「We're in the air! We're off the ground!」

Cycelia shouts in panic with her emerald eyes wide open, staring outside the window.

「Yup.」

Straf calmly replies, and flips the landing gear lever up.

「We're going to hit a tree or something!」

She continues shouting, clutching onto her seat. Straf watches the instruments with his mouth aslant.

「…At this altitude it'd have to be the world tree, or some shit like that.」

He nonchalantly replies, and eases off the stick. The aircraft begins leveling off, and Straf pulls the throttle back slightly.

「Eh?… We're still going up?…」

Slowly getting over the initial panic, Cycelia realizes the plane is still ascending, contrary to what she expected.

「…Why are we not falling down?」

She asks, pointing her dainty finger at the side window by her seat.

「Lift, Lia… Would you want to?-」

Straf shrugs, then turns his mischievously grinning face to her.

「No!」

Cycelia shouts back again, feverishly shaking her chestnut head left and right.

「Alright… Well, statistically, the takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of flight, so I'd say we're in the clear for now….」

Straf glances down at the altitude needle, and eases off the stick some more, flying upward at a shallow angle.

「…The Concorde is actually kind of neat. It's old, but it has autopilot and stuff… Somewhere. I'd turn it on, but I don't feel like looking for it right now.」

He adds, as the white, dart-shaped aircraft pierces through the clouds into the sky above…

…

A few moments ago, in the capital, in the bell tower…

Lily's scarlet eyes snap open. She lets out a little yawn, covering her mouth with her hand like a proper lady, and stretches as she sits up.

A moment later, she hops off the bed and heads behind the dressing screen. She takes her folded dress off the chair waiting there, and throws her night gown onto the screen.

…Fffwwooooosshsmmmm…

「Hm?…」

Her head perks up when she hears an odd rumbling sound some distance away from the city, slightly reminiscent of a powerful waterfall at its ferocious drop.

Lily slips her dress on, and weaves her clawed hands through its sleeves. She secures the fashionable, if a little old-fashioned gothic lolita accessories tight, and moves to shove the chest of drawers out of the way of the hatch, but then her ears pick up another odd sound. This time rumbling, and coming from the sky.

…Fffffwooooooooooopppp… Fwwwwwooooooooopppfff…

「…That sound again… What is going on?」

Distracted, she turns away from the hatch and heads for a window. She opens it, and peeks outside to take a look. Her scarlet eyes scan the sky, and spot a white, cloud-like trail.

「…What is that thing?」

Lily furrows her brows and tilts her golden head at the sight of a strange white creature as it roars through the skies, before disappearing into the gray clouds…

…

At the same time, high in the sky…

Straf actuates the stick gently, causing the aircraft to roll slightly to the side. The Concorde escapes the densely packed clouds beneath its belly, and the land below becomes visible.

「Finally. Have a look outside the window, Lia.」

He grins, and rolls the aircraft the other way to let Cycelia have a good view of the ground. Straf orbits around the capital, circling in a large radius.

「Woooooooooooooow!… Is that the capital!?」

She exclaims while hugging the window and staring down at the shapes below with amazed eyes.

「I don't know what you're looking at, Lia, but if it's your palace, yeah. We're pretty high up. I could take this to a supersonic cruise, but then I'm not so sure we'd be able to make our way back.」

「Supersonic cruise?」

Cycelia asks, briefly glancing over her shoulder at Straf, then quickly returning her gaze back to the anthill-like settlements below.

「Have you ever heard someone shout while riding past you on horseback?」

Straf asks, while Cycelia looks at the Parnatau Gap. The mountains surrounding it appear almost as little pebbles on the ground.

「Uh… Yes, I have. Why?」

She nods, very briefly peeling her eyes away from the window.

「Ever wondered why people sound different when they are riding closer, and when they're speeding away?」

Straf asks, pulling back on the stick to dodge a gathering of clouds.

「It's because they're moving with the sound, right?」

Cycelia says, tilting her chestnut head as she looks at Straf.

