The acceleration in this position was monstrous. In the blink of an eye, I was hurtling toward the rocks of Castle Island like a boulder flung from a trebuchet. The air rushing at me was pressing with such force against me that my helm and shoulder pauldrons started heating up. Breathing was impossible; I simply had to hold my breath.
Anna-Lucielle was tumbling through the air, screaming—but I couldn’t hear those cries over the roar of the wind in my helm, both from the Wind enchantment and the rush of air from the tremendous speed at which I was traveling.
“Come on, faster, faster!” I growled into the ceaseless roar, angling downward to try to increase my speed.
Anna-Lucielle was a few hundred yards from the rocks and falling fast, while I was coming in at a steep angle. I didn’t know if I was going to make it before she hit the rocks, but I did know that I would never forgive myself if I allowed her to die like this—and die she certainly would when she hit them. I could bring her back if she was stabbed through the heart or something, but if her body literally exploded like a dropped egg then not even I could help her cheat that kind of gruesome death.
I contracted all of the muscles in both my body and Talon’s, trying to tuck us both in more compactly, doing my utmost to gather even more speed. It was a matter of seconds now. She was tumbling closer to her doom—fifty yards, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, nine, eight…
We collided a yard above the rough gray rocks of Castle Island, and I snatched her in mid-air from her fall of death. The moment she was in my arms, I threw out Talon’s wings, trying to brake in the air and pull up from the near-suicidal dive, but the speed we were traveling at was far too great. We carried on racing through the air at a trajectory that was slightly more downward than flat, and my knees and elbows clipped the surface of a couple rocks before we cleared the island, raced for a hundred or so yards across the ocean in the space of a mere second, skimming the waves, before plunging into the water in a heavy splash that knocked the wind out of me and made me feel as if I’d been dropkicked by a Jotunn.
For a few chaotic seconds, I tumbled around, dazed and disoriented, under the water. I pulled a boost of Death magic into my body to enhance my strength and vitality, then I swam up to the surface, sucking in a greedy gulp of air when I finally broke through the water.
I looked around for Anna-Lucielle, and saw her bobbing in the waves a few yards away, looking out of breath and somewhat bedraggled, but otherwise okay. Her helmet had come off, and I figured we were far away enough from the harpies that I could take mine off too. I pulled it off and swam over to her.
“Vance,” she gasped, throwing her arms around me and covering me with kisses, “I was inches from death, literally! I’ve never been so terrified in my whole life! You saved me! I don’t know how you did it, but you saved me!”
“It was one hell of a close shave,” I said, “but you’re okay. Wait, you are okay, right? No broken bones or anything?”
“I feel like a couple cave trolls just used my body as a practice dummy,” she said, “but I’m sure nothing is broken.”
I lifted up my arm, and showed her where my elbow had skimmed over the rock. A huge chunk of the steel armor had been sheared off.
“Good thing that wasn’t your flesh,” she said, staring with horror at the twisted steel.
“Like I said, it was really close. But since you’re okay, I need to get back to the battle.”
To get a sense of what was going on, I hurled my spirit into one of the many undead harpies I’d created who were in the thick of the fighting. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, aside from a few fleeing stragglers, the battle was clearly won and most of the harpy flock was dead, or undead.
I turned the remaining dead harpies into my own creatures, and then got Talon to carry me and Anna-Lucielle back to the ship, where I raised the gray flag of victory. Everyone took their helms off and cheered, and rowed their boats back to the warship.
Nobody had taken any serious injuries, and while two of the boats had been destroyed by the harpies’ attacks, we didn’t exactly need them anymore, now that we were within sight of Prand.
“Excellent work everyone!” I roared once my whole party was gathered on deck. “Now, on to Prand, where we smash the Blood God once and for all, demolish the Blood Pyramid and rip Elandriel’s filthy guts out! Let’s do this!”
Chapter Twelve
“I suppose there’s no need to go through the Black Passage now that we’ve got an army of undead harpies, Lord Vance,” Rollar said, staring at the distant cliffs beyond Castle Island. Here, the continent of Prand looked as if it had been snapped in half by some planet-sized titan, with the missing half cast carelessly into the depths of the ocean. The jagged cliffs, jutting up almost a mile from the crashing ocean waves, presented a formidable barrier—one that we would now be able to overcome with ease thanks to my new undead flying division.
“That was another reason I wanted to tackle the harpies before the other two challenges. Don’t get me wrong, part of me was very excited about navigating an underwater cave labyrinth with only one way through it—that was a challenge my old crypt-diving self would have absolutely relished—but flight is definitely a more efficient
