Arion couldn’t sleep.
He wasn’t sure if it was the residual charge still stuttering through his nerves like a faulty live wire, or the euphoric high of having invented one of the coolest spells he’d ever conjured in his life. All he knew was that sleep had officially abandoned him, leaving his mind wide awake and buzzing with dangerous possibilities.
He perched on the cabin ledge, legs dangling into the cool night, staring up at a sky packed with stars he didn’t recognize—constellations that swirled like alien riddles written across black velvet. As he gazed into that vast unknown, his thoughts inevitably drifted to the ceiling destroyer herself: Auriel.
“She has it too good,” he muttered, the words carrying a sharp edge of envy. “She can walk on nothing. She’s like Jesus with water… sky Jesus?” He snorted at himself immediately, the ridiculous image cracking the silence.
He sighed, long and dramatic, the sound swallowed by the forest around him.
“Ha~ kinda ruins the joke if no one gets it…”
If I could walk on air… now that would be a game changer. Fools wouldn’t know what hit them. One second they’d see a smug bastard standing on thin air, the next—boom—regret.
“Well, surely it’s easy enough, right?”
He reclined back against the rough wood, arms laced behind his head, casually fantasizing about breaking natural laws again like it was just another lazy Tuesday project.
Wind is basically pressure differences in the air. It simply wants to transfer from high to low pressure.
Air wants to move from high pressure → low pressure. Natural correction. The universe’s way of keeping balance.
He raised his hand, letting the faint breeze slip between his fingers.
“If I can manually create the difference… then I can make the air move however I want.”
So, wind magic is basically macro-scale fluid dynamics. It’s just thermodynamics with pressure physics.
Way safer.
Way easier.
Way more fun.
And that was the exact moment Arion doomed himself to a painful evening of wind experiments—chasing the impossible with the reckless grin of a man who had already survived worse.
—— ? —— —— ? —— —— ? ——
I guess I’ve already cast wind magic, well, more like brute-forced it. But that was just me smashing one and one together to get a barely functioning two.
He peered over the ledge, the drop inviting below.
“I need an actual functioning mobility spell.”
His eyes narrowed.
“If I compress air beneath me… I can create an air cushion.”
He sent Luminary downward in a controlled rush. It bent the air, flattening and compressing it into a shallow disc of raw pressure below him—Essence ripples shimmering faintly in the night, tension tightening like an invisible trampoline.
“Now, theoretically, that should kill the kinetic energy from gravity and let me land safely.”
He stepped off the ledge.
He hit the compressed zone—
—and instantly learned something important.
The pressure had nowhere to go.
The moment his mass punched into it, the air hit critical compression and snapped upward to reclaim the space with violent, explosive fury.
“Oh—”
He was launched straight back up, past the ledge, and into the tree in a chaotic blur.
Leaves burst in a green explosion. Branches flailed. Arion vanished into the foliage with a crash.
He landed sprawled on a thick branch with a muffled grunt.
“I… forgot the bleed.”
…
Attempt two.
He stood further away from his cabin this time, carving out plenty of open space. Now standing on a tall rock.
This time, he made the air cushion—and forced a controlled collapse on impact. A pressure-release valve.
A safe balloon-pop.
He landed.
A slick rush of wind cushioned his soles, absorbing the fall with a soft, satisfying whoosh.
He grinned wide, victory surging hot through his chest.
No more horrible landings for me.
“Now, with the concept set… let’s tweak it.”
Vitalis sent Luminary sinking into his soles, warm and alive.
He outlined two circular zones beneath each foot. Luminary framed like pressure boundaries, humming with restrained power.
Then he compressed the trapped air, feeling the springiness build beneath him—a coiled serpent of force ready to unleash.
He stirred the air above him next—thinning it deliberately, creating a low-density channel that tugged at his clothes like invisible hands.
“Wait—maybe I should—”
Physics did not care about his sentence.
High → low—as fast as the universe could correct.
FWOOOMPH!
The compressed air instantly expanded upwards in a roaring surge.
The thinned air above yanked everything skyward with merciless hunger.
A supercharged equalization, happening at the blistering speed of pressure
Physics.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
He was gone.
No animation.
No dramatic wind-up.
One moment Arion was standing solid on the ground.
The next he was a horizontal meteor launched across the clearing—
DUFF!-BANG!
CRACK!
—straight back into his cabin like physics was personally offended and shoved him toward the drawing board.
Unfortunately the crude chair caught his fall, helping neither of them really—one reduced to kindling, the other bruised and groaning in protest.
“Ow…” he rasped, rubbing his back with a wince, “let’s maybe design a safety trigger first, before I blast myself into oblivion.”
…
Attempt three.
Back on the ground, he paused this time—smart enough now to think about a safety trigger before leaping into density experiments.