「Yeah, but there's a little extra tidbit to that. The sound moves too, Lia. Shocking, right? You could probably guess, considering you don't need to mail order your words to everyone…」

Straf smirks, and glances at her, briefly taking his eyes off the instruments.

「…And the way it works is, sounds are a wave, Lia. Like at the sea. Most everything is a wave, in fact. And just like boats leave wakes, so does stuff that makes sound.」

He adds, and shrugs his shoulders.

「…So that's why I saw a flash, and then heard your invention do its thing back in Telas Kingdom! It took time to get to us, like a wave!」

「Not like a wave, Lia. They are waves, just in the air…」

Enlightened, her already broad smile widens. Straf quickly chimes in, correcting her.

「…And this thing makes sounds too, and believe me, it can make a lot of fucking noise when it goes supersonic.」

He adds, turning his grin to Cycelia. He then looks at the magnetic heading indicator, and turns west…

…

Around the same time, in Telas Kingdom…

…Ffffwwwwwwwooooooooopppffffff… Ffffwwwwwpffffffff…

An ominous, rumbling sound spreads in the skies above. The peasants briefly stop planting the hardy winter crops to look up.

「What is that!? A dragon!?」

One of the men exclaims, pointing at the winged shape high above as it leaves a trail behind itself.

「…Shouldn't we hide!? It sounds angry!」

Another man asks, furrowing his brows in worry.

「If you hide from the dragon before you're done with the work for today, you won't hide from me!」

A fat man in fancy robes peeks his head out of a nearby hut, and shakes his fist at the peasants. They let out fatigued sighs, and return to work…

…

At the same time, high in the sky above Telas Kingdom…

Straf pulls at the stick, slowly turning the nose north.

Vrrrumburrumburrum!…

The entire aircraft rumbles, shaking Cycelia. Her smile quickly returns back into a tight-lipped, nervous grimace as she clutches onto her seat. Her frightened emerald eyes turn to Straf.

「Reeelaaaaax… It's just turbulence… Remember how I told you most everything is a wave? It holds true for the air too. It's just like a sea, but you can't see it.」

With a lightly amused and confident smirk, Straf calms Cycelia, explaining the rumbling in a calm voice.

「…So it's like a boat rocking back and forth?」

She lets out a relieved sigh with her hand on her sizable chest, and asks.

「Exactly!… But the ocean in the air is kind of in patches, and it ranges from completely still, to absolutely fucking storming!…」

Straf raises his voice as another rumbling, this time lighter, shakes the entire aircraft once again. Knowing about turbulence, though nervous, Cycelia returns to watching the ground.

「…Though I should probably be gentler with the maneuvering. It's not exactly a fighter jet.」

He sucks air through his teeth, thinking out loud, and levels the wings as the Concorde speeds towards the high mountains of Parnatau Kingdom. Watching the mountain tops and the dry land of Parnatau Kingdom wind beneath the aircraft, Cycelia feels a certain sense of awe, still in mild shock after taking off as she blinks her emerald eyes out the window.

「…Didn't the way back and forth between Parnatau Kingdom take you roughly four days? We left the capital just a few moments ago!」

She exclaims as she continues staring through the window, leaning onto it with her dainty hands, practically smushing her face on it as she tries to see more and more.

「Yeah. Aircraft are pretty overpowered… In general, flying mounts are great, until you realize they kind of ruin everything by making combat optional…」

「Huh?」

Straf nods along in agreement, grinning slightly. Confused, Cycelia looks at him, and tilts her head.

「…Luckily, with aircraft, people have figured out how to make combat mandatory!… Remember the Great War, Lia?」

He asks, turning his grin to her.

「…The one with the trenches?」

Cycelia replies with a voice lacking confidence.

Snap!

「Yup! And gas!… And flamethrowers!… And tanks!… And aircraft!…」

Straf snaps his fingers, and points at Cycelia with a wide grin as he lists off the implements of destruction.

