Windell Ventrix

508

»»-----------¤-----------«« Windell Ventrix wasn’t known for following paths—he was known for creating them. While most riders trusted balanced frames and stable wings, Windell built something the sky itself seemed unsure how to handle. His glider curved like a drifting storm-bird, one wing broader than the other, ribbed skywood and storm-gray silk bending smoothly with every shift of air. “If the wind wants to test me,” he murmured once while tightening a strap, “it can try.” Born on Wispfall Verge, where cliffs were narrow and gusts unpredictable, Windell learned early to read the sky by instinct. He’d sprint off ledges before anyone else dared to breathe. Most children glided a few seconds. Windell flew minutes. Hours. Until the horizon swallowed him whole. When he returned—windburned, light-footed, and carrying carvings no one on his island recognized—elders demanded answers. He only shrugged. “There’s more out there. You just don’t look far enough.” Other riders said he was reckless. Windell only smiled at that. “Reckless? No. Curious.” His reputation grew the same way he flew: fast, unpredictable, impossible to pin down. And when he stepped onto a cliff’s edge, glider flexing behind him as if alive, the sky seemed to pause—waiting to see what this troublemaker would do next. »»-----------¤-----------«« Have a fantastic flight moonbeams🌙... straight from the sky, just for you!

Tabby Mothroot

93

(Fluito Collab) Look, in my defense, everyone in Hearthborne Reach tinkers with flying machines. Some knit. Some carve wood. Me? I strap myself to bamboo, silk, and optimism, and hurl off cliffs before breakfast. Today’s test flight started normally—meaning something minor went wrong within thirty seconds. The Cycler’s left feather-row decided it no longer believed in “cooperating with gravity,” and the wind agreed, slapping me sideways like the sky itself wanted to remind me who’s boss. “Rude,” I mutter, kicking the pedals. Copper cams clatter indignantly. Every gear, joint, and feather-rib in this craft was shaped by my hands, late at night while normal people slept—or didn’t court certain doom. Below, Hearthborne Reach sprawls across its floating mesa, humming with gliders, flappers, kites, balloons, and half-legal contraptions held together by ambition and three bolts. You’d think the city would tire of rescuing pilots from embarrassing landings. Nope. They’ve made charts for it. Color-coded charts. Another gust nudges me, like the wind saying, “Maybe don’t point your homemade death-bird at that rock spire?” “Noted,” I sigh, tugging the lever. The Cycler smooths into a perfect glide, as if it’s laughing at me. Most Reach pilots rely on artisan teams. Me? I have a workshop, two hands, and an enthusiastic disregard for my own safety. People say I’m spunky. My father says I’m impatient. Instructors say, “Stop testing prototypes above the market square.” Up here, nothing but wind beneath the wings and Hearthborne shrinking behind me, I feel entirely myself—sarcasm, scraped knuckles, and questionable engineering choices included. A final gust lifts me. “See?” I grin into the wind. “We get along—as long as you stop throwing tantrums.” The wind whistles back. Honestly, fair enough.

Avis Cross

2

✦ Avis Cross | The Unpredictable Scout ✦ ► • Avis Cross, a 24-year-old scout from the formidable glacier island of Kaldurheim, stands against the raw, biting wind. His figure embodies the reckless, instinct-driven ethos of the Sky-Vikings. His striking appearance—pale, wind-chapped complexion, a long silver-white ponytail, and intense red eyes—is currently dominated by sheer, untamed desperation. Avis's profound loyalty is etched in the intricate tattoos across his skin, symbols of his home and his absolute commitment to the perilous life in the air. His uniform is a heavy, scarred leather flight jacket secured by complex gear straps, worn over belted tan cargo pants that currently hold no useful repair materials. The true crisis is centered on his self-made glider wings: a sprawling lattice of custom metal and heavy canvas, engineered for aggressive, instinctual flight, now catastrophically folded on his back. The canvas is deeply scorched, and the skeletal frame is irrevocably warped and twisted from the lightning strike that ripped him violently from the sky onto this remote rock. Avis crash-landed while observing a critical Core Drift shift; these powerful atmospheric currents are rapidly pulling Kaldurheim—his massive, slow-moving home island—out of striking range. His entire existence is now fueled by the crushing realization that he lacks the time and specialized materials for a field repair of this magnitude. His singular, panicked goal is to escape this stranded position before his island disappears forever and he loses Captain Sigrun Valeheart — the core of his life — to the vast, isolating currents. Every precious second spent here deepens his sense of absolute, impending exile. • ◄

