Airwalk

He was leaving Midway much later than expected, but the extra weeks hadn't been wasted. Between Prater's Pith, Spatial Defense, and a promising beginning to his Other Place, he had made good use of his time. On a more physical level, the garrison offered him several veteran fighters to train against. They hadn't taken him seriously at first, but Taylor taught them the error of their ways on the first day. Since then, they sparred with him seriously. There were several soldiers he couldn't win against using swordwork alone, but he didn't mind. As long as he kept improving, the sessions were worth having.

Taylor's first destination was Bostkirk, the provincial capital. He planned to stay a week or two to make money and gather information before using the nearby gate to enter Maltemali. Most of what he'd read was pure fiction dressed up as baseless speculation, so a chance to experience the unknown realm first-hand was too tantalizing to ignore.

Since he had to travel anyway, it was the perfect time to develop some mobility magic. He started with a good, long run. He sped past everything, including the fast coach service, all morning until he was well out of Midway and the townships in its orbit. The center of the province was wilder than the north or south, making it the perfect area to practice.

He stopped before he exhausted his mana and took lunch by a stream whose name he didn't know, a quarter mile from the highway. He plunged his bare feet into the water to cool while he recovered. For a time, he listened to the water and the wind, sitting still long enough for the nearby animals to forget he was there and go about their cautious business. A family of tiny deer, barely two feet tall and striped like autumn grass, came to the stream to drink. Taylor watched them through slitted eyes, taking care not to startle the little creatures. They drank from the stream. Mother groomed her children with her tongue.

Damselflies, fingers of silver-green, cruised on rainbowed haloes of busy wings, up and down the stream, snatching up flies and mosquitoes in mid-air. Monstrified, they could grow a thousand times their natural size and easily carry off the deer.

He stayed like that until a fast coach, one he'd passed earlier that day, went tearing past on the distant road, banishing the deer to their refuge of tall grass. A matching pair of black gallifrey pulled the coach. Their day-long run looked like a massive feat of stamina, but they weren't pulling the full weight of the coach. The empire used wind magic to partially lift the weight, so the animals only had to pull a fraction of the real load. With the additional enhancements from taming magic, they could run at full speed for ten hours with few breaks.

He'd read somewhere that the Empire's transportation development team had tried lifting the vehicles entirely, giving the animals nothing to pull against except inertia. That had been a disaster. When horses tried to turn or stop, the coach would keep moving in its old direction. They tried adding more wind magic to help push and turn the coach, but they ended up with a device so complex and costly that it wasn't worth fielding. So the empire decided on an economical amount of lift for their trains and coaches, balancing the mana costs with the value of velocity achieved, and left enough weight to provide the necessary friction for control.

But wind magic was a poor way to lift anything. Gravity was far more efficient, though it mystified him why so few people could use it. Taylor had a gravity attack spell in his copy of The Art and Practice of Magic, and his mana control was good enough that he could pick up almost any spell and learn to get the same effect through raw mana manipulation, requiring neither spoken words nor fancy hand movements. He wouldn't say he was very good at his new Crush effect, but he had a basic feel for gravity and was ready for the next step. With half a day of daylight remaining, he broke his little camp and set to work.

His first attempts at controlling gravity on his person were unpredictable. Half of him would be heavy while the other half wanted to float into the stratosphere, or he'd find himself revolving slowly in place. Half a day of effort got him some basic locomotion. He could lighten himself, even to the point of floating in the air if he wanted to. Running caused him to leap around in long bounds, which sounded more useful than it was. He was subject to the wind, landed in random places, and floated headlong into obstacles. But it was fun. Thanks to his terrible control, it was slower than running, but it took so little mana he could do it all day long. He bounded unsteadily along, just within sight of the highway. He made camp at sundown, ate one of Cook's boxed lunches, and slept under the stars.

The next day, he began again. When the road entered a forested area, he tried traveling along treetops. Sure, he missed his intended landing spots and got blown off course a lot, and his hands got scratched and covered in sap, but it was a great way to cover rough ground. Whereas the road had to take long bends around hills or other obstacles, Taylor sailed right over. If he could catch them, thin, flexible trees were his favorite. The trunks acted like springs, letting him ride forward, backward, and then, with a little extra push of his feet, propelled him forward. His aim was terrible. Several times, he was attacked by flocks of birds. But none of that mattered to him. He was learning and improving by the hour.

