“Pew, pew, pew, pew!” Sylph audibly commented as she dodged the spells flying her way. Everyone was so tense up here, looking at her unappreciatingly as she flew by and made funny faces at them. “Relax, big nosey, I am just here to look around, look there and over there and over there and over there and… OH NOES!”

Someone tried to throw an air sickle at her and she did an electric jump to the side. That she found immensely rude. All she was doing here was chatting it up; John hadn’t even told her to fight. If they wanted it so badly, though, Sylph was completely fine with showing them her own awesomeness.

The sky around here was filled with funny people and even funnier things. People that could fly naturally were a sought rarity in the Abyss. Yeah, sure, there was an arcane spell that allowed mages to fly and an ankle technique that allowed martial artists to walk on air, but both of those cost immense amount of mana. It was much better to just have an Innate Ability that allowed people to claim the sky. There were a lot of shapes that took.

Sylph zoomed at the person who had tried to attack her. Moving at top speeds was funny since she had evolved into Tier 4. She had her little trick to fill her body with lightning when she had been a tempest elemental, that boosted her speed for short bursts. It had become the norm now; her body now did it on its own. She was super-fast all the time, she loved it. If she moved REAAAALLLYYYYY fast, her body even dissolved and became just a streak of electricity, reforming immediately when she stopped. That was an interesting tingling feeling.

Only drawback: it made guessing distances travelled a bit hard sometimes. “Hey, you are being… whoops!” she talked to the air, having overshot her target by about two metres. Zooming backwards, refusing to look behind her out of principle and because flying without seeing was fun, she found herself about three metres before the woman. “Give me a second I can figure this out!” she promised the enemy combatant, who was making swimming motions to stay in the air.

Looking equal parts confused and afraid about what he had aimed at, the soldier of Matthew’s army regiment could do nothing but wait for the thunderstorm elemental to do as she had said. Fleeing from the little goofball was impossible.

Flying at a diagonal, Sylph managed to stop a mere few dozen centimetres away from her goal. “Haha!” she triumphantly chirped. “I almost have it! Just a little jump now and…” she found herself the same distance away, just on the other side. “Elderberries and wobble-herbs!” she said something with the intent of cursing. “Evil words, very evil words, I don’t want to say any so just insert some here with your mind powers, okay?” she requested when the exact same thing happened again. With puffed up cheeks, she gave up on the zooming effort and instead goose-stepped through the air and up to where she wanted to be – right in front of the woman’s face. “Boop!” Sylph touched her on the nose with her tiny index finger.

The woman’s hair turned into a huge ball, like a dandelion ready to lose its seeds. Fainting, she fell towards the ground. At first Sylph found that funny, then she remembered that people died when they hit the floor from several dozen metres high.

“Whoopsie!” the fairy-esque elemental stormed after her shocked victim and flew in tight curves around her. Generating an upwards breeze, Sylph slowed her fall to the point where she got stuck in some canopies without any further harm. “There you go, be a good girl and keep sleeping, and I am going to… oh my mother, my marshmallows!” Whatever she had even tried to say, it was suddenly swept away as she suddenly remembered that promise. “If I melt them over Sally’s hair, how would those taste? Would she let me? I think she would, I am adorable and she likes me, even though she is a bitch sometimes… then again, she was pretty mad after the candy cane accident. Picking all that sugar out of her hair was sooooooo annoying! WAIT! She is almost bald now! AUDIBLE GASP! BALDAMANDER! I can call her Baldamander! I am a genius! A total ge-”

Her words were interrupted by a stinging pain in her back. A projectile the size of a needle burrowing itself into her body of magically inspirited air. Given her size, she might as well have been hit by a spear. With her Endurance, that bit of damage was immense.

Immediately, Sylph moved. She made a little jump upwards, spying a swarm of thin magic missiles. It was hard to discern how long they were, the white projectiles drawing long trails after them in the air. Rather than shoot off into the distance, they flew wide curves and came for the air spirit again.

