In the silence after Glaustro’s proclamation, I offered up a question. “So… how long do we have before Crewe kicks us out of the city to go on the wild-goose chase for a living piece of rock in the middle of an endless desert?”
“Two days.” Glaustro delivered the answer with the graveness of an executioner. “I tried to buy us more time. I always do. But we march according to the legion’s orders.”
I couldn’t help wondering about this constant push for more, even when it would make sense to rest up for a little bit longer just to preserve our own sanity. Not that the legion was big on sanity at the best of times, but still.
“We will be ready, commander.” I wasn’t sure why I said that, but I put all my conviction into the words, and he did shoot me a wan smile.
“You should just…” He trailed off, then shook his head. “Never mind, there is no way you’re staying out of trouble. Normally I’d ask you to at least be smarter about the nonsense you’re pulling, but I’m afraid that’s a lost cause. Mia, keep an eye on him.”
“Yes, sir!” the cat girl exclaimed happily. Her arms tightened around me even more. All my wiggling was just getting me stuck in an increasingly uncomfortable position, and she seemed to take inordinate joy in that.
Glaustro nodded. “Good. As for you, Hayden, if I see your feet leave the ground for a second without explicit permission, I’m taking those wings off your back myself. You can have them again when you die. You will also spend the next two days training to use them so you’re not a danger to yourself, and only under supervision.”
Honestly? I didn’t mind that. Sure, I couldn’t go out there and throw myself into learning how to fly immediately, which is what I was itching to do, but I genuinely didn’t want to keep stressing them out.
And me breaking my neck in a fall would definitely stress them out.
“Yes, sir!” I replied, copying Mia, then failed to hold back a grin when both of them glared at me.
—
The next morning, bright and early, I found myself standing in front of our temporary lodgings.
Mia had been very grumpy over having to wake up early herself, but the cat girl’s uncanny senses picked up the second I tried to sneak out of our room for my morning appointment. Apparently, she took Glaustro’s order to keep an eye on me as an ongoing assignment, and almost forced me to stay until she confirmed with said commander that I could leave. Thankfully, the fact that my brand had woken me up with an order to be up and waiting in fifteen minutes convinced her to let me go.
Not without following me, of course, which I had a feeling Glaustro would find hilarious.
So, there I stood, hopefully fanning my wings in preparation for flight lessons. I waited, then I waited some more, and then waited longer still, but no teacher appeared.
At least Mia was thoroughly amused and distracted. I had seen her eying my wings the day before, so it was no shock to me when she started running her fingers over them and fondling them. I was tempted to make a crude joke, but the way her face was all lit up in delight held me back.
A few minutes later, she leaned into my wings entirely. I had to bunch them up to support her weight, but they did hold when the cat girl let out a dreamy sigh and started napping right on top of me. As it turned out, my wings were much tougher than I’d originally expected, which was great.
What wasn’t as great was feeling my new limbs slowly grow sore and stiff in the position they were forced to hold, and still waiting. I eventually decided to run my body strengthening technique to alleviate the issue, then gasped as it started up the way it always did and just… skipped over my wings.
I didn’t expect that. Still, better to find out now. It could have been a deadly little surprise to encounter in the middle of combat.
I launched into testing right then and there. Best of all? Since my feet were firmly on the ground, even if Glaustro found out, he couldn’t be mad at me!
What I discovered spelled trouble, not to mention a bunch of work for me in the future.
The technique wasn’t faulty. It was just meant for a standard human body. My new additions weren’t being strengthened because they simply weren’t within the framework of the spell, which I honestly should have anticipated. I had to scowl something fierce though, because I was now in the exact same position as Mia.
That thought reminded me to extend my claws and try to figure out if my strengthening and enhancement techniques were effective there. They were, in a kinda-sorta-maybe way. The techniques did work, but at something like twenty-five percent potency at best, which was inarguably pitiful.
The only good thing in the whole mess was the fact that I had some prior experience with this kind of spell-tinkering. Not only had I adjusted my own spells to fit me better, but I had also worked with Mia to adapt the spells to her body and extra limbs. So, thankfully, I wasn’t starting from scratch.
It was a few hours later, when I had gotten the spells to work at fifty percent power in my wings and Mia was mumbling in her sleep while making biscuits on said wings (which, ow), that my supposed teacher in all things flying finally showed up.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Despite her flaming wings, the sight of Methialia strolling out of our lodgings did not fill me with confidence. Probably because she looked like she had only just crawled out of bed.
“Good morning,” I quipped, maybe a tiny bit sarcastically, since the sun was already high in the sky.
The demoness mumbled a greeting back as she hitched up her worn-out shirt to scratch her stomach. Plopping herself on the ground next to me, she ran her hand over her own brand. She did a double take. Finally, her bleary eyes focused in on my wings.
The smile that slowly stretched across her features was as gleeful as it was malicious.
“Finally! Finally, I’m no longer the only bloody flier in the unit!” the woman crowed, then broke out into actual laughter. I just stood there, staring, as a fully realized adult demoness lost it right in the middle of a relatively public space.
“Um… are you okay?” I was still trying to be polite, since I know you don’t mess with crazy. Mia, on the other hand, had jerked awake and was now eyeing the demoness like a cat about to pounce.
