Abnādūr had been having a very pleasant day. He'd had a relaxing 'bath' with his second-favorite wife, followed by a supper supplemented with the exotic fruits the Djinn merchants from the capital had brought. He'd even followed it up with an unplanned rendezvous with his first wife. She was...not his favorite any longer, but it was still a pleasant enough time.

All that had come crashing down when a messenger stumbled through the doors, panting like a dog in heat, with an urgent message about his son. Dūrilī.

A lesser son of a lesser wife, Abnādūr had still once held such hopes for the boy. He had a faint trickle of essence, enough to notice, enough to give him hope that when the time came he could follow in his father's footsteps as a mage. They'd had many a bout of combat in his manor until the disappointing realization came that the boy simply didn't have enough essence to cast spells. After that, he'd been shuffled off to lesser duties. Rather than serve the house, the lad had moved into business for himself, carving out a bustling little business in the underworld as a mostly respectable brothel owner and to reward his initiative, Abnādūr had instructed the guards to look away.

So when the messenger stumbled into his home, the first thing he had thought had been a feeling of shame. Dūrilī must have gone too far, done something that the guard - or a true crime lord - couldn't overlook. Instead, the message brought to him had been baffling.

His son had been brutally attacked by an unknown and extremely powerful wind mage. What the hell? His mind immediately leaped to thoughts of political assassinations, but who even had the budget to bring in such expensive talent? Wind mages weren't exactly common amongst the Djinn, and hiring an outside contractor would probably be enough to bankrupt him. No, that can't be it.

Confused, he had nonetheless sprung into action. An insult had been offered to his house that could not be ignored. But his confusion had only deepened when he'd questioned his guards, and learned that the mage in question had entered the city with a motley crew - two Corsyths, two Djinn dressed in royal colors and...an elf?

Immediately, he discarded all thoughts that he or his son had been the target. Abnādūr had no idea what was going on, but one thing was clear: a powerful noble from the royal house was operating in the city, and Dūrilī had just gotten in their way.

Frankly, by that point, Abnādūr wanted nothing more than to turn a blind eye to the whole affair. Damn his honor - fighting against one or more powerful mages was a risk at best and quite possibly a death sentence. But it had become a matter of duty. As the captain of the guard, he couldn't let the royal family run amok in his town. Dūr-Ēkal did not belong to them, not now, not ever.

At least I have the puḫmaḫḫu.

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The puḫmaḫḫu crouched on its haunches, grinning at Jasper like a Cheshire cat. A long, rough tongue lolled out of its mouth and languidly ran along its upper fangs as it waited for him, entirely unconcerned by the approaching threat.

It might have been enough to give him pause if Jasper wasn't already committed to his course of action, but it wasn't like there was much room for him to change his mind. As Dapplegrim thundered straight toward the beast, he released the essence he had summoned. With a whoosh, the white flames rapidly spread out from his hands, covering him and his mount in a halo of fire and heat.

The beast didn't move. Drawing his sword - he'd have killed right then to have his ruined glaive back - he prepared himself for the impact.

The hooves hit first, a clang of burning metal against the smooth, grey panels that covered the puḫmaḫḫu. It finally responded to the attack, snapping with its vicious fangs at Dapplegrim's legs, but received a sword to the face for its efforts. Neither attack did much damage.

But the beast’s laissez-faire about Jasper's spell was only partially well-founded. Its stony panels didn't catch fire in the horrendous fashion that the Djinn's skin had, but the white flames still swept over its form like a tsunami. At first, it seemed they did no damage. Dapplegrim and the beast danced back and forth on the ledge, trading largely ineffectual blows, but as the white fire lingered, what the flames couldn't harm, the heat begin to affect. When the first of the panels cracked, that was when the beast finally took them seriously.

With lightning-quick speed, the puḫmaḫḫu launched itself forward and smashed into the pair with all the force of a wrecking ball. Dapplegrim was tossed backward, her front legs flailing against the beast's carapace, but somehow she managed to maintain her hindquarters on the ledge. Summoning a bit of rock to reinforce her legs, she ground the beast's progress to a halt. The flaming hooves lashed, smashing again and again into the cracked panel and it gave way altogether. The beast flinched and, for just a second, it withdrew.

If Jasper had been on a large, open plain, he suspected he could have won fairly easily. The beast was far stronger than the two of them, but the flames could hurt it, given enough time. It would just be a matter of staying of its way long enough to take it down, a war of attrition. But on the narrow ledge, that wasn't an option.

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The beast eyed them angrily, fury waging a war with wariness as it ran its long tongue over the flesh exposed by the damaged panel, but Jasper knew Dapplegrim couldn't take many more blows like that. Fortunately, he had a plan. A really, really bad plan, but it was all he could think of.

Leaning over her shoulder, he whispered something in the horse's ear.

Dapplegrim obeyed immediately. Backing up a few paces from the beast, she slammed her hind hooves deep into the narrow ledge. Like a jackhammer, she rained one blow in quick succession after another on the path, infusing what little earth magic she possessed into each hit. The horse was far from an accomplished mage; at this point, she certainly didn't have enough power to fully cleave the ledge from the cliff, but Jasper wasn't expecting her to.