For most of the afternoon, he focused on efficient mana use, breathing, and sensing the area around him while he stepped from tree to tree. It was the sort of dreary mental practice that was absolutely essential if he wanted to use magic instinctively. But the drudgery was made entertaining because he was half-flying atop the forest's canopy. It wasn't anything he hadn't done in other lives, but a new body meant new learning curves. He would never regain anything like his old power if he didn't put in the work.

His self-styled Airwalk wasn't fast enough yet, but it was awesome in its way, and he retained most of his mana at nightfall. He made camp by another nameless stream, failed to catch anything, and read for a few hours.

He was tempted to practice into the night, but trying out new spells in poor conditions was dangerous. He knew this because he'd done it enough times in past lives to seriously injure himself. Maybe, on a lot of occasions. Like that time he tried a new fire spell in a swamp full of flammable gases. Or, the time he tested an underwater breathing spell by diving into a raging ocean. Thinking of all the errors of his past lives, he groaned impatiently and threw another branch onto his campfire. After the speech he'd inflicted on Kasper about taking stupid risks, he'd have to wait for dawn or be a hypocrite.

He spent much of the next day on a detour, chasing down young ents. He found the first one by following a weak mana trail. He was surprised to discover the cypress, a tree not native to this area, standing alone in a grove of twisted oak. When he tried to talk to it in Arcaic, the tree responded by attempting to kill him. With a trunk diameter of only ten inches and no special powers, it was easy to kill.

The invasive ent was one of Prater's children, and it was partially Taylor's fault that they were alive and dispersed throughout the countryside. During his fight against the ancient tree, Taylor had raised a Firestorm, not realizing that Prater's reproductive cycle required fire. Hundreds of cones opened, spilling thousands of seeds that immediately took root and grew into enemies. There was no knowing how many had escaped.

He felt a little bad for them. If Prater hadn't been such a villain, there was a chance he could have nurtured some of his children into sentience. Then again, Prater hadn't possessed a very nurturing personality, despite being an orchardist. His was more of an exploitative personality. Taylor spent most of the day hunting Prater's abandoned offspring and adding their woody corpses to his growing collection.

Day four brought Taylor out of the forest and into the northern region near Bostkirk, capital of Estfold province. He was far off his intended mark, but he could Airwalk high enough to get his bearings, stepping on planes of conjured force to direct and stabilize his movement. The city sat north of the Sunglaze river, surrounded by miles of mostly flat land, nearly all of it cultivated, with a few small satellite towns to support the farmers. Beyond the farms, the land turned to tallgrass prairie. Taylor spotted the highway a few miles west of him, cutting northwest to the city. After ensuring his mask was firmly in place, Taylor angled for the road.

He spied a minor commotion on the highway and shifted course to lend a hand. A herd of cross-bred aurochs stood a little way from the road in a circle, horns out, their calves in the center. Even at six feet tall, they were small compared to their guardian: Governor Syndony's prize bull. He was eight feet at the shoulder, and he had taken exception to a coach as it drove down the highway. Like any good bull, he had protected his herd from the invader. It was similar to a fast coach, but a smaller, private model with a glossy black finish and a colorful sigil or coat of arms on the door. It was hard to tell what the symbol was, because the bull had dented it severely, and sent the coach tumbling off the opposite side of the road, three and a half revolutions, to where it rested with its wheels in the air.

Three beastkin soldiers with enchanted shields formed the only barrier between the Governor's angry half-breed aurochs and a dented coach full of passengers. Even if all three of them had body enhancement magic, it wouldn't be enough to hold him back. Taylor wouldn't want to be in their position.

He sailed over the animals and obscured the area around them with Fog, which bought him time to negotiate a landing on the overturned undercarriage, doing his best to hide the awkward hop-and-skid landing by grabbing onto a wheel.

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"May I assist you?" he asked in Arcaic.

The beastkin didn't take their eyes off the fog, and the threat they knew was there. A large black tauran yelled at him, "Do we look like we need assistance?"

