“Why would I run when I can fly?”

“Well, for one, you aren’t supposed to leave my side,” Ignatia says. “Besides, you’ll need to work on your control. What better time than now to start?”

I groan at the idea. Running isn’t exactly fast and we’re half a wasteland away from the Agglomerate. “How long will it take us to return?”

“That will depend on you.”

With cubic key in hand, Ignatia falls into a jog, clearly waiting for me to catch up. My eyes rise to the sky above. Should I just fly anyway? I really don’t want to take too long before I begin my punishment. I’ve already been separated from everyone I know; the longer it takes to join my supervisor on the Alps, the longer it’ll take for me to see them again.

I want to fly, but going against a grand elder at this point probably won’t look good. Who knows if they might extend my punishment because I refuse to cooperate?

Finally relenting, I fall in step beside her. Ignatia immediately speeds up and I try to follow suit. Each time I reach her speed, she accelerates further. It reaches the point where I’m altering my weight distribution with each step to the best of my ability, and yet still can’t catch her.

“You’re self taught, aren’t you?” Ignatia asks after a while.

“Huh?”

“Oh, sorry. You’ve done really well to get as far as you have, but it’s pretty obvious you’re not approaching the alteration of your body correctly.”

I’m not?

“What you’re doing is serviceable for now, but it doesn’t scale with greater control. In addition to your weight manipulation, what you want to do is create as many micro-explosions as you can. They need to be as small and numerable as you can make them.”

I try it out. With a dozen tiny explosions within my leg as I leap forward, it kicks back into the sand uncontrollably. Unfortunately, my explosions were a bit too large and momentarily blew apart the form of my leg.

Ignatia watches as my leg reforms. Thankfully, she doesn’t laugh at my failure. “I guess this is what happens when your power far exceeds your control. Until you can contain the explosions to within the size of a grain of sand, I don’t want you attempting more than one explosion per step. Only micro-bursts at that size are efficient enough for you… a typical áed to last the journey.”

With only a single explosion, my running speed isn’t enhanced majorly, but it is noticeable. It is surprisingly hard to compress it down to the size Ignatia told me to; even with minimal energy, the burst wants to reach the size of my fist. After only a few attempts, I get it down to half the size, but it gets exponentially harder to shrink it down after that.

Despite the improvement it makes to my running speed, I can’t help but notice how slowly we’re moving compared to flight. “How long will this take?” I ask again.

“At this rate, a few months.”

I groan.

❖❖❖

It took five weeks. Not as long as we originally thought, but still a damn long time. If we’d flown, we would have been here ages ago. I’m sure I could have carried Ignatia, but she stubbornly refused.

It was only because I had improved my micro-bursts to handle a dozen of them without blowing myself apart that our speed increased. I still struggle to get their size down to what Ignatia wanted, but I’m getting close.

At one point, I got so fed up with running that I went and hunted down a colossal worm, intending to take its skin and replicate that sand-boarding set-up of Śuri’s. Surprisingly, the micro-explosions make my spear smash through the hard skin of the worm with ease… though I may have accidentally overpowered the bursts when I did. Not even fire jets had this effect.

Of course, despite getting the chute and board made, Ignatia didn’t let me even try. Again, she was insistent on our continued run. But, I’ve got a chute now, so I’ll be able to use it if I ever don’t feel like flying. Not that I expect that to happen often.

Ignatia, who is apparently skilled in our kind’s pattern inscriptions, was nice enough to inlay the worm’s skin with the same pattern as Yalun did my snowsuit. She did so with only a few tools she kept on her body, which was impressive considering Yalun needed an entire workbench to achieve the same.

Despite the long, near restless run, we are finally returning to the Agglomerate.

“Nope, we’re going straight to the Alps. Your supervisor is waiting.”

“If he was waiting, then why didn’t we hurry?” I grouch. At least flying isn’t boring. If only Ignatia bent on the issue.

So, even as the Agglomerate comes into sight, we run past it. I thought we would stop by for at least a day, but those hopes are dashed. Instead, we rush up the ever-increasing slope until mountains rise around us like the toothy maw of a Titan.

