Young Writers Society

Dae wasn't as prone to questioning; in fact, he was very interested in the state of the trees floating in the air. He had heard that there was something dangerous ahead, but he didn't care all too much. Many things are dangerous to a hummingbird. He, on the other hand, was a human, and a dragon, and- floating?

He hadn't noticed Lex's little stick test, and for some reason the fact that gravity just didn't work in this space just didn't seem to click. As such, he had quite simply kept walking forward, resulting in him getting stuck in this little predicament.

He found himself hoping it was a floaty danger, and not a hungry danger.

Kiran couldn't help smiling at the anti-gravity. With a little giggle, she stepped forward and let the lack of gravity take her upward. She grabbed the roots of the trees to orient herself and waved to the others.

Helenah thanked Dara and looked up to see Lex's stick test. She giggled and followed Kiran. She laughed as she floated in mid-air. "Woohoo! This is amazing!"

Aegeas didn't agree that the floating trees were amazing. He clung onto one of the not-floating ones at the edge of the clearing, biting his lip as he saw the others start to fly up.

"What is wrong this place?" he said. He'd mostly forgotten to respond to Lex's vague comment about being on Fayne, but for good reason - it didn't feel like something worth responding to at the moment. "I haven't seen anything like this since the end of the war. And I'd almost died because of stuff like this."

Lex already had one foot into the area when he heard the comment from behind him. It was a little uncomfortable, seeing that the foot was beginning to fly up and the other was still firmly stuck to the ground, but he was able to pull his foot back.

He turned to Aegeas.

"War?" he asked. "Enide and Am-" He paused, remembering that Amaya was a secret that Enide tried her best to keep. Even if he didn't fully understand why, he would respect that. "-anyone I met there never mentioned a war."

Ohh, that palace. "Well, the war was a little while ago," Aegeas said, glancing at Lex's briefly rising foot. "Or, it was more like a couple wars that were connected? But that's how we all met. I met Enide and, uh, her in-law when we were running away from one war and heading right into another. Not that Enide would bring any of that up; she's never been honest like that." He sounded a little bitter towards the end.

The otter grimaced, then let go of the tree. "Do you know if that floating thing is safe?" he said, taking a couple steps towards Lex. Aegeas didn't think he'd go off flying, but that didn't stop his heart from pounding and his mind from trying to convince him that he hadn't stepped on the ground. He reached out a paw. "And can I hold on to you?"

Kiran let go of the tree roots and pushed off toward the edge of the invisible divide between functional gravity and whatever this was. Once she was beyond it, she fell to the ground. Hard.

“Ow,” she said, a vague acknowledgment of the dull pain in her back where she’s landed.

She sat up, giggling, “That has got to be the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

Lex momentarily tore his gaze away from Aegeas when Kiran landed on the ground beside them, but quickly turned back to him when he realized she was alright.

"I think it's safe," he said. "It just looks like there's no gravity there - or, there's some of it, but it doesn't work as strongly as it's supposed to."

He grabbed onto the extended paw and gave him a comforting smile.

"You can definitely hold onto me," he concluded, his tone gentle and reassuring.

Okay, okay. Kiran was fine. She'd fallen a bit, but she was fine. Probably.

Letting out a long, shaky breath, Aegeas looked over at Lex. "Okay, let's do this," he said slowly.

Dara stared at Helenah and Dae mucking around the floating trees above the rest of them, all the while debating whether there was a way out of what seem to be expected of her. If they wanted to get anywhere that remotely resembled civilisation, they supposedly had to get to the other side of... well it certainly wasn't anything civilised. She was already light-headed from purifying the crystal rings she'd used, but this took it to a higher level, very literally.

Could she even handle venturing that giddy nightmare in the state she was in? As she looked on, her head began to swim. She reached for the nearest support to keep her steady, but that ended up being Rayden's shoulder.

"Okay," Lex agreed.

He stepped away from the forest and into the area of floating trees, feeling the loss of gravity kick in and raise him from the ground. He didn't walk in too fast; he wanted Aegeas to have a chance to adjust to the change in gravity.

Things had gone very weird, very fast.
That is, weirder than waking up in Nowhere with a bunch of strangers.

Anti-gravity was like something out of a sci-fi movie - and for all he knew, maybe Rayden was in one. Maybe this was all just a stage.

Yeah, fat chance. He shook his head at himself.

And then there was a pressure on his shoulder that almost made him lose his balance. He managed to right himself - score one for street survival skills.

It was Dara, looking dizzy and confused, pretty much the same thing Rayden was feeling. He steadied her. "Are you okay? "

Aegeas closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as he felt his paws lift above the ground. There wasn't any mistaking it - he was airborne. Somehow. And it wasn't like he was afraid of heights. He'd been much higher than this, both on purpose and on accident. It was the air acting like water that bothered him. There wasn't anything to step back onto. There wasn't anything stopping him from pushing his paws backwards or forwards, up or down, moving however and wherever he wanted to. And air wasn't supposed to do that.

"How far up are we?" he said, keeping his eyes firmly shut and hoping the answer wasn't something embarrassing like a couple feet. Which it probably was.

Kiran moved to lean against one of the maybe-trees and watched the others float upward, "It's alright," she assured Aegeas, "If you get too far up I can get you down. A lot gentler than I got myself down, too."

"That'd be nice, thanks," Aegeas said, still keeping his eyes shut.