“Okay? I’m bloody brilliant, mate! Do you know how long I’ve fucking waited for another, hopefully competent flier to show up? Urgh. Honestly, I left my last place of employ because they kept exploiting me, so imagine my surprise when I show up here and it looks like it would bloody well be the same thing all over again?”
I tilted my head, examining her features a little closer. She did look ridiculously exhausted for a demon. They were supposed to have near limitless stamina as long as mana was thick enough, though the psychological factor was a whole other thing to account for.
“I take it they had you on a ton of scouting duty?” I took another look at her flaming wings. “Maybe aerial combat as well?”
“You can bloody say that twice, yes. It was, urgh, bad. I kept getting stuck in predominantly ascendant demon squads, too. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind ascendant demons, but you lot could really use more wings. I knew I should have lied about how racist I am in that questionnaire we got when we signed up…”
I filed that away for later, because I never got any kind of questionnaire to fill out. “Still, shouldn’t just flying around and casting a few spells from on high be a bit safer and less exhausting than a chaotic melee?”
Her eyes found mine swiftly, and they promised a world of pain. “That’s what you’d think. But no, no it’s not. Besides, I have some extra issues of my own to struggle with. I’m not telling you what those are! We’re not best mates forever just because we both have wings. Still, I kinda wish now that I had checked what this assignment was, instead of ignoring the attempt to wake me up for so long.”
I couldn’t resist the urge to tease at least a little. “Well, you still have, what, a day and a half to make me a competent flier? A quarter of the time lost, but what can we do?”
The way her lips were trying to twitch into a smile was a warning. “Well… I’m typically not the one to say this, but there is a solution. Don’t worry, I’m sure missing sleep for a day or two isn’t going to be much for a tough mortal, eh? But you have wings already, and you look like you’re way more than halfway to demon, by ascendant standards.”
Despite her threat to my rest time, I enjoyed the look of grudging admiration on Methialia’s features. “Yep, well, what can I say? Mia here and I are overachievers. Neither of us wants to ascend until we’ve evened out the playing field a little.”
The demoness glanced from me to the angry cat and back, then shook her head. “Nope. Not concerned with what crazy mortals are getting up to. If you want to risk your sanity, you’re free to. Let’s get you up in the sky as quickly as we can.”
—
Contrary to what she said, Methialia did not get me up in the sky that first day. If anything, she seemed set on not letting me lift even a foot off the ground until she was sure I wouldn’t just plummet to my death on the desert sands.
She had me do stretches. She assigned me a whole set of exercises to memorize and repeat perfectly a bunch of times. She made me twist my wings in cruel and unusual ways. I complained about the twisting after a shot of agony forced me to run the enhancement technique for several seconds just to dull the pain, but she was unrepentant.
“Do you think the winds are always going to be gentle on your wings? No. They’re going to do their best to rip you out of the sky, especially if they’re being controlled by someone who’s not your friend! Your wings will get jostled, pulled on, and twisted way worse than this, so suck it up and keep working.”
I did, after that little lecture.
The end of day one found me absolutely exhausted. Even Mia, who’d spent most of the day lounging in the sun and watching us, didn’t feel like teasing me or draping herself over her wings. That’s how prickly and sore I was. My wings were drooping and dragging on the ground. I just wanted the torment to stop.
I also wanted to deck Methialia, who seemed to grow more chipper the more I suffered.
“Now, now, where’s that spirit from this morning?” She followed me inside, cheerfully berating me all the way to my room. “You said flying’s easy, right? So, working out those limbs you suddenly got and which have never seen a single workout should be just as easy!”
“First off, I said that around noon, because you overslept, remember?” I groused, incapable of keeping my temper in. “Second of all, I’m still a mortal!”
“Eh, a very enhanced mortal. You’ll be fine. Walk it off. Also, should ya really be complaining when you’re this dead on your feet from a half-day of training? Imagine if I showed up on time! I did you a favor, really.”
I had no good response to that, so I shut the door in the face of her cackles and then collapsed on my bed.
Despite the hell of that day, I woke up the next morning feeling decently refreshed. I also discovered that I’d been moved into a much comfier sleeping position and tucked in.
My eyes drifted over to Mia with profound gratitude. Then my stomach had to ruin things by protesting loudly, reminding me of the fact that I had eaten nothing after hours of intense workout the day before.
A glance out the window told me it was still very early, so I prodded Mia awake. I then had to carry the spoiled cat to a nearby restaurant for a meal. I guess it was only fair, considering her efforts to help me rest well.
I honestly expected Methialia to be absent when we came back. Instead, she was waiting impatiently. Her eyes glared daggers at us for all of second, then lit up when I waved a cup of demon-grade coffee in her face.
“Fine, I guess I can forgive you for being late,” the demoness grumbled, snatching away my insurance policy. It had done its job perfectly.
For all the pain she put me through, and for all her ‘wonderful’ personality, I could have kissed the demoness later that afternoon, when she finally walked me through lifting off.
My first flight was a wobbly mess. It lasted maybe twenty minutes, and I ended it by tripping when I tried to land and plowing a furrow in the sand with my face.
I loved every second of it.