"I never have the chance to appreciate the sights up here," Aexilica began as she stared out at the clouds and landscape beneath them, "every time I fly in one of these machines it's always in a rush. Some emergency, a danger we need to hurry towards. But still it's…"

"Breathtaking," Kruger finished. He'd long since grown used to the sights of course, the wonder and beauty had become rather mundane to him.

Which was why he so loved to take others up into the skies with him, to see them see it. Through the eyes of someone else, he could soak all that beauty in again as if for the first time.

"I never saw anything like this back in Aethiq," Aexilica breathed, "I…My people were never able to create such flying creatures. The Gods forbade it."

That disturbed Kruger, though did not surprise him. He'd heard similar stories from all around the world, including Curgundry itself. There seemed some force here, or perhaps it seemed that magic and technology were, each, a force themselves. Working against one another, balanced and contested. Where one flourished, the other was feeble and weak. Stone weapons and man-power left Aethiq's pantheon and magic mighty indeed, but at the expense of those born without the favour or power of their gods.

"There were far finer machines than this back in my world," Kruger mused aloud. He was surprised to find Aexilica's head turned sharply to him.

"Emma's world?"

"...Yes," he nodded, "the same. Different parts though. I am from a place called Bavaria, she is from one called America."

Aexilica seemed to be having trouble with the names, which Kruger could empathise with. He'd had to assimilate a great deal of them when dealing with the neighbouring regions around Curgungdry too, foreign words just had a way of bouncing off the memory."

"The details don't matter," he added, "just the flying. Back home we had planes that could reach five, even ten times this height. They travelled more than twice as fast. We could cross the world in a single day, with stops to refuel and rest, and…" He could see he was losing her again, Kruger smiled. "It was wonderful."

But Aexilica didn't lose interest as many people did when things moved onto a topic they knew little of. She frowned, but with curiosity and confusion more than annoyance.

"You were a driver of these…planes?"

"Pilot, the word is pilot. And yes I was. Or…Uh, well. I trained to be one." Kruger felt the bitterness as he revisited that again. "Trained for years, worked so hard and…I had something called a panic attack once. Never again but it…It was recorded down, and the people who controlled these planes decided they didn't want to risk putting me in control of one again if I might be…unstable."

He couldn't blame them, really. Not as much as he'd like to. Kruger blamed himself if anything. But Aexilica's eyes were hard.

"You're flying now, fine. You did it several weeks ago too, even while we were being attacked by those flying creatures. I don't think I'd trust anyone more than you for this."

"There are rules." Kruger said it flatly, never good at conveying his emotions to others, or even really himself. "Rules exist for a reason. I…I understand why they did what they did, I understand what this one is for. It's okay. I've made peace with it."

Aexilica bristled. "This rule sounds stupid."

Kruger didn't know how to respond to that, so he didn't. Just kept his eyes ahead, allowing himself periodic glances to the side. At the landscape, at Aexilica.

It really was beautiful, the skies. He was seeing it again himself now, her wonder having reawakened his own. It wouldn't last forever, but it would last for long enough. He soaked it in.

"Can you…teach me?" Aexilica asked.

Kruger found himself staring at that, a novel moment of genuine surprise coming over him.

"To fly?"

"Is it possible to learn?" she frowned with the concern of someone who thought they may have stumbled onto an invisible embarrassment.

"Yes, possible for anyone," Kruger added hastily, "it's just…I'm surprised you want to, most people not of Curgundry are…Terrified by the prospect."

But then most of those people could not survive falling from the plane, and were far more worried than curious when flying in one another person piloted. It shouldn't have shocked him nearly so much, Kruger decided.

"I guess I've seen enough terrifying things that it doesn't seem that bad," Aexilica shrugged. "Can…you teach me?"

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Kruger could, and he began to. Aexilica was an interesting learner. So many of the core tenets of piloting, things he'd always taken for granted in any learner, were lost to her. The notion of steering, for example, was something she had never even encountered before, save for the wheel of a sailing ship she'd been passengered on once.

Despite that, she had a knack for it. Or perhaps she simply learned fast in general, cleverer than most would give her credit for. He didn't have to do much to convey the basics at least, after that it was a matter of simple repetition, letting her commit the steps of operation to muscle memory.

"No, not like that!" Kruger snapped suddenly, ten minutes after he let Aexilica first experiment with taking the controls, "you did it out of order!"

She seemed frosty, suddenly, but he was well used to that. People did not like his precision when it came to the proper manner of doing things, it needled them. If there was ever a time where Kruger felt justified in it, however, it was surely a mile in the air.

Aexilica listened as he went over the corrections, and seemed to be soaking the information up well enough. Still, Kruger watched her.

One did not learn how to fly all at once, after all. Especially in the same month one learned what an aeroplane was.

