MIRRI

  Mirri pumped her wings faster as she approached the ledge.

  Sutai had made it ahead of her with only three stops for rest, hanging from handholds. Mirri would not be stopping a fourth time.

  Not unless she would have actually fallen. That would have been far worse than losing a little pride, but her current course was worth a little burn in her muscles. Nobody else was looking, except maybe the Arrival below her.

  Earning more scorn than she already had from Emma seemed unlikely. Especially over such a petty judgment, when Mirri's actual transgressions against her were weighing so heavily on the plan right now.

  All Mirri could do about that was ensure that Mahira didn't change her mind about the apprenticeship.

  Normally Arrivals formed enclaves nearby the settlements that had first welcomed them, but with this year's comet being a global event, Mirri could only pray these particular humans settled far from Tenashki, and took whatever subjects they retained away with them when all was said and done.

  The last thing she needed was more 'local' human nobility with a grudge against her.

  "I just found out magic is real like, twelve hours ago, I'm not going to risk teaching you how to turn this valley into an uninhabitable crater by accident until I understand the rules."

  The other one was still arguing with a Venatrix when Mirri landed, teetering on the edge of the cliff.

  Sutai reached out and grabbed her by the lapel, grasping the painted lightstone still affixed to Mirri's chest to steady her until she got her spear and her boots planted more firmly.

  "Thank you." Mirri huffed.

  The flight up under no load had been easier in some ways, but a strictly vertical climb didn't lend itself well to mana conservation.

  Maintaining perfect form was far more physically exhausting than simply throwing power at the air.

  "Do you have any more?" Sutai demanded, peering down at the rune-painted rock. "I know a concealment pattern that works on a scaleswidth of copper, I could do it with this."

  Venatrix Mahira was still arguing with Calen half a dozen lengths away, and the crack of another fireball was accompanied by pained screeching. The enemy was close, but the Venatrix would have called the retreat if things were untenable.

  Or at very least paused her interrogation.

  They had a moment to prepare for the next step, and Mirri needed whatever allies she could get, if the Arrivals she had accidentally mauled were going to hold a grudge about it.

  Even if she would have to find a way to bribe the prickly waster out of sinking her claws into Viran later, this would be a start.

  Mirri fumbled with the pouch below her dagger by feel, bypassing the empty glass on her left for a thin pottery vial in the center. She lifted the still-corked container carefully out of its retaining ties, and caught the haft of her brush laid across the bottom of the leather with a claw.

  She took a moment to press the half-full bottle of the other potion back into place with her free hand while he held out both tools to Sutai. Her emergency kit was running far emptier than she had planned today, she couldn't afford to shatter the last of it carelessly.

  Some of it had to be for her.

  With that in mind, she let Sutai take the tool, but held onto the bottle as they sheltered under the wall. A more-than-generous allotment of the platinum-infused paint still left the neck on the horsehair brush.

  "This will do. Just enough power to make sure we all live." Sutai flashed a grin Mirri chose to take as grateful instead of smug.

  At least the priestess had found her own rock.

  "Careful with that." Mirri started. "Don't get it on—"

  "Any of my channels before it's dry, yes yes."

  Sutai was pinprick-focused on the smooth stone in her palm, using Mirri's body as a wind-shield for her work and hanging a wing over the rock to keep the surface dry. Three concentric rings were rapidly traced out, and then the detailing began as they were linked, the brush dabbed in spots where the paint lay thick to refresh the integrity of the traced runes.

  Mirri barely heard her muttered question, might not have if Sutai hadn't flicked her chin up and cocked an eye at Calen's back to get her attention. The Arrival was busy interrogating the Venatrix about her mandate instead of listening to them.

  "Did the princess down there buy it? Or is she the ungrateful type anyway?" Came the near-whisper.

  Mirri's eyes squeezed shut for a moment longer than necessary while she processed the implications.

  Sutai had apparently taken her telling-off inside a bit too seriously, and in the wrong way. A careless mistake was one thing, but endangering an Arrival solely to ingratiate herself to Mirri was cold-blooded, and a foolish risk besides.

  The amateur attempt at playing Immortal Games might have been the death of someone.

  Not that Emma had been hurt too much to run, and the Arrival had seemed a touch more grateful to Mirri afterwards, but—

  "You triggered her durability enhancements. In the legs." Mirri hissed back. "What if she'd broken something?"

  "Then she would have needed to be carried." Sutai shrugged. "What a heroic recue that would have been. Ready for the little one?"

  Mirri's mana pool was still partially depleted, but she had questions. Questions she wouldn't get answers to if she made a fuss about a mess that hadn't actually happened instead of asking. She tapped her chest with a claw, spending the mana now to drive away the creeping cold, and resolved to tell her mother later.

