Chapter 10: Ch. 6: Reaching for the Sun Part I

"Storm Wyvern, Dracominuere tempestum- generally considered the runt of the litter among known wyvern species. These pseudo-dragons which lack breath attacks are as large as a grown man from head to claw. Their hides come in shades of gray, sky blue and rarely, one may spot an albino among their offspring. However, their diminutive size should not fool you; unlike their bigger cousins, these wyverns are pests because of their swarming habits. Given enough time, weyrs may grow large enough to impede aership travel and may need culling. Their leather is used for everyday articles and the most basic of adventurers’ gear. Are considered a harbinger of mana storms which lends them their moniker...”-from Philiarz Oonswarner's Bestiary for Adventurers

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T’duos’day was the day the sole inhabitants of the Sturm Keep’s caverns had been waiting for. That is, not counting the various fauna that prowled in and around the aerlands like the storm wyverns and electric fexocotls. With the apex predator making their presence felt, they were nowhere to found. As for Arthur, the conditions were just right for what he was about to do; the weather agreed with him.

After a light breakfast, he made sure to recheck the Azure Surfer to ensure everything was in order and moved to the testing phase. Not unsurprisingly, the craft bore his weight gracefully. Even after piling crates of things on the board, it continued to hover unhindered. He had no way of knowing how much mana expenditure was being churned out but it couldn’t have been something to scoff at. Unfortunately the only mana measuring artifact was embedded into a forge somewhere in the workshop and could not be appropriated for the task.

For actual flight, Aeskyre led Arthur to another cave system where the cavity was large enough to berth a couple of dwarven aerships. It opened to the outside, in plain view of the rising Erythean sun.

Arthur was dressed in his aviator jacket, leather boots and a turtleneck sweater; aerlands were generally cold places and some of their highest parts could have snow. He’d also draped a scarf halfway around his face to keep out the early morning chill from his nose as well as leather gloves to protect his hands. Contrarily, Aeskyre was clad in a sundress that stood in defiance to Sturm’s Keep wintry disposition. She stood barefoot, unbothered by the cold rock of the caverns.

Standing there in companionable silence, they watched the sun rise through the haze of faraway mist as they waited for the sky to brighten up. Across the vista, aerlands floated across the sky like pods of orcas stalking through the fog. Some had patches of greenery while others were bare as if they’d been scoured clean by the vagaries of weather. It was Arthur’s first time outside and the draconic woman seemed to be of the mind to let her cooped up guest soak in the ambience of his first excursion.

Outside of dwarven blueprints, it was also the first time that Arthur was seeing aerships in the flesh, or given their derelict and weatherbeaten state, in their bare bones. Some worse off specimens had their wood bleached almost white, giving the resemblance of ribs jutting through the carcass of a beached whale. Yet despite that, Arthur could not refute the otherworldly fascination that tugged at his mind. And that was without mentioning the fact that there was also the bone deep feeling that he was indeed a stranger in stranger lands.

“Ready?” Aeskyre prompted, rousing Arthur from his reverie.

“Yeah―as ready as I’ll ever be.” Arthur replied nervously. He pulled down the goggles from his forehead and made sure that his scarf fit snugly, tucking in the loose ends. Then he stepped onto the Azure Surfer holding the mana sail away from the board.

“I shall follow in your wake ,” Aeskyre stated. Arthur nodded mutely. He couldn’t shake the feeling that her reassurance had the warmth of a warden telling a prisoner that they were being watched.

‘Okay, let’s do this’ Arthur thought. With a deep exhalation, he slotted in the sail’s mast and waited. Barely a beat passed as a familiar turquoise glow shone in his face, making his skin tingle as mana was funneled into the sail’s collectors. Arthur felt the mana thrumming through the boom beneath his hands.

Without fanfare, the small engine flared to life with the soft whine of an electric motor. As the board gained a bit of lift, he adjusted his stance to find his balance. The heel of his right boot, delicately positioned above the pedal shifter slowly eased downwards, shunting more mana to the Aertherite crystal as the craft compensated for his weight.

Eyeing the opening of the cave, Arthur fed a little more to the engine which responded with short sputtering bursts of thrust for forward motion. The Azure Surfer glided across the cave floor towards the lip where a sheer drop disappeared to the clouds below.

‘This is it,’ Arthur thought, releasing the breath he had been holding. He tensed his legs and shoulders and then gradually depressed the pedal to divert even more power from the mana sail―The Azure Surfer cleared the edge of the cavern and took a steep dive that almost wrenched the air from his lungs.

