Aether Beasts

I tried to make sense of what exactly I was seeing, but it was difficult. I'd never seen or even heard of anything like what I was seeing. The best way I could describe it was that it seemed like we were in a floating mountain, and off in the distance, I could see other floating mountains, and in between was a vast sea of rolling clouds that led to, well I couldn't see from here, so I wasn't able to tell what it lead to, but it all certainly looked beautiful, of that there was no doubt in my mind. The way the clouds rolled across the sky, or wherever we were was unlike anything I'd seen and the sheer size of everything left me in awe.

A quick glance at my immediate surroundings told me that we were closer to the tip of our mountain, and below I could see more trees like ours, but also an odd rocky structure, that I couldn't make sense of.

A sudden gust of wind made me turn my head, and my eyes widened as I saw a large flock of beasts flying in the distance. I immediately ducked down. They were quite far away, but were looked to be traveling fast, in my direction. They couldn't have spotted me, could they? I was only a small speck in this land, then again there were so many different types of beasts, that one with extremely good eyesight or smell or even a natural ability to sense life wouldn't be out of the question.

Instead of waiting for them to pass by then checking again, I slowly made my way back down the tree, taking care not to make any slip-ups. In just a few minutes I was back down.

The three women I'd left were talking with each other, but they all walked over when plopped back down on the ground.

"What did you see?" Zraini asked.

I caught my breath then explained everything I saw, including the giant birds.

Zirani frowned while the other two looked confused

"I've never heard of a place like this." She shook her head. "Floating mountains?"

"Could you see any of the twin horn or any man-made structures?'

I shook my head. "My vision is good, but it's not that good. All I saw were the mountains and that odd rocky structure a few miles from here. It did look off when compared to everything else, then again, nothing here exactly screams normal now does it?"

"No, it doesn't," Zirani agreed as she sighed. "Let's head over to the rocky structure and then we can go from there. We aren't in any particular rush. From what you said, this mountain is about the size of a small island. We can spend some time searching and scouting out potential places for a camp then we can begin training."

"Sounds like a plan," I said. "There's no way we can do much right now. We're in the shadows."

"Being in the shadows isn't a bad thing," Sandra replied. "Though I get what you mean in this case."

"So, should we get going?" Misty asked.

"We should," Zirani confirmed. "We head to the odd structure and then we can search the mountain, and get a lay of the land. I'll need to know where certain resources are, and beast locations among others things before we begin training."

We a plan in mind, we quickly began making our way down the mountain, taking care as we went. It was rather annoying that neither Zirani nor I could use green pulse as it would have given us a lot of information and made things far easier and less dangerous. Although Zirani's words and everything I'd learned in the academy eased me somewhat. The difficulty of an aether tower increased as you traveled through and up it. In the plains, the first floor was always mainly populated with one-core beasts with a few second cores closer to the entrance to the second floor. In our case, there was also the fact that we couldn't be sure that once we made it two the second floor we'd be able to make it back out, not that we would want to. Aether towers had a system in place so that one didn't need to travel through an entire floor again if they'd already done it. When you reached the entrance of the next floor, you could enter, and close by would always be an exit pillar that would allow you to travel out of the tower, and the next time you entered the tower you travel directly to the second floor.

As we traveled further down the mountain, the stone slowly began to turn into normal earth and things leveled down, and both Zirani and I smiled at the development. Her smile grew even wider when more and more greenery appeared, all of which looked completely foreign to me, but familiar to her.

"This… these arent plants that should be here," Zirani said as she paused by a group of odd-looking flowers. "Not on the first floor at least, and more certainly not in a tower in the northern plains…"

Her words trailed off and she tilted her head. "Aiden can you feel that?"

"Feel what?" I asked as I glanced around.

"I wasn't sure at first, but I'm positive now," She replied. "The quality of the aether in this tower is higher than the quality of the aether outside.'

"How is that possible?" Misty asked with a gasp. "Towers don't do that."

Zirani shrugged. "I don't know, but it's a benefit to be sure. I was curious at first, but now I'm dying to know what the twin horn did to get this result. We've gone past several types of herbs, plant life, and other things that just shouldn't be here."

"It's a good thing, no?" I questioned.

"Oh definitely," She replied with a smile. "This is going to make things much easier. With a good palace for a camp and the locations of the local beasts I'd have no doubt we could get all of you to the second level of infusion and condense your cores up a stage."

Sandra's eyes widened. "For real?"

Zirani nodded. "We'll have to find the entrance to the second-floor eventually but we won't be able to get past all the two cores beasts as we are now."

"So we train until we're strong enough," I said.

"We do and then we do the same on the next floor, getting progressively stronger as we go," Zirani explained. "I don't know what caused this, but we are certainly going to take full advantage, but first let's get to that structure."

We continued our journey, with renewed vigor and excitement. I'd known this tower would help, but not to this degree. If Zirani was right then how strong would we be by the time we made it to the top floor? I smiled inwardly.. Whatever it was, I couldn't wait to find out.