That sky was clear, there were little clouds, and the gale was just perfect for a nice afternoon stroll. That is, if Gargan doesn't take into account the hungry and pissed pair of flying wyvern hot after his plums.

‘Yup….I would be pissed too, if some random guy just showed up right next to the window when I was just getting down to business….Or, are they just hungry?’ Gargan’s curiosity takes the helm, and he performs a beautiful barrel roll, taking another look at the couple after him. ‘Hungry and horny….Damn, just my luck!’

He was gaining distance, not by much, but his smaller frame and lighter weight allowed him to slowly getting away, but still not out of the danger zone just yet. ‘DIVE!’ his mind screamed, as he could feel the air around him getting hotter.

Pulling his wing back, he dived down, narrowly dodging half a dozen fire balls. Angered by their misses, the wyverns roared, and followed him down into the zig zagging canyons and rocky rifts.

As an aarakocra, Gargan nimbleness in the sky was second to none, but dodging and weaving through the number of rocky and narrow rifts was not his forte. Too fast, and he could crash into the pointy skewers of Mother Gaia, too slow and the wyvern would catch up. Not only that, his wing would, on more than one occasion, clipped the walls. That would instantly break his wings, condemning him to his death.

The chase raced on for half an hour, and as time went by, exhaustion, both mentally and physically, started to set in. He has been flying for no less than 2, maybe 3 hour at this point, at a speed that would put most of aarakocra to shame. No, he hasn't been able to maintain it, and has allowed for his pursuers to catch up.

Not only that, he was not able to dodge all of their fireballs, and has taken 3 to his back. His thick plumages and the coat of heavy feathers has protected him from any burn, but it still hurts like hell. Blunt trauma and flying don't mixes well together. Another one, and he would just give up.

‘Think! Gargan, fucking think!’ His mind races, no slower than the chase itself. The is an upcoming fork in the canyon. ‘Left or tight?’ At the same time, he began to cast his least favorite spell, Create Mist, to screen his escape.

As he drew closer and closer to the fork, he felt a strange disturbance of mana… ‘Something isn’t….right? No, something isn’t normal! To the Right!’ He made his decision.

‘This….This could be it! An Arcane Phenomenal! The Dimensional Rift!’ He celebrated. ‘The rumor is true after all! Hahah! I found it!’

The wyverns, seeing that its prey has visibly slowed down, launches another hail storm of fireballs, this time even more intense, leaving the flying bird-man with almost no space to dodge. And he didn’t, as Gargan was too focused on the mana disturbance to complete his spell, or to even keep up his awareness.

The fireballs crashed into him, and burned off his top most layer of feather, and shot him out of the sky. “FUCK! DAMMIT!” He screeched, realizing his mistake, but too late to do anything about it.

Out of the explosion’s smoke, Gargan controlled his fall by tumbling toward the right. Barely clearing the jagged edges of the rift, he saw it. A black, mysterious portal at the foot of the rift, reaching all the way up to the sky. It must have been hundreds of feets tall, if not a thousand, and was rapidly closing.

“NO!” he screamed, and flapped his injured wing twice, and bit through the pain. He could reach it. No, he did, and as he crossed into the Rift, his consciousness began to fade. But before darkness took him, he heard an enraged roar, and a fury wing flaps.

Tightly clasping his pendants, Gargan subconsciously prayed that whatever is on the other side won’t attack him….It would be a shame if the only mark he left the new, unexplored world is his chewed corpse.

---

On another realm, and other world, a small black rift tore through space and out it spitted out a man. No, it was not a man, but a man-like bird. An aarakocra, injured and unconscious. 

His landing was soft, as he tumbled through the thick and dense foliage of the forest, green and full of vitality, and down onto the glass. The fall hasn't injured him one bit, but the same couldn’t be said about his clothes. Rips and tears could be seen on his tunic and trouser, together with the burnt feathers the smell of it could mistaken him for a dead body. Luckily, the largest inhabitant of this forest is an elder elk and his pacifist pack.

It took one night, and by the time the aarakocra came back to his senses and woke up, it was the next day, as the sun just barely caressed the top of the green foliage. The pain has subsided, but sudden movement is still stinging, and Gargan found out the hard way.

He knew better not to exercise the wounded muscle, but the excitement of discovering the new and unknown world was too much for him to hold back. The second thing he did after waking up was trying to take flight, wanting to view the world from up high.

The first thing he did, by the way, was to check if any of the wyvern followed him through the rift, and luckily, none did. He assumed that those beast-minded creatures were too afraid of the phenomenal, and unwilling to leave their territories.

