As Malkiz enters our vision below, I begin to hear a voice - something like a trapped animal, and something like a lie. I try to ignore it, it sounds like a predator caught in a snare and still fighting for meat. Gwendolyn seems to have the same idea, powering ahead towards the city itself. A strangeness begins to take over one of her riders, however.
"Can we stop?" The small Arakanth struggles to speak, and his words scrawl across my vision in light.
A hand grips my neck as I jolt in place, and I try to straighten my course for them, only to realize the weight across my back has moved. I twist, trying to hold myself in place, and see the dark-winged woman dangling off of my side, unconscious, slipping from her fellow winged friend's hand. Fear clearly in my eyes, I look between her and the riders on Gwendolyn's back. The Arakanth is dazed but not unconscious, the others are awake and afraid.
I cannot land in time, I plead. The figure of the Arakanth blurs, my vision doubles.
I blink. Four screams.
My eyes open to chaos, the O'urtnx woman struggling to open her wings as she plummets through the air beside her companion. The werewolf and winged man howling in despair atop my back, drowning out the whistling wind. Gwendolyn is diving to meet them, on her back the pale Arakanth buries her nails into the neck of the small one, his face streaked with tears and horror.