Chapter 70: Problem with the wings

The voices of the chase only continued to grow stronger. With each passing second, Fen's window for escape was getting tighter and tighter. But in a situation where he was suddenly supposed to use the limbs that he never had before, even the pressure of time wasn't enough to prompt those unruly wings of his into action!

"There he is!"

Before Fen would manage to wrestle the conscious control over his wings, his pursuers finally managed to catch up. It seemed that while the young man managed to get a headstart over them when it came to moving through the congested streets of the town, they were the one with the edge over him.

'Fuck!'

Swearing to no end in his mind, Fen realised that the situation was far worse than just being caught by the inquisition. With how he was peacefully standing in front of this helpful and kind girl, one only needed to use his eyes to draw the connection between the two of them!

'To hell with it. Let's just go with the flow!'

At this point, Fen was no longer capable of letting his mind do the work. After everything that happened today, his body might seem full of energy, but his mind was exhausted to no end. In the end, the power that fueled his actions so far wasn't something that was natural to him yet, but a foreign force that he started to use only… today!

"Good choice, you bitch!"

Violently reaching forward with his hand, Fen made sure to hook just a single finger of his against Firo's arm, before conjuring a small ball of fire at the tip of his other four fingers. Pretending to push the girl heavily against the wall of the archarity, Fen shoot his flames at a controlled rate, making sure they would create a visible but harmless explosion just a moment before Firo would touch the wall with her back!

"ARHG! HELP ME!"

Reading the man's intention, Firo instantly dressed up an expression of panic and extreme terror on her face, using a voice pitched even higher than Fen ever could guess she was capable of producing. 

"GET HIM!"

Maybe it was the use of his flames. Maybe it was just a reflex of his ancestors taking over his body. Just as the group of inquisitor apprentices emerged from the crowd of the main street, properly entering a clear line of Fen's sight, his back suddenly tensed.

All it took was this strange contraction of his back muscles. A flurry of the images was the only way to describe what Fen's eyes saw then before his sight properly stabilised once again. 

"Woah…"

Unable to stop himself from letting a short sigh of awe, Fen stared down below his feet, at the expanses of the city. This insanely huge place, where each district alone was far bigger than the village the young man grew up in, was now nothing but a speck on the enormous flat plane. At Fen's current scale of vision, the only things worth noticing were landmarks that stretched over the land like rivers, forest… or sea?

As little of importance as it was for the young man now, he finally realised that contrary to his expectations, the sea wasn't some kind of mythical object, but a tangible place just on the south of the city he lived in for the past while!

"Huh?"

Immersed in this beautiful sight, a sudden change in his insides managed to catch him by surprise. Even though the young man lacked any place that he could refer to in order to confirm that he was falling, the feeling in his guts couldn't be more obvious!

'How do I control those wings again?'

Only at this moment did the young man realise that his muscles tensing up on their own accord, and doing it himself was actually an entirely different matter!

'Come on!'

Straining his back to no end, Fen finally managed to flick the same muscles that managed to push him so high into the air. 

And nothing happened.

'Huh?'

If the surprised caused by the sudden fall could be justified to a point with how new Fen was to this flying thing, then the fact that replicating his previous motions didn't seem to reproduce the same effect was a life-shattering realisation for the young man!

And it was life-shattering in a literal sense, as Fen continued to descend back to the city at an insane pace, most likely right back to the place where he launched himself to the air from!

'Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!'

Turning his entire mind around in order to find any way in which he could save himself from shattering to million, wet and bloody pieces upon the touchdown, Fen's pupils dilated as the boundaries of the city no longer could fit inside his vision. 

'Flame, yeah, flame!'

If his wings didn't work, then he could always explode himself. One could say, that this kind of ending would be fitting for the descendant of the Phoenix, wouldn't he? But instead of treating himself like a suicide sky-bomber, Fen actually hoped to achieve something else. Something, that made his neck hurt all over again just by thinking about it!

'Come on, work!'

Speaking to himself without creating a sound as the pressure of the air would suffocate him at once if the young man were to open his mouth, Fen continued to amass his own, cold and unlit flames right in the middle of his palms. With each passing second, the buildings on the ground were turning more and more detailed, as if to remind the young man that the inevitable was just like its name - inevetable.

'Just a little bit more…'

Unable to use any other scientific method to judge the distance other to eyeballing it, Fen continued to gather his power as his visions slowly reached the point where he could distinguish specific people in the crowd below.

'NOW!'

Just as his spirit lit up in response to the sudden, internal shout, Fen's hands erupted in powerful explosions of condensed flame. In one instant, two forces clashed over the young man's body. His momentum and the pull of the ground stood against the barbarians representing the explosion.

There was no denying that in a prolonged conflict, it would be the orderly lines of the first force that would claim the victory, but given the ferocious and sudden attack of the huge crowd of barbarians, the fate of the battle has yet to be decided!

And then it happened.

Right as Fen's feet were about to stomp on the heads of the unfortunate crowd before, his wings finally acted like they should, once again pushing against the air and elevating him… just a bit?

This time, instead of launching the young man like some kind of cannon-ball into the skies, Fen barely gained any height. Instead, this single sweep of those fire-wings of his instantly added to his horizontal momentum, moving him away from the city so far, that it was realistically no different from instantly changing locations!

Crash!

If not for the remaining fire that glued itself to Fen's body during this messed-up explosion, the moment his body crashed against the thick layer of leaves, branched and finally ground, his life could very well come to an end!

"Ugh… That fucking hurt!"

Shouting to no one but himself, Fen groaned in the small crater created by his descent for a moment, before his senses managed to return to their usual state, instantly silencing Fen's protests against the reality.

'What now…'

With the young man's eyes rolling at yet another pearl of laughter produced by the fate, Fen once again started to gather his fires in order to face the enemy that his guts were screaming to warn him about.

"It wasn't that long, wasn't it?"

For the first time since the young man appeared in this world, a sudden even turned out to be something far greater than he could imagine!

Instead of a wild beast or even a bloodthirsty monster, the being that his guts considered as the extreme danger, was no one else but Raksha, the forest's queen, accompanied by not only the two of her retainers that Fen clashed with before but an entire army of monsters orderly lining up behind her!

"Trust me, if you told me that we would meet so soon back then, I wouldn't believe it either."

Finally letting out a painful groan, Fen allowed his head to fall right back on the ground. Faced with this army of monsters, if they had any hint of hostile intentions about him, then the game was over. Against this immeasurable and unstoppable power that the queen herself could present, not to speak about the entire army that followed her, even Fen's ancestors would most likely raise their hand in surrender!