To Fly the Soaring Tides

Through a golden spyglass and beyond the parted clouds, Cira laid eyes on solid land for the first time in what felt like months. That wasn’t unheard of up here, but the aspiring sorcerer would go mad if she spent any longer wandering through such empty skies.

Cira changed course to get a closer look at the island she spied on the horizon. For a time, she enjoyed drifting through these vast stretches of nothing, interacting with few and landing only on a rare whim, but the life of a hapless gull had begun to take its toll. Now that she had largely come to terms with her father’s passing, Cira found herself excruciatingly bored most of the time.

She told herself she’d land at the very next island she found no matter the circumstance. It was time to finally get serious about her sorcery again. Now, Cira found herself adrift deep in the desolate reaches of the sky after a couple years of travelling without concern for direction. Luckily, lands found in these skies often hid an ingredient that could do leaps and bounds for getting her back on her feet.

As Cira approached, she determined it would only take a few hours to walk across if that were her goal. Most of the terrain was made up of flat woodlands but there were signs that people lived here at some point. Old piles of charcoal from buildings burned long ago, a bridge fallen into the river. On the edge of the forest closest to her, there was a ruined castle of crumbling stone. Each structure gave the impression they were constructed by different builders, as if multiple eras of people abandoned this place.

Not one to walk when she didn’t have to, Cira still held the fresh wound of having just lost her skiff after trying to push her luck a few islands back. Travelling alone was more dangerous than she expected. The miniature sailboat her father built for her was perfect for getting across an island to areas she didn’t have room to land in otherwise, but alas, she’d need to find a new one.

An open field showed itself not far from the ruined castle past a dense stretch of forest, and Cira brought Breeze Haven in to start descending. Compared to the little boat, this was a much more impressive invention. Her father created it long before he took her in, and Cira had called it home almost as long as she could remember.

While nowhere near the size of the one the island she was preparing to land on, the Island of Breeze Haven still had room enough for a garden to grow food and a yard to stretch her legs. Cira flew over the treeline until she noticed another clearing in the woods much closer to the castle than she initially planned. Saving herself some distance would be a huge boon, so she slowed down to see if it could work for a landing.

Pulling out her spyglass again to take a look, she almost tripped over herself and dropped it, “No… no way! It can’t be—” Cira didn’t even need the spyglass to see it as she floated over. The fledgling sorcerer had seen strange beasts and frightening birds during her time in the clouds, but this one was more terrifying and imposing than any other.

In fact, Cira was convinced her father had made these creatures up for the sake of stories and sounding impressive, but there was no other way to look at it. Laying asleep in the clearing below was a red dragon. Huge, spiny wings folded up at its back. Its head was fearsome, adorned with three sets of horns and a maw massive enough to swallow a few houses.

Even if she wanted to, there wasn’t room to land there—the beast was larger than Breeze Haven. Covering its entire body head to tail was a thick armor plating of crimson red dragon scales. Cira stumbled back and hardly caught herself on the railing. Her legs trembled and her arms grew weak as she stood there frozen in place. It took a few seconds before she could shake herself off and snap out of it.

“Dammit… I have to land here though. I told myself I would!” She was determined not to be thwarted by something so trivial as a beast taking a nap, “A real sorcerer wouldn’t fly away scared… At worst, I’ll just sneak around it!”

And so, she slowed down, held her breath, and continued to the first field she spotted to finally land. After shaking away the tension, landing was a simple matter and Cira ran back inside to get ready for an excursion. Her house wasn’t large, but most of the rooms were downstairs, carved right into her portable island’s interior.

Any time Cira visited ruins, she hoped to find treasure, and today was no different. One could argue a sorcerer needed treasure more than any pirate in the sky, but she was here for something else—the treasure would only be a bonus.

The main event today would be digging for worms, and as any budding young sorcerer should know, picking one’s attire properly for each situation was essential. Despite neglecting her studies, Cira’s wardrobe had continued to grow steadily as sewing was a fine companion to loneliness. Her father always said not to be reckless, so she ran downstairs for a change of clothes.

