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“Hmm. I figure we’re looking at between fifteen to twenty five tons in total, but there’s definitely some rock on there that’s not ore.”

I winced. If we only got a ton of chalcopyrite out of this, at roughly three hundred pounds of sulfur, iron, and copper, it was still a massive financial windfall for a skyhold like ours. We had to get it home. And there was almost certainly a lot more than a single ton. This was a fortune. But even on the lighter end, fifteen tons was more than Granarrik could carry, even if I used might spells on him. Conrin knew this.

He mused quietly to himself while we climbed back out of the mouth of the beast, and I once again used a scour spell to clean us off. Our leather jackets and gloves took some damage, and we had some acid burns, but neither of us cared. This was bigger than some leatherwork.

I took the time to look at the sky, climbing around to look in all directions. Other than the rainclouds, which were still billowing ominously, and had added some internal flashes of lightning, we were still alone in the sky, which is just how I like it. The island was slightly closer, but we were still a good ways away.

“One possibility is towing it back to that island,” he said, indicating the one we had just come from, which was nicely down wind, “and getting a ship to pick it up. But that will cost us hugely. No, we don’t have to hire a ship. We can mine it in loads Granarrik can take, and get it home that way.”

“That would work,” I agreed. “I still have a casting of might ready. It’d be slow, and if we miss we’re in trouble, but we can definitely do that. We can cut it out and chip off the rock.”

Conrin hesitated, looking back at the island, then shook his head. “I don’t think we have the time, Saras. It’ll take hours, and as slow as we are, we’ll be long past the island that way.”

I looked at the island again. It wasn’t very far away by the standards of the sky, I mean, we could see it. But we were moving pretty slowly. I think we could do it, but I don’t rate our chances good enough to actually argue with Conrin. I shrugged and nodded.

“Get Granarrik hooked up. I’m going to try to furl the wings so they don’t drag as much.”

We had ropes. We had hooks. We had simple pulley blocks. It’s not hard to rig up a straight tow-line, but it’s better to set up a loop of rope with a pulley on it on both Gran and the gnathotis. That way, Gran can fly without weird twisting forces throwing him off. The pulleys slide around the loops of rope so that even if, say, the big corpse twists a bit in the wind, the tow is always pulling from the balance point. Gran’s saddle has anchor points on it on each side of his center of lift, though it’s more guesswork with the monster body.

Meanwhile, Conrin, using gaffs and hooks and more rope, got the wings more or less pulled in as close as possible. Unlike birds, who furl their wings when not in use, gnathotis and some of the other natives of Air aren’t meant to pull in their wings very much, so it’s not exactly an elegant solution.

Still, every bit helps. It’s not long before Granarrik is hooked up and we’re back in the saddle.

I held off on empowering him with might. We needed to see how he did without it first.

Birds, in general, aren’t meant to fly without gravity, and that’s especially true with a soaring bird like Granarrik. There’s no real gliding without using the energy of falling to impart forward motion. So in the sky, if you’re not flapping, you’re just drifting on the wind.

However, my big boy isn’t just a regular bird. Regular members of his species don’t get sixty foot wingspans, no matter how long they live. To attain sizes like that, you need magic.

My mother is a magecrafter, I’ve mentioned. An expert in alchemy, enchantment, and transmutation. She lead the team that developed the most common livestock animal we use, the giant edible dormouse. Edible dormice, who weren’t bigger than any other mouse, were a food animal usually considered a delicacy before the Breaking. Their main advantage is, after they’re fed and fattened up, they can easily be convinced to go into a dormant hibernation like state, hence the name ‘dor’ mouse.

Now, the giant doormouse is considered full grown at about forty pounds, eating scraps and poor quality fodder that even goats or pigs would have trouble with. And when dormant, they don’t need to be continuously fed.

Making a mouse grow two thousand fold is actually harder than making a bird grow a mere forty-three fold, especially given than birds have a conceptual link to the air magics that are so plentiful here.

