The silent, blue expanse had become a prison. Sprinting—even at her unnatural speed—was no longer a means of travel. It was an act of despair.
'Enough.'
The thought cut through the static in her mind. She stood at the end of her latest ice span, the path behind her a vanishing thread, the path ahead an infinite, impossible chore. Flying was a risk. But staying here, marching any longer into a watery oblivion, was a guaranteed defeat. The risk was now the only logical choice. To find land, she needed height. She needed speed.
She admitted it to herself, the admission itself a form of control: 'I am panicking.' This is a tactical adjustment born of panic. Thankfully, she had a blueprint. She closed her eyes to see inward. Deep into the archive. For a detailed treatise on aerial levitation. The feeling. The practice. The kinematic signature, of Virgil in motion.
The memory surfaced not just as a lesson, but as an experience: the visceral sensation of the world blurring into streaks below, the atmosphere not as a barrier but as a fluid to be parted, the earth itself seeming to curve away from his passage. His style was not the graceful arc of a bird. It was the ruthless, linear trajectory of a meteor. It prioritized one thing: velocity.
That—she thought. 'That's what I need.'
In Virgil's era, flight was more than a convenience. It was a statement. A dividing line. Any competent mage could hurl a fireball or harden their skin. But sustained, controlled, high-speed flight required a mastery that consumed lesser practitioners. It demanded power reserves vast enough to make the immense energy cost trivial, and a control so precise it became autonomic. It was the hallmark of the highest-level mage because it tested every foundational principle at once, under relentless, real-time strain.
Serena opened her eyes. The knowledge was clear. The practice was a cliff face.
First, full somatic control. Every muscle, every tendon, needed to be in a state of perfect, responsive tension. Not rigid, but poised. She adjusted her stance, feeling the alignment from her heels to the crown of her head. Her body was a vessel, and the power was a contained storm. Most importantly, the internal flow. Mana—the ambient energy she could perceive as a faint shimmer in the air—had to be gathered, not just around her, but through her. She drew it in, feeling it circulate—a second, luminous bloodstream. Energy congregated in her core. This was Virgil's technique. In addition to making it easier to cast magic, it had the benefit of enhancing her body, including her senses.
Then, the external shell. This was the most delicate part. With a focused exhale, she pushed a layer of mana out from her skin, forming a seamless field around her body. It was invisible to the naked eye, but tangible to her senses—a pliable buffer. It needed to be firm enough to deflect the coming hammer-blow of wind resistance, yet dynamically responsive, thickening at the edges, flowing like liquid silk over her form. She reinforced it over her eyes and ears, creating a transparent, protective lens. A single flaw in the matrix, a weak point no larger than a coin, and the pressure would find it, rip it open, and possibly shred her—even with the body enhancement.
She spent hours there, hovering a meter above her ice bridge. Not moving, just maintaining. The distribution of mana flickered and wavered; she'd feel a patch over her shoulder thin alarmingly, or the lens over her eyes distort her vision. She corrected, adjusted, recalibrated. It was an endless, exhausting dance of willpower, control, and physics. Virgil made it feel as easy as breathing—perhaps she overestimated her new body.
Finally, a semblance of stability held. It felt less like mastery and more like she was balancing a towering, wobbling column of plates. But it was holding.
'Now.'
She willed the energy in her core to push.
First, up, slowly. Then—forward.
The world snapped.
The ice beneath her became a smear, then vanished. The sound of the wind, even muffled, rose to a deep, tearing roar. The ocean below transformed to a flat, blue sheet. Her stomach lurched with gravitational disbelief.
She was flying. Not gracefully, nor with the complete confidence from Virgil's memories—but she was a projectile cutting through the sky.
She pushed further, incrementally increasing the output from her core. Speed was a function of power and efficiency. A human body, even one like hers, had biological and structural limits. Flight magic circumvented those limits by propelling and hardening the body with pure energy, then encasing it in a force-field. The faster she went, the more perfect her shell and internal flow had to be. The biggest factor was magic power, but she probably didn't need to worry about it.
Hours bled into the flight. The wobbling column of plates gradually steadied. The all-consuming focus required to maintain the mana field began to decentralize, parts of the process becoming automatic, handled by a subconscious layer of her will. She could now think independently while flying, rather than just endure it.
She estimated her velocity with her enhanced senses. Comparing the blur beneath her to the geographic scale in Virgil's memories, she was moving fast. Incredibly fast by any Earthly standard. Yet, when she measured it against the meteor-trail in her mind, she knew she was perhaps at half his casual cruising speed. That was fine. More than fine. The memory of his top speed—a stark, numerical fact buried in the archive—flashed before her: 70 kilometers per second. A speed to orbit planets, to turn atmosphere into fire, to cross continents in breaths—at least back on Earth. The mere thought of attempting such velocity was ludicrous. It wasn't just about ability or power, it was also about using your body as fuel. A feat only Virgil could sustainably do with his life-stealing abilities.
A new uncertainty settled. She was drawing on Virgil's power, yes. But what was the totality of it? The integration had been a catastrophic, metaphysical event. Some of that raw, cosmic power was spent to cross worlds, merge the archives of two minds, travel back, and forge her new form. Did that power regenerate? It no doubt took a huge chunk. Perhaps Bituin was used in its place, hence why she's unable to recall the girl's memories.
She had no idea. She was a pilot flying a God-Emperor's starship with no gauge for the fuel tank. And even then, she only used it because she knew it was unrealistic not to in this world of magic.
Testing its limits was out of the question. So, she would not go all-out. She would not be a meteor. She would be swift, direct, but sustainable. Her eyes, shielded by their mana-lens, scanned the endless horizon ahead, not with hope, but with grim calculation. She had traded the prison of the sea for the gamble of the sky.
.
.
.