Ashtoreth's body slammed into stone, and claws scrabbled uselessly at it, nearly tearing nails from her paws with desperation. Okay, okay, okay, just don't fall, she pleaded to herself, wincing as every inch of her trembled with... fear. She realized how terrified she was in that moment, flapping with her body pressed up against one of the sides of a stone pillar, staring down at the endless void bellow.

Aure had warned her that it was dangerous. What if I fail? The thought filled her brain, nearly blotting out all conscious thought, but as she tore her eyes away from the darkness, she spotted a glimmer in the distance. Something was clicking, she could hear it, and as she pushed off to glide to another platform, she could see it.

A door!

One of the mechanisms had already been opened... From when she had hit the gong, perhaps? Were there more gongs? Feathers ruffling, she scrambled down to a lower position among the rocky outcroppings, and began to flap her wings, stirring up the air.

They looked like metal. Metal conducted electricity. The easiest way to figure out where the other brass mechanisms (gongs or not), she decided, would be to light them up. Literally. The already turbulent winds stormed around her, roaring in her ears, and her small frame slipped on the stone. She tried to hold steady as she whipped up the storm, but her magic-- or was it Emuh's?-- was growing too strong.

She was knocked off of the ledge and sent tumbling again, falling further down into the darkness, but even through that she didn't scream or cry out for help. She couldn't, after all.

The room was small: certainly not large enough to host a full storm, as the magic struggled to demand of it. Yet still, slashes of light ignited the deeper shadows: reached for and found their metal targets, leaving them briefly glowing red-hot.

But Ashtoreth was falling; and nothing there would save her but herself. The fall was a long one, and the winds offered no last-minute, upward reprieve; instead, she would sink or perish on her own merits, and nothing more.

@Ashtoreth

She was falling, falling, falling. She crashed against stone, claws scrambling, but now she had too much momentum, and the world was falling away. She rebelled against it in the only way she knew how: by drawing on the air, by throwing wind underneath herself, by trying against all odds to throw everything she had wildly at a wall and... uh, pray?

Above her, dim red lights faded like stars. Maybe the last thing she would ever see.

By some miracle, she managed to-- while falling-- get enough of a wind storm to sweep up around her. She was swept upward by a sudden gush of wind, and twisted to reorient herself as the mini tornado threw her back up out of the void. Head spinning, eyes bleary with tears, she forced herself upward, wings pounding, desperately, toward the closest one.

She was lucky she hadn't broken a wing. She would be lucky to survive this test. Maybe she hadn't been ready, but if there was one thing she was, it was tenacious. Emuh shouldn't count her out just yet. She was going to open that door. As long as she didn't look down again.

Ashtoreth's head was pounding with every thump of her little heart, paws tucked tight to her chest as she forced herself upward. She hadn't got a great look, but she at least thought she had the so-called clever puzzle sorted out. She just had to hit the targets with a strong enough force.

She caught her breath as best she could on her way up, the updrafts carrying her further now that she had escaped the endless pit below. She would need that breath, too, if she wanted to vent out every fear that had hit her in the last few moments.

After something like that, her anxieties mounting to a point, all she wanted to do was scream.

Jaws parted, beady eyes locking on to the glinting bronze overhead, she let loose a magically-charged screech with a snap of her teeth, the air crashing forward from her in a supersonic BANG. The air rushed around her, and she dove, rushing for the last goal. She had no way of knowing if the Door was the end or not, but it meant an exit, and a way out from the endless void. She couldn't fly for long periods of time as it was-- too lopsided-- and she wanted out. As soon as possible.

The second gong's note was no delicate bell; like the first it was a discordant, brassy bellow, like the lowing of a bull.

It, at least, drowned out the distant sound of cackling; Ashtoreth's fall had, it seemed, amused the black owl-beast lurking in the wings.

The wind shifted: stronger, now, howling and biting, making it difficult to even see given how much one would have to squint against its strength. But the final gong was visible, in the distance: higher up, past the eddies and twists of air current and spires of ridge-backed stone.

2/3

@Ashtoreth

Ashtoreth caught a glimpse of the gong above, and as the wing began to sting her eyes, slowly she closed them as she drove herself upward. She flitted past the gong she just hit, its sound deafening to her small, sensitive noodle ears. Her teeth gnashed together as she pushed onward toward her target.

Higher, and higher, until her eyes were forced shut, until it seemed like she was rising on faith of the wind alone. Her wings ached, her body strained to remain rigid, to keep aerodynamic and not get caught on any stray jetstreams and sent spinning. She had to reach the top.

The sensation, almost melancholy, made her feel like she was becoming a star. The world was falling away below her, and she did not dare look down. Or look at all.

When it felt like she could no longer continue upward, she peeled her eyes open. Was the gong close enough? Could she hit it? She summoned the last vestiges of her strength, and focused her energy, twisting herself upside down to slam her wings in the direction of the gong, sending one last clap of sonic magic toward the target... still, so very far away.

She saw the black void underneath her, like a gaping maw, like a sky she would never see, and began to plummet again. The exit-- the gong sounded behind her, a shockwave-- she needed to reach the exit.

As the resonating boom of the final sound-ignited shockwave faded, so did the room itself. The winds faltered, and then died completely; the roaring grind of the stone shifting, the spires falling away, the crevasses simply closing, and suddenly it seemed as though the strange door with its three brass discs was sweeping toward her.

She was safe.

Emuh was laughing.

The cackling rode in on the wisping backs of the last of the other sounds, his feathers ruffled up. "YOU'VE DONE IT, AND NOT EVEN DIED. Are you ready-?" he then asked.

There was no explanation, no pause to wait for a response: instead, there was a tug and flow of magicka from Ashtoreth to Emuh. It was as though abruptly she were being hollowed out: an echoing chamber in her own well of magicka, a drain that felt almost--almost, but not quite--painful. It would be a dizzying moment, and a strangely cold one: but when it ended, Ashtoreth would be left feeling like an emptied vessel.

Emptied... but capable of being refilled to greater depths; and with a new and lurking knowledge itching at the back of her memories.

"NOW GO," Emuh squawked, and turned, flying off in a flutter of black feathers. The door opened. Polaris yawned beyond.

Ashtoreth has Transcended. She is now a Transcendent Pupil, and may work her way back up to Transcendent Master. Upon attaining this rank, her player may post in Update Me to choose a Specialization (viewable in the Magic section of the Guidebook).

She has also learned the spell:

Perfect Storm

Transcendent Intensity Manipulation. An extremely powerful cyclonic vortex of whirling winds is created under the control of the user. Those caught in it can be flung or even torn apart by its power, or it can be used to lift and carry targets--so long as it remains under control. It is very tiring to maintain for more than a few moments.

@Ashtoreth

Not even DIED? Ashtoreth's feathers ruffled as she caught her breath, settling slowly on to the stone before Emuh. In the next moment, the life was sucked out of her, enough to make her throat close up, and she shrunk down with a wince.

Is this what... Aure had to go through? She suddenly felt light-headed, and chilled to the bone, but she had... she had succeeded. She had really thought she was going to fail, but she actually...

Holy shit.

She had to tell someone. Eyes widening, she spread her wings and turned. Thank you, Emuh, she thought, giving him a salute with one of her flight feathers, willing the wind to rise up under her.

The wind suddenly kicked up stronger than it ever had under her command, and she was nearly whisked away at the sheer force of it-- she immediately cut off her magic before it slammed her into the ceiling or the floor, and instead rode the gust she had summoned out.

Her lips parted, and she laughed too, a silent huffing and puffing as she spun through the air and began the long journey home. They wouldn't believe her!

; exit ash