With his arm locked firmly in the crook of Faris’s elbow, Rasp drew inwards, pulling the wind in his direction. A raging gust swept beneath them, lifting their feet from the leaf-littered ground. Faris abandoned his futile attempts to squirm free and threw his arms around Rasp with all his strength, wailing something about this being a terrible idea. Rasp paid the panicking faun no mind. For the gods’ sakes, they were barely even off the ground yet! He wouldn’t have to take Faris’s screaming seriously until they were at least a little bit higher.

With a flick of his hand, the gust swept them upwards. And while this worked just as well as he had hoped, Rasp may have misjudged one tiny detail–the thick canopy stretched overhead. Gnarled, twisted branches, thick with leathery leaves, tore at his face and clothes as the pair broke through the treetops.

Faris, fortunately, was a bit of a natural at his role as the lookout. “Big branch! Go left, left, left!”

Rasp twitched his finger and they banked left, barely missing the thick limb that Rasp swore had come out of nowhere. Faris insisted otherwise, but that’s why he was the lookout, after all. A few narrow misses later, and the pair broke through the top of the canopy and into the clear airspace above. Bright blue light inundated Rasp’s weak vision. He shielded his eyes from the worst of it, but the dramatic shift from light to dark made his head swim nonetheless.

Carried by the wind, they rose higher, higher, higher. The air was fresh, almost crisp tasting as it filled Rasp’s lungs. For the first time in weeks, he felt the full power of the sun against his bare skin. The experience would have been divine if it were not for the icy winds hellbent on tearing the threadbare clothes from his body. The current whipped about them, howling as it pushed and pulled the pair in whatever direction it pleased.

Faris trembled against Rasp for reasons unrelated to the chill. “Why are the trees below us, Rasp? You were supposed to get to the top of the hill, not the top of the mucking forest!”

“Poor planning? I dunno. It’s not like I’ve done this before.”

“You’ve never done this before?” Faris’s high-pitched reply came out sounding more akin to a scream than a question.

“I can tell you’re impressed.”

“But you know how to get down, right?”

Of course he did. What a silly thing to ask. “I assume the same way we got up. Except, you know, the opposite direction.”

“You’re going to drop us?”

Rasp inhaled sharply through clenched teeth as Faris squeezed tighter, crushing all the crisp air from his lungs in the process. Rasp took a shallow breath and said, “Gently, Dingle. I’m going to gently drop us.”

“Okay, it’s fine. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.” Faris didn’t seem to be listening to Rasp anymore. He self soothed by talking himself through the situation instead. “Whisper’s a dragon. They can come save us if we get stuck. Or if we drop too fast or–”

“Well, not anymore actually.” Rasp hated to burst his bubble, but it was only fair that Faris knew the truth. “I mean, Whisper still has a dragon form, yes. But it draws too much power to use. It’s sort of an emergency use only kind of thing.”

“This is an emergency!”

“Now who’s being dramatic?”

“Are you telling me we’re on our own?”

“Oh please, I got us up here. I can get us down just as easily.”

“It’s surviving the going down part that’s important, Rasp!”

“Now that you mention it, I am feeling suddenly weak.”

“Don’t you mucking dare!”

Old Rasp would have let them drop a few stories simply for the funsies. Old Rasp was a bit of a dick, though. The more Current Rasp distanced himself from his former self, the more he realized he was lucky he’d managed to retain a single friend at all. Also, if he wanted to keep retaining his only friend, it would probably be best to ensure he got them both to the ground safe and sound. “Alright, I’m done being an ass, I swear. We’ll take it nice and slow, okay? In all honesty, I didn’t actually mean to go this high.”

Faris clung to him tighter, whimpering, “Not helping.”

“I’m going to need your eyes though. You don’t happen to see a clear spot around here, do you? I don’t know about you, but breaking through the treetops last time resulted in a few sticks in places that weren’t there before.” That last part wasn’t actually true, but Rasp hoped the joke would help calm Faris’s fraying nerves.

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After a few steady breaths, the faun worked up the courage to open his eyes again. It came with a bit of a shock, apparently, as every muscle in Faris’s body seized in terror. “For muck’s sake, Rasp! Do you realize how high we are?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t need your eyes, now would I?”

A dark shadow passed over Rasp’s face. Instinctively, he craned his head upwards, squinting at the blurred shape that circled soundlessly above. “Dad?”

“That’s a hawk, idiot.”

Certainly explained the lack of obnoxious squawking. “Kinda weird for it to be here, right?”

“What, in the air? Where they hunt? Spend their free time? No, Dingle Head. I don’t think the hawk is the one out of place here!” Faris screamed. “And you do know why it’s above us, don’t you? Because it recognizes an easy meal when it sees one! Any moment now, it’ll be stripping the flesh from our dead bodies. If there’s anything left after we splatter across the ground, that is.”

