Methialia was a cruel and merciless torturer, and I did not like her.

Not only had she seen the whole thing, but she’d known before I took off exactly what was going to happen to me. But since we made the plan ourselves without consulting her, she didn’t intervene. She just stood by and watched.

After she was done laughing her ass off, the demoness strolled up to a shocked Glaustro and told him to run any bright ideas concerning flight past her in the future.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Short though my time in the sandstorm was, I did get to learn a couple of things beyond ‘Don’t mess with gale-force winds.’

First and foremost, the sand did not affect my wings any worse than it did my skin. This meant that while my sand resistance was hardly ideal, especially since I’d begun messing around with ascension more, it was still far beyond a demon’s. My wings could withstand a lot without being reduced to a bloody mess, as evidenced by the fact that only one of them was broken.

The second thing I learned was that there was definitely a sand-free zone somewhere beyond the storm. I only caught a brief flash of clear sky, but if I could somehow make my way much higher up, I would be able to dodge the miniature projectiles weaponized by the wind.

Unfortunately, this was close to impossible.

The higher I went, the more powerful the winds got. So, to fly even higher than the sandstorm was well above my skill level.

Methialia might be able to do it. But when she heard my story, she just shook her head, shoved a healing potion into my mouth, and told both Glaustro and me to shut our traps and focus on plans that were actually viable.

To demonstrate why, she briefly dipped one of her flaming wings into the sandstorm. The effect was alarming. Apparently, her wings really were purely elemental. They enabled her to fly through some odd mana-interaction theory that went way over my head, thanks to my stellar education.

Regardless, her wings were torn apart in less than a second by the anti-mana material permeating the storm. Even if she could fly above it, she would need to land eventually, which would result in a crash at best and severe injuries at worst. Alternatively, she would be forced to continue flying until exhaustion set in, when the same thing would happen.

Glaustro grumbled something about how she could’ve explained all of that earlier rather than just saying ‘won’t work’ and moving on, but the demoness ignored him. She looked even more miserable than she had the last few days, and not even Glaustro had the heart to push.

So it was that when we ventured into the storm, we were chasing after our quarry both blind and on foot.

My misery didn’t end there. Methialia had taken it upon herself to help me get better at flying, and since we couldn’t focus on the practical application, she settled on working out my fundamentals.

In other words, not only was I surrounded by howling winds, with sand scoring tufts out of my poor, delicate feathers, but I also had a whole string of exercises to get through. I had to twist my wings and keep them in place, despite the environment. I had to stretch them in ways that made my entire body ache. Methialia even told me to spread them and just feel what the wind was doing to me for fifteen minutes at a time.

Spoiler alert: the wind was doing horrible, painful things to me.

All the while, I had to keep healing the wings from the damage they were enduring. I had to take care of the rest of my body. I even added an almost continuous run of my enhancement technique into my routine, in a vain attempt to get my new limbs in line with the toughness the rest of my body had already.

It wasn’t fun, and it started to take a toll. Mia noticed immediately when I flagged from the front of the group to the middle. Thankfully, she didn’t try to convince me to stop my training. She didn’t even say anything. It was all any of us could do to keep ourselves going through the storm, anyway. She was shooting me a lot of worried looks, but I did my best to ignore them.

I didn’t want to stop.

While the training was a dark tunnel of torture, the freedom of flight lay on the other end, and that was worth more to me than my temporary wellbeing.

Bronwynn and Glaustro did not share Mia’s hesitance to do anything.

It was on the third day of our traipsing through the desert that they both forced me to sit down with them in Glaustro’s tent.

“You are not doing well,” Bronwynn, ever the gentle voice of reason, declared bluntly. “And you need to stop pushing too hard.”

I shot a brief glance at Glaustro, but he just stood to the side with a scowl on his face, backing Bronwynn up.

Since when do they get along so well?

“I’m doing just fine, actually.” I raised a hand to forestall Bronwynn’s argument. “Now, please, listen to me for a second. Yes, I fell back, but that’s because the wind and sand are less intense there. With bodies in the way, it can’t pummel me quite as badly. The other demons aren’t complaining either, since my wings are shielding them from a good chunk of the same, too.”

“But you’re sleeping less,” the traitorous kitty’s voice sounded from behind me.

I twisted around to glare at her. I hadn’t even noticed when she slipped into the tent as well.

Apparently, when I came to visit Glaustro, I had walked into a planned ambush.

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“You’re sleeping less? Is that right?” Bronwynn asked, his tone carefully neutral.

“Yes, fine, okay. I’m not sleeping as well as I could be, but that’s that and this is this!” I insisted, hoping they would drop the subject.

They didn’t.

“Why do you sleep worse?” Mia demanded with an arched eyebrow.

I just shot her another glare. I was starting to regret my agreement to share a tent with the cat girl.

When I didn’t answer, my commander stalked over so he could look me in the eye. Looking away would have been childish, so I just held my ground in the face of two literally burning orbs.

“Why can you not sleep?” he growled.

“…because of the pain,” I finally admitted quietly, then cringed when Glaustro moved behind me and pulled my wings open.

I had kept them tucked under a long cloak for a reason. Now that they were revealed, so were the many streaks of blood, the bare spots that were missing feathers, and several honest-to-goodness holes I had earned by pushing myself in the storm.

There was a loud intake of breath from several people at once. Mia’s sounded more like a hiss.

“Was it this bad on the first day, or is this a new development?” Glaustro asked conversationally. I almost couldn’t detect the anger in his voice.

Almost.

“Since the first day… but it’s not as bad as it looks. It all heals up by the morning. Most of the damage is purely cosmetic. And the healed spots are much harder to damage the second time around, so my training is definitely working.”