The puḫmaḫḫu, catching on to what she was doing, lunged forward again - providing exactly what was needed. As his full weight landed on the weakened section of ledge, it crumbled away like chalk.

The puḫmaḫḫu was fast. So fast that it nearly defeated his plan. Desperately writhing its body, it managed to snag one claw into the cliff's face, where it clung on precariously. Unfortunately for the beast, Jasper and Dapplegrim collided directly into it. The claw held for one agonizing second, and then the puḫmaḫḫu was separated from its salvation. Leaving the quivering claw still buried in the rock, the three adversaries plunged into the depths of the ravine.

The wind rushed up to meet him, whipping at his cheeks with the fury of angry god as they as Jasper and Dapplegrim tumbled head over heels into the chasm below. The beast flailed wildly and its remaining claws scored a trail of bloody marks across Dapplegrim’s belly, but the puḫmaḫḫu paid in turn. The white fire spread to its exposed flesh and that - unlike the carapace - did burn. With a screech of agony, the puḫmaḫḫu curled up on itself like a pillbug, trying to quench the flames, and the two were finally left alone.

Taking a deep breath, Jasper reached for his essence to summon the Spectral Wings. It took a second for the essence to pool - it was an interminably long second of watching the rock-strewn landscape rush up toward him with dizzying speed - but despite losing his concentration at first, he finally managed to complete the spell, letting it blossom iff the tips of his fingers. Wasting no time, he slapped his hand against Dapplegrim’s back and released the spell.

The wind raged against the two of them as they plummeted towards the earth, tearing and pulling at them with harsh and icy hands. And then Dapplegrim's back spasmed and the wind ceased just as suddenly as their fall.

The change in momentum hit him hard, nearly ejecting Jasper out of the saddle like the aftermath of a car crash. His stirrups saved him from the fall, though the excruciating pain that accompanied their iron grasp was enough to wrench a scream of agony from his lips. But then the pain passed, replaced by an almost overwhelming relief, as he glanced wildly between the two shadowy wings that sprouted from either side of his mount's belly. It worked. It actually worked. He really hadn't planned to test the wings out on Dapplegrim for the first time while falling to his doom. Thank Kas̆dael.

The dark shadows beat with an almost lackadaisical rhythm that should have been entirely unable to support them, but he didn’t care how they functioned. As long as it worked, that was all that mattered.

His legs protested as he craned his neck over the side of Dapplegrim's flanks, trying to get a view of their still-falling adversary. The puḫmaḫḫu had curled its body so tightly against itself that its head and furry legs were completely hidden, leaving nothing but its hard grey shell visible. It collided with the ground with a sound that echoed in the narrow chasm like an explosion, and the sheer momentum of its fall buried it partway into the rocky soil, throwing up a shower of dirt and gravel. Running a calming hand down Dapplegrim’s neck, Jasper tarried just a moment over the impact site, feeling a rather savage satisfaction from the beast’s death. Good riddance.

But his moment of victory was quickly tarnished. With a shudder and a spasm, the body of the monstrous stone beast began to very slowly uncurl, stretching itself out across the ruptured earth.

The puḫmaḫḫu looked like hell. The boney panels that Jasper’s fire had scorched and cracked had been further hammered by the fall. A good half of its panels were shattered or had fallen off altogether and lay on the ground, revealing large patches of the creature’s skin for the first time - a blue so deep that it bordered on midnight. Several of its legs also dragged uselessly as it lumbered to its feet, but for all the damage the beast had taken, it was very much still alive.

Rising up halfway on its haunches, the puḫmaḫḫu roared defiantly at the now-winged horse hovering above it. Rocks flew up to meet them, but gravity claimed them before they could do any damage. A grudging feeling of respect for the beast rose in Jasper’s chest, and he raised his still-flaming sword in a half-hearted salute. If the puḫmaḫḫu shared the sentiment, it certainly gave no indication of that, responding with another roar, but Jasper ignored it. His friends were still up on the ledge after all, and the guards were closing in upon them. Pulling sharply on the reins, he guided Dapplegrim into a soaring ascent that skimmed across the precipitous cliff.

With the wings beating with a steady, almost hypnotic rhythm, it took less than a minute for the two to rise back in sight of their friends. They hadn't been gone long, but even seconds can be an eternity in a fight, and an unwelcome sight awaited them.

Dapplegrim’s earth magic had taken out the puḫmaḫḫu, but it had also crumbled a portion of the ledge that led to the stone bridge and - across that narrow stretch - the freedom of the forested slopes. They perhaps could have jumped the gap, aided by physical stats no earthling could hope to possess, if the formerly pristine arch, once it was no longer supported on one side, had not promptly cracked in half, tumbling into the ravine and leaving his friends stranded on the ledge with a quickly approaching group of guards.

And judging from the encroaching columns of stone that had snaked their way up the legs of their mounts, binding them in place, one of those guards was a stone mage.

Crap.