Chapter 15: The Fall

If I let go of this trint's leg it'd mean a fall to certain death. I held on as hard as I could, my chest hugging the trint's leg as I watched my feet flapped in the wind. The trees looked so small, like little twigs. In the distance, I could see a small field amid the trees which had to be where we had just been. It was already so far and only getting further away. I looked to where we were headed and saw the trees disappear to form a large, crooked crack in the ground. It appeared to be a ravine.

A sudden wave of heat hit us and I held on tight as we were lifted further into the air. I had never had a fear of heights, but as the ground beneath me continued to just get further away from the ground, I got the keen knowledge that at any moment I could’ve fallen and there’d be nothing I could do to save myself. The thought made my bladder want to let go.

Somehow, I managed to keep all of my liquids in my body and forced my eyes from the ground to the situation I was now in. I wasn’t falling. I was on this trint, held in the air by a magical bird. A ridiculous situation, but at least I was alive. But I wouldn’t be for long if I did nothing.

“What are we going to do?” Finn called to me.

I pulled my body further up the trint's leg, the animal crying in pain as I did. I quickly lifted one hand and grabbed onto its fatty thigh.

“You're going up?” Finn asked.

“There's no way down,” I pulled further up and managed to grab a tuft of fur on the trint's side. I twisted into it and the animal kicked but was unable to get away from my grasp. “So we'll head up!”

Finn shook his head, “This is crazy!” But even if it was, he began to pull himself upward too.

I strained to get higher. This time, I grabbed a hold of a tuft of fur on its back. With one more pull, I wrapped my arm over its back and lifted myself onto the creature's back. I straddled it like a horse. As I did, the wind became astounding as it ripped past me. I opened my mouth and felt the air get jam itself into my throat. It was a strange feeling not being able to breathe due to there being too much air. It took a moment to get used to the wind as it whistled through my ear, the trint’s cries intermixed with it, but eventually, I was able to begin breathing normally again.

In front of me, I could clearly see the bird as it held onto the back of the trint’s neck. Its wings flapped lazily but with each motion, we were sent ever further through the air. I could’ve easily reached out and touched the animal, yet, if I tried to kill it then we’d fall to the ground. It seemed at the moment that I and the animal were at a stalemate.

I looked behind me. Even though Finn’s specialty was not strength, he had managed not to fall off the trint. He held onto the side of the animal and was trying to pull himself onto the back of it. He pulled his leg up with all of his strength. A vein revealed itself in his forehead as he struggled and I felt sure that his arms were about to give out. Somehow, he managed to get his foot over the trint’s back. He heaved himself up with one last pull and then he was on.

He gave me a large smile, “I made it!” He looked to the sky, “Holy Gahen, I made it!”

What the hell does gahen mean and why does everyone here say it?

“We haven’t made it yet!” I shouted and turned back toward the bird. I couldn’t come up with any good solutions other than to force it to land or to wait until it landed at its nest. If we made it to its nest, I didn’t feel too hopeful about our survival.

But how would we make the bird let us down? I decided to throw caution to the wind for how I’d do that. The other options seemed riskier, this was our best bet. I ended my and the bird’s stalemate and grabbed onto the bird’s sides. I dug my hands in.

The bird's face turned toward me and let out a loud screech that made my ears ring.

I roared back at it, “Put us down!”

“What in Gahen are you doing?” Finn yelled.

“Getting us down!” I dug my fingers further into the bird’s skin and felt its bones scrape against my fingers. I pulled down on the bird’s right side. Its whole body slowly turned that way. The force of the wind became a tornado and the bird began to caw madly in pain as it tried to puzzle out how me and Finn had gotten here. Even so, it didn’t stop flying and it didn’t let go of the trint. Instead, it begrudgingly allowed me to control it. We were going in a tight circle now, but even so, we weren't going down.

“Come on, go to the ground!” I tried to tilt the bird forward but when I did that the wind started to get even worse and the bird’s wings suddenly went down. We fell quickly and I felt my legs begin to lift away from the fur of the trint. I let go of the bird and dug my hands into the trint, clinging for dear life. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to prepare myself for when the bird would inevitably let go of the trint and we’d fall to our doom.

Yet, the wind began to become more even and when I opened my eyes again the bird was still holding onto the trint and had control again.

