Niko flew through the air, relishing the feeling of the wind blowing through his feathers, and the sheer freedom he had at every moment. Just a day ago, Niko had thought that gliding was close enough to flight, that he knew what it would feel like.

Now he knew he’d been delusional, deceiving himself for something he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to experience. It was like having a birthright restored to him, a long dormant part of his instincts singing with exultation that he could now fly. Gliding had been fun; this was right.

“How are you doing, Skye?” Niko called back happily to his rider, who had anchored herself in place with Charlotte’s braided webbing.

She laughed by way of answering as Niko pushed onwards to Riizen. There had been, admittedly, a few close calls during this little venture, but he’d improved rapidly. It hadn’t taken them all that long to reach where they needed to go and return, albeit Niko wasn’t sure if their bait would really be all that effective. Mithel had assured them that the scent would be able to penetrate down into even the lowest depths.

He banked, sending notice to Skye through their connection. In response, she held on tighter, while opening the flask of Lure Potion, created through the use of the mushrooms that had bumped the Wyldwalkers over the edge to tier three. They only let out a small amount of liquid, a splash, across the trunk of a tree before straightening out.

“That should be fine, right?” Skye called out, “It’ll be close enough to maybe cause some chaos.”

Niko trilled out, “Yeah, I think so, anyways. Let’s get back to Riizen before anything starts showing up.”

At first, Niko had wanted to make this trip on his own, but Skye had raised a good point. He had no idea how well he could fight at the moment, and landing in the lower canopy seemed… ill-advised, considering he’d had wings for only a few hours. Now he knew that he’d have been fine, given how quickly he acclimatized, but that wasn’t something he could have been sure of. In any case, it was useful not to have to stop and fumble with the Lure Potion every time he was going to use it. As an added benefit, Skye had gotten the opportunity to learn how to ride on his back now. It wasn’t actually that difficult to figure out, and in fact it seemed that his new body was much easier to actually ride atop of.

“I didn’t think this would be so fun!” Skye called out enthusiastically. She’d been wary of flight at first, but after she’d gotten used to it – helped along by the connection between herself and Niko – it was hard not to be happy.

Niko trilled in agreement before diving down and picking up speed. He pulled up, while simultaneously using his Particle Wing to generate a hefty updraft of hot air beneath him. With an inexorable pull, Niko and his passenger rose rapidly, speed only increasing as they went. The more practice he had, the faster he was getting, and at this point Niko almost wished he could just travel around like this at all times.

As the only one who could fly in the group, he wouldn’t be able to cut down on their travel times, but he could still enjoy flying around.

‘Actually, couldn’t we build a hot air balloon?’ Niko pondered to himself, ‘I could even pull the thing… Maybe.’ He second-guessed himself, uncertain exactly how that might work. The idea that he would be pulling a balloon through the air, flapping all the way, was both amusing and inglorious. Maybe if it was a blimp…

He stirred from his thoughts as Skye patted his side, “Niko, there!”

Confused, Niko sought out whatever she was pointing at, and realized that she’d spotted something from in between the trees. He’d only gotten a glimpse, but motion and several essence sources had been hard to miss once it’d been pointed out.

Contemplatively, Niko let out a low clicking noise, before turning his head to look at Skye, “Do we check it out? It’s probably the Dawr.”

Skye chewed on her bottom lip, glaring out at the direction that they’d both seen motion. Letting out a sigh, she nodded, “Better to be sure. Knowing where they are could help the strategists back in Riizen.”

Niko nodded at that, before soaring up higher and banking more to the side. He took himself several hundreds of meters up, until the point where the canopy was much closer than the ground. The essence here was somewhat thinner, and, Niko noticed, the air was much hotter. The many reflecting leaves that ensured sunlight still made it through also had the added effect of acting like a heating lamp. Still, it wasn’t intolerable yet, but he didn’t expect that he’d want to stay this high up for very long.

