Free Immortal Darkness: Shadow Across the Land by Alex Rey

for
flight when Molar quickly consumed a fistful of fish and sipped a
mouthful of malid.
    Soon Molar found himself standing on a large
cliff with his father at his side. It was maybe five times taller
than the cliff where Molar had hurt himself on the attempt to fly.
Such was a place where Molar and a horde of other flying creatures
were to have their first flight.
    Upon making his way to this educational
cliff, Molar took sight of Mesd, Caeo, and Toakld—who hadn’t seemed
to change a bit—sitting together. “I’ll let you go now,” his father
murmured with a pat on Molar’s back.
    Without a look back in Carpla’s direction,
Molar trotted over to the three familiar griffins. Upon coming up
to his friends, Molar spoke to and chatted with them until the
flight teacher came up to the front of the group of fliers.
    “Quiet!” the teacher hushed, catching all the
students’ attentions. “So young fliers—today you will learn how to
fly. What you must understand is that all of you have no feathers,
which makes this especially harder than it would a slave to
teach.”
    “What is he?” wondered Molar through a
whisper.
    “I’m not for sure,” Toakld began, “but I
think he’s what you call an eagle.”
    “What’s an eagle?”
    “Quiet!” the teacher growled. He stood up
tall on his two feet, his back straight as a dignified look placed
itself upon his face. Such was the look of an intimidating leader,
indeed. “Anyway—I won’t give you the ability to grow feathers, but
I will give you the courage, strength, stamina, and spirit to fly
freely!”
    “How exactly will you do that?” one of the
children stirred behind Molar.
    “Well, my plan is mainly to tell you all that
there is nothing of the sky to be afraid of—that the only worry is
that if morale goes down for you, then being up high will be
dangerous.”
    Beyond the young fliers’ imaginations, the
teacher was able to show the young fliers how to not be afraid of
heights in less than a day—how all they needed was morale. None of
the fliers could believe the sophistication placed into the
teachers’ words, how it actually helped them—almost as if he were
once a skilled counselor.
    After much mental training, the teacher was
able to give the children a small amount of physical training. It
was only a fraction of the time he’d spent on mental training when
he decided it was time for them to fly for real.
    “Now is the time!” the teacher explained,
pointing the students to the edge of the cliff. “It is time to fly!
Remember that the wind you pass through should hit your wings.”
    The children surprisingly didn’t feel nervous
at all, but really excited and full of this morale their teacher
had told them about. “Ready—and fly!” he commanded.
    The fliers flapped, and flapped, and flapped
until Molar took sight of one of his other griffin friends—who was
already hovering off of the ground!
     

Chapter IV
     
    The Feeling of Flight
     
    Molar couldn’t believe what he had just seen!
“Caeo! You’re flying!”
    “I am?” he panted, taking a look down at his
feet. He noticed as they barely even tiptoed their way along the
ground. “I’m flying!”
    The sight of another one of the griffins
hovering gave a boost of confidence to form in Molar’s mind. He
could almost feel himself walking on air as he gave his wings gave
another great flap. Already Molar began to feel lighter and lighter
with every heartbeat—soon realizing his feet were no longer
touching the ground. He took a look down to notice the only things
of his paws that touched the ground were his paws’ shadows.
    “I think I‘m flying!” Molar cried with glee.
After he gave only a few more beats of his wings, he felt something
slightly sharp press against his back. What’s going on? Getting a chance to turn his head, he noticed his teacher was
pushing him off of the cliff with his beak.
    A horrific cry for help split the air at that
moment; all the while did