Adon used Color Change to become effectively invisible once more.

He knew that in the open air, a massive bird like the Golden Eagle would have a speed and power advantage over him. If he was to stand a chance, in the event that they actually fought, it would have to be by using his unique gifts—in particular his nigh-invisibility.

With that done, he rose through the sky, testing the air currents with his body, until he found an altitude where the winds felt so powerful that they could be dangerous to him if he wasn’t careful.

His fragile wings—and consequently his whole body—shook and shuddered like a kite cut loose in a thunderstorm.

It reminded him of how the Golden Eagle’s wing beats had affected him.

The weather isn’t even bad, he thought. The sky was not particularly cloudy. I have to remember not to underestimate the power of the elements. I’m still just a small creature.

He poured Mana into his wings to turn them as hard, strong, and stable as he could. And he held tight to his resolve. The wind continued to wreak havoc, pushing him around and requiring constant adjustments so he would not go careening out of the air current he was riding. Adon refused to shift to a different altitude that would put him in another, slower air current.

It was a trial by fire, forcing him to sharpen his steering and control on the fly so that he could keep pace with his adversary.

At least the Golden Eagle no longer seemed to be drawing further away, now that Adon was putting his body on the line to chase it. But the creature didn’t appear to be getting much closer either.

Adon wondered if it was actually trying to get away from anything. He thought it was extremely unlikely that the great bird would be worried about a scrawny creature like himself, but perhaps it had seen something else, more threatening, and that was why it had seemed to take off and build distance in such a hurry.

The alternative, that this was just the eagle’s normal speed of travel, was daunting to think about. Adon reckoned, as the minutes slowly turned into hours, that he and the eagle were probably doing something like sixty miles per hour. Like a car on the highway. Faster than any butterfly could fly, he imagined, without magic to strengthen its body.

The ground flitted by far beneath them, the trees looking like dark-colored shrubs. Day faded into evening. In the distance behind them, the mighty Claustrian capital receded and turned from a collection of imposing buildings enclosed behind a high wall into a gathering of tiny game pieces.

The eagle was heading into the mountains, Adon could now see.

All he could do was follow as best he could, trying not to burn through too much energy as he sought to ride the strongest air currents he could harness.

The strategy seemed to be working. As the sun approached the horizon, the little brown shape that Adon tracked was steadily getting larger and more recognizable. The butterfly was slowly but surely gaining on the eagle. Perhaps the bird was tiring, or perhaps it was merely slowing down because it was getting closer to home. Either way, in another half hour to an hour, Adon thought he would catch up to the Golden Eagle.

Then he felt the familiar hollow feeling taking hold inside of him.

No, come on, not now…

His Biomass was starting to get low.

But I’m so close!

The empty sensation in his gut continued to develop as he flew for the next few minutes. He finally decided to shift his focus from the air to check his Biomass and saw he had only 4/50 Biomass remaining.

It only confirmed what he already knew. Despite having done his best to limit his physical exertion by keeping to the most powerful air current he could ride, he had already burned through most of his meager reserves of energy. Soon he would have to stop and eat.

But for the moment, Adon forced himself to keep going. Just a bit further. He slowed down a little, to use even less energy. Anything to continue for an extra few minutes. He had already intended to stop somewhere to feed before he challenged the Golden Eagle, but he needed to know where it was going.

The sun would set very soon. If he knew anything about eagles, he was fairly certain that they were diurnal. Adon might be running out of power, but the eagle was surely going home now, and it would want to be safely ensconced in its nest by the time the night predators emerged from their dens. Even an eagle could be killed if a creature like a mountain lion came out to hunt and found where the bird slept at night.

I just need to see where it nests, and I can attack it in the morning.

The pursuit continued as another quarter of an hour slowly passed.

Adon felt like a plane that had run out of fuel. He was still gliding along, but he thought he might drop out of the sky if he had to keep this up much longer. He had managed to get even closer to the eagle, which had continued its relatively slower pace. With a few minutes of truly determined flying, Adon probably could have touched his opponent. But it felt like a hollow victory.

The butterfly would have to give up soon, and the Golden Eagle showed no sign of stopping except that it had continued its relaxed pace from earlier.

Even that could simply be because the air current the eagle was riding had lost steam somehow. Or the bird was only just now getting tired and beginning to conserve energy. It might have miles to go before it slept.

Adon didn’t believe that was it—the sun was hugging the horizon like a dance partner now—but he knew that he couldn’t win if this became a battle of attrition.

Even as he followed the massive bird, he had been scouting a place at ground level where he might be able to feed on some flowers. He could see a place he should be able to reach quickly if he stopped soon. But if he followed the eagle for another mile, he would start to enter starvation mode, as well as increasing the distance to his prospective food source.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

If the chase continued longer, things were going to become very uncomfortable.

The butterfly was camouflaged with Color Change, but if he hadn’t been, he would almost have thought the bird was mocking him.

Adon was moments away from abandoning the pursuit when the eagle began to lose altitude.

Really? Yes! Yes, please!

