Chapter 532: Flight Club

At speeds that had dogs chasing her and people throwing themselves out of her way, Arc raced towards the 5th Ward train station, the only one that took people to the old airfield where cargo gliders used to land. She already knew she would be late; the trains of the city ran on precise schedules down to a tenth of a second, and the conductors knew all sorts of tricks to gain those tenths of a second back, so there was no excuse to be made about their function or timeliness.

Thus, because she was already five minutes late for the train, she would be twenty minutes late for the first meeting of the Academy Flight Club... but running still felt like she was doing something to arrive, at least more so than walking.

She’d barely stopped at the train platform when someone even faster than her, to judge by their blur, arrived just behind her.

"In a hurry?" the Polis Knight, an elf in her mid-twenties, at least appearance-wise since one could never really tell with elves, was already writing something into a little notebook as she approached Arc. Her crisp black uniform with soft blue edges came complete with a truncheon etched with sigil lines that produced, at a glance, some sort of shield and some sort of lightning-based effect, probably for stunning.

"Just running late... Lady Knight," Arc replied, while her inner monologue filled with self-deprecating remarks about making herself even more late.

"Whatever you’re late for, chasing trains is pointless." She clicked her pen and started to write. "What’s your name?"

Arc had to remind herself she might end up working with this elf one day before she answered, "Arcine Gale."

"Spell that for me."

Arc complied, trying to hide the exasperation she felt.

"You’re an Academy student," the Knight said after writing a bit, before delivering a long, canned-sounding warning about students who violate the law and how it could affect their educations. "In your case, penalty for that sort of running is a full ten thousand crysta, even more if someone gets hurt or there are damages. Because there are none right now, just some startled folks, I’m going to take your name down and let you off with a warning. Stick to the designated running lanes and don’t endanger pedestrians."

"Wait, there are running lanes?"

The cop seemed about to roll her eyes, but instead she blinked a couple of times and returned a smile. "A full map is available at Polis Knight stations and most post offices. Have a nice day, Mageling Gale."

Arc was about to correct her when the Polis Knight stepped away and starting speaking into the callring on her right hand. "Knight Navahn here, 313 let off with a warning. Name of Ankhest, Rune, Chocolate..."

The moment the Knight was finished spelling Arc’s name phonetically, she gave Arc a little salute and disappeared in a blur. The whole interaction had taken less than ten minutes, and the cop managed to time her departure to the moment the next train arrived.

Only once she was on the train and seated did the reality of what occurred truly hit her.

Crap... Amarena’s going to find out about this. She could only hope that the most violent and overreaction-prone of her mothers was distracted or in a good enough mood to ignore something as trivial as her getting a warning for speeding...

Still, her worries dogged her all the way outside the city, but it all melted away when she saw the open landscape stretching all the way to the slightly shimmering border of the Veil. And up in the sky, she saw tiny figures wheeling and bobbing with the wind.

She had no doubt they were the Flight Club, and the closer she got, the more she felt hope that somehow they could help her fly, because not all of them had wings.

From the outermost train station on this side of the city, she was only a few minutes walk to the largely unused airfield. She’d come here once before as a child to watch her Dad teach others the art of sword-surfing, which he still did despite having wings of his own.

She’d hoped to learn something like it herself, but the way most swords were designed, she would have needed to be able to put her own mana into them to make them float and steer, and that wasn’t happening at a functional rate.

Walking in silence, except for the wind, she came upon a set of trunks, one of the open ones showing a long, delta-shaped outline clearly meant for a surfsword.

Hearing a clang, she looked up to find two fliers in a jostle, the edges of their swords meeting as they tried to tilt each other out of the way in an advantageous fashion. One was a beastkin holding a ball in her hands, so it was easy to tell they were practicing for some sort of game, as the other, a male orc by the look of him, tried to reach for the ball without grabbing his opponent.

The exchange lasted barely a moment before they wound up going in near-opposite directions.

Having been forced towards the ground, but still keeping the ball, the woman - racckin, it turned out - spotted Arc and paused, looking up at her friend before tossing the ball his way and using both hands to call out at a more distant figure. Whatever she said went unheard in the wind.