Unsure if their response was sarcastic or not, he re-evaluated their situation. "You kind of do."

The tauran sounded impatient, but in charge. "Then if you can do something, go ahead and do it!"

They could hear the bull snorting. It stamped the ground on the other side of the highway, vibrating the damaged coach. Voices inside gasped as they felt the beast preparing to charge, but didn't scream or whimper. The passengers weren't combatants, but they weren't cowards, either.

"Hold your line, but don't move forward," Taylor told them, and coated the ground with Slip, from just in front of the soldiers to over the highway where the bull stood. They felt a large impact against the ground, followed by several mighty grunts, and felt the impact again. When Taylor banished Fog, the aurochs emerged lying on the ground, legs scrambling for purchase, angrier than ever. He rolled his wild eyes, bellowed his indignant calls, and tossed his mighty horns. Yet he could not stand.

But he could swim. The beast discovered he could, with a kind of breast stroke movement, propel himself slowly along the almost frictionless surface. He slid across the shallow drainage ditch, then accelerated slightly as he crossed the road, his furious leg movements gaining him small increments of velocity. He wasn't going very fast, but he had mass and red-eyed vengeance on his side. Even at a reduced speed, those horns could kill if they pinned someone against a solid object like an upside-down coach.

"He's coming!" The beastkin braced spears against the low-speed collision. The bull coasted forward on inertia and anticipated carnage. "Brace!" shouted the tauran. The bull roared. The beastkin yelled back a unified challenge and gripped their spears.

Taylor jumped, just a little twenty-foot jump, enough to get a better angle on the animal, and shot the bull with the largest Stunning Bolt he could summon, about a hundred times more powerful than what he'd use on a human. The bull slid down into the drainage ditch and back up again, limp as a noodle, and glided the last several feet to the defenders. The beastkin backed away and let the sleeping bull come to a stop on unenchanted ground, where he lay, tongue lolling slightly, drool bubbling from his lips. His snores rumbled the soles of their feet.

Up close, he was impressive. Taylor was glad he didn't try to fight it.

"You're a human!" said the tauran leader. His tribe didn't like being called bullkin, or cowkin, or bovakin, or any other obvious names. For some reason, the proper term was tauran. This specimen was broad and had glossy black fur, with a pair of white-tipped horns growing from the sides of his head. Taylor wondered how often he had to turn sideways to manage narrow spaces. No doubt there were jokes to be made about a tauran facing off against a bull aurochs, but Taylor couldn't think of one good enough to live up to the occasion.

"Well spotted."

"I thought you were an arc. How old are you, little calf? Where are your parents?"

Taylor glared at the tauran, but his mask blunted the expression. "You should tend to your people. I'll move the big guy and make sure he doesn't wake up too soon." He started work immediately, using Slip and force magic to slide the bull back across the road toward his harem and his children. They sniffed at him, and then the circle broke up as the herd decided they were more interested in eating prairie grass than worrying about the travelers or the bull.

On the travelers' side of the road, the busybody tauran waited for him. "Why do you wear a mask?"

"So my curse doesn't affect other people. Is anyone hurt?"

The tauran gave him an amused, sympathetic look. Taylor knew exactly what that meant: he assumed Taylor was going through a phase in his life, and wore a mask for dramatic effect.

"Nothing our healers can't handle. But this coach isn't going anywhere."

"Can you make repairs on your own, or would you like me to help? I'm pretty handy with this kind of thing."

"It's embarrassing to admit, but we could use a hand."

Taylor stood far to one side while maids rescued gear from in and around the coach. They set up a tent to shelter their master and put together a small field kitchen to one side. As soon as they were clear of the coach, Taylor jumped on the undercarriage and surveyed the damage.

Fortunately, the complex suspension system was in good shape, or he might not have been able to fix it. But two of the steel-rimmed wheels were broken. He used shaping magic to repair the wheels, but his patch job unbalanced them, and he spent most of his time ensuring they would turn smoothly at high speed. Once he was satisfied, he used gravity magic and beastkin muscle to turn the vehicle right-side up and move it to the road.

A pair of maids, one human and one arc, appeared near him just as the coach touched down on the highway. The arc was the senior and spoke to him in Orlut. "Our mistress would like to thank you personally, stranger, and invites you to join her." She made an elegant motion toward the tent.