They moved quickly, weaving back through the titanwoods, plenty of space available to navigate even with the higher number of branches between them and their potential quarry. After they moved near to where Niko thought they needed to be, he began circling a tree trunk lower and lower, careful not to fly right into a branch. When he was low enough that he began to see glimpses through the branches, he stopped. It wouldn’t give him a great picture of what was going on, but the only thing they wanted to do was confirm their location at the moment.

“I see them,” Niko spoke through the mental connection he shared with Skye, “Definitely Dawr. I’m not sure if they’re the same ones as we found before.” With his Aether Sight, Niko could pick out several hundreds of shapes below.

“Maybe land on the tree and climb down, slowly?” Skye suggested, “You’re a much brighter and larger target with your wings fully out.”

Realizing she was right, Niko landed as carefully as he could at the crook between a branch and the immense trunk. At the last moment, he activated his Wyldstrider pattern, silencing the sound of his landing entirely. He grinned at that, ‘Hah! I can cheat!’ Smugly, he looked at Skye, who rolled her eyes knowingly.

“Alright, let's get down there, slowly.” She whispered in his mind reflexively, eyes darting around and a slight amount of essence beginning to course through her Wyldform pattern. Bark covered parts of her skin, and Niko thought that the smaller branches that grew seemed to pull inwards subtly, shielding them from easy sight.

As stealthily as they could manage, Niko began to scrabble down the side of the trunk, moving with his head pointed downwards. His talons cut into the wood, made silent in spite of how he needed to grip tightly with his added weight. If Skye wasn’t tied in, this would have been a much more precarious seating position, but as it was, they were both able to move down slowly, taking every motion only a few notches at a time.

Finally after five minutes of slow progress, they were able to peer down upon the gathered creatures.

“Lots of Dawr.” Niko commented mentally, “Do you recognize the flags or crests?”

Skye waited a few more seconds, before affirming, “I think so. A lot of the flags look familiar.”

That resolved the issue of the missing encampment, at least. Niko let his gaze slide over the horde, which had several platforms with tightly bound materials on them. Some of them, he noted, looked like siege devices, with many more being ammunition of sorts, and what looked to be tents and other structures. Their march wasn’t anything that he could call fast, but they would still reach Riizen within a day, at most.

“Do you think we can drop some Lure Potion on top of those caravans?” Niko asked Skye.

He could feel the wariness from their connection, but knew that she was considering the plan. They could potentially set up for a great deal of damage, provided the large lizard noticed, but Niko wasn’t absolutely certain that it would throw itself into combat with the Dawr again. Still, if they were very lucky, perhaps it would draw other creatures attuned to the mushrooms?

“Maybe if we dilute it, they won’t notice…” Skye thought back to him, “But, I don’t know if the lizard could detect it at that point.”

Niko frowned as he weighed their chances. It would be risky to even attempt something, but would the potential chaos of another lizard attack on their group be worth it?

“We need to do more than the Lure Potion… Do we have any bombs?” Niko asked, tilting his head back again to question Skye.

“Only a few.” Skye said as she looked through her packs. “We have six Firebomb flasks, eight Sticky Traps, and two Flashbang flasks.” They had a decent number of flasks, and with Mithel making more of them, Niko was willing to expend them.

The two silently debated their chances of doing realistic damage, before eventually relenting. No matter what, the tens of wagons full of munitions, siege engines, and other materials weren’t going to sustain tremendous damage from them. On top of that, an attack lasting more than a moment would leave them open to counter attack by an unknown number of tier four and at least one tier five adversary. If they came out of the encounter alive, that alone would be a miracle, let alone unscathed.

That said, they took careful note of their numbers, position, relative approach and speed, all to relay to strategists. While they weren’t going to mount an attack now didn’t mean that they weren’t going to harass and skirmish with any known force they could find long before they made the approach to Riizen proper.

“Hold on, I’m going to start climbing again,” Niko whispered to Skye, who wordlessly secured all of their potions. It would be nice to drop at least some of them on the column of Dawr, but if they could get out of here without being detected at all, there was the chance that they could deal greater damage later.