Below ground, the interior of Breeze Haven was mostly stone carved to look like a palace, but nothing gaudy. Her father had some taste alongside his eccentricities. Narrow tables dotted the edges of the hall and held potted plants or the odd decorative relic—an ornate dagger here, a shimmering goblet there.

Cira’s removed the seal on her bedchamber and turned the lights down low, so she didn’t have to see the mess at her feet too clearly. She would clean her room later, but sorcery came first. From within her vast closet, Cira grabbed the new robes she crafted for just this occasion. Her golden hair rested on soft fabric the color of desert sand, which turned darker in a gradient as it flowed to her feet.

When she put the hat on, its sandy tones brought out the vibrant green of her eyes, but she couldn’t help laughing at herself in the mirror. As an amateur seamstress, she couldn’t get the hat to fold over so it pointed straight up. Alas, the hat allowed her to achieve finer control over the mud she had to dig through than she could manage herself, so there was no helping that for now.

“Time to go!” Cira returned upstairs and skipped right out the door, but only made it as far as the garden before her spirits fell again, “Just have to sneak past the dragon…”

But don’t let her tears fool you—she could have taken a wide berth to avoid it completely. Cira would argue she didn’t want to walk more than she had to, but it wasn’t very far to the castle anyway. The trees here weren’t sparse, but their leaves didn’t offer much protection from the sun. She’d seen a dark cloud coming this way earlier. So far it hadn’t reached her yet, but the wind had been picking up all morning.

It didn’t look like much of a storm yet, but she was better safe than sorry. It was best to wrap this trip up quickly and take off again. After fifteen minutes or so, Cira reached the first clearing. She could see it through the trees. Little specks of red between the foliage that seemed to glisten with pure fire mana.

As her father would say and had said many times, “it is always prudent to avoid an unknown threat, while it is even more prudent to avoid an overwhelming threat.” Now, the old man had a pair of robes for this. They even resembled the scales a little bit. Cira was convinced that wanting to look cool in his Dragonslayer Robes was part of the reason he made dragons up, but now she wasn’t so sure. She hemmed them to fit her a while back, but that would leave her out of luck in the mud.

Truthfully, Cira knew without a shadow of a doubt that if the dragon woke up, she would blast herself home with some painfully effective magic and fly away without hesitation. The problem here lay in that it was a simple matter to push one’s luck with a sleeping dragon. Yes, among those fairytales were many a dragon who slept for decades or even centuries at a time.

Naturally, Cira remembered the entirely wrong lesson from her father in the entirely wrong context: “There will come a time you are met with great danger, and you have no choice but to stare it in the face. On that day, once the danger has passed and you are far beyond the clouds, you will know you are a true sorcerer.” This is it. Today’s the day I become a true sorcerer.

With clenched fists and bated breath, she crept up to the clearing. The dragon’s sleeping form towered over her and again, her blood ran cold. It was so much worse up close. Its monstrous jaws could clamp onto Breeze Haven and whip it around like a toy. Each of its front horns stood taller than her house while a single scale was larger than her entire body. She wanted to convince herself to go touch its horn and run away, but that just felt like a joke at this point.

The girl was far out of her depth and shook in her boots, but her eyes were unmoving. Who knew if she’d ever see such a magnificent creature again. The growl of each breath the dragon took from its deep sleep was enough to shake the forest. The sun burned her eyes as it bounced off the crimson scales, but it reflected on her the color of the warmest sunset.

In all the fairytales her father never mentioned how beautiful this terrifying creature was, so she took a few moments to admire the slumbering legend while she had the chance. Her eyes kept flitting back to its face as she watched for any movement or sign that it was awakening. Soon anxiety had crept up her spine and froze Cira in place. Suddenly, she had to exhale, and its nose twitched.

Cira almost fell over but managed to catch herself on a tree branch without making too much noise. Before even drawing another breath, she had disappeared into the woods. Walking as fast and quietly as humanly possible, with wide eyes and arms tensed, she kept her face forward and departed. Straight into the woods.

