A group of flying creatures whoosh in our direction. They look like a hybrid between heavy-duty excavators and condors, and their shrieks make even Vickie, the siren, cringe.
Ariel aims her bow at the sky and looses an arrow.
“Anyone know what a group of condors is called?” she asks as the arrow hits one of the flying creatures in the eye.
“A condo,” Felix says and launches the four giant rocks he’s been holding in each of the hands of his suit.
One of the rocks bashes the condor that Ariel already wounded on the head, and the thing drops, squashing some of the enemy troops as a bonus.
The ballista fires with a loud snap, dropping a dozen condors.
Moving with uber superspeed, Ariel grabs another arrow from her quiver and downs another bird. “Is that short for condominium?”
Rowan shoots her crossbow, hitting another condor in the chest. “I actually think the term is ‘scarcity.’”
Ariel looses yet another arrow, finishing the monster Rowan hit. “That’s dumb. What we have is an abundance of condors, or the opposite of a scarcity.”
That’s an understatement. The condo or so-called scarcity of these monsters is a hundred thousand strong.
“Everyone, fire!” Napoleon shrieks.
We obey, releasing a cloud of arrows and rocks so thick it blots out the magma sky.
Most of the condors get pierced by the projectiles, but a few manage to survive.
They dive for us.
The siren shrieks upward, and two seconds later, any birds within earshot are stripped to constituent parts. Still, some are mid-dive, including one that seems to be headed for—
I swing my katana just as a beak smashes into my temple, nearly blinding me with pain as I slice the creature in half.
Staggering, I prepare to leave my body to heal myself, then remember that the plan calls for hiding my powers.
Kojo—the real one—must’ve been keeping an eye on the proceedings. He waves his/Asha’s hand, and my wound instantly heals.
“Air support!” Napoleon yells as another condo/scarcity of flying monsters swoops our way.
A large portion of the Escapists take flight, including the fake twins. They start shooting multicolored lightning bolts at the horrific birds, lighting up the sky like fireworks.
Some condors make it through and dive down at us again.
“My zombies are gone!” Rowan yells. “Make more.”
Before anyone can do that, a condor smashes into Napoleon’s head, and the general disappears.
“Should I bring him back?” I urgently ask my sister. “I’m the only one who has the link.”
“It’s not worth revealing yourself,” she replies in Kojo’s voice. “Instead, help me make sure the monsters don’t kill my husband.”
Of course. If that happens, Kojo will turn homicidally insane—not something I want for my sister and niece.
Before I can reply, yet another condor swoops down, and I cleave it in half with my katana.
Horrific shrieks emanate from the battlefield. It’s a squadron of tardigrade-like beasts; they’re slithering toward us with a speed one wouldn’t expect from their ten-foot-long sea-cow bodies.
Both Rowan’s zombies and our dream constructs rush to intercept.
In the distance, the warthog/mole rat cavalry mobilize, so the remaining Escapists take flight and rush over there, as per Napoleon’s plan.
The tardigrades slam into our forces and kill a bunch of my patients, as well as the dream construct of Napoleon, before anyone can react. Moments later, a large contingent of zombies are also torn apart by tardigrade claws, and one large monster manages to bite off Frankenstein’s head.
A condor gets too close to Kojo. Moving in unison, my sister and I launch arrows at the monster, piercing it in the chest and the head.
Robin Hood avenges his fallen dream-construct comrade by turning the large tardigrade into a pincushion with his arrows, but he pays with his life when eight claws of another rip him into shreds.
In the sky, a cloud of skeletal turkey vultures comes to the aid of the condors.
Ariel takes one of them out with her bow. “I think a group of vultures is called a kettle,” she says, eyes narrowed.
Felix hurls a stone but misses his vulture. “Or a committee.”
Rowan chuckles. “My favorite collective noun for vultures is a wake. Now, what do you call a group of collective nouns?”
Ariel dispatches a condor and a vulture. “Maybe a glaring of nouns, like with cats?”
Ignoring the rest of that insane conversation, I check on our Escapist air support, particularly my brother-in-law.
Though they’re making decent progress with the bird menace, I can’t help the feeling that their colorful lightning attacks aren’t as imaginative or effective as mine would’ve been. Kojo is probably the most effective fighter among them—which might be why the birds attack him more often. That or the fact that he looks like Asha and is therefore on Phobetor’s hit list.
I explain my observations to Asha, ending with, “I expected more from the Escapists, given their extensive experience with dreamwalking.”
Kojo’s eyebrows furrow on my sister’s face. “Violence isn’t something they’ve ever encountered. That’s the cost of living a sheltered life.”