From higher up, a large, bat-shaped shadow tilted out of a thermal, before the familiar figure of Veng landed, stowing his demonic wings as he shifted his arms back to something more humanoid, the web of flesh flowing into tattooed storage lines that Arc caught glimpses of past the long gaps in his clothing. A moment later, his flight suit closed the gaps, preventing Arc from getting a more risque glimpse of the first special curriculum student she’d met who wasn’t in her year.

He bowed, causing Arc to blush from embarrassment at the special treatment.

"Miss Gale... welcome. If I had known you were arriving... I would have waited to start." He rose to a full stand, right as the racckin from before zoomed by with what sounded like an encouraging woop directed at Veng. Or perhaps it was directed at both of them.

"Oh, no, please don’t do that sort of thing. I’m just here to learn." She waved her hands in front of her, as if warding off his unearned admiration. "Please just treat me like anyone else."

"Ah," he lowered his voice. "The... contract. I’d almost forgotten." He sounded a bit disappointed, but quickly rallied. "In any case, welcome to the... Norneau Academy Flight Club. I apologize for not being at the table during the club recruitment fair, since I had to... walk patrol. I’m the... President."

"And I’m just Arc," she replied, a little emphatically.

"I think I’m beginning to understand," his eyes seemed to smile a little behind his collar hiding half his face. "How do you prefer to... fly?"

"Oh! One moment," Arc focused hard on turning off the tattoo on her back, and a moment later, her demonic wings unfolded through the slots in her uniform, and she gave them a little relieved flap before folding them behind her. The sensation of her wings radiating heat into the cold wind gave her a little shiver, but she quickly adjusted.

"What would you like to learn Mi-, I mean... Arc?" Veng asked. "We mostly do competition and sports flying, and once a year, we put on a formation with the Dragon Knights."

Her tail was already wagging from excitement, but the last statement made it stand up in surprise, as flying with the Dragon Knights was not on the flyer she’d been handed by a less-than-enthusiastic bluejay-patterned birdkin who looked like they’d rather be flying.

"I’m actually hoping I can learn how to fly..."

Veng blinked in confusion. "Yes, which... style?"

"Just... any of them. All of them, I guess. I can’t figure it out." She felt a surge of shameful emotion as understanding dawned in Veng’s eyes. To distract herself and keep from crying, she opened her wings and flapped, doing little more than move some air around.

"I, um... pardon me... Arc. Could I maybe see that again? I wasn’t quite ready." His eyes began to glow red as she sensed mana surging up to them. This time, when she flapped, his eyes grew concerned. "Have you ever, um, managed it before?" he asked awkwardly.

"I don’t know. I feel like I used to fly with my Father, but that could have just been gliding." The rest of the story flashed to the front of her thoughts, how the flights stopped when he got all distant and weird, and she shook her head to free herself from them. "I feel like my parents know, but they won’t just outright tell me. It’s like they want me to fail..."

"I’m not sure how to... say it... Demons with wings use the extra surface area to accumulate mana, but they can’t typically absorb it all at once so the body just gives it a wind aspect and that’s what enables flight. It’s supposed to be... automatic..."

"But..." Arc already knew what he’d just said, but with the added truth that the mana was used more to cancel gravity and multiply the force of flapping, otherwise angels, demons, and birdkin with wings couldn’t hover like they did.

"But your wings don’t seem to work like that. I’m sorry, but I’ve never seen this before."

"I was afraid of that," Arc said, her voice cracking a little as she wrestled with her emotions. "I guess this means I can’t..."

"Of course you can still join us!" Veng said, his voice rising to a more rapid cadence than she’d ever heard from him. He even seemed to blush a little, though that could have just been the cold wind. "I’d be honored to help you solve this... I mean, we would be honored to... Everyone... that is. Not just... me. I know what it’s like to grow up with a... malformity. Would you mind if I ask you a few more questions before the... break?"

"Y-yes! That’s fine," Arc pretended to wipe a speck of dust out of her eyes. The feeling of hope at finally solving her lack of flight almost stole the words from her. "Thank you."