Chapter 29: Cheep!? 28

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Cheep!?

Chapter 28

The wagon trundled through the underbrush, near silent in spite of its bulk. The sigils on it made certain of that, and now that they were working at full capacity, they also helped to cover their tracks. More than that though, they obscured much of the party's presence, allowing them to go unharried through the forest. 

Of course, Oscar doubted that there would be much problem now that they were leaving the Evergreen. Most of the creatures that could have given them trouble would be much deeper, more to the north-west, or further south towards the Daurghast. Considering their trip thus far, though, he was glad to have the precaution active. However, they lacked the ability to refill the sigils themselves as things stood. They had no essence to spare in the event that something did happen, as he, August, and the last man that remained of their troop needed to maintain top condition. As for their Oath-Sworn, they were weakened and, moreover, couldn’t be trusted not to make trouble any longer.

He cast a glance at the cart, making sure to keep his expression inscrutable. In truth, he didn’t necessarily fault them for having made the escape attempt before, knowing that if he himself were in their position, he would have likely done the same. Still, it had resulted in the deaths of some of their number, and that wasn’t something that they could overlook. The fact that one of the Oath-Sworn had managed to altogether get away also did not bode well for their future in the area.

As he turned his gaze to August, eyes resting uncomfortably on his back and while registering the minute signs of discomfort through essence depletion, Oscar wondered what their plans would be now. 

Almost as though summoned by his weariness, he heard a muffled railing of noise from within the wagon. Oscar failed to suppress the deep sigh that escaped from his lips, but he made sure to control his expression once more as he fell back to open the flap of the cart.

The noise grew noticeably louder, but the sigils still held strong enough to keep the current cacophony down somewhat. With the essence pattern he’d painstakingly made in his eyes, Oscar was able to peer into the darkness without any difficutly. 

A veritable flock of Red Hawk’s were clattering loudly in the largest cage, the only one that he and August felt confident could hold the lot of them without harming them unduly. He grimaced at the sight nonetheless - they were young beasts, valuable, but also more troublesome for the fact that they might actually harm themselves at this rate. Next to the cage on either side of the wagon’s interior sat the last two Oath-Sworn. The woman, he knew, looked broken and empty, a desolate expression that Oscar had seen far too many times on those just waiting to die. The sight gave him no pleasure, but he kept himself from feeling too much for the woman. Instead, he turned his eyes on the man. 

His gaze was downcast, but Oscar could see the embers of rage there, impotent and with nowhere to go. Both of the Oath Sworn were dangerous, for different reasons, but they weren’t taking any chances with them. No more stops or breaks would be permitted until they reached their destination in Greenleaf. Still, if the Red-Hawks didn’t calm down, they’d either hurt themselves or make it much harder to skirt the town without being detected.

“Calm them down and keep them calm. Do not leave the cart, and you are not to release them from their cage.” Oscar ordered simply, knowing that the Oath that bound them wasn’t capable of anything more at this point. Perhaps in another day, the corruption of their Oath would unravel it in its entirety, leaving them free. If they survived long enough in the first place, anyway. He personally doubted their employers' contact was instructed to be merciful to these people. Just more loose ends to tie up, something that he and the rest of the Gauntlet knew very well could befall their few remaining people as well.

They’d handle that soon, too, but for now Oscar merely watched the man make brief eye contact with him, but gave no indication of having heard him. 

“I order you to nod if you heard my instructions.” Oscar wouldn’t underestimate the man, as he’d already clearly demonstrated that he’d managed to block the orders he’d been given in the previous escape attempt by blocking his ears. He’d been ordered not to block his ears again, but Oscar himself could just about imagine the ways a desperate man could try to get around that order. 

It would just be much more painful. 

Thankfully, the man only grimaced and nodded. Oscar stared at him for a moment longer, searching his face for any sign of resistance. 

After finding nothing, Oscar let the flap drop and moved back into position on the left flank of the cart. ‘Just let the rest of the trip be uneventful,’ he prayed to no deity in particular, not certain he wanted to attract any deific attention at the moment. The Gauntlet had done questionable things in the past, but this job reeked more of brigand than mercenary.