Arthur’s mind ran a mile a minute in panic, in the assumption that it hadn’t worked as he approached the clouds meandering at the bottom of the cliff. That was before he realized he’d let go of the pedal shifter―

As the air whistled past, Arthur shook off his stupor and reoriented the board's engine to face the clouds coming to meet him. Then he re-established contact between his heel and the pedal prompting renewed clamor from the engine.

The Azure Surfer stopped acquiescing to the whims of Eryth’s gravity as the engine picked up steam and the mana sail flared brighter. The Azure Surfer’s momentum slowed then reverted to the opposite direction putting Arthur in a coasting course parallel to the cliff face. Speed picked up, and in no time, he was hurtling past the mouth of the cave. He caught a momentary glimpse of Aeskyre with her arms akimbo, nonplussed as if his fall had been within her expectations.

Turning back to his flight, Arthur cackled gleefully as the wind muffled his laughter. He kept his eyes peeled ahead, dodging outcropping ledges and vegetation sprouting from aerland’s bluff, ascending higher still until he left Sturm’s Keep behind him. He breached the clouds shrouding the upper peaks of the mount and emerged into the wide blue yonder.

There, the risen sun painted the sky in motley strokes of reds, oranges and yellows. It was exhilarating and worth committing every reminiscence of it. The azure went on for leagues with no form of curvature whatsoever. Unobstructed, his eyes drank in the view. Whether Eryth was flat or a super planet so big its curvature couldn’t be seen was not something he dwelled on.

The sky was of a richer shade of blue, more so than his home. It awed him to no end as it seemed impossibly higher than he was used to. Layers upon layers of clouds were segmented into different formations, soaring high above yet he could distinguish which type ended where.

‘Like an ocean’s depth zones’, he mused. The sight brought a tear to his eyes; flying had never felt so good.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” commented Aeskyre as she levitated alongside.

“Yea, Eryth’s so big,” affirmed Arthur

“Mmh, that she is. Still yourself for a while―”

“I am definitely not liking the sound of that.”

Aeskyre sidled close to him and wrapped her clawed hands around his waist. The action rekindled the memory of the time he was almost throttled to death by the same hands that so gingerly held onto him.

“ Wha— what are you doing?” exclaimed Arthur as he tried to squirm.

“Be still.”

“Lady, sometimes I forget how eccentric you are.”

She planted her feet right behind him and tested her footing. The Azure Surfer’s engine did not show any overt signs of being taxed and the mana sail did not show any change either.

“Sturdy…” Aeskyre hummed. “ We have yet to test its limits. Hmm―see if you can follow,” she added, grinning toothily. The woman stepped onto the air, keeling headfirst before letting herself drop like a bomb. Arthur intuited what she was getting at and pitched the Azure Surfer forward.

Killing off the power, he disengaged the sail and leaned into gravity, moving after the dragon getting further away. Wind tore at his scarf as he hurtled in gravity’s embrace. He grinned as he re-engaged the mana sail feeling a lurch of acceleration as he gained on her.

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The duo's impromptu game of tag pushed the Azure Surfer through its paces. They zipped through the space between aerlands. Aeskyre executed aerial maneuvers that would have snapped someone's neck while Arthur tried to compensate for the jarring motion of her curves.

Once or twice he’d come close to planting face first into a cliff wall around the next bend before he caught himself. Thrice he'd scraped the walls of the towering floating cliff while rueing the inefficiency of the mana sail as a steering rudder. Despite that —the Azure Surfer was fast; only his response time was wanting. Unless he became an expert surfer, its maneuverability would not hold a candle to wyverns . Balancing on the board was enough work.

Nonetheless, the chase did have an upside. There was the awe of seeing the ancient castle keep in its entirety, and the exotic scenery sprawled around it. It was the only edifice still standing after millenia had scoured the land.

Most remnants like the free standing colonnades of chipped marble that might have been a walkway had fared worse. Tie beams and plinths lay broken, a seedbed for moss and other stubborn flora that took to the cracks.

Once in their circuit, they had flown in the shadow of a smaller aerland. It had been too dark to see what was underneath and he'd caught goosebumps from seeing and asteroid sized rock just hovering above his head.

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The two fliers also crossed several marooned ships torn asunder and spilling their guts of barrels and rotten cargo. Long past, some of the barrels that had been broken into and picked clean of their contents by storm wyverns and whatever passed for scavengers around those parts.

Arthur also saw cannons which he would have loved to study but they had been melted into slag. Scorched gouges running along the ship's hulls were hard to miss and some of them seemed to have burned from the inside. The sight of an aership torn in twain sent an inadvertent shiver crawling down his spine. There was no doubt about it that the damage had been done by Aeskyre. Even with a body the size of a large business jet there was no winning no matter how many cannons the ships would have brought.