I need a thin membrane of Essence, a valve seal that sits between the two pressure zones, stopping them from interacting.
So that’s what he did: a shimmering seal of Luminary, locking the pressurized air and low-density void apart.
You could think of it as him building a distorted, human-sized Essence pressure chamber—with him trapped gleefully inside.
“Take-off attempt two.”
He paused, a flicker of practical doubt crossing his face.
“Maybe I should have gone to the toilet before this…”
He swallowed hard, pulse quickening.
“Fuck it!”
The Luminary seal collapsed.
He shot like a ball out of a cannon.
SNAP—FWOOOMPH!
Surprisingly, Arion flew upward cleanly, soaring just a bit higher than his cabin roof—managing to drop back onto its ledge. He quickly summoned his pressured air cushion, this time bleeding it out with careful precision.
He wobbled on the landing, the bleed a touch too swift, but otherwise—it was a successful launch with a perfectly passable touchdown.
He threw up his arms triumphantly, adrenaline singing through every vein.
“Ah, look at that, HQ! I’ve landed on an alien planet! First human alive to take a step on its soil…”
Silence answered, vast and mocking.
Well, except for the double-headed bird chirping smugly on the branch to his left, its twin beaks clicking like it was sharing the joke with the whole forest.
His eyes narrowed to a deadpan glare.
“Yeah, laugh it up, buddy. Let’s all point and laugh at the crazy man who talks to himself.”
Then more birds joined the chorus—he nearly took it personally, flipping them off.
“Damnit…”
—— ? —— —— ? —— —— ? ——
A roar shook the sky as rays of sunlight burst through the clouds like golden spears.
It was the next morning—a new and unwelcome kind of morning alarm for Arion, who’d never heard such a bone-rattling sound before. He’d still been half-asleep, so the fact barely registered until his eyes snapped open.
…
Once he had finished his morning workout and feasted on first and second breakfast, Arion stood back in the clearing once more, muscles loose and mind electric.
Aerostep. A fitting name for my first wind spell.
“Now, let’s see how high I can go,” he said, a reckless grin splitting his face ear to ear.
At this point, he wasn’t really helping himself. But who could blame a man who had just discovered he could fly?
He performed each step with meticulous care, but this time his target was higher—much higher.
The discs of pressurized air beneath his soles expanded further and further, the pressure growing dangerously high, thrumming like a second heartbeat against his bones.
His Vitalis drained steadily the longer he held it—the higher the tension, the fiercer the strain burning through his legs.
His ankles vibrated intensely. Pressure coiled in his legs and spine like a tightening vice. His chest tightened as the thin air above tugged at him ever so slightly, teasing, promising, daring him to let go.
Once he felt he couldn’t physically hold it any longer—muscles screaming, veins throbbing—he removed the seal in between.
“Aerostep.”
An immense amount of pressure collapsed and exploded in a single heartbeat. It was fast, instant, merciless. A jolt pulsed through his whole body as his ankles were yanked skywards with savage force.
His stomach flipped violently, like a roller-coaster drop in brutal reverse. Gravity barely existed, raging quietly against this blatant violation of its sacred laws.
He flew, his body slicing and breaking through the wind as it clawed at his skin. Ears popped with sharp pain; his brain lagged for a dizzy moment; his stomach lurched, fighting to stay in place.
The world shrank beneath him at an incredible, stomach-dropping rate as his breath was ripped away by the roaring rush.
As soon as he clawed hold of his senses, he was already high within the sky—clouds brushing close, air thin and icy.
Then he floated, weightless, like he weighed next to nothing. The zero-G moment—both terrifying and awe-filling, a breathless suspension where the ground became a distant, painted world below.
As he drank in the breathtaking landscape, a strange, massive shadow passed over the clouds above, blotting out the sun for a heartbeat.
Then he saw it: the flying bird he had already encountered a few times, gliding effortlessly toward the cloud surface.
“Chicken!”
One of his first archenemies, taunting him with its lazy grace.
He would not pass this golden opportunity for fresh chicken.
“Ah! What a perfect time to use our new spell. We even have a volunteer,” he said, mouth salivating at the thought of victory barbecue.
He cast Ion Spark, but this time he needed range without overkill—so he positioned his left hand and knee at the perfect length of a short bow.
Himself as the bow.
Then drew the line with his right hand, connecting both anchors—a perfect bowstring of glass-thin Essence that hummed with lethal potential.
Tension thrummed through it, vibrating against his fingers like a live wire begging to be released.
He pinched the line.
The collapse hissed.
A cluster of charged mass spun alive, frantic and unstable between his fingers—crackling with barely contained fury.
Arion compressed it.
The ion charge folded, tightened, sculpted—until a crackling arrow of lightning rested on the thin glass string.
He pulled.
The filament strained to its limit.
