The golden light surrounding us faded gradually as we walked through the space between spaces.

“There,” exclaimed Sun, pointing.

It was unnecessary. I’d tried to deviate from the direction Ilfred had advised we take, and the magic in the portal steered me back insistently. I had the impression that if I forced it, the power would reply in kind. The whole every action has an equal and opposite reaction type deal. The circular opening that gradually revealed itself was one of bare rock. As we neared the exit, the light around us faded, revealing the secret cave of the waystones. It was a real pain in the arse that Alwyn had taken the stone keys with her. Being able to hop at will between the dozen or so sites would’ve been immensely useful in saving time.

“Mind your step,” I said, noticing the edge of the platform as we emerged from the glowing portal.

As soon as Sun’s foot had left the golden skin, the light vanished as if it had never been there, plunging us into near darkness. There was the faintest intrusion of sunlight across the chamber, which I assumed to be coming from the cave mouth. Summoning a torch, I handed it to Sun and pulled out another, forcing back the shadows.

“Better than a broken ankle,” I said, carefully walking over the jagged, uneven rock. Sun was glowering in a way that I hadn’t seen before, even when applying a hammer to my toes. “Are you ok?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you like to talk about it? There’s plenty of time. We’ve still got to get down to the port.”

She remained focussed on the way ahead, looking right through me.

“You don’t have to, of course. It was just an idea.”

After a few moments she replied. “I’m feeling… conflicted. Is that the right word?”

The large chamber narrowed to a small passage that had us both ducking to prevent a crack to the skull. “How so?” I asked.

“I never thought that when I ran I would ever see Daulf again, at least not in this lifetime. I expected the marshal’s forces to kill me on sight after the barbarians attacked. Fear of the other is bad enough in times of peace.”

“I can understand that, but what has you conflicted?”

The light grew stronger, as did the delightful smell of briny water that had been ever present in my seaside town.

“By the gods, I’ll have his heart or he will have mine,” she growled. “But if we should win…”

“What?”

“I betrayed my people. I went against the wishes of the rightful ruler. What will they think of me?”

“Were the others eager to wage war against the Dawnstar people?”

“Not until Daulf killed the clan heads. With no leaders and an ogre army at his back, no one dared oppose him.”

“Then you might be surprised at how they feel if we can beat him.”

We emerged into full daylight and a view that was at once stunning and terrifying. The crescent shaped port was situated at the edge of a huge, open bay. The sprawling cliffs formed spits that sealed the entrance at both sides, much the same as the crown of mountain ranges protected the northern access to Kherrash. The water was littered with debris and the burned husks of sunken ships. Fires raged in one of the southern most quarters of the city adjoining the massive docks. Dozens of vessels rowed slowly back out to join a far larger number that waited on the ocean itself. For every elegant boat carrying the colours of the barbarians manning it, there was one filled with ogres. What they lacked in woodworking skill they made up for in fuck Poseidon and the seahorse he rode in on bulk. They were basically just rectangular, floating towns with no hydronautical value whatsoever. That the brutish creatures could pilot it in a somewhat straight line was more down to luck than navigational skill. I saw one crash into the side of another which triggered an almighty ruckus as ogres attacked each other over the gunwales. The crack of a meaty whip carried up to us and the fighting simmered down with only a few corpses to show for it.

“They’re in a bit of trouble,” I said, noting the armada that had the port under a tight embargo. I estimated the number of barbarian vessels to be in the hundreds, and the ogre variant a quarter of that. In the distance, more ships were coming and going from a faintly visible coastline many miles across the sea. “Supplies?” I asked.

Sun nodded.

“Why haven’t they taken the place?”

“They have the numbers,” Sun replied, reading my mind. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Let’s get down from here and see what’s going on. I hope we get a better reception than I received at Pitchhollow.”

“I’m sorry,” Sun sighed.

“I wasn’t talking about you! I meant from the marshal, and from that prick Finneus. You were only following orders.”

She grunted.

“At least I hope you were only following orders. If I thought you liked a bit of toe smashing and casual torture in your free time, I might have to reconsider our party.”

“I’ll enjoy Daulf smashing far more, I can assure you.”

“That’s the spirit!” I replied, searching for the next safe step. “We just need to get down from here without breaking our necks.”

“You could always fly down and I’ll meet you at the foot of the cliff?”

The suggestion stopped me dead in my tracks. “I could, couldn’t I?”

“Does it mention any limits? Like your fated skill that can only be used once a day?”

I checked the description and shook my head. “Nothing except the range. I’m wondering if it’s because it doesn’t really give me any power? Any advantage over the enemies? I just get to scout for a mile in all directions when I need to.”

“Unless you wanted to pluck their eyes out, that is,” she replied.

“That would be helpful. I expect Daulf will be a fraction easier to kill if he was blind.”

“He’d be harder to kill. He’d go berserk.”

“I’d just go and have a cup of tea while he tired himself out.”

“Maybe leave the battle strategy to me?” Sun suggested.

“Probably for the best.”

She started to climb down the perilous face. “I’ll see you at the bottom.”