So when my father brought home Granarrik’s egg, my mother saw the potential. And she made him grow.

Linking his soul to the elemental magic of the plane of Air. Enhancing his growth rate. Fueling him not just with the energy of food, but also the magic that is so abundant here in this endless sky. He’s not just big. He’s not just strong. He’s got a supernatural affinity for wind itself, not just knowing how it affects his flight, but how to use his natural magic to affect it. When he flaps his wings, he doesn’t just move air. Air moves his wings back.

That being said, fifteen to twenty five tons of rock and ore, plus another ton or so of gnathotis, is really, really massive.

To fly in weightlessness, it’s less glide-falling forwards like birds normally do, and more angling the body and pulling up, like a bird in ascent. Forward for us is closer to our upright position in the saddle than along the plane of Gran’s body.

And, to my big boy’s credit, he’s moving it.

Not fast. Oh my no, not fast. His steady, mighty wing strokes add very little to the momentum the monster already had from the wind.

Stolen novel; please report.

But they do add up. And that’s the power of Granarrik, just like it’s the power of Conrin and me.

We do the work until it is done.

He just ate, so he’s a bit heavier than normal, and he certainly can’t keep this up forever, but I can feel the wind change around us.

No longer is it something pushing from behind. Now, it’s something coming from ahead.

We’re absolutely going to be able to drop this on the island.

Or at least, that’s what we think before the rainclouds off to the side don’t so much part as they suddenly surge forth across our path.

Lightning flashed continuously, an internal web of light as the fat, vaguely fish shaped mass of black thunderclouds seething with rain and wind took flight.

“Stormwhale!” I cried in fear.

It’s not a whale. Those don’t exist anymore anywhere in the Kingdom. But we have records and drawings. So when it came time to name the titanic elementals that dominate the plane of Air, that’s what we used.

If, by some infinitesimal chance, a zephyr doesn’t get scattered into nothingness, it can slowly absorb more and more of the elemental magic of this place and gain control of greater and greater winds. And, even more unlikely, if millennia go by, and it keeps growing, and nothing ever stops it, you get something like this.

Cloudwhales, if they’re just wind and some light, fluffy clouds. Rainwhales, if they’ve got more water and leave everything wet as they pass through.

Stormwhales, if they pick up an absolutely monstrous amount of elemental electricity.

Incidentally, that’s where fulgurite comes from. In fact, the piece of fulgurite in my pack is almost certainly from this particular stormwhale. Some random rock, swept up by the wind and rain of its body, and bounced around getting zapped over and over and over again by the lighting, until its suffused with it.

That’s all well and good for a rock. If we get caught up in that thing, if you’ll forgive the pun, our goose is cooked.

Fortunately, they’re not innately hostile. We don’t have anything it wants. Unfortunately, they don’t really notice us, either. A big group of master wizards, such as Momma and her colleagues, could control it with binding magics, but that’s pretty much the only thing us poor mortals could do. No, this, like most storms, is just a colossal force we have to work around.

Mica caws in mortal terror and hides down the top of my jacket.

Conrin swears softly behind me, his hands tight on my shoulders.

Gran’s flight falters, and he begins looking around for a way to escape.

Me?

Well.

Let’s just say I really, really wish I had found time to visit a bush earlier.

The only thing that can save us is that it’s crossing in front of us, and it’s far enough away it’s actually behind the island.

But it’s really big. And it spawns lesser storm clouds with its presence. And it flies by manipulating the winds themselves. So as it flies, it sort of creates this enormous wake of storms behind it. In our current orientation, they’re coming up on our left.

And there’s not a damned thing we can do about that.

“Get Gran to grab onto the corpse!” Conrin orders. “Fast!”

Or can we?

Following his instruction, with Gran flying and us pulling on the ropes, we get next to the big corpse. The big bird doesn’t like it. Instinctually, he wants to flee. But he’s well trained, and he trusts us, and he grabs ahold of the belly of the beast with his feet.

