Although Iris was able to recharge the energy of her broom without crashing, it was far from a sustainable solution or the intended method of flying. Much of the evening was spent practicing a technique which the witches called sweeping, which involved intentionally banking and rolling through the sky in a “sweeping” motion in order to maximize the amount of time spent inside strong headwinds. Rather than slow the witches down, as one might expect, their brooms instead absorbed the force exerted by the headwinds to slowly recharge the broom and allow for long bouts of sustained flight. The same technique also worked with tailwinds, by absorbing the forward pressure that would otherwise held propel a witch faster in the direction of travel, though the returns were lower than with headwinds.
After a few hours of flying, the witches took a break on a branch of one of the enormous trees scattered throughout the swamp. As they approached, Dala slowed her speed and landed softly on her feet, while Ellie lined herself up lengthwise with the branch to come to a gentle stop with a light jog. Iris didn’t dare attempt a classical landing at all, and instead approached from overhead, climbed off her broom mid-air to arc down towards it and blipped to close the gap. She landed with the end of her broom against the bark to slow her descent into a casual step.
“You put on your spin on things, that’s certain,” the matron said as Iris walked up to her, “but you’re making incredible progress for a beginner.”
“I have a lot of practice flinging myself through the air,” Iris said proudly.
“It helps that you’re so fearless,” Ellie added, “when I was first learning, it took me weeks to even work up the courage to leave the ground.”
Iris shrugged before rubbing her eye, “you can’t get very far in life if you’re afraid of getting hurt. I just wish the wind didn’t dry my eyes out so much.”
The branch they stood upon was several feet wide and terribly high above the lumpy, rolling canopy of the swamp below. Iris guessed it would have been about as far as the distance from the tallest tower at the peak of Giantrock City to the lake that lay below it. From this distance it was impossible to tell one tree apart from another, and based on all her experience falling great distances, Iris expected she’d have time to grow bored during the fall to the surface. Despite their great height, however, the swamp still stretched out to the horizon in all directions, only broken by the occasional enormous tree or the few moss-covered, overgrown brick structures that could only be spotted amongst the foliage with a careful eye.
The branches of the tree were spaced out enough that each had of a partially unobstructed view of the sky, but were still close enough that Iris could have leapt and chained a few blips to travel between them if she wished. Though this one was relatively flat and straight for much of its length, many twisted and turned at odd angles, and some even crossed over each other. The lowest ring of branches had long, trailing curtains of moss that fluttered gently in the wind almost like hanging banners.
As Iris had expected, the canopy of the tree was alive with an entire ecosystem of its own. Some of the creatures she saw included a myriad of birds, a trail of ants the size of boots that trailed up the trunk and down a nearby branch, and a variation of the lizard-squirrels she hadn’t yet seen that had brown scales and bat-like wings attached their front legs. There were also occasional noises that sounded like a mixture of a hooting owl, a shouting human, and a cackling jackal, which Ellie explained came from furry creatures called monkeys.
During the break, Ellie explained to Iris that winds near the surface often travel in one, mostly uniform direction over a large swath of land for extended periods, but at higher elevations one could find streams of wind that flowed through the sky like rivers in all directions. For witches, finding these streams and anticipating their directions eventually became second nature. In Iris’s case, however, she would have to settle for grasping the basic principles until she had accrued years upon years of practice.
Stolen novel; please report.
The lesson was interrupted when one of the pink-skinned girls — Iris was pretty sure it was Anna — came racing towards them, shooting through leaves and twigs and nearly crashing in her hurry to land.
“There’s a—” she gasped a breath as staggered up to Dala, “balrog! Dungeon Temple!”
Dala’s casual expression instantly turned serious, “Ellie, take Iris back to the huts.”
“Yes matron!” Ellie answered quickly.
“Grey and Relena are trapped,” Anna explained quickly as Dala mounted her broom.
The matron was already on her broom about to take off when Iris interjected, “I’m going with you!”
“It’s far too dangerous,” Dala said curtly as she kicked off and took flight with Anna following close behind.
Iris crunched her nose in frustration and mounted her broom.
“Wait!” Ellie shouted, “the matron’s right! Balrogs are too strong, you could be killed!”
Iris looked back at her, “if it’s the balrog I think it is, then it’s my leftovers. If anyone’s going to get hurt finishing it off, it’s me.”
Iris was about to take off when a tentacle rose up out of her bag with something dangling from its grasp. Iris looked down in confusion for a second before recognizing the item. It was a pair of goggles that had once belonged to Milo, and in unexpected rush of memories Iris realized she had forgotten to give them back after the battle in the fish wizard’s castle.
“Good idea,” she said with a reminiscent smile, and Abby promptly reached out with two more tentacles to strap the goggles onto her head and across her face.
Ellie watched hopelessly with an aghast expression as Iris took flight, she wobbled slightly at first but soon settled into a stable balance and shot off after the other witches with a burst of speed. With no idea what else to do, she mounted her broom and followed after Iris.
Iris leaned low and forward and lifted her feet to hook them over the tail end of the broom, turning herself into a dart that punched through the air as she traded mana for speed. It was only a few moments before she caught up to Dala and Anna and sloppily fell into formation beside them.
“If you die, it’s not my fault!” the matron called out at her arrival.
“I’m hard to kill!” Iris shouted back.
Ellie soon joined them, but kept her distance from the matron lest she draw her ire. Anna led the way towards the dungeon temple, which was nestled in the swamp and nearly obscured by overgrown trees as much of the ancient ruins were. As they descended towards the canopy, Anna and Ellie peeled away from the formation while Dala shot straight through the leaves towards the mass of mossy bricks hiding behind them. With only a split second to decide, Iris followed the matron.
There was little time to make sense of the structure as the balrog quickly came into view. It was standing on a platform about halfway up the pyramidal structure, ripping away bricks and tossing them aside as it sought to widen a tunnel-like entrance into the temple. Vines were reaching out from overhanging limbs and wrapping around its arms and shoulders to slow its progress, but snapped with mere tugs from the massive beast. One of its legs had turned to stone, causing it to step as if it had a peg leg, but that too failed to meaningfully slow it down.
Dala landed near to the beast and held out a hand full of flower petals she had pulled from a pocket. Over her outstretched palm, she clenched her other hand into a tight fist until blood began to drip from within and splash down onto the petals. One-by-one, each petal touched by blood rose into the air and drifted towards the balrog as if carried by the wind. When the petals touched the beast the hair beneath them began to smoke and burn. The flames crept outwards as the petals disintegrated, and soon a half dozen patches of fire were slowly expanding out across the balrog’s body.
Iris had landed on the opposite side of the balrog, and took advantage of its distraction as it turned to roar at the matron. She blipped inside the tunnel, where she found Relena and Grey with their backs against a stone wall that blocked the way only a few dozen feet into the tunnel. Both had their hands out stretched and appeared intently concentrated on the balrog at the opening of the tunnel, and Iris quickly pieced together that they were focused on the spells they were casting against it.
“Can I help?” she asked hurriedly.
“Out of the way!” Grey almost growled through her tightly clenched jaw.
“Okay,” Iris spun away from the witches on her heel, “guess I’ll go stab it, then.”