“So glad you could join us, Falon Solei Umbra, although this probably won’t be as much fun for you as it will be for me,” Lazza sneers, and then he hits me...hard.
I taste blood in my mouth as I lurch to the side, but I don’t bother putting another foot down to steady myself. I completely pull inside of myself and give Pigeon all the room she needs to leap out and start ripping some cheap-shot-throwing motherfucker’s head off.
The roar of rage that bellows out of Pigeon as we erupt into feathers, fur, talons, and wings trumps any evil smile I could ever give. Her snarl raises every hair on my now incorporeal body, and I know shit is about to go down.
Pigeon leaps for Lazza, but a brown gryphon slams into us, keeping our razor-sharp beak from catching Lazza by only inches. Pidge screams and turns her fury on to the shit stain who’s also a fan of not fighting with honor.
We rear back at the same time as our attacker, but instead of swiping at them and getting this party of pain started, another gryphon attacks us from behind. Our wing audibly snaps, and pain rips through us, as what feels like two beaks snap one of our onyx wings. Pigeon and I both scream and whirl around to deal with the attacks coming at us from all angles.
There’s six gryphons immediately surrounding us, but we see more standing in the trees as though they’re waiting for their turn.
“Pigeon, shift! Let me slip us out of here!”I scream at her as she spins and snaps at anything that gets too close.
We’re cornered, and there’s no good reason why Lazza would want us alive.
There’s a part of me that shouts that this can’t be it. He couldn’t have stolen us away just to slaughter us in such a cowardly way, but the rest of me simply scoffs at how naive that is. Lazza doesn’t care about honor or fighting fair, he cares about winning.
Pigeon doesn’t listen.
She leaps at a white and tan gryphon who takes a swipe at us, and she manages to get the upper hand. She buries her beak in the gryphon’s throat and tears at everything that separates this gryphon from death. It feels good to tear into something, but unfortunately, we can’t kill and watch our backs at the same time.
Multiple bodies leap on us, beaks, claws, and talons ripping into us. Pigeon does this rolling maneuver, throwing the now dying gryphon away from us, the body slamming into other gryphons who are charging at us.
Snap!
Another bone in our already broken wing goes, and it hurts so fucking bad it’s hard to focus on anything other than the pain.
“Pigeon, shift,”I beg.“Let me try to get us out of here.”
Pigeon flips and spins, claws, and lunges as she tries to keep attacking gryphons from mortally wounding us. She flashes me my body, and I see how fragile it is through her eyes. Someone sinks talons into our flank, and we snarl and snap for them. Tears drip down my cheeks as Pigeon is slowly brutalized. She won’t shift, because she knows if one of those gryphons gets a hold of my body, we’re done forwayfaster than we will be if it’s her they have to work to shred apart.
Defiance thunders out of Pigeon with a roar, and as much as I want it to be a rallying cry, I know we can’t defend against who knows how many fucking gryphons at one time. Helplessness rakes through me, and in its wake, rage pours in.
I’ve never tried to activate my runes while in our gryphon form, I don’t know if it will do anything at all, but it’s the only thing I can think to do other than accept our inevitable death. I focus on my core, on the well of magic that I feel there. I pull from what feels like an endless source and don’t bother with finesse or figuring out which runes I can activate while in this form, I call on everything that I have.
A familiar building sensation starts in my chest, and I wait until it gets overwhelming before shoving it out of me. Instead of the magic pulsing out like I expect it to and blasting all the attacking gryphons away from us, the magic ricochets through Pigeon and starts to settle.
I watch in awe as the runes I call in my form adapt to Pigeon’s form, and the next thing I know, the black swoosh blades fit the arc of our wings perfectly, turning the appendages into giant weapons. The whip swords morph into a chainmail covering Pigeon’s neck and chest. The shield runes on my forearms become greaves for her front and back legs, and tasses cover our hind quarters.
Renewed fight pumps through our veins, and this time when Pigeon opens her beak and bellows out a warning, it’s through a metal covering that protects the top of her beak, snakes between her eyes and fits over her ears.
In a blink, we Mighty Morphin Power Ranger-ed ourselves some gryphon armor, and these motherfuckers are about to pay thefuck with ustoll.
21
If it were me in charge, I would have cracked my knuckles ominously and taken a moment to really build the tension and impending doom I wanted my attackers to feel. But Pigeon is agive no fuckskind of girl, so she just goes balls to the wall and starts cutting bitches up.
One of our wings is very badly injured, so it’s more tucked against our back protectively, but the wing blades are the shit, and just one of them slicing through a crowd of honorless gryphons does a satisfactory amount of damage.
Pigeon embraces her inner rhino and charges through the gathering attackers, using her protected bits to lead the way and all her sharp bits to exact as much damage as possible. Unfortunately, that means that more gryphons get tagged in from the outskirts, and just as we take one down, another hops in to take its place.
It’s a fucking flood of assholes, but we’re not dead yet, so there’s that.
I keep hoping that somehow Wekun will portal an army in at any moment, but the oncoming night is filling with snarls and cries, death gurgles and pain, and I have no idea how long Pigeon can keep this up.
A hurricane of air slams into us and sends me and all the gryphons around me flying. Pigeon and I try to fight against the sudden onslaught, but it seems Lazza is tired of waiting to watch us get ripped apart and wants in on the action.
I think back to when I first started training with Treno on how to use the runes he gave me that grant him an affinity for water. I learned that day that his brother, Lazza, has runes that allow him to manipulate air. I realized then, that was how he almost killed Ryn back in Kestrel and what he used to try and kill Treno—and subsequently me, Zeph and Ryn—through the Vow when we’d escaped.