  "Did you say princess?" She asked.

  Another moment to warm herself wouldn't kill anyone. Venatrix Mahira was keeping an eye on things, and most of the sling-stones were falling short of them, clacking off the inside of the wall into the courtyard.

  "That one did, when they thought no one could hear. He's worried you'll hold her hostage. She shushed him about it, so they both are."

  Sutai looked like a temple cat that had gotten into the fishbasket, relaying the information. Mirri swallowed her distaste as best she could to reply, keeping it short.

  "Thank you."

  The information was genuinely useful. If these two Arrivals were heirs to a kingdom, other local Arrivals would likely rally to them on familiarity alone.

  Depending on the original span of their power structure on 'Earth', and survival rates after today, Mirri might have just accidentally made an enemy out of an entire people, while the Highlands lacked a Warden and the rest of the valley lacked the population of fighters to reclaim the wilds.

  It felt like failure, seeing Sutai's grin widen and wondering whether the waster had made the correct choice after all.

  "I can share too. As long as I get what I need." The priestess brazenly ran her eyes over Mirri's scales. "And maybe a bit of stress relief when we're done with all the important parts of today. I get snappy after a short fight too."

  It was another test of boundaries, not real interest. After their earlier conversation, it was obvious the priestess wanted a flippant rejection. The simplest way to do so would be to point her at Viran instead.

  As if Mirri would be careless enough to give her that permission.

  Mirri was spared the necessity of response by a thrum in the aether.

  Mahira's time was nearly cut short by the impact of a magically charged projectile.

  Stone shrapnel exploded out of the wall, revealing a black-tipped metal arrow, the indigo lines across it fading across burnt-out runework.

  They were out of time.

  "Snake's moving fast! They're doing magic on it from far back." Calen shouted, ducking back behind the wall where he had peered around Mahira.

  "Druid." The Venatrix cursed, lowering her spear. The silver shaft sticking over the bulwark had likely informed the archer's aim. "The monster needs to die before we get below."

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  The Venatrix's helmet had stopped the projectile itself, the bronze merely denting under a fresh-looking chip on the inside of her horn. Mahira's snout had still been lacerated by shards of stone, with beads of blood welling past the scales even in the fractional second Mirri had to spare a glance.

  One of Sanctum's finest disappeared over the wall a moment later, leaving Mirri alone with her second charge, and the other priestess. A wash of orange flames glowed over the wall near-immediately.

  The pained screeching that followed was closeby.

  "Get him down, I'll help hold things here." Sutai shouted, grabbing Calen by the scruff and the waistband with a hand each while he was distracted.

  The Arrival seemed less than enthused to have his walking privileges revoked, but he had been about to stumble over the cliff, looking up at—

  Mirri didn't know whether to grab her spear with both hands or drop it entirely, when the Hydra's sole remaining head towered over the wall, coiling to lunge at the Venatrix.

  The decision was made for her when Sutai chose to make things even worse.

  Mirri read her thoughts a moment before the deed was done, watching the priestess from the wastes lift the struggling Arrival another handspan off the ground and swing her shoulders.

  She still wasted almost a full half-second debating whether to help the Venatrix with the monster, or pursue her promise to Emma.

  Finding herself leaping off the cliff after Calen was less a choice, and more a reflex that happened to her when she realized no one else was going to do it.

  Tucking her wings and shoulders let her carve through the air much faster than the flailing Arrival, but he was steadily rotating over his back as he fell.

  Mirri needed to catch him before he went into a headfirst dive, or she would be too late to stop them both from striking the ground at speed.

  By the time she got a hand wrapped around one of his ankles, it was almost too late. She had to dig her claws through the thickly padded cloth of his strange trousers, cursing the loose clothes Earth's nobility clearly favored while she scrabbled to get a firm grip.

  The easy part was over once she did.

  Mirri braced herself for the pain, and threw her wings wide. If Calen screamed, it was lost under the gale in her ears.

  Flying for two was a momentous task, but Mirri didn't need to climb, just slow them enough to avoid a messy accident. The mana in her bones still thrummed in protest as she caught the air, and the loose-hanging weight at the end of her arms immediately spun them out of control, whipping her around to face the ground as they continued to plummet.

  The first wingbeat, less than three seconds after her dive over the edge, only delayed the disaster, doing next to nothing until she paused her panicked flapping to throw her wings wide again.

  Her spine screeched a protest as the extended membranes worked to pull her out of the dive and into something more horizontal

  Mirri's left eye caught the approaching cliffside just in time to adjust course again. A swing of her tail and hips finally brought them banking out of the dive, less than twenty lengths from the ground, and so close to the cliffside she might have been able to extend a leg and kick off the rock.

