Broken Lands

Ci’an was right: the gryphon youth couldn’t have come from either of the two closest mountains. They were both wholly within the cloud layer, which meant that any nest would be covered in moss. There was no sign of either a large nest or of a spot missing enough moss to indicate a missing nest.

They did, however, find three wind eagles, seven hawks of different types, two crows that fled the moment they saw the group, numerous small brown or tan birds that either ran or attacked in swarms, and one extremely annoying heckling mockingbird that refused to attack with anything other than words.

Words could, in fact, hurt you if they were appropriately infused with magic. The mockingbird’s insults were mostly about their flying styles and Sophia felt several of them hit, but they were weakened by the fact that the mockingbird did not know what it was talking about. Sophia did not fly with her wings, not really; the wings were an outward manifestation of the Ability that let her fly, but it was really the Ability doing the work. Truthfully, it was more like floating with the ability to add a direction than actual flight. The human body just wasn’t built to fly.

It still hurt when the mockingbird called her a “talentless hatchling with no hope to fly with her own wings,” long scrapes where her wings met her back below her armor. Sophia had to remind herself that they were her own wings; they might be an Ability instead of part of her body, but they were still hers. That was enough to make the damage stop, but it didn’t heal it.

Fortunately, while the mockingbird’s words caused a momentary problem for Sophia, they didn’t slow Dav down at all. He didn’t have wings, but more importantly he didn’t have any desire to fly with wings. He answered the insults with the response that was both the worst counterargument and the most final one at the same time: pure violence. The mockingbird never noticed him slide impossibly through the air, but it definitely noticed when his sword sheared it in two.

The mockingbird was the most dangerous of the birds, but it was still only first upgrade. It was dangerous only because it could bypass their Shield if it managed to actually insult them. Even then, the injuries were slight; it only took a few minutes of flying beside Dav while he emanated healing to heal the scrapes on Sophia’s back.

They expanded the search after the mockingbird and the confirmation that the adult gryphons weren’t that close. There were only four other possibilities within the range Sophia thought the young gryphon could have glided to reach the pyramid. The one she thought was the most likely wasn’t the closest; instead, it was the tallest, the only one whose peak lay above the cloud layer. It was a long flight for a young gryphon, but the other options had closer landing points that were more likely. The extra height meant extra distance if the young gryphon didn’t circle as it glided down.

Ci’an was the first to breach the cloud layer. Moments later, she dipped back under the clouds and dove deeper. “Stay below the cloud layer! There’s a gigantic bird up there, much bigger than you said the gryphons would be, and I think it’s hunting. It didn’t see me and I’d like to keep it that way.

An image followed Ci’an’s words. Sophia couldn’t tell how large the brown-and-black bird was, but however large it was, it was amazing it could fly. Its proportions were similar to a normal bird, which clearly meant it had magic helping. That wasn’t the real problem, though; the real problem was the chains around its lower legs, almost like jesses made of rusty iron. Sophia was no falconer, but she knew that iron was exactly the wrong material to use on a bird that had to fly. Between that and the fact that they looked old, rough, and corroded, Sophia was certain there was more to the story.

Sophia concentrated on the bird, then paled as the World Tree told her what she was looking at. “It’s a roc, and that means it’s humongous. Its body is longer than the Arena was. The good news is that rocs are almost entirely sustained by mana, like elementals; the only time they eat is right after they hatch. This one was clearly captive at some point, but I don’t know what it was used for. It’s not captive anymore; it’s not wearing a harness of any sort, just the chains. Are you sure it was hunting?”

“Definitely,” Ci’an answered. “It was looking for something. I guess it could be looking for something other than food, but what?”

Sophia didn’t have a good answer for that. The obvious answer was to serve as a challenge, but everything inside the World Tree had at least a limited amount of story behind why it was where it was and what it was doing. A lot of those were little more than “you look like lunch,” but that was still enough to make sense. It was a bit more densely populated than the real world, with almost everywhere that could be inhabited holding something, even in the desert.

“If it’s looking for food, it’s looking for food for its offspring,” Sophia answered instead. “We’re a bit small for it, though my wings are obvious enough that it might come for me if the pickings are slim. The rest of you … well, they’d have to be really slim for it to go after something with a wingspan of less than a dozen feet.”

She paused and took in a deep breath as she connected some dots. “A gryphon’s bigger than that. In fact, an adult gryphon is just about the right size for a roc to feed to its hatchlings. The youngster said there was a storm, but … I’m starting to get a bad feeling about its parents since they haven’t come after it.”