After they were done with this, they’d have plenty of capital to get to their ultimate destination and a necessary tie to the kingdom to use. Then they could leave this business behind.

‘Maybe I’ll just retire…’ he mentally quipped in exhaustion, ‘That sounds pretty appealing right about now.’ 

 

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Dane suppressed a string of curses that threatened to erupt from his mouth as the flap closed. Not that he didn’t want some kind of outlet for his frustrations, but his captors still weren’t aware that he could speak. 

‘Still not giving up all hope, huh?’ A snide part of his own mind needled at his desperate situation. With his lips pressed in a thin line, Dane turned his gaze on the caged Red Hawks. They were beautiful creatures, and as far as most people were aware had very stable temperaments. Fiercely loyal, caring, and above all intelligent, Dane was aware that these beasts were not only willful enough to do anything to escape their current situation, but intelligent enough to know that there was little they could do to change things at the moment. Their wings were bound, and they had cloth tied around their talons. The only thing unbound were their beaks, and that was only due not wanting to try to fight with them. Only scraps of fabric lay on the floor from what remained of the hoods that the poachers had tried to use to calm them, shredded by their sharp beaks.

‘Is there anything else I can do?’ Dane wracked his brain for anything he could work in his favor. ‘The wording he used… I have to calm them and keep them calm. That’s open ended, but I can’t leave the cart. I also am not allowed to open their cage…’ His expression soured at that, ‘If I could open the cage, I could at least free them…’

Almost on reflex, his eyes settled on the only other remaining Oath-Sworn in the wagon, still hugging her knees with her face buried against her arms, as though she could curl in on herself to shut away the world. Dane had to admit she was probably doing a remarkable job of doing just that. 

But he needed her help.

“H-hey,” Dane tried to whisper, only to cringe slightly at the crack of his voice from disuse and nerves. She didn’t stir at the sound, though, and Dane couldn’t help but tense, waiting for the flap to open and reveal that he’d been heard. 

When nothing happened, he turned his attention back to the woman, his gut tying itself in knots, “I need your help.”

Only now did she stir, and Dane let out a mental sigh of relief that she wasn’t completely shut off. That relief died, though, when he saw the desolate stare that rested on him, mixed with something like resentment. It caught him completely off guard, and for a second he couldn’t help but feel for the woman. After all, she’d lost her loved one, and worse still was the fact that it was his plan that had caused it.

He pushed those feelings down resolutely, “I want to free these birds, will you help me?”

There were a hundred different ways he thought he might persuade her, but the risks that came with a protracted conversation kept him from doing so. Her gaze sharpened a little, turning her eyes to the cage and the hawks within. Dane could almost see the thoughts churning in her mind, and for a dreadful moment he could see the rage and hate that contorted her face into a grimace in the dark of the wagon. If she didn’t want to help, everything would be much, much harder. He had hoped that she might want some form of revenge against their captors, and as much as it hurt him to play on that, he needed the aid more than he needed a moral compass right now.

Just before he opened his mouth to try to persuade her, in spite of the risks, she turned her gaze to him, the desolate look having been subsumed by a silent, wrathful fury. There was something else in her eyes as well, a kind of frenzy that made Dane clench muscles he didn’t even know he had as though his instincts were telling him he was about to be mauled.

Instead, she gave him a curt nod, and then maintained her gaze, expectant, but unable to speak as he could.

‘By Samut’s arse that’s terrifying,’ Dane swallowed hard, not trusting his voice at all to speak. He nodded back, but put a finger to his lips for the gesture to be quiet and then mouthed the word ‘wait’ to her. 

She sat back with another, much more mild nod, and closed her eyes in what he assumed to be meditation. Only barely noticeable, Dane could feel the lightest tug of essence in the air before it vanished. Dane shook his head at that, wondering if the woman was trying to create an essence formation right then and there. But, the step from a kindling formation and a truly composed one was great - he doubted severely that she would experience a breakthrough in time to help.

That wasn’t his problem, though. She clearly had no ideas on how to open the cage. Regrettably, Dane had to admit that he didn’t either, having already been stripped of literally anything that wasn’t clothing. With a sigh, he felt the Oath, corrupted as it was, begin to settle down around him like a cloak of pain. Ignoring the order any longer would be unwise, and definitely not help any plans of his.

