It was a good and bad thing that Beist had no idea Astrid was capable of summoning a pair of wings. Good because he immediately went to save her as she fell. Bad because he was in a complete panic as he did so.

Dora dived down, straight for Astrid while Beist clung to her back, hugging her tight with all four arms. Only when they'd swooped beneath Astrid did Beist let go of her with two of his arms so he could catch the falling girl in them.

Beist wasn't one to use vulgar language on a regular basis, but he couldn't hold back this time.

"What the heck!? Why did you do that!?" Beist scolded Astrid while at the same time hugging her tightly. Like a grandfather whose grandchild had just done something stupidly dangerous and almost gotten themself killed, he didn't know if he wanted to strangle her for being so foolish or comfort her after such a traumatizing situation. He compromised with a bone-crushing hug.

After a few seconds, he loosened his hug just a little, letting Astrid breathe again, and took one more hand off of Dora to grab the bottled oozeling back from Astrid. He took one of Astrid's hands and pulled it out before carefully dripping some acid from the bottle onto the manacle on her wrist. With a hiss, the metal was eaten away until it was weak enough for him to break it easily, the manacle falling to pieces with just a tug from one of his fingers. Granted, even with the help of the acid, not many people were strong enough to do that. 

"You were meant to use the acid to dissolve the manacles, not the Drake's foot!" Beist continued his scolding as he did the same to the other manacle. "You could have been a stain on the ground! What were you thinking?"

---

Oozeling
Bull's Strength

"HEY GIVE HER BACK!" The drake rider yells back at them as he turns to slowly start banking around to face off against Beist and Astrid.

Spines along the drake's back started to glow as embers sparked in its throat as it started to build up its flame breath. Jets of flame spewed forth as it hit the pair in a strafing pattern, trying to burn them out of the sky. After it passes it starts a turn to try and come back for a second pass, claws ready to rip at Beist's fuzz.

Gerhart grits his teeth as he gets back into Halcyon's saddle. They were a bit too far away to help at the moment. Still, they pull a mid-air U-turn that threatens to toss Thoman out of his saddle seat. The wind blazes past them as Hal tries to hit his top speed.

"KNOCK HIS BUTT OFF THE DRAKE AND I'LL CATCH HIM, WE GOTTA ASK WHAT THE HECK HE'S DOING!" Once more he yells out over the wind at the pair to hopefully some avail.

Freefall doesn’t usually frighten Astrid. She got so used to it when practicing flight that the feeling itself is kind of freeing. And even if her wings don’t work, she usually has backup plans. In this case, things don’t work out so well for her. Luckily Beist catches her, but it isn’t without a grandfatherly scolding. With the powerful hug, she wonders if he’s trying to snap her in half or just doesn’t know his own strength. Maybe he’s more traumatized than she is in this situation.

She watches as he explains what she should have done, complete with a demonstration, makes a lot of sense to her. “Oh. Ya know… That would’ve been smart. I couldn’t figure out how ta get the ooze out though!” With her wrists free of the manacles, she feels magic surge through her again. “Aye, I could’ve been a stain, I s’pose, but I wasn’t scared. I trust ya!” She gives Beist a confident smile and throws her arms around his big neck for a returned hug. “Thanks.”

Suddenly, a gout of flame comes spraying at the two of them on Dora’s back. If it weren’t for Beist’s deathgrip on her, she might have fallen again. That’s when she hears Gerhart yelling and speeding for them as fast as his kestrel will fly. Having not used any magic, Astrid feels a bit of a backlog of magic. “I’ll get ‘im!” she declares, and attempts (poorly) to free herself from Beist. “Mister Beist, ya gotta let me go!” But she’s not so sure she’ll convince him, so instead, magic starts to manifest around her from her cape, and in the blink of an eye, Astrid appears midair a few feet away.

Her descent barely begins when lightning gathers and crackles around her form. As if stretched by the magic herself, warped into a flash of blue light, Astrid becomes the very element she controls and strikes through the air with explosive force. A zigzagging blue streak marks her path to the drakeback cultist, each corner marking another burst of energy that thrusts her forward. In a flash, Astrid appears behind the cultist, and all of the lightning trailing behind her catches up and explodes out from her in an synapse-frying burst.

