Taking off should be no problem. I’ll just blast us into the air with a jet of fire. The problem will come once I’m at speed. I can hardly keep shooting myself forward with physical flames. Doing so will exhaust me in minutes. Especially up in the air where I don’t have earth to burn and mitigate the energy I expend.

No, I’ll need to apply what I’ve learnt of airflow from my firestorms to my wings. I have ideas, but I’ve yet to try them. Unable to do so until I’m already in the air.

It’ll be a trial by fire.

I’ve heard some other races use that saying. I find it amusing. For them it means to learn by doing, in a dangerous situation. My first assumption had been the complete opposite.

I stretch my wings and lean forward, straining not to tip under Leal’s weight. My wings slam downward as a plume of flame rockets behind me. Despite the extra heft, we thrust into the air without issue. Leal clenches her arms tight around my neck. If I were one of the fleshy races, I’d probably suffocate from her strength.

With widespread wings, I accelerate through the air. It’s rather pointless to flap while I’ve got the thrust of physical flame pushing me through the sky. Probably didn’t even need to do so when I took off.

A squeak reaches my ears, so I turn my head. Leal presses into me, not daring to look anywhere except the flickering depths of my plumage. As I look over her, I remember another failure of mine. The guilt layers on top of everything I already feel.

“Leal, I’m sorry.” I turn back ahead as my acceleration slows. “The jacket you lent me, it was destroyed.”

“What?” she mumbles.

“I wanted to return it when I finally met you again, but-”

I’m cut off by her laugh. Her breath brushing my feathers tells me she still isn’t looking up. “Why are you worrying about some old bit of cloth? I can’t even remember the thing.” I can feel her shaking her head without raising it. “Honestly, how could I have ever thought you could do that intentionally?”

I don’t know how to respond to that, so I just focus on my flight. Since I left Morne in a fiery blaze, I’ve killed many more. How many times might I have caused innocents to die without me knowing it? I’ve been indiscriminate for a long time now. I’ve burnt through any in my way.

Is… is it possible that amongst the thousands of normal mermineae, there are those like Leal’s mum: innocent, but only there due to circumstance?

No. They’re here to invade. That is clear by the action they’ve already taken. They could have simply stayed back in their own lands and not caused us problems.

I’m losing speed. Fast. Without the boost that comes with jettisoning physical flame out the back of my wings, I won’t be able to keep us airborne for long. Maybe I should have had her toss the armour. It would have lightened the load at least a touch.

As I’d learnt to do with Grímr’s wings, I heat the air beneath my feathers without consuming it. My flames encourage the air to rise into my stretched wings. The lift is considerable, but not enough.

I expected I’d need this to fly, but it doesn’t even let me glide. Not indefinitely. Hopefully, the other applications I’ve been planning will work.

The first change is to have the feathers on the top half of my body eat the air. If air can push my solid wings upward, then it’s reasonable to think that the air above might block my rise, right? Having my flames do so isn’t even hard. Slightly disorienting, forcing two opposite effects so close together, but not difficult.

Surprisingly, it works on the first attempt. The strain on my wings increases and I level out. I flap my wings with the joy of success, and immediately destabilise my flight.

The difference in air doesn’t play nice as I beat my wings in habitual motions. With Leal strapped to my back, our combined weight is incredibly off centre. My momentary loss of control has us rolling in the air.

Leal shrieks and her fingers dig ever deeper into my neck while her legs clamp around my side. I struggle to twist us the right way up and soon regain level flight.

Okay. Nothing more than basic movements until I know how all this works. Especially while I’m holding a passenger.

“Sorry,” I call back, but she doesn’t respond nor loosen her grip. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t opened her eyes since we started flying. What ever happened to the curiosity of a mage?

I spread my inner flame through the air above my wings, and increase the amount of air consumed. While that improves my lift, it’s hardly worth the effort with how minuscule the rise is from simply burning the air touching my wings.

It is great that removing the air above my wings pushes me past the point of a stable flight, but I want to move faster. We’d likely outpace the ursu’s trains at this speed, but it would still take well over a week. After enjoying the intense pace set by Grímr’s massive metal wings, this feels like crawling.

This next change is the one I have the most hope for.

I’ve noticed, after creating many firestorms, that air will rush into flames. It doesn’t even matter all that much whether I eat the air, or heat it enough to make it rise, the air will rush in as if to fill the space left empty. The air I heat myself will almost always rise, but it will only rise. The air in the surroundings, not directly affected by my fire, can rush in from the sides or even from above.

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If I could force a breeze to rush in from my rear, I could have the wind not only lift me, but push me forward as well.

Well, that’s easy to say, but I’m not really sure how I can do it. My goal is to somehow modify my flames so that the air coming in from the front is minimal, but the air coming in from my back is as strong as possible. If I create a fire behind me that eats the air, none of the air will actually reach me to push me forward, but if the fire behind me heats the air, it’ll fling upward. Though, maybe the answer lies in how hot I make the air?

Thinking by itself isn’t about to give me any answers, so while the flames above and below keep me gliding through the air, I spread my inner flame to cover the area behind me.

Only heating the air a little allows the wind to blow into me, but the breeze isn’t all that strong. I’ll take it — every little thing will add up — but I was hoping for something with a lot more oomph. Changing the temperature doesn’t make much difference. Hotter air moves faster, but also rises instead of pushing me from the rear as intended.

Covering my front in air-eating fire solves my issue of the air whipping into my face, but when I spread it too far, I find myself falling rather than gliding. Right, can’t fly if there isn’t any air.

