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Knights, Witches, and Fighter Jets
Chapter 18: The Flying Man

Chapter 18: The Flying Man

It was a cool morning, and the fog was beginning to roll into the city of White Chasm. There were a few gaps in the massive clouds overhead that allowed the blue sky to peek through in place. The sky was dynamic, the shapes of the clouds shifting in the wind. It was cold.

The members of the White Chasm Aviation Club went through their checklists as a small crowd of students and professors watched. Quinn's ethermancy professor was even present. His face looked serious, as if he was attending a funeral.

After the checklists were finished Seth strapped himself into the seat and put on his goggles. Something seemed wrong to Quinn. His intuition was telling him that he forgot something. He felt a chill down his spine.

He looked at his checklists again. Yes, something was missing. The checklist was missing the step that involved taking the temperature.

"We forgot to do a temperature check," Quinn said.

"I will go get a thermometer," Bjorn said.

"Get a fresh one from the campus laboratories," Quinn said. His theory about Kiera modifying his notes didn't have any evidence, but if it was true, then maybe the other instruments in the workshop had been modified?

Bjorn returned with the thermometer and handed it to Quinn. The temperature read fifty degrees.

"Fifty degrees, Bjorn what is the safe flight ceiling?" Quinn asked.

Bjorn quickly sketched out some calculations on a piece of paper. "Much higher than this thing has any business flying," he said.

"Don't fly too high brother," Quinn said.

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Seth smiled and said "I take my own risks brother." Then, he yelled "clear the propeller!"

Everyone backed away and it began to spin. The craft slid forward across the grass and then lifted into the air. Up and up and up it went. There were gasps from the crowd.

"It actually left the ground, fascinating," one of the professors said. Children started screaming and cheering and running after the craft as it flew away, perhaps thinking they themselves could fly.

Seth was beginning to fly a little too close to the apex of White Chasm, where the two cliff faces met and the chasm dropped away. They had theorized that there would be low pressure at that point, and it would cause the craft to sink and maybe even get sucked down into the chasm. Seth turned the craft toward the campus just as a massive cloud blew behind him. He vanished into the cloud.

Everyone waited. Nobody could see Seth anymore. Silence.

Suddenly somebody cried "up there!", pointing behind them. Everyone had to crane their necks around. Seth had looped back behind them and was approaching from the direction of the campus. He was directly over the quad. The sunlight caught the craft and it was shining, glowing white.

It should not be white.

Grabbing his telescope, Quinn rapidly zoomed in on the little airplane. It was completely covered in a thick coating of ice. Seth was clearly struggling. He had ice on his body and had removed his safety goggles. He held one hand in front of his face to block the cold air.

Then the craft must have hit a low pressure bubble as it passed over the campus. The plane dropped a few feet and recovered, but as it recovered the left wing snapped clean off. It immediately began to spin.

"Brother," Quinn said, running towards the falling plane. "BROTHER!"

Seth SCREAMED.

He vanished into the fog. The screaming stopped.

The students, the professors, and the members of the Aviation Club rushed towards the campus quad to help Seth. Quinn stepped cautiously through the dense fog, feeling his way across the cobblestones with one foot. He felt something squish under his shoe.

It was an eyeball.

Then, they all came across Seth. He had exploded into a mass of meat and bones and blood all over the campus quad. The broken, frozen wreck of the airplane had crashed into the fountain, though the fountain did not look damaged.

Quinn fell to his knees. "Brother," he whispered. A caring hand grabbed his shoulder.

"Another one for the graveyard," his professor said, shaking his head. "'I take my own risks brother', the perfect epitaph for his gravestone."