After trekking a considerable distance, Cira found a nice tree to kneel behind and curled up. Her breath was heavy and uneven, and she had to spend a few minutes just trying to calm her heartbeat down. This was another case of pushing her luck but so far, she could only hear its rhythmic breathing. It was asleep.

Phew… That was too close. I don’t feel like a real sorcerer at all after that…

She allowed herself a short break before standing up and peering suspiciously behind her. Nothing. Left and right. Nothing. The forest was quiet save for the dragon’s slumber. Cira hadn’t seen any signs of wildlife either. Surely, they’d all left for fear of the dragon. Finally, she brought herself to carry on to the castle.

At one point in time, it must have been tall, but now the castle was scarce more than a pile of bricks, weathered with time. She could tell it had been built with great care, but any details were sanded to nothing through millennia of winds. The walls still stood at its base, but most else was gone. Curiously, nothing but a fallen tower lay to the side.

Cira noticed strange marks and holes dug into the stone, all over the ruined structure. She had been warned about abandoned islands before but never seen the reason why in person. As she got closer, her suspicions were confirmed. Inside the holes, littering the ground, and crawling up the walls, were hundreds if not thousands of black snakes.

“Ruin Eaters…” Cira tensed up again, “I have to make this quick.”

If an island was abandoned for long enough—could be decades or centuries for all she knew—these things dropped out of the sky. Her father tried to study them, but it was difficult to determine where they came from without witnessing the moment they appear.

That aside, their nature is to fall on an island after so long and eat everything on it. Well, not everything. They return the island to its natural state before supposedly dropping off the shore into the cloudy abyss below. Once they’ve appeared, however, you can’t get rid of them until their job is done, even if people or other creatures move back in. They’re incredibly resistant to magic as well, so killing them all would be a monumental task. It was best to step over them.

The ruin eater devours whatever it wants, be it stone or metal, enchanted artifacts. Anything left behind. While not aggressive, they would attack if angered or suddenly awoken. After one has eaten its fill, it takes a nap, apparently for years at a time. Bit by bit, thousands of ruin eaters will devour a castle through centuries of repeating this cycle, feasting until they’re full and sleeping until they’re hungry.

They were pitch black and it was hard to tell if they even had scales. It was like their bodies rejected light and you couldn’t get a good look at them. You’d think they were silhouettes if they didn’t cast a shadow.

Tiptoeing through the thick grass, Cira carefully stepped over the slumbering serpents while walking around the rest. The ones that were awake ate at a snail’s pace, dragging themselves across stone or burrowing straight into the wall, slowly devouring whatever was before them over days or weeks at a time.

Finally, Cira made it to the front door with low expectations. Any treasure which once existed here was sure to have been eaten up by this point, but still, she entered what was left of the castle. There was no door, of course, or roof for that matter. She walked right in and past the crumbling bricks. Not a single trace of anything made of cloth or wood remained—no furniture, paintings, anything.

Pedestals carved out of large blocks lined what used to be a hall and Cira was pretty sure treasure was once placed upon them, though none remained. There were a lot of snakes inside, too. More so than outside. She hopped from one bare brick to the next, narrowly avoiding stepping on one or tripping over their tracks. By the time she got to the end of the hallway the walls had decayed to a sorry state, or perhaps the ruin eaters had only progressed that much further.

In other words, there was less the more she looked. No indications of an underground level, as she’d been checking the whole time, and by the time she found herself on the other side of this hollow shell of a castle, she had given up on treasure completely.

The sorcerer sighed, “I guess it’s time for worms…”

Bloat worms were found in old soil. Ancient soil if you will. They lay dormant for hundreds or even thousands of years, and at the end of that long rest, they were prime ingredients for mana elixirs. Cira walked around to the side of the castle where it used to meet a moat. The water had long since stagnated, yet clearly still got a trickle from the spring somewhere as it hadn’t dried up.

The best place to find bloat worms was in old, slightly moist dirt. And with the castle being the oldest structure on the island from a glance, Cira thought beneath it would be the perfect place to go worm hunting. Out in the open, they were more likely to have been ravaged by birds or anything else that wanted mana.

