Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison) Subject: [Storm] Kadrys: The Wind Beneath My Wings Message-ID: Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1993 05:14:35 GMT [ADMIN] This is posted for Andrea Evans Kadrys' footsteps were now more rapid, his heart beginning to beat harder. His previous vague restlessness had steadily deepened, intensifying into an urgent, eerily driven mood. He felt charged with energy, with the life he had absorbed from his deep and restful sleep in the earth, the life he had witnessed on the streets. The same urge that had sent the young unicorn dancing in celebration of life now thrummed in his taut muscles. The stolen blood of countless victims pounded relentlessly in his veins, radiated fever heat from his skin. At that moment, the streets darkened subtly, and he looked up to see the early outriding wisps of iron-grey clouds, banked high and wide, still very far away but drawing steadily nearer. As he gazed out to sea, into the heart of the approaching storm, the first touch of breeze caressed his face, ran icy, teasing fingers through his black hair. Kadrys hearkened to the secrets of the wind, tasting its bitter tang, breathing deeply of its rumour of cold and salt and distant driving rains. The breeze lifted leaves and papers, sent them hurrying away down the street with an uneasy, skittering motion, like harbingers. But Kadrys paid them no heed. He was listening with all his ears to the song of the wind. It spoke to him of a dream of flight, of becoming a part of the storm's winds, of speed beyond even his strength, of the mighty gales as servants to his wings rather than barriers. A wild light glittered in his eyes as he yielded to the unearthly lust that rose within him: a lust not for blood, but for flight, for speed, for driving his body to its uttermost limits and beyond, for riding on the wings of the storm. 'Yes...' thought a calm, detached corner of Kadrys' mind, 'It'll be a wonderful way to burn off my excess energy...' And then even that thought subsided, and Kadrys' whole mind and soul was given over to enjoying the experience, this strange and rising need. And then he could bear to be still no longer. He began to run. As the stormwinds rose, and the people scattered, scurrying away to bolt themselves behind their fragile wooden doors and imagine themselves safe, Kadrys ran along the empty street, straight into the growing force of the wind. It caught at the open neck of his shirt, billowing then shredding the silk until it was flying from him in tatters. He ran on, unheeding, his eyes wide and wild, staring, his pale face exalted as he revelled in this rare indulgence. His speed increased until he was running faster than any horse could gallop, and then faster still. As a silent blur of speed too rapid for human eyes to behold, he reached the end of the seaward road, the T-junction where it curved away along the top of a seashore cliff. He didn't even slow down. Bringing both feet together at the brink, he leaped out into empty space. Arms widespread, he arched outwards, lying for an endless moment crucified on empty air. Time itself seemed to slow with his motionlessness, so sudden and so complete after all his reckless speed. And then, his outflung arms slowly warped and altered: fingers lengthening, stretching out to caress the air, black webbing spreading over them, turning them into wings. He transformed leisurely, deliberately, for once taking the time to savour every tiny detail of the transformation rather than using the instantaneous change that prudence dictated. As gradually as if the deadly fall had no power to harm him, the plummeting human form shrank and changed, until at last a bat swooped low over the sands. Arcing out of the dive, it arrowed away over the waves in a sudden burst of speed, dwindling until its dark form was lost against the backdrop of the boiling black thunderheads far out to sea. --- Kadrys clawed at the turbulent air with his wings, reaching for more height. Already, the coastline of Generica was lost to sight, far below, far behind. Ahead the storm loomed across the heavens: it massed like the smoke from all the fires of Hell. Luridly lit from within by flickering lightnings, it engulfed the entire westward sky. Kadrys had been striving against the rising headwind, beating toward the storm, for hours. The first heady blaze of anticipation had begun to ebb in the face of that sustained, fruitless exertion. But now he was close enough. He spread his wings wide, gliding in a tight circle, holding his place in the sky. Soon the storm would be close enough for the real winds to reach him. Soon. He swivelled his head as he circled, keeping an assessing eye on the towering spires and gaping abysses of roiling black thunderclouds, their windy chasms lit now and again with blinding bluish flares of lightning. Higher and closer the roaring thunderheads loomed. Kadrys faltered in midair as the breeze he was riding suddenly failed, leaving him in a spot of dead calm air, warm and chokingly