  The attempt would have been disastrous with a free-hanging weight below her, so Mirri refrained, addressing the next disaster through the rain pelting her face.

  Their momentum had not disappeared so much as changed, translating the vertical danger into horizontal motion, and Calen's head was still dangling below her. Landing in this state would be akin to executing him unless she found a way to slow.

  Their turns had also set her flight path toward the interior of the pass, at an uncomfortable speed. The Stubs, the patterned barrier of vertical stones that marked the border between Tenashki valley and the contested pass through the Fang to the plateaus, were looming ever larger in front of her.

  Mirri banked once, twice, even a third time to bleed off speed, but the air tore at her face far more quickly than she was able to turn, and she soon found herself navigating the stone pillars, every one a death sentence if she struck it head-on.

  The first was easy, all she had to do was aim for the gap. The second, she had to contort her spine and dip a wing low, orienting herself near-vertically as space pressed thin against her wingspan. Swinging left around the rain-smoothed rock formation was an exhilarating victory, an absolute demonstration of her mastery of flight.

  She didn't quite manage to thread the third gap.

  It would have been impossible at their current speed, but she only realized it when the weight dragging at her arms slowed her roll, dragging her lower into the thicker bases of the stones, and she found herself faced with a choice.

  She tried to tuck her wings for a moment to avoid the gap, and perhaps throw them wide afterward to brake without—

  Mirri's claws tore through the cloth she was gripping, dropping Calen just a few lengths from the ground.

  Bereft her burden, she shot forwards, too fast, wings still half-spread.

  One of them was folded in time.

  Her right shoulder blade wrenched and buzzed with mana in a way that promised pain, if she did not die before the numbness subsided, and the world spun.

  The wing itself screamed, and so did Mirri, according to the hoarseness of her throat.

  A sheet of stone struck her sidelong, and her left horn reverberated a sharp noise through her skull as it saved her from a true head injury. Mana still thrummed, absorbing part of the impact before it could truly snap.

  She almost rolled, skidding along the ground, but her body was oriented the wrong way to roll without tumbling. Turning over would have been a conscious choice, and dragging the membranes folded on her back along the mountainous bedrock would have been disastrous. The armor on her chest took the brunt of the beating, but the sides of her hips and her knees left scales scraped across the ground too.

  Mirri finally reached a stop and gasped for air, mostly without sobbing.

  The telltale creep of mana exhaustion weighed at her limbs, the burning sensation of Anerean's Due notifying her that her body had burned a fractional piece of her reserves avoiding more grievous injury.

  She was paralyzed by pain, prone on the soaked ground, on the wrong end of the pass, while the Venatrix fought a monster.

  Her right wing wouldn't fold all the way, screaming with pain every time she twitched and with every errant gust of wind that caught the extended membrane and shook the limb anyways.

  Ferrying herself up the opposite cliff in this state would be a feat of legend. Taking a passenger was impossible.

  Mirri would need to be rescued, if she could even get that far.

  Which started with standing up.

  The raw flesh on one of her shins protested as she reached her hands and knees, but none of her limbs collapsed.

  Then her eyes opened again, and her face was pressed sidelong to the ground, water running over one of her nostrils.

  She had assumed too much, apparently.

  One shuddering breath later, she tried again with shaking limbs.

  Unconsciousness failed to claim her the second time.

  A footstep plapped in the rain, without the telltale scrape of claws, and something grabbed at her belt, near the small of her back, just below—

  Mirri's claws closed over the handle of her knife that her assailant had somehow missed, and she rolled onto her back, gritting her teeth against the pain in her limbs and scrambling away.

  "Try it." She hissed.

  The thin trickle of mana she had recovered heated the blade just enough to steam under the pouring rain. The orange glow was dull, but unmistakable.

  It illuminated Calen, shrinking back with a palm outstretched.

  He had retrieved her remaining half-potion from the pouch below her knife, and had it extended to her.

  The human was babbling something.

  "I think you need it a little more. The other one is still in my system." Calen croaked a second time, when Mirri lowered her knife and went back to listening. "This one works on bones, right?"

  He pointed a flat-clawed, pinkish finger at her wounded side, the membrane dripping rainwater as the tip of her wing hung limp.

  Face flushed, Mirri snatched the medicine back with her free hand and tossed the liquid into the back of her throat.

  She was alive. Her charge was alive. They just needed to cross the pass, get out of the Fang before any humans chose to investigate.

  Any other humans.

  "Scout deeper." She huffed, taking fast breaths to feed her lungs while the potion crept through her system.