She held up a staff of polished stone and a bright light the color of her robes appeared from the jewel encased at the top. After a brief wait, a long rope of mud shot out of the bare dirt before losing its shape and seeping apart. Then, a blue light appeared from a ring in her off hand and water fell over the mud, washing it away.

“Darn… No hits.” She tried again and again, throwing mud all over the ground until— “I’ve got one!”

From the dissolving mud remained a dark brown and lumpy, engorged log of flesh. Truthfully, they shared an unfortunate likeness with something that found more use in botany than alchemy. But that didn’t stop Cira as she rinsed it off and threw it in her satchel, hungry for more worms after her first catch of the day.

Ruin eaters were slow, but if they stumbled upon Breeze Haven they’d probably slither right through the barrier. Her dad was convinced they would, anyhow. The ruin eaters defied logic every time he tried to learn something about them, and he supposedly had yet to figure out how to stop them.

That said, Cira wasn’t leaving this island without a surplus of worms. With them and a couple extra steps, she’d frivolously cast spells far into the foreseeable future and help strangers all across the sky. Just like Dad did… I’m a real sorcerer now, right…? Cira wasn’t convinced after her pitiful dragon encounter, but she still had to sail off past the clouds before claiming the title.

Under the beating sun, Cira took a break to wipe the sweat from her brow when saw something appear on the other side of the island. Pulling out her spyglass again, she saw it was a ship. A top of the line one at that, molded by a master artificer to be a single block of wood with metallic sails keeping it aloft. Three masts found themselves still hidden in the clouds.

“What could they be doing here? Are they thirsty…?” Judging by the river she saw under the fallen bridge, that was the direction of this island’s spring. She didn’t know what a wealthy merchant would be doing on such an empty island if it weren’t for water. It didn’t strike her as a pirate ship because anyone who could afford one like that would have no need for piracy, though the sails didn’t have any symbols on them. “I guess they didn’t see the dragon, or they’re desperate for land.”

Behind this ship was the approaching stormfront. It had grown in size and become darker still. Cira didn’t really need to care about the storm, but leaving before it hit would make her life easier in a variety of ways.

Cira went back to pulling worms out of the mud, intent on filling up her bag before having to deal with the forces of nature or people. It would take them a few hours to make a beeline straight for her unless they sprinted for some reason. Cira realized her mind was wandering and that wasn’t very likely to happen at all. Still, she picked up the pace and her excitement reached its peak after she pulled an especially fat worm from the mud.

“My, what fascinating creatures,” she said, lifting it up and staring at the levitating brown lump, “To think they store mana for hundreds of years. What do they do with it all?”

The bloat worm was such a great ingredient for mana elixirs because it spent most of its life sleeping below ground, just gathering mana indefinitely. However, her father warned her of the dangers related to harvesting this ingredient. In her worm-induced fervor, Cira had forgotten about it for only a brief but critical moment.

She went to pluck the worm out of the air and put it away as she did with all the rest, but when her finger made contact, she felt a jolt run through her body. Faster than she could blink her eyes, Cira was bathed in an explosion of mana and light. Her barriers shattered like porcelain and pierced her ears as she was left writhing on the ground coughing up dust. The burns on her arms and face stung, but somehow the smell of burnt hair troubled her most.

If one were to touch a bloat worm that’s too close to waking, the superdense mana it spent centuries gathering will react with that of the unfortunate alchemist and explode violently. This was well-known to Cira, but if she hadn’t activated a shield in fear of the dragon earlier, she would have been thoroughly roasted.

After blowing the smoke away she caught her breath, touching her face, “Okay, okay… It’s not that bad… I can heal this.” Her breaths were painful and shallow as she wiped the blood off her fingers and onto her new robes. They were half-burned away, so treating them well was the last thing on Cira’s mind. The ringing in her ears was too bad to hear anything and she found herself slumped over with her head cradled in her hands.

Once she had a breath to spare, Cira cast a basic healing spell. The shield had taken most of the damage, so she just had surface burns. They healed over easily, and Cira was left to lament her new hairstyle. It was much shorter than it should be and a little lopsided.