His limbs tensed and resisted being pulled together, muscles burning.
Air warped around him from the raw, crushing force.
Max tension.
Release.
FW-SHOOM.
The lightning arrow screamed upward, a blue-white lance tearing a blazing path through the sky, soaring straight at the chicken—
—and then the heavens moved.
GOAROOOOR!
Something colossal parted the clouds like a torn curtain, a roar following that shook the sky itself to its core.
A shadow larger than his entire clearing swallowed the light.
Its shape snapped into terrifying existence—vast wings spanning horizons, scaled hide gleaming like armored mountains, a body drifting like a living storm.
Its mouth opened wide, swallowing the chicken whole like a dinosaur being fed a helpless duck for dinner.
“WHAT IN THE FU—”
The lightning arrow hit its flank.
Tzz.
A tiny spark.
A pathetic crackle.
The bolt evaporated against its impenetrable hide like a candle flame against steel.
“…Oh no.”
The creature turned its colossal head. Then it retreated back into the clouds.
A shadow loomed above once more. Then the clouds broke open again with a thunderous crack.
A skull the size of a cottage lowered through the cloudbank, mist curling around razor fangs.
A mouth unhinged—lined with fangs each as long as Arion’s entire body, curving inward into a cavernous throat that pulsed with searing heat and abyssal darkness.
Clouds funneled violently into its maw as it descended, like the sky itself was being inhaled in a vortex of doom.
It came for him.
Arion froze for half a heartbeat, ice flooding his veins.
Then pure instinct took over.
He was in so much shock his mind didn’t even comprehend spells—instead he slammed the air beside his body with desperate force.
FWUP—!
The pressure blast launched him sideways, just as the monster’s jaws slammed shut where he’d been falling—wind detonating outward in a cataclysmic boom as those titanic teeth clashed like colliding mountains.
Arion tumbled through the sky, landscape and clouds flashing in nauseating strobes—then he hit something.
Hard.
DRUFF!
He bounced off its scales, rolling across a surface vast as a hillside, skin scraping raw against the living armor.
He tumbled back further, bouncing onto a softer surface.
Hands scrabbled uselessly as he skidded along a smooth, taut membrane stretched between bone ridges taller than he was—the creature’s wing.
“Nononono—”
The wind tore at him with hurricane fury.
The beast beat its wings once.
A hurricane exploded outward.
The gust ripped him from the wing entirely.
Arion flipped backward, sky and horizon spinning in a sickening blur—the world turning to streaks of blue and white as the tail-wind smashed into him, blasting him further off-course like a discarded toy.
He spiraled through empty air, limbs numb, mind blank except for one crystal-clear, screaming thought:
Why did I ever think this was a good idea!
He tried to inhale against the crushing wind pressure, lungs burning.
His fall slowly gained order as his body stopped spinning and finally faced the ground.
Ground that was quickly increasing in size with every terrifying second.
“Shit!”
He quickly produced an air cushion—a massive one—within the gap between the trees he was falling straight toward.
Time the bleed… if not, either every bone’s gonna break or I’m going to blast straight back up in a random direction.
He shot down like an emergency care package stuffed with the dumbest ideas imaginable. He collapsed through branches and leaves, receiving a barrage of stinging cuts—
—then, impact.
The bleed was close, agonizingly close, but sadly a fraction too slow. His body bounced straight back off as the pressure built became too much.
Branches tore from trees; plants were steamrolled flat. His body hit earth and barreled through meters of forest, dirt and roots churning in his wake, before grinding to a painful stop.
His vision stared straight toward the sky, his body throbbing with dull fire as he watched a colossal tail vanish into the clouds above, a final roar breaking through—as if claiming the skies for itself forever.
“…Let’s not do that again.”
—— ? —— —— ? —— —— ? ——
Field Entry:
Aerostep
Fluid Dynamics
Description:
Wind is just pressure trying to fix itself.
So I force the correction.
Aerostep began as an attempt to copy Auriel’s “walk on anything” nonsense—except I don’t cheat with divine fairy magic, so I had to brute-force physics instead.
By compressing air beneath my feet into a tight disc and thinning the air above me, I create a vertical pressure differential.
Nature hates imbalance.
So it fixes the imbalance by launching me.
Hard.
Too hard.
Science:
Air pressure differential → forced equalization.
Vitalis commands the Luminary to create a compressed high-pressure zone (air cushion).
Then Luminary stabilizes the boundary.
A second zone—low-pressure, thinned air—pulls everything upward.
Collapse the membrane between them and the universe fires me out like a human cannonball.
In Layman Terms:
I step, the air panics, and I become a flying mistake.
Controlled collapse = clean jump.
Uncontrolled collapse = through a wall, a chair, and briefly into orbit.
Maxim:
“Pressure wants balance. I give it a reason to overcorrect.”