Dane scooted closer to the cage, at once attracting the attention of the Hawks, who still fluttered wildly. He expected fully that they would move to attack him, given the situation and his identity as a human.

One of them let out a screech, and Dane resolved himself not to flinch away from the bars.

Surprisingly, though, the one who screeched simply hopped in front of him on the other side of the bars, and it only took a brief moment for Dane to figure out why.

This was the same one that he’d formed a connection with before. Dane remembered the incident solemnly, noting the cub in another of the small cages against the wall. Ultimately, it hadn’t mattered, but it warmed his heart knowing that the Red Hawk and its family hadn’t decided to eat the poor little guy.

“Trapped!? Trapped, why!?” The hawk with a pair of chevrons stacked vertically on her chest, both a deep red, spoke with words formed of intent and awareness far beyond anything he’d heard a Red Hawk should possess from such a freshly born connection. Dane couldn’t help but gasp at the sensation, his feelings of amazement suppressing his fears.

The hawk, too, looked surprised, having felt the counter contact of Dane’s emotions, before looking almost… haughtily at him, obviously relishing the sense of admiration.

Dane’s expression flattened out immediately. ‘Yup, gonna have to be sure to raise this one right.’ 

He cleared his throat, mentally speaking, and tried his best to push his words and intent to their link. While he’d never had any practice with this sort of in depth communication, he felt as though the connection between them was more like a limb, once forgotten, but now fully functional. Perhaps that was an exaggeration - it was certainly weak and could be strengthened, but he could intrinsically tell how he was supposed to use the connection.

‘We’re all trapped. The men outside are… bad men-’ Dane decided not to get into the depth required to explain what a bandit, mercenary, or poacher was at this time ‘-that want to take us all away. They’ll force you to do things even if you don’t want to, so we need to get you and your family out. But, I need you all to ca-’

Just as he was going to ask her to calm her kin down, the flock of them immediately settled, and to his shock had huddled up closer to the bars. For a split second, he marveled at the sight before refocusing himself. Through their connection, he could tell that this Red Hawk was communicating what she’d learned back through to her kin. It was no surprise to see beasts communicate with one another, most species at least could communicate with their own. But the depth at which these hawks did… He almost believed that the whole lot of them were aberrerations. 

Without any time to consider that, the bird spoke, much more fluently than last time, ‘You said get us out? What about you?’ 

Dane immediately felt both touched and put on the spot that she’d noticed his wording. He tried to put on as convincing a smile as he could, ‘I’ll figure something out.’ 

Unfortunately, while he knew how to use the connection, he wasn’t experienced with the nuance of it. Which included the fact that the hawk could virtually read him like a book and knew that Dane didn’t believe his own words in the slightest. 

‘No! We stick together.’ She looked at him with a look of defiance in her raptor gaze that sent a chill down his spine. 

And, as Dane looked to the other hawks, noted that each set of intelligent eyes that rested on him shared that same expression.

‘This… is going to be much harder than I’d expected…’ 

 

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Charles knew that he had to be careful and advance slowly, making certain to pick up every clue that he could find so that he could better ensure that he wasn’t thrown off the trail. Every time he slowed down, though, the only thing he could hear in his mind was the echoing warble of chicks in a then safe and cozy nest. The feeling of  soothing warmth as they lay against him, sheltering him and nursing his battered mind back to some semblance of stability. They had been there for him after he’d died. They were there for him and had shown him what a true family was like, one that didn’t just up and abandon him.

‘I need to be there.’ He thought to himself again as his heart clenched and his vision sharpened. He took in every detail he could as he rushed through the green. Charles desperately wove through the trees, his eyes scathingly searching the trees and underbrush. The risk of missing something was great, though, and he forced himself to serpentine through the trail, making sure that what he did see was real, and not a false positive, or worse, a deception by his quarry. He didn’t reasonably know how a mule drawn wagon of that size was moving through the forest at all given the knotted and unstable footing presented. Even more frustrating was the fact that the trail itself was incredibly light, and there was little in the way of any kind of smell. 

A slight waft of coppery blood, however, kept him moving in the right direction. 

