In a flash, I make out sharp teeth, tusks, antlers, and claws. Some have furred legs—two or four or even six legs—and others have scaled, snake-like bodies that writhe in the air. Still others have stingers on their tails like those of insects.
Some of them are smaller, allowing them to dart through the gaps between others’ wings. The beaks on those small creaturesmay not be as large, but I have no doubt they could rip my throat open with ease.
Blackbird reacts faster than I can flinch.
He banks left, avoiding the downward swoop of a feathered creature whose talons would have sliced off my head and tears away in the opposite direction, heading northward across the vast plain.
Bless him, he’s luring the creatures away from the city, but the fact that they stream after us tells me we’re their target.
“Asha!” Erik is reaching for his sword, but he doesn’t slide it free. “I need your permission to kill them.”
When I thought we would face one monster, my choices were simpler. My chances of saving it were higher. But not so for a swarm.
“You need to land!” he shouts. “We won’t survive in the sky. There are too many of them. I can make a gap for you!”
A single downward glance tells me that the creatures are swarming beneath us, flying parallel to Blackbird.
My eyes widen as I realize that they’re not only following us, but also forming barriers around us. Soon, it won’t matter how quickly Blackbird darts and weaves—we’ll be surrounded.
“Asha.” Erik draws my attention back to him. Back to his solemn eyes and the grim press of his lips. “I need your permission.”
I told him that my hammer won’t kill.
I transformed Blackbird instead of killing him.
But it will be impossible to transform all of these creatures. There are simply too many of them.
They’ll kill me before I can save them. And if they swarm toward the city, they could do extreme damage to the humans there. Wherever the humans are hiding, they won’t be safe.
I cling to Blackbird, painfully aware that the longer I take to decide, the more danger I’m putting us in.
“Let me do the cutting,” Erik says so quietly that I nearly don’t hear him.
Let Erik do the cutting.
My heart hurts, heavy with my decision. “Do it.”
He gives me the quietest nod. “Get to the ground. Stay alive. I’ll come to you.”
With that, he propels himself away from me, leaping from Blackbird’s back and out into the storm.
He draws his sword as he jumps.
My breath catches as he lands on the back of the nearest creature—a beast with antlers—his sword slicing neatly through its neck before he jumps off it again. He catches the wing of another beast but swings himself—impossibly—beneath its belly, striking up through the underside of its scaled chest before dropping onto the back of the flying beast below the first and cutting its head clean off.
The creatures were closing in around us, but Erik’s already created a gap for Blackbird to dive through.
Blackbird doesn’t waste our chance. He heads straight for the gap, sailing through the clear space before it closes again behind us.
My heart is in my throat as I twist, trying to look back to see Erik through the swarm of feathers and malformed bodies.
I need to see him!
But the flying creatures are clearly aware of the threat in their midst. Half of them have closed in around the location where I last saw Erik.
The other half have broken away to follow me.
We have a few seconds’ head start, and Blackbird isn’t squandering them.