All said, Arthur lost count of the number of ships in the graveyard. He’d passed them from afar, never lingering as he flew after the dragon in her humanoid simulacra. He had an itch to explore the place. To see what untold treasures lay hidden by the wreckage; intact aerostat floats in undamaged hulls for one or navigation instruments if any survived. There were arguably other things a dragon would scoff at but a human would consider valuable.

The last of their flight looped them around the main aerland's back where they passed through a waterfall misting in the sky throwing double rainbows in the air. Afterwards they went back to the cave from whence they’d exited. And they were just in time to avoid a mana storm.

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Not so long after their excursion the two residents were cooped up in the keep as fierce gales battered against the sturdy walls like a mob of titans. Time and again, loud peals of thunder would cause the cavern to tremble but Aeskyre assured him the keep had weathered worse.

’ A storm on steroids,’ Arthur opined as they sat down to a brunch.

“What plans have you next?” Aeskyre asked, dribbling copious amounts of honey over her pancakes.

Arthur looked up from his notes, scrunched his face as if he was thinking hard and shook his head, “I have no idea but I want to get some rest for a few days. Maybe I’ll try tinkering with storage enchantments. I want to get that Locus affinity as soon as possible.”

He paused to consider the woman’s reaction before he added,

“ Now that the theoretical has become reality, I might want to prep the workshop before I start building a full size aership engine.”

“Hmph, hardly restful,” she sniffed. “ One might think you are trying to overcompensate for something.”

“Er, short of twiddling my thumbs there isn’t much to do around here.” He said hesitantly.’ Except for those thaumic equations for pyr I keep putting off, ’ he thought.

After that morning, he was eager to step out more wyverns be damned. “ I just want to see the world out there,” he blurted.

“Hmm, suit yourself. Do you partake of alcoholic beverages?”

‘Huh? You’re not going to stop me?’ Arthur thought as he blinked owlishly. Aeskyre’s glare reminded him that she’d asked him a question. He promptly tripped over his words to answer.

“Ah,” he scratched at the back of his name. “ I think I do,” he said. “ But…not to the point of taking leave of my senses.”

“Is that so? I never took you for the type.”

“Why? Think I look too soft for you?”

“On the contrary. I would think that you would know to hold your liquor.”

“Reason being?”

“You have the body of someone who looks like they are used to doing menial work. Your muscles are well defined, there are small scars at the joints of your fingers and calluses on your palms. Also, the first time I saw you, your skin was tan from laboring under the sun. Either you were a soldier, or a farmer. I would stake my gold on the former.”

“Haha, I am flattered.” Arthur chuckled wryly. “ You’re close but not quite. Believe it or not, amnesiac as I am, I don’t see myself being a trained killer.”

“Mayhap one of your kin was a soldier and trained you how to wield a weapon. I don’t see you gallivanting across farmland and shoveling manure.”

“Riiiight... because that would make more sense. I am inclined to agree.”

“I shall take leave for a few days. I trust that you’ll hold down the Keep while I am gone?”

“Uh yea. Where are you going though?”

“You should know better than to nose around in a lady’s business [Lost Worlder].”

“Fine, fine. At least melt down some ingots so that I can start working on the next project before you go. I don’t possess draconic magic that can melt fantasy metals the way you do.”

“ The forge should let you melt any of the metals using mana. It is easy to work it the way you would the heater plate in the kitchen.”

“It’s too slow.” Arthur protested, gauging the dragon’s reaction. When she did not berate him, he added “I don’t think there is a manual for using the forge anywhere in the library. That thing is old.”

“I concur with your sentiments,” Aeskyre replied in resignation. “Leave me these blueprints you speak of and shall have it done by the morrow. However, I will do no more. Anything else?”

“Not really,” Arthur shook his head. “ I think I marked everything else that was not fabricated the first time―you can find them on the blueprints at the top of the pile. ”

Aeskyre got up with barely a word and headed towards the study to look at the aforementioned blueprints. As for Arthur, he remained in the kitchen letting his thoughts stew. He put down his notebook from where he was looking at storage enchantments and rubbed at his bloodshot eyes.

Resolved, Arthur was ready to try his hand at making his bag of holding. Hopefully if he did manage to get a successful enchantment he would have his leather bag become a magic item. If the material was deemed too weak to hold the runes, then he’d have to wait until he was in civilization and get a custom order from an expert [Leatherworker] or a [Tanner].

“On second thought…” He groaned as realization dawned on him. “ There is no need to risk the duffel bag if there is a high chance that the enchanting would fail.” With that, he decided that he was not knowledgeable enough to attempt meddling with the only possessions he brought over from his world.

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