Drifting. Drifting in a sky of light. Ingrid woke up. She did not know where she was or how long she had been asleep.

She was strapped to a chair in the sky, with a vast jungle below her. Ropes held her chair, suspended from a half-dome of cloth in the sky above her. There was a fire in the jungle not too far away. A glowing mother-of-pearl light was tied to her hand with chains also made of pure light.

Then she saw the birds, and Ivan's little airplane shooting at them.

Right. She had been flying, and then, hundreds of knots of airspeed smashed into her face. Her Life Elemental must have kept her alive, but she lost consciousness immediately. She fell, slowly, down past the canopy of the trees. The parachute caught on the canopy above and her chair remained suspended in a column of light in the pitch black jungle. Ingrid could not see the ground.

"Paranoid, can you create light?" she asked.

The little Light Elemental appeared as a small girl in a flowing dress. She began to glow, too bright to look at directly, and bathe the jungle all around in light. I wish you would stop calling me that, she said in a delicate voice that resembled wind chimes.

All around Ingrid, giant insects the size of dogs drifted lazily in the darkness, a cacophony of different iridescent colors, many of them partially or fully transparent. Far below the treetops the floor of the jungle appeared to be a dark bog of some sort, covered over in places with twisting roots.

"Ingrid!" Ivan's voice boomed through the sky, likely amplified by an Air Elemental. He flew just overhead, his engine no longer making a lot of noise. He was most likely gliding. "I see the light, Ingrid! Stay!" His engine restarted and then he flew away.

She didn't move from her seat, not that she had anywhere to go. After a while she heard his engine coming back towards her again.

"Stay there! A tilt-rotor is on the way!" Ivan bellowed. "Check under the seat for food!"

Ingrid carefully checked under her seat with her hands until she found a large pack. She had no idea how long it would have taken her to find it if she did not already know where it was. It contained food, a canteen of water, a coil of rope, a compass, a pistol, a knife, and a red-blue crystal, most likely for starting fires or purifying water.

"Summon the crystals that were in my fighter into this bag," Ingrid said. Lights appeared inside and then the missing crystals materialized.

The tilt rotors, with propellers full forward, could travel at about two hundred and forty knots. Assuming it took a few minutes to take off, it would likely be about a half hour before help arrived. The birds would not likely come back as long as Ivan was flying around nearby. They did not seem to like his propeller, and would enjoy the presence of the tilt-rotors even less.

"Dark, keep a lookout!" she cried. The little ocular demon appeared, a pair of floating yellow-red eyeballs with purple octopus-like bodies.

Pretty location, the demon said.

Thankfully the insects seemed mostly docile. They floated through the trees like gentle spirits, singing their own little songs. Ingrid was certain that she saw a pair of them mating. She waited for a few minutes and just took in the view.

Danger approaching from your left, the demon reported. I can see it through the trees, it is approaching us directly. It is as tall as the trees. I think it wants to eat you.

That sounds very large, Paranoid said. My barrier will not be able to stop so much raw force. You must flee!

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"How!?" Ingrid asked.

You will not be able to climb up out of its reach, the demon said. Its neck is very long.

Use the rope, go down, Paranoid said. Hide from it somehow.

Ingrid glanced around. She was completely exposed up there. If something knocked her off her chair, she would fall down into the water and die, if she wasn't eaten outright. She started breathing heavily. "I, um, don't know how to tie a rope in a knot."

You better learn fast, the demon said.

Ingrid released the straps on her seat and frantically pulled the rope out of the pack. The straps, she realized, could be secured once again. Presumably the forces on those straps would be quite strong while a fighter jet was flying at top speed. She assumed it would hold her weight. Hopefully.

She let one end of the rope dangle down. It did not quite reach the ground, but the drop onto the roots did not look far. She wrapped the rope around her waist, but it tended to slip up or down as she moved it.

Try wrapping it in a loop around each leg before putting it around your waist, the demon said. It wasn't a terrible idea. Though wrapping the rope around each leg was somewhat difficult while seated on a tiny chair high up in the air. This consumed even more of the rope, and it took two attempts to gain enough slack for the makeshift "knot" at her belly. It seemed to hold, even when she tested it against her full weight by dangling off the side of the chair. It crumpled her skirt and tended to ride up uncomfortably.

Holding the part of the rope which was dangling down from the seat straps, Ingrid used both her hands to very slowly, and very painfully, lower herself down into the darkness below. She could hear a loud splashing sound from the direction of the beast, but it was still too dark to see. As she descended Paranoid followed, creating flares of light on the trees which moved down at Ingrid's pace.

When Ingrid ran out of rope, she dropped down onto the gnarled mess of roots. They bent slightly as she landed, but were surprisingly thick and strong. She slung her pack over one shoulder then walked around the nearby tree to get a better look at what was approaching.

Splash.

She saw it then, just at the edge of the darkness. It looked like a horse but with very long legs and an extremely long neck. It was indeed as tall as the trees. Its skin appeared to be made out of black scales, polished to a shine and reflecting the light of her Elemental. It had horns, sharp teeth, a prominent nose, long tube-like ears, and... no eyes. At least not that Ingrid could see.

Splash.

Each footstep required the great beast to lift its leg out of the water to move it. There appeared to be about ten feet of the leg hidden under the water, in Ingrid's estimation. The entire beast was maybe a hundred feet tall. Its giant nostrils flexed as it sniffed the air, then looked straight at Ingrid. Yes, it had no eyes on its face.

"Wind, prevent the sounds and smells from my body from escaping!" she cried out. A turquoise woman with a flute appeared and then dissolved into a barrier around Ingrid, which then faded and vanished from sight. Ingrid snuck along the branches, away from the beast.

Splash.

It wandered towards where she had been, bent its massive neck down, and began sniffing the roots. It followed her scent on the roots, from where her feet had touched the ground.

"That's bad," Ingrid said. She ran, sprinting along the root floor and leaping across gaps over the bog. The beast continued to chase her but very slowly, sniffing each footstep.

Splash.

"Fire, burn the roots behind me!" she cried out. A tall, naked woman made of pure flames appeared over the roots in front of Ingrid.

CONSUME!

"Yes, consume!"

The Fire Elemental started shooting fire out her palms, sending up plumes of black smoke. The giant beast sniffed the air again, and then screamed. "Wind, protect my ears!" Ingrid managed. The sound subsided, but the giant creature still bellowed outside, like a dying animal. Then, it galloped away through the water so fast that all the roots shook.

Splash, splash, splash, splash.

Ingrid caught her breath and checked her surroundings. She had moved about fifty feet along the roots before she stopped to set them on fire, relative to where she had landed. The parachute and the chair of her fighter jet still dangled from the canopy far above. A single shaft of sunlight penetrated through the darkness. The insects did not approach her, as they had not before. She sat down on the roots and snacked on the bread and cheese in the bag while she waited.

The loud whirring sound of the tilt rotors was unmistakable when it finally arrived. A man on a rope with a harness descended slowly into the hole in the canopy, cutting the ropes on the parachute with a machete. Ingrid waited just below the opening for him to arrive.

"Do you have working communications?" She cried out to the man as he descended.

"What do you need?" he asked.

"Tell Ivan that he saved my life," she said. "And tell him I want to learn to fly his warbirds."