“Those storm clouds are coming, and they’ll suck us right in and fry us with lightning if we can’t get away. But this rock is heavier than anything we’re gonna find besides that island itself, and there’s a good chance it won’t be able to pull us in fast enough to kill us before the storms scatter. Wish we had been flying the other way, but it’s too late to change now.” He was working to undo some of his efforts in binding the broken wing.

Together, we rearranged it so that the wing, acting like a giant tarp, wrapped over the top of Granarrik and tied us closer and more securely. We used every rope, hook, and gaff we had.

“All that metal is going to attract lightning,” I warned, glancing at the seething wave of storms spreading in a vee behind the stormwhale.

It was already gone, but the wall of black clouds was coming at us, angled from the left. It was one of the scariest things I think I’ve ever seen. The wind was already picking up, building from a whistle into a howl as it whipped around us. Gran made unhappy warbling croaks. Mica stayed in my jacket with his eyes shut, making little cooing caws to sooth himself.

“Saras, everything in the sky is going to get hit with lightning. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll hit the metal before it hits us. Otherwise, we’re no worse off than we were before.”

Ah.

“So if it’s no safer one way or the other, we might as well bet on the one that lets us keep the ore?”

“That’s pretty much it, girl.” Once the ropes were tight, we started burrowing between Gran and the monster, like chicks crawling under the comforting bulk of their mother.

Conrin suddenly stopped and grabbed me by the shoulders, and looked deep into my eyes.

He’s not actually that old of a dwarf, being recently turned seventy one. His hair was still black and there were no streaks of grey in his beard, which he had tucked into his jacket. Dark grey eyes bore into my own, and if I didn’t know better, I’d never guess that one of them didn’t work.

“Listen. Listen good. Saras, it’s been an honor to ride with your father, and an honor to teach you. If one of us or none of us make it, remember that we did everything we could. We made the right choices at the right times for the right reasons. Sometimes, that’s just not enough. But I think, this time, it is enough. We’re gonna make it.”

I hugged him like my life depended on it.

We ended up on the right side of Gran’s breast. I was pressed up against the feathers, tied to his saddle and my arms and legs hooked into the straps. Conrin grabbed me from behind, using different anchor points, mostly from the ropes on the gnathotis.

Gran pulled his head down under his wing with us. Mica wiggled up closer to the hollow of my throat, and I used what little movement I had to pet them both. Out beyond the layers of wings and rope, the howl of the wind spiked, and our world started to spin.

This was one of those times when I wish I had bigger breasts, rather than the nearly nothing I currently have. It’d be a lot easier to fit Mica down my jacket with some proper cleavage.

“Conrin?” I said, trying to keep the quaver from my voice.

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Saras.” He squeezed me. “We’ll make it. It’s just a challenge. A big challenge, true, but a challenge. And what do we do when faced with a challenge?”

“We do the work, until it is through.”

“That’s right. We do the work.”

Then the storm hit.

Even riding the wind, there was no way we could have out flown this on Granarrik. He’s strong, but he’s not the faster flyer in the sky. Wind slammed into us hard enough that the acceleration made us sag against the ropes. Rain and hail hit like bullets, thrumming against the wing membrane over our heads.

The first lightning strike hit, and we all cried out in pain as our bodies seized and burned, and one of the ropes went slack, burned in two.

Mica cried scared crow noises against my throat, and I focused on sending him comfort and bravery even as I stroked the cheek feathers of my mount, offering sympathy where I couldn’t offer safety.

Lightning hit us again.

We were getting soaked. There was so much rain gathering on us it was starting to get hard to breathe. I had to wipe my face with one gloved hand and blow out air to clear my face.

At one point, after lightning hit us three more times, I heard Conrin speak up.

“Huh. I saw a flash of light in my bad eye that time,” he said, almost musingly.

Eventually, I passed out.