Both the cultist and the drake scream in pain, their circuits fried. The rider slips free of his saddle, and the drake plummets from the sky. Astrid hangs in the air briefly, looking surprised and pleased with herself. She only intended to travel through lightning in a way that she learned recently, but this was much cooler than that, she thinks.

---

Displacement cloak - blink
Astrid’s Valkyrie Strike
Electrical Surge - 3 charges gained

"They don't come out of the bottle, they like it in there." Beist huffed, still a bit angry at Astrid's reckless endangerment and now also mad that she'd mistreated the poor oozeling. "I'm sorry, I thought she'd have more sense than that." Beist apologized to the oozeling in the bottle who looked a bit shaken up and then pocketed it with care.

His anger diminished just a bit as Astrid wrapped her arms around his neck to hug him back. Now he was flustered, not expecting the gratitude or the smile. He blinked in surprise and his cheeks became a darker shade of blue behind his bushy beard. "You're welcome..." He mumbled in embarrassment as he realized just how he'd been acting. He shouldn't have been so angry at her, but he'd just found the emotion welling up inside him without him even realizing. He'd been treating her like she was his own grandchild when she wasn't.

Through the whole conversation, he'd continued to squeeze Astrid tightly. It was good that he had, as Dora suddenly maneuvered to evade the drake's fire breath and claws. The drake was apparently quite multitalented! Able to shoot both flames and earthy muck. Maybe it was a hybrid? Beist would have been fascinated if he wasn't busy holding onto Dora for his life and holding Astrid protectively.

"Hold on tight!" Beist said to Astrid, but then realized his arms were empty. Astrid had suddenly vanished! He looked around in fear, worried he might have somehow dropped her or she'd slipped out of his grasp without him realizing, but then he saw her become a bolt of lightning and strike the drake rider. He was glad to see she wasn't plummeting to the ground. Yet. Now that she was back to normal and no longer living electricity, she was high up in the air!

He didn't care about trying to save the drake rider to question why he'd attempted to kidnap the girl, instead diving straight toward Astrid to catch her again. He'd leave the drake rider to Gerhart.

Well that was a new trick....Gerhart was going to have to work on getting a lot more creative if he was going to keep pace with Astrid. She was pretty inventive when it came to magic and fighting it seemed. Or at least she was reckless enough like him to use things in more dangerous than intended ways.

Halycon tucked his wings and started an immediate divebomb seeing where Dora was headed. Makes sense, he was closer to Astrid and Halcyon was likely faster than they were so they could catch up to the two.

As they passed the drake, the kestrel kicked out to claw into its back and send it into a spin while it was paralyzed. The rotations while falling would make it hard for the beast to pull out of without a rider to guide them. In a turn of events, the rider was snatched up by Halcyon and now he was the one being carried in claws.

Gerhart pulls on the reins a bit to slow the bird down and start turning them back towards the other two once Astrid was caught. He grins as they start to get level once more.

"Pretty good work all things considered, didn't even let them get back to their hideout which I bet saves us a lotta hassle. Got the guy too in case we have questions....or if you just wanna beat him up Astrid."

Because of the exhilaration of pulling off a new lightning move, Astrid completely forgets that she can fly with her wings. She’s in shock and feeling absolutely pumped about the whole thing! When Beist catches her on Dora, Astrid shakes herself out of it and immediately sits up in the large beastman’s arms.

“WHOA!! DIDJA SEE THAT?!” she shrieks excitedly, nearly climbing up over Beist’s shoulders. “Gerhart, did ya- Oh.” When she looks towards Gerhart, he and his kestrel send the drake careening down to the ground with the struggling rider in tow. She points at them and laughs. “Ain’t such a nice ride, huh?!”

“Sh-Shut up!” the rider says indignantly. “L-Let me go!” Then he looks down. “Er, nevermind. Don’t let me go right now! I don’t want to fall.”

“Shoulda thought of that before ya messed with the wrong folks!!” Astrid triumphantly sneers. “I wanna beat him up a bit, but we gotta find out why they’re kidnappin’ folks an’ what they’re doin’ with ‘em!”