“Great job, dumbass!” Finn called. He was back to clinging onto the side of the trint.

“What, do you have a better idea?” I retorted.

“Yeah!”

Just then, his arm flicked out and an object blurred past me. Crimson oozed out of a new, small cut on the bird’s leg. The blood pooled out of the wound before the wind took hold of it and it flew off of its leg into the air where it’d land on whatever sorry creature was below.

The bird let out an angered caw and one of its claws let go of the trint. The claw went toward me and I leaned out of the way just in time. I reached out and grabbed a hold of the leg. The claw continually opened and closed to no effect.

I looked behind me and stared at Finn, feeling anger boil within me. What I had done was crazy but at least I hadn’t drawn blood. Didn’t he understand that if this bird dropped us we’d be dead? “That was your idea of a better plan?”

He ignored my question and stayed on the side of the trint. Carefully, he began to climb sideways across the trint to my side. By some miracle, he made it and grabbed a hold of the trint’s back just ahead of me, right next to the bird’s leg. He pulled out another dagger from his belt. “Keep holding on to that leg!”

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I did as asked. Clearly, he didn’t understand how gravity worked. Finn pulled himself up just enough to grab onto the leg I was holding onto with his empty hand. With his dagger-equipped hand, he jabbed the dagger into the bird’s side and at that moment this plan went from terrible to completely insane.

But I never got to tell him how I felt about this plan because the bird then let out a cry so loud I felt the world shake. At that same moment, I felt myself begin to be lifted and the texture of the bird's leg became almost scale-like and thicker. I stretched my legs out for purchase and my toes barely touched the trint’s back.

No, my mind had to be playing tricks on me. I stared at the leg. My mind was playing no trick. The leg had been only a twig's thickness just moments ago but now it was as big as a baby tree.

Finn asked the question in my mind, “What’s going on?”

I looked up at the bird.

I looked up.

The bird was taller, much taller. And much, much bigger. The bird shook slightly and as it did, the ashen brown color of its feathers literally flaked off and revealed shiny, gold and blue colored feathers underneath.

Finn had his arm stretched out, reaching for something above him, his feet barely on the edge of the trint’s back. I saw what he was reaching for, it was the dagger which was still on the bird’s side but now five feet away from where it initially was.

“Great, now we're on a massive bird!” I yelled. “What are we going to do now?”

“Shut up, I’m still figuring that part out!”

I made the mistake of looking down toward the ground. We were closer to the forest now, too close in fact. The tops of the trees were soaring past us just twenty or so feet below. I tried to see where this magic, shapeshifting bird thing was going and could see where there were no trees in the distance. That had to be where the ravine was that I had seen when we were higher in the sky. I knew what that meant.

“We're almost to its nest!” I called out as I began to climb up the tree trunk of a leg.

“How do you know?”

“It lives in the ravine, I'm pretty sure!”

“Pretty sure? Oh, whatever,” Finn heaved himself up the same leg. He and I managed to wrap ourselves around the leg. Finn began to shimmy his way up toward the bird’s stomach. It seemed the bird decided not to pay him any mind. “Follow me!”

I pulled myself onto the leg and at the same moment, the bird decided to take action. I held on as tight as I could as the leg swung forward and dangled just in front of the trint. If I fell I’d surely smash into one of the forest trees below. I couldn’t allow that and it seemed Finn couldn’t either. He had one arm wrapped around the bird’s leg and began to repeatedly stab the massive bird in its stomach.

It didn’t do much but at least it was something. We both knew we had to make this bird land as quickly as possible because with what we (or really, Finn) had done, the bird was not going to be happy when it made it to its nest. I struggled my way up the leg next to Finn – which I knew I’d never have been able to do so as quickly if it weren’t for my new Adventurer’s strength.

I pulled my sword out of its sheath. The wind immediately caught it and I nearly lost the blade to the powers of physics. Luckily, I held firmly to the hilt of the blade and aimed it at the bird’s stomach. It wasn’t a large target, but with the wind and my ineptitude at close-combat, I would’ve been satisfied if I even grazed the creature.

