I cleared out my eyes for longer than I strictly needed- I mistook the sunlight conquering the horizon for yet more of the imprints dancing in my sight.

That is to say, it was somehow dawn, and I had narrowly avoided a migraine.

I had been holding onto Rilu for dear life, but I quickly found him nowhere near my grasp. I was freefalling through the sky as was he, each with our own distinct sort of lacking elegance.

While I flailed and desperately sought for some purchase, he seemed to simply not be shifting, electing to descend in a limp stupor. I was too far away to get a look at him and I couldn't detect his Imprint, so all I could do was tell myself he was conscious and that somehow this wouldn't mean me barreling down to yet another inevitable untimely demise.

Confirming that part of my situation took an instant, yet the relief of having done so allowed me to relax for just long enough to take in the scenery.

The slab of yellow-white radiance peeking out from and through the array of clouds obscuring my view of the ground grew larger each moment, shyly peeking up as if to proclaim its turn. It then proceeded to violently throw everything into limbo for a sliver of time in the dawn.

This was just the time that highlighted our fall. The characteristic resplendent rays adorned the sky in a technicolor tapestry in their waltz throughout the light mists and currents of gas all so omnipresent yet nearly invisible in the sky. It was a time when the full range of this world was brought out. When the subtlest pieces of creation took part in the process to convince the night sky it had been usurped.

I know I'm going on and on here, but it truly was beautiful. The rays were warm, and even amidst my uncontrollable earthbound velocity their coat felt like home. It was hard to believe the worlds to be a cold dead place when they could naturally produce such things.

I reminded myself that was only because I gave meaning to the beauty. It was only because I saw more depth in the coldness. That the colors the world showed my eyes were painted in their most glorious whilst traveling the path to my memories.

I told myself I had more to worry about. And I did, namely the anticlimactic end that I was currently heading face-first toward.

I twisted myself in the sky and felt the sunlight's warmth. I imagined it exploding onto the scene, disrupting the carefully orchestrated array of the Web's replacement for mere stars with its own crescendo. The violent burst of growth and change. The impetus. The flame.

The metal formed into a cylindrical shape, tapered into curves at the edges. The runes I had imagined had been inscribed perfectly, brimming with meaning. I pointed it away from Rilu and exerted both dynamics of my will upon it.

[Potentia - Engine]

[Bound to Leaf, the Ranger]

[A hastily-constructed and inefficient Catalyst actualized and imbued with the runes of 'Beam', 'Blast', 'Force', and 'Fire' channeling toward a central point of release. Currently Overcharged with Intent, improving efficiency.]

Fire built up, and I was accelerating backward, toward Rilu. Slowly. It didn't provide all that much force- it was mostly heat.

I didn't have the mana to waste putting in an Input rune, and, even then, I wouldn't have been able to fit it. But that's an explanation for another time.

For now, I crashed (more accurately: nudged) into Rilu. He was unconscious, but on the edges of it. I suspected something to do with either blunt force trauma or mana overuse. Being a witness myself, those seemed the only two reasonable options.

In spite of my fanfare, I had finished all of these things in a matter of seconds. The world felt no slower, my life was not yet flashing before my eyes, I was just taking everything as it came.

I don't know why, but I felt guilty.

I shifted Potentia into a Radiant-attribute wand with an Enchant rune. I tapped him with it, and his eyes shot open. His breathing quickened, but he seemed to calm when he saw me. I gave him an awkward wave, falling parallel to him, my right-side up to his up-side down.

He seemed to be about to open his mouth, maybe to try to have a short talk, but I pointed downward to the sea of clouds below us. Even if we were fine now, it wouldn't stay that way.

"Can you save us?" I asked, more calmly than I expected.

"My Skill works through mana channels, and their integrity was damaged when I pushed too much to completely block the blast with what I had saved up. I'm in aftershock, so even if my wings heal using mana to make them work well enough to stop our acceleration is impossible. Maybe if I could-"

"Yes or no," I insisted.

"No, I can't. You've influenced me."

I laughed. It was the first time he said something like that without any sort of bitterness. I imagined the sarcasm helped.

"Yeah, didn't think so."

I reclined out, feeling the wind push against my back. My hair flew up in a tunnel and I watched the falling above and around us. Their shadows danced in the wind.

"This reminds me of that time before the ash storm. I don't take it that you have a new suspiciously applicable superpower to pull out of your ass this time?" I asked sardonically. Really, any awakening would probably work.

"Not unless you have anything to give me," Rilu said back, brushing his hair out of his antlers. It had gotten tangled. The comment held a familiar tinge of bitterness that pained me. It wasn't something to unpack for now.

There was silence. The roars of the wind rushing ahead of our ears from the horizon didn't do anything to abate the longing and restrictive lack of willingness to speak. These could very well have been our last words. Yet, as time ran short, there was too much to unpack. Too much to say. Too much to wish for. Too much to try.

As we tried to make things right, our fumblings only made that less likely.

I spoke at the same time as he did.

