11 – Boots of Jumping Don’t Come With A Manual
The second thaum wasn’t as difficult as I had thought it would be. I hadn’t even needed to add that extra something to the process, which confused me. Why did one need it and not the other? Thoughts for another time, though.
Now I had to fuse connected muscles, fiercely taught, violently sprung with impact diminished, force expunged – my attempt to reduce the strain of enhanced muscles and lessen the impact from falling from great heights.
I readied myself to begin the process of fusing the thaums together, but stopped myself. Would I need to add that extra something to the process this time? If I did, I should have it prepared beforehand. The issue was, I had no idea what I needed. I could agonize over this lack of information, or I could just go for it and hope for the best.
I chose the latter.
Just as before, I felt that absence of something critical, a missing piece, a binding agent. What was it that bound these concepts together? Was it the same memory that I used earlier? Or something else?
I was running out of time, the pieces were vibrating, rejecting each other, destroying each other. I needed to act now.
With a thought, I coated my mental hammer with a collage of memories. Recent moments of strength and endurance; punching Dimitri, sailing through the violent storm surrounding the Anomaly, fending off skychasers and their powerful yet compact frame.
I held my breath and struck.
Not daring to move a muscle, I waited for the fusion to settle. A few moments later, I could tell, at the very least, I didn’t fail completely.
I opened my eyes and saw a sight that made me laugh in relief. A whole, complete thaum. No cracks, no (extra) abnormalities. Success.
With a steady, practice hand, I took my humming knife and sliced the thaum perfectly in half, creating two lesser, identical wholes. Then, I did it again, ending up with four identical but lesser wholes.
Giddy with excitement, I swiftly infused my boots and carefully hopped out of the boat, not yet activating their thaumatic property.
“Kornos,” I called out to him, unable to mask the anticipation in my voice. He sat up from where he was laying in the shade of the ship, looking at me with a knowing gleam in his eyes. I nodded, and after making sure he was watching, I activated the infusion.
Strength roared through my legs. It was like they were on fire, pumped with massive amounts of adrenaline. I felt like I could break a tree in half with a single kick. I’d probably break something, since that wasn’t what I intended for the boots, but it sure would look awesome.
Instead, I squatted, my muscles contracting so taught I swore I heard creaking, though there was no pain, which was a very reassuring sign. With a nervous breath, I jumped.
***
Vincent disappeared. That was the only way I could describe it. A cloud of sand erupted from where he had been just an eyeblink ago. I looked up and saw his figure at least two hundred feet in the air, maybe more. He was laughing, which made me smile. I couldn’t wait to try that out!
Then, for a moment, I thought everything would go wrong. He reached the apex of his ascent, then started flailing as he fell. He spun, and I realized he wouldn’t land on his feet.
Thank the Leviathans, because he was able to right himself with only a second or two to spare. He slammed into the beach like a cannonball, sending up an even larger cloud of sand than when he launched himself. I coughed as I ran through the cloud, trying to reach Vincent to check on him. Even if he was intact, his had to have been more shaken up than a man trapped in a barrel in stormy seas.
“Vincent!” I managed to shout between coughing fits. “Are you alright!?”
I reached the epicenter of the blast zone and found Vincent on hands and knees, heaving and coughing. I lifted him up and helped him out of the sand cloud.
I helped him sit down against the boat in the shade, offering him a canteen of water, which he eagerly accepted. I let him take time to recover while I examined his state. He looked fine, thankfully; no broken bones or anything where it shouldn’t be, which was a relief. Still, his hands shook as he held the canteen. But when I saw his face, I couldn’t help but break out in roaring laughter.
He had the same kind of stupid grin on his face that one would have after a fun night with a lass!
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Vincent joined in after a few moments, and we laughed and laughed until our eyes were wet and our stomachs cramped.
***
“Oh Leviathans, that was a rush,” I finally said after regaining control of myself. And it was a rush. The sheer power I held in the moments before I leapt, the weightlessness at the apex of my ascent, the moment of wonder as I saw the world – this small slice of it, at least – from a new perspective of my own making, and then the not so fun feeling of realizing you were one mistake away from death.
Yeah, I would have to practice this before I tried island hopping. Especially the flipping part.
In the meantime, I went ahead and infused Kornos’s boots and he stepped away and did much the same as me, though with far more grace and showmanship. He even struck a pose and landed with much more poise than I had! The nerve!
Some people were just built different. Then again, he was the son of a god, so I supposed it wasn’t that unreasonable that he might just be more physically adept that the average person. Also, I couldn’t have been described as the most active of kids in the colony, not by a long shot.
Anyways.