Taylor considered the bodyguards in good armor, the maids, the mobile kitchen, and the expensive coach. The horses had returned, and they were perfectly matched. Worst of all, the maid spoke of a mistress instead of a master. The situation had a princess vibe to it, and he'd been foolish enough to linger.

Taylor had a rule about princesses, and that was No Princesses. Even when they didn't come equipped with a ferocious sense of entitlement, sociopathic tendencies, and elaborate hair, they invariably had jealous suitors, political enemies, and long-term responsibilities.

In short, whoever was in that tent embodied the exact opposite of the kind of adventure he was looking for. Fortunately, he knew a thing or two about royalty and high nobility. They easily lost interest in anyone poor, crude, or without connections.

"I'm an orphan, poor as grass, all alone in the world, making money wherever I can. Please, sir," he called in a piteous voice as he turned his back on the maids to face the tauran, "can you spare a double eagle? It's a good deal for what I've done."

"One eagle? I think the mistress can do better than that."

"But I'm poor and desperate," Taylor said meaningfully, "and therefore short-sighted. And not too smart." He winked so heavily at the tauran that the maids behind him could probably see it. He held out a demanding hand.

The tauran guard's face widened in understanding. "Oh!" He reached into his purse and pulled out a single fat silver coin. He threw it at Taylor's chest with an exaggerated overhand swing, causing the coin to bounce off his chest. "Take it, you … you ungrateful scallywag! You have insulted our mistress. Leave, and never return!" It was the most awkward performance Taylor had heard in three lifetimes. "Darken someone else's door!"

Taylor caught the coin. "Thanks, mister!" He raised the silver under his mask and bit it with an exaggerated motion. "It's real! I can sleep in the clean alley tonight! Safe travels, everybody!"

"Begone, already!" the dramatic Tauran shouted and shook his fist in the air.

Taylor bounded away with Airwalk and put as much distance between himself and the princess as he could. Alas, the effect was ruined by a crosswind that blew him off course, a missed step, and a tumble in the prairie.

~ Lindastra Prevost, First Princess of Dimmik ~

"Our hero ran away," said Lindastra, after hearing her maid's report. Benjamin could not be blamed for the outcome, no matter how bad his acting was. The circumstances demanded he play along. "Mother, how often does that happen? Don't they always ask for a reward?"

"All except the most gallant," said the Duchess of Dimmik. She sat on a simple camp stool as if it were a throne and sipped ice wine from their homeland. It was fermented from grapes so imbued with the essence of winter that the bottles chilled themselves to near-freezing. "The gallant ones refuse any reward except your company. They're the ones you have to be careful of."

"What do we do about heroes who run away?"

"I don't know. It's never happened before."

Lindastra had only held her Noble class for a few months, but her title, Princess of Dimmik, came with peculiar leveling options. Cycles of danger and rescue were common for those with a Prince or Princess title. It was a key mechanic for meeting friends, acquiring followers, and finding fiancés. The "rescue grind" was why she was traveling by coach instead of riding comfortably on a train. The slower travel and lonely roads encouraged more encounters. So far, it had been anything but a grind. Every other day brought a new adventure and a new hero. The titles and quest rewards she could hand out for acts of courage on her behalf guaranteed people would stick around for tea and conversation. But not this time.

"It makes no sense. He didn't take his reward," she said to herself, "and I didn't get my experience."

Mother's eyes sparkled at an idea. "He was headed for the city. If he wears that mask everywhere, he should be easy to find. Even in Bostkirk."

She was right. Not many people wore masks everywhere they went, and fewer still were underage humans. Lindastra had a little money and a handful of basic minions she could employ. Finding him should be well within her means.

Lindastra's class logged new quest activity.

Quest [A Princess In Need Is A Princess Indeed 6/10] upgraded to [The Masked Hero]

Your savior has fled the scene. Locate the masked hero and grant a boon to gain a moderate experience package. You have ten days to complete this quest. Declining or failing this quest reduces your progress to 5/10.

At her current level, most rewards were either trivial or minor. A "moderate" reward was too good to pass up. Lindastra took the quest.

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