Flight

[its_a_fire]

The throne room, as far as Aoth is concerned, may as well be the cramped dining table where Gloom had cornered them. Dwarven windows. No one had laughed, but she was proud of that line. From across the room, she watches her wife explain some scene from military history while General Gom hemorrhages worry. Rey, as ever, is rhapsodical, doubtless, resplendent, and ordinarily Aoth would be fascinated by the display. But there have been so many maps since Norwick fell, so many lists, so many numbers.

Her mind wanders to the simple wooden docks. It had only taken her a few seconds to wrest control of the battlefield. She’d commanded the elements no matter where Hive’s puppet fled, she’d called on roots and the storm so that her allies could make it onto the deck. She was no soldier fit to march for days on end, but those seconds were a breath of fresh air. They’d fought so many immense beings over the past few years. Removed from ordinary soldiers, it was easy to forget that Moonreach was right about one thing. The Geese were worthy of their fear. That drowning soldier had seen it in the end.

She imagines none are terribly surprised when she walks out out of the throne room unannounced. Over the years so many have called her unpredictable in one way or another, but truly the reverse must be closer to the truth. They are all so thoroughly governed by unremarkable routines. Not the few she called friends, no, but people generally. Had it been this way before the air elementals merged with her soul? What if it was true that some Seprets were born of an inhuman storm? She remembers their last, short stay in the Plane of Elemental Air. Once her companions had chosen a direction to fall, that was it for them. In a world of infinite change, they chose gravity.

There was a light drizzle when she reached the roof, but she had skin to feel only a few drops before she was airborne as a whirlwind.

Lain Laurent had written that the enlightened lived in the past, present, and future at once. It had immediately seemed limiting to Aoth. Flight called from every direction. Perhaps she’d grown used to seeing the world from within the interlacing visions of Premonition. One future would never do. Time’s arrow was as optional as gravity.

The winds from the Icelace rebuff her, but she continues her upward course. The few meager clouds are already dispersing as she tears through them. She flies straight up until Peltarch is the size of a table then no larger than a dinner plate. She can see the fires of the Zhentarim. Someone in the council would have warned her about wyverns, but in this shape she can fly faster, higher. Then again, would these eyes work for what had called her?

She shifts into the shape of her birth and begins to swiftly plummet. Turning herself to face the approaching earth, she searches the landscape, scans the waterways, and scans the courses of the gathering armies.

“The wise must be agnostic toward time as anything but a temporary orientation.” She’d written that, but had she truly believed it? It had been something of a love letter in her own style, or at least a fascination. But words are shapeshifters, and she could believe it for the moment. She wouldn’t cast Premonition. She doesn’t need spells or a book or ink or a star from elsewhere. She controls battlefields as she controls the elements. And time? Time is another element. Time is motion and change. Time is as optional as gravity. Besides, she doesn’t want to Sign into being a world of her design. She didn’t believe in centers or permanence. She only wants to see unimpeded by gravity and routine.

Aoth falls—

No, Aoth flies downward. And she opens her eyes against the rush of air to see into the fractal twilight, the choices yet to be made, the surprises yet to be revealed…