“Look on the bright side,” Dav encouraged her. “At least we can guess that we’ve probably found the Challenge chain we’re looking for. With those chains, there almost has to be something more to the roc’s story.”

“It is pretty bright up there, isn’t it,” Sophia agreed. “You’re right; we’re here for the Challenge chain, not the gryphon.” She paused, then added, “But we should still take care of the gryphon. There ought to be a solution, just like in the Maze.”

None of the others answered immediately. By now, Sophia knew them well enough to know that they didn’t feel as strongly about it as she did, but none of them minded helping. That was a large part of how they got along as a group; if someone really wanted to do something, everyone else would cooperate unless they felt strongly differently, in which case they’d talk about it. That might end up in an argument.

It was really the only way Sophia could work with a group. She really wasn’t very good at dealing with people. She tried to be straightforward and expected others to do the same. It was definitely a very good thing that she’d found a group that could work with her; not everyone could. There was a reason she didn’t have a stable group back home. She could work with almost anyone occasionally, but few groups really clicked for her.

“So we’re teaching the giant bird, right?” Ci’an checked. “To see what it leads us to.”

“Hopefully its nest and not a gryphon,” Sophia confirmed, “And it’s a roc.”

“Of course,” Ci’an said doubtfully before she flew higher in the air. “You three follow me from down here, especially you, Sophia. I’ll track the … roc.”

Sophia chuckled at the way Ci’an said the word.

It wasn’t long before the roc proved Ci’an right. It dove after something near the top of the cloud layer. Sophia was barely able to make out what happened at the distance, but it looked like the roc smashed its talons into another unsuspecting bird’s wings, then caught the bird as it fell. It turned and headed in a new direction, flying with a clear destination in mind instead of searching.

Ci’an had them slowly creep closer. The roc paid no attention to the Flying Stars, even when they encountered a light elemental shaped like a flying ostrich and had to fight it to get it to stop trying to peck holes in Dav. The roc almost had to have noticed; it simply didn’t care.

They flew past the closest mountain and were approaching the peak of another mountain that punched above the clouds when they were finally close enough for Sophia to make out the slowly struggling shape held in the roc’s talons. It wasn’t a bird; instead, the roc held a pegasus. The winged horse made it obvious just how big the roc really was, because its talons were clasped around the horse’s body, not piercing it.

Sophia hoped it was a very small pegasus but she didn’t really think it was. It certainly explained why the pegasus would be food for a hungry hatchling. If the roc was that large, its young were probably bigger than an adult human. They might well be an appropriate size for a first upgrade Called to fight; the adult roc definitely wasn’t.

If they were headed to the roc’s nest, as Sophia expected, she certainly hoped that these birds didn’t always leave one of the parents to watch over the eggs or nestlings.

When they finally reached it, the “nest” was nothing like what Sophia expected. She thought she’d see a nest like what she was used to, possibly made of entire trees instead of twigs, but that wasn’t what she saw at all. The first sign of the “nest” wasn’t the nest itself; instead, it was another orange-red light, glowing in the distance.

The light came from a spiraling rune like the one on the buried building the gryphon youth liked, but this building was no small pyramid or half-buried building. Instead, it was a walled building with several floors that stepped inwards as they rose higher, like a ziggurat. Like the buildings in the clouds, the walls were covered in runes. Only one of them glowed brightly into the daylight like a signal, but the others were clearly visible. They were in better shape than the ones below, with no moss covering the runes and slowly eroding them away.

The roc headed directly towards the building, then dropped the pegasus onto a flat section of the roof from about twenty feet in the air.

The pegasus screamed. It wasn’t like the scream or a human, but it was still very definitely a scream. It managed to spread its wings wide and level itself. Magic flared at the last moment, slowing the descent, but the pegasus still landed hard. Sophia wasn’t sure if that was a landing it could walk away from or not, because the pegasus wasn’t walking. It wasn’t even standing.

Before the winged horse recovered from the stunning fall, the roc’s head whipped forward and the beak closed on the left wing. Sophia could hear multiple bones snap before the roc lifted its head in seeming satisfaction, flapped once, and rose impossibly into the sky once more.

Ci’an waited until the roc was well away from the building before she led them to the wall. She approached close to the ground on the opposite side from the roc, even though they could all see that it was not looking their way. “We’ll want to be under cover or gone before it comes back.”