Wind. Cold air. Hot. Platinum blood.

  Pain.

  She screamed again, but the wind screamed louder. Water vapor sprayed against her skin. These unfamiliar clouds seemed ethereal, unlike the comfortable, solid ones she was so familiar with all her life.

  Pain.

  She felt herself pass the barrier long ago. How long was it? Minutes? Hours? She had no clue. Did it even matter? Even if she somehow survived the crash, she knew her fate. The beasts would take her wings. Make a slave of her. Maybe it'd be better to die here. Better that they try to take her wings. Let one of the beasts try to touch her fiery body and incinerate itself, then she could take one of those monsters with her.

  PAIN.

  "What in the true name of Fagra-Hvel am I even thinking?! I can't die in a place like this!" She thought to herself sternly, attempting to get her thoughts back on track. She stretched out her undamaged wing to try and slow her descent, but it only accomplished in making her spiral faster as she fell. So she gritted her teeth and braced herself, then tried to extend her left wing,

  AGONY.

  She screamed again, this one even less successful than the last dozen. She'd jammed her wing plenty of times, but they were never like this. She couldn't even move it. The crossbow bolt was still pinning it in place in her side, the wing in an awkward position. She reached around, trying to dislodge the bolt.

  TORMENT.

  She couldn't do it. She was going to die. She'd never died before, and the thought of it terrified her, especially considering she couldn't even... "Please. Oh, gods of the sky. Oh, Fagra-Hvel. Mother. Father. Somebody." She prayed aloud, her voice strained from the pain, the words themselves lost in the continuous howling and screeching of the very air she loved. With her eyes closed, she begged, pleaded to the ones she worshiped. To the ones she loved.

  ...Warmth?

  She could no longer feel the ice-cold chill of the abomination of a cloud, but she could feel warmth. Not warm like the heat of her blood soaking her clothes, but the even, perfect warmth of the brilliant wheel. Her god. She could feel it on her face, on her body, and for a moment, she basked in it, keeping her eyes closed, for it was forbidden to gaze directly at the great one lest you be cursed and your sight stolen away by its majesty. The heat of her wound seems fleeting in comparison to the grandness of Fagra-Hvel.

  "My child, why suffer ye?" She could imagine the voice in the back of her mind, never audible, but a feeling in answer to her prayer. Warm, loving, yet harsh and immense.

  "The grey invaders took my flight, Great One." She spoke back aloud.

  "So you will die here then, daughter? You will let the queen be right about your fragile will?" Responded the impression. This prompted a stab of an entirely different kind of pain. Rejection. Still fresh despite the trio of years since her failure. Anger flared inside her chest, fueled by the pain. The image in her head of the Golden Lady on the throne who 'made an example of her'. The disgust in her eyes.

  RAGE!

  "No." Came her simple reply, the fury smoldering like embers flowing through her veins. The word sounded clearly in her ears and heart despite the still-wailing wind.

  "Then live."

  She screamed, not with pain or fear, but crying out a battlecry. Then, her teeth gritting and eyelids squeezed shut harder, she firmly gripped the bolt and snapped off most of the shaft, leaving the head embedded in her side, freeing her wing. The damaged limb flung upwards as it ripped free, the angle of which caused one of the bones near the middle to snap as it was twisted at an awkward angle. The ligaments were sprained in some of the joints, and the socket was dislocated. The pain was worse. But unlike before, she knew what she had to do.

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  She opened her eyes, her lashes deflecting the wind away perfectly, but for a moment, she was stunned. She had heard the land of the humans was large, but in her head, she had imagined many islands the size of the capital, but instead she found... eternity... a land that extended in all directions as far as she could see, and in the distance? A plane of infinite blue, tiny glints of light reflecting like a million little torches, shifting and changing.

  Awe

  It took her a few moments to remember that she was still falling, and that awe-inspiring land was rapidly approaching. She curled into a ball, bringing her right wing in close and spinning in the air to curl her left wing over her body. She tore a piece of her tunic off, and used the shaft of the bolt she had placed momentarily in her mouth to fashion a make-shift splint, using her right wing to shield her from the wind as she fell.

