“And here we are!” Father Mayhew threw his arm out, at the tall, tall, tall mountain in the middle of the range. The sun shifted, tinging it red. A beautiful sight, but the Vampires could only see the rocky, snow-covered spire brush the tip of a cloud. “Not even flight spells will last long enough to reach the top. You’d be repelled by the barrier anyway. Here’s where some of the…sigh….strongest mobs in the game reside.” he finished flatly. Alex let out a low whistle, tilting his head.

“That’s a big vun. And ve have to get over the other vuns to access Mt. Skyshear, yes?”

“Yep. Can’t get closer than this with teleportation. Fortunately, I came prepared.” Mayhew said, holding up two red crystals. Jamie tilted his head, then gasped as he read the stat screen.

“G-Griffin Summoning!? Y-You can get those!?” he exclaimed.

“Tons of money, remember? They were hard to find, had to use like eight teleport crystals before I could get ‘em. They won’t be much use on the actual mountain, but to get there we can fly over the range.” Mayhew held the crystals up, and called out “Summon Griffin!” and they shattered in his hands.

There were flashes of red in the sky, and in a swirl of feathers two beasts appeared, great bodies of lions and the heads and wings of eagles, though much bigger than them both. Each griffin was fifteen feet from beak to tail, with a nearly twenty-foot wingspan. Alex gaped as they landed, creatures he’d only heard of in myth standing before him, stretching and shaking off the flight.

“Magnificent.” he said as a large golden eye turned on him. A pop-up appeared with the griffin’s stats: level 28, STR 112, TGH 88, SPC 20 and SPD 140. “They appear qvite strong, as vell.”

“Better take a picture, these things won’t last long. The X Summoning spells’re like an hour for every ten levels you got, capping at like five hours, right?” Lina said.

“Yes indeed! Griffin Summoning’s a Beast Tamer spell, and one you don’t get until you’re level 25. They’re only as strong as your level, and they count toward the Tamer’s level cap. It’s basically an emergency substitute if you don’t have any monsters.” Jamie explained.

“So hurry up, these things’ll only last two hours. Should be enough time to get to Mt. Skyshear.” Father Mayhew said, hopping on one of the griffins. “Two to a catbird.” Alex jumped on Mayhew’s Lina on the other. Jamie was going to climb up, but then he realized. He’d be sitting next to. Holding onto. Right behind, hands around waist, super close. To a girl. He couldn’t help but glance at Rizelkhrad’s toned, athletic midriff, the tight fabric of Lina’s shirt taught on her muscles, just below her generous, bouncy, warm…

He went bright red and dithered, mumbling to himself as he turned and circled. Lina rolled her eyes. Kids.

“Hurry up!” Mayhew barked.

“C’mon kid, let’s go.” Lina said. She held out her hand, and Jamie’s face turned nuclear.

“I, I mean, t-that is, if you, uh…” he sputtered, trying to reach out a hand but pulling it back. Damn his nerves!

A hand clasped around hers, and Jamie looked up to see Alex on the griffin behind her.

“Ve do not have time for this. Jamie, I vill give you advice about vomen later, but the most important thing is, they are just people too. Remember that.” he said, and Jamie nodded. The Magus found himself lifted off the ground and dumped on the creature’s back. The griffin retracted his beak and flapped his wings.

“C’mon, let’s go!” Father Mayhew said. He kicked the griffin’s side, and they took off.

“Have you ever flown on vun of this game’s creatures before?” Alex asked Lina.

“Nope, but summoned monsters are supposed to obey the people controlling them.” Mimicking Mayhew, she thumped her leg on its side. The wingspan unfurled, and with a mighty flap they began to lift off the ground. “Whoa! Oh man!” Lina cried as the g-forces took hold. She leaned over and hung on for dear life to the feathery neck, Alex hugging her close. One, two, and they were in the air! The wings beat, higher and higher as the griffin ascended, then swooped forward to catch up to Mayhew and Jamie’s. The wind rushed past their avatars, the beast dipping and soaring on wind drafts. Alex clung with his legs, trying to relax and failing.

“It’s hard to trust this creature to fly. Usually vhen I do, I’m going under my own power!” he told her over the wind.

“Yeah, I can see that! Whoa, we’re so high up!” Lina said, looking at the mountains below them. It was strange, seeing the clouds at this angle. The sun was beginning to go down, lengthening the shadows across the land, casting an incredible beauty as they flew above it. A plane couldn’t compare to this majesty, even if it would be faster. She gazed around in wonder and contentment, until she saw black dots in the distance. “What’re those?”

Alex squinted hard at them, more used to trying to see in the air with all this wind around. He frowned.