“That hurt, that was so mean, who does that?!” Sylph palavered as she took off. The needless were aiming for her but slower than she was at top speed. Flying high into the air, she was quickly met by a second, then third swarm, however. She had only short moments between jumps to find the source of this precise spellcraft.

It was a fortress in the sky. Well, fortress was a big term for the object, but Sylph was a small girl, so it fit from her perspective. Forged mainly from cogs and steam pipes, the colours of copper and polished steel, it was a marriage between a medieval tower and steampunk. Four balconies set around the circular walls of ticking cogs and on them stood mages in dark green robes. Three of them were casting magic, the fourth oversaw the entire operation. A blue hue around the entire thing betrayed the existence of an arcane shield.

One of the mages finished his preparations and flung another wave of the needles at Sylph. They seemed designed specifically to take out fast moving, low health enemies with homing, low damage but highly precise attacks. “That is so mean! I say, so, so, so suuuupeeer mean! Like putting a jalapeno in a gummy bear levels of mean!” Sylph complained.

All she felt was bullied. Not that that stayed for long. Whimsical as always, the thunderstorm elemental twirled out of the way of a swarm of needles and then began the deadly game of tag. Elegant streaks of white chased after a jaggedly flying fairy of thunder and wind. Across the sky, claimed by mages of professional hired battle life, Sylph bolted from one point to another.

A direct approach was impossible. Flying towards the fortress meant she had to go through a swarm. One needle had already hurt. A lot. With her low Endurance, getting caught by an entire wave would be a death sentence.

White both left and right of her. A jump backwards, a third spell from below, forcing her upwards. Throwing out a massive gust of wind did nothing to deter the magical projectiles. Sylph zapped over to an enemy combatant. “Sorry, but can you stay still for a sec?” she asked, speaking as if somebody had put a movie on double speed. “See, I got this situation and so I need a bit help of somebody who has a broad, broad back and you seem to have a broad, broad back. Hope you don’t mind, but then again, you are the enemy of John, so you minding isn’t exactly a thing I should worry about, you catch me? I think you catch me. Don’t think I’ll have the time to catch you though.”

“Who… what the hell are you even on about?” the mercenary asked the tiny spirit in front of him. Before he could get any answer, his back was hit with a bunch of spells that couldn’t redirect themselves around him fast enough. As he fell out of the sky, Sylph moved again. New swarms were steadily added to the chasing number of projectiles.

Nevertheless, Sylph laughed. This was kind of fun. Dangerous, sure, very dangerous, but she had to really strain herself to keep dodging and that was unusual exercise. Her flight took her all across the sky. Every successful dodge of a new attack was a greater swarm behind her.

A critical mass was eventually reached, with older spells fizzling out from the energy they consumed in travelling the distance. Still, she was being followed by a massive trail of white, like a magical jet engine leaving behind glowing condensation clouds, that also chased her. The metaphor fell apart a bit, but it looked pretty cool in her opinion.

“I feel like one of those giant robots in that show that Raver-Janer likes that GUNS DAAAAAMN thing. No, wait, that wasn’t the title of that show,” Sylph palavered as she zoomed off the side. Circling around the fortress, she approached it like a meteorite caught in orbit. The closer she got to the source of the needles, the narrower the dodges became. One mistake and she would be done for.

Finally, close enough to land some good hits, she unleashed a barrage of lighting strikes. They arched out of her dissolved form and danced over the surface of the shield. Where they hit, the barrier lit up in an azure blue. She just had to keep circling and keep up the electronic pressure, sooner or later the shield would fall, and then she could destroy this sky fortress.

No more needles came. Something that she noticed just a few moments too late. A blast of energy went into her direction, too quick and broad to be dodged effectively. It catapulted her back, tumbling through the air. All the space she had covered was lost, her body subject to some rather immense damage.

