ZipZing zipped after Kit the moment she launched herself into the sky. She intended to follow as high as she could, and cast her own spells on Kit until she was out of range, so that the items could be used for as long as possible.She could just make out the traveling merchant ringed by players in the market square as they rose above Fogton. When she looked to see if Kit had spotted him, she saw the larger dragon glance downward in the same direction before gazing upward again with determination.
Danika had expected Kit to be difficult to keep up with as they flew upward, but her new dragon shape seemed to fly effortlessly but not very quickly. She seemed to leisurely rise into the air, instead of circling around and around and flapping with all her might as her hawk form had done.
"Is this as fast as you can fly?" Danika questioned worriedly.
"It seems to be," Kit agreed. "But I"m not getting slower as I rise higher yet."
"Do you think Ryullusion"s speed boost is working?" Danika asked. It had made a noticable difference when they"d tested it in fairy dragon form, letting Kit outpace ZipZing easily.
"I"m sure it is," Kit rea.s.sured her. "I can see the music notes sparkling off my wings just the same."
"Living Jade Empire" fell away from them as they climbed higher, and Danika stopped worrying about Kit"s seemingly slow speed when they finally reached a height where she had to cast featherweight on herself to keep up. The larger dragon continued to rise at the same steady pace.
Kit began to slow as they continued to rise, and she seemed to be nearing the "ceiling" of her natural flight at about the same time that ZipZing could no longer rise even with her featherweight active. Danika quickly cast the spell for Kit before the larger dragon rose out of reach, and Kit suddenly flew upward more quickly again.
"Good luck!" Danika shouted after her.
She hovered at the top of the range she could reach and watched the celestial dragon rise higher until she became too small to see easily, and then let herself start dropping back toward the ground.
--
Kit rose more swiftly with the featherweight spell active, and she began to hope that she might be able to fly high enough with just that boost. Unfortunately she only rose perhaps a third of her original distance from the ground before she slowed again. She renewed the spell with the pendant, but it hadn"t actually worn off yet.
Ryullusion"s song accompanied her, with the very realistic mild annoyance of music through one ear bud. The magical transmission didn"t have the hollow tinny sound of an old fashioned electronic ear bud speaker though. The clear notes from his harp felt like they carried her upward and the visual effect that they gave to her wings was merely a rea.s.surance.
She didn"t open the bag of wind until she could no longer detect any upward progress. She wasn"t entirely certain that she"d stopped making progress, because the ground was so far below her now that it didn"t make a very good reference point, and the clouds she could see were all moving along their own paths.
There were other dragons visible to her at this elevation, but none of them approached her, and they seemed to cl.u.s.ter near the clouds. She guessed that they were all at least twice as big as she was, though like the distance, it was difficult to judge their sizes.
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Kit looked upward. As a dragon she had a flexible neck and could see the sky above herself with more than peripheral vision, which didn"t show well on the full motion console. Larger dragons drifted lazily, like the fish in the Koi ponds across the street from Shrubbery"s garden, and Kit couldn"t tell if it was the distance or something else that gave them a rather faint and misty appearance.
The bag of wind lifted her higher, with a wild buoyant feeling, like riding a wave. Balancing herself so that she climbed mostly vertically along the thread"s path felt a lot like one of her few attempts at trying to balance on a surfboard.
Even if the full motion console wasn"t VR, it still managed to convey a lot, like the dropping feeling after the bag was empty. Kit frantically renewed the featherweight spell, in case it had worn off, and then withdrew the first carpet.
Silvam had instructed her that the carpet would automatically hover for a full minute before it began to descend if it wasn"t given a command. The Jade Hand had thought that she might be able to use that time to reorient herself and apply other skills and boosts, without using up one of the activations.
The carpet flattened itself out across the open air as though it were a floor, automatically orienting itself, and Kit scrambled onto its flexible surface gratefully. A minute wasn"t very long though, so she activated the dragon"s racial skill "Phase" which she would only be able to use once with her single skill point.
She was confused and relieved at the same time, as the air seemed to thicken around her, and she found that she was able to move upward from the carpet. But it took a lot more effort and felt weird. The full motion console made it feel a lot like trying to swim through gelatin. She reached down and stowed the carpet before struggling to fly upward again.
When the phase skill ended, she brought out the carpet again. She couldn"t tell how much progress she"d made. A cloud had moved to cover the landscape beneath her, masking her main reference point. She complained aloud, "I needed some sort of measuring device that would tell me how high I am."
It startled her when she heard ZipZing"s voice over the sound of Ryullusion"s harp. The fairy dragon said quickly, "I"ll go ask the merchant if such a tool exists. If it does, and I can get one, I"ll mail it to you."
Kit laughed, and said, "Thanks, and thanks Ryu, for playing so steadily."
His voice was warm in her ear as he replied softly, "I"m glad to be of a.s.sistance."
Even though she seemed to be alone in the sky, her friends were all supporting her.