"I-I'm not telling you anything!" the rider says, trying to avoid eye contact not only with the group but also with the ground. "We're not doing anything! You were just... needing to be taught a lesson!"

Astrid looks between Beist and Gerhart. Well, they've gotta get the information out of this guy somehow.

"Careful!" Beist pleaded as Astrid climbed up to his shoulder. She really seemed to just have no regard for her own safety at all, did she? Whatever Kamille was teaching her as her adoptive grandmother, it definitely wasn't caution. He was just glad he had an extra pair of arms, because this girl was more than just a handful, she was at least two, maybe three.

"I'm sure he saw that." Beist said comfortingly, hoping a little praise could settle Astrid down somewhat. "I'm pretty sure everyone in Darkveil saw that..." He mumbled to himself, noticing the crowd in the streets of bystanders looking up at the strange display. The flashy bit of lightning magic had drawn a lot of attention and now people were taking notice of the griffon, bird, and people flying in the air above.

"Perhaps we should save the questioning until we find somewhere a little more private? We're starting to draw an audience." Beist pointed out the crowd below before continuing.

"I have an idea for getting the information out of him. As an alchemist, I generally prefer making potions that help people, but I do have something of a poison on me. An accidental creation. I was trying to make something to help one keep cool in hot places, but I ended up with something more like bottled hypothermia."

The little winged snake flew back, finally catching up after getting lost in the chaos of diving drakes and griffons for a moment. He wrapped around Beist's horn.

"Hmph! Why question him when we could just kill him? Who cares what these fools needed the girl for if they're no longer alive to do it. Give me a little power, I'll do it myself!" Pretzels scoffed, his voice only in Beist's head while everyone else just heard a hissing.

Beist let out an exasperated sigh and shook his head. "No, I know what you'll try to do. You can't eat him, you know you won't have enough time to finish digesting him."

"I could if you'd give me back my power for long enough!" Pretzels hissed.

"You know I can't!"

The captured kidnapper only heard one side of the conversation, but that was all he needed to hear to make his face go pale.

Halcyon flexes his talon a bit, letting the captive go for a split second before squeezing back around him.

"Sorry, he had a cramp, just....stay still."

He grins as he looks up to the others, "Crowd's not bad, not like they are going to do anything, ya know? Just curious." Halcyon shakes his legs just to keep the cultist annoyed.

"OK stop, please.....I don't like heights, this is doing a number on my nausea."

At that Gerhart does look a little guilty, he didn't wanna torment the guy. "Talk to us then, we're reasonable." Said the man who risked falling to his death to look cool, a half-dwarf who did the same, and Beist who seemed to be discussing eating the man.

"Promise you won't eat me?" He looks pleadingly up at Beist.

Beist’s scramble to keep Astrid still settles when Astrid decides that she’ll just sit on the large fellblood’s shoulders, perching just behind his neck. This isn’t something she can do with Cantio, and as small as she is compared to Beist, she figures he won’t mind so long as she stops wriggling around.

“Ya don’t like heights??” she asks, leaning forward between Beist’s horns to give the rider a very confused look. “But ya were ridin’ a flyin’ drake!”

“Th-That’s different!” the rider stammers. “I’m in a saddle, the drake is below me, I don’t look down a lot…”

“I think yer bein’ a baby ‘cause ya don’t wanna fall,” Astrid says with a disaffected tone. She looks between Gerhart and Beist. “Much as I wanna beat this guy up fer kidnappin’ me, I think we oughta turn him over ta the guards fer questionin’ ‘cause they’re lookin’ into alla these kidnappin’s happenin’.”

She looks up at the smoking volcano above them, the place the drakes were seemingly making a beeline for. It’s got to have something to do with that, but the question is what exactly? 

Beist didn't mind Astrid taking a seat on his shoulders. At least like this she was still and he was a lot less afraid of her falling off. He put a hand over each of her legs just to be sure, but he could also feel her using his horns like handlebars so she would have probably been fine without any of his help, but he couldn't help it. He chuckled quietly, actually a bit happy to have her there. He felt even more like a grandparent now.

