The feeling of time running out was stronger than ever before. Yet, he’d accomplished nothing related to Ere and Sorin’s predicament.
The Eagle King was his last hope. He prayed and wished meeting Sol would lead to something concrete. A clue to help Sorin in modern times.
But he didn’t know anything for certain.
There was never anything certain in these quests. So, he simply followed his gut and kept on climbing up the mountain.
As they rounded a rocky bend, the path becoming steeper and narrower as they went so that they had to walk single-file, Sin froze up ahead, hackles raised visibly on the back of his neck.
Ben didn’t have to hear the two Immortals’ thoughts to know that danger was approaching. He could sense it himself in the eerie stillness.
There was no wind blowing; it seemed that the sky itself was holding its breath. There were no sounds, not even the distant calls of birds.
But, gradually, Ben began to pick up on aswooshingsound, the muffled flap of gigantic wings.
Because of his dragon training, Ben was familiar with the aerial approach of something that size. It was unlike any other sound in the world, manmade or otherwise.
The raptors had found them.
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Zai braced himself for the raptors’ approach.
Of all the animal spirits, these were the most difficult to kill.
Not the least because none of the Dark Ones could spout wings and take the Beasts on in their own element. The most the Hunters could do was shoot arrows and throw javelins into the sky. The attacks were clumsy, and they were always at a disadvantage.
The same was true of serpents. They could never hope to win against those Beasts in their own domain. It was far too easy for a serpent to destroy their ships and drag the Hunters and soldiers into the ocean, where, if they weren’t torn apart in massive jaws with rows of sharp teeth, they’d drown on their own eventually.
But the other reason the raptors were the most lethal amongst the Beasts was that they were the best organized. They flew and fought always in formation. An attack on one raptor was an attack on all.
While the felines formed clans and prides, they were mostly solitary by nature. They certainly didn’t all live in one place. And the serpents were the most reclusive, preferring to stay to themselves a thousand leagues beneath the seas.
Raptors flocked together. Their ruling structure mirrored the Dark Ones, but with a King at the helm instead of a Queen. Legends had it that in bygone times, it was the raptors who led all the other Beasts. They were the generals and strategists.
When the annual hunt came, it was always the felines that suffered the most casualties. Accordingly, the landed Beasts also posed the most threat to the Dark Queen’s rule, given that they inhabited the same lands.
If the raptors and the felines were to ever join forces and launch a coordinated attack on the Dark empire, Zai didn’t know who would come out the victor. The serpents stayed in their domain for the most part, so they were never much of a threat.
More than once he wondered why the Eagle King and the Tiger King didn’t form a military alliance. Once upon a time, all three Kings of Beasts, along with their warrior dragons, were fabled to have fought against an entire pantheon of gods and won.
At great cost, it was true. But they’d triumphed against all odds. They won their freedom.
Why they hadn’t joined together to overthrow the Dark rule over the last few millennia was a mystery to Zai.
But he could take a good guess—when all you’d ever known was war, violence and bloodshed, it wore on you. Eventually, you stopped caring why you were fighting. And then, you stopped fighting altogether.
As the great wings beat closer, Zai heard the raptors’ thoughts:
Landed Beast, Dark One and human, you trespass at your own risk into our domain. Explain your presence before we throw you off the mountain.
Hell.
Zai had already fallen down one mountain in recent history. He was not eager to endure another near-death tumble.
Sin seemed to take the unwelcoming greeting in stride, for he shifted to human form and replied out loud:
“We are here to see the Eagle King. The human is on a quest that only he can relate to the King of Raptors himself. My name is Sin, and the Dark One is Zai. We are merely Ben’s protectors on this journey. We are not a threat. I would not have transformed if I planned to fight you.”