Leaving wasn’t an issue, seeing that the Dawr didn’t appear to have stationed any watchers at the highest points of the trees. Still, he didn’t take any chances of a forward scout spotting them farther afield, and in spite of the uncomfortable warmth, light, and thinner essence, stayed high up in the canopy until he was certain they were far away from the Dawr Army.

Upon descending to a more reasonable altitude, Niko breathed a sigh of relief. His wings ached from being used so much, especially given that they weren’t used to activity as of yet. The heat was easy enough to handle, a quick flare of Particle Wing and the heat dispersed from him, though he had to reverse that somewhat when it’d been a little too effective. Still, it was rapidly becoming a favorite pattern, not that Niko didn’t like all of his patterns.

It was a little disconcerting though that his stealth pattern didn’t have any of its frame up in his wings. Being able to fly while stealthed would be… ‘Wait…’

Niko suddenly doubted himself, and activated his Wyldstrider pattern. Only, he did so slowly, manually pressing essence through it and tracing where he could feel the outline of it. It coursed through slowly, and as he put more pressure, he felt as though there were more of the pattern than there was before. That wasn’t terribly unexpected; patterns grew as one tiered up and evolved. What took him by surprise was the sensation that his pattern was trying to flex and activate, but wasn’t able to. When he simply activated it, he hadn’t noticed, but now it was clear that there was something blocking parts of the channels.

He landed on a branch, unwilling to try anything while he was flying through the air. Niko warned Skye that he was trying something with his patterns, and she nodded.

Slowly, Niko activated all of his patterns. Immediately, it became apparent that only Particle Wing was unaffected by the strange sensation he felt. With careful attention, Niko gradually increased the amount of essence that poured into his patterns, feeling the active lines filling up and putting pressure on the whole of the frame. The more he pressed, the more he realized that there was something clogging the lines elsewhere. Inactive essence, or some kind of byproduct, whatever the case, it shouldn’t have been there.

Now certain of the issue, he throttled essence through his patterns, forcing the energy to revolve through the current frameworks. He didn’t activate them, merely pressurized them more and more. The amount of power coursing through him would have left him exhausted in the previous tier, but Niko could tell that he had a considerably heightened ceiling since then. Just as he was about to dump another huge sum of essence into his patterns, he felt new movement. It started with a creeping motion, before suddenly blasting all throughout in explosive force. Clean essence mingled with whatever substance was clotting new pathways, annihilating one another.

Niko almost sagged from the sheer precipitous drop of his reserves, but quickly refilled the patterns, keeping them cycling to ensure nothing remained of the blockage. It felt like it was running cleaner, more efficiently than before, but even without that, his patterns were significantly more developed. The minor improvements that he’d noted from his eyes were now far more advanced, with essence easily visible, and his capability to peer through objects now much greater. A part of him immediately preened at the idea that Sasha might not be able to hide so well from him now, but he wouldn’t get ahead of himself. Testing would be required to see how it would work fully.

Surprisingly, his Sharp Strike pattern now extended itself into his talons, not just his beak. The pattern stretched through his body, but if the longer pathways affected it, Niko couldn’t tell. More than that, his Wyldstrider pattern affected all four of his legs, and likewise had some of the pattern spread into his wings. He activated the full suite, but realized that his wings wouldn’t be benefitting from the strength portion of the pattern just yet. For some reason, only the stealth portion of the pattern seemed to be there, but given how packed Niko’s wings were, he was grateful even for that much.

His Clarion and Carrion Call hadn’t especially spread anywhere, but had deepened, and Niko could feel that it was capable of a much greater volume of essence use. That, combined with the fact that each of his essence patterns appeared to be able to store essence themselves, meant that he could possibly deliver some truly powerful buffs to his allies, or hit the enemy with a considerable impact all at once.

All in all, when Niko took off into the air again, he was quite pleased with what he’d developed. There was a sense of growth there within the patterns that reminded him of Alterra, and Niko suspected that she’d had a hand in what had happened. Considering that Venris had also likely boosted his evolution to give him wings, Niko couldn’t help but feel a touch pampered right then. And he loved it…