Flying. Ever since I had gained the ability to experience Lenore’s memories and feel the sensation of flight within them, I had been hooked. I had flown within my dreams, eventually, I had flown by hitching a ride in my Hallow and, near the end of my journey, I had been able to glide using a wing of Ice and repeated teleports. So far, I had never been able to truly fly under my own power and agency, even if the gliding had been quite close.

And now, that changed, now, with the Raven’s Shadow covering my back, I would be able to fly. I could hardly wait and despite my incredible exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep all afternoon, waiting for the Sun to go down. While some of my traits had reduced the effect of the Sun’s Curse on me by a huge margin, I wasn’t about to experiment with flight while being drained. I had no desire to find out that there was some sort of destructive component to the curse that kicked in when somebody was a certain distance from the ground or possible shelter, it was a risk I was simply unwilling to take, no matter how excited I was.

Luckily, I had another fairly exciting thing to consider, namely what Runes I wanted to scry for in the Astral River. Wind Rune Mastery and Darkness Rune Mastery were both eligible for a new rune, though I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted. A part of me wanted to search the Wind Magic for a Flight rune, but I doubted I could get that yet. Maybe pressure, as an integral part of flight would work and the concept was part of my recently developed wind-based acceleration spell, so I should be able to get it.

As for Darkness, I truly wanted the ‘Magic’ rune, simply because it was stupidly versatile, fitting into essentially any runic formation. It wasn’t as efficient as some more specialised Rune, but it was a Darkness Rune, so I could slot it in for other elements that I had less affinity with and the efficiency would even out.

Shifting into the Astral River was easy, as was looking for the different elemental streams. Wind was quite faint, as I was in our underground shelter but there was Darkness, both from the darkness underground and because the Sun above was going down for the day and the summer was rapidly fading into autumn, bringing Darkness into ascendance.

Delving into the playful stream of Wind Magic, I found what I was looking for almost instantly. It wasn’t flight, even trying for that gave me a headache, but it turned out my second choice, Pressure, was a fragment of it.

With Darkness, things were a little more complicated. I remembered that the Curse Rune was part of the Magic Rune and by using it as a foundation, I could reach for Magic. It wasn’t easy, I could feel parts of the Astral River ebb and flow around me, almost as if I was trying to put a square peg into a round hole, but it worked. Not smoothly, but it worked and I could feel the Rune coalesce in my mind, while the Astral River around me shuddered just a little bit.

Relaxing my mind, I returned to reality, leaving the Astral River behind. It had taken more time than expected but maybe that was for the best. Now, the Sun had vanished behind the horizon and twilight was taking over the world, so I could finally fly. Not too high just yet, there was that tale of Icarus and while I doubted my wings could melt, I was not about to chance it.

Stepping out of our temporary shelter and into the gloom of dusk, I took a long, deep breath, pushing away all the worry, anxiety and excitement that had been fermenting in my gut today. I knew there were things that could go wrong with the wings but I had a literally epic item and I would be a fool to ignore the options it provided.

Feeling the faint connection between me and the cloak, I carefully channelled Astral Power into it, happy that the gloomy light around me meant I didn’t have to worry about channelling Astral Power into them the right way to activate the flight instead of concealing my soul.

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The moment my Astral Power went into the silky fabric, I realised that it was only taking a small part of my power, namely the Wind Magic Power within it, the rest was wasted. Luckily, I had enough control to only channel that element, essentially using Wind Magic on the cloak, to keep the waste down and my efficiency high, but that was for later. For now, I could feel the cloak on my back ripple and split, the shadowy fabric flowing upwards and spreading across my upper arms and shoulders.

Turning my head, I had to blink for a moment when I realised that the cloak didn’t just give me the ability to fly, it literally gave me a pair of wings, each about a metre and a half in length, like the cloak was, and coated in black raven feathers. The wings didn’t quite look corporeal, there was a strange, wispy quality to them, with shadowy feathers dropping from them every few seconds, only to crumble into black dust that vanished in the wind moments later. Simply by stretching my mental muscles into them, I realised that these wings weren’t there to flap, they were a mix between a symbol and a focus, allowing me to magically lift myself in the air, no muscle strength required. Just magical strength, and quite a bit of that.

Flexing the Wind Magic I was now channelling into the wings, I felt my feet leave the ground as I slowly floated, the entire experience strangely surreal. There wasn’t any identifiable pressure, nothing that indicated how I was moving upwards, I could only see that I was. Maybe if I was going faster, I might feel the acceleration but the way things were now, it was the smoothest elevator ride I had ever been on, only without the sensation of standing on the floor.

That part was a little disorienting, a part of my mind was insisting I was falling, while another was just as convinced that I was rising, both parts warring for dominance while the majority was focusing on controlling the magic. Maybe that was the easiest way to learn, let the instinctive parts of my mind scream in the back of one of my additional mental processes, where they didn’t influence my active mind too much, while that active mind figured out how exactly these wings worked. Or how the magic I was channelling through them worked, the wings didn’t really have an active component. Just magic, flowing through them and then outwards, doing something I couldn’t have done before, namely lifting me into the sky. Wondering just how the normal disconnect between magical movement and physical movement was solved, I focused on the magic billowing outwards, trying my best to understand what was going on there.

Sadly, trying to look over my shoulder to see magical processes going on behind my back was difficult, so I closed my eyes instead and completely focused on the magic I was channelling. Even after the Raven’s Shadow changed it, it was my magic and the Raven’s Shadow was my item, created by me and at least partially made from my power. It was mine, in all the senses that mattered, so I felt that I should be able to feel it out like I could feel out my own arms and legs.

Not that it truly worked, the way the magic was moving through the item was incredibly complex, there were some structures within them that I faintly recognised as runes. Not that my Wind Rune Mastery was good enough to understand them, not even close, but they were runes. Just, from what little I could tell, the style was more akin to my own Ice, Darkness and Blood Runes than it was to the other styles of Runic Magic, making me wonder where the difference came from. Maybe because I had picked up my original magical styles on Mundus and these new ones when looking over the shoulder of my students here on Earth, Terra now. I wasn’t sure, but it might become important at some point.

But not now, now, I just wanted to understand how the magic worked.

My musings were interrupted by a sharp gust of wind and when my eyes flickered back open, I realised that I had ascended a lot further than planned, putting me above the ruined houses in the area but also above all the trees and everything. Now, I was looking at the world from a vantage that would put me level with the roofs of some of the larger buildings before they had collapsed.

And, maybe more importantly, I could see a lot further than normal and there, quite some distance away, I could see what might be smoke rising into the dusky sky. It might be something we’d want to check out soon.