As if my thought conjured the Tasmanian devil with wings, Pigeon slams mercilessly against the wall that separates us. I grab at my head as a throbbing starts just behind my eyes.
“Doesn’t that hurt you?”I ask, my tone dripping judgment.“What the fuck was that, Pidge?”
She slams against me again, and I can feel her desperation and excitement to take control bleed into our limbs.
“You’re into this?”I ask, shocked.
She flashes an image of gryphons flying together and playing, and I give an incredulous snort.
“You just want to play paws and wings with Treno,”I tease, like it’s the gryphon equivalent of footsie.
She slams against me again, and I growl.Hold your fucking tail feathers. Let me get undressed first so you don’t shred the only pants the tailor would make for us. Trust me, we need them. Did you see the dresses?”I ask her as I begin to unlace my top and pants.“More like strategically placed scraps of fabric, if you ask me,”I add, trying to hurry.
Pigeon’s need courses through me, making me antsy. She’s stopped trying to force control now that she knows I’m going to hand it over soon, but restlessness and adrenaline flood me all the same. I pull my shirt over my head and push my pants down before folding my clothes and setting them neatly at the base of a tree across from Treno’s messy pile of fabric.
“Okay, Pidge, I’m trusting you. Please don’t get us killed or make us Mogus food.”
I drop the wall between us and pull back in on myself as much as I can as Pigeon shoves her way in, and our body cracks and morphs until we rip apart what is me and explode into what is her. We stretch our massive wings and screech-roar our excitement over how good it feels. Being cooped up all the time sucks, and I make a mental note to incorporate more gryphon time into each day. Pigeon shoots us up into the sky, our strong wings doing exactly what they were made for.
The wind brushes through my feathers and fur as if it’s saying hello and inviting us to play. Pigeon puts us into a spin, and we twist through the sky, closing the distance between clear sky and the Cynas. A terrifying moo-roar fills the air all around us, and we look over to find the other Cynas trying to impale the Mogus with its antlers.
Damn, those Mogus are really pissing it off.
Treno is so fast I can only make out a streak of white through the pine needles and leaves of the trees as he hunts down his targets. Instead of being scared off by the Cynas’s war cry, it sings in Pigeon’s blood. It pushes her on and makes her want to destroy the annoying little shits pestering the poor female we’ve been tasked with helping. I spot a dragonfly-winged fucker diving for the long-haired, boar-headed female, and Pigeon takes off like a bullet in pursuit.
Pigeon takes to the chase, fitting us through the Cynas’s extensive array of antlers like we’re threading a needle. She gets close enough and manages to swipe at the thing with her taloned foreleg. The Mogus goes careening out of the sky and then smashes into a tree, where it splatters like a bug on a windshield. Pigeon and I both scream in triumph like we’ve just achieved something epic. I laugh and encourage her as we hunt down another, and Pidge preens from my praise. She’s completely in her element as we chase, kill, and dive bomb more unsuspecting Mogus.
I start humming songs from theTop Gunsoundtrack, and Pigeon flits, flips, plummets, pitches, shoots, and swoops until we’ve cleared almost all the pests from around our Cynas. The last few fuckers left aren’t making things easy though. These little bitches have more brains than the others did. They force us into not only chasing them but dodging the Cynas as it loses its patience and tries to take matters into its own horns.
Pigeon and I are almost nailed by its antlers and tusks a couple of times. The long brown hair covering the female Cynas’s head is an obstacle too as it periodically shakes like a dog trying to get dry, and we almost get tangled up in the mangy tresses that fall down almost to her knees. Its giraffe like tail swats around as a Mogus tries to hide behind it. I look down and feel sorry for the flattened forest at the animal’s feet as it steps on full round trunks and snaps them like they’re toothpicks in an effort to get away from the last of her tormentors.
My full volume singing of “Danger Zone” morphs into a cheer when Pigeon rips an especially sneaky Mogus in half that we’ve been chasing for ten minutes.
“Only three left!”I urge.
