Chapter Twelve

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Chapter Twelve

Glenn couldn’t stop himself from bleating in agony as the thunderbird carried him away from his friends. The massive bird's talons had pierced his skin in at least three places, causing pain to lance through his body like frozen lightning every time it jostled him—and because of how awkwardly it was flying, he was being jostled a lot. Not that he would have expected the ride to be comfortable in the best of conditions, but even grasped in its monstrous claws he could tell that something was wrong.

With some difficulty, he managed to twist his long neck around—he was still in his buck form, and shifting now would only tear his existing wounds open even further—and looked at the ground below. He'd hoped that maybe he could spot a landmark, perhaps a town or a lake, that would give him some idea of where he was or where it was taking him. But they were so high in the clouds that glimpses of the ground were few and far between, only occurring when the thunderbird's energy seemed to flag for a moment or two. And even then, they were traveling at such a blinding speed that all Glenn could make out below them was a dull blur of colors.

Instead, gritting his teeth against the pain, he turned to look upwards. What he saw took his breath away. This wasn't the first time he'd seen the thunderbird, but seeing it this close was absolutely awe inspiring. Its sheer size was difficult for him to comprehend. He had to repeatedly tell himself that he wasn't looking up at the night sky, as only that could account for the staggering amount of blackness stretched out above him. Its feathers shimmered even in the dim light of the storm, and the proud way it carried itself, even in defeat, made it look downright majestic. It was the kind of thing that people could catch a fleeting glimpse of, and then spend the rest of their lives worshipping the mere memory of it. Was it possible that something so vast, so terrible, could be anything but a god?

But there was clearly something wrong with it. Glenn wasn't able to see its face well at this angle, but every minute or so its head would droop forward, like it was on the verge of fainting. Had it been wounded? What on earth could have managed to injure a beast of such incredible size and strength? Another, equally strong monster? The thought that two of these things could be flying around the woods terrified him even more than the predicament he was in.

Abruptly, the landscape below them changed from woods and scattered farmland to gray stone. It took Glenn’s overtaxed mind a few seconds to understand what his eyes were seeing. There was a mountain beneath them, he realized. Beneath them! The thunderbird flew so high that even the snowcapped peak was hundreds, if not thousands, of yards below them.

The freezing high-altitude winds carried the thunderbird in slow, almost lazy circles around the stony monolith, as if it were searching for something. He briefly wondered if it was hunting for more prey, but realized that couldn’t have been it. The thunderbird already had him in its clutches. It would have no reason to hunt more at least until after it had eaten him. What, then?

As frost began to form in his soaking wet fur, his blood sending up clouds of steam, Glenn spotted something. It was at the very summit of the mountain, huge, dark, and strangely circular. Too circular for it to have occurred naturally.

Apparently satisfied that it was safe, the thunderbird swooped down toward the bizarre structure, and in an instant Glenn realized what it was: a nest. A nest so enormous that entire trees had been plucked like blades of grass and stacked haphazardly on top of each other to form the outer edges. And if any doubt remained as to who it belonged to, the thunderbird unclenched its talons, sending Glenn plummeting the last thirty feet to the cold, unforgiving mountaintop.

Glenn's head slammed into the ground hard enough to make his vision go double, but he scrambled to his hooves anyway. He was back to his true form in a matter of seconds. A puncture wound caused his right leg to shake under his weight, but he forced himself to stand firm. He didn't know why the thunderbird had bothered to bring him all the way here to eat him, but he didn't intend to go down easily.

"Instinct!" he growled. Light exploded out of his antlers, and even though he couldn't see it, he could feel them reshaping themselves according to his will. He grasped the bony shafts right above where they connected to his skull and snapped them off. Immediately, they set to work growing back exactly as they had been before, and he clutched his new pair of antler knives in his fists, ready to fight—and most likely die.

To his surprise, though, the thunderbird didn't seem interested in fighting. With a couple clumsy flaps of its wings, it landed on the outer edge of its nest and simply gazed down at him. It was breathing heavily, and it hunched forward as if it had just carried something far heavier than Glenn up here.

The arrow shaft sticking out of its eye was a gruesome sight, and obviously the source of the great bird's distress. But at the same time, Glenn couldn't help but find it strange. Such a tiny wound on such a massive creature shouldn't have been worse than a pinprick to…

The thunderbird turned its head, giving Glenn a better view, and he caught the glimmer of scarlet light shining deep within the wound.

"Skeptic's Stone," he whispered. "You poor bastard."

An injury like that, for a beast like this, would surely kill it. But it would be a drawn out and painful death, its very essence slowly being leached away by the arrowhead embedded in its eye. Was that why it had brought him here, he wondered? Had it somehow recognized him as a fellow magical creature and hoped that he would take pity on it and remove the arrow?

And more importantly, Glenn realized, did he even want to heal it?

He eyed the edges of the nest. To something as big as the thunderbird, the trees and logs were pressed so close together that they formed a solid wall. But to a creature Glenn's size, there were gaps that he could easily fit between. Perhaps he could use one as an escape route.

Cautiously, trying to judge how the monster would react, he took a step toward the—

CRUNCH.

The sound was so unexpected that Glenn's deer instincts nearly made him bolt in the opposite direction. But the cool head he had spent years developing in order to lead his pack kept control, and he looked down to see what he had stepped on.

At first he couldn't make heads or tails of it. It was a light purple color, and looked like some kind of thin and flat stone. Maybe a kind of shale? But why would the thunderbird bring shards of shale up to its—

It was eggshell.

Glenn stumbled backwards with a gasp, only to step on another shard of eggshell. He froze, letting his eyes take in the floor of the nest for the first time since he'd gotten here.

Broken eggs. Shattered and left strewn about like garbage. At least a dozen of them. No, more than that.

Suddenly the thunderbird's fury made sense to Glenn. Who had done this? Who even could have done this? Both in terms of strength and barbarity, to destroy an entire clutch of defenseless eggs was…

A soft purple light began to gleam from somewhere behind Glenn. Slowly, he turned to look, and a horrible chill went down his spine.

No. Not the entire clutch. There was still one egg left. And suddenly Glenn understood why he had been brought here. Not to heal the thunderbird.

But to feed its offspring.

NEXT CHAPTER: 1/29/2025