Her essence was ripped at the seams. The hole in her back her essence had managed to patch no problem, but now parts of her were drifting off like a heavy gas in winds. By the time she finally restored her balance, her left arm was nothing but tattered scraps of energy, barely holding together, her hips and chest losing small fragments at the sides, and her long, light green hair became a blur past the hips, like an unfocused image.

“Ow, ow, ow!” she mumbled and saw the enemies once more charge their ranged spell. “This is so mean,” she cried. “I wanna eat gummy bears and roll in biscuits. I wanna get laid. Repeatedly! I don’t wanna get hurt. Getting hurt is no fun!” She tried to pull herself together, but baring healing or having time to rest in an incorporeal state, she would take a while to get her body complete again.

The fortress mages were ready, by comparison. The first new wave of needles came. Sylph jumped to the side. Barely. Then the second. A couple of the white projectiles shaved along her legs, causing her essence loss to worsen. She was too hurt now to fly at her full speed. Going incorporeal wasn’t an option; in the fading time she would simply be killed.

She would fail John and everyone else. That was the sober reality that hit her when the last wave of needless came her way. ‘No! I reject that reality, I don’t like it!’ she thought, growing restless at her own inability. ‘I refuse, I refuse, I refuse, I say, think, whatever! I won’t fail; damnit, Sylph, you have one job! DO IT!’

The negative emotions, the connotations of failure, the self-aimed disappointment, it pushed the boundary of her body and unleashed her. A sudden, destructive surge of power took hold of her. The dodge that seemed impossible a moment ago was suddenly child’s play. Three swarms were surrounding here and all three she dodged with two jumps. The sounds of the battlefield no longer reached her, her mind was silent, pure focus. She had one target. One target alone. The fortress had to fall.

A female form made from lightning rose in the sky, turning around herself. She grew up to her human size, pulled back her arm. Her entire, unsteady form glowed intensely. Quickly, the light seeped from her limbs and body, concentrating all in the raised right. A rod of lightning manifested, crackling power, all of what she had. The quiet was reflected in her wide open eyes, amber in the electric blue that had replaced her normal form. Her arm snapped forwards. Like the god of thunder himself, she delivered the wrath of the heavens.

The shield struggled for a second, then was depleted of its remaining mana. The bolt struck the fortress and turned the entire thing into one large conductor. All mages were equally hit by the voltage, their perceived security coming to a sudden and shocking end. Their concentration broken, the needles about to catch-up to the unleashed thunderstorm elemental ceased to be, fizzling out.

The mages jittered from the electricity forcing their muscles to contract and become loose. All bodily control was ceased. It kept dancing within the metal for far longer than any normal electricity would stay. Then, something short-circuited. A chain reaction was unleashed, the immediate effect coming to the forefront in a large explosion that filled the sky with flying cogs and the purple mist of destroyed arcano-tech.

A scrap of metal flew closely by the empty faced air spirit. One blink and her unleash ended, her body slowly changing back into its damaged but human state. “I… I did it!” Sylph realized, ready to do some happy jumps. The strange quiet that had grabbed hold of her mind disappeared, leaving the cheerful air spirit to celebrate her victory. “I am the best, Sylph is number o…ne…” And with just a single, one-armed jump of jubilation, her burst of power claimed its price. “Is all going… very dark…” she mumbled, no longer having the power to stay in the air. “Can’t be… eyes… in the sky…” She fell, her body once more losing more of the magical essence that kept it together. Slowly, she disintegrated. “… Sylph… is… number last… dammit…”

The fighting continued elsewhere. She, however, perceived nothing anymore. Her body became undone in blueish, green fragments of energy. Her consciousness became nothing, lulled by cold darkness. A place, perhaps more of a concept, of no thoughts and no words where she had to dwell until revived. Her first visit to that darkness, it was a trip accompanied by a giggle of stranger things. They, or perhaps it, was unable to touch her but they could see her misery just fine. Their many-eyed laughter she wouldn’t remember.