「…Anyway, the early planes were made of wood and canvas… Yup, same canvas as paintings! They were unarmed at first, and mostly used to gather intelligence…」

He continues, explaining while Cycelia listens and glances outside the windows. He takes a gentle south-eastern turn over the mountains.

「…But then as more countries invented their own aircraft, they didn't like the fact that the pilots could just observe them with impunity!」

Straf shrugs his hands, spreading them with a light smirk.

「Pilots, Straf?…」

Cycelia furrows her brows in mild confusion at a new word.

「Sky captains, Lia… Anyway, someone has a genius thought… What if we put a machine gun on a plane?」

He quickly adds another word to Cycelia's already convoluted glossary, and she nods along as he continues speaking.

「Machine gun?…」

The very next moment, Cycelia hears another unfamiliar word that causes her brows to furrow.

「It's a… Remember my magic gun, Lia? Imagine a thing like that, except loud, and it spits out small pebble-sized bits of metal both very fast and at a high rate…」

Snap.

Straf glances up at the cockpit's ceiling switches as he thinks, then snaps his fingers and points at her, explaining the concept of a machine gun to Cycelia. She nods, struggling to imagine it.

「…Anyway, they didn't work at first. Or rather… They worked, but shredded the propellers. And before you ask, a propeller is like…」

Cycelia briefly opens her mouth, but Straf begins explaining faster than she can ask, rubbing his chin pensively.

「…Imagine a windmill. Early planes were much smaller, kind of like a little carriage. They had this spinning windmill at the front, which sent it flying. Got it?」

Straf asks, leaning slightly towards her seat. Lowering her head and thumbing at her soft lips, Cycelia pictures a carriage-sized Concorde, with a windmill on its nose spinning leisurely.

A mental picture of a group of people pushing the Concorde with an oversized windmill off a cliff forms in her head. After plummeting, it flies up, defying gravity.

「…How did they get it off the ground like that?」

She asks, tilting her head and inquisitively holding her hand out, deeply perplexed.

「Well… They were really slow and couldn't fly that high. The propeller had to spin really quick, and they placed the machine gun right behind it… See the problem yet?」

Straf asks, and Cycelia furrows her brows for a second. Her head perks up, and she extends her index finger out.

「…How did they keep the metal pebbles from hitting it!?」

「They didn't.」

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Straf bluntly replies to Cycelia's question.

「…Huh!? Then why didn't it destroy the windmill?」

「They did.」

「Huh!? Don't you need that to fly!?」

Utterly confused, Cycelia furrows her brows and looks down at her lap, struggling to parse Straf's statement.

「…They eventually figured it out, but that's not even the wackiest part of the Great War, Lia…」

Straf adds with a tight-lipped grimace while the two look at each other.

「…Want to fly over the Eastern Kingdoms while I tell you about how one of the sides told their soldiers to leisurely walk into machine gun fire?」

He asks, and points his hands at the flight stick between Cycelia's legs.

「Eh? But I don't know how to!」

Her emerald eyes widen in shock, and she refuses to even as much as let her dainty hands go near the stick.

「It's easy, Lia. Flying is actually the easiest part. It's the landing and takeoff that's relatively hard to pull off without turning into a fireball. Give it a go, it's fun.」

He replies, encouraging Cycelia with a shrug of his arm towards her stick. She reluctantly grips onto it, mimicking Straf's previous grasp upon his.

「It's kind of like reins, but if you push, the nose goes down and you dive. If you pull, the nose goes up and you climb… Provided you have enough thrust. Don't worry about it for now…」

Straf adds, and takes his hands off his stick completely, watching Cycelia simply hold the stick as the aircraft starts rolling to the side.

「…Go on and level it out, but be gentle. It doesn't take a whole lot of movement to completely disintegrate the whole plane.」

「Eh!?」

Cycelia's head perks up in a wide-eyed shock, and with a tight-lipped grimace, she very weakly pushes the stick to the side to counter the roll.

When she notices it has next to no effect, she pushes a little harder. The wings begin to level out.

「Ah!… We're flying straight now, aren't we!?」

She asks, and her nervousness dissipates as a large smile appears on her rosy face.

