042 – I Missed Gravity

Day 3

I woke at the crack of dawn and immediately checked my new list.

‘Red Fox’ (daily)

‘Orca’ (daily)

‘Honey Badger’ (daily)

“Are you fucking kidding me,” I muttered before I caught myself. I liked all of them. I just couldn’t simply rotate through those three in my tiny bedroom.

While my own party was mostly still asleep, the other was already gathered at the fire station’s entrance. It looked like they were already about to leave.

And I hadn’t asked Constance for that spell.

I jumped out of bed, grabbed some clothes, and quickly dressed before running to intercept them.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I called out. Their dots had already left the building.

They all stood in the street and looked rather perplexed as I ran out of the fire station, barefoot and wearing yesterday’s bloody clothes. Only Jason looked plainly annoyed.

“Good morning, Eve,” Anthony said.

“Hey,” I replied. “Constance. Before you all leave, I need your help.”

I turned to Claire’s spot and called out for her. “Claire! Get down here!”

“What can I do for you?” asked Constance.

“I need your Holy Armor spell to survive what I’m about to do. Why are you leaving already?”

“Long day ahead,” Anthony said. “We are going to map out the liminal spaces with my new perk. And we will escort those who need escorting.”

Right. A bunch of people wanted assistance going from A to B, which Jamie and I had wanted to help with and never had gotten around to. The apocalypse was far too damn busy.

“Okay, yeah, that’s an excellent idea.”

One of Claire’s mannequins joined us.

[“Yes?”] she asked in local chat.

“Which direction do I need to go to find you? Where can I spot your relays?”

[“Northeast. I’ve positioned myself on multiple rooftops on the path there.”]

Perfect. I looked along the street that led north. It was mostly straight.

“You saw that Unicorn shape, right? How heavy would you estimate it?”

The mannequin tilted its head. This was the first time I’d seen any expression on Claire.

[“Half a metric ton.”]

The others were mostly wearing various expressions of confusion.

“Eve?” Constance asked. “What is my armor protecting you from?”

“Friction, mostly.”

“Now?”

“Yes. No. Give me a second. Thirty seconds, right?”

“It now lasts a minute.”

“Perfect.” I started jogging away. “Activate it when I run past. And then cover your ears.”

[“Am I cleared for take-off?”] I asked in my Guide chat.

“Go ahead. But don’t run as fast as you can. And remember to jump.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this excited. There were six hours left on my fear debuff. And, rationally speaking, what I was about to do was insanity.

But did any other Blessed human on Earth achieve this before? Was I about to do a 0 to supersonic (any%) world first?

I swapped into the Nightmare Unicorn shape.

[“One minute and I’m ready,”] I wrote in local.

[“What are we covering our ears against?”] asked Roslyn.

[“A sonic boom.”]

With my cooldown at five seconds, I readied myself.

[“Ready?”] I asked.

Constance gave me a thumbs up.

[“Please step aside.”]

The party complied.

I ran. Not a full sprint going as fast as I could—just a bit below that. I trusted Gabriel on this.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

When I ran past the others, a golden sheen fell over me.

I flexed my legs and jumped. The very moment my hooves left the ground, and my trajectory shifted into an upward angle, I shifted into the Red-Tailed Hawk shape.

The worst part was the deceleration. Like the pit-of-your-stomach drop of a rollercoaster, except it didn’t pass. It just kept going, stretched out into something my brain couldn’t make sense of.

Besides that, my mind mostly stopped parsing what was going on for a couple of seconds. Eyes pressed shut, all limbs pulled in as close as possible, I was nothing but a projectile, entirely at the mercy of physics and magic. The noise wasn’t as bad as anticipated, though that might be because the pressure ruptured my eardrums the moment I swapped.

By the time the pressure stopped feeling unbearable, I dared to open my eyes.

The city was beneath me.

The new New York streamed past in impossible miniature, its streets and wrecks reduced to something almost abstract by the height and speed. Only the tallest buildings came anywhere near me. If the wind hadn’t been tearing at my body hard enough to make every inch of me aware of it, I might have forgotten how absurdly fast I was still moving.

Slowly, carefully, I spread my wings.

I’d bled off enough speed. It was time to make this a flight.

There was a grim task ahead of me. But first I’d flex this shape a bit. Even without the glitches in the Blessing, a hawk could dive at well over 100 mph. And I was going to experience that.

I focused on nothing at all and let instincts take the lead, just feeding it my desire.