One of them had been injured, of that he was sure. While they weren’t bleeding profusely anymore, he was keyed into the smell now. It astounded him distantly how accurate his sense of smell was, but he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be nearly as capable of tracking them if he hadn’t known exactly the scent he was looking for.

It was hard to describe how a robust sense of smell really felt. As a human, he could detect different odors, but it was… almost like trying to compare someone who could read with braille - but was only still learning - to someone who had perfect vision and had mastery over several languages to the extent of superb fluency. 

In a sense, he could almost parse strands of smell, knowing the composition of something and being able to infer a handful of things almost automatically. One might think that it made tracking something terribly easy, but the truth wasn’t quite so plain. He could detect everything around him by some smell, some unique concoction that wasn’t quite the same between certain areas, and far be it for two animals to smell the same. It was a fingerprint, but in that same vein, it made identifying things somewhat difficult at times. The more strands of a scent that matched his mental profile, the more he could guess that it was identical to something he’d seen before. 

For his senses, if he could familiarize himself with a particular scent, he’d be able to tell it apart even in a crowd, even from old scents that had begun to degrade and deplete with time and the plying hand of nature. That he had some kind of profile off of the bit of blood back in the nest meant that he could at least track this source, so long as others of its kin didn’t run around bleeding all over the place. With a bigger sample size, he’d be able to ignore even that, they’d-

‘I just referred to a human as an it…’ Helplessly, Charles shook his head and pushed the observation out of his consideration. It would be best not to overly - for lack of a better word - humanize those that might well be his mortal enemies. 

Charles would have liked to say that he might hesitate if it came to combat, but he was very wrong. The opposite was the truth. He relished the idea of coming into violent contact with the people who would dare kidnap his family. He wanted to beat them down into a bloody pulp until they shuffled off the end of their mortal coil, clucking humanity be damned!

Did that make him a bad person? Perhaps, but Charles was already resolving to himself that he wasn’t the same person who had come to this world. Whether it was his values, his rationalization of the situation, or just the sublimated instincts of the Phorus he’d become, Charles accepted that he wasn’t going to be able to deceive himself into acting like a human just because he’d been one once. Form equaled function, and Charles emphatically couldn’t convince himself that he wasn’t a two plus meter tall killer bird. 

He steadied himself as he bypassed a thicket of bushes with great leaps across tree trunks. He flapped his wings and glided as he did so, vaulting himself higher with every jump. With the greater vantage point, he peered through the greenery around him. More trees greeted him, nothing else besides for the time being. 

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Gritting his beak, he made some mental judgements on distance, ‘The trail is getting warmer quickly, but I don’t know how far from Greenleaf the road extends. In the first place, they’re not heading directly to the road…’ 

The fact that they were roughing it in the forest gave Charles the opportunity to catch up to them. He didn’t bother thinking about why they might be doing so at the moment, only promising himself yet another thing to consider later on. 

Charles was mid dash when he stopped his flurry of motion with a start, the coppery scent had nearly disappeared. Barely managing to contain his surge of emotion, Charles immediately moved backwards and in a wide circle.

The scent did not pick back up in any other direction, however. 

‘No, no, no, what the pecking hell? How does that happen? Where did the smell go?’ He scurried around the clearing, stealth rapidly diminishing in priority as his eyes searched every square inch of terrain. Even so, he wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but that was secondary. 

‘Calm, be calm. Think it through, don’t get in your own way…’ Charles took a forced, deep breath and peered around more, ‘The smell goes away when the source does. So, he could have simply cleaned up. Or they could have used a masking scent. How does that help me? That would be…’ He took another deep breath, this time savoring the aroma of the forest around him. 

It was loamy, earthen, with a damp vibrancy that he’d come to associate closely with the woodlands he called home. It varied in flavor depending on where in the forest you were, with a few strands extra of dried earth for the area he was in now, as well as the slightly lesser taste of wild essence in the air. That wasn’t what he was looking for, though, instead parsing through what belonged in order to find what didn’t belong. He walked forward, breathing deep the lingering strands from the bloody cotton cloth into his senses. 