  Slowly, gently, she began to extend her wings outwards, the air catching under them, filling her feathers in the familiar, delightful way. She began to try and pull up, her wings curving in just the right way. Familiar. She aimed for the great blue cloud, but realized that with her left wing missing as many feathers as it was, she might not make it. Might. She tried harder to slow her descent while maintaining horizontal momentum, but as more and more air filled her left wing, she felt some of the other bones in it crack. Not breaking entirely like the other, but fracturing, likely from the blow she took with the island she collided with while trying to gain air to get out of range of the invaders' weapons.

  She knew now that if she tried to reach the great cloud, she would end up unable to fly at all, so she changed target. Beneath her. Somewhere she could reach. Eyes scanning frantically, she spotted a patch of fluffy golden color inside a small enclosure upon a ridge above what appeared to be some kind of small village. "GullM?kkr!" She thought to herself. Going near a human village was risky, but if she landed in the Golden Clouds of her queen, she would be cushioned, safe, and could use its power to heal herself. She could escape before any of the humans caught her!

  With speed, she dived for it. Once she got closer, however, she realized that it was not GullM?kkr, but instead, some kind of fluffy golden plant. Filled with fear, she quickly extended her wings to change course, but as she shot them out to the sides, the air pressure of her sudden airbreak snapped another bone in her injured wing, and the structure gave out. She was going to crash after all, it seems.

  As a last-ditch attempt to save her life, she braced herself for impact.

  The map had a frustrating number of "X"s on it. Trails traveled. Not a single hint of information. Frustrated, Murmur ran his fingers through his orange head fur, massaging behind his ears to try and relax the growing tension in his head. It seemed like another headache was on its way. At the very least, he got a good amount of Rulalds from this last trade deal, even if this town's library didn't have what he needed. He knew this would be difficult from the start, but that didn't actually make it any easier now.

  With a sigh, he absent-mindedly looked out the window into the distance, the sunlight streaming across the hills showing that the sun was already rising. Seems he spent another night up again. "I really need to stop doing that-" he began to think to himself, before suddenly, he saw something far off, something falling and spinning. Curiosity piqued, he stepped to the window to see it, some kind of... box? Ball? A bag, maybe? It looked like it was spinning pretty quickly. Out of curiosity, and because of his sleep-deprived brain, he found himself wandering outside, following the falling thing with his eyes. Something about it intrigued him, though if you asked him, he wouldn't be able to tell you why.

  It was at this point that the building next to him, the one where he had been staying, had a cart full of hay come crashing into the roof, smashing through and causing an explosion of straw to begin fluttering down, alongside a large amount of oddly large silver feathers.

  "Huh..." He said to himself, watching the hay settle around him, seemingly unfazed. The moment it had clicked what had happened, though, panic filled his brain, and he found himself sprinting back into the building to find hay, a destroyed cart, and, at first glance, a dead human woman with wings.

  With that thought, his panic increased. He looked around the room. He'd heard stories of this. Stories that some of the humans had wings that let them soar through the sky. The reason his people hid beneath the trees. If they sent one here, and that human died? More would be coming. He had to get out. He had to ESCAPE.

  Where was it? Where was it? He frantically dug through the golden chaff spread across his things, eventually finding the bag he was looking for. He pulled it open, viewing the object within, it's odd, pearlescent red glow shimmering across his face. He had it, and it was safe.

  He took the bag and was getting ready to leave when he noticed it. There was no blood. After crashing through a building? No, wait, there WAS blood, or at least a viscous liquid of some kind, leaking out of her head, side, and across the flood, but it wasn't RED, it was some weird silvery color. So this... wasn't a human?

  He poked the corpse, trying to roll it over and inspect the face....

  ...Only for it to cough up dryly, then inhale sharply, the eyes flying open, looking up at him, trying to stand, then falling over unconscious.

  Turning around and seeing the crowd that had gathered outside, summoned by the noise, the guard included, he yelled at them.

  "THE CLERIC! SOMEBODY GET THE CLERIC! SHE'S STILL ALIVE!"