.
I flew at my top speed down the river gorge. For the first few miles, the villas continued, but then gave way to terraces filled with orchards and farms, cut into craggy palisades that rose to amazing heights. I was also flying above, and once below, incredible bridges, slender fantasy-art structures that stretched amazing distances across the river, and passing thin spires whose function I couldn’t even guess, rising from the edges of steep cliffs.
But soon my path became just an uninhabited river gorge, which grew wider as I continued. I couldn’t imagine the geological event that had cut this enormous thing through the hills using the power of the thin stream leaving that tiny lake in the middle of Royses. Although, truth be told, at some point the volume of water had grown larger.
It became a white-water river like the one in Colorado on which Robert once went on a ‘rafting adventure’. I kept winding along it, expecting at any moment that Feraen would catch up from behind me, but my stress began leveling out with every winding turn.
I still had my mana circulating at maximum levels. Hopefully, the glowing of my wings wasn’t too attention getting in the full daylight. Although I was dumping a lot of it, the Wind portion, in order to maintain a high speed, I still had Wind, Healing, Earth, Darkness, Fire… and Aether? I had six mana types circulating?
My absolute limit had been five, almost from the very start of when I could start properly using magic, under Ceria’s coaching on the way to Bray. If I tried any more than five, I lost control of them…
I remembered dumping all my Fire into Feraen’s bracelet and replacing it with Aether. So, where had all this Fire come from? I carefully searched for the source of the mystery Fire mana, and discovered a surprise reserve, a dense dot of all five of the elements I was circulating as well as healing, hiding in the center of that ball of condensed blood. The replenishment of Fire seemed to have come from there; it was at a much lower quantity than the others.
Cautiously, I drew more Fire from the sunlight hitting me, while watching that ball. I could see the ball slowly siphoning some of that incoming quantity off, bringing it back up to the levels that the others were at.
My curiosity grew stronger. Was this that ‘spiritual core’ the IT lady had been talking about? Not the blood ball, but a tiny, ultra-dense kernel of mana hiding inside? But I got the impression the kernel was something that was holding the mana, rather than being the mana itself.
As I studied it more, I concentrated on the flow of mana, wondered if I could direct more of it into the ball on purpose. Sure enough, I slowly pushed nearly all the Fire in circulation into it, and it didn’t seem to have any difficulty storing it. I tried pulling Fire from the core, and to my delight, it came flowing out…
My Lady! Watch out!
Durandal’s voice shook me awake just in time to see the sheer cliff that was looming in front of me out of the mist. I poured the Wind I had been using to supplement my flight to twist myself into heading straight up, nearly grazing the rock wall as I forced my flight path into a loop.
Shaken, I came to a halt at the top of the arc and hovered while I took stock of my location.
It gave me the opportunity to realize what I had just done. While hurtling down the winding river course at breakneck speed, I had completely stopped paying attention to where I was going! I had once again fallen into some kind of trance while I fixated on my magic!
Seriously, what the hell was wrong with me? That had been another episode like when I had obsessed on Nandi’s magic to the point where I considered enslaving her in order to learn it! The only difference was, I had become fascinated by the ball of blood inside my chest instead of another magic user.
What was it about magic that robbed me of my rational mind like that? I wanted someone to explain it to me!
I shook myself out of my funk. I was still fleeing into the hills, per instructions. To orient myself, I checked the river below me. It had really grown up now. I was beginning to realize this could be either the Hart or the Tain, the two great rivers that had their source in Relador. At the very least, it was likely a major tributary to one of them.
Which meant I wasn’t precisely ‘flying into the hills’ as instructed. I was actually flying out of them.
With a wry grin, I recognized that this was obvious, if I flew downstream. Relador is landlocked; all rivers lead into other countries.
I looked around and decided on a direction. I would fly over a nearby ridge, then strike out for parts unknown. Although I maybe also needed to take a rest. I had been flying now for…
How long had I been flying? I recognized that I had lost track of time when I zoned out. I took a moment to reconstruct my path, and finally concluded I was already almost a hundred miles southwest of Royses.
It felt wrong. I would have had to fly for an hour to do that. I couldn’t have been flying that long!
Could I?
One of my innate senses, which seems to be a characteristic that both vampires and fairies possess, is a sort of crude built-in GPS. I generally know roughly how far away I am from familiar landmarks like Atius, or recent points of rest. But something was playing havoc with that sense. I was now hardly two hundred miles from Atius according to that sense, even though I had been flying in the opposite direction. Oh, and it seemed to be to the north. I knew that wasn’t right.