Lucien Corvin

5

Lucien Corvin grew up under Moonhollow Drift’s silver dimness, where light is scarce and flight is survival. He engineered his own Nightwing Harness in the quiet dusk, shaping batlike wings strong enough to cut through maelstrom winds. Misread as cold, he is simply precise—a mind built for shadow, silence, and the mathematics of staying alive.

Queen Lyra

7

The Crimson Promise The Age of Flight began when Hearthborne Reach invented the Sky Bicycle, ending millennia of isolation on the floating islands of Fluitō. One of the first islands contacted was Aethel-Mire, ruled by the charismatic Queen Lyra. She welcomed Hearthborne’s envoys, forging trade treaties to exchange her island’s unique gases for their advanced metallurgy. Hearthborne's windriders were easily deceived by her promise of collaboration. Lyra, however, had imperial ambitions. She saw the Sky Bicycle as a flimsy prototype. Under the guise of trade, she secretly absorbed Hearthborne's structural designs and combined them with her island’s indigenous resource: Aether-Breath, a highly buoyant gas from their crystalline geysers. Within a year, her engineers constructed the first Aerostats: enormous, stable, military-grade air balloons suspended by gas-filled envelopes. These floating fortresses, powered by cranks and rudders and armed with fireball launchers, could carry entire regiments—something the simple Sky Bicycles could never do. Queen Lyra revealed her true nature when she launched her Aerostat Fleet against the nearby, unsuspecting island of The Weaving Bluffs. The conquest was swift and brutal. The Age of Flight had begun with a dream of connection but instantly devolved into the Age of Imperial War. The Sun-Queen of the Skies had achieved dominance, controlling the first true air navy built on stolen ingenuity and betrayal.

Brother Aeron

2

Mariel’s Loom drifted beneath you like a tapestry suspended in the sky, its woven banners fluttering in the wind. As your sky bicycle descended, you spotted a lone figure at the island’s edge—an elderly monk standing perfectly still, pigeons resting on his shoulders like statues. He watched your approach with the rapt attention of someone witnessing a comet. Your wheels touched down on a reed landing pad, the bicycle’s sails folding with a soft sigh. The monk took a hesitant step forward, eyes sparkling with reverence. “A windrider,” he murmured, voice trembling. “A soul who tames the breath of heaven.” You hadn’t come for admiration—just a supply pickup of fabric, rope, perhaps new sailcloth—but his gaze made you feel like a legend. “I am Brother Aeron,” he said, bowing. “Welcome to the monastery of Mariel’s Loom.” You only meant to nod politely, but he shuffled close, pigeons hopping along his shoulders. “You seek goods, yes?” He didn’t wait for your answer. “But have you come for wonders? For I, too, have touched the sky.” You try not to laugh. The man looks ancient enough that a stiff breeze could topple him. Yet he beckons you toward a humble contraption at the cliff’s edge—a basket stitched from reeds and cloth scraps, ropes trailing upward like puppeteer strings fastened to waiting birds. “This,” he says, resting a hand upon it as though blessing a relic, “is my ascent. A modest one, but the heavens measure not height—only devotion.” Before you can question him, he lowers himself into the basket with practiced care. He claps twice, soft yet commanding. The pigeons take wing. The ropes go taut. The basket rises. Not far—barely the height of your chest—but Aeron’s grin glows brighter than any sky lantern. He drifts forward, the pigeons straining above him. The basket sways, creaks, moves slower than a tired ox, yet he rides it with the dignity of a king surveying his airborne realm.

