Sara enjoyed the fall immensely—she had never experienced anything like free-falling from such an immense height before.

The more reserved Sara found herself giggling and laughing openly, the wind rushing wildly past them as they plummeted together through the clouds.

She and Benjamin held hands tightly, performing playful tricks in the air—spinning together in wide, dizzying circles, tumbling in synchronized revolutions, turning their wild descent into a private sky performance meant for just the two of them, full of joy and shared exhilaration.

Benjamin had never seen Sara laugh so much and enjoy herself so completely in all the time he had known her, her face bright, her eyes sparkling and her whole body shaking with unrestrained joy.

The sight made him connect the dots with all the weird and unusual things Sara loved to introduce and show to him—like the dead body of an animal that did not decay due to excessive mana trapped in its flesh, or the preserved eye of a titan that rested at the bottom of a river, glowing faintly in the darkness.

Sara truly was in love with novelty, with strange and unique experiences that no one else had ever touched or felt.

And if she could smile like that every single day, with that same childlike wonder and excitement, Benjamin decided that he would scour the entire world if he had to, traveling to every corner of every continent, to find something of note, something rare and fascinating, just to make her even more childishly excited than she already was.

He thought along those lines as he fell toward the world from the edge of space, the wind rushing past his face and his hair whipping wildly.

Sara was laughing and enjoying the rushing breeze, the sharp and cold air, the terrifying and exhilarating feeling of true flight without wings or magic holding them up.

***

"So, we need more clam shells for the next part of the ritual, Lulu," Lotus said, standing in a secluded side of Verdant Spire with some soft feminine Amazons gathered around her, including the small and petite Lulu who was clutching a bundle of shells to her chest. "Please bring me as many as you can find. The larger ones are better, but any size will work in a pinch."

They were all standing on a stump of an enormously large tree, ancient and weathered, about seventy meters in radius wide, so broad that a small village could have fit comfortably on its flat surface.

The wood beneath their feet displayed veins and hums of magic power of old, remnants of all the spell or ritual that had occured on the giant tree centuries ago. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Lotus was trying to tutor these Amazonian priestesses on the art of soul detection, a difficult and subtle skill that required years of practice to master.

Since magic can always be interfered with things like counterspells, anti-magic fields, and other disruptions, coupled with the fact that souls are very distinct and unique, learning to sense souls directly gave a priestess an advantage that pure magic users could never normally overcome.

Not every Amazon could learn this skill, no matter how hard they tried, but the priestesses gathered here could attempt it due to their natural affinities for spiritual matters and their existing training.

However, in the middle of her teaching, Lotus sensed something unexpected in the distance, something that made her widen her golden eyes and freeze mid-sentence, her staff trembling in her grip.

"Is something the matter, Lotus?" Lulu, holding more shells in her small arms, asked with concern in her voice, her blue eyes studying Lotus’s pale face.

Lotus then calmed down a little, forcing her breathing to slow and her heart to steady, but still wore a worried expression on her beautiful features.

"What are those two thinking?" She murmured under her breath, shaking her head slowly.

Taking the shells from Lulu’s outstretched hands, Lotus went stiff again as another wave of whatever she was sensing washed over her, and she instinctively dropped the shells to the ground, where they clattered against the ancient wood.

"Lotus?! What is going on with you? You are scaring us!" Lulu asked, her voice rising with alarm, as the other priestesses gathered around them got visibly worried for their teacher’s health and state of mind.

Lotus clicked her tongue in irritation and quickly grabbed her magic staff from where it leaned against a root, then with a powerful blast of magical energy she launched herself into the air and flew away from the area, her robes fluttering behind her.

Lulu carried her own staff, with a round tip that glowed faintly with stored power, and ran after Lotus on foot, her small legs pumping fast.

Despite her small stature and feminine body, Lulu sprinted like a cheetah across the forest floor, her movements fluid and efficient.

She hopped on tree branches to gain height, using them as springboards, and leaped great distances from one high point to another, her body enhanced by magic as well as her natural Amazon strength.

Lulu soon covered two miles of difficult forest terrain within twelve minutes to meet Lotus outside the borders of Verdant Spire, on the tall brown grasses that swayed in the wind.

Lotus was chanting frantically and gathering mana on one point in the air near her, her voice rising and falling with the rhythm of ancient words.

She was pouring so much power into the spell that veins were popping on her head from the strain, and her arms pressed so tightly on her staff that the wood cracked a bit under the pressure.

"Parē imperiō magī et hanc regiōnem in scaenam tūtitūtis verte; da mihi manum deī necessāriam ut sociōs meōs teneam priusquam sē in terram laedant!"

And just as Lulu was about to ask again what was wrong, and what emergency had caused such a dramatic reaction, a force landed on the spot where mana was gathering at the same moment, as wild breeze fluttered her gown aggressively: something moving very fast had landed from above...

Or rather, it did not land at all.

It stopped right before hitting the ground, hovering inches above the swaying grasses:

Specifically, Sara and Benjamin, suspended in the air by the very spell Lotus had been frantically casting.

"Ahaha! Hahahaha! That was so much fun, Benjamin!!" Sara laughed like a small girl who had just been given the best gift of her life, her voice bright and unguarded.

This was shocking to Lulu who had known Sara for years as someone always serious, composed, and never laughing so freely.

"Please, take me to space again sometime soon. We can mate there again, against the stars!"