The sorcerer frowned before rinsing herself off, but she could still feel the charred bits that poked against her face. The silver lining was without her silly, obnoxiously pointed hat, she’d likely be bald right now.

“Wait, the dragon!” She jumped up and cupped her ear, trying to hear deep into the forest. The steady sound of a resting dragon’s breath couldn’t be heard anymore, but it was hard to hear her own footsteps right now. Even after healing, her ears still rung. That just had to go away on its own.

Cira didn’t want to take any chances, so she tied up her worm bag and turned her back to the castle. It wasn’t full but this much would last her a little while. Considering their potency varied by age, she still had millennia worth of mana the worms tirelessly cultivated for her. It was time to turn back.

After all that noise there was still no movement from the other ship. While it was far away, they doubtless heard the explosion. With any luck, they were the only ones who heard.

Taking a wide path around the dragon, she tiptoed back through the forest, too scared to even look that way. Before long she started jogging, then running. As her hearing cleared up, there was no flapping of wings nor fearsome roar, but if its breathing was any indication, the beast no longer slumbered.

But she was past the insurmountable monster. In the home stretch—she could practically smell the roses from here. Cira saw the spire atop her home poke up over the treeline when the ground began to shake. The horrible grinding of stone filled the air for miles around and Cira heard cracks beneath her feet. Suddenly, the ground started to tilt.

Distant trees could be seen starting to lean the opposite way. A fissure appeared at Cira’s feet, and she dove to the side, narrowly avoiding getting swallowed up as the island came apart. All she could see through the ensuing clouds of dust were the dark pits between cracked stone below which she knew an unfathomably long fall to certain death awaited.

“What is all this?!” The sorcerer’s staff slipped out of her hand, never to be seen again, and she clawed at the rising ground to find purchase. “I have to get home—”

She was interrupted by a sound loud enough to drown out the miles of crumbling earth. Cira almost dropped to her death trying to protect herself from the ear-piercing roar. It was loud enough that more cracks formed by the time it was through. Intense pain wracked her ears and a warm liquid dripped onto her shoulder. Clutching onto fractured stone with the bloodied fingernails of a single hand, she scrambled to heal herself again. Being deaf was too disorienting and she’d already lost her way.

If she weren’t clinging on for dear life, she’d be petrified. All her muscles tensed as she tried to figure out which direction Breeze Haven lay through the clouds of dust when a powerful flap broke the air like a giant whip. Cira winced and by the time she opened her eyes, the dust was gone. She met eyes with the enraged dragon who returned her gaze with misplaced scorn as its chest puffed up.

Cira looked behind and saw Breeze Haven as it slid towards her on an opposing piece of broken island, flattening trees as it approached. It was still far away though, and she couldn’t run in these conditions. Just then she felt a sinking feeling and she slowly rose up from the stone, watching her dear home do the same. The island was falling, and Cira didn’t have time to question why.

As she heard another growl from ahead her attention was once again split. Turning back to the dragon, she saw it breathing in air while flames danced in its open maw, furious eyes trained on her.

Cira was sweating but her survival instincts kicked in. She layered shield after shield onto her body without minding the mana spent. She only had one shot at this, or she would be cooked alive. Her home would plummet through the skies before sinking to the bottom of the sea.

Her staff was no more, but she didn’t need one for this. The sorcerer waited until the dragon just couldn’t hold them in anymore and flames burst from its mouth with a brilliance not even her father could have conjured—to her knowledge. If she had the time she’d sit there and watch it. The flames of impending death were the most beautiful thing Cira had ever laid eyes on, with their source being a close second.

As the heat whipped her face, she let out a burst of light from her palm. The stone beneath Cira rose up and exploded which sent her hurling into the air, beaten and bruised by the passing rocks. By the time she got the chance to spit out a mouthful of blood, the stone exploded again in a fiery blast, shooting her away from the dragon like a cannonball.

All she could see for a split second was a column of fire that became so bright she nearly went blind, instinctively clamping her eyelids shut and flinching away.

Her shields shattered together in an instant and a million shards of glittering light dissipated while the fringes of dragon’s fire threatened to melt her skin off. The speed at which she flew snuffed out any flames and Cira hardly hung on to consciousness when she barreled through a wooden shed, peeling up grass and rolling to a stop against an apple tree.

