“There is nothing here for you.”
“But you are here,” Ben pointed out.
“I came to see you.”
Sol gave a brief huff of breath, like an aborted, humorless laugh.
“Then, take a good look and be satisfied. There is nothing else here.”
A cold foreboding descended over Ben, seeping into his skin to chill his very bones.
He had heard many times on this quest that the fabled Eagle King was “lost.”
Gone.
Mad.
And now, the man himself was saying the same:
There is nothing else here.
Even as he stood there in the flesh, tall and imposing. With shoulders so wide they looked like they could carry the world.
Ben shifted slowly closer, and as he did so, loose pebbles rolled off the edge of the plateau to plummet soundlessly into the deep ravines below.
The Eagle King stood balanced with only his heels on the ground, half of his feet already dangling off the edge, as if he was poised to throw himself off the ledge at any moment.
Of course, Ben wouldn’t worry if he did. He was a giant eagle, after all. He wouldn’t be falling to his death.
Would he?
If he stayed in human form as he fell, hewouldfall to certain death.
“It is a long way down,” Sol murmured, as if reading Ben’s thoughts.
“Even an Immortal would die upon impact from such a fall.”
Ben’s breath froze in his throat at that, and then Sol said:
“You had best stay clear of the edge, human. I will not bother to save you if you slipped and fell.”
But what stayed with Ben, despite his words just now, was the threat of suicide that lingered in the air.
He hadn’t been thinking about Ben. He’d been thinking of himself. Ben didn’t know how he knew this, he just did.
“No one needs to plummet to their death,” Ben said with as much conviction as he could muster.
“I need to get back to my time and realm, and you have yet a very long life to live.”
“Do I,” the Eagle King whispered.
“I have existed a very long time already.”
There is no reason to continue. There has not been reason for many thousand years.
Ben could practically hear the unsaid words, Sol’s private thoughts.
He didn’t question what he heard; he only tried to address them.