“So, who exactly is my supervisor?” I ask. “It’s not one of the grand elders that attended the conference, is it?” If it was, I’m sure they would have come with us.

“No. Kiko likes his solitude and rarely participates in our gatherings,” Ignatia says. “Um… I should say this now. Try not to irritate him too much; he can be rather grumpy and I don’t know how unhappy he might be to have this duty forced upon him.”

Great. Just what I want; my supervisor is a cranky old áed. I can see the possibility to leave early going up in smoke.

Despite the less than stellar news, I still want to meet up with him as soon as we can, so I push my legs with as many tiny explosions as I can without Ignatia telling me to focus more on compressing them. I don’t dislike her. No, if I wasn’t so concerned about the time we are wasting, it might have even been a pleasant trip. She’s a good conversation partner. Unfortunately, she has that same debilitating sense of time that infects each of her comrades, so no talk feels completely stress free.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

The Titan Alps are much the same as bordering the pact nations, with the distinct lack of any snow. Unlike my first trip to these high altitudes, the greatest threat doesn’t exist. Well, between my snowsuit and white flames, a bit of snow is hardly a threat anymore.

Signs of life are everywhere up here. I even recognise a variation of those roaches my team slaughtered on my first trip. We avoid all creatures on our way up.

We are only in the Steppes, but despite the lack of water, there is a surprising number of creatures up here, far more than I observed back in the pact nations. Is this just because the mercenaries keep the population of creatures along the Alps low and we don’t? It’s an interesting difference, and I have to wonder how it affects things. The wasteland is already dangerous enough for the typical tribe, but we rarely ever faced creatures not native to the deserts. Though, my tribe stuck to the southern half of the wasteland while I was with them, so maybe it’s just that we weren’t near any of the Alps’ descending creatures.

Unlike our tribes, the cities and towns of the pact nations — besides Baansguard — were hardly prepared to face such creatures. If keeping the populations of the creatures along the Steppes low prevented constant attacks, then I can see why they did so. It helped that it was likely a good way to enhance the Fearn and lower teams, and they had plenty of mercs to spare.

Had.

After the merminea invasion, do they have enough mercenaries to keep out the weaker, but far more numerous, creatures? Maybe it’s better to ask whether they even need to worry. The merminea have supposedly taken residence along the Steppes, so they’re the ones who have to take the brunt of the growing populations. Compared to what the slender race had to face on the other side of the Alps, those creatures could actually be considered rather tame, so it’s possible things have simply worked themselves out.

Well, I won’t know until I finish this damn confinement and rejoin my team.

❖❖❖

Eventually, we arrive before the border between the Steppes and the Lower Elevation. There is no ice here, so instead of the giant wall and crevasse, there is only a crevasse. I dare not go close enough to the edge so that I can look down, but I know it’s deep. Wind blows out from the depths so rapidly, it is visible. Small plumes of dust or sand that got knocked loose somewhere down in the void of earth shoot thousands of metres into the sky within moments.

While there is no ice wall here, the mountains beyond the chasm rise with a much stronger slope. It appears as if the Lower Elevation and above are entirely separate from the rest of the world, rising out from the relatively small Steppes. Maybe the crevasse is truly endless.

“I assume she’s the one?”

I spin on the voice. As I stare at the man standing behind us, I have to give him a twice… thrice over as even I almost mistake this áed for an albanic. No other áed, not even the grand elders suffocated their heat to the level this man has. If not for his sheathed relic sabre, animal skin clothing, and heat too low for any albanic, I would have mistaken him for one.

“Well? I hope you’re not here to waste my time, Ignatia.” His tone is grating, as if he just ate something foul.

“N-no. This is Solvei, the one Hraun wants you to watch over until she reaches a satisfactory level of control.”

From the way she fumbles her start, I’m sure she was surprised by his appearance as well. Every áed I’ve met keeps their core burning to the hottest heat they can handle. Even if they cool the outside for countless purposes, I don’t know a single áed that would want to cool their core. I don’t, and neither did Hraun, so why is he putting himself through so much discomfort just to sneak up on us?

