Chapter 107

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's helm, there was no horizon in sight right now. Normally, a span of windows ran from the back left of the cabin around the front to the back right side, providing an expansive view in two hundred and seventy degrees. For this flight, however, those windows were coated with a film of opaque tucrenyx, partly out of consideration for the wellbeing of his passenger and partly for the wellbeing of his floors.

Over the course of several trips, Gabriela Carreno had single-handedly made Blake grateful he'd never gotten around to installing carpet throughout his precious zeppelin. Given how much work it took to clean her copious vomit on these metal floors—and that didn't even consider the smell—he couldn't imagine trying to get it out of a thick, luxurious rug. That was why he'd consented to her request to block all the windows for this trip. It wasn't like he needed the view to pilot, anyway. A single viewscreen hooked up to a swiveling camera placed on the ship's bow did the job well enough for the moment. He just liked the view.

Gabriela did not. Even with the windows sealed off so she could best pretend that they weren't floating a thousand feet in the air, the woman looked to Blake's eyes to be barely holding herself together. Blake had never dealt with somebody confronting a severe phobia head-on like this before, and he honestly didn't know what to do.

He didn't even know why she was here. He knew from experience that she could easily outrun the airship, even if he threw every last bit of power into its engines. She could have just sprinted north and relaxed for a while until he caught up.

Perhaps the reason she'd decided to ride along pertained to the third person in the cabin, though Blake often failed to think of the Many in that way. It was so easy to forget that they were human, given how... inhuman their presence felt. They were more like statues of living flesh, barely breathing, much less moving.

As was the plan, he'd brought a Many along, just in case Sofie appeared during this trip. Given how heavy-handed in his life Murphy's Law seemed to be since the transfer, that meant that she'd definitely show up. And, whether or not his foolish idea worked, Gabriela would need the Many to communicate with the others on the way back.

So far, the Many remained as motionless as ever, seemingly unfazed by any rocking, swinging, swaying, or assorted turbulence that they came across so far. Blake idly wondered how often they had to eat, or how long before they would need to poop. He hadn't brought any Many handlers along, since nobody could know about his current even-worse-than-normal condition, so if anything happened, it was up to the two of them—meaning Gabriela, while he provided moral support—to take care of any issues.

It wasn't that he was totally useless right now; he could still manipulate metal, create circuits, and operate preexisting technology without issue. Heck, even the fiery pain, which assaulted him every time he entered Hyper Mode since Sofie's attack, had gradually faded with each passing day to the point where it now was just a bad case of heartburn. But all that said, he still could barely even move his arm, the vile foe known as gravity always there to thwart him.

Back on Earth, Blake had treated his body like crap. More so, he'd taken it for granted. Getting a new and improved body upon arrival on Scyria hadn't helped; even when he'd lost part of his left arm to Jarec's obsidian blade, he'd largely shrugged it off. But after his encounter with Sam, everything had changed. It turned out, shockingly enough, that having half your body suddenly stolen away really made you appreciate what you'd once had.

Now, he was experiencing that same feeling all over again. Lacking the ability to even lift his one remaining arm, he found himself pining for the days of mere partial-paralysis. If, through some miracle, he ever regained a functioning body, he swore to cherish it like the priceless treasure that it was. A proper diet, exercise, yoga, coffee enemas... the works.

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