I saw two approaches going forward from my current position. Either I could fly after Stormbringer and see how close I could get to learn more about what he actually did to the world, or I could search for the source underground, which required some kind of cave entrance. Luckily, those were not exclusive. I took off and moved towards the east, where the dragon had gone. I chose a decent speed but low enough to scan the ground for promising caves or ravines to explore later.

It took a whole two days without much happening until I noticed the frozen desolation underneath was starting to thaw. I was going too slow to catch up. There had been a few potential points for later research of the mana leaking through the cracks in the ground. Not one of them was especially promising, though. So I decided to accelerate. I used my shadow wings to go a bit faster than my previous top speed. The energy expenditure was manageable for about a week from my current observations.

That quickly changed when the cold started to get really annoying. Small droplets of water were condensing on my body and quickly freezing within my feathers. It got harder to fly and I was feeling the cold seep into my bones. So I took the only reasonable solution. I shifted to my metal and shadow form. The icicles between my now steel and thaumium feathers cracked with a good shake of my body and the cold no longer bothered me. Until I noticed how much more ice and weather mana was drawn to my body in this form. That was when I regrettably dropped my pursuit. I wanted to go further but I just could not physically do so. The wyverns had to be incredibly resilient if they were still following the dragon.

It took another day to get back into manageable weather, mostly because I did not completely stop but returned to scanning the ground for interesting things and deep caverns. Beneath the ice, there was not really anything, though. I found myself above a somewhat familiar chain of mountains. Mostly because I knew which direction I was going, not because I actually recognized any terrain. There were a few valleys but even those had a high altitude and not much past a few frozen shrubs or a still river. Wherever I looked, not a single sign of life could be seen. A few caves here and there might be good places to start exploring beneath but I was not confident in actually finding anything. Neither was I happy with how little I knew about the area I found myself in.

Simply following the trail of ice should lead me back to the valley I first saw Stormbringer and just a little before that, the ravine holding the entrance to Roguk’s village. I could pay them a visit, but maybe after figuring out some more things about the weather-dragon. I could also turn around and see if any large changes were already happening to the areas that had been hit days ago. Though in that case, staying here and observing carefully was most definitely the smarter idea. The only risk was not knowing about local danger. The surface should not hold much for another few weeks or however long it took for the ice mana to dissipate. That meant, caves and the like were prime real estate for those that had survived. Maybe a resting spot close by but not within the frozen area was the best place for now.

Then, an idea hit me. I spread my wings of darkness as far as I could and turned upwards. Beating them, I rose as steeply as I could manage, higher and higher. With my metal form, I had no reason to worry about air. Luckily, there was barely any cloud in the sky. With the angle I took, it was near impossible to make out the ground clearly. I only spotted it from the corner of my eyes. After almost a minute of rising, I levelled and looked around. My eyes had always been one of my most reliable senses. Being up this high made it only more clear how great they were. Sure, I was not an eagle or a falcon, but with my Skill [Owl Senses] being as high as it was, I could still make out most branches on the thicker trees below me. Still, there was not much non-frozen land in my field of view.

I saw some movement at the edges at least but I knew I could see more from higher up. After another minute, the air had gotten a lot thinner. It was not much of an issue for my darkness wings but my normal wings had become much less effective. I would not be able to rise any higher without the darkness, though I doubted I would fall. Which I promptly put to the test and confirmed. That would save me a lot of mana during the scouting.

Looking back down, I was absolutely amazed. I had flown a lot in this life but this was the first time rising this high. Well, it felt somewhat familiar. The panorama at least. I winced as a small headache burned my head. An image of a rounded window looking over a field of clouds with a bit of green peeking through here and there flashed before my inner eye. A memory. I had flown before. What was it? A visit to my… mother’s parents? Or my father’s? No matter, they were my grandparents. The very same I had seen when I made the memory bracelet. Or they had been, at least. Back when I was not a deathly sick human. Back when… No. I had made friends. I did not need to remember.

Back to the task on wing, I focused on the view below me. Far in the east, I spotted the roiling clouds of Stormbringer. My eyes widened as I saw the dragon’s body occasionally break through the sunlit surface. The monster was gigantic even from this far away. The black, blue and purple sheen reflected from his body made me squint my eyes even though the sun reflecting on the clouds should have been more glaring. Then I remembered I was in my metal body. How was he making me squint in the first place? My eyes were made from steel, gold and thaumium, for warp’s sake! Maybe it was simply a reflex carried over from my flesh and blood body?