This was bad. No matter what river I followed downstream, it would eventually take me out of Relador. I felt pretty confident I couldn’t have left it yet, but as uncertain as I was about my position, I couldn’t say that for sure.
I flew upward, beating for altitude while becoming more and more worried about my mental condition.
The ridge line sank to the left of where I had nearly plastered myself against a cliff, so that was my target. I gained altitude easily. The mist was thick, as low-flying clouds clung to that side, but I passed with ease over the canyon’s edge… and after a moment of vertigo, found myself flying in the opposite direction, headed back across the river!
Hovering while blinking in confusion, I asked Durandal, “Hey, old man, what just happened?”
I’m not quite sure, My Lady… but there was a significant fluctuation of Darkness mana involved. Didn’t you feel it?
“I felt… something like a sudden dizzy spell.” I wasn’t sure what amount constituted a ‘significant fluctuation’, but had that feeling actually come from my fairy sense?
Durandal was no help on the matter. I’ve heard the term, but I don’t know the feeling of ‘dizzy’.
“I suppose a sword wouldn’t,” I nodded. “No inner ear.”
I didn’t think just doing the same thing would work, so I tried the opposite side of the river. I ascended rapidly, since the top of the canyon was taller on that side, and soon, a range of rolling mountains was in front of me. In the foreground a relatively short distance of rolling woodlands, interspersed with farmland. I passed across the edge of the canyon and…
Same thing happened. And I was too disoriented in that moment to be able to read the mana. I turned and flew along the canyon edge, inspecting the precipice and the air above it for any sign of the mysterious magic. For the life of me, I could not see anything.
The same crawling feeling came over me as when I’m thinking about the ‘wizardry’ magic that the angels and Grandmother claimed were messing with my life. Magic I couldn’t see…
I guess it wasn’t the same thing, though. This spell had some mental element to it that was damaging my ability to perceive mana just at the moment I would need it. That was different than magic I simply couldn’t feel acting at all. It still creeped me out.
What will you do, My Lady?
“First, get out of this narrow alley I’m stuck in,” I answered. “If anyone is following me, I don’t want to be stuck in a place like this.”
So you have only two choices.
“Yeah. Upriver or downriver. But downriver means leaving Relador, so…”
Back to the city doesn’t seem like the right choice either.
“We’ve flown past tributaries joining this river,” I noted. “I’ve seen waterfalls a few times, too. Maybe following the water up a tributary will lead to a way out.”
At the very least, you would no longer be following the most obvious path.
“Right,” I nodded, and began flying upriver.
I rounded a bend that I had totally spaced on– the reason I suddenly headed at the wall was that the river did a nearly ninety degree turn while I wasn’t paying attention– and saw all the territory I had been completely ignoring the first time I passed it.
It wasn’t an uninhabited canyon anymore. it had widened a bit, and due to some freak of geology had developed into a lake. It didn’t look artificially dammed; I think some ancient landslide had created it. Along the banks, enterprising locals had created floating structures where they grew crops, and fences in the water to create fishponds.
They had built entire little hamlets into the cliffs lining the lake, so it looked like the system was to use the lake to produce food and transportation– I saw several long canoes and one sailboat– and live in the canyon wall. I flew along it, developing a deep respect for the sheer amount of dedicated labor that had gone into building this community. It went on for a solid dozen miles.
After I had left it behind and flown another dozen miles or so, I saw a small side canyon and turned up it. I followed it for several miles as the small river, really a series of rapids, climbed like stairs closer to my altitude. It eventually became a normal winding stream flowing through a normal high-altitude valley.
Experimentally, I left the river path and struck out cross-country. No mysterious boundary magic turned me back. I passed over subalpine meadows and began occasionally encountering grazing herds of wildlife and then began spotting herds of sheep. I veered away from those. I didn’t want to be seen by the shepherds.
I also began spotting fields of unmelted snow. This was some seriously high altitude. It was already the Month of Early Flowers– on Earth, it would be ‘April’– but there were still places with snow on the ground, here!
Theoretically, I had no particular reason to stop flying. I could continue for quite a while longer before I ran out. But, I didn’t want to just keep going without a plan or a chosen direction. I began looking around for a good place to stop and sort things out.
