“Simply relax and start walking. As you walk think about walking upward at the same time, think of gaining altitude. Once you start rising, you can stop your legs, but just continue to pretend you’re walking. For you it should be easy. Me, well I had to get used to my extra legs as well.”
Refusing to simply say, ‘right,’ or ‘yeah,’ or ‘OK,’ again, Tom simply did as he was instructed. He began walking towards the mountains. As he walked he pretended he was also climbing stairs. Shortly, he could no longer feel his legs touching ground, so he looked down. He was walking about ten feet above the ground. Tom was so pleased by the easiness of flight, that again his wings started to falter. This time however, he quickly looked forward, and tried putting all thoughts but those of walking forward out of his head. It worked, he started going forward again, he wasn’t gaining altitude, but he wasn’t losing it either. Once again he began to think of rising, and once again, he did. He simply couldn’t stop being amazed at how easy this flying was, if one didn’t think about it.
“Good job, good job,” Tizzy said as he flew up beside him. “We’ve only got fifty kilometers to the mountains.”
“What!” Tom said as he stopped and turned to face Tizzy in midair, then promptly fell.
Actually, it wasn’t quite as bad as it had sounded at first. As Tizzy showed him, once he managed to get airborne again, demons could fly considerably faster than a normal man could walk. In fact, the mighty wing muscles of a demon, combined with their not quite material state, allowed them to fly, as Tizzy explained, much faster than a horse could run. As they picked up speed, Tom conservatively estimated their velocity to reach about thirty-five miles an hour, or about fifty-six kilometers per hour. Which, since Tom had no way of judging time, meant that it took them only about an hour to reach the base of the mountain range.
Tizzy was an interesting companion on the flight, since he would fly ahead, then fall behind, dash right and dash left and occasionally come alongside with an obscure comment on some of the local geography. All in all he found Tizzy to be good at keeping his mind off their altitude, and his as yet unresolved questions about his own sanity. In fact, he was somewhat relieved to note that if he was crazy, then Tizzy was crazier.
The river Styx, when they passed over it, was quite impressive. It seemed to wind from horizon to horizon across their path, and was located about halfway between the mountains and where he had landed. The river was black, darker than any river he had ever seen on Earth, and much wider. The river had to be several miles wide, he imagined that the Mississippi was probably about the same width, but he had never seen it, except from thirty-thousand feet in an airplane. It was also quite violent, which puzzled Tom, he had always expected really wide rivers to be fairly calm, but this one certainly didn’t seem to be. It seemed to be as turbulent and violent as a white water river, like the ones that raft trips were taken on. However, there didn’t seem to be any actual ‘white’ water in the Styx, even the foam was a black color. Perhaps there were some silvery streaks on the crests of the waves, but he couldn’t be sure from one hundred feet above. The river also seemed to be slightly out of focus for some reason, and this didn’t help matters any. He was unable to see any boatmen on the river, and he couldn’t see how any boat could traverse that river.
Tom had, after the first fifteen to twenty minutes of flight, gained enough confidence to fly higher above the land. As Tizzy pointed out, a fall certainly couldn’t kill him, it could only hurt him; however, Tom greatly desired to keep his requisite pain to a minimum, so he kept his altitude at about one hundred feet. He had to admit there was some beauty in this ‘hellish’ land. Not normal beauty, but a grim, impressive beauty, in the huge desert and towering pillars. The streams of lava, highlighted everything and the arcing flames and immense fireballs, seemed to punctuate the majesty of the view below him.
His most treacherous moment in the flight occurred when one of the great fireballs all of the sudden ignited right in front of him. He had simply been flying along, when all of the sudden he saw a small light in front of him, and then there was this roaring fireball. As if he was walking, he sprang back, out of the way of the fireball, and stood there an arm’s length away from its edge.
He could feel the heat on his face and chest and he realized that it had to be incredibly hot, but he felt only mild discomfort from the intense blaze. In all, the fireball must only have lasted a few seconds; however, it seemed to go on for several minutes. Only after the ball had shrunk back to a small flame and then out of sight, did Tom realize that he was hovering in midair. He hadn’t fallen; maybe, just maybe, he’d finally be able to get the hang of this flying business.
Eventually they did reach the base of the mountains. “Here we are!” Tizzy exclaimed. “We actually made it, and you still have all your parts.”
Tom looked speculatively over at Tizzy, wondering for a moment about the demon’s comment, and wondering how much of the confidence he had seemed to show in Tom had simply been faked. “So where do I go from here?” Tom asked.
“Why anywhere you want to live.”
“Just go pick out a cave, anywhere?”
“Well, any uninhabited cave.’
“How do I tell which ones have demons in them?”
“Easy, every demon makes his personal mark above the entrance to his cave, just don’t go in any marked ones.”
“How many caves have demons in them?”
“Oh, I don’t know, not all, certainly not even most of them.”
“Well, I guess I’d better start looking,” Tom said, not knowing really where to look, since he couldn’t see any caves at the moment.
“The best ones are over there.” Tizzy pointed beyond the first layer of mountains, deeper into the range.
“Very well, I guess I’ll start looking.”
“Yes, I always say...” Tizzy’s voice drifted off a little as he seemed to look off into space for a moment, puffing on his pipe. “Sorry, gotta go.” With that, the small octopodal demon vanished into thin air.
“Hmm, guess I’m on my own.” Tom said. He supposed Tizzy had just been called off to see his ‘accursed master.’ Tom flew up higher in the air so that he could pass over the mountains. The mountain range seemed, like the river, to be larger and more imposing than any he had seen on Earth. The mountains were all jagged, torn and extremely rocky. None of the close ones had snow, which was to be expected if the temperature was two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It did appear, however, that some of the more distant mountains did have white on them. Thinking back on what little geography and geology he’d had, Tom guessed that those mountains would have to be incredibly high for the temperature to drop from two hundred degrees to the point where snow could exist.
He was now flying over the first mountains. He was higher than he’d been, since any time after he fell off the pillar. He guessed he was still not as high up as the pillar had been, but this mountain had to be at least nine thousand feet high. He guessed this by the time it took him to fly to the top, based on what he estimated his speed to be, about twenty miles per hour. If this mountain was nine thousand feet, then some of those further in had to be twenty thousand feet high, and those snowcapped ones would have to be higher than Mount Everest.
He tore his eyes off the distant mountains, and began scanning the valley below him, now that he had passed the tops of the first mountains. Occasionally, he spotted what appeared to be dark spots on the sides of mountains. The first one he saw, he swooped towards, and saw that it indeed was a cave, this one had some sort of strange circled ‘Y’ engraved above its entrance. Apparently, it was occupied. He continued on, when he saw a cave that was situated in what looked like a convenient location he would swoop down on it, to see if it was marked.