「Yup. Turn right juuuuust a little bit, and we should be on the right heading… Actually, you can go ahead and play around a little. Just don't be too rough on the controls.」

Straf nods, crossing his arms. After a second, he changes his mind and shrugs his shoulders, permitting Cycelia to go wild.

「Really!? Then…」

She beams a happy smile at his nonchalant, somewhat bored face, then looks at the controls.

「…Weeee!…」

Cycelia makes a little, gleeful quiet noise as she rolls the aircraft to the side.

「…Woooo!…」

She does the same in the other direction, zigzagging the aircraft through the air.

「…Whoooooosh!-」

VRRUMBRUMMBRRUM!…

The aircraft shakes, and her frightened emerald eyes snap to Straf.

「Relax. I told you, patches of storm…」

「Right…」

Straf returns a shrug, and Cycelia nods, returning her lightly nervous face back to the front window. She looks out the window, and finds that they're flying past the capital.

FWOSHBRUMBRUMBRRUMMMM!…

The aircraft shakes again, and the instruments flicker briefly. Cycelia's terrified face snaps right back to Straf.

「…You can't see 'em, Lia.」

Straf remarks, and casually shrugs his shoulders again. She notices the nose is tilting up, so she pushes at the stick.

「Um. Straf…」

「Yeah?… Level out the nose a little, Lia.」

Straf says as he looks out the side of his window towards the snow-blanketed land in the distance.

「…It's not working.」

She replies, and Straf looks at her nervous, tight-lipped grimace. Cycelia has the stick pushed all the way forward to the panel ahead.

「Uhhh…」

Straf raises his brow at the state of affairs, and realizes the aircraft is remarkably quiet.

「Stall! Stall! Stall! Stall! Stall!…」

That is, until a computerized voice begins shouting warnings in the cockpit. Cycelia jumps up and lets go of the stick. It springs back, and the plane doesn't react.

「Uhhh… I'm not touching the stick. Go ahead and give it another try, Lia.」

Straf spreads his legs and leans back, ensuring that he is making absolutely no contact with the stick, and that it is in its neutral zone.

「…Stall! Stall! Stall! Stall! Stall!-」

Cycelia pushes on the stick again, the nose begins to pitch forward, and the computerized voice goes silent. Cycelia lets out a relieved sigh.

「…See? Flying isn't that hard-」

An amused huff escapes Straf's nose as he smirks with his arms confidently crossed, fully in control.

「Overspeed! Overspeed!… Overspeed! Overspeed!… Overspeed! Overspeed!…」

The computerized voice begins shouting again. Straf glances at the airspeed gauge, which is whirling clockwise.

「Uh. You pushed a little too hard, Lia. Pull back-」

He looks at Cycelia, who appears rather nervous with the stick pulled back as far as it can go. Straf looks at the attitude indicator, and finds it only dipping further downward.

「Uhhhhhh… One second…」

Straf extends his index finger, and heads for the cockpit door. He swings it open.

FWOOPFWFFFWOOPFWOPFWOOOMFWOOPFWOOPFWOOP!…

Bits of wiring, torn and twisted metal, as well as seats barely hanging onto the airframe all flap wildly in the wind, as everything beyond the second row of seats is simply missing, apparently torn away from the cockpit and the rest of the aircraft. Straf rubs his chin, and glances over his shoulder at Cycelia.

「…Is this one of the natural laws of this world, like gravity?…」

He thinks out loud, still rubbing his chin while looking at her girly hands pulling on the dead stick.

「…Tsk… She didn't remind me about the ticket… Okay, Lia! On the bright side, we won't have to attempt landing! I don't think they made the airstrip long enough anyway!」

Straf declares with a shrug of his shoulders as he moves out of the way of the open, howling door.

「Did you figure out what happened!?」

Cycelia asks, unaware that you need control surfaces to control an aircraft.

「No, but I know why we're plummeting!… Hop out, Lia!」

He shouts over the noise of the door, nodding his head at it.