I still haven’t spotted Treno’s gryphon aside from a wing or tail here and there, but his charge looks infinitely more relaxed than it did forty minutes ago, and I’m taking that as a good sign. Pigeon releases a frustrated growl as wejustmiss ripping apart another target. That growl morphs into a shriek when an antler comes out of nowhere, and we almost become gryphon jelly against a tree. She back rolls us in a way I didn’t even know was possible, and the Cynas takes out a tree instead of us. The tree splinters with a loud crack, and I can’t help thinking that could have been our bones.
The Mogus that just had us almost creamed goes right for the Cynas’s face. Pigeon roars and dives for it, but out of nowhere the Cynas charges forward, and neither Pigeon or I are ready for just how fast the big fucker can move when it wants to. One minute we’re diving, focused and ready to kick Mogus ass, and then in the next minute, we’re being knocked out of the air as if we’re the annoying pest worthy of being swatted.
It all happens so fast, I have no idea what even takes us down, but Pigeon tucks and rolls us into a relatively safe crash landing, well, that is until the Cynas goes in for a good trampling. The fucker is all over us before we can so much as blink. We keep our wings tucked as close to our body as we can for fear that they’ll be crushed otherwise. Hooves the size of cars slam down all around us, and I feel like the Little Mermaid when Ursula is trying to fry her at the bottom of a whirlpool. We’re just flapping around and screaming, trying not to become a gryphon pancake.
I spot what looks like a pocket sized little Cynas hiding under the long pelt of the massive one currently trying to kill Pigeon and me, and it all clicks. Well, shit. We have a pissed off mama on our hands. She probably doesn’t care that we were trying to help; she’s been fucked with by the Mogus for who knows how long, and now she’s out for blood. I don’t really blame her, but I also don’t want to fucking die.
The Cynas above us bellows out a roar that feels like it’s going to shatter our eardrums. It’s so loud and angry it vibrates through my bones. I swear to fuck I can hear thethat’s itin it, and I know Pigeon and I have to figure out how to get the fuck away from her and kill the last few annoying pests so she can take a well-deserved nap or something.
There’s a clear path to the baby, and Pigeon and I debate for a moment about taking it. If we hang out on the little Cynas’s back, we might just make it out of this. Unfortunately, it’s a bitch move neither Pigeon or I can get on board with. Another hoof slams down next to us, and I scream.
That was too fucking close.
Suddenly another option pops into my head. I flash Pigeon an image of a bull rider and then another image of a giraffe’s leg. All we have to do is hold on to the leg until it stops the stompathon, and then we can try to make a break for it. We could even climb the leg and pelt until we get high enough and then push off into the air and finish off the sneaky Mogus fuckers that got us into this mess.
Pigeon sends out a wave of surprise and approval, clearly liking the plan and also revealing just how much she underestimates me. We’ll be talking about that later, but for now, we scramble out of the way of angryyou fucked with the wrong bitchhooves and time our leap. We wait for the perfect moment as if we’re about to jump into a serious round of double Dutch and we need the rhythm of the two jump ropes to come around just right.
“Now!”I scream in our head, and we dive for the Cynas’s ankle and hold on for dear fucking life. We dig our talons and claws in deep to secure ourselves as much as possible. I feel bad because I don’t want to hurt her, but that concern disappears when it’s clear she doesn’t have the same reservations. She slams her foot down over and over again, and I can feel the bones in my body compress with each brutal impact with the ground.
It’s the worst fucking roller coaster ride ever, and I hate rollercoasters. Panic floods me when one stomp almost dislodges us. Pigeon’s fast reflexes turn our slipping into a leap higher up on the Cynas’s leg. We dig into a meatier part of her appendage and wait to ride it out.
A large brown gryphon goes streaking past us, and I feel like someone at an air show, trying to track jets as they fly by. An image of other gryphons coming to our rescue flashes in our mind, and I get the distinct impression they just announced that the cavalry’s here. Iwoo hooout my appreciation, but it sounds more like a creepy caw-moan coming out of Pigeon’s mouth.
