guess what: it's another ambiguously placed magic solo!
may or may not have plot, haven't figured that out yet!
Without a sky, practicing beneath starlight seemed fitting—it made him think of what could've been, were they not surrounded by an apparently infinite amount of stone, trapped and sequestered away from something called a surface for eternity. Wind could go on forever without impediment. Monoceros was treacherous in that it was bottled wind, and Aure currently lacked the confidence to attempt taming that. He was no dragon capable of taking a hefty swing at the wall with his entire body.

The young King glanced down at the ruins as he swept past them from high above. Nictitating membranes slid over his eyes briefly, and he shook his head. He twisted to look at the tower overlooking all of Orion; a slight tilt of the wing had him curving past it. Bright eyes stared at the top of it, orienting himself and—ah, there it was. Nestled away into the landscape, easy to miss from above, as intended.

He squirreled away the resulting thought for later.

For now, it was time for him to climb—and climb he did. Feathers beat at the air, pushing him higher and higher with a cacophony brewing in his stone. It swirled through his chest with every breath, amassing—

HHHISS—!

Oh.

Aure's wings tucked in too late to send him careening out of the blast radius. The sonic boom's impact rocketed through the air behind him, far too fast for any living thing to outspeed. It smashed into his back and broadsided him. His fall stuttered for a moment with the rapidly-compressing air; then, he started to free-fall with a deafening EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE in his ears.

A wing spread further than the other by pure chance, and it sent him into a one-eighty spin, so his back faced the ground—and, that was a more terrifying prospect than meeting his maker head-on.

Panic thrummed through him as he tried to twist a wing to catch air beneath them, only for the resistance to snap it back upwards. Each feather dragged against the airflow, feeling a bit like they were about to be stripped to quills. The ceiling blurred closer (That's not right.) and spliced brown in patches (Oh.) with a dark silhouette descending. Aure blinked once, tilted his head far enough to see the ground coming ever-nearer, and threw his magic out.

It broadsided him again; a blustering thermal that spiraled as it met him.

The wyvern stuck a wing out to meet it, and when it caught, extended the other. He nearly overbalanced again, but managed to correct with a shift of the tail and quick jab of the legs. It was smooth sailing from there, though—even with his stream's quick end.

His flight path was rather standard after that point. Gliding let his heartrate level out and his stomach settle back in his gut where it belonged—because, of course, Aure was not built for such intense situations. He could've wired himself for it, but his demeanor was just too casual for it. A certain daredevil-slash-fool in the Bonebound would've handled it better (or maybe not, since he'd be on the receiving end of that peculiar sense of deja vu that'd just struck him.)

"I'll go slower, then," he mused to himself (and the sound of his voice was still muffled like everything else,) after a while. A steady bit of magic—the sort that he knew didn't require so much effort to maintain; or, to even cast. It'd been slated to be a stirring breeze... something to beat his wings against as he went to ascend once again.

But, transcendence bit at him once again, and sent him veering off-course. The wind blasted through with misdirected intensity, sending him through a dizzying corkscrew and bringing him yet closer to the ground. A few feet further, and his primaries would be grazing every passing building.

Skimming a few buildings with his talons and shoving off the last crumbled wall, Aure started his ascent with no magical assistance. It was becoming increasingly obvious that he needed a cushion of height. He could deny it no longer. Not so much a spark of magic was responding to him, now, and it was... beginning to become a little peculiar. He'd never been so unsure of his own control over it.

Breathe, he reminded himself in thoughts, then breathed it out loud, "breathe." Half of it was focus. As Pride'd told him on the shores of Fornax, "we imagine, we will it into being, and it becomes." That was ages ago now. Aure twisted his head downward, as if to spot the pale stag in his usual haunts—wondering how he and his family were doing. Family, as in his own children, and the rest of the Seven.

The poor Gembound'd always seemed to have issues with his ilk staying together. They came and they went, and their self-proclaimed King had been asleep for more than a year, now. Aure didn't pity him, no—he just worried, like a neighbor or an old friend would.

Imagine.

Aure didn't close his eyes—that was dangerous to do, mid-flight—but he imagined wispy blue streaks dancing across his vision, like a breeze stirring over a black owl's feathers for just the briefest of moments. He visualized them spiraling ahead of himself and trailing on the tips of his outermost primaries.

Will it into being.

His mind reached.