“Trouble, that’s vhat. They look like vinged vomen, like angels, sort of!” The dots grew closer, and he counted roughly twenty-five of them. All of them were carrying spears with their feet, their arms actually white, feathery wings. “Incoming!”

Lina grabbed the griffin’s feathers and pulled back, making it go up. Jamie and Mayhew weren’t as lucky, as the monsters threw their spears, hitting them and the griffin. The Priest -38, Jamie -46, and the griffin -17. It squawked indignantly.

“Vhat are these things!” Alex growled, looking around and cursing his uselessness. He had no ranged weapons at all! And they were too far away to jump to.

“Harpies! They like to live in high, rocky places in RFO!” Lina shouted, urging the griffin into a dive. Her sword was useless here, it was way too heavy to use at these speeds, one-handed to boot unless she wanted to fall off.

Down below, Jamie warded off the screaming harpies with a gout of flame form his hand. Mayhew was trying to push the griffin faster, but they were being swarmed. He used a Divine Barrier, but the indestructible forcefield only guarded from the front, claws scratching o nit form the harpies’ talons. He eyed the cooldown bar, eighteen more seconds until he could use it again. The spell only lasted ten!

“Duck!” Jamie cried, pointing his staff over Mayhew’s shoulder. He stretched out his hand behind them.

“No, wait-”

“Flamejet!” MP down, harpies to the rear scattered. “Sunblight!” Jamie knew very well that no attack pierced a Divine Barrier, one of the cornerstone spells of the Priest class. But the Sunblight spell didn’t just deal damage to enemies. The harpies fell away, forced to use their arm-wings to shield their eyes from the blinding light. “Yeah!”

“You moron!” Mayhew cried, hazy spots swimming in his eyes. The griffin cawed, blinded too. They started to fall, the harpies swooping to rend them to pieces.

“No! If only I could do something!” Alex cried, gnashing his teeth.

“Throw a spell at them!” Lina shouted.

“I only have Stalagspike as a damaging spell, it’s no use in the air!” he countered. She smacked her forehead.

“Use Magbolt! It’s the first spell Raiders get!”

“Oh, right.” He turned his hand at a harpy, grimacing. This spell was absolutely weak, it had never done anything against an enemy other than the tutorial wolf. He shook his head, but it was the only option. “Magbolt!” The blue sphere shot out at the harpy, a level 1 spell against creatures that were level 38. It fell like his hopes, and splashed onto the harpy, burning bright then winking out. -41. He blinked.

“V-Vhat? The Magbolt. It, it did something? Holy *bleep*, it did something! Lina, it actually did damage for vunce!” he cowed.

“So happy for you.” she deadpanned, using her knees to guide the griffin toward the other. “Harpies have crap defense and health! The hard part’s actually hitting them in the first place, keep firing!”

“Right! Magbolt! Magbolt!” Alex fired spells at the harpies like a machinegun, but they began to spread out. He downed two of them with concentrated fire, four shots apiece, but that was barely a dent. They kept harrying Jamie’s griffin as it tried to reclaim altitude, but was forced lower and lower to the ground. Spears kept appearing in their talons, and they danced through the sky too gracefully for Alex to get a good bead on any of them.

“Blast and tarnation!” he thundered. Even if he hit one, it still wasn’t enough to take it out. Their TGH was only 45, pathetic at their level. He took in the monsters slashing at Mayhew and Jamie, still casting but not making much progress with the freewheeling harpies. He nodded. “Lina, fly us closer! I vant to hit them vith my svord!”

“What!? This is no time for memes!” she scolded.

“Vhat is a meme!?” he hollered back.

“You’re serious!?”

“Yes!”

“Ugh, fine! Hang on!” Smacking the flanks with her boots, she spurred it on faster, over the other griffin. Gritting his teeth, the vampire took careful aim, drawing his sword. This required careful timing; there would be no second chance.

They zoomed over the spot, and Alex dropped. The wind whistled past as he went free-falling, clutching his sword in an iron grip. It had been too long since he’d flown up high in bat form, changed back to dive, and transformed again, simply for the fun of it. It was so much effort. But his task now wasn’t on fun, but a deadly game of survival. Damn it, his metaphors needed work.

He rocketed down, forcing a couple mobs to scatter and landed with a thump on the leonine backside, making the griffin squawk and fight even harder to keep aloft. He ripped his blade free of the harpy’s wing he’d impaled through, and redirected a startled Jamie’s arm form his face to the harpy next to him, just as a blast of fire sprayed out.

“Whoa! Alex!?”