My worry for her safety was quickly assuaged. Sun was as sure footed as a mountain goat, hopping from ledge to ledge, swinging from tiny nooks by her hands when required. In less than a minute she was out of sight around a curve in the rock. It struck me as a remarkably dangerous way for the sorcerers to travel, even with the time saved. Ilfred had made no mention of teleportation, but I had to assume that was the method they used to get down from the secretive location. The scraggy bottom would be littered with the bones otherwise. I turned to see how obvious the cave mouth was, only to find it as sealed as the doors within the tutorial dungeon. When he’d said it was a one way journey, Ilfred had been right on the money.

I took a deep breath and slipped the skill into my quicklsot bar. Even coupling the eagle form with my superhero landing skill, I was still absolutely terrified of heights. I was potentially about to be at a height unknown, without the comfort of a nearby wall under my spider palms to boot. Hell, I wasn’t a fucking eagle. How would I even know how to fly? The avian species’ flight often came down to a gentle nudge from the nest and a reliance on thousands of years of genetic instinct. My instinct was to have a loosened sphincter when the vast drop stretched out before me. I looked around to make sure Sun was completely out of view and no one else was watching me. Feeling like a complete bell-end, I flattened my hands, put my arms out, and flapped. I stopped short of cawing like a bird. Unsurprisingly, my solid arms lifted me off the ground not one inch.

“You don’t have to fly,” I reminded myself. I could activate the skill, stand on the bluff, and shriek a bit. There was nothing that said I had to dive off straight away. I was in control of it.

“Fuck it,” I muttered, pressing the icon with my thoughts.

I’ll admit, I expected pain and lots of it. You don’t go from over two hundred pounds down to twenty or whatever eagles weighed without issue. What followed was painless, and utterly surreal. My view lowered as my body contracted into the new dimensions being created by the spell. As I shrunk, my vision improved dramatically, as if a world class telescope was strapped to my face. The distant homes of the port came into stark relief. The ogres rowing away were as gruesome as Sun had warned me. I leaned forward as my posture changed completely. I could feel the weight dropping away and the increased power the wind had as it tugged at my newly sprouting feathers. My bones shrank and hollowed, twisting without breaking into the new skeletal form. I felt what remained of my arms shift around to my back, accompanied by the bizarre sensation of wings growing as the limbs flattened and stretched out. My nose, forever a vague accompaniment to my vision, elongated into a wickedly curved beak.

I tried to cry out my amazement and the only sound was a high pitched trill that echoed in the cliffs. The vast openness before me no longer held any fear. The wind tousling my feathers became an almost living thing that I could feel in the deepest fibres of my body. The eddies and swirling patterns of the morning breeze painted a flourish across the horizon. Waves of thermal currents rose from the sun warmed earth, like vast columns of energy that I could harness.

All I needed to do was take a step forward and jump.

My talons chimed against the rock as my wings unfurled, and I bounded from the rim.

I’d jumped from a plane once as part of a charity drive for one of the bar patron’s kids who’d developed leukaemia. For the entire fall, I’d screamed with my eyes tightly closed. On the plus side, I’d earned over eight hundred quid and the little lass had made a full recovery.

This, though…

This was beyond any feeling I’d ever had. Love was one thing; a chemical realignment in the brain’s neurons or emotional bond created by a mystical power none could identify. Flying high above the Port of Ishalon was another thing entirely. Something primal; something dating back millions upon millions of years when the first amoeba flopped from the primordial ooze. An impression left long ago on the DNA of the upright monkeys that we now were, remembering a time when we didn’t just cling to branches, we flew from them.

My effortless form glided across the sky, picking up every little gust to retain energy. I could feel the steadying flutter of my tail feathers. I could feel the instinctive tilt of my wings as they sensed the currents all around me.

And the view…

My god, the view!

I’m not sure if it was the differing genetics making up my body that gave me an entirely new appreciation for the beauty of the land below. The blades of grass were more pronounced as I watched shrews and other small mammals scurry through them, rich in emerald splendour. Each wave created by the tide was a marvel as it broke towards the shore and dock, blue and grey foaming masterpieces. The buildings of the port, whether stone or wood, had the mark of their loving craftsman etched into them. Even the tiny fissures in the sprawling silver bluffs all around me spoke of the unrelenting, yet beautiful passage of time. An ageless wisdom held in the dark nooks.

I circled lower and found Sun navigating a precarious overhang that required her to dangle over emptiness for several feet, using only her fingertips for purchase. I held my eagle breath and squalled when she reached safety.

She turned to me and smiled warmly. I think it was the first time I’d seen the expression fully light up her face. “I’ll be down soon!” she yelled.

I cawed again, and whirled away on a rising thermal. Soaring higher than ever before, I felt I could touch the heavens themselves. For a fleeting moment, and if I’m being honest, it was a little more than a moment, I considered staying in the eagle form forever. Never in my life had I experienced the unfettered freedom offered by the skies. Fly, hunt, sleep, repeat. Animalistic desires and no responsibilities. No war. No worry. No pain.

I swooped down, tucking in my wings before using the acceleration to do a series of loops.

Such freedom…

Only the faces of those I loved pulled me back down from the dizzying heights. Feeling a pang of regret, I allowed gravity to draw me back to reality.