It becomes.

The Bone King's sails went full, the full force of a wind drifting beneath them and carrying him higher and higher with nary a wingbeat. Every bit of being disheartened washed off him as easily as the air ahead of him did; his eyes brightened into a trademark-eager smile. There was the spirit of his youth—all that luckiness that landed him where he was today.

The young King just hoped that his luck wouldn't run out before he'd managed to exhaust himself and come out more familiar with his magic.

His attention shifted back to the imagination—this time, he painted a more intense scene in his mind. It was a veritable path in the sky, like a sort of superhighway. Moments ago, it had thrown him into even flight. Now, Aure willed it to carry him to Orion's roof; and, with no more than a single beat of his wings to keep himself in the currents, he scraped the stars with his nape.

What would stop him, were that ceiling not there? It was another flight of fancy, dancing through his mind like the invisible road before him. The song ended a few seconds in, his focus wavering on what lay ahead.

He found himself curving around the Tower once again, taking to a sweeping spiral high above. For a moment, Aure contemplated swooping down to alight and rest a while; but, he'd spent too much time crawling to this height and took a fall from it once. His wings spread full sail—it'd be best to stay like that a while.

Bright eyes couldn't help but drift down to watch the old ruins, though, and the way that it was almost his axis of motion. A tilt of the wing had him pinwheeling around it with ease. He felt out for that movement, how perfect and circular it was. The wind stirred, and it brought him back to his being so young and fresh in an old Olympics event. His first foray into a display of magical prowess, and it'd given him the gold.

Aure'd studied the act of another not long ago; perhaps, he could study his own, now.

A wingbeat had the air spinning and intensifying into a whirling zephyr atop the Tower. The tip of it bounced between the battlements, however close they were, and it existed in its self-contained and -fed state. There was—step two. He couldn't bring himself to trust step one—the barbs of his feathers were still singed from the last attempt.

After a time, the twister began to lose steam and throw fewer pebbles here and there. The frenetic movement stilled into a consistent, steady hum. Small as its eye was, Aure hadn't taken his chances. Gambling was another forte that wasn't his.

He flipped his wings up, keeping primaries tilted, and practically parachuted down into the center of the wild wind. It lifted him upwards, at first, like a piece of flotsam on an endless sea, no shipwreck to be seen for miles. With a strike of the talons and a brief fall, the wyvern was at the heart of it all.

The wind roared louder than the blood in his ears, but it was... peaceful, same as before. His magic twisted through his throat, but all that emerged was a brief squeal.

... perhaps, that was too far out of his reach. It was uncontrollable magic, indeed. Once it was released from his being, there was little to stop it. The noise would keep resounding, and the air would keep being ballooned.

Aure flapped his wings, climbing higher in the dissipating twister. Something else, then—something he'd used before and had finer control over (fine enough to silence another, even.) Given enough strength and focus, it could have the same effect.

His method blinked into view: a pocket of air given visible shape in his mind. He inhaled, and encouraged it to balloon and spread—further, further, further! It smashed against the walls of the twister, breaking the flow. The effect wasn't immediate, but it was appreciable.

At last, he stood atop the Tower, heart a little too quick in his chest.

There, Aure stood akimbo—letting his wings lie relaxed at his sides, primaries brushing old, dusty stone. He shivered in the residual wind a few times, feathers rising and making his nape look a bit like a pinecone. Talons clutched at the quartz-encrusted parapet, loosening as he leaned this way or that to counterbalance.

At one point, though, the young King found himself peering over the roof's lip, carefully kneeling on the cobblestones. From such a point, he could only see the worn-smooth floor. It was dimly-lit.

Curiously, he didn't recall ever exploring this particular building. The others had seemed like old haunts—where whatever-manner-of-beast once lived. Subjects, workers, what-have-you, all beneath the Throne while it was red. This place had seemed... aesthetic, almost. A piece of the landscape that he often glanced over, despite its glimmering, starry surface. It overlooked all of Orion, and yet he'd thought it was insignificant... ?

Odd.

He twisted his head some, hooking one wing so that his inflexible claws pressed flush against the rock above him. Disentangling a leg from his own self and the ridge, Aure felt out for a foothold. The very tips of his toes grazed stone, and he leaned to stand one-legged, doing an awkward sort of split.

It strained him enough that he tumbled the rest of the way, landing in a graceless heap.