“Well, are you ready?”

The bird was perched on a limb above as Mark scoured the area for Astoria….

Despite it being near the city before the Gift, whatever mysterious powers that had enacted on mother nature had turned the sparse plant life into a thriving jungle.

“Just a moment, I need to find someone…”

The bird tilted its head, before…. Eyes began surfacing all over its already disfigured form- each in a different direction as it took flight…

“Understood, I will assist you in this endeavor.”

With the Third Sentinels assistance, Astoria was easily found… She had actually been dangling from one of the high branches of a tree, barely lodged in such a way as to not fall. Without, the Sentinels help, finding her might have taken significantly longer.

And so with everything set, the two set off to meet the supposed master….

According to the bird- who seemed to simply call himself Third- his master was in a remote location south of Brazil…. Normally that sort of distance would make me reconsider my new friendship, but I guess i’m not normal anymore am I?

It only took me a few hours to get the hang of flight, even if I could barely fly half as fast as I could run. Being able to simply fly over everything would still lead to a lot of time saved, and my speed kept increasing with continued use. That also seemed to be all my skill needed in order to rank up!

Aerokinesis: (Tier II) Uncommon

You are able to create and control air at will.

Gives basic knowledge on summoning air from the Aether.

Boosts Dexterity and Will by 2%

In the end, I had to settle for completely encasing myself in a hardened layer of air before moving it in its entirety in a southern direction. Even doing this I could feel countless imperfections as I could barely move being constrained by my own powers. Maybe I could rework it at some point to allow mid air combat? At the moment that would be impossible, but certainly something to look into for the future.

My enhanced stats once again showed their use as we continued flying well into the night and through the next morning, only then do we actually arriving at the tip of Florida….

We had debated briefly on whether crossing would be a good idea or not, but seeing as I could hold my flight for so long it shouldn’t be an issue.

The next few hours could be described as the most boring of my life…. At least as I flew over what remained of America I could watch as people fought for their lives, and died to protect their loved ones. One individual had decided that flying objects made for great target practice and emptied a few rounds in our direction… A quick use of Hydrokinesis ended his fatal decision.

Only a few moments had actually brought me out of the monotonicity of the waves. The first being when an enormous whale, or what I could only describe as something whale sized, jump out of the water. It managed to reach over a hundred feet in the air before arcing its way down and slamming something encased in its jaws onto the water's surface.

The whale creature seemed perfectly fine from the normally fatal fall, however the victim of its vicious body slam had become paste, slowly drifting on the surface of the waves… The scale of such had actually sent waves over ten feet in every direction as the massive monstrosity slowly lapped at its meal below the waves…

Whoever managed to survive on the islands in between North and South America must be extremely unlucky…..

The second had been when a storm had blown in over the horizon….. At first I had ignored it, continuing my slow flight to South America, that's when I saw the flashes….

Below the storm, countless bolts of lightning fried the ocean…. That's not good…..

Even Third seemed nervous under the pressure of such a storm. Our entire views were filled with clouds as the storm seemed to eclipse everything….

“Young sir…. You wouldn’t by chance have an ability to counter this storm…. Would you?”

Third slowly turned his hea- no now he has multiple heads… I don’t know when that happened but they all seemed to be in various states of distress…..

“What if I said I didn’t…” Sorry buddy, Mark doesn’t have a bag full of tricks…. Just a bag full of arms….

Third’s normally powerful wings faltered as if he could barely maintain his flight with the burden of that news…

“Well that's rather unfortunate…. Would you allow a selfish request should you choose to continue forward?”

Third’s dead, cloudy eyes stared into mine, as all his heads swiveled to look at me.

“Can I go into your spatial ring?”

“I don’t think that's how it wor-” Before I could finish, Third rushed me before biting down on the hand that held my ring… In an unconscious knee-jerk reaction I slapped him away…. Only for him to disappear….

“Well shit… guess it can….” I looked at Astoria, who I had been dangling over the ocean using telekinesis as that was easier than carrying her…. One quick slap later and she also joined Third in my ring….

Facing towards the quickly approaching storm, I could only laugh at what will probably be a breeze…. God I hate myself sometimes….

I only had a few more moments to gather my thoughts before I was swallowed….

At first all I could see were clouds before light came in the form of deadly bolts.

Hundreds of bolts striking the water at once created a deafening boom that seemed to never end. It didn’t take long for the storm to realize another path of least resistance… And that's when the lightning arced through the sky to meet Mark...

Every one of my hairs stood on end as bolt after bolt struck my helpless form….

At first I had tried diving under the waves only to find that the lightning would continue through the water until it completely discharged. Entire schools of fish were fried as the bolts carelessly ended everything in their path… Resurfacing, I had attempted to gather dust or any other particles into a solid barrier, only for it to immediately dissipate under the torrent of rain that began to fall. Even the thin barrier of ice I had attempted to erect melted and blew apart under the combination of warm rain and lightning…..

