Chapter 171: Turkey Dinner

Jaxir tumbled through the air with the cliff face rushing past only a few meters away, and his first instinct was to reach for the Sapphire-Emerald Glider Wings. The treasure unfolded behind him for barely an instant before a warning flashed across his vision, informing him that deploying it at his current altitude and in winds this violent would cause its durability to deteriorate at an extreme rate.

Jaxir stared at the screen while continuing to fall and found that he had no tears left to shed.

"Would’ve been nice to know that earlier."

He dismissed the wings before they could take meaningful damage and immediately reached for the Twinkle cards instead, because at least those were expendable by design. Twinkle Step activated first, spreading its attraction toward the cliff face through his body, but the pull was nowhere near strong enough to overcome the wind on its own. Jaxir followed it with one of the few Twinkle Vacuum cards he still had left, placing the sucking pocket of mana between himself and the stone so that both effects dragged him in the same direction.

The change was immediate, though not nearly enough to stop him from falling. Jaxir added Twinkle Pulse beneath himself next, forming the repelling star below his boots and forcing its pulse downward so the reaction fought against his descent. Step pulled him toward the wall, Vacuum dragged him closer, and Pulse shaved away some of the speed carrying him toward the mist below.

For a few seconds, it almost worked.

The wind still battered him sideways, but Jaxir had slowed enough that the cliff no longer looked like one continuous blur. A narrow ledge appeared beneath him and he angled his staff toward it, gathering a concentrated Cast while trying to judge how much force he could afford to use without simply blasting himself farther away. Then he released the beam.

Silvery-blue light struck the ledge hard enough to explode stone across the cliff face, and the impact kicked against Jaxir’s fall just as he’d hoped. Unfortunately, the ledge itself shattered almost immediately beneath the attack, removing the exact thing he had intended to land on. Fortunately, losing most of his downward speed meant Jaxir had enough time to throw out one hand and catch a jagged section of rock left behind.

His body slammed against the cliff before the layered Twinkle effects helped pull him tight against it, and for several seconds Jaxir simply hung there while the wind screamed around him. The fingers of one hand tightened into the stone while his boots searched for anything that could take some of his weight. Once he was reasonably sure he wasn’t about to start falling again, Jaxir exhaled.

The Storm Scar Vulture screamed.

Jaxir’s head snapped upward in time to see the Elite dropping through the clouds, its enormous wings cutting across the sky as pale blades formed along their edges. The vulture swept one wing forward and several wind scythes ripped away from it, each one curving toward the cliff face from a slightly different angle. Jaxir had nowhere to dodge.

He tightened himself against the stone and let the Aegis take the hit.

The first wind scythe carved across his shoulder and ripped away a chunk of stored MP, while another struck his back hard enough to make his grip slip several inches. More followed, tearing against the silvery-blue inner skin beneath his robes until the entire defensive layer flickered beneath the strain.

Jaxir’s face slowly twisted as the vulture pulled out of its dive and climbed again.

"I’m going to turn you into a roasted turkey, you piece of shit bird."

The insult did nothing useful, but the attack had shown Jaxir exactly what the next problem was going to be. Twinkle Step could hold him to the cliff so long as the wind wasn’t too strong, but once the vulture attacked or another heavy gust hit, the attraction wasn’t enough to keep his body planted. He needed more pull.

Jaxir looked at the remaining shimmer of Twinkle Vacuum still tugging him toward the wall and then focused on what the card was actually doing rather than the card itself.

Vacuum didn’t care about sticking him to anything. It created a point that drew things toward it, while Twinkle Step changed the direction his body wanted to fall. The two concepts were close enough that Jaxir could already feel where they overlapped.

His mana shifted.

Instead of simply telling his body that the cliff was down, Jaxir added the hungry pull of Twinkle Vacuum to that new direction. The attraction deepened at once, no longer feeling like his boots and hands were merely sticking to stone but as though the cliff itself had begun dragging him against it. Jaxir tested one foot, then another.

The difference was ridiculous.

He pushed upward and started running.

The wind clawed at his robes as he climbed, but this time every gust had to fight the compounded pull dragging him toward the cliff. Jaxir kept his body low and raced over the stone, occasionally using his hands when the surface became too uneven for clean footing, though the strengthened Twinkle effect did most of the work. Even when the wind shifted and tried to peel him away, his feet remained planted.

The Storm Scar Vulture noticed.

Its cry sharpened somewhere above him and another gust came hammering down the cliff, but Jaxir had already learned enough from the first one to lean into the pressure instead of letting it catch him broadside. His mana surged through the Twinkle effect as he increased the suction again, using the same pull that had once belonged to a separate Vestigem Card as part of his movement. The higher he climbed, the more certain he became that he was approaching whatever the bird had been protecting.

Then the cliff ended.

Jaxir hauled himself over the upper edge and rolled onto a wide shelf of stone covered almost entirely by an enormous nest. Branches thicker than his arms had been woven together with strips of bark, rope, old cloth, and things Jaxir had no interest in identifying, forming a bowl large enough that a dozen of the tree he’d started on could’ve fit inside it. He pushed himself upright and raised his staff.

Three eggs rested near the center.

Each one stood taller than Jaxir, their shells pale gray with dark streaks running across them like scars through stone. He stared at them for half a second before understanding exactly why the Storm Scar Vulture hadn’t simply flown away when the fight became inconvenient. The nest had solved that problem for him.

A shriek tore through the sky behind him.

Jaxir tightened his grip on the staff and turned.