“Splattering would make the picking easier,” Rasp conceded.

Eventually, once he got all of the death and doom out of his system, Faris composed himself enough to provide actual assistance. He spied a small, swampy patch devoid of trees and, between the cursing and muttered insults, directed Rasp over the top of it. On Faris’s command, Rasp began the descent, slowly.

They were only halfway down, according to Faris, when the ache in Rasp’s lower back transitioned from a dull thrum to what felt like pulsing spasms of lightning. The bolts lanced up and down his spine as it spread wave after wave of white hot agony to his extremities. The familiar buzz of magic waned, giving way to pain and exhaustion. Rasp was barely holding on by a thread by the time the blurry ground rose up beneath them.

Long blades of grass, wet with morning dew, brushed against his trousers as Rasp’s heels struck soft ground at last. With a wave of his hand, he severed his magical connection, leaving only the tingling loss of sensation in his numb fingertips. The numbness did not apply to his shoulder and, thus, he felt the full force of Faris’s punch. Rasp stumbled several steps backwards before falling flat on his ass.

“Don’t ever do that again!” Faris emphasized his scream with a hoof stomp.

“...Urg.”

Rasp decided against trying to get up in the event Faris wanted a second go at him. He went limp amongst the damp grass, feeling the wet squish of the muddy ground splatter beneath him. Exhausted and magically spent, he laid perfectly still, listening as the sounds of the forest intermixed with Faris’s relentless pacing.

It took half an hour for the rest of the party to find them. June was the first to arrive on the scene. Having shifted back from bear to human, her willowy shadow came bursting out of the trees at a full sprint. “That was amazing!” June’s wet footsteps carried her all the way to Rasp’s side. She bent over and tugged ruthlessly on his arm, not bothering to check if Rasp was even alive before attempting to heave his limp carcass from the grass. “Can I go next? Please, please, please!”

Hop was not far behind with the mule and Whisper in tow. Unlike June, he stayed tucked along the trees, allowing his baritone voice to carry across the clearing from afar. “Nobody should be doing that again.”

Rasp raised his finger triumphantly into the air above his head. “I conquered the hill, as requested.”

Faris was still angrily pacing back and forth from the sounds of it. “You could have done it in a less dramatic fashion, you know. You got lucky today, Rasp. But you can’t do that kind of shit when we’re in real danger. My village is at stake.”

‘My family is in your incompetent hands’ was the part he wasn’t saying.

The breeze shifted directions, unsticking the sweat-soaked hairs that clung to Rasp’s forehead. He felt a swell of magic ripple across his skin as Whisper touched down beside him. The faun may not be impressed by your feat of magic, but I am.

That certainly came as a surprise. Rasp said nothing, waiting instead for the inevitable follow up, which would undoubtedly include such words as ‘however’, ‘but’, or ‘idiot’.

Unfortunately, Whisper had other plans which, for some gods awful reason, involved introspection. Do you understand the importance of what just took place, little bird?

I got over the hill like you asked me to? Without dying either, Rasp would have liked to have added. Seemed a little redundant though, considering Whisper would be attempting to converse with a corpse otherwise.

Indeed, you did. More importantly, you used the full extent of your magic without stirring the darkness.

Oh shit. He had, hadn’t he? Rasp hadn’t been able to do that since becoming an unwilling host to the dark magic. Small spells he could squeak past with, sure, but this hadn’t been a small spell. No, in fact, he’d all but drained his power with the flying nonsense. He should have been elated, but he felt mostly confused instead.

This is not the first time, either. You achieved the same yesterday, when you first reunited with your friend. Whisper allowed the thought to sink in before asking, Do you know why these two instances were different from the others? Why you were able to use the full extent of your powers without losing control?

If you tell me it’s the power of love or some shit like that, I might just hit you.

Whisper’s quills rattled together, daring him to try. You were not angry.

While it may not have been the power of love, Rasp still found the answer nauseatingly stupid.

Anger is what awoke the spirit in the first place. It is how it first reached you. By controlling your anger, feeling it without becoming consumed by it, you are denying the dark entity access to the rest of you.

That’s it? That’s all it took? This whole time Rasp could have been using his magic without the threat of losing control and all it would have taken was not being angry? For reasons perhaps too ironic to fully grasp, this knowledge served only to make him angrier. The scuffed skin on his face stung in the cool morning air as a ripple of heat flushed all the way from the tip of his nose to his forehead.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Rasp didn’t care if the others didn’t know what he was yelling about, he had to get the rage out before it had time to dig its claws in and fester. “Is that why you kept pushing all this emotional wellbeing bullcrap? It actually had a purpose? I thought you were just trying to make me more tolerable to be around.”

And you’re back to being angry. Right on schedule.