I turned away from the sight. If I was stronger I might have tried to fly above and get his attention but it sounded like probable suicide for me, right now. What I saw all around was… snow. Everywhere was pure white, covered in tiny crystals. Though my eyes could not make out the individual snowflakes from up here, the frozen trees below looked very similar. I realized I had been wrong with my assumption of how much non-frozen land there was. It simply looked like that due to the snow.

The winter was quiet all throughout the wilderness. The only interruption was the ork valley down south which I could see now from my new height. In the southwest a thin grey line was visible. The dwarven wall. Had I already flown this far? Straining my eyes, I confirmed the Borsdown lake on the horizon. At least I believed the flat blue surface was that specific lake. Further to the north I saw the mountains rapidly drop into hills and then snow-covered plains. A few plumes of smoke betrayed some most likely human villages. They should live in that direction. I drew another circle. And another one. Something looked off. Very off. It almost seemed as if the human plains were on top of a ginormous mountain, something like a plateau. Especially looking at the Dwarven Hills, the land was not lining up with the horizon.

I slowed down to the slowest glide I could manage. My body balanced out on the air. There was some wind which might cause the weird feeling. I carefully pulled in one wing, then the other. Both times, I dipped equally fast to the side. This was not working. My experiment was flawed. And still, I could not get rid of the feeling that the horizon should be different from what it looked like. Especially when I turned to the plains. There, everything looked fine. Behind, Stormbringer’s clouds covered a significant part but even they were… diagonal. Only a bit, maybe five degrees. Or ten at most. But the horizon was… not straight. I turned south and… It was fine again. East was diagonal and west was… diagonal in the opposite direction. It was a mountain! An absolutely massive mountain! Or something like that. I did not actually know what the world was like. I had only assumed it was a planet like earth. Maybe it was something different like a plane or… No, it could not be a living animal, right? What if this world was… No. I would not go there. Scientific method! Sit back fantasy! Go back to sleep, dreams! I would figure out what was going on and then I could remember you!

But it was seriously weird to have such geology. It just felt wrong somehow. Maybe I should fly towards the ocean and then rise high again. The water would make it clear if there was a normal gravitational centre making this a planet or something similar. I only had to fly high enough to see a potential curve. Yes, that would solve my question. Or at least start on it.

I shook my head to clear it. This whole weird plateau thing had come out of nowhere. It was interesting but I could set it as my next goal of research. Maybe the dwarves already knew about something and I had simply not come across it in their libraries. Or Nymph might have an answer. For now, it was time to return to my current interest. Especially since that was limited in time, even if repeatable twice a year.

I found myself looking down towards the trail of destruction. It truly was much harder to make out than in summer. Everything had just frozen to death rather than been broken into tiny splinters. With the snow covers, it was very difficult to discern from this height. Then, a crazy idea popped into my head. I checked my mana and sure enough, I had over half left. More than enough to shift back and still use some magic after.

I hesitated for a moment. Then I pulled my wings in. Steel met steel with a soft clang, quickly overshadowed by the rushing of wind past my ears as I dropped like a rock. Or like a 250 kg steel owl. Was I really that heavy? I had just gone with a simple formula of guessing my volume. I probably was a little larger than I had assumed there but… That was a lot of weight. My eyes were fixed on the horizon slowly dropping towards my head. Why again was I doing this headfirst? I turned up to look at the ground coming down to meet me. And I panicked. Hard. Because I was dropping far faster than it had looked like when I had not seen the ground.

Before I could react in any way, I impacted. The frozen earth shattered with screeching crunches and cracks and my metal form smashed into it. I felt only a dull ache in my head until the cold hit me like an electric shock. I was stuck halfway in the ground. The ice mana had gone deep and only where the cracks had opened was it receded in any way. Sadly, I had not landed in such a crack. I extended my shadow and shifted out of the hole. Quickly, I started to feel better. A glance around showed a plume of icy dirt and snow thrown up high and obscuring any vision. I checked on my body and found I had returned to flesh and blood. The spot where I landed held a cylindrical impact hole about the width of a large owl’s torso and maybe half as deep as I was tall. I took a deep breath. In and out. Then I started cackling. My tongue clicked the roof of my beak as half cut-off hoots disappeared in the plume of broken ice. That had been insanely fun. And it was perfectly safe, as long as I had mana. Instead of dropping rocks or magical feathers on my targets, I could start dropping my very own body on their heads. What an amazing way to fight! I had to try it one day. Though, aiming would be very difficult.

For now, it was time to find a roost for the next time. I wanted to observe the effects the life and order mana had on the frozen wasteland over a longer time.