Galahad felt the wind rippled against his body as he plummeted down the cliff side. His ears popped and all he could feel was the splitting headache he received the moment his skill shutdown.
Galahad cursed at himself for being so reckless. 'I shouldn't have kept the damn skill going, Heath and Mycroft would always complain about this.'
The headache and near faint Galahad experienced was due to backlash of using up naturally generated Chi. The two sword brother were sometimes reckless when using their skills and would over exert their bodies. They would proceed to collapse from their bodies not being able to handle the backlash; resulting in the whole team going back up to the surface for safety.
Took Galahad a bit too long to realize his class problem was dealing with backlash now and not lack of mana anymore. The consequences were obvious apparent now that he was falling to his death once again.
'I'm gonna play the town lottery next time, because my luck is the fucking worst.' He thought while twisting himself in the air. He wanted to deny Pavell's statement on his luck, it was most definitely the worst, not just strange.
Galahad tried centering himself upright in the air, but his odd tumble off the side of the cliff left him spinning in the air. He got a quick glimpse of the ground, it was coming up fast and nothing was at the bottom to stop the impact this time. It was only a bit of snow and a lot of jagged rocks.
Suddenly Galahad was lurched straight up into the air by his bad arm. Like gravity decided to slingshot upward without any warning. The reverse in direction was so sudden that his arm came out of socket of his still burnt shoulder. He didn't care though, he was just happy not to die from the height.
"You really can't seem to avoid trouble, can you?"
Solteer's voice squawked loudly through the wind. The giant hawk had nabbed Galahad's arm in his large talons, rescuing him from the fall. Galahad looked up and laughed at the giant king bird.
"Well you found me before, didn't you? I think you are just looking for trouble." Galahad yelled back. His arm was burning in pain now, but he was ignoring that with the excitement of being in the air without the threat of dying.
Galahad had never experienced flying of any kind before, no one in Teramore had such abilities to do so. On a rare occasion, a magic tool or magician class adventurer can configure air or wind skills to do the impossible and cause the user to fly.
Galahad had no special power as a support class, or the money to waste on a magic tool; this was the closest he would get to experiencing flight.
Solteer was quickly losing altitude with Galahad weighing down to the point that he was just trying not to fall like Galahad was a second before. Both of them were exhausted from the dungeon and were practically held to together by the will of wanting to stay conscious.
Solteer brought Galahad to the trees at the bottom of the summit. His magic started to destabilized again, forcing him to drop Galahad the last couple feet down.
"Ow fuck!" He yelled when he hit the ground sideways.
"Apologies, I can't keep this form much longer." Solteer landed on a branch with random bits of yellow light flaring across is shrinking body.
"What?" Galahad asked while trying to get up. "Oh, no you're fine, I just landed on the bad shoulder, it may have been dislocated too. The good news is you dropped it back into place ow."
He rotated his bad shoulder a little bit to see if anything still felt right. His body had taken way too much damage recently that he couldn't even remember what it should normally feel like. He bent down and started pressing snow together in his hands as he thanked Solteer.
"Thank you for saving me, how'd you know I was falling down the mountain?" He turned to ask.
"I never lost sight of you. I could see the red fire on your body as you sprinted through the forest. It was quite a scene to watch from the air."
"So then you saw the elf in the forest as well?" Galahad rolled up the remains of his jacket sleeve and applied the snow to his shoulder. He wanted to keep some of the bruising down.
"Barely, I didn't even smell her scent. She could have been wandering out here for any amount of time and I wouldn't have noticed unless someone notified me."
"What is it with you and smells?"
"The smell of a being is sometimes the most honest thing about them, it reveals more then they ever do."
"Well if you caught her's, you'd probably know she's a fanatic for wanting to kill me. I wish she was how I remembered as a kid; all this time, she kept talking about some evil god and killing me. Have you heard anything about the monsters worshipping an evil god?"
"No, nothing about evil gods. Could it be the one the two dirt-dwellers were commanded by? A warden with enough control can make any weaker demon believe them to be gods."
"Maybe, I figured the same thing. Oh, before you go again, I wanted to ask you something. You talked in the cavern about keeping the humans out and killing the monsters, why didn't you just kill me the moment you could smell me? I am basically in both categories thanks to the black orb."
Solteer turned his head to the side, almost like he was embarrassed to answer. "Oh I would have, but I didn't want to sully Apharine's home with blood. If she returned and was upset by my bloodshed, I wouldn't survive her wraith. She is much more of a threat than the Succubus if she is displeased."
"Yeah, I've seen what she does to mana orb- Oh my. Fucking. Gods!" Galahad dropped the snowball at his sudden realization.
On top of the splitting headache, Galahad felt his stupidity might be getting beyond worse, and hurting his mental state.
"I've been giving her mana orbs that she can EAT for years. Whatever that black magic orb did, it let me do the almost the same thing she does. Damn it, I can't even ask her about it now."
"Ironic, she leaves just before you obtain this dark power. You certainly have strange luck, I suggest return home before your angry companion finds either one of us."
"I'm starting to think you've been talking to my nurse." Galahad shook his head and started heading home, or at least what he hoped was the right direction. Being dropped in the middle of the woods after plummeting a few hundred feet did a number on his sense of direction.
*****
Galahad eventually made it out of the wooded areas as the last bit of sunlight was disappearing. He hightailed it to the outskirts of the city and received a few odd looks.
Galahad made his way home and realized he wasn't going to pass off his last leave from home as simple and harmless. His jacket and pants were torn to shreds, he was caked in dry mud, smelled like decaying animal carcass, and he still needed to remove all the scabs that were along his injuries from the Succubus.
He looked like a homeless man was thrown through a blender and a mudslide from a graveyard. He was going to have to climb back up the water line on the side of the house, hoping none of his family members spotted him.
Galahad went around the alley to grab the cane he needed to return to the medical center pretty soon. When exiting the alleyway, he watched the big doors on the side of the building open up. he saw a messenger come out of the forge with a parcel. He waved goodbye to Derock and starting heading in the opposite direction.
It wasn't out of the ordinary to have mail come in, his father had some family out in the farmlands and sent him mail regularly. The reason Galahad noticed was because his father was holding a red velvet envelope on top of the stack he was given.
Galahad climbed up the scaffolding on the neighboring building and jumped to the pipe attached his family's home. He flinched at every loud noise he made for a few reasons.
He was drawing attention to himself, looking like a homeless man about to commit robbery, and his head was still in so much pain from over doing his new skill still.
As he travelled up the pipe, he felt warm water travelling up to the higher floor, Galahad hoped the sound of the water running would hide the sounds of him entering his room in a not-so-stealthy manner.
After crawling through the window, he practically had to poured himself into the room due to his body giving out. Never had he desired a nap more than that moment of his life.
Talking to himself, Galahad was motivating himself to at least shower before sleeping till the end of time.
"Come on, shower then sleep, shower then sleep, shower and then sleep."
'Piss off, just get up before someone walks in and mistakes you for a pile garbage ya bastard.' The meaner part of Galahad's brain managed to get him to start moving.
Galahad was now standing up and slowly opened the door to enter the living room.