Whenever I tried to block the lightning with my wind, it would simply bend around it, finding hidden weaknesses in its structure to get to me.

With nothing else I could do other than wait, I sat there…. In the sky….

And my whole world was blown apart….

Bolt after bolt struck me, my muscles spasmed as false signals commandeered my body. I lost the feeling in my body as my flesh was singed….

I don’t think this is normal… Every strike left some foreign energy circulating through my body…. It felt like coffee was being directly injected into my bloodstream.

My heart began to beat faster and faster, as my blood rushed around my body as if it was racing some invisible opponent.

Chunks of flesh were blown off with each consecutive blast, while pressure formed behind my eyes as if to force them out of their sockets.

I attempted to scream but my jaw wouldn’t respond, only able to verbalize my distress in a loud hum. Through this, I felt another strike descending to push me into oblivion. Stripped of my senses and barely alive, I tried to fend it off through the haze over my brain. I felt resistance for an instance until I was immediately overpowered and struck once again...

Although the pain was nothing compared to my past experiences, my body had other opinions. I could feel it forcing my mind into unconsciousness as my control over Aerokinesis finally slipped and I plunged into the dark waters….

Waves gently crashed upon the rocky shore, slowly dragging sand and other small rocks deeper and deeper into the oceans depths, while those same currents deposit stolen minerals from other banks…

Opposite this intimate interaction of nature was an enormous jungle, with a path clearly defined leading into its depths…

From this path a deeply tanned young man calmly walked to the edge of the shore holding a rusted bucket and an enormous harpoon.

The young man set the bucket down, before taking up his spear and waiting….

Several minutes later, the harpoon flashed forward before being pulled back to reveal three fish, all perfectly speared through their middle.

With a motion that could only have worked with practice, he simply shook the harpoons end towards the bucket as the fish flew perfectly inside.

He repeated this twice more before setting his harpoon aside and proceeding to feel the surrounding rock at random. Some he would feel for several seconds while others took whole minutes until he seemed to accomplish his hidden objective….

Retrieving his bucket, he began to quickly scour the shore for clams, each time going exactly to the place where another had buried itself. During this hunt, he also picked various plants like orach and seaweed until the bucket was brimming with food.

Satisfied with his haul, the young man turned to fetch his harpoon before freezing on the spot….

Out of the corner of his eye, something white clung to the shore some way down….

Careful to avoid making noise, he grabbed his harpoon before slowly approaching the creature… As he approached, he could make out the figure of a relatively health male with extremely pale skin. His hair was a jet black, and he had a relatively average face, although that was only because of the frown that somehow clung to it despite being unconscious…. There also seemed to be a tattoo of a large eye on his forehead.

Poking the man with the blunt end of his harpoon, the other human grumbled something before rolling over…

The tanned man quickly headed into the forest before returning a short while later with an improvised stretcher and an even younger boy, also deeply tanned.

They carefully maneuvered the pale man onto the stretcher before covering him a bit with some oversized leaves off to the side…. Unfortunately he had no clothing other than a shiny ring on his hand….

What was normally a short trip, took nearly an hour and a half as the two hauled the unconscious man back to their home…. Getting through the thick foliage and avoiding the various natural pitfalls had taken the majority of their time. A small opening in the flora signaled relief for the two boys, as they walked through into a clearing with twenty hand crafted huts of various sizes.

Surrounding the opening into the clearing were various amazonian warriors, men and women that looked barely into their twenties with various tattoos gracing their fit bodies. Many had primitive swords and clubs in their hands, although each seemed to be far more dangerous than they let on.

As they stood at ready, a small opening formed at the head of their formation letting a shriveled old man and woman through their group. The two were heavily decorated with furs and colorful feathers, and while the man held a gnarled staff interwoven with various vines, the woman had an enormous wooden bow on her back. Just like the staff, vines were woven into the wood strengthening its construction, and both easily towered over their owners.

The first one to speak seemed to be the old man as he slammed his staff into the ground twice in a silencing gesture.

“Soloman, why have you brought this white skin to our village? You know of the risk their kind pose these days, do you not?”

The old man focused on the young man with the harpoon, otherwise known as Solomon. In response, Solomon gently set the stretcher down before kneeling towards the elder in a reverential manor.

“Elder please. This one is not like the others, he may know what is happening…. Our own continue to grow ill as time passes, and the local forests are not providing what they once had. Even our dead seemed angered as they rise against us, we cannot survive sticking to old ideologies. Without outside help, we are doomed.”

Silence pervaded the clearing, not even the ambient sounds common to a jungle could be heard, something completely irrelevant to the situation.

“Bring him to the communal hut, we as elders, will take responsibility for him if you truly believe this.”

Solomon once again bowed deeply before standing to grab the stretcher.

As everyone departed to complete their own separate assignments, the elder woman continued staring off into the deep jungle…

“It is coming…”