Glaustro didn’t blow up. He just sat down with a sigh. When he spoke, he sounded more tired than anything.

“Listen, I told you already that I’m not your parent, and I don’t want to be. However, think for a second about what you are doing to yourself and what might happen if you push too far. You’ve been a legion soldier for what… four months? Five?”

“Something like that,” I murmured, tempted to point out it was actually a bit shorter than that before I thought better of it.

“Exactly. Yet, you’re already a decent way along the optimal path of ascension. Typically, I’ve seen people have the opposite problem: they take too long, content to sit on their laurels. You haven’t done it yet, but you can easily push too far, to the point where you can’t fix what you damage. Primarily your mind, and don’t tell me you don’t feel exhausted.”

Truth be told, I did. No matter how effective it could be for growth, I was finding that constant pain wasn’t the best for one’s long-term mental health. It wore me down, sapping the energy I needed to keep a lid on the emotions always churning beneath the surface.

Resentment, frustration, desire to do better, and a host of other feelings made my chest their favored lair, growing fat on all my turmoil, always almost about to break through. I had already experienced a few moments when my attention would drift and the emotions would slip free, threatening to make me do something stupid.

I had almost attacked Methialia on several different occasions. There was a demon somewhere out there in the mass of tents I had almost skewered with my sword for daring to chat a little too long with Mia. He was making the cat girl uncomfortable, so I of course felt the need to try and dig out the guy’s kidney with no surgical knowledge or implements required.

Basically, I felt… thin. Brittle. Like I could snap at any moment

Bronwynn’s voice was surprisingly gentle as it broke into my thoughts. “Hayden, until you can properly get used to your emotions and start to maintain control of them habitually, you’re walking on a wire’s edge. Tip too far, and we won’t be able to drag you back. It would be down to you, and there’s no telling what kind of damage you’ll do in the meantime.”

For a moment, I froze. Then, of course, I gave into a temporary swell of irritation. “It’s not like we can do much about my mood. Unless one of you can just turn off this disgusting storm at will, and you’ve been holding out on us? No? Well, then I can’t avoid a foul mood anyway. Might as well get something out of it! This way, maybe I’ll be a bit tougher to kill next time a powerful enemy comes around and tries to squish me.”

It’s all down to that, isn’t it? They already have power. They can afford to waste time and do nothing! If even a slightly-above-average demon or jinn comes along, it could blow me apart ,and I won’t even be able to fight back. It’s easy for them to say I should—

“How long?” Bronwynn snapped, recapturing my attention. “How long do you think I spent as a mortal, Hayden?”

The question threw me for a loop, especially with how focused I was on my own misery and bitterness. “I don’t know. Five years? A decade?” He had mentioned he spent a long time struggling to ascend, after all.

To my surprise, Bronwynn laughed with acerbic bitterness. “Two hundred years. Ascension, minor mana training, and getting bound to the Abyss don’t make you immortal, but they make it possible to last for a much longer time. I wasn’t part of Torment, and I wasn’t in a well-regarded job. I was little more than an afterthought, and I got pay that reflected that. I could have ascended faster if I saved up all my pay, but there’s pesky things like food and lodging to worry about. I barely scraped by for ascension.”

I stared, feeling my mind boggle at the number. Two hundred years of drudgery and hoping to ascend eventually... No, I couldn’t quite comprehend that kind of thing.

“But… why? How?”

Bronwynn just shrugged. “I didn’t pass my combat assessment very well, and my former layer wasn’t as big on invasions and combat in general, so only the top scorers got handpicked for a fast track to Ascension. So, stop trying to race ahead. You are already doing exceptionally well. Both of you are.”

“We’re not saying you should stop, of course. We’re just asking to stop trying to shatter your own mind, you idiot,” Glaustro filled in with a scoff. “I’ll be having words with Methialia, too. She was never a mortal, so she has a much tougher time understanding the mindset of one. Not to mention the dangers of ascension.”

I must have agreed, because Glaustro shoved yet another healing potion in my hands and sent us off to our tent. Once there, I seriously debated whether to use the potion or not, then eventually tucked it away.

That earned me another hiss from Mia.

“I promise I won’t push as hard tomorrow,” I told her. “It would just be a waste to undo all my work for the day, and not using the enhancement technique would do exactly that.”

She settled down somewhat at my logic, though she was still eying me unhappily from the pile of blankets she had used to craft her ‘bed.’ It looked hilarious, but if she found it comfy, who was I to judge?

I lay down on my own bed, finding it strangely easy to relax. The emotional soup was still roiling in my chest, but it was somehow calmer than it had been before the ‘ambush.’ This trio was relentless. Once again, they had made it very hard to deny that they actually did care about me. I was important to them. Gods only knew why.

It took a while, but I did drift off to sleep feeling oddly warm and mushy.

—

Another four days after that, we were all tired, irritated, and thoroughly done with sand. If I never saw another beach in my life, I would be a deliriously happy man.

Unfortunately, Glaustro had yet to lead us to our target, and the horizon contained no possible options. It was all just plain desert, as far as the eye could occasionally glimpse through the infernal sands.

I was near the front of the formation again, having taken to mutilating myself a little less, so I had a good view when Glaustro suddenly halted and stomped in frustration. He was glaring down at an odd black device in his hand, somewhat reminiscent of a compass with a lot of bells and whistles.

I drew closer, looking around wearily.

“What’s wrong?” I shouted over the wind, only getting through thanks to Glaustro’s superior senses.

“This thing is leading us in circles,” Glaustro shouted back, somehow looking furious and thoughtful at the same time. “So, either it’s broken, or…”

The demon trailed off, looked down, then stomped again, much harder. The ground shook, and Glaustro’s eyes sharpened.

“Or our destination is underground.”