***

Vari was looking worse by the hour. Emma felt some way about that, some complicated way she couldn't put her finger on. She hated feeling like that. Rarely did of course, usually Emma's emotions were quickly felt and easily vented. With this, though, everything was too…persistant.

She'd caught herself dabing Vari's brow, like some nurse. Granted most of the exposure Emma had to nurses came from porn but she was fairly sure she knew which things were actually nurse behaviour and which weren't. Except for stuff going up the ass, she'd heard mixed information on that when she looked into it.

It had been a while since Vari had said anything at all, but the last words they'd exchanged still clung to Emma like something that smelled foul.

I could be an idiot, and it didn't matter.

Because he knew they expected him to fail, because he knew they thought he was an idiot. And that was how he'd die. Surrounded by people who thought nothing of him. Really?

Emma wanted to wake him up, to tell him she didn't…But it would be a lie of course. She had thought that, and him suddenly being close to death didn't undo that. That was the magic of death, in the end, wasn't it? The mystical power to make everybody suddenly realise how much of a cunt they were.

She sat next to Vari and listened to him breathing, let herself worry at the sound. Let herself fear, with every exhalation, that there would not be another breath taken inwards. There was of course, every time. Always jagged, rattly, uneven, painful. Always sounding like those breaths were exactly one breath more away from stopping entirely.

But she didn't move anywhere else, this seemed just fine to her. It was, Emma thought, the least she could do.

What was it about weak, pathetic people that always brought out the nicest in her?

Probably just me seeing a kindred spirit.

"Is it just you seeing a kindred spirit that has you all nice and kind when it comes to helpless, pathetic people?" Larry asked.

Emma glared at him. He couldn't read minds, that much she was sure of. The asshole just had a way of guessing what would most upset other people to say.

"I'm not sure what the exact definition of irony is," Emma replied, "but being called pathetic by a sentient severed head has got to be up there, right?"

Larry's smug grin fell away instantly, and soon they were both glaring at one another. Just as nature intended.

"I still don't understand what you idiots expect to come of this, or even why you're bothering," the head sighed. "Definitely not why I need to get dragged along."

"Dragging you along is easy," Emma shrugged, "if Suzanne comes back to Curgungry with you there and us gone, you're fucked."

Larry frowned, eying her and looking thoughtful.

"Huh…Yeah, that's…Not wrong actually."

"Whereas if she jumps us with all those earth people again, we can offer you up as a sacrifice," Emma added. That wiped his smile away nice and quick.

"You know, it's amazing that you're still single." Larry snapped. "Really, baffles me."

Asshole.

"Funny how the only other Cognitive Spirit we've met hates you," Emma shot back.

Larry laughed at her.

"Because we're enemies, disphit, on opposite sides of a fight. Try again."

Emma hadn't been trying to just piss him off, of course, rather she'd wanted to confirm what she already suspected—that Suzanne was that previously unidentified opposition Larry had talked about. It was so much easier to make him smugly correct her than it was to have him volunteer information for its own sake. Prick.

The plane rattled along its flight path, and Emma remained seated beside Vari watching his condition. Her leg still ached of course, even after watching that literally magical healing carried out. As far as gunshot wounds went she supposed it was a lucky one. No bone broken, apparently, and the bullet had passed right through.

Still stung like a motherfucker though. The actual flesh had been mostly repaired, but in a fragile way that left it prone to straining and protesting if she moved too much. Emma had been warned not to use that leg more than she had to—an easier prospect now that she coild fly, thankfully—but assured she'd heal up nicely within another week or two if she didn't.

"How's the leg?" Larry asked, right when Emma had almost managed to stop thinking about it. She conjured up a ball of hardlight and punted it off his forehead, earning a round of enraged snarling and promises for righteous vengeance that rang out as music to her ears.

But Emma didn't get to enjoy the sweet sounds of Larry in pain for long, something pricked at her consciousness. It was hard to really put her finger on what it was that frayed her nerves so thoroughly. A subtle change in the atmosphere, an unbalancing of the universe. If she paid close attention, really chewed at the minutiae of everything, Emma couldn't help but observe that it started right around the time the plane began wildly jerking around from side to side as bullet holes appeared in its bottom.

The change to their flight pattern was explosive and instantaneous, tilting the world and threatening to bounce Emma hard off metal walls as up became down, then up again, then just abandoned consistency entirely and did its best to resemble the whirring blades of a blender.

Emma was inside that fucking blender, but uncharacteristically her thoughts turned first to Vari. He was bouncing around like a pinball, and if the sheer velocity wasn't enough to threaten his preternaturally tough bones and organs yet, Emma didn't want to just wait for things to worsen until they did. She doubted he'd survive that. She'd just barely finished coccooning him in hard blues and cushioning yellows when shit really hit the fan.

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