humid. Then it hit. A solid wall of wind fell on Kadrys like an avalanche. His piercing bat-shriek of pain was torn away from his mouth and swallowed in the screaming of the wind. Had he been on land, his broken body would have been ground into its own grave. As it was, he was smashed downward several thousand feet, the snapped bones of his wings ripping the veined membranes to shreds. Blood sprayed from torn wing-arteries, the droplets swept away like red rain. Kadrys hauled his shattered wings in and dropped helplessly, his mind reeling with pain and noise and disorientation as the winds played with him, hitting him from side to side like a ball. Then, the torn wing membranes started to draw themselves together, healing. The light strength of the splintered bones returned. Soon they would be whole. But would it be soon enough? Now he was thankful for every wingbeat that had brought him to his earlier, dizzy elevation. The wildly spinning surface of the waves was rushing closer, closer. The winds seemed to scream with laughter at their maimed plaything. There. The last gash in the crucial membranes had healed. The bones still hurt like hell, but there was no time. No time. He strove for control, holding his wings half-closed as a falcon will when stooping, allowing only the tips of his wings to extend fully into the ravening blast. Slowly, his unnatural muscles howling stress at him with the effort, he strove to turn, pull out of the breakneck dive. And somehow the blistering turn held. A mere hundred feet above the slate-hard waves, a black streak arrowed past followed by a roaring blast of wind. In the calm instant at the top of the arc, Kadrys paused. Incredibly, a feral grin bared his needle fangs. Now. He flung his wings wide just as the front of the winds caught up to him, and swatted him on before them. But this time, instead of a lifeless, helpless leaf, his movement was like an arrow, like a peregrine: full of purpose, of direction, incomparably faster than both. Inside his skull, Kadrys laughed maniacally. 'Got me by surprise last time, you hellwind. I know you're here now. I'm healed, I'm strong, I know what to expect from you now. Cmoncmon, FASTER, I'm still flying, you can do better than that!' His mental voice scaled up into a wild shriek of ecstasy as the wind impossibly picked up speed, faster, faster, until he was screaming toward land at an unholy speed: a ravening pace far beyond anything a winged creature should ever know. He never saw what hit him. A blinding white flare of agony, and Kadrys was spiralling down, one wing ash and a stump of charcoaled bone, half his chest blown away, his labouring heart bared to the icy whip of the rain. Now, he was no longer fighting for flight. Now it was all he could do to stay conscious. Pain. Yes. There. Pain is precious. Fight for it. Hold onto it (the burning, agony roiling in my guts) hold onto it tight. Pain means I still have a body. Pain means I'm still alive. Somehow, amid the sickening torment, the reeling shock, the word bobbed to the surface of his thoughts and floated there. Lightning. I've been struck by lightning. Ridiculous. The storm is leagues away. That bastard reached out and hit me. What bastard? That storm. It's alive. ... Then I'm dead. (In the whirling world outside his mind, winds toyed with a falling scrap of charred flesh, taking it by its one remaining wing, idly shaking it to and fro as a cat will shake a mouse.) Yowling low, like cats, the winds listened with casual approval to the silent screaming of their prey. For far away within the heart of the storm, a marid, frustrated and slightly bored, was amusing itself in the way all thoroughly nasty infants do, by pulling wings off insects. It had already ripped off one wing, but carefully, ever so carefully. It wouldn't do to have the insect die just yet. It was so much more fun to watch it squirm as long as possible. The marid had some time yet before it would get to play in the big sandbox and have REAL fun. Still some time to kill. Pick up the insect, get it away from those waves. Don't want it smashed. Not while it wriggled and squeaked so well. (The winds scooped up the falling body and it shot upward in a dizzying funnel of screaming air. The semiconscious thing hovered, spinning with delirious slowness, in the eye of a whirlwind. The air was warm and still and dead, thrumming with static electricity and anticipation of pain.) Now. Why not play wishbone? Grab the wing, grab the body and make a wish... Kadrys felt a sudden burst of air pressure clamp down all over his body. Though he fought it with the last pitiful rags of his strength, slowly his sole wing was unfolded, dragged out by rushing air until it was at its fullest stretch. With terrible deliberation, the air pressure increased until it almost splintered his remaining ribs. Then, the crushing body of air started to shear: slowly but surely, Kadrys was being pulled limb from limb. He spent the last breath in his body in a savage scream of hatred and defiance. It mattered not at all.