「Huh!? What do you mean hop out!?…」

Cycelia asks, climbing the nearly vertical floor up to Straf. Her head recoils back when she sees the state of the passenger compartment.

「Hop out where!? Half the thing is gone!」

「I noticed!… Just out, Lia! Trust me!… Remember what I said about lift!?…」

Straf asks, and glances at the front window. The aircraft plunges through the cloud cover, and the ground below becomes visible again. With a terrified face, she nods her chestnut head.

「…We have all the mass, and none the lift! You can't trick gravity! Just hop out! I'll be right behind you!」

He adds, and gestures his head towards the door again. Cycelia winces, and climbs out through the threshold. She then covers her face with her hands, and jumps past the last row of seats.

「Bet it was fucking debris on the landing strip again…」

Shaking his head, Straf jumps out.

「Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!…」

Cycelia shouts with her face in her hands while plummeting downwards in a freefall. Concerned by how long she is falling, she peeks through her pale fingers and looks at the ground.

「…Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! Why did I do that!?! Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!」

Cycelia screams into her hands, forcing her tear-filled emerald eyes shut.

Ffffffwap!

Without a warning, she feels a sudden shock of deacceleration, though she also can feel she is still falling. She finds enough bravery to peek through her fingers again.

「Straf!…」

She notices Straf holding her in his arms, falling with his back towards the ground while looking over his shoulder. He turns his gaze and nonchalant, bored face to her.

「…Straf! Help! I hate planes! I hate planes, I hate planes, I hate planes, I hate planes!… I want to be back home!」

Cycelia wraps her arms around Straf like a vice, and shoves her milk-white face into his chest. Straf sucks air through his teeth again, grinning awkwardly down at her chestnut head.

「…Weeeell, Lia… I've got bad news for you if you think this is the last you'll see of aircraft…」

He replies, then turns his gaze back to the ground. Cycelia shivers slightly from the altitude cold, and the rapid wind licking her at her sides.

《We're not really in any danger here… Unless Nona is right there, somewhere on the ground…》

Straf thinks with a calm, nonchalant face while Cycelia continues screaming in panic into his chest.

《…That's actually a scary thought. I don't want my last words to be「You're fired!」or worse, incoherent screaming for the sake of a video game reference…》

He lets out a fatigued sigh, and gently pats Cycelia's head while she's screaming it off.

《…Still, what the fuck broke the plane apart? It's not like Lia did any crazy maneuvers. Surely something must have happened-》

《Cycelia Redwing and her servant!?….》

Deathwind's booming voice in Straf's head interrupts his thoughts. Straf instantly gains a frustrated, tight-lipped grimace on his face.

「Eh!? Deathwind!?」

Cycelia stops screaming, and her head perks up. She looks around, searching for the black dragon.

「…That explains it. Concorde just can't catch a break.」

Straf rolls his eyes, grumbling to himself. A black giant shape pierces through the cloud cover above and dives for them.

FFFFFFFFFFWOOOOOOOOOPfffffffffff!…

Deathwind deftly places his back right beside Straf and Cycelia, then slips underneath them as he slowly begins to level off his flight path. Straf lands right on top of his scales with his back.

「Eh?」

Cycelia blinks her enormous emerald eyes, and realizes that the two are no longer plummeting. She lets out a massive sigh of relief, and hugs into Deathwind's back.

「Ahhhhhhhhh! We're saved!…」

She exclaims with an exhausted smile on her face.

「Nooo?… We weren't in danger to begin with.」

Disgruntled, Straf spreads his arms.

《My apologies for this mistake, Redwing's kin!… I had taken your flying contraption for a strange white dragon, and its noise for roars challenging me!…》

Deathwind explains himself as he takes a gentle turn, gliding downwards.

「Did you really have to break the only Concorde in the world, you asshole!? What did that plane do to you all!? Are you a part of the aerospace mafia too!?…」

Indignant, Straf shouts at the dragon, spreading his arms with his mouth aslant in heavy frustration…