Without many things he could do until the pain subsided enough for him to fly, Gargan decided to check if he still had his belongings, and began to go through his scattered items. His sword was presented, albeit just barely holding on onto the damaged leather belt, and 2 out of his 4 knives were lost. “I mean….I rather lose those two throwing knives than my cooking and field knives….They were meant to be throw anyway…. Not a big loss if they are unsalvageable…..”

After that, and miraculously, his navigation bag is still intact with minimal damage to it. Sure, there were burnt marks here and there, but it added a sense of danger and achievement to it, just like his profession. Everything in it was still there too. The compass still works, his string ruler is still in one piece, the papers were a little crunched but still usable, the ink has not been spilled, and the notebook suffered no damage!

His spare clothes were still intact too, so he hurried and changed into it, throwing into the bag his current set, as it was too damaged to be useful for anything but rag. And bandages. Right, He should fixed up his burnt,

It was not as bad as he thought, as Gargan found out that only his feather was burnt, together with a little bit of his neck. Superficial wounds, and he made quick work of it, tearing his old tunic into long strips of fabric and wrapping it around his neck. For the heck of it, it tied it into a small little bow in the front, causing him to chuckle a little.

The most important thing of all, his clan’s pendant and charm, his inseparable was lost, however. Gargan only discovers it while changing, and frantically searches for it while half naked. Nothing. He found nothing after half a day.

Frustrated, he let out a screech, vibrating through the forest, scaring away a flock of little one. Exhausted, frustrated, and pained, the aarakocra decided to jog down his location, and travel on foot into the forest.

Along the way, he may or may not have thrashed the surroundings with his machete-like knife….

There may or may not be a clear and direct trail that the featherfolk unintentionally left behind…

It took him the whole day to calm down, even though he found nothing, not even a trial, or a hint of where it went…

“Maybe the rift has sent it somewhere else? Zephyr! I hope it is not on the other side of this planet. My luck isn’t that bad, is it?” Gargan grumbled, and stored his knife away, avoiding his creation.

By the time Gargan made it out of the woods, and into the clearing following the trail of water’s ether, the sun was only 2 hours away from the horizon. Luckily, the water’s ether has led him to a large as large as an ocean. The only things it lacks, when compared to the ocean, are the sandy beach and salt.

The clearing was open, but there were a few rather old trees dotted around the edge of the lake, and Gargan picked the largest, tallest one as his bedding for the night. His wings have recovered enough for a short jump, and the pain should subside enough for him to take flight tomorrow.

With the last hour of sunlight, Gargan circled the lake from above, 2 dozen feet above the surface waiting for his prey. As the sun went down, the surface started to cool, and soon life began to surface. It was only small fish at first, which he ignored, waiting for something more filling. He didn’t have to wait for long.

The sky darkened, but with his vision, he could still see the lake and its inhabitant clearly, and he set his eyes on one particularly large fish. He flew higher, reducing his shadow over the lake as the fish leisurely stalked its prey. He waited for the perfect moment to strike.

The goliath fish slowly swan up to a school of smaller fishes, and lunges toward the furthest one away from the mass. And then Gargan dived, his deadly claws aimed toward its head.

A nasty crunched, and Gargan lifted off together with his dinner. ‘This thing must be at least 15 lbs….Wonderful! I’m starving!’ He cheered, and landed on the ground just below his temporary nest.

Within 5 minute, the fish is already on the fire, constructed with stone, dried branches and leaves. “Too bad I lost my seasoning pouch….This this could use some salt….” He commented as he swallowed the first bite. “This world ain’t half bad! At least the fish are edible….Unlike the Elven pounds’ fishes….By the Gods, those things tasted wrong!” He recalled one of those terrible moments of his previous exploration.

“Um….Now, what the hell is THAT !?!” Gargan weakly mumbled, looking at the surreal scene before him. “This….This is one hell of an exploration waiting to be discovered!”

Before his eyes, way above in the sky, just below the lowest of batches of clouds, floated a landmass. That thing must be thousands of miles in area, Gargan noted, as he scribbled it into his notebook, doodling the flying archipelago down.

At the middle of the cluster is the largest island, surrounded by countless others, hovering and dancing around it. As the sun settled, Gargan could see the bedrock of the archipelago glowed, and sparked….It looked beautiful, and breath-taking. “Arg!….I should have learned to paint!” He grumbled, as his drawing couldn’t bring out the archipelago beauty.

Glazing at the starry view of the archipelago, Gargan Kiri decided his first stop for tomorrow, and slowly drifted into sleep.