‘There.’ He paused, smelling something he strained to identify as anything particularly special. In fact, he realized he'd been smelling it all along on the trail, but hadn’t managed to place it. It was some kind of scent that tasted… neutral, like his brain wanted to pass over it. It fits so well in the surrounding climate, that he was having trouble noticing it even when he was looking for it. If it weren’t for the slight taste of the scent mingling with blood and how fresh it was, he still wouldn’t  have detected it. 

‘Whatever the peck it is, he slathered his bloody cloth in it. They must be wearing it, too, but it has to be older. Otherwise I think I could follow the guy normally. What is that stuff?’ The question gave Charles pause; he couldn’t parse anything about the scent even when he tried to divide up the strands of it. It resisted his attempts to take note of it, let alone do anything more specific.

‘Is this a magic-related thing?’ Grimacing, Charles did his best to force something resembling an imprint of the sensation in his subconscious. Maybe if the smell was potent enough, either by freshness of application or proximity, he’d be able to latch on and follow it.

It did not bode well for Charles that there were things out there that could so effectively evade his senses. ‘Best to find out now, rather than later with someone sneaking up on me…’ 

Charles picked his way into the underbrush once more, noting the scent was remarkably fresh if his nose had anything to say about it. In time, it’d be just as hard to pick up on as the rest, the aged stuff still nearly invisible to his senses. If he only had that trace to follow he was uncertain that he could find it again if he wandered off of it.

He picked up speed only when he felt that he was getting better at keeping track of the sensation - or not-sensation, as it sometimes felt - and could swear he felt his blood running hotter and hotter in his veins. The forest around him blurred at the edges of his vision as he focused only on the trail, narrowing his awareness to that single focus. Everything else was secondary, and Charles found himself reveling in the sensation of his blood singing in tandem with his drive. Useless things fell away, the what ifs, the consequences of what he might do, even the potential risk to his own life. 

The only thing that mattered was that something of his was taken, and that something was irreplaceable. 

The rest of the landscape on his journey moved by his perception like an impressionist painting, the only thing that was in focus was the trail, and now that he was in this state, he followed it without deviation. He felt no reservations about his task, and sank into a strange half consciousness as he devoted all of his concentration to succeeding.

He slowed as he noted the scent had grown stronger and stronger, nearly keeping his body parallel to the forest floor, low to the ground and using the shadows to darken his colorful feathers. 

‘I can smell you,’ Charles picked up on the smell of the humans beneath their obscuring scent. The salty odor of blood and sweat was the first and easiest to pick up, but other scents mingled about too, though he couldn’t place them without a frame of reference. 

Charles ignored them and slid through the undergrowth silently. Carefully he picked through the creeping vines and blooming plants, ensuring that when he slid past a bush it was at its lowest parts possible, obscured from any prying eyes from above. The wagon came into view, still more than thirty meters away, before Charles began to search the area with his eyes. 

Two mules pulled the wagon onerously, small sigils on both their hooves and the wagon's wheels that glowed faintly to Charles’ essence infused eyes. He could see how the mules’ traction never waned, and how the wheels of the cart seemed to almost flex slightly with the roots, allowing them to more easily roll over them. In any other time he would be impressed, but Charles’ gaze snapped to the three men who loosely surrounded the wagon. At the front was the leader, or at least whom he presumed to be the leader. Essence seemed to rush towards him, trying to saturate his form, yet somehow Charles could tell that his body was barely able to make use of it. Whether it was too meager in density or not, Charles didn’t know, but he figured that the man might be weakened then. 

He could potentially be taken down first, but he was also a risk. ‘Check the others first,’ the assessing voice in Charles’ mind directed his gaze to the other two.

One was the man that Charles was fairly certain was the second in command. A strangely concrete bundle of essence was almost visible within the man's eyes, though Charles couldn’t get any better of an idea of that from so far out. 

‘Dangerous… Might not be able to disable him in one go.’ Charles clacked his beak quietly with irritation before looking to the last man.

‘He’ll do.’ Grimly, he knew the moment he looked at him that he was inferior to the other two. A threat, to be sure, but his essence level seemed only somewhat higher than the Ironback Badger’s that he preyed upon.

