Chapter 11: Two birds with one stone, or at least some manner of flying thing.

Snow fell softly from the sky. Lupix stared up at it in disbelief for a while. She remembered what had happened, she had played the best music in her life so far. More than that, it had been with the Firelord’s Grand Snuffer, she wished for a moment that he wasn’t the grand snuffer, but part of her band, but she quickly quashed that feeling. He was the Firelord’s Grand Snuffer, bent on snuffing out her flame, her song. Lupix got the feeling there was something odd there, but went back on track to think of what had happened.

But what had come after that? She had played the best music in her life so far, and after… oh of course, the grand snuffer exploded. Lupix gazed into the sky, swirling with snow, the sun in the distance, looking down on elcon with his massive eyes. Lupix would have waved, but she was sure he wouldn’t spot her.

She guessed that the explosion had blown her all the way to the surface, unharmed somehow. She even had her thunder-lute still. Where was the rest of her band however? There was a grunt beneath Lupix and she tumbled, off some rising creature. It was Koul. Clearly he had shielded her from the explosion. He was dependable like that. Lupix couldn’t remember a time when the rebcubre was not protecting her.

Mik, Specker and Am ‘P’ were all there too. Koul may not have been the best when it came to attacking, but his skill at defending was unquestionable.

“Glurg” Koul uttered.

Then seeing Lupix, he stood to attention.

“Princess, are you all right? All limbs together?”

“Yes, thanks to you Koul” Lupix responded.

“Y-yes well just doing my du… wait you can talk!?”

“She can talk?” Mik exclaimed.

“I can talk?” Lupix said mystified.

“You can talk!” Specker shouted.

“Isn’t she usually able to talk?” Am ‘P’ questioned.

Lupix thought about it, she remembered what the sand spirits had said about getting her voice back, what was it…?

“She will be fine once she sings”

She was worried for a moment that the spellsong had gone from her head, but it was still there, calling to be sung. So, the sand spirits hadn’t meant when she had sung the spellsong she’d get her voice back, any old song was fine for it. She didn’t want to risk singing with words though, the spellsong was too important.

“I have my voice back!” Lupix yapped, grabbing Koul by the hands and dancing around the conepeople. The whole band laughed for joy along with Lupix.

Koul disentangled himself once she had calmed down.

“So, what do we do now Princess?” Koul prompted Lupix.

Lupix looked around, naturally enough for elcon, there was nothing but snow to be seen, and one could not see far into the distance due to the falling snow.

“Well, we could do with finding out where we are, we also need to find where would be the best place to sing this spellsong… I don’t know what to do” Lupix frowned.

“We could pick a random direction and go in it” Specker offered.

“I guess we could try going back underground to ask someone for directions, but we’d need to find someone, and it could be bad even if we did find someone, at least the red eyes didn’t want to eat us” Mik counselled.

“Well, if the Moon Pumpkin was up and we could see it I could tell our position by it’s bumps and the position of Jack’o the Moon and so on” Am ‘P’ claimed.

Everyone stared at him.

“What? I was really into moon gazing before I got into music!”

Koul shook his body from side to side, as all beings that have no heads to shake tend to do. A thought seemed to come to him. He rolled his eye away from Lupix.

“If only there was a song that could make us fly or something” He slyly said to Lupix.

“ohhh then we could look for a place for the song and see where we are!” Mik exclaimed.

“If only.” Lupix answered, sighing.

She didn’t know of any songs that could grant flight, which was odd, now that she thought of it, she guessed people preferred to use ‘normal’ magic and other means, after all, if you had a song that gave flight and you stopped playing it, you’d drop right out of the sky. That’d be a bad end.

“There’s songs that’ll call flying creatures and stuff like that but…” Lupix stopped.

“Wait, wouldn’t that work? We could play Woski’s ‘Herald of the Skies’ “

Woski was known for two things, music and mountain exploration. She was only good at one of them. One time, Woski was climbing a particularly crumbly mountain, which had been named Cookie Mountain by the denizens that had once lived near it, but had moved, deciding that living right near a mountain that could could topple over like a badly placed jar of cookies was a stupid idea.

The reason they had called it Cookie mountain was mainly because it seemed be made of chocolate chip cookie. A few magicians postulated that it was a stray mountain from the food dimension that had slipped into elcon, and also that it was delicious.

So, Woski had to climb this mountain before it crumbled away. She was doing quite well, then however she found herself stuck on a pillar of chocolate chip as the tasty ground around her crumbled apart. In desperation she managed to make a song that called flying creatures to her.

The creature she called had ignored her of course, and gorged itself on the Cookie mountain, Woski managed to surf down the mountain on the creature’s bloated body, but although she was safe, she could never look at a chocolate chip cookie the same way again.

The three conepeople grimaced, they knew the song. Although it was unquestionably good at calling flying creatures… it was to put it lightly not a very pleasant song. All the same, they still joined in when Koul began to beat it out.

The song, very simply was kind of like an unholy combination of so many cries of flying creatures in elcon, all mashed together to make one mournful dirge that screeched and burped through the ears.

Woski was not known for making good music.

Lupix’s eyes watered, but she kept on playing her thunder-lute, there was no way she was going to sing the song, she didn’t even want to know what kind of flame it would have made.

Magicians were just generally perturbed at how anything could be attracted by the song, musicians generally tried not to think about the song existing in the first place, let along how it worked. It did work, so again and again its awful tune was inflicted on reality.

After many painful notes, the band finally heard a long deep honk call, a flying creature had come.

Lupix and their band cried for joy. It was the best possible outcome.

Slowly breaking through the clouds was a Bargephant.

The Bargephant is a particularly docile flying creature. A huge being, with a body shaped like a boat, with four fins on that body and a rudder like tail. The body is slightly dished at the top, so one could sit atop it easily. It has a long square trunk for a nose, from this the Bargephant would let loose a long doleful honk. It has two round saucer like eyes on it’s rectangular head. Sprouting from it’s head are it’s two massive wing like leathery ears.

The Bargephant uses air sacs in it’s body and this massive ears to fly about. Their body is completely covered in dark brown warm fuzzy fur. They spend their time drifting through clouds, eating airborn plants, like cloudgrass and balloon vines. Bargephants are widely regarded in elcon as being the most relaxing form of creature based air travel in elcon. Due to how naturally docile they are, they don’t even need much in the way of training.

This Bargephant was a particular fuzzy and comfortable looking one, it looked at the band curiously tooting a bit with its trunk, it seemed this one had ferried denizens before. Lupix and the others were greatly pleased, and where we happily going to board the Bargephant when a howling screech split the sky. A blur slammed into the bargephant, and there was a particularly unpleasant chomping noise.

Lupix and the band could only look on in despair as their Bargephant became the prey of a massive Musstangler!