"What? I'm not going to eat you. Do you think I'm some kind of cannibal or something? Your drake was more likely to eat you than me." Beist asked sounding a bit offended. Why would he think he was going to eat him? Sure, he was big, but he wasn't some monster. At least not at the moment. What a strange man. Afraid of being eaten by a Fellblood, but not by a drake, and afraid of heights despite being a drake rider that flies through the air. Just a bundle of contradictions, this one.

Beist just looked at Gerhart with a sigh as he just accepted the crowd. The flashy, if not stupidly dangerous, moves the man had used earlier starting to make more sense. He must enjoy the crowd. Beist, however, did not. Crowds made him uncomfortable. Probably a side effect of usually being a giant monster that everyone gawks at or avoids. He wanted to get out of the sky and somewhere more private as soon as possible, somewhere with less curious eyes on him.

He was thankful for Astrid's suggestion then.

"Yes, I agree. I'm fine with leaving the interrogation to the authorities. There must be others involved in the disappearances. The guards may know more already."

Beist gave Dora a light pat on the side and she started to descend. He hoped Gerhart would follow his lead.

"Good, cause I'm not too good at playing good guard bad guard." Gerhart smiles as Halcyon firms up his grip on the cultists as they make their slow descent.

"Maybe the guards will let you get like one shot in." Another grin and laugh. "By the way, how'd you do that lightning thing back there? That seemed pretty...well not seemed, it was awesome! You know I started learning lightning stuff cause of you."

He grins and enjoys the conversation, happily going slow just to annoy the guy a little bit more. When they are finally ready to land the man is dropped a few feet to thud right outside a guard tower before Halcyon can find a ledge to perch on and Gerhart can hop off.

The retinue of guards that step out look very, very confused. "Can...we...help you?"

"Sure, arrest that guy for kidnapping, tried to take my friend for some cult stuff?"

"YES I DID PLEASE ARREST ME." The cultist seems desperate to get away from the adventurers as quickly as possible. With an admission, the guards arrest him though they are still a bit confused.

When the group lands on the ground below near the guards and curious bystanders, Astrid hops off of Beist’s shoulders and gives Dora a good scratching of her majestic chest for all her hard work before bouncing over to Halcyon and doing the same. “Yer both such good beasties,” the girl coos affectionately.

Meanwhile, Gerhart declares their captive to the guards who make to surround the cultist scrambling away on the ground. Wow, the guy is basically begging to be arrested! That’s crazy.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Astrid says, prancing towards the guards as they collect the man into some shackles. Without much warning, she gives the barbecued cultist a good punch across the jaw before stepping back. “Ya deserved that.”

“Ow…” the cultist manages to groan before the guards drag him away. They of course have some questions for the group, who happily obliges to provide what information they have, including telling them about the other cultist who is probably a goopy puddle on the ground somewhere in the city. Once things are settled, Astrid looks between Beist and Gerhart and throws herself at each of them for a big hug.

“Thanks fer helpin’ me back there,” she says. “Probably shouldn’t’ve been lookin’ into this meself, buuuut ya know how it goes.” As Astrid steps away, there’s a bark from just down the street before Spicy Pawsage, having finally found his person, comes charging up and tackles her to the ground. “Ack! Spicy!” she giggles as he licks her face then just lies his very large hot dog body on top of her, looking up at the familiar Beist and Gerhart.

From beneath the hellhound, Astrid coughs out, “Alright, well I think we’re all deservin’ of a meal, yeah?”

"Yes, a meal does sound nice." Beist said with a sigh.

The whole ordeal had been terribly nerve-wracking for the old man. How many times had both Astrid and Gerhart been in potentially deadly situations in such a short time? How many of those had been caused by their own recklessness? Probably more than those caused by the kidnappers, honestly.

Beist smiled and put a gentle, caring hand on one of Gerhart and Astrid's shoulders. And then both of those hands clenched tightly, in a bone-crushing grip that seemed to have all the strength of the giant beastman behind it despite him still being in the form of a Fellblood.

"It would also give us plenty of time to have a little talk about both of your reckless habits." He said, smiling, but in a tone that would send a shiver down their spines.

One of his free hands reached up and tapped the golden feather-shaped charm hanging from his horn, sending Dora back into the pocket space within it. The griffon gave Astrid and Gerhart both a look of pity before she disappeared.