The Heights

The Black Beyond the Blue

"Its comin back raun!" Cait shrieked, eyes wide with fear as she snuck a glance over her shoulder and fumbled with the rigger lines to gain purchase on the hempen ropes through the thick skin of the fur-lined gloves. The small girl's bright auburn hair caught the wind like a vivid sail as it flowed freely through it's countless curls; there had been no time to pin it up in their rush to the flight deck In a strange way, the sight of the girl's rural features removed him from the peril around them, if only for a moment. 

But as with all the others that came before, it didn't last. 

Another pants-shitting screech cut through the crisp air, and Vinver shook himself free of the surreal contrast created by his crew mates gentle beauty and back to their harsh reality as he steeled himself against the rigging and looped a free arm through the mesh cross-section. Sharp cracks of musket fire joined the hellish cacophony of the howling winds and screams as their fellow aviators traded blows with their airborne foes far below them. Dark plums of smoke erupted around the airship flak cannons peppered the otherwise crystal clear skies with deafening short range shell fire.  

 Vinver vehemently spat curses under his breath as small puffs of warm breath escaping through his parted lips and into the elevated airways. Glancing down at his belt, the small polygonal crystal teetered to the worn band secured around his midsection burned with a vibrant red arcane hue. The ship was fast approaching 18,000 feet and rising as it frantically tried to out climb its pursuers.  

"I-I can't feel m-my hands Vin!" A shaking voice cried out from beneath him. Vinver peered down through his parted legs at a frost caked face wrap concealing what was presumably an expression of utter terror save for two horror-stricken eyes that met his own behind a shield of cracked glass. The uneasiness in his tone was no doubt brought on by the frigid gusts as much as it was by the mortal danger they were so plainly faced with.

"It's normal, just hold those lines tight! We're almost to the superior hatch!" Vinver reassured the boy, angling himself to the side and offering a leather clad hand as he did so. 

The young rigger seized his outstretched arm and strain to hoist himself up to the next set of rungs despite Vinver's joined aid. With a solid shove to the boy's rear as the climbed past, his form continued to ascend the lines towards the top side of the vessel- be it at a slower pace than was to his liking. Digging into the furr-lined depths of his stiffened coat, Vinver retrieved a tarnished pocket watch from his vertically angled right side breast pocket. The piece was once a treasured parting gift from a past love, but now, clutched between deadened fingers in the presence of peril so far from home, it only reflected the epoch of those estranged and damning sentiments the same way it wore its age. As the long hand ticketed past the hour mark, he figured they had precious minutes to reach the summit before the elements over took them, if that. With care to tuck the relic back into the deepest recesses of his coat, Vinver could already feel the biting chill of the elevation seeping through the various layers of protective garments and liners beneath his coat's outer skin. Though better suited for the harsh elements than most of the newer riggers, his experience came with tolerance, not immunity. Its frigid touch spread through him like a cancer, snaking its way deeper into his core along with a myriad of frightful implications that came with it. His own hands had been numb for the better part of an hour, but the sensation was familiar and Vinver had become well adjusted to his lifeless extremities long ago. Each breath was a shallow, painful shock to his brittle lungs and his head grew lighter with each passing minute as a foggy haze muddled his frantic thoughts, loosening his tenuous grasp on reality, and worse still, the lines.

Doing his best to focus his vision beyond a few yards in front of him through his own fractured visor, Vinver could just make out the fast approaching silhouette of a winged creature with its rider in tow several hundred feet away, the blinding rays of the sun at its back as it dove towards them with predatory grace. Once more an ear splitting screech tore through the high altitude winds. A wyvern no doubt, the very thought of it made his blood run that much colder.