Tara dropped onto the ground with a thump, more from boredom than exhaustion. She sighed, relieved at even the minor change. The past couple of hours were spent flying, which required virtually no effort from her. However, she could only stand in one spot and stare at the same thing for so long.
Nephthys stood with her back toward Tara atop a bluff overlooking the border between the Gloam and Radaar, the kingdom occupying Ashreach’s southern coast. The border was obvious. The lush grassland turned brown and dried out, mushrooms of various sorts springing up to replace it, while enormous shelf fungus began to cover the sparse trees.
Nephthys had stopped their flight rather abruptly, lowering them onto this hill, little more than a rock sticking out of the ground, to stare at the boundary for what must have been close to half an hour now.
“Should we be planning to camp?” Tara groused, unable to help herself.
Nephthys blinked and glanced back, as if she had forgotten Tara was even present.
“We will move on shortly,” she said.
“Is there…something interesting out there?” Tara asked in reply.
Nephthys turned back to her, and Tara thought she detected surprise, though her expressions, or lack of them, were still difficult to read.
“Does this look normal to you?” she asked, indicating the border.
“Far as I know, yeah. Why?” Tara said, her confusion obvious.
“The Gloam has advanced from where I remember it. It has moved south and claimed a great deal of territory from the grasslands. The grass here dies because the mycelium moves beneath the ground far ahead of any mushrooms appearing on the surface. The fungus hordes resources and starves the native plant life.
“It is actually quite interesting. Decayers usually operate symbiotically with trees and other plants, yet in the Gloam, they might be considered apex predators that—” Nephthys started.
Tara must have had a look on her face, as Nephthys stopped her explanation, blinking a couple of times.
“Regardless, the Gloam will need trimming,” she declared.
Tara’s mana senses were not keen, yet she could swear she saw a burst of mana around Nephthys. It was so quick and faint that she might have imagined it.
“Let us continue,” she said, suddenly rising into the air.
“Did you just cast a spell?” Tara asked, standing and consciously maintaining her calm as her feet lifted off the ground.
“Did you not see it clearly? I was not being subtle. Perhaps that is how you shall entertain yourself the rest of the way. Circulate your mana, and focus on your sight. I will periodically cast spells, so watch and attempt to detect them,” Nephthys said, sending them both darting through the air.
Apparently, simply casting spells and using mana would increase Tara’s magic perception. Nephthys had equated it to, once again using the dam analogy, greenery returning to the riverbank, now filled with water after a long drought. Circulating mana would, over time, saturate her body, from her bones to her muscles to her eyes, marginally improving each.
Tara was vaguely aware that the improvements became more noticeable with each verge, level thresholds at multiples of twenty-five, while the largest improvements happened after a brink. Brinks were the big thresholds, the ones that most thought about their entire lives.
There were three brinks: one each at level one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred. Granted, there could be more, but scarce were the powerhouses who managed to reach even the second brink, so who knew what lay beyond the third? Carga had passed the second, and he was strong enough to rule a clan in the Peaks without contest.
And he would rather die than reveal any information that might lead to someone becoming powerful enough to challenge him.
She focused on the mana running through her body, tuning out the ground flying by below. There were a few spells that Nephthys had shared from her own spellbook for Tara to work on, one of which was a Mana Sight spell. Nephthys hypothesized that using the circulation pattern for that spell specifically would improve her natural sight.
Even if she was wrong, Tara would at least become familiar enough with the pattern to cast the spell without much thought. It was a win either way.
The next hour-or-so passed uneventfully, with Tara working on her circulation, occasionally detecting one of Nephthys’s more obvious spells, and the green plains flying by in a blur below. Frankly, detecting Nephthys’s magic was made dramatically more difficult by being contained in a bubble of it.
Whatever spell Nephthys was using to fly them both, it created a sort of field of magic around them that obscured her other casts. It was like trying to feel water of a different temperature than the lukewarm whirlpool already surrounding her. That she succeeded, at least sometimes, inspired Tara enough to keep trying.
Tara was vaguely aware of the landscape as it whizzed by, and after a while, she decided it was time to speak up.
“We should walk from here,” she said suddenly.
Nephthys lowered them into a copse of trees amid the quiet plains.
“There should be villages within a couple of hours' walking distance. If you’re trying to lie low, you won’t want to fly over them,” she explained.