Approaching swiftly, Charles felt like his body was burning as adrenaline pumped through him. A cold and wrathful energy suffused his muscles, the essence in his legs trickling through and nearly muting his every footstep. What few sounds had been made in his travels vanished as he planned his strike. He knew that real combat was rarely a dogfight; it was brutal and quick, only drawn out when both sides were equal.

Charles did not intend to make things equal.

He could hear them talking to one another, but their words flowed past his ears without being processed. Focusing, Charles stopped his approach for just a second, lining up his body and flexing his legs before flaring his wings with their clawed fingers. Aiming his head towards his target, Charles' eyes narrowed to pin-pricks as a low growl was suppressed from his throat. His instincts demanded a declaration of battle with the initial strike, but Charles pushed that demand down with his will, feeling like he was trying to keep a pressurized hose from exploding. 

All at once, Charles began his dash forward, muscles explosively surging with essence as his stealth capabilities were strained to their limits. Even more essence drenched the formation, putting more and more energy into sheer power. He’d been more than twenty meters away when he’d begun the dash, and it felt like he’d traversed the bulk of that distance in the blink of an eye. Charles watched as the man, wielding a spear, seemed to waver on his steady track forward.

Nothing else came of it as Charles smashed his open beak into the side of the man's neck, hitting him so hard and fast that he lifted him with the impact. A sharp crack reverberated from Charles' beak, and instead of a struggle he found nothing but dead weight. The man’s spear spiraled off into the jungle and, without slowing, the Phorus vanished once more into the forest - seemingly gone without a trace.

 

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

‘What the fuck?’ August spun and stared at the spot where one of his men had been standing seconds ago. He’d heard something in the forest, something that hit a tree, and a sharp crack, but he couldn’t parse exactly where they were. It had happened too quickly, and when he turned to Oscar and the last other man, he realized that their number had suddenly decreased by one.

Wrath and fury boiled in August, but he didn’t scream out in rage. It wasn’t out of any sense of dignity, but instead out of a sickly, cold sense of dread.

‘Whatever the fuck that was might still be here.’ August’s instincts were rarely wrong, and this time he felt his teeth grind while his gut roiled.

“Where-what and the fuck?” Oscar panned around, realizing the man that had been behind the cart was missing. He spun, no doubt using his essence enhanced eyes, but saw nothing.

‘Hit and run, out of his visual range before Oscar noticed. Is that luck? Or does it know? Venris’ teeth, what kind of fucking predator lives in this neck of the woods? This whole forest is God’s cursed!’ August snarled mentally before he settled himself.

Oscar turned his gaze on August for a moment before he turned towards the forest in the direction that the noise had come from. He took one step before August shouted at him, “Don’t. Let me check, stay real tight on that cart.”

Hesitation lingered on Oscar’s face before he nodded. August trusted his second, but he also had no idea what the hell they were dealing with yet. It wasn’t as though his eyes could see everything, that simply didn’t exist, and anything that could counter that was his achilles heel. Hopefully that’s all it was, because if whatever kind of monster they’d attracted was just that fast, August knew that he’d be the only one who might come out of this alive, given how depleted he was. 

‘Never thought I’d regret taking a job so much. Samut’s arse, I guess this is all those ill-wishes I’ve earned over the years.’ He shook his head, keeping his stance loose and ready to dodge on a moment's notice. As much as he tried, he couldn’t keep his heart from hammering, the rush of blood filling his ears. Still, August made certain to keep track of his surroundings, and regularly kept his head on a swivel. Any time he did so, he kept the side of his body that wasn’t in his field of view to a tree. 

In a few seconds, he made it to the area where he’d heard the sound, and almost felt his blood chill at the realization of what it was. 

“The spear he was holding… ,” he murmured to himself in dismay. 

‘If it’s just the spear… he must have been either killed or incapacitated instantly, otherwise he would have screamed. The spear flew from his hands; did he throw it? Did it get knocked away? He wouldn’t have had time to throw it, so it was knocked away…’ He snapped his attention up as he swept the spear into his free hand, gaze grim. ‘How fast was it moving to get knocked this far away?’ 

August felt his gut sink at that realization, before he spun and began sprinting back to the wagon. 

 

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oscar felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, almost like a sixth sense for what was about to happen. Instinct was the only thing that saved him, as he dove to the ground while casting an errant sweep behind him with his spear. The sound of a beak snapping shut where his head had been sent chills down his spine, even as a foot connected clumsily to his gut.

