Chapter 258: Whispers of the Wind
Hearing the wind was one thing, the faintest whisper of an untold language.
Speaking it? Not nearly as easy.
While it took Rory ten days of meditation near the lower atmosphere's ceiling to hear anything, it took far longer to accomplish anything more than that.
Two months and fifteen days to be precise.
Having finally caught a whisper in the winds, Rory found that the atmosphere was far less quiet than originally expected. Whispers, some quiet, some loud, seemed to constantly ring out, in his mind somewhere between a cross of a tinging silver bell, and the world’s gentlest and most quiet trombone, a rather odd mix if he had to be honest.
Doing nothing but listening for several days, it was the better part of those two months and fifteen days that Rory spent just trying to respond. It wasn’t easy, but then Rory never really expected it to be. Even with his cognition, achieving skybound chanting had taken Miguel years if not decades, and Rory was attempting it just under three months.
Hearing the wind was one thing, but when he understood it the first time was another, sitting there listening to the quiet chorus of whispers hidden from the ears of all but a single person on the planet –well, two people now— that had been a special moment, a single sense of meaning from one of the random, slow, ringing whistles.
Direction.
Over time, Rory began finding meaning in more and more of the ‘sounds’ as he began to build his own vocabulary.
Direction. Speed. Fun. Flight. Slow. Fast. Up. Down.
More and more words slowly filled in his skybound lexicon, but even a tier eight eventually felt the call of something more powerful.
His stomach.
The environment, as gentle as it appeared, was not friendly, and Rory’s body had been sustaining itself by burning up his own reserves of energy, which had a slow accruing cost that eventually couldn’t be ignored.
Sighing, Rory slowly stood up, his legs surprisingly responsive even after being seated for nearly three months.
“Probably a good time to leave anyway,” Rory muttered. The agreed-upon deadline with Zoey was fast approaching, leaving him around a week to spare.
“Enough time to give a few lessons, and maybe test the new bad boy out,” Rory sighed.
| Sky-honored Chanter Rarity: Aberrant. Skill Level: Low The way of the skybound chanter is already a skill few even know, requiring years of practice and dedication. Unlike most who would put themselves in one toe at a time, you have plunged directly into the deep end, exposing yourself to an environment not suitable for most, while keeping a mind open to words spoken of a language unknown. At high altitudes, senses not conducive to perceiving skybound chanting are muted, granting greater perception of skybound chanting.
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