“I’m sorry-“ He began.

“Thank you-“ I began.

We laughed. I shifted my weight awkwardly forward, bobbing back and forth. He looked at me curiously, but as he realized what I was doing he seemed to mentally shrug and continued his thoughts.

I managed to get close enough to hold a finger to his mouth.

“I had a lot of fun. I’d say sorry, too, but you chose this,” I recalled some old memories, some people sharing their wisdom. I think it was funny that Mason, of all people, was the one who mentioned something about saying thank you instead of sorry. He was insulted by our surprise. In hindsight, he probably stole it, but based on his sincerity he believed it to be true. That was what mattered.

He didn’t speak. I needed a moment to collect my thoughts. Channeling my mediocre-at-best emotional multitasking abilities, I decided to fill the silence with a question.

“So how does the sun rise here? Wouldn’t an object get caught on some Worldbridges? How about gravity? Is it magic?”

“I don’t know, to all of them. Ask a [Scholar],” Rilu sighed. I patted him on the shoulder and gave a content sigh. When I touched him, a small Manifestation appeared in front of me. Hope sparked into me that we had unlocked an ability that would allow us to escape this and-

[Duelist, Level 21]

I was sorely disappointed. It was nice to see that he had leveled up, though. Perhaps from fighting the beast?

I caught myself retreating into my head. If there was any time to try and live in the moment, it was now.

“Wow, that’s unsatisfying.”

“Tell me about it,” Rilu laughed. We were doing a lot of that. It felt at least partially sincere.

What else was one to do when faced with… this. The very ground we stood upon falling alongside us to our deaths.

“But, uh, yeah,” I began, scratching the back of my head and averting my eyes. Certainly a promising start. I cleared my throat.

“Thank you. For everything, I mean. Ever since I got here, I’ve felt so alone. And I’m sorry for not being able to recognize that I wasn’t. No- Actually, wait, thank you for sticking with me even when I had my eyes and heart elsewhere. I was surrounded by friends back home, too, but-“

This time, he cut me off. I put my finger back up to his mouth to mirror him, but he spoke through it, recognizing it for the attempt at humor that it was.

“By the gods, we’re both disasters, aren’t we?” he smiled a very, very familiar smile. A smile that chilled me to the bones.

His next words mirrored my thoughts-

“Why do we have to die here?"

The shared sentiment didn’t stop my sarcastic reply.

“Gravity, I suppose.”

He slapped me. It was far too weak a slap to even seem in jest; my head barely budged an inch. He was being too careful with me. It would take some time to get used to my new Vitality.

‘Some time, huh?’ I wondered.

“Asking ‘why’ for anything tells me that you have an idea, speaking from experience. Care to share?”

“That, I am still working on.”

And then he asked me something he had never asked before.

“Leaf, can you help me?”

I knew he was serious because I felt blobs of his Imprint enter my perception. I felt around my psyche, and the resonance was difficult to define. I held out my palm in a motion for him to do the same.

“Is there anything that we can do?”

“You know that that’s the wrong question.”

‘Right, there’s magic here,’ I thought and pondered for a moment.

“What will we do?”

I had gotten my answer previously, but I wanted to ask it again. His answer was as warm as the sunlight.

“Either we figure this out, or we die. Last words are no better than standing around waiting for it,” Rilu said. By the tone of his voice, he was quoting someone, but it was lost on me.

I hadn’t spoken in a while. He must have thought me dumbstruck, but I was thinking with him. Trying to see what I could do in my mind.

“Rilu, put your hand to mine.”

He did as he was asked.

“Do you have a plan?”

“As much of one that you have. Keep trying. I’ll support you as I can.”

He put his hand to mine, and I sealed them together with a string of mana. I pumped more mana through it, cycling it around and feeling my perception deepen in a small area around us. I felt a bit more, and a bit more, and then we broke through the clouds.

Spires of rock framed the early morning sea, extending across any horizons we saw, bounding back and toward us as we fell, as if in a vain attempt to catch us safely. It seemed to chase after us instead of the setting sun. I appreciated the gesture, but all the light and deep blue could offer was that mere comfort.

He closed his eyes and I gazed at his face. The smile had faded to a grin, but the spirit was still there. Painful and beautiful echoes reverberated throughout my psyche, old, bittersweet memories making themselves known. I felt a bit more of his Imprint. I sought more.

I looked at his antlers and remembered the awe of the fantastical. How alone I was when I arrived here. How much of an outcast I had felt since Olivia died, and how much that way I had felt before I had anything else to compare it to.

Rilu’s Imprint grew deeper.

‘There’s magic here,’ I believed.

He searched his soul, I searched mine. Peeling back the layers together to see what we could find. We didn’t speak, we just slowly felt through our connection. Me moreso than him, but the squeeze of my fingers that had at one point become intertwined with his told him all he needed to know.

I felt his loneliness and doubts as I felt mine. I felt his apathy and hate as I felt mine. I felt his love and care as I felt mine. I felt his fear as I felt mine.

