They all sat up, coming to their senses. Trenton felt fresh and nimble, practically perfect in every way, but he always woke up that way. The others didn’t have the same supernatural rejuvenation, meaning most days they lagged behind him, their flesh slowing them down, rather than pushing them forward. However, this morning, everyone looked awake and excited, some leftover magic from the spirit encounter still hanging in the air, or so Trenton figured, anyway.
Garrote walked over to Trenton, stretching his arms above his head, “I don’t think I’ve ever woken up so…energized. Is this what you feel like each morning?”
“More or less,” Trenton replied.
“Who was that spirit lady?” Millie asked, sliding up next to Trenton. “Her waters felt AMAZING! I’ve never felt anything like it.”
“I’m not sure, but in any case, we should take advantage of the boost in stamina. We can make good heading today,” Trenton said, focusing on their path forward.
“So antsy to get moving. Not going to talk about your chat with that massive spirit?” Kiva asked, eye eyebrows raised.
“Not much to say. Most of it was just that she’s rooting for us. That’s pretty much it,” Trenton replied, pushing Kiva playfully away.
“What kind of spirit was that, Millie? I didn’t realize they could even get that big,” Kiva asked, coming down from their morning high.
Millie thought about it for a moment, before throwing her hands in the air and shrugging, “I dunno. My mom’s not even that big. But did you feel her waters!?” Millie exclaimed, distracted again. It seemed she really liked water.
“C’mon, we’ve still got a lot of headway to make. We can’t just sit around talking forever. We still have to pack up camp,” Trenton said, pushing everyone back towards the cliff.
They quickly scaled the cliff, stowing away their tents and heading out. Much like days prior, they trekked across the rocky desert, struggling through the various cliffs and dunes, taking note of interesting landmarks whenever they would appear. There wasn’t a lot to the dessert visually, but some of the cliffs did make for nice scenery. Kiva seemed to really appreciate short stops to admire them, in any case, so Trenton acquiesced. It was a small favor.
About 2 weeks later, the Final Spire finally came into view, a massive pillar far off in the distance which seemed to stretch up forever. They’d wanted to visit it, but didn’t have the supplies to spare. It would take at least a couple days of travel to actually reach it, a couple days that could mean starving to death. They hadn’t encountered any monsters in the desert, Kiva steering them around the most dangerous areas, which meant they were pretty safe, but they also weren't able to loot the monsters for meat. If they got desperate enough, they may have even needed to purposely fight a monster to eat. Trenton hoped not, but it wasn’t off the table.
They stopped to rest for a couple minutes, Kiva enjoying the sight of the spire. They were standing atop a pretty large cliff, some crags around them forcing them to climb their way through. Like usual, Trenton and Garrote took the brunt of their climbing, everyone else sandbagging along. So this break actually gave them both a chance to rest as well as to let Kiva enjoy the little snippets of nature that they could find. She was sitting on the edge of the cliff, dangling her feet off of the side. Every now and then, Kiva would pipe up with some detail she noticed, steering Trenton’s eyes towards the spire off in the distance. Trenton didn’t have particularly good eyes, but he was able to see more or less if he really focused. Finally, when they couldn’t afford to wait any longer, Trenton pulled Kiva to her feet, beckoning them to continue moving. But halfway through the motion, he stopped, a faint rumbling beneath him catching his attention. It was getting closer, and fast.
“Something is approaching,” Trenton said, crouching low to the ground. If he could tell which direction it came from, then they’d be able to properly run. It was too risky to simply pick a direction to move before they even knew where the threat was. He had to move to several different spots, triangulating the direction based on the slightest of differences in frequency, but eventually he got a lock on the target. “Due west,” Trenton siad, rising to his feet and scanning the horizon.
“We shouldn’t move until we can see what it is. We might be better off hiding depending,” Kiva said, her voice low. Everyone stood tense, straining their eyes to make out anything, the rumbling only growing.
“There,” Leo said, pointing towards a point a little further to the north than Trenton had thought. Trenton couldn’t see what it was at first, his eyes lost on the smear of browns adorning the landscape, but eventually it faded into view. It looked like a massive wall of undulating black heading straight towards them, its form spilling over the crags like water.
Kiva staggered back, her eye’s wide, “Cliff vultures,” she said, her words breathy.
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“What should we do?” Garrote asked.
“I…don’t know. They cover too wide of an area to run,” she said.
“I’m not taking that for an answer,” Trenton said, grabbing everyone and hoisting them over his shoulders. “Soften the landings.”
Trenton launched off of the cliff to the east, heading straight towards the spire off in the distance. The swarm was far too wide to get past its borders, which meant that trying to outrun it was their best hope. Trenton bounded across the rocky terrain, using his great strength to leap from cliff to crag, Garrote slowing their downward accent so as to keep them alive, the swarm closing in behind them all the while. It was moving unbelievably fast, covering several miles in a matter of minutes. It was already practically right on them, Trenton’s movement doing little to save them from the approaching wall of death.
