Skye is the Limit by Phenomenal Pen (best time to read books txt) 📕

<So, Mage will lift Warrior and Warrior will pull me up. Since I’m the lightest of us, I’ll be the one to…>

<Wait, how do we know you’re the lightest?> the older-spawn Ranger butted in on the recording.  

The current-spawn Elf looked daggers at the current-spawn Ranger.

“Uh, guys?” current-spawn Blacksmith said. “A little help?”

The Nidhoggr had lifted itself in the air on the command of its Orc rider. Now it was fanning its giant batlike wings to make the flames around Blacksmith blaze. Talk about taking the heat.

“OK!” Elf screamed. “Maneuver No. 3! Let’s do this!”

Like the base in a cheerleading pyramid, Mage lifted the muscle-bound Warrior and sat him on his left shoulder. It was uncanny because Mage did it so effortlessly, with the same poker face and frame of a septuagenarian. Mage also squatted.  

Elf did a run-up and boosted herself on Mage’s thigh up to the level of Warrior’s barrel chest. Warrior caught her by the waist, turned her around in the direction of the Nidhoggr and shoved as hard as he could.

Unfortunately, the timing was off because the Nidhoggr’s wings had just flapped forward from their swept-back position, swatting the airborne Elf.

Elf crashed and blacked out.

****

When she opened her eyes, Elf was back on the rolling hills and had a pounding headache.

“Where are we?” she groaned. The others were also just regaining consciousness. 

“Oh man,” Blacksmith said. “We’re back at the starting point again.”

“You mean this isn’t my first time waking up with four guys from completely different clans?” Elf asked.

“This place does seem familiar,” Warrior said uncertainly.

“What spawning are we on now?” asked Ranger.

Blacksmith looked unsure so Mage answered in his stead: “This is the seventh spawning.”

“How many times do we need to keep doing this?”

“As many times as it takes,” Mage said, “till we reach a Save Point or complete the mission.”

“Or run out the clock,” Warrior added.

“How much time do we have left?” Ranger asked Mage.

“It has now been 3 hours 27 minutes and 49 seconds inside SKYE, out of a maximum of 6 hours.”

“More than half,” Ranger said. “What was our last game plan?”

Mage crouched and used the bottom of his staff to draw something in the dirt.

“This is Maneuver No. 3,” he explained. “This is I. Warrior is in this position. Elf is expected to launch herself from this location to the Nidhoggr. The objective is to attack the point of vulnerability under the Nidhoggr’s scale-crown.”

“Wait, back up. What’s a Nidhoggr again?” Elf asked.

“A fire-breathing, flying creature. Wingspan of 40 feet and height of 15 feet. A natural born killer.”

“Oh,” Elf said.

“Wait, where am I in all this?” Blacksmith asked.

“At this position. You are creating a diversion and laying down cover fire – or water to be precise.”

“Cover… water?” Blacksmith asked, confused.  

“Indeed. Suffice it to say that in your previous spawning, you were a firefighter.”

“I was?” Blacksmith asked. As soon as the question had left his lips, his Anima bracelet slithered down into his hands and transformed into a hose. “I am!” he said. 

“And me?” Ranger asked. “What role do I play in this strategy?”

“You are here with Blacksmith in front of the Nidhoggr.”

“Am I a firefighter too?”

“As a matter of fact, you are more of a swordsman. You are experiencing a certain amount of difficulty with your Anima.”

Ranger’s brows knit as he pondered Mage’s last words, but he didn’t ask or say anything else.

****

“Let me get this straight,” Ranger said without looking back. He was leading the pack northwards. “We’re on a quest and we have two goals. First, we need to rescue a friend of ours called Fairy and then seek an audience with a powerful wizard called Atom the Sandman.”

“That is correct,” Mage said. “Atom the Sandman lives in the Mansion of the Bennu in Heliopolis, which lies northwards.”   

350 miles away, to be precise, Ranger thought but kept to himself. The way the rest of the party looked, they were barely keeping it together.

From the rolling hills, they trekked through a place that Ranger saw fit to call the Uncanny Valley. As they passed by a row of hedges of various exotic shrubs, some of them fruit-bearing, he shouted out a warning: “No one eat anything from this place! It’s not safe.”