“Keep fighting!” Jamie had a heart attack when Alex used his shoulder to pivot and swing his legs out, smacking two harpies for only -18 but knocking them back. The vampire’s limbs and sword lashed out, defending where Jamie’s spells couldn’t. Harpies burst into data and light, forcing them back as XP bars filled. Father Mayhew whimpered as he tried to heal the griffin, frozen in place as a player breakdanced mere inches form his head at bird people.

“Here we go!” Lina appeared on her griffin, her sword held like a lance as she plowed through a cluster, making them explode.

“Alright, ve-” Alex was cut off as the griffin stopped flapping, a -73 appearing next to it. He boggled at its’ 5 hitpoints. He looked down to see a trio of harpies sticking spears into their mount’s belly, snickering with vicious glee. Two slashes and a burst of flame and they were clear, but the griffin squawked pitifully.

“She’s not gonna make it!” Mayhew cried, the harpies mostly backing off, but only to pelt the party with spears. Mayhew cast Divine Barrier again, but it couldn’t protect enough. He began dumping healing potions down the beak, but the HP was drained as fast as it was restored. They simply couldn’t keep up. He aimed the griffin as upward as he could in the direction of Mt. Skyshear, and prayed as they descended. The griffin hit zero, beginning to dissolve into light. They had less than two seconds. Lina was trying to reach them, but wouldn’t make it. They wouldn’t survive a fall from this height.

Jamie grabbed, then suddenly in the air, Mayhew behind him.

“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

“Gotcha!” They slammed into Lina, nearly bowling her over. The griffin screeched in protest, flapping harder, but fell to despair when Alex was leaping as well, jumping from the griffin at the last possible moment. He tried to land on the pile of bodies…and missed. His hand briefly slid on the tawny fur, then off.

“Ah!” Jamie stuck his staff out, which the vampire’s quick reflexes allowed him to desperately cling to. Then the physics engine caught up, and Jamie found himself sliding off.

“Hurk!” Mayhew grabbed his waist, but had no leverage and was pulled himself.

“Come on!” Lina shouted in exasperation, grabbing his leg as they flew off the beast. She strained her STR score to the max as she tried to hold up three people with one arm, the other holding onto the griffin. “Gah! Too heavy!” She could feel her grip slipping.

She wasn’t the only one. The griffin cawed and flapped as hard as it could, but all that weight on one side was too much for it. The dangled in the air, fighting to keep aloft futilely. The griffin was going down.

“Hang on! Coming in hot!” Lina shouted. The ground was approaching fast, the griffin losing vitality as they dropped, ever closer. They were starting to skim the mountains, twenty feet at over eighty miles an hour. The griffin was dipping too much.

“Right! Lina, lift!” Alex cried and let go, spreading out his body to reduce speed.

“No!” Jamie cried as Lina heaved, hauling him and Mayhew up. They watched him fall with a detached, serene grace on his face, concentrating as the ground was-

“Hut!” His body snapped together in a ball, tucking as his feet hit the ground, -17, -15, -18, -19, -10, -12 in rapid succession, and then their attention was occupied by the griffin slamming into the ground, skidding on the dirt and rocks.

They all lay there, examining their virtual bodies with twitches and grunts. Boots crunched on gravel as Alex stood over them, a wild grin on his face.

“Whew! How vas that? Paradropping vithout a chute is exhilarating, isn’t it?” They all stared at him in exasperated horror.

“How are you alive? How are we alive?” Lina groaned.

“A griffin broke your fall. That’s vhy your health’s yellow, vhile mine’s red. Ha ha ha!” Alex threw back his head and laughed. Maybe this game wasn’t so boring after all! “Speaking of vhich, can I get some of those healing potions?”

“Ugh. Yeah.” Mayhew raised his head, ruefully looking at Mt. Skyshear. Looks like they’d be walking the rest of the way. At least they’d gotten this far. “They’re in the red bag…” He turned to his bags, lifting it up to the sound of broken glass. “Huh?” The bag sloshed, thick with liquid and glass shards. “No, no, no, no, no…” He opened the bag to see all the potions broken. “No!” He checked the mana potion bag, in the same state. “No! No! This’s terrible! How could this get any worse!?”

“Uh, you maybe s-shouldn’t have said that.” Jamie said apologetically, holding up the bag of spell crystals. Or rather, spell dust. The Priest watched as he upended the bag, broken crystals and multicolored sand pouring out. The litter digitized and disappeared. Mayhew sank to his knees.

“A-All that stuff…all that money…it’ll take a month for the shops to respawn it…”

“Cheer up! A real man doesn’t need accessories anyvay! He relies on his vits and his svord! Ha ha!” Alex said, slapping him on the back.

“The ability to teleport and throw fireballs would’ve been useful, though.” Lina deadpanned.