We spent the last few hours of daylight practicing our jumps, more specifically, Kornos suggest we take turns diving from the stern of the Whizzing Arrow, without using the boots, practicing our coordination and precision with reorienting our bodies midair. Basically, we practicing jumping off the boat and doing a flip.
The night passed without incident, we made sure to get plenty of rest for the next day, as we would be putting our practice to the test, going island hopping for real.
I was both terrified and excited beyond belief. Never would I have imagined that I would be in a situation like this. At most, I thought I would be practically escorted through Anomalies, taking as few risks as possible, using the safest methods and tools available to traverse treacherous terrain, not flying through the air by the skin of my teeth, praying to any Leviathan that would listen to help me not splatter myself against a chunk of hovering rock.
***
Kornos shot off like a bullet, easily clearing the island’s gravity field. He passed through the zone of normal gravity – the gap between that no island’s altered gravity reached – and reached the next island’s field just as his speed began to noticeably flag. He flung out his arms and legs and used them to align his descent so that he fell directly downwards rather than at an angle. That only took about a second. Then, he reoriented himself so that he would land feet-first.
My breath hitched, my whole body tense with worry. But I did not look away.
Kornos hit the ground, and without a cloud of debris to obscure his landing, I could tell that my friend had stuck the landing, uninjured. Then he turned around and shot me a thumbs up. I smiled and shook my head at that.
“Alright, Vincent,” I muttered to myself, “you got this.”
Double-checking everything; angle, positioning, making sure the straps on my boots were tied correctly, and so on, I was ready to fly.
***
I watched as Vincent leapt with superhuman strength, launching himself towards the island. Immediately, I knew he would be just fine. His movements were calm and practiced, and while not flawless or particularly graceful, they worked just fine, which was all that was needed.
In time – a few days, hopefully – we would both be so adept at the action that we could fling ourselves between vast distances without fear, greatly increasing the pace of our exploration.
Vincent landed a few feet from me. His boots absorbed the impact and redistributed it, most of the force redirected into the ground, the rest used to cushion his body from the sudden stop.
“Excellent landing, Vin,” I praised him.
Vincent’s training paid off, as he hardly looked shaken from the effort. The adrenaline coursing through him still had an effect; flying hundreds of feet through the air and sticking a landing that should have killed anyone else normally would do that to a fella.
Vin thanked me and then remarked, “Say… I didn’t see you do any of your usual flashy moves this time.” He raised a brow and looked expectantly at me.
“Um…” I trailed off. Oh boy, I thought to myself, my ears starting to heat up.
Vincent’s expression morphed into a predatory grin as he sensed weakness. “Were you… scared?” he prodded me.
“Nope,” I hastily replied. Damn it.
He laughed.
***
I can’t believe Kornos can even get scared! I thought to myself. He seems so… well, fearless. What about it got him so worked up though? The height? The fact that messing up would mean certain death? Whatever it was, I probably shouldn’t have teased him.
We ended up exploring the island in peace, though we found a colony of bizarre insects. They were like ants, but had octopus-like tentacles for legs, and their pincers were metallic. Oh, and they were about as big as my thumb.
Actually, they were pretty horrifying. And extremely aggressive, as all Anomalous life is. We ended up stomping them with carefully controlled uses of the boots, though that tired us out extremely quickly.
“Shit, I think I pushed myself too hard,” I told Kornos. “My legs are already sore; they feel like they’ve been massaged with cannonballs. And then bashed with a hammer.”
“We should rest early. And you can take the healing earring, I’m not even feeling the burn yet.”
“You sure?” I assumed Kornos was in a better state than me, considering his physical aptitude, but I didn’t want to hamper the best fighter here.
Kornos nodded, and so I accepted the earring, pinning it in place. In less than a minute, I could already feel the soothing effects it had on my sore muscles. I almost groaned in relief.
I napped at the base of a tree; the island oriented away from the sun cast the surroundings in shadow. A pleasant breeze lulled me to sleep.
***
While Vincent slept, I had the displeasure of sifting through a pile of creepy bug corpses. I had to touch them, Leviathans dammit. Ants should not have slimy tentacles! Luckily Vincent wasn’t able to hear me gag as my fingers brushed up against yet another disgusting monstrosity. It didn’t help that the mandibles were razor sharp – I cut myself on them more times than I could count, but my constitution let small wounds like those heal incredibly quickly.
The disgusting task was – somewhat reassuringly – worth it, as I found a plethora of thaums in the ants’ limbs and metallic bits. What they were, I couldn’t tell, I had no aptitude for thaumaturgy, only enough to sense the presence of a thaum on contact. Also, it was a safe bet that any strange bits and bobs on a monster would probably have a thaum in them.
“I swear, if he ever makes me stick my hands in another nest of bugs, I’m going to strangle him,” I cursed under my breath with a sardonic grin.