(COMPLETE)
Lady Mhysra Kilpapan was blessed from birth with a distinguished family, a glorious home and a giant eagle miryhl of her own. Fully aware of her luck, she wants for nothing in life - except a chance to become a Rift Rider. The elite force...
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THE AIR HAD an icy bite as Mhysra exited the HQ and raised her face to the watery sun, murmuring prayers of thanks to as many gods as she could name. Two for Maegla, since the Goddess of Storms was Mhysra's favourite and the patron deity of the Riders. Opening her eyes, she looked down across the city to where the Storm Goddess' cathedral rose high above the docklands like a finger of divinity pointing to where all should look for guidance.
Beyond it rolled the Cloud Sea, an everlasting blanket of pure whiteness. Under the soft winter sun it looked plush and inviting. Yet to step onto those false waves was to fall for all time. Or so the legends said. But once there had been something beneath it, once there had been a whole world down there, before the gods cursed the people and covered the world in white.
"Hey, Mhysra!"
Wrenching her thoughts away from gods and curses, Mhysra grinned and ran to where her cousin was waiting for her.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she shouted, throwing an arm around his neck and hugging him hard. Caught between them, the puppy yipped happily and tried to wash both their faces at once.
"You're – urgh! Pup slobber." Mherrin pulled free and scrubbed his sleeve across his cheek, looking less and less like a professional messenger by the moment. Instead he looked like her favourite cousin, with his wind-tossed curls, dancing eyes and an ever-present smile.
"You're a star," she told him, popping onto her toes to kiss his brown cheek. "I was beginning to doubt they'd let me in, until you arrived like the south wind at the end of winter."
"You know me," he demurred with false modesty. "I always show up when I'm wanted."
"And even more often when you're not."
Chuckling, Mherrin threw an arm around her shoulders and they began the long descent to the city. "There's my Mhysra. I was starting to think Nimbys had got to you already." At her wince, he laughed. "Deportment lessons going well?"
"Gods, don't!" she groaned. "You'd think I'd been a hunchback all my life. It's all sit up straight, Mhysra. Lift your shoulders, put your chin up, don't slouch, breathe properly.As if I'd been doing it wrong all these years."
"Since you're still alive, I'll assume you've been getting some of it right."
"You'd think so, but no, apparently not. I've developed some shockingly bad habits, or so Milli says." Having spent eight years living in the whirl of Nimbys society, Mhysra's sister Milluqua had taken on the daunting task of teaching her youngest sibling how to behave. Much though Mhysra loved her sister, things were not going well.
Mherrin laughed again. "Well, no lies there. You've got a terrible predilection for things with wings and the amount of clothes you used to get through back home was appalling."
"Say's you, the soot and scorch king of Wrentheria," she defended hotly. "At least mine was only blood."
"Only." He snorted. "As if that makes it any better."