“Solvei, this is Kikotawân. He wi-“ Ignatia starts, but he interrupts her.

“That’s fine. You can go now,” he says dismissively, waving his hand in a shooing gesture.

“Uh… uh, sure.” Ignatia clearly doesn’t know how to respond to him. She turns to me. “Bye, Solvei. I hope we meet again soon.”

She leaves with haste, clearly not wanting to be around this áed.

I glance at the grand elder from the corner of my eye as he glares at Ignatia’s back. This is not a good start. Could I have gotten a worse supervisor than one who absolutely despises being given such a task? What do I do if he tries to be petty and force me to stay here for years?

No, let’s look at this in a positive light. If he doesn’t want to deal with me, then he’s more likely to want to send me away as soon as possible. I’ll just go along with him for now, and hopefully I’ll be back in the pact nations in only a few months.

Once Ignatia is out of sight, the áed, surprisingly not that much taller than myself, turns his gaze to me. I reflexively tense, expecting his grumpy voice to attack me, but it’s nothing close to what comes.

He laughs, grinning all the while. “So I’ve heard you’re the reason growth is no longer taboo.”

“Huh?” I ask, dumbfounded by the immediate reversal of his personality. “No, I-“

“Oh, don’t be so humble. I gave up on convincing the old fogey and his cohort that such a taboo was the dumbest thing we’ve ever done nearly a millennium ago. Regardless of details, your presence has brought change we’ve needed for a very long time.”

What is going on? Was his grumpiness just an act in front of Ignatia? Why?

“Come now, don’t look at me like that. I’ll show you the best hunting spots. One of Yalun’s birds already told me everything I need to know.” Without another word, he rushes off to the west. He moves too quick for me to keep up, so I’m forced to fly after him. Thankfully, he doesn’t take issue with my use of my wings.

“Have you been raising your capacity?” It’s the only thing that makes sense. His strangely excessive control over his heat; the grouchiness toward the other grand elders; and well, his praise of the taboo’s rescindment all point to him having gathered energy while hiding his growth.

“Absolutely not.” His smirk and wink contradict his words.

The wind is intense this close to the crevasse, so I fly by his knees as we move along the edge. Simple red flames spread out from his body and poke at mine, requesting Kindling. I let him in without delay, too curious of the capacity he might have achieved.

Immediately, I’m pressed with an intensity comparable only to Hraun. Beneath the thin veneer of a childlike red flame lies a pitch-black flame. From our connection, I would say this áed has greater capacity than Grand Elder Hraun himself. But what is strange, is that he doesn’t feel as strong despite his equivalent or even superior heat and energy. His voice doesn’t burn in my chest.

If I compare the flames of the two, I’d say this áed’s is steady and undisturbed, like a constant burn, while Hraun’s is a blaze of fury, scorching without restraint.

“Impressive,” he comments. “Now that we’ve introduced ourselves, I’m Kikotawân. Kiko’s fine. I intend to make your time with me incredibly worthwhile.”

Is Kiko just controlling his presence at a completely different level than Hraun? Is that why he doesn’t feel as strong?

“You’re as strong as Hraun.”

Kiko grits his jaw slightly at the comment. “No, I’m still not even close.”

He doesn’t elaborate, so I’m left to ponder whether Hraun can somehow hide some of his strength through Kindling. The idea seems completely unrealistic, but I’ve experienced enough insane things not to completely discard the idea. Kiko obviously doesn’t like the grand elder, so I shouldn’t push him in case he goes back on his personality shift.

“We climb down here,” Kiko says, and proceeds to drop into the crevasse.

The wind is too great to fly, so I change back, but he’s already gone from my sight.

His head pokes out over the ledge. “What are you waiting for?” and once again, he leaves my sight.

I creep forward, the wind slams into my face as I peer down into the depths. Kiko slides down the incredibly steep cliff face, his fingers digging into the rock to slow his descent.

He’s not making us go down there, is he?

Kiko looks up at me, raises an eyebrow, then jumps. He plunges into the depths.

He is.