Aislen was surrounded. Two little birdies, pretty of feather, long of snout, with plenty of sharp teeth. Their leathery grey muzzles came peering out of the underbrush, dark stains ringing the flesh around their eyes. Orange feathers cowled the backs of their skulls and their long necks, turning gold as they continued down the powerful, compact body, with enormous powerful legs that tore up the earth beneath three-taloned feet.

He could have been looking in a mirror! He liked biting and ripping and kicking too! He didn’t have feathers, true, but other’n that - “Come hither to me, oh my long lost sons.” He sang. The strangest, softest voice came cooing from those monstrous lips. He could whistle a bird down from the heavens.

At least until all the local pigeons had heard about what happened to the first one.

“What-” The man shackled to his right arm hissed. “Are you doing?”

“Are you mad?” The one on his left barked - a bit slow on the uptake, Aislen had to say, if he was only noticing just now - starting to edge away until the chains stopped him.

Aislen just grinned, and waited, the raptors coming forward, slowly, edging towards him and the two men who were pulling at the chains with all their strength now, trying to drag him away as the beasties came forward, forward.

“Ha!” With a sudden cry he simply swung his left arm forward, and the main chained to it followed. There was a glorious moment as the poor lad sailed through the air, upside down, his face a rictus of fear as Aislen grinned so wide and open-mouthed that his head might have been at risk at coming unhinged.

Then the boy smashed into the bird, and they were both slammed against the ground. The screaming started just after that, the reality of his arm being dislocated and snapped in seven places hitting all at once after a moment of dazed shock, but Aislen had no time for sorries and thank yous.

The other birdy was leaping towards him, and now he yanked his right hand forward, bringing the hisser, that nay-sayer and dour character, flying towards the birdie. Swat!

Swat!

He swung them ‘bout like clubs, great bloody bludgeons of meat getting bent and twisted and wailing as he used them up.

But he didn’t see the third birdie, did he? The one hiding in the bush?

It slammed into his back, great rending claws sinking into his meat as it pushed him towards the ground.

He screamed, of course, he screamed, but he laughed too, and rolled and fought and managed to buck the raptor free from his shoulders, getting on top of it, wrapping his chains around its throat. His hand pressed down on the underside of its muzzle, holding its jaws back from his sweating, mad-grinning face. Slowly, with blood dribbling down his back, he strained and choked the beastie till it was all dry of breath, its claws scrabbling over his forearms, ripping the skin open to the red beneath.

The man on the other end of the chain was alive during all this, a groaning, sad pile of sobs and whimpers. His arm was bent the wrong way now. The lad on the other arm was unconscious, hit his head one too many times.

When he had the thing dead, its legs ceasing to kick, the toes curling up, he let out a sigh of triumph. There was nothing more satisfying than feeling something break.

As he knelt there, dripping with blood and sweat, Aislen heard in the distance a vast roar. The shaking of the jungle. The approach of a vast beast.

Something told him he was home.

Henri’s wisps were proving invaluable. With them, they could avoid the places where poisonous sporing mushrooms clustered thick, a jungle of their sleep-oozing stalks, and the ambushes of the clever terror birds.

That left the crows in the trees above. Tyrna watched their shadows follow the group as they moved. Above, the sky was changing as she watched, a white grid with blue glowing between the spaces stretching over the vault. It was a vast and beautiful thing to behold.

The jungle around them was no less strange. Everything here glowed faintly, the little lantern-floats she’d encountered before marking their path by rising into the air as they went - useful, she realized, for letting the hunting ground’s predators follow them. The curl-topped grasses that shone emerald swayed as they push their way through. Vast mushrooms let loose spores the size of her fist, bobbing through the air, balls of fluff that went tumbling on the breeze.

It was like nothing she’d ever seen.

They’d met the feathered terrors twice more, each time sending them off with an initial few kills. But they were still following the group at a distance, and they were growing in numbers. There was a swarm coalescing around them, gathering in size and fury, and when the cowardly raptors felt they had the advantage, they would strike for real.

Henri grimaced, snapping his eyes open. The strain of constantly sending out his wandering eyes was adding up, and she could see him losing his grip.

“Three more just arrived. There’s twenty seven now. I’m not sure-” He was interrupted by the warcry, the hooting, piping laughter of the terror birds. She saw him flinch at the sound.

“Oh my, we have gotten them angry.” Draig said. The old greybeard chuckled nervously.

“If we stop here, I can work on a spell. Something to scare them.” Mhurr had been fumbling with his spellwork for the past several minutes, knotting fiery golden characters into a central design that rotated and twisted in ways that made her eyes hurt.

“No, if we scare them, they’ll just be back.” On this she was sure. They were Dungeon-creatures. Their first instinct wasn’t to themselves, but to their home.

“That’s why we take the window of opportunity and retreat.” He hissed back at her.

“Forward.” She responded. Always forward. She had been told she needed to see something, and until she knew what, there was no retreat in Tyrna’s mind.

“But-”

“You heard her.” Caoirre cut in. The greying swordmaster was a hard man to argue with, his voice as strict as steel.

“Up ahead…” Henri was suffering, the toll of using so many wisps making his voice begin to shake. His hands were clenched around his chest as if he was freezing cold, fingers clutching the fabric of his tunic, squeezing down until the knuckles went white. “There’s the breach, guarded by a creature. Half-man… half-spider…”

“Are you going to be alright?” Tyrna asked. Henri just nodded, forcing his chattering teeth to spread into a smile. She doubted he could have fought off a chicken - but if he said he was good to keep going she would take him at his word. “Come on then. Let’s see him for ourselves.”

Cabochon stood over the breach, guarding the precious egg that waited to hatch in its royal bed of woven ferns. Fires danced along his fingers. They were Mana-flame, raw power left unshaped, the clumsy byproduct of his work to craft the heavens into place-

It was almost done now. The vast grid of white and silver, the glowing diamonds of blue between. Like an impressionistic sky. It added something surreal to the jungle below, something not-quite-right and yet beautiful.

But was it enough?

The arrow almost caught him off-guard. He wore his armor, the pearled plate and the skeletal helm with its rising spikes like a crown around the brow, and with a sudden twist the arrow winged off the shoulder instead of piercing through the joint. His head snapped about.

Humans in the brush.

At their head was a man with two swords, wiry and quick.

Just behind him, a black-haired woman with a red bow. She knocked another arrow.

A mage, holding a knot of spellwork in place with an effort that made his hands tremble.

A bald-headed man the Maker recognized as the scout who’d first mapped the ravine.

A white-bearded old man, walking with the help of a staff, a book unfolded in his free hand,

Cabochon lifted his glaive, stepping forward slowly. The cold exhaustion of shaping the hunting grounds was still with him, sapping his strength, weighing down his every motion. This would be a hard fight.

It was a fight he was determined to win. For the glory of the Maker.