‘There’s magic here,’ I like to think that we believed, both in our own ways.

We ate and ate away at ourselves, our lives flashing before our eyes at our own wills, not the whims of life and death. There was a core somewhere.

I didn’t know what Rilu’s was.

But as I thought back to the things I experienced on that day, the things I was still trying to wrap my head around, the feelings I was still trying to make true to my consciousness, I felt it.

I touched defiance.

I nudged his Imprint just as he figured it out as well. The warmth of the sun became more beautiful to me as I reached out and took it for myself.

And I pushed it through everything I could, through my mana and through my connection with Rilu from it. Through our Imprints I promised to blaze a warpath and eventually I learned I didn’t need to.

I wasn’t running out. Rilu had one as well. He was one as well, a firelight, defiant against how cold the world could be. I nodded and let go, pushing away from him as the Davy Jones’ Locker drew ever nearer.

In him, I rekindled my firelight, which had grown scarily faint as I tasted the inevitable. Falling to it would have been the end; overcoming it made the world seem just that little bit more bearable.

I eyed the Manifestation- my Analysis of Rilu- suspiciously as it seemed to warp.

And then it changed.

[Firelit Duelist, Level 21]

Our Imprints were as one, I knew what would happen next. I lost feeling of his and things went back to normal, but a physical pressure weighed upon my senses.

To Gradient, the records flowing within and around the mere drop of mana he managed to siphon through his destroyed body roared with a harmonious tune, growing into a crescendo as the drop of fire began to grow and built upon itself.

It became a corona heralding a momentous release of energy. Until it froze, as if in stasis, and the flow reversed. The flames folded upon themselves, slowly, becoming more tangible. I could taste the electrifying power the held the promise of, I could feel the coating of shifting static just beyond the edge of my skin. I could hear the wind begin to capitulate under the phantasmal weight of the royal-purple flames lined in neon blue flashes of starlight.

'Oh.'

Rilu was trying to heal himself, running the shred of mana imbued with boundless conceptual power through the parts of his body Gradient had deemed broken, but there was far too much. I looked down, and I saw that we couldn't be more than 200 meters from the ground.

There was no way I could decelerate fast enough.

I wasn't as sad about it as I thought I would be. Perhaps it was the rush of understanding that came with a synchronized Imprint or perhaps it was Something Else Entirely. I suppose I just knew that my feelings weren't unique.

Or, less depressingly, that I wasn't alone. I knew Rilu felt the same. I knew I had changed him. Whatever it was I had brought along, I had helped him along his path.

So, if I died, he would carry it on, and-

"Charge Vitality, you fucking idiot!"

Well, at the very least some of my vocabulary rubbed off on him. I saw the shifting seas come nauseatingly close as I felt my own mana burn.

My insides were set ablaze as I was caught on a descending, resisting net woven of invigorating flame. Needles of sparkling motivation made their way within my mana, boosting its effects and forging my body into a machine.

As the pressure from the landing ruptured my organs repeatedly, I felt no pain or discomfort. I left the realm of a mortal, for just a moment, and the impact passed through me harmlessly.

It was as if my very existence knew that I would not fall here.

The remnant forces of my chaotic landing slingshotted me skyward.

A dragon flew beside me.

At the crest of my ascent, where my momentum hit zero for the first time in multiple minutes, I saw the sun.

I still didn't know how it worked, but that was ok. For now, I spiritually gave its warmth a bear hug, as I did with the far deeper yet far less ancient warmth of Rilu's fires which coursed through my veins.

I looked at the sun and the dragon in my peripheral vision and the sea and the columns of land built into towering monoliths from the rolling plains and the boundless horizon that heralded forever ever more of these things.

And, for the first time, I let myself love it.

I would make it back. I knew I would, it was a fact. There was no way that I wouldn't.

And when I made it back, I would have so many more stories to tell and people to see with new eyes. My own eyes. Not a starting point I had mistaken for the universal ideal.

I loathed my escapist tendencies and I was terminally homesick.

But, fuck, things could still be beautiful. I wouldn't come home as I hoped to if I deprived myself of that.

The flames blossomed upward and embraced me as I began to fall.

-

I landed with an anticlimactic 'plop' in the sea, stargazing at the cool-colored mirror of the sun diminishing above me. The product of Rilu's awakening.

The man himself was floating behind me. Not in the water as I was, mind you.

I had gotten far too used to these things.

He kneeled down on liquid water as if it were concrete and tapped me to attention. I shifted my weight down and treaded water.

"Hm?" I asked, wondering why he felt the need to break the silence.

His face twisted with relief and conflict and a frantic search for what to say. He seemed to decide on stern anger and held a hand to my ear so I wouldn't avert my gaze.

"Leaf. Just because that worked perfectly doesn't mean that you were right. Never do that again."

I snorted in semisarcastic affirmation.

He breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed into the saltwater by my side.

The final booms of rocks falling into ocean faded and the fireworks finally cleared.