Elemental Cats

It wasn't the first war between humans and demons, and if history was anything to go by, it wouldn't be the last, either.

But for some, the fact that a war had started wasn't of utmost importance. Toz and the cats didn't even know that a war had begun.

They had sensed a tremendous surge of demonic energy coming from Dormant Thunder. There wasn't even a need to speculate about how well it would go for the city and its inhabitants. But even after the demonic energy abruptly disappeared, the group didn't feel safe. Instead, they felt a surge of danger tingling their minds, and they started rushing through the forest, away from the city and the source of the dangerous feeling.

But they didn't get far before they were thrown into the air by the earthquake and the waves in the ground. They did, however, get sent flying by the shockwave in the air as it blew them straight away from the city.

Toz and the cats spun like ragdolls in the air, barely maintaining enough of a grip on their awareness to summon and accept the summons into Toz's familiar space.

But that still left Toz tumbling through the air with no way to control where he was headed. The occasional glimpses he got of his surroundings, despite the mosaic the spinning had turned his vision into, didn't give him much information. But the small pieces he could put together didn't give Toz much hope.

Toz could see the ground and trees fracture and split apart. Closer to the edge of the plane, it wouldn't be weird for the cracked earth to reveal the Void on the other side, but it was impossible to make heads or tails of anything, much less differentiate between the Void he could see in the sky and the Void he could see on the other side of the plane's remnants.

Every time Toz collided with a piece of wood or another beast, he would try and grab hold of it so he had something to weigh him down and protect him. But since there was no way to see the object he would collide with in advance, he could only rely on his reflexes and reach out for it as soon as he felt the object. However, even with Toz's extraordinary reflexes, both he and the objects he collided with flew through the air with too much force and speed for him to catch them.

The tumultuous spinning through the air and the repeated collisions with everything else struck by the blast from the demonic arm's impact on the ground left Toz beaten and bruised. And despite trying to protect his head with his arms, a large tree trunk struck Toz's head with enough force to knock him out.

Toz only felt a thud before everything went black, and his body relaxed. Toz's unconscious body continued flying through the air, tumbling around and drifting further away from the direction of Dormant Thunder and the rest of Roaring Skies.

Just because Toz had been knocked out once, it didn't stop the rest of the uprooted trees and rocks from hitting him as they also flew through the air uncontrollably.

But the force of the blast that had sent him flying wasn't infinite, and eventually, Toz's trajectory began shifting downward in relation to the plane he had been sent flying from, which would have been a positive development if not for there being nothing to land on. As far as Toz would have been able to see if he was awake, there was complete emptiness in front of him.

Unless Toz or something else changed directions, he would drift into the Void and disappear. Since he wasn't yet at the level where he could survive without breathing, he would suffocate before anything else.

But right as he was about to pass by the last line of rubble and pieces of the plane hanging in the air between the gravity of the plane and the Void, his already worn and weathered coat snagged on a branch. Toz's coat was made of mostly medium level materials and had several enchantments to increase its durability, and it had performed more than well during his journey.

But after repeated collisions with materials and beasts also at the medium level, there was only so much left of the coat's ability to hold out. Instead of gliding off the branch that had hooked onto the coat, the fabric tore. The strip of the coat created a string between the branch and the rest of the coat and Toz.

The branch and tree it grew out of was part of a large clump of trees still attached together with their roots and some dirt from Roaring Skies. Even if Toz came tumbling through the air, he wouldn't be able to move it.

With a tearing sound, the coat continued being pulled apart, destroying some of the pockets within along the way. Although the coat pockets were mostly empty, the remaining food reserves and several spatial rings were sent tumbling into the Void.

Despite the coat tearing, Toz showed no signs of slowing down and was still headed straight for the Void. Until, with a thump, the strip of fabric tying Toz and the tree together stopped growing longer. The tearing had reached a seam on Toz's coat, preventing it from continuing along the coat.

Toz was hanging by slightly more than thread right on the edge of the Void. Although he had temporarily stopped floating away and was hanging in the air like almost everything else, only a slight push was needed for that thread to snap. Even without a push, the strip of fabric was frayed and untwining, just from Toz hanging in it. The branch the coat had snagged onto was also bent out of shape, seemingly on the verge of snapping and freeing Toz.

Toz's motionless body had come to a standstill. Most things that had been sent flying from the demonic arm's strike had either started slowing down or had already drifted into the Void. But, like with everything, there were exceptions.

A group of trees, slightly larger than the one holding on to Toz, came flying right at him from behind. They were floating through the air in the direction of the Void, with Toz being in their way.