Chapter 1136: Kavad's Lance III
The wind lifting Leon raged around him, but not nearly enough to counter the inexorable pull of gravity. Under normal conditions, the fall that Leon was threatened with was nothing to worry about, but given the demands of Kavad’s Lance, that being to never try to fly, he was far more concerned. He didn’t fear death even if he fell to the ground, but he was not going to lose his people on the mountain or its orbiting floating islands.
Leon waited only just long enough to confirm that he wasn’t going to reach the floating island at the end of the current and sent his power flowing through the transformation enchantment in his soul realm. Grandin had been adamant that they don’t fly, but he hoped that having wings might mitigate any repercussions.
In a moment, his body had more than tripled in size, bent and deformed into its new shape, and sprouted white feathers all over. With his crest of long blue feathers streaming behind him, he spread his wings and caught what remained of the wind current, letting it lift him even faster than it had in his human form. It wasn’t enough to reach the destination, however, and he called upon wind magic of his own.
Almost as soon as his wind magic pushed up into his wings, he felt the ambient magic in the cloud all around him suddenly recoil, then fall upon him. Before he’d beat his wings even once, he was struck by half a dozen bolts of golden lightning. The magic rippled over his feathers, though, unable to enter his body, and after a moment, winked out entirely. He actually found the experience rather pleasant.
What was decidedly less pleasant was, a moment later, dozens of winged serpents—each one green or blue of scale, more than twenty feet long, and with feathery gray wings sprouting from not far behind their heads—came lunging at him from within the cloud, where even to his magic senses they’d been completely invisible.
Three of these serpents snapped their jaws shut around his wings, piercing his feathers and skin with razor-sharp fangs. A burst of silver-blue lightning threw them off and warded away the rest, but his pristine white feathers were now marred with blood, and even worse, he could already feel his wings starting to lose strength. These serpents, it seemed, had venomous bites.
Leon frantically beat his wings to reach the floating island with all speed, while fending off further attacks with silver-blue lightning. Golden lightning continued to rain down upon him, but with his mastery of lightning magic and natural affinity for it, especially in his Thunderbird form, these bolts did nothing more than tickle.
Finally, only a few seconds after transforming, he reached the edge of the floating island and almost crashed into the ground. The serpents didn’t pursue him once he’d reached the island, and as soon as his talons brushed the grass, lightning stopped falling from the clouds.
“What in the Stone Pit are you doing?!” Grandin screamed as he realized what just happened. As Leon transformed back into his human form, the guide wrathfully continued, his hazel eyes blazing with fury, “I specifically told you to never fly! Now you’ve gone and stirred up the natives!”