Nephthys nodded and motioned for Tara to exit the trees. Surveying the plains, Tara tried to place their position on a mental map. She was not overly familiar with Radaar, having only been there briefly, so she had no idea where they were, without recognizable landmarks.
Truthfully, she was only guessing that they were a couple of hours from seeing villages. She had based that assumption on how fast they seemed to be flying, so she could have been completely off. It would be pretty embarrassing if they did not reach a village before the sun set.
Glancing around, she knew that, at the very least, heading south would be a good idea. Looking at the sun, just past its zenith and on the way down, she determined its direction and started approximately south.
A whoosh of wind blew her hair into her face, and she turned around, expecting to see storm clouds or something in the distance.
Her mouth dropped open, and she froze. A creature at least four times larger than she flapped its enormous wings as it exited some sort of portal, slowing its descent and landing on the ground before Nephthys with a thud. She smiled and scratched its scales as it, inexplicably, nudged up against her like a cat.
“W-w-what is that?! Is that a dragon?!” Tara shouted, pointing.
Nephthys glanced over at her, head tilted, as if confused. She looked between Tara and the dragon a couple of times.
“No. This is a wyvern. Dragons of this sort have wings on their backs. You can see that Wrex’s wings are attached to his forelimbs,” Nephthys explained, as if to a child in class.
“Wrex?” Tara asked, her voice cracking.
Nephthys, once again, looked between Tara and the wyvern before nodding.
“Why…is Wrex here?” Tara asked with a sigh, suddenly feeling exhausted.
“To transport us,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“...I don’t…maybe I wasn’t clear,” Tara started, resisting the urge to sit on the ground. “We shouldn’t fly, period. I didn’t just mean that you shouldn’t use magic to fly us. Most people don’t fly around, either by themselves or mounted.”
Nephthys seemed surprised, which Tara only guessed based on a slight furrow of her brows as she looked fondly at Wrex, who seemed to be cleaning the scales beneath his wing or something. He really did remind Tara of a cat.
“He can walk pretty quickly…” Nephthys whispered.
“No wyverns. People don’t have those, flying or otherwise,” Tara chided.
Nephthys sighed reluctantly, rubbing Wrex’s neck scales.
“I’ll call you again soon,” she said apologetically as the monstrous beast vanished in a bubble of purple energy.
“Right, it should only be a couple of hours if we head this—” Tara said, turning around to begin the walk.
She turned around again, exasperated, as another whoosh of displaced air passed her. A tall stallion with a dappled black coat stood proudly, regal, next to Nephthys, who stroked its mane with a smile. She must have felt Tara’s eyes, as she turned toward her and spoke before Tara could.
“Horses are fine, yes?” she asked.
“...sure, whatever,” Tara replied after a long sigh.
Horses were not native to Ashreach, at least not as far as she knew, so any horses would have been imported or bred from those imports. That meant only nobles and the like would be riding them. As expensive as a horse was under normal circumstances, they were doubly so here.
Nephthys’s ostentatious robe already spoke of a certain status, so Tara supposed a horse might actually complement the ensemble.
“Can it—” Tara started.
“She,” Nephthys corrected.
“...can she support two riders?”
“Of course. Shadowstreak is far stronger than a normal horse,” Nephthys affirmed quickly and proudly.
Motioning her over, Tara approached cautiously. She had never ridden a horse, but she had been around them before. She knew to be wary of creatures weighing multiple times her own. A kick from a ‘normal horse’ could be deadly. She did not want to imagine what one from this creature would do.
Nephthys hopped into the saddle effortlessly, almost gliding, and extended a hand. Tara took it, and Nephthys hoisted her up, settling her behind. With a sudden lurch, the horse took off at a canter. Tara yelped and grabbed Nephthys around the waist. She had barely had time to even sit!
“You know how to ride, right?” Tara asked, clinging tightly to Nephthys.
“Of course. It has simply…been a while,” she replied.
The horse sped to a run, and Tara buried her face in the back of Nephthys’s robe.
A dark horse ran across the plains, leaving a dark streak as it passed, its pace one to inspire envy in any racer. Its breathing was regular, its posture measured, unbothered by the blistering pace. A muffled scream carried on the wind as it passed, taking miles in single leaps.
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