Part 6 The Fateful Leap
It was beautiful, laying there watching the shadows lengthen as the sun neared the horizon; Seto creped close to the precipice, peering over the edge. His keen golden gaze was unwavering. As predicted, the clouds came; at first, there were only a smattering of white fluffy ones far below. They couldn't wait too long or the sun would dip below the horizon and it would become too dark to see. But dusk was always the time of the most potent magics and Sora had promised to lend her ability to locating 'just the right cloud.'
So they waited and wished…and the clouds rolled and boiled into the valley below. They jostled and crowded each other like over-eager sheep drinking in the radiance of the setting sun and growing fat and heavy. Unblemished white turned to amber, then amber deepened to burnished copper and then dusky rose.
"It is time," Sora whispered. Seto only nodded, mesmerized as he was by the beauty unfolding below them. He felt her arms snake around his ribs, her hands were cold but the breath on the side of his neck was warm. He puzzled briefly over the fact and then, with childish innocence and complete faith they jumped together.
Sora's wings were spread wide, catching the wind, they glided as they had before far out from the rocky cliff where they had taken shelter and out into the bright blue air. "There, try there." Seto pointed one clawed hand but the first level of cloud was thin and they parted like mist as they slipped past.
The winds increased, agitated by the intensity of their expended yōkai. Thunder rumbled and Sora got the first inkling that they were about to be in serious trouble. She felt the strain on the joints of her wings and the pull of gravity. Several pinions broke loose and were snatched away by the wind.
The air around them grew darker and the wind colder as they plunged into the next layer of cloud. This one was nowhere near as benign as the first. They were quickly blinded as wind, rain, and stinging teeth of ice crystals tore at them from all sides. Sora was suddenly very afraid. It seemed they had disturbed the rest of a cloud giant and the monstrous creature had roused and whipped the air to fury.
Sora could feel the storm's energy pricking at her hair. Even fully grown Draconians quailed at the prospect of successfully navigating currents such as these. They were unpredictable and she wasn't sure her own ability was up to the task. The ambassador's daughter had to rely on her people's most carefully guarded secret, the ancient Altean's gift of seeing the warp and the weft of possible futures and manipulating the strands of fate linking 'that which is' to 'what might be' in hope that it might save them.
And so she began to sing, softly at first the wind snatching the notes away. But it didn't matter, her desperation summoned the greater portion of her power… forbidden power, especially for one untrained. Sora knew she shouldn't. Knew there were consequences she could not foresee. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction that rule held true for magic just as it did for the physical world; But faced with the very real possibility of their deaths, rote axioms didn't seem quite so important at the moment. So Sora called on the unpredictable forces of fate and linked the core of her ancestral powers…to Seto's surging yōkai energy hoping that together, they would be strong enough to survive.
"I see it," Setomaru shouted turning his head to face her. Sora was surprised to see the mix of Centra and inu-yōkai magic had turned the whites of his eyes glowing red. "I can see the wind scar." He repeated as they glided toward a particularly dangerous looking thunderhead. "We need to be there!"
"What!" she shouted back, funneling her gift through him temporally blinded her to the future, blinded her to fate but she wished with all her might that her rash decision would not cost him…his dream, his future, his very life.
"Every cloud has a silver lining." Seto gasped stretching out his hand, not noticing the unnatural magenta glow of yōki surrounding it, "Even this one." His claws lengthened forming long talons and his body was stretched taunt in her arms. He strained toward something. "If only, if only… I can just…reach it!"
Then, against all odds, those gleaming claws caught on something seemingly solid. The sky vibrated with a crack as something was torn asunder. The effect was jarring, turning them both in a 360-degree loop. Sora's wings were twisted painfully. She cried out and nearly lost her hold on him, stubby human-like nails raking across his ribcage. He was just as shocked by the sudden resistance as his left arm was practically torn from its socket. He howled in pain. There was a second ripping sound that was immediately swallowed up by a tremendous crack of thunder. Lightning flared dazzling both and they plummeted out of the sky. Something trailed behind them as they fell, like the tail of a comet.
They did not see the enormous figure of the enraged Inu no Taishō battling the elements, clawing his way up the mountainside with the ambassador of the Centra Draconis and his entire entourage clinging to his rain-slick fur. They did not witness the prodigious leap that carried the great dog general nearly three hundred and fifty feet into the air to snatch the helpless youngsters in his gaping maw before they could impact on the jagged and unforgiving rocks at thr foot of the mountains.