I was ecstatic, then, when I stabbed right into the flesh of the creature, my blade easily slid into the bird's stomach up to the hilt. Blood began to bubble out of the wound and leaked onto my blade. The bird let out a shrieking caw that shook my soul but I paid it no mind.

Without giving the beast a chance to bleed, I continued my assault by sawing my embedded blade through its stomach as if it were a steak. The trickle of blood became a fountain and I was blinded as it squirted into my eyes.

I heard Finn’s voice scream into my ear, “Shit, jump!”

I gripped my sword in both hands, shoving off the bird's leg with my feet. The world seemed to slow down as all I felt around me was air. I was falling and there was nothing I could do. I couldn't even see where I was through the blood in my eyes. It was just dark red.

It would be the last thing I saw.

My back slammed into the hard ground and I felt the wind leave my lungs. I let go of the sword as I began to roll across the ground over and over again, my momentum forcing me along. Finally, I came to a stop. My head was spinning and when I wiped my eyes with a stinging arm, I found the world was spinning too. I could feel the scrapes on my arms and legs already beginning to heal beneath all of the blood that covered them that, mostly, wasn’t mine. I didn’t have time to wipe the blood away as the massive bird was in front of me. Its back was in a tree that was splintered and leaning over it.

The bird pushed itself upright, its legs hitting the ground with a thud. It wobbled, then steadied. It shook its head and looked around with dazed eyes until it locked onto me. It gave me a deadly stare and took a slow step toward me. It was beginning to slow but the blood was still leaking from its wound in its stomach and it left a trail on the ground.

The bird's neck recoiled slightly before it shot out as it opened its beak wide, letting out a tremendous caw that rumbled my entire body. I put my arm up as spittle flew from its mouth onto me and wished I was on my feet so I could run away. But I wasn’t, I had to just endure it. Eventually, it ran out of air and stopped. The world felt so silent as it did so.

It didn’t move, just continued to stare at me.

I saw my sword lying just a few feet from me. I crawled on my knees to it and picked it up. I staggered to my feet and shakily pointed the sword at the creature.

“Come at me,” I whispered to the bird.

It huffed but didn't move. At any moment it could've struck and there would’ve been nothing I could've done. But even so, I stood my ground, ready for it to take my life.

There was a loud, whining cry to my side. I allowed a glance toward it and saw the trint. It was still alive, though barely. Its legs were broken and its body lay a bloody mess. It looked at me as if pleading for me to end its life.

I felt my heart sag for the creature. It hadn't done anything wrong, it had only been passive the whole time. Yet, that was how the world worked, it was cruel. I knew that very well. And its cruelty would continue as the bird lunged toward me. I cringed, knowing it was coming at me.

But it didn’t, it went toward the trint. It grabbed the animal in its large talons and took off in a shaky flight. I watched as the beast flew behind me and its giant form began to transform back to its smaller state. It shot down into the ravine that I realized then was maybe ten feet away from me.

“Holy shit,” I heard a voice say behind me.

I turned around quickly, my sword pointed at the voice. It was Finn, who unthoughtfully flipped a dagger as he leaned against a tree. “I thought you were a goner for sure.”

“Where the hell were you?”

I noticed then he had scrapes on his pants but they weren't as bad as my ripped mess of clothing.

“Oh, I hid. There was no way I was getting in front of that thing.”

I sighed and sheathed my sword. I wanted to be mad at him for hiding but I couldn't. If I was quick like him, I would've hid too. Instead, I let out a soft laugh. “We...we were in the sky. We flew!” More laughter came, and suddenly, I felt giggly.

Finn began to laugh too as he walked over to me. “Yeah, I guess we did fly.”

“First a necromancer, now this? I feel like we can take on anything!”

“We’re gonna have quite a story to tell the whores, that’s for sure.”

“We didn't just fly though, we're gonna tell everyone we killed the shit out of that thing.”

“That's the spirit of a true Adventurer right there!”

We stood there, laughing at how close we were to our demise. A mere ten more feet and I would’ve fallen into the ravine. Yet, here I was. I could feel my pulse pounding in my head, the adrenaline in overdrive as it coursed through my veins. I was alive.

“Alright,” Finn said his usual sly smile. “Let's go meet up with our group.”

I nodded, barely registering what he had said. Something clicked at that moment, an understanding of what an Adventurer's life truly meant.