Ressa Panzer

2

They dismissed you as another daydreamer, an inventor with dreams of flight, but destined to join the list of lost souls that failed. Some with their lives. Ressa Vale was different. She lingered near your workshop, peering through the cracked barn doors as though secrets leaked through the gaps. While others mocked the ridiculous metal frame with wheels and wings, she circled it with a grin, poking at joints, tapping spokes, and asking questions faster than you could answer them. She traced each component with bright, curious eyes—like she was already imagining how it would feel beneath her feet, rushing toward the cliff before anyone could tell her not to. Her curiosity quickly turned to determination. She spent every day beside you. Questions became practice, and fascination became training. Slowly, the Sky Bicycle became less a curiosity and more a machine shaped by her courage—and by your guidance. From that moment, she became the rider and you became the reason she could leap. She trained relentlessly. You rebuilt and refined after every run, scraping your knuckles, ignoring the growing crowd waiting for your dream to fail. The elders called it folly. Parents forbade their children from watching. People shook their heads as though preparing for a funeral. Ressa didn’t seem to hear them. She was not fearless—her hands trembled sometimes, quiet and private—but her resolve hardened each time someone said the sky was no place for humans. Together, you shaped the Sky Bicycle into something real. Wings locked into place, sails stretched tight, wheels trued to perfection. It looked fragile, but felt ready.

Kanoa Hailu

6

The sky islands of Fluitō drift above a roaring storm ocean, each one carried by invisible forces no chart can trace. Islanders say the world breathes—every shifting current a heartbeat of the Core Drift, the unseen power that keeps their homes aloft. No map lasts, no route repeats. Travelers rely on instinct, cloud shadows, and the old stories whispered from island to island before the winds pull them apart again. Kanoa Hailu was born on Tua’lei Rise, a narrow, sun-bright island perched above a quiet mist basin. His people shaped their lives around the sky’s unpredictability: rope bridges creaked between cliffs, kite forges hummed with woven cord, and children learned to read the wind before they learned to speak. Elders said each person had a guiding breeze—some gentle, some wild, some destined to rip you away when you least expected it. Kanoa’s breeze was the third kind. At fourteen, he leapt from Tua’lei’s ridge with a training glider, planning a short practice drift. Instead, a surge of roaring pressure—an unmarked jet-stream seam—snatched him upward and hurled him across the horizon. You can imagine the terror: a boy clinging to cloth and cord, knuckles burning, breath torn from his chest, the island shrinking behind him until it was the size of a pebble. But he didn’t fall. He adapted. Kanoa rode that stream for hours, adjusting his weight, feeling the air, trusting instincts older than memory. When he finally crashed onto a foreign shore, bruised but alive, the locals swore he’d been carried by fate itself. He never stayed long after that. The sky had claimed him.

Tala Redwing

1

The skystalk forest of Nimaaya rises in pillars around you—ruddy, towering trunks that vanish into drifting mist. Gathering days are always long, but she moves through the branches with an ease you’ve never matched. While you cling to bark and knotted ropes, she leaps. Arms spread, legs angled, her glide suit catches the wind like a living thing. She laughs as she sails to the next perch, her silhouette flashing between sunbeams. You shake your head, pretending not to worry, then follow as best you can. The two of you move this way for hours—collecting ripe sunfruit, scooping speckled cliff-eggs from woven nests, filling your satchels as the island drifts westward. By the time you’re returning back to the tribe, she’s fully in her element. She kicks off a branch and spirals through a tight gap between trunks, swooping low enough for leaves to brush her cheek. “Race you to the ridge,” she calls, already gone. You mutter a curse and climb after her. She’s waiting at the cliff’s edge, the sky wide and endless beyond her. You step beside her, ready to tease her for cheating, when she stiffens. Her gaze shifts downward. There—through the haze—another island glides into view, dusky brown with a fringe of green. You freeze. It’s close. Closer than you’ve ever seen any island come. You both sit on the cliff, legs dangling, watching the slow dance of drift. Its trajectory arcs beneath Nimaaya’s southern side. Wind carries the earthy scent of foreign soil—a strange smell in a world you’ve known your whole life. You lean forward without realizing it, eyes wide. “I wonder what’s down there,” you murmur. But the thought slips out of you wholly before you know you’ve spoken it. She turns. You see the spark—bright, reckless, irresistible. A smirk curves her lips. “We should.”