Spear of Destiny James Baldwin (free romance novels .TXT) 📖

was a real concern. Skydiving off the back of a dragon offered some interesting challenges. Number one was the fact that unlike an airship, dragons undulated as they beat their wings. I knew from experience that it was pretty easy to be flung off. Suri also had to avoid Karalti’s assorted body parts when exiting the platform. That wasn’t a problem for me because of Jump, but Suri didn’t have any special mobility moves. We’d decided the best option was for her to cling on to Karalti’s rump, where the saddle narrowed into a leaf-shaped cantle. Once we reached altitude, she would sprint out to the base of her tail and jump out behind her at an angle.

As soon as Suri was in position, I mentally signaled Karalti. She backed up, scattering the officers, then broke into a lumbering stride for the edge of the cliff. I bowed down and braced my forehead as she kicked off the ledge into the open air. The initial drop lifted our stomachs and then punched them down. Looking back, I saw Suri clinging white knuckled to the grips, watching as the earth receded from us at speed.

“Whee!” Karalti strove her wings rhythmically, gyring upward into thinner, colder air. “Why don’t we fly this high all the time?”

“Mostly because no one else can breathe the air and I don’t like dead friends,” I replied, kneeling back into the saddle. “But once Suri’s parachute is out, I am totally up for a fifteen-thousand-foot dive back to the mesa.”

Karalti brayed with saurian laughter, driving her wings as we broke through a thin, wispy little cloud. “Yeah! You’re on!”

I checked the altitude on the Raven Helm HUD. “Suri, we’re at ten thousand and counting. How are you feeling?”

“I’m ten k in the air with my lungs on fire and a couple of straps holding me on. I’m fuckin’ peachy.” Her eyes were concealed by the polarized goggles Rin had loaned her, and the rest of her expression was stony. “But you know, it’s weird. I feel like I’ve done this a hundred times before, even though it’s the first time.”

“Soldiers jump off high things a lot,” I said. “Maybe you were airborne in your past life.”

“Maybe. I...” She paused for a moment, then grimaced and rested her head down on the saddle.

“You alright?” I glanced at the HUD. We were almost at altitude.

“I just remembered something. I think?” She shook her head. “I remember... I was in a big grey tube with a bunch of other people. We were all dressed the same, all drab greens and grays. I had a pack like this... I remember attaching it to like, a zipline? No. A static line. That’s what they’re called.”

“Hot damn, Suri.” I grinned from ear to ear. “You WERE Airborne.”

“Yeah. The static line pulled the cord from the bag as we jumped.” She chuckled, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Shit. That’s weird.”

The mesa was now a great green slab looming over the shadowed valley, the castle a dark triangle to the south. I motioned with a hand. “Okay, babe: we’re at altitude. Let’s do this!”

Karalti, reading my intent through the Bond, slid into circulating current of air and flared her wings into a smooth, condor-like glide. As she steadied out, I stood up and walked with the wind to join Suri. I signed her for three minutes, then got her to stand. She nervously obliged, and I checked her harness from bottom to top, adjusted her rip cord over the back of the parachute, and then gave her a thumb’s up. She signed one minute back to me. Without thinking, we’d both shifted into the universal hand signals of military procedure... signals that were the same no matter which side of the war you were on.

“Hold steady,” I urged Karalti, watching as Suri signed forty seconds, twenty seconds, ten seconds... “In three, two, one.”

Suri kicked up off the saddle like a sprinter and ran down Karalti’s back, launching into the air at a thirty-degree angle from the base of her tail. Whooping encouragement, I hit Spider Climb and held on as Karalti banked into a roll away from Suri, giving her space to fall. “Yeah, girl! Get some!”

Suri rolled over once in the air before getting her limbs under control, spreading them out to maximize drag. Karalti wheeled at a distance, tilting starboard so we could watch her. After about twenty seconds of freefall, I saw Suri pull the ripcord. She tugged once, twice, and my heart began to hammer... but then she yanked it again, harder, and the rectangular silk parachute blossomed up and out, dragging her back up a short distance into the sky. We circled as she drifted down for five minutes or so before landing neatly in the distant pale bullseye below.

“NICE.” I messaged her and Rin.

Rin squeaked with joy. “Yee! And I got a new achievement and bonus EXP! I’m Level 25 now!”

“I got some EXP and a new Skill.” Suri said shakily. “Jeez… already have six ranks in Skydiving from that one jump. And a real bad wedgie from that harness.”

“I can fix that, kind of,” Rin said. “Unfortunately, the, umm, human body being what it is…”

“Hah! Taethawn’s gonna have to pay back the money we gave him!” Karalti flicked her wing and tail, leveling out. “Wanna give them a show?”

“Always.”

Karalti waited for me to assume the dive position, then folded her wings and barreled over with almost lazy speed. My gut lurched with the brief release of gravity, and then we were falling... plummeting toward the ground so fast the wind tore my joyous laughter away before I could even hear it. Diving at top speed, Karalti could reach three hundred miles an hour, nearly twice as fast as a peregrine falcon... conditions that would have sent a normal