As the wind rushed past my face, I took stock of my situation, my mind running far faster than my body fell. It was clear to me that the damn Yulku had opened a portal to - well, wherever I was now - high in the air, no doubt in an attempt to have me fall to my death if I jumped through after him, leaving him in the free and fucking clear. Looks like he didn't anticipate me joining him at the same time that he hit the portal, judging from the frozen expression of fear stretching around his avian face.

So, high in the air, portal closing, or closed, behind, above, me somewhere. A dead carcass of the Yulku, limbs currently tangled with mine and my Fang buried in his chest, slightly below the center, straight through where I had been trained, and experienced through bloody first hand knowledge, that the fancy fucking owls had their heart. Speaking of - I tore the Fang from his chest as we spun and fell, bringing bits of his heart matter out with it. Hm.

No, not the time for hunger, I was plummeting towards the Shadows knew where, with currently, no landing plan. Well rectify that. What did I have? Clothes - useful only to slow me down slightly, I was currently already traveling too damn fast to try an impromptu hang-glider. The only other thing I had was - the body of the bird. I grinned.

As the alarm rushed up at me at a rather alarming rate, I shifted around, putting my plan into action. Step one, stabilize, stop spinning around so that I didn't accidentally end up on the bottom with the carcass above me as I fell. Thankfully, he was dead, and couldn't really fight me as I roughly manhandled his wings, twisting and contorting his body to make sure that I was above the corpse. This had the added benefit of slowing the fall down slightly - who would have thought that fucking wings were useful when you were trying not to hit the goddamn ground?

Didn't help the damn Yulku in keeping my Fang from his heart though, so I had to content myself with that. But there. Step one, done. My, that ground was coming up at an alarming rate. Right, what should step two be? Slow my descent. Again, options? All I had were my clothes, daggers, and the carcass. Fuck it, I knew what I could do. I just had to time it right.

So I waited, contorting myself and folding up a bit, crouching on top of the body as I plunged towards the ground. I had to time this right: too late and I'd end up a damn pancake on the fucking ground, too early and well, you get the idea. But if I did this right…

There! I sprang upwards, launching myself off of the corpse, and twisted my body through the air, a tight, compressed ball of sliding muscles and shimmering scales. The jump canceled out most of my momentum built up in the plunge towards the earth, and the short distance I had remaining was nothing to be concerned with. It did however, speed up the Yulku corpse’s own fall, not that it could care, and it splattered against the ground with a very, very satisfying wet splat and burst apart rather like a valemelon would.

I landed moments later, dropping into a crouch and thumping my tail against the ground to help dissipate the remaining momentum. I stood up and brushed myself off, the stalked over towards the scattered remains of the body. I studied it for a moment, then spat on it.

$”Did you really think a little fucking fall was going to kill me? If I was that easy to kill one of my Shadows-damned rivals would have happily taken care of me before this. Stupid fucking bird, acting like only they can be in the damn sky. Fuck you.”$ I spat on him, before looking around, finally taking in the area around me. Fairly normal topography, if not something I recognized right away, but then again I was a fucking assassin and a damn good one some map maker or naturalist.

I didn't think anything of the unfamiliar landscape until I looked up. I did know how to chart my way with the stars, so I could figure out where I was with them even if I had ended up on the other side of the damn world. Luckily it was evening and - my eyes widened, and I could feel every muscle in my body go rigid. That was the wrong number of moons! I spun back to the body.

$”You damn asshole! You worthless piece of fucking shit! Really? Fucking really! You try to run from what’s fucking coming, and you decide to go to another fucking world?! Fuck you!”$ I hissed the words out, glaring at the unresponsive corpse. Fuck me. I had no fucking dimensional magic, I was a fucking assassin, my magic was geared towards that. Shadows fucking damn it!