“They shouldn’t be swarming something like this unless they’re chasing after something!” Kiva shouted into his ear, twisting so as to look behind them. “There! I see it! I’ve got an idea!”
“Yeah!?” Trenton shouted, eyes locked forward.
“Jump as high as you can on my count!”
They were running across a flat landscape, another cliff far ahead of them. If he jumped, he’d just land back down on the ground where he was already running,“Alright!” He shouted, placing his full faith in Kiva. It would overtake them any moment, the longer they waited, the more danger they were in.
“3…2…1…JUMP!”
Trenton slammed his feet against the ground with all his might, leaping easily 20 feet into the air, his momentum still carrying them forward. They flew through the air, Trenton bracing for impact, Garrote working to slow and steer them, and Millie screaming–not really helpful. With the help of Garrote, Trenton landed back on the ground relatively softly, still holding everyone close to himself in his arms. At first, Trenton panicked, the weight of the fall stopping his forward momentum, but as he moved to dash, he noticed they were still barreling forward, their movement even faster than before. They weren't standing back on the ground at all. Underneath them was a thickly scaled lizard-like creature, its gargantuan muscles clearly visible as it bounded forward.
Somehow, Kiva had timed them perfectly to land on its back as it was running, the rider atop it, holding reins and sitting on a saddle, barely even glancing back at them as they landed. The creature was definitely big enough to hold all of them, strong enough, too, but it wasn’t massive, not quite the size of Godfrey. It was closer to the size of a small house than a mansion.
“Damn fine jump, kid! Hold on, it’s going to be bumpy,” the rider said, bending low to reduce friction with the air.
Trenton ducked low, letting everyone down and assessing the situation. The creature beneath them wasn’t familiar. It looked kind of like a lizard mixed with a horse, its body wrapped in pale yellow scales. All around them there were more of these creatures, smaller variants, all of them running in the same direction with a rider atop their back. Just behind them, the cliff vultures buzzed violently, their undulating mass more visible now that they were close. What Trenton had mistaken for a black blob from afar was actually just tens of thousands of small insects, their little bodies interlocked and vibrating violently. The wall was only about a dozen feet behind them, but the lizard they were riding on seemed to be holding its ground, the mass getting no closer.
“I can’t lift all of us up a cliff! We’re way too heavy!” Garrote cried out at the man’s back.
“Don’t worry! Climbing is a stormas specialty!” the man shouted, clearly not worried.
They were coming up to the edge of the cliff fast, the next one far away and higher than their current position. Even if they managed to make the horizontal distance, the vertically would take far too long to scale. They weren’t going to make it. Just as Trenton was thinking this, the man wrenched up on the reins, the storma planting its massive feet into the ground, bursting up with vigor almost similar to a frog. They were practically flying, the storma easily clearing the large jump and absorbing most of the impact with its mighty legs, continuing its stride in one swift movement. That must have been how they were outrunning the vultures for so long. Stormas were probably a local creature, one specifically designed to traverse through the desert–the horses of the desert.
Straight ahead of them, a gargantuan stone complex crystallized, its form no longer blocked by the cliffs ahead of them. It had a great moat surrounding it, one large bridge leading to the mainland. That was their target. The bridge wouldn’t do much to help against the flying creatures, though. They’d need some sort of barrier to be truly safe. With no other options, Trenton put his trust into the new man. Their storma barreled forward onto the lowered bridge as the vultures started to catch up to them, several of the men ahead of them already making their way towards the end of the bridge. Around them, several of the men lost too much ground, their beings disappearing in the mass of vultures. They screamed as they fell back, their flesh quickly severed from the rest of their body, but there was nothing any of them could do. They needed to keep going forward.
As they bolted across the bridge, it sounded like cracks of thunder, the vultures just feet behind them now. Several of the vultures were even starting to break away from the pact, rushing forward to attack them. Trenton raised his hands, preparing to slap them away, but Leo actually acted faster, launching a wall of fire larger than Trenton had ever seen him use before at the creatures, a wild fury dancing in his eyes. The fire shot past Trenton, incinerating the stray vultures in an instant and burning a great hole into the rest of the swarm. It had only bought them a moment in the confusion, but that was all they needed. They leapt over the last segment of the bridge, the air just behind them suddenly solidifying into a transparent white mass as they crossed the threshold of the base. The vultures slammed against the spatial wall, crashing into each other with a wild force, the corpses of crushed vultures smearing their guts across the barriers edges.
The storma below them quickly slowed to a stop, the man pulling back on its reins now. When they were fully stopped, they turned around and watched as the vultures smashed against the barrier, their numbers paling in comparison to the might of wizard's magic. It seemed that the barrier stretched all the way around the complex, the spatial dome offering them complete protection. They had made it. They were safe.