Also, I have to pull back when Leal gasps for breath.

I think back to the self-fuelling firestorms. They are at their strongest when air and fire twists in a spiral, flinging flames dozens or hundreds of metres ahead. An attempt at creating the swirling flame in midair only results in the air dispersing with each turn.

If I had to take a guess, I’d say the surface underneath is how it remains formed normally. The air pushes down from above, which keeps the twister’s shape. Unfortunately, that simply doesn’t work in the sky.

Unless…

On a whim, I create two tubes of physical flames around both sides of my body. Not eating the air, nor allowing it to pass through. At the front end of each cylinder I burn away air, but at the rear, I leave the only entry point. Inside each tube, I spin my fire, super-heating the air all the while.

This… is effective. There are a few problems, like my wings interrupting the cycle of air, but I can work on the efficiency later. The physical cylinders will tire me out eventually, but they’re far more efficient than jets of fire; I’m not actually throwing away the physical flame.

Wait, couldn’t I make these tubes a part of my body instead? I’d have to sacrifice my wings and a bit of my chest mass, but this might just be too good to pass up for long-distance flights.

With my flight settled and speed assured, I turn my attention to my passenger. She still won’t look up.

“Leal, you should have a look. The world looks amazing from this high up.”

She doesn’t speak, just shakes her head into my neck and refuses to open her eyes.

“We’re going to get to your dad far before they ever get any message,” I try to reassure her, but still get nowhere.

This is getting concerning. I feel horrible for what I did in Morne, but it has been so long since I’ve seen her. I want to talk to her. Find out what she’s been doing all this time. Not that I deserve it, but I want to be close to her again.

“Leal,” I start softly. “We’ll be flying for a few days. The sooner you look, the quicker you’ll get over it.”

She lets out a quiet groan, but lifts her head. Her hands clench my feathers as she finally opens an eye. As she gets a glance over the horizon, I can tell we won’t be having any problem with a fear of heights. She can’t tear away from the horizon, where the starry night sky meets the dimly lit earth of the post ember moon evening.

A breath of relief passes my beak. It is important for us to move fast, but I refuse to fly if she had stayed terrified. If I were to force her through her fear, I would be nothing but a hypocrite. It’s a struggle I would rather avoid putting on her shoulders.

Leal tenses as her eyes finally fall below. We are flying at an incredible height, almost a thousand metres up. I consider flying lower, but Leal is unenhanced; there’s no chance she’d survive a fall regardless of altitude. At least with this height, I can catch her if the worst were to happen.

I may also just prefer the view up higher and want to show off.

We fly for a few hours in silence. I experiment with changing my body and eventually settle on a form best for reserving my energy while also keeping us speeding along. Unfortunately, with how heavy Leal is, I’m still tiring rather quickly.

I’ve wanted nothing more than to just talk with her, but I don’t feel comfortable being the one to speak first. Leal has every right to not talk to me.

The first stray twinges of light peek over the horizon when my hunger and exhaustion reach their peak. Below, the odd towns mark the land. Buildings litter the roads between each.

What might have happened to the albanics after the ursu took their land? It’s hard to tell from this high, but most buildings we’ve passed are intact, so I’d have to imagine Hund hadn’t just gone on an indiscriminate killing spree through the Kingdom.

I land within a section of forest far from any settlements. Whether it’s ursu or albanic living here now, it’s better to avoid any contact for now.

“I need to rest for a bit, then we can get moving again,” I say.

Leal jumps off my back, and I can’t resist the urge to let out a sigh of relief when she does. She looks up at me. This form is taller than her when I’m not bending down under her weight, which means I’m looking down to an ursu. Huh.

Her eyes drop to inspect herself and I realise my relief might be too obvious. I turn away and engulf a few trees in fire. Wood isn’t anywhere near as filling as metal, but they are in excess and I’d rather not waste time melting through rock in a blind search.

A clatter brings my attention back to Leal. Her armour now lies in the dirt by her feet. Strapped to her chest is a thick plate with an incomprehensible array of inscriptions along its surface.

“You should have just told me earlier,” Leal says.

I collapse to the earth, not bothering to change to normal. I’d had to revert my wings back from the vortexes to properly land, but I want to get back in the air as soon as I can.

“There’s no problem.”

It may be hard to carry her around, but I can hardly complain. What right do I have?

Leal sits before me. Her eyes in her lap and her fingers tracing the lines along her palms. “Solvei… thank you, for dropping everything for me. I hadn’t really been thinking when I asked you. The possibility we might move faster than his execution letter seemed impossible.” She lets out a shaky breath and looks me in the eye. “I’m not about to reject your help, but the gulags are well-guarded prisons. It will not be easy to get him out.”

I lift my head and try to appear as confidant as I can for her. “You don’t need to worry. I’m a lot stronger than I was two years ago. As long as you keep any water mages away from me, there won’t be anything that can stop me.”

Leal is obviously doubtful. Maybe I should give her a proper display of what I can do?

“New Vetus military adopted many of Henosis’ methods after the war. All the corpses of the last war went to enhancing a few amongst our highest ranks. One of these few is the warden for the gulag where my father is held. No matter how strong you are, we still need to be careful.”

I give her an earnest nod. It’s her father in danger here; no matter how sure I am that this elite ursu won’t come near Hund’s strength, I’ll give him the same apprehension as a Viisin.

The Viisin just so happen to be burnable.