“How exhausted are you?” I asked Ylva, knowing that she had to be running on fumes by now. She had fought just as hard as Lenore and I had and now she was even carrying me to safety.

“And how are you flying in the first place?” I added, my curiosity pushing past the grief, if only for a moment.

“We are pack, acknowledged by the Ancestor,” Ylva replied as if those words explained everything.

“So?” I pushed, unwilling to give up just like that, “What does it mean?”

“You helped me awake the Ancestor’s Bloodline and today, the Ancestor felt that I needed a bit of help, so he granted me a blessing. The blessing allows me to freely run through the sky,” she explained and while I still was unable to understand why wolves could run through the sky, the explanation that it was a divine blessing could at least be chalked up under some sort of “divine bullshit”-category.

Shaking my head, I decided to focus on my other question, “And how exhausted are you?”

“I’ll have to rest in an hour, maybe two,” she replied, finally giving me a simple and straightforward answer.

“Can you head in that direction?” I asked, giving her the direction towards the dryad attuned to the forest around us. I couldn’t tell how far she was away, but she was south of us and she had an appointment with my blade and the Nidhögg. It would be rude to keep her waiting overlong.

“Sure?” Ylva agreed, though she obviously didn’t know why, “What are you planning?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I asked, letting out an angry snort, “They took my beloved from me, what do you think I’m about to do?” I didn’t even wait for her to consider, before answering my own question, “Revenge, what else. This day will go into elven history, as a day of mourning and a day of remembrance. If there even will be an elven history, once we are done with them.”

The thought brought a smile to my face, just the idea that there wouldn’t be any elves to tell their story made me feel quite happy. Maybe I should create something to chronicle why the elves would be suffering, just so those coming after them would know their crimes.

The smile didn’t fade from my face, even as I closed my eyes and fresh tears started to trickle down my face. I had no idea how I had any tears left, but my avatar somehow managed to surprise me. I tried to rest, maybe get a bit of sleep while Ylva carried me forward, but somehow, the moment I closed my eyes, Sigmir’s form appeared before me.

It was akin to a revolving lantern, images of Sigmir flickering through my mind, from the moment I had met her, fleeing from the hounds unleashed by her tribe, to that last moment, when she turned into dust. So many memories, so many sensations of her. Images of her, memories of her scent, of her taste and texture. They were all running through my mind, never stopping, never letting me rest. And yet, I welcomed those images, no matter how painful it was to have them in my mind, I wanted to experience that pain, even if it was only a faint reflection of the pleasure those sensations had brought me before.

As I was floating in the darkness, a pair of arms wrapped around me. The familiar sensation of Sigmir’s presence entered my mind, the sensation of comfort and home wrapping around me. Held in her arms, I felt myself relax, my mind falling into darkness as exhaustion claimed me.

“Morgana, you need to wake up,” a growl shook me from my sleep, a wonderful dream fading like mist in the morning sun. For a moment, I felt the lingering sensation of Sigmir’s arms around me, only to realise it had been nothing but a dream. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, feeling as if someone had punched me in the gut and a sob escaped my mouth.

“I’m awake,” I told Ylva, who had woken me up.

“I need to rest for a bit,” she told me and I realised that her previous, steady and secure gait was flagging, making her look like she was very much on her last legs.

“I’ll carry you,” I immediately promised, knowing that stopping would mean the elves could easily hunt us down. I wasn’t sure how I would be able to carry Ylva, she was quite sizable after all, but I was confident I’d be able to find a way.

“Catch me,” Ylva told me, and suddenly, I wasn’t holding her back and riding her, but I was hugging a tiny puppy and realised that she had essentially done the reverse of the ability that turned her huge and made herself tiny. However, given that I wasn’t riding her any longer, I was now falling. For a moment, I was stunned before I managed to get my legs under me and absorbed the shock while holding onto Ylva.

Looking at the pup-sized wolf in my arms, I realised that she had truly been on her last legs and had already fallen asleep. Even as I kept running, I shook my head and put her around my neck, her size just right to serve as a furry scarf. That way, she wasn’t in the way and could rest reasonably well.

It took me a few hundred metres to realise that I couldn’t stay on the ground. The trees, and the forest around me, were the territory of the elves and while I was reasonably certain that the trees couldn’t see me, I wasn’t certain whether they were able to feel movement on the ground. Without Adra, I couldn’t even ask how her ability exactly worked, but it didn’t truly matter, I needed to get off the ground.

Knowing that Lenore was still completely out of it, I did the next best thing, if I couldn’t fly, I could at least fall in style.

Looking up, I fixated on the shadows between the canopy high above and far ahead, stepping into the shadows around me and back out, high in the air. Gravity immediately did its thing and I started to plummet, only to step through the shadows again, coming out some distance ahead and at my previous height.

After a moment, I decided to conjure up a sheet of Ice behind me, shaped into a thin triangle, giving me an approximation of wings, slowing down my fall and turning some of the downwards velocity into an impulse that carried me forward. Gliding, instead of flying, but it was good enough and allowed me to quickly travel, as long as I kept stepping back into the air.

Step after step, I kept moving forward that way, a part of my mind fully focused on regaining Astral Power, while the rest of me had to focus on mechanically picking a shadow and stepping through them. It was a lot more efficient compared to taking a single, long-distance shadow step, but it was exhausting.

“What are you doing?!” Lenore’s mental voice jostled me from my focused state and I almost missed the next step. Luckily, I had already reinforced the wings of Ice on my back, allowing me to easily glide for some distance, even without stepping back into the canopy.

“Avoiding the ground,” I replied, letting Lenore share in my thoughts. There was still some rawness, but she could easily understand my thoughts, even returning quite a bit of appreciation. While she was able to fly naturally, she could recognise the effort I had taken to fly on my own.

“What are your plans now?” she asked, maybe noticing that some of the grief within me had morphed into determination. While a part of me wanted to wallow in misery, a much larger part of me wanted those who had taken Sigmir from me to wallow in misery instead.

“Make them pay,” I replied, letting her understand the entire plan I had been hatching, the idea to first strike at a dryad or two until we managed to make it to the Mountains of Ice. And there, I would be able to crack the Soul Prison, not only allowing the Nidhögg to return to the cycle of reincarnation but if I was able to pull it off, bringing the dragon back to Mundus proper.

“Ambitious,” she commented and I could feel both awe and apprehension at the ideas I was forming. She could appreciate what I had in mind and was quite obviously in favour of it, but at the same time, she worried whether it would work out or not.

“It is,” I acknowledged, “But think of the upside. Bringing a primordial being back into the world, you and Ylva would gain a lot from it. And I’ll vanish from this world, following after Sigmir.”

“If that’s what you feel you need to do, I’ll support you. And I know that Ylva will help as well,” Lenore reminded me, though I could feel a trace of sadness in her voice as if she wasn’t fully on board with my actions.

“I’m not long for this world anyway,” I reminded her, not wanting her to think I was abandoning her out of grief. She was my dear friend and if I could, I might even stay with her, but given the circumstances, I could only hope to meet her again in the next world.

Both of us fell silent, as I was silently gliding through the forest, stepping through the shadows to gain altitude from time to time. Always towards the dryad, resting in the burrow of her tree, not knowing that death was coming for her on wings of Ice.