The Many Lives of Cadence Lee

*Cadence Lee (as Hewka) POV*

With a strong jump and a beat of my wings, we were in the air and rapidly pulled away from the ground. I was tempted to put the new saddle to the test and see what Rei thought about flying upside down, but her focus on the mission in front of us helped me keep focus as well. In theory, our job was easy and safe. All we had to do was use Taunt and arrows to draw the ire of the Bronzebirds and then use my superior speed to keep just ahead of them until we drew them into the trap. Simple.

Probably.

Of course, there was the slight issue, which had been brought up, that the Bronzebirds had to come from somewhere. The chance that a whole flock of some other bird Monster had all evolved into Bronzebirds was higher than it sounded at first - because if they lived in the same conditions they might act similarly in situations and all qualify for it - but it was far less likely than an older Bronzebird had laid Bronzebird eggs.

But where was the older Bronzebird? There were at least two and they would be far older than the current flock, but no one had reported seeing a larger than normal Bronzebird. Not that sleep deprived caravans were the greatest at reporting in the first place, it can be hard to tell the size of things in the sky because people lack something to reference as a comparison, but you would think someone would have mentioned it if they noticed.

Hopefully, if there were a couple of older Bronzebirds, they had just been shot down in one of the caravan raids. They still probably couldn’t catch me, but in theory if they were old enough or had a strange evolution path… Actually, the worst possibility was that they had evolved into something else that would be able to catch me, but unless they were a lot faster than me I didn’t think any of the possible evolutions mentioned would be able to catch me before I made it back to the ambush point, and catching me was only half of the fight. Rei and I would hardly go down easy.

Without having to accompany a caravan or stay on the ground, I was able to cover a lot of distance and soon we could see the location the Bronzebirds were roosting: a couple of rock formations that jutted out from the forest. Now came the fun part as I prepared to use my [Aerokinesis] to launch a nonlethal, but extremely annoying, sound attack on them.

Suddenly, however, a wave of sound crashed into us! A high-pitched metal on metal screeching, almost industrial, sound that immediately caused me to lose my concentration and feel a strange sensation.

“Hewka!” Rei, shouted over the din as she brought her hands to her ears.