All at once it felt like someone had just stabbed him and dropped a bag of bricks on his ribs. He rolled with the impact inelegantly, coming up with his spear braced to meet a potential charge. His eyes widened as his field of view was nearly filled with vibrant red and blue feathers, the spearhead coming just shy of its chest. The beast reared back just out of range, its complete silence as unnerving as the relentlessness in its attack. 

Oscar winced as he came up, finding his back firmly against the wagon’s opening. ‘No more backwards retreat, then, but I can brace against the wagon.’ He thought, adrenaline momentarily helping him keep his thoughts off of the fact that he could feel at least two broken ribs grinding up against one another from the impact.

He took a stifled breath and repositioned the spear, “August! Help here! Big fuckin’-” he paused momentarily to really take in the beast, “-bird.” He then mumbled partly at the bird and himself, “Not familiar with you, Kingdom specialty? Seems about right.”

The bird tilted its head to the side slightly, and for a moment August felt the unreal sense that it might well have understood him. 

Of course, any thought of negotiating with it went away with the clear sight of blood on its beak. 

Then again, you never know if you don’t try.

“Aye, big guy, any chance I can convince you to go fuff about somewhere else?” Oscar winced, still keeping the spear between them, glad that the beast seemed to be giving it a very healthy respect for the moment. 

Then came the sounds of the Red-Hawks as they chattered, loudly enough that even the sound dampening in the wagon didn’t keep it from being clearly audible. All at once, any more diplomatic considerations that the bird might have had vanished in a plume of rage. Its feathers flared out widely, an intimidation display that Oscar had to admit was extremely effective.

‘It’s here for the hawks? You’ve got to be kidding me!’ Oscar grit his teeth, slashing with his spear as it cut a line across feathers that were altogether tougher than they ought to be. 

In the next moment, the still-silent bird slapped the shaft of the spear aside with its wings, and Oscar’s muscles clenched as he realized he’d been too focused on its beak. He felt the talons cut through his leather and pierce lightly through the chainmail undershirt he wore beneath it. The impact stole his breath away and launched him hard over the edge of the wagon, planting him firmly within it and with his spear fumbling away from his grasp. He coughed up blood as he landed, his wild-eyed gaze landing on the bird with no small amount of terror.

It moved forward to finish the job.

And then stopped as a spear hit it in the side.

‘Good shot, August,’ Oscar felt relief wash over him, plucked from the depths of despair. The bird stuttered for a moment, looking down to its side, red blood staining its feathers as the spear sagged. 

Contemptuously, the bird grasped the spear with clumsy but strong fingers and began to pull the spear out to both Oscar and August’s rapidly growing fears. The beast - ‘No, that’s a Venris cursed’ monster,’ Oscar mentally corrected, drew in a deep, hissing breath as the head of the spear finally cleared from the wound, spilling blood.

That very same breath, filled with pain, rage, and no small amount of hatred was filled with essence, and followed by a shrill, terrifying shriek. For Oscar and the occupants of the cart, it was like being hit in the face with an almost physical wave of essence, prickling skin with razor blade intent and terrifying blood lust.

That was more than enough to overcome the trained mentalities of the mules that pulled the cart, and with a desperate, panic-driven tempo, they immediately took off through the forest, essence sigils flaring wildly with the added draw.

Another shriek followed after, no less potent, as the Phorus set to run the cart down.

It took three steps before a sharp pain tore its attention downwards to the spear head that cut across both its legs, leaving only shallow cuts across them but fouling its footing all the same. The bird crashed head over heels onto the ground, but August couldn’t capitalize on the attack, given that he’d just thrown his weapon with a burst of essence in the first place.

“The hells are you built for? Speed or strength? Blasted cursed forest,” August grit his teeth as he scooped up the previous spear he’d thrown, trying to ignore the fact that it felt like his damned arms were nearly yanked from their sockets from tripping the thing. 

It stood and faced him, and August couldn’t help but mentally breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Good, at least those three get to live now.’ 

“C’mon, big bird, let's see what you got.” August mustered up as much bravado as he could.

 

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