Trouble With Horns

Dawn dropped several meters in the air as she hit a downdraft, and my anxiety spiked upwards the same distance. Shooing me away with a hand, she shot me a grin to signal she was fine.

“This is awesome!” she called over the sound of the air rushing past us. Her wings were so pretty, with their gently glowing red edges fluttering in the wind.

“Okay, but keep your eye on the ball, babe!” I laughed, dipping my wing so I could soar over the top of her. “We need to dive and go right through the portal, okay? Right past the big fuckers.”

“I know, I know,” she giggled, her exuberance trailing behind her in the wind.

Who knew all it would take to turn Dawn into a giddy school girl was a pair of wings? The smile on her perfect red lips right then… god damn, my heart.

The strange realm we were in rushed past as she dipped and dove, practicing her flight abilities. This place almost felt like an enormous brain, floating in midair, huge synapses periodically firing with massive bolts of lightning. It was my kind of place.

When the clearing with the portal came into view, we couldn’t see anything moving down there, but it didn’t feel right. The odd, ethereal trees had been mangled and broken by our battle, giving plenty of places for smaller enemies to hide. Near the center, the portal to return home sat, its dark mists looking like an angry ball of black wasps from this distance.

“Go for it!” I yelled, angling in for a dive.

Dawn followed my movements, bringing her wings in slightly and zeroing in on the portal. Her dark hair trailed behind her, flowing with the path of the air that rushed over her. Something disturbed it, caused it to ripple and sway as a massive blur whipped past her, only narrowly missing.

That little brush of wind was enough to knock my unsteady girlfriend from her course. Crying out in fear, she dropped and veered off to the side. I dove to catch her, wrapping my arms around her waist and at the last moment, reversing a portion of my momentum. We hit the ground with a thump, and my breath was forced unceremoniously from my lungs.

Dawn scrambled off me and summoned a health pot, getting ready to throw it down my throat. I shook my head. The crash hadn’t done much damage.

There was a tearing, smashing sound behind me, and Dawn’s eyes widened. Her arms wrapped around me and with a powerful flap of her wings, she threw us backwards. In our place, a dismembered tree gouged a massive furrow in the earth, before flipping back up into the air to cartwheel out of the clearing.

“Jesus fuck,” I coughed, still trying to get air back into my lungs.

“It’s them,” she said, pulling me urgently to my feet.

I looked up and sure enough, it was the two massive dudes. Their odd, wooden horns glowed with an arcane light that seemed to pulse with the surge and wane of their overly muscular legs. They charged us again, roaring unintelligible hatred at the pair of pigeons they saw flopping about on the forest floor. Those pigeons, of course, were us.

“Get through the portal!” I gasped, standing up and readying my rocket powered fists.

Dawn wasn’t having any of it, and she grabbed my arm, trying to pull me back. “And leave you here? No thanks.”

“I’m not staying, I’m going to be a distraction while you escape, then I can just fly through!” I argued, shaking her off. “I can take a hit better than you, plus I can fly properly. Just go, I’ll be right there!”

“Fine!” she exclaimed, exasperated, and threw herself towards the portal. She still had two dozen yards or so to go, and the big boys were closing in.

Faced with two giant stag men running at me, I did the only thing I could. I twirled my hand and called out into the air, “Ryana! I need you!”

Across the length of the FTLN, my dragon heard me and came running. She formed in my hand, storm clouds coalescing and hardening until they were all but opaque, save for the brief periodic flashes of internal lightning. The mace that was my little baby dragon was everything that she would one day be, hard, powerful, and terrifying.

She finished forming with a loud clang of steel on steel, and I swung her around into a guard position. With the head resting on the ground and the handle used as a shield, I hoped to all the gods, both virtual and real, that Ryana understood.

Understand, she did. A brilliant shield of mist and storm erupted out of her in a semicircle, edges flashing with lightning. The giants hit the barrier like a pair of trucks, sending spiderweb cracks out over its surface. Despite that, and against all odds, it held.

Glancing back, I saw my girlfriend disappearing through the portal. Thank fuck. Now it was time to get the hell out of here. Ryana felt beyond tired in my hand, her exhaustion presented to me as a very slight ache. That shield had taken every scrap of energy she could muster, and now it was my job to get her to safety.

Drawing my wings out to their full span, I beat them in one, powerful burst. I flew back towards the portal, throwing a bolt of lightning at the face of the closest giant as I did so. It’d do barely any damage, but eyes were eyes, regardless of health bars.

From there, it was only a small flexing of my magical will that threw me through the portal at extreme speeds. I landed back in the courtyard of the enchanter’s guild accompanied by the sound of my steel toed boots scraping along the cobblestone.

I met Dawn’s worried gaze and grinned, then straightened and twirled my mace over my wrist. “Told you I’d be right behind you.”

****

The random rock chunks didn’t sell for a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but it was a start. Walking back home, we delivered the gold we’d gained to steward Leila, then called it quits for the day.

Our staff had shown us where the armoury was during our tour of the house, but it wasn’t needed. Blessed had inventories, after all. The maids tried to help us undress, but that was just way too fuckin’ weird and snobby for me, so we declined that too. God, this nobility thing was going to take some getting used to, that was for sure.

Ryana had returned to May’s care almost as soon as I’d left the portal, and she’d warned me that calling my little dragon pet might have consequences. Nobody knew what eyes were watching in this game anymore, so there was a chance, even if it was a small one, that Ryana might have been traced. So yeah, I got told in no uncertain terms to wait until May had her hooked up with some sort of code thingy. It was all technobabble to me, but I trusted my little egghead sister so whatever.

“Well,” Dawn said wryly as she closed the door on our bedroom. “That was a day.”

“Yeah,” I groaned, flopping back onto our four poster bed. Laying there, I flicked open my inventory and unequipped my armour, causing me to drop slightly as it dematerialised.

“I look… cooler now,” she said, walking forward into the room’s center. She still had her wings out, and they fluttered prettily as she glanced over her shoulder at them.

“You look really good,” I grinned, strafing her figure with my gaze. “So damn pretty. You look a lot more like your external world self now too.”

Giving me a mock suspicious look, she asked, “Oh, because I'm black again?"

"Yup," I laughed, rolling my eyes. "No, really though. I think your jawline and cheekbones are a little more you. Like, defined, you know?”

She nodded, expression turning thoughtful, then dismissed her wings with a thought and hopped onto the bed with me. We lay backwards, feet hanging off the edge, arms and sides pressed together.

Raising a hand, she summoned the mirror app from the settings and smiled at me through it when it materialised. “We look so good together.”

We did. We looked like we’d been designed by some expensive creative AI to be love interests in a movie or something. Yin and yang, but in a different direction to how it was with Taylor and I. Taylor and I went down the light and dark axis, while Dawn and I were on the blue and red axis. It was pretty fucking cool, to be honest.

“We should let Izetta Ferrera know that your looks have changed,” I said after another moment’s thought. “Let’s take a quick screencap and send it off to her, along with some of the footage, yeah?”

“Good idea.” She took the picture from the mirror, with us snuggled together on the bed, then requested the last few hours of gameplay as footage from the game. All that stuff ready, plus a little written explanation, and the package was sent off to our manager. Which like… was crazy. We had a manager? Life was wacky as hell.

“So… now what?” I asked, wiggling my eyebrows to let her know just what I was thinking.

Her smile told me we were on the same page, and within moments, she was straddling me and diving down for my lips.

QuietValerie