his mind were Gray’s talons gently clutching his limp shoulders and her wings wrapping around him, shielding him from the fall.
They collided with the ground and tumbled, throwing up dirt and mud and snow. Everything went dark.