Radeon plummeted through the open sky, the world a blur of white and blue. Clouds tore past him, cold damp fingers slapping his cheeks before the wind ripped them away.

He did not twitch. Did not flail. He gave the six above not a heartbeat of doubt that he was already dead.

"Disappear," he murmured.

The cloak wrapped around him as he fell, a fading cocoon that turned him into a vanishing blot against the bright vault.

High above, the six gilded core cultivators squinted after him, their eyes burning from the strain and the thin air.

They all knew how to guide proper flying ships. This thing beneath their boots was something else entirely.

The contraption shuddered when they tried to work it. They could force it left or right. They could not pull it into a clean dive without risking everyone on board.

So they held the line and let him drop.

In their minds Radeon was already gone. Turning back for a corpse would only waste what he had bought them.

The scraps of intelligence they had put together would have to be his mourning rites. A thin comfort.

A drunk bard in some low tavern would sing his name for a month if they were lucky. That was the price they chose to pay instead of reaching for him now.

Radeon did not begrudge them. Their choice was selfish. It was also the way of the world. He pushed the thought aside and fixed his gaze on the ground rushing up to meet him.

He spread his arms, dragging at the air, stealing a little speed from the fall.

Cold wind howled into his sleeves and around his fingers. Two weights sat in his palms. One pale and faintly humming. One dark and stubbornly still.

Hoverstone and windstone. He was no ship and this drop was no clean glide. Yet with the right touch his meridians could feed the stones enough to bite the air.

'Steady flow won't cut it. Qi's too thin to even twitch it. Need to hold and load it instead.'

A tight knot of power gathered behind his sternum and in his wrists. With an estimated measure, he let qi flooded into his hands like a burst dam.

The stones flared hot against his skin. The hoverstone lurched against the fall and the windstone kicked sideways.

Radeon twisted with them, teeth bared, forcing his body to turn with the sudden drag.

'This speed won't cut it. I'll end up mince.'

He pooled the rest of qi on stones. He also added vitality. his face drain of color and his nails turn purple.

This time a stronger lifting force was given by the hoverstone while the windstone let him have a faster glide and spun much wilder.

His vision started blurring and his consciousness started flickering but he punched his liver hard, popping himself out to wake up.

He needed to change his face, he needed to be Giovanni this time.

His skin bloated and balloon, muscle that seemed dry went young and supple. But Radeon knew he was burning blood essence fast.

'Just need enough to walk, see, and talk straight.'

Radeon hit the maple crowns fast. The red and green canopy rushed up and then swallowed him. Branches whipped at his face and shoulders.

He tore through dozens of branches before the power he had fed into the hoverstone and windstone guttered out, and he crashed into the undergrowth in a spray of leaves and bark.

The men who had thrown spears were not blind. Even in the chaos they felt that someone had been left behind.

Shouts rose. Boots pounded toward the place where he had fallen.

'I. Need. To. Get. Up. Come. On.'

Fractured hands. Broken ribs. A leg that barely held weight. Pain wrote itself in short sharp lines across his body.

His pelvis sat wrong. Radeon gritted his teeth, set his palms, and drove force through the dislocated bone.

A sharp click followed and white heat ripped through his hips. He chose running over screaming.

He staggered toward a strip of ground he guessed the cultists would be sparce.

In a few paces, Radeon went past the rough stone outcrops and their watching peers.

Their leader had already gone, soaring off to check the commotion above. Radeon slipped through the gap they left.

Reaching further back, he was able to leaned against a maple trunk.

His chest heaved. His hand fumbled inside his cloak for the pill bottle. Blood slicked his fingers.

The bottle had shattered from the fall. Shards bit into his palm as he dragged it free.

He dropped to one knee. Shaky hands scooped the mix of powder and glass into his mouth just as the edges of his vision darkened.

His tongue hunted through the mess, worrying at the hard slivers, spitting glass and keeping what mattered.

The last of the medicine he created burned its way down his throat.

'This trip better be worth it.'

He pulled his focus inward and drove his blood to move, to carry the medicine through his failing flesh.

Only then did he grasp how weak his body had become.

After half an incense of rough, shallow rest, Radeon forced himself upright. Every bone complained. Every breath scraped.

He then made himself known, letting his presence leak out, turned off his camouflage and offered himself up to be found.

The cultists were already combing the forest, their senses stretched thin. Experts in blood manipulation, they tasted every trace the wind carried.

A new scent brushed their senses. Almost dried out yet familiar. Radeon made no effort to hide it.

They drifted toward him, drawn by that thread as much as by their own curiosity and their hunger.

They broke through the trees and stopped short. For a moment shock touched their faces before training smoothed it away.

They saw Giovanni. Gaunt as if water had been withheld from his lips for days. The frame that had once carried heavy muscle now showed bone.

His borrowed clothes hung in torn strips, baring too much skin. He had kept only a jet black cloak on his back and a blood and soil stained bamboo shaft in his hands.

He cradled the bamboo as if it hid something priceless, a secret only he was loyal or mad enough to carry.

"Master! You'll bring me to him, now! Any of you take one more step, I'll bring you all down to hell with me!"

Radeon yanked a talisman from within the cloak, almost tearing the fabric in his haste.

Ominous red light crawled across its surface, pulsing in time with his ragged breaths.

He held it up too close to his face, lips peeled back in a grin that showed more teeth than sense

Even the gilded core among them felt the hair rise on their arms and froze where they stood.

The six gilded core swordsmen had pressed that strip of power into his palm before launch, speaking of last stands and honorable deaths.

Radeon had nodded, said the right words, and kept it for something else.

He waved it now with a shaking hand that might have been weakness or might have been intent, letting them see a man who looked ready to take everyone here with him on a single mad whim.

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