Elania’s wings beat against the air as she ascended high enough to touch one of the light stones that illuminated the city. The glare from up close was strong, but she avoided looking at them in favor of scanning the city below.
As high as she was, it was hard to make out individual people, but that also meant no one was shooting at her despite her being in the open.
The other thing the position gave her was a view of the trauma the city had suffered. Was suffering.
The noble district was a war-zone, and the spiraling avenue that led to the top had been severed by the seraph’s attack. That was of lesser concern to her, however, since she doubted Yolani and the others would have gone in that direction.
The Conclave district was the second worst off area. The large clear gap between the buildings and the fortress had saved a lot of people, but the fighting itself seemed to still be ongoing, with smoke and fire erupting from the streets at random.
It hadn’t been long since the attack had demolished the single bridge that connected the Conclave fortress to the district, and there had been a lot of monks that had crossed over into the district. She wasn’t sure how many Lightbringer had hidden in the district, but it all came together to paint a negative picture.
She doubted her friends had made it out of the district.
That they crossed the bridge in time, and that they weren’t in the path of the seraph’s destructive beam attack... she’d just have to take for granted.
Anything else was just too much for her current form to handle, emotionally.
She got the feeling that she’d transform if she meandered too far from her emotionless state, and neither Darkwalkers nor humans could fly.
Elania shook her head and focused on the Conclave district. A change in the angle of her wings set her on a wide spiral downward toward the city.
Getting close enough to see individual people would put her at minor risk for being shot at, but the only thing that would likely hurt her badly was if one of the cannons took her by surprise.
And she didn’t think they had enough accuracy to hit her while she was on the move. Maybe Bannon’s promise to inform the crews at the fortress about her being friendly would help with the aspiring snipers, too.
The spells she just ignored. The light bells and spikes that had been dangerous to her before were blown away by the flap of her wings or absorbed into the aura of divine [Power] that followed her like a mist.
Seraphs really did get some overpowered abilities when it came to ‘light’ or ‘holy’ magic.
Elania buzzed by the bazaar she remembered from when she first arrived in Neftasu. There were all kinds of stalls laid out, but they had been trampled and abandoned in a hurry. Wares and goods were scattered everywhere. She spotted a few people crawling between the piles of stalls, grabbing what they could.
In one corner, there was a fight between several guards firing from second and third-story windows while monks below flung light at them.
The monks’ spells weren’t directly related to fire, but if the buildings had been made of wood, she was sure they’d have caught flame, as evidenced by the charred and red-hot stone surrounding some of the impact points.
She didn’t see any of her friends, so she continued on.
A thread of dread began to form in her chest as she continued the search despite the transformation. With the contract with Yolani broken, she couldn’t even tell if the other girl was alive or not.
Their connection had been completely broken.
Or...
Had it?
She banked between two buildings and then flared her wings to stop just in front of a window. No one appeared to be inside, and she pulled herself through. The room was furnished like a bedroom, but it was dark and she didn’t sense anyone nearby.
Moving out of sight, she stood in a corner and closed her eyes to focus.
[Essence Management]
[Essence Distribution]
[Darkwalker - 6%, Divine - 87%, Human - 6%, Other - 1%]
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
She only had 6% human essence, and certainly almost all of it was from her own core that generated it constantly. It had been days since Yolani had broken the contract, and she’d been using her [Power] constantly.
But... Yolani had been donating her own essence as part of the contract. Not a huge amount, but it was more than enough to form a bond.
And unlike all the other ‘donors’ of essence that contributed to her [Power], Yolani wasn’t dead.
She wasn’t.
Searching through herself for the vestiges of her friend’s essence was like swimming through the ocean to find a single fish. A small, probably fast fish. While everything else was screaming for attention.
And her human and Darkwalker forms weren’t good at sniffing in the morass and [Divinity] was good at presenting itself before the others, like a blustering peacock.
Elania felt a wave of incredulity as she realized she was anthropomorphizing the essences floating around in her... soul? She wasn’t sure what to call it other than that. She was sure the monks would have objected to that term.
The perception of time disappeared as she sunk deeper, but then, just when she was about to give up, she found it.
It was the faintest of whispers, but a small mote flittering around on its own at the edge of her perception touched a finger.
It was warm and felt like a hug. There wasn’t really that much difference between it and her normal human essence, except that it radiated a sense of her friend.
Elania latched onto it and shoved everything else away as best she could.
The essence pulsed slightly, and then the feeling of a response thumped in the back of her mind.
Yolani was alive!
Like a compass pointing her in the right direction, the thin connection gave her a sense of where to go.
Pulling herself out of the room, she took off into the air again, this time streaking between the buildings straight toward where she had felt the connection.
When she reached the end of the district and hovered over a cliff, she felt confusion. Somehow, she’d passed the position by.
She flew back to the building that she had searched from… another fruitless pass.
It was accurate enough to know Yolani was somewhere on the line, probably hidden in a building, but not enough to know where she was.
Frustration began to rock her core and made her wings flicker.
“Elania! Down here!” a voice called from below, a melody of sound that she recognized.
Elania looked down. It was Yolani waving at her. Gaston had hold of the neck of her shirt and pulled her back inside.
Relief washed over her strong enough to send her tumbling to the ground as her wings flickered out. The landing turned into a rough skid, but by the time she came to a stop, she was calm again.
There were sounds of fighting nearby, but she ignored them as she walked to the building.
Gaston, Henri, and Yolani were all there, even the guide whose name she still hadn’t learned was sitting in the back of the room.
They’d been separated for only an hour or so, but it felt like much longer than that to her.
“Elania, are you alright?” Yolani asked.
“Yes. I’m fine,” Elania said. “I’m glad you’re all okay.”
Yolani pulled her into a hug. If her wings had been out, they’d have turned into another mess.
“What happened to Magister Bannon?” Gaston asked.
“I dropped him off. He told me we should meet up with him at the Watch, or find our way to the Magistry and Magister Keswick,” Elania replied.
“Did he say anything about the seraph?” Henri asked.
Gaston shot him a look that said that it wasn’t a question to ask, but Elania shrugged.
“He said it was a divine being that the Conclave has had imprisoned the whole time,” she explained. “I think it’s one of their sources of power... they certainly are adept at using [Divinity] and that’s not good for me right now.”
“What about Magister Roland, and the fighting in the noble district?” Gaston asked.
Elania shook her head. “Nothing good there… it looks like the Lightbringers are bringing down reinforcements somehow and Magister Roland is supposed to be fighting them.”
“How did you get that form? I thought it was taking a long time for your essence to build up with the other cores?” Yolani asked.
Elania bit her lip. “The monks... when we were fighting them and I absorbed them... they give [Divinity] instead of human essence and skills.”
They all stared at her for far too long.