  "Like through the mountains?" Calen asked suspiciously. "Em's over there with the— oh holy shit. They need help."

  Heat lightning flashed, but it was nearly two breaths before Mirri heard the rumble of thunder.

  Calen's now-bare feet slapped on stone, headed for a gap between two pillars to investigate whatever he had seen.

  "South." Mirri said through grit teeth. "Towards the—"

  The aether thrummed.

  Calen's head snapped up towards the source, and he stumbled backwards just in time.

  An indigo lance carved across Mirri's vision, weaving through the gap Calen had just vacated and embedding another arrow fletching-deep in the pillar to her left.

  The cracks in the stone webbed nearly a third of the way around the sides of the formation, and high-speed flecks of pulverized rock pelted Mirri where she lay.

  The archer had claimed the high ground with their toy, and must be carrying a way to prevent the rain from ruining their bow. Or they were burning through munitions before they left.

  Neither outcome would allow Mirri and Calen to cross the more open sections of the pass until they reached the far side, out of range.

  "Scout ahead." Mirri pointed this time. "I'll follow when— when I can."

  The Arrival nodded silently, eyeing the destruction he had narrowly dodged and weaving deeper into the Stubs. Mirri calmed her thoughts. It would be safe for him to meet any knights lurking in the pass that for her to stumble ahead wounded.

  Well, he wouldn't be instantly shot. Certainly not dismembered.

  After he had confirmed the way was clear, it would be safe for Mirri too. And she would be whole, with the potion amplifying her regeneration. More whole than she was now, at least.

  Propping herself up against the undamaged pillar was the work of a minute, and then boredom set in quickly as she waited for the potion to do its work. It was less than half that time again until she began carefully craning her neck for information. Any glimpse of the battlefield might save her life, or end it, if she gave away her own position.

  From her perch on the ground, she could see the south tower, and the cliffs below it. Still empty. The Warden had not yet arrived, despite the pounding rain and the howling wind.

  There was no hydra pouring through the scattered boulders and catchment funnels, so Mahira must have succeeded in that portion of her mission at least. Mirri could see no sign of Emma, but the occasional flash of orange light and the distinctive crackling detonation told her the Venatrix was still fighting on the valley floor, and using fireballs liberally.

  A scream ripped through the aether into Mirri's ears after one such detonation, and she forced herself to stand in the aftermath. The pillar to her back was a steady enough support.

  A beam of light raked the lower cliffs on the northern side of the pass shortly after she reached her feet, so it had not been Sariel, despite how similarly the reverberations had pummeled Mirri's senses.

  She was distracted from further conclusions by the sight of movement at the edge of the Stubs, further south. Mirri almost risked calling out to Calen, telling him to get back into cover, but her mouth froze with her hearts when she realized he was facing the wrong way.

  The Arrival was not looking out over the pass at the fighting. He was facing back into the Stubs, and emoting as if in conversation, with the hood of his strange half-cloak thrown back despite the rain.

  There were only so many human tribes who lived close enough to the pass to bother sending a patrol after a disturbance.

  Mirri could count on her fingers the number of knights who would be wearing steel gauntlets instead of bronze.

  Only one would have polished them enough to flash with a little reflected indigo as the archer took their next shot, thankfully aimed away from the Stubs.

  Mirri took stock of her battered body, lost spear, and empty mana pool, and realized she was completely at the mercy of a stranger who might not even realize he was leading death her way.

  One who might not care, even if he did know.

  Mirri's hand found her knife in its sheathe once again as she watched Calen nod, moving back into cover with an unmistakable spring in his step before he disappeared from her view.

  The cliff faces and the stones around her seemed to press in, climbing in circles around her like the walls of an arena.

  Lift is slightly too complex to describe with complete accuracy into the text box of an author's note, but can be mostly summed up as a combined interaction of Bernoulli's Principle and flow deflection's interaction with Newton's Second and Third Laws of Motion.

  Bernoulli's Principle is a principle of conservation of energy which requires that the sum of kinetic, potential, and internal energy within a flowing fluid (whose definition notably includes gases such as air, not just liquids) remains constant. Therefore, airflow increasing in speed is the result of lowered pressure. As air moves unevenly above and below curved airfoils such as airplane, feathered, and membranous wings, lower pressure zones above the wing and higher pressure zones below the wing contribute to lift.

  A 150 pound (~70kg) non-magical humanoid would need a wingspan of approximately 22 feet (~7 meters) to generate the lift required to stay aloft in earthlike gravity, before addressing the weight of the wings themselves, the absolutely massive pectoral muscles that would be required to hold the wings open, or the problems created by the strength-to-mass ratio of the human body structure.