She was in a daze until a ripened fruit dropped on her forehead with a heavy thud, “D-dammit! Up! Go up!” Breeze Haven was already airborne so it happily obliged. It drifted to the side, slowly leveling out, and Cira flattened against the ground when the mass of stone heaved itself up.

The burned and battered sorcerer-to-be was in no shape to run upstairs, but she didn’t need fine control to get the hell out. If she wanted to go up, Breeze Haven would rise. Reaching the nearby storm clouds would be her only salvation.

Pain assailed her head as Cira pushed out another healing spell and she could feel herself running dangerously low on mana. If she ran out completely it would take months to return but she had to take the risk. Timidly opening her wounded eyes, she crawled over to the fence at the edge of her garden and locked eyes with the dragon. It hadn’t let her out of its sight for even a second.

The chunk of land she’d just escaped was no more. Moreover, a huge hole was carved right through as if a massive beam had erased it ending just a few strides in front of where Breeze Haven had taken off from. The land’s remains joined the rest of the island in plummeting through the cloudy abyss. Heat that can vaporize stone… There’s no fighting this thing. Not in a thousand years.

“And h-how… can something so huge fly?” It was truly unbelievable, and she really wished it was still just a fairytale. It looked like it could slap Breeze Haven away with just one of its wings. The dragon stayed aloft with only a few lazy flaps now and again—it defied all reason. But within its jaws another ball of flame had begun to form. “Not again!”

She had almost reached the dark clouds and could hear angels’ whispers behind the distant rolling thunder. Just a little further and she’d be safe. At the very least, hidden from sight. According to the fairytales, red ones didn’t like water. If it were a blue or even yellow, she’d just take a seat in the garden and wait for the end.

“But I still have a chance!” Cira shouted to the sky, only to be drowned out by the forces of nature which all converged around her.

She dumped the last of the mana she could spare into Breeze Haven and threw it forward. The clattering of broken dishes from inside the house didn’t even register as she leaned into the clouds to finally breach the dark shroud of storm. Her own island’s barrier held the clouds at a distance, encapsulating her in a black sphere as she drifted deeper, the torrent of wind and distant thunder was all that could be heard up here. Escape was the only option, really. Her father was no hack, but there was no taking chances after what she just witnessed. This was not the day to test her defenses.

Suddenly, the clouds lit up and in front of her a column of the storm simply disappeared, leaving a massive void. Her eyes shot open, and she went pale. If the dragon’s aim were any better, she’d have taken that directly. In a fluster, Cira did everything she could to back away. Then the sky-shattering dragon’s roar broke through the storm again, and she heard the flapping of colossal wings. They buzzed around her on one side, then the other.

Its furious cries as it tried to find the prey that got away had Cira stuck in the grass clutching her knees. Out of mana for at least a couple days, she could only let Breeze Haven float away, waiting out the dragon and hoping it lost the trail. She heard it unleash its terrible fire a few more times before the sound of wings eventually grew distant. Still, her nerves were on end and every crack of thunder made her flinch.

Helplessly adrift again, she stayed there for a few hours and tried to calm down, shivering inside the dark clouds. She’d never had such a close brush with death. That beast was enough to destroy everything in sight so long as it felt like it. If its fury was ever set on an island, they wouldn’t last five minutes.

Did the dragon break the island? I didn’t hear its roar until after, though, and why would it even do that? That was an old island, and I didn’t go look at the spring, so who knows. Today could have just been the day it was destined to fall.

Cira didn’t look back or even move for a while. She just sat there in the garden. Hopefully that dreadful creature was never to be seen again. She didn’t think to spare a thought for whatever dismal fate that unfortunate merchant ship met. There was nothing on her mind but getting as far away as possible.

On the ground next to what remained of Cira’s shed, she noticed a brown bag—her satchel. The drawstring had burned away but seeing the bounty of worms she’d foraged spilled out in the grass made one more thing cross her mind.

“By the time this storm passes… I can finally call myself a sorcerer.”