The Golden Eagle did not rush to its destination, but it moved steadily downward as Adon had hoped it would. The bird descended gracefully toward a chunk of the mountainside that looked the same as any other spot to Adon’s eyes.

The eagle drew close to the mountain, almost touching it, and then seemed to vanish.

Adon resisted the temptation to fly closer and investigate. He had accomplished everything he needed to. He was pooped. It was time to rest and eat.

Undoubtedly, in the morning, he would find some crag the eagle had nimbly slipped into, which he could not easily see in the twilight.

Adon began his own descent.

It amounted to him doing as little as possible with his wings—besides protecting them with Mana—and trying to drop like a stone.

He was not in a position to worry about elegance right now, and no one was watching.

Once he was out of the powerful air current he had been riding here, he even pulled the Mana back from his wings. Every bit of energy saved would count.

He angled his wings delicately to catch a weaker air current blowing toward the ground, and he let that carry him, with very little muscle movement, to a flowery meadow near the foot of the mountain.

When he landed on the closest flower, he wanted to shout, “Home free!”—or drop over from exhaustion. But there was no one there to hear a telepathic shout, and collapsing wouldn’t do him any good.

He unfurled his proboscis and began to drink, first from one flower, then the next, flitting quickly from one to another in a quick, businesslike fashion.

Once he was done with this, he imagined he would slip into a torpor that might last more than a night. When was the last time he had pushed his body this hard?

Right after the final fight with the ladybug larva, maybe. Back then, he had been both injured and hungry, and he had also ended up poisoning himself with the ladybug’s flesh.

Well, when I think about that, this trip was practically a relaxing walk in the park.

He flitted to another flower and forced himself to feed again. He was still hungry, with Biomass in the middle of its range, but his body wanted him to be still and rest. Now that he had found food, Adon intended to keep eating until he was sated. He wanted full resources for his planned fight with the Golden Eagle tomorrow.

He landed on another flower and sensed movement in the darkness.

Though Adon remained essentially invisible, he paid attention. If he saw something nutritious walking around, he might skip the rest of the flowers and just eat whatever approached. He had already proven to himself with the bee-eaters that his butterfly body enjoyed consuming blood and melted flesh—though the thought of how he had consumed it was still a bit disgusting.

Something in the darkness moved again, and Adon got a lock on its location. Whatever sort of animal it was, the dark, sleek, long-bodied creature was walking down the side of a tree. Probably coming to hunt its dinner on the ground.

Identify.

Continental Pine Marten (Female)

Adon had a vague memory—from which past life, he wasn't sure—that the pine marten was a creature somewhat similar to a weasel.

All right, I think I can take that down. I’ll wait until she’s preoccupied, in the middle of hunting something. Or maybe when she tries to go back up the tree. If the pine marten is in the tree, I think being able to fly will be a bigger mobility advantage than it would be if she was on the ground.

For now, Adon simply sipped nectar and watched the pine marten move.

He noticed as it was climbing down from the tree that it seemed to be listening for noise of anything else moving.

Sharp hearing and eyesight, then, I guess.

That was somewhat par for the course for a nocturnal animal, but every bit of information he gathered could come in handy when he made his move.

The pine marten touched the ground, darted its head from side to side, and then lifted its snout. The nose twitched as it scented the air. Then it started walking, its snout slightly lowered, clearly following an olfactory trail of some sort.

Let’s see where we’re going, Adon thought, though he was already imagining he would prefer to ambush the pine marten when it was preparing to return to its home in the tree.

He flapped his wings and took off, invisibly and as quietly as he could move, after the pine marten.

His dark-furred prey continued to follow its nose along the ground until it came to a small hole in the ground, hidden among some grass. Adon realized it was a hole only because the pine marten stuck its snout in. At first, it just looked like the end of the pine marten’s head had disappeared.

Then it pulled back out. In went the paws, and Adon flitted onto the side of a nearby tree to watch as it dug into the tunnel. Less than thirty seconds of digging widened the tunnel enough for the pine marten’s whole head to fit inside, which Adon imagined meant the whole body would fit in.

The pine marten stuck its head in, and for a moment, Adon just waited.

He was content to simply watch and see what happened next.

Then he heard a sound that brought back a painful memory.

Hissing, from more than one creature’s mouth. It was followed by the sounds of an underground struggle, and then an unpleasant shriek.

There’s a family of voles in there, Adon thought. It reminded him of the Red Queen.

He knew these were a completely different and unrelated family—the others were dead, after all—and that nothing he could do for these voles would help the dead ones out.

Still, he had always felt a bit bad about what had happened to those voles. They had let him hide out in their home, until it was obvious that he was bringing danger with him. And then the danger that followed him had killed them.

I don’t owe these random rodents anything, but I was going to kill the pine marten anyway. Now that he’s distracted, it’s the perfect opportunity.

Adon took flight and moved toward the hole. The pine marten’s back legs and long, bushy tail still stuck out, presenting themselves as a tempting target.

There was an almost silent sound of wings flapping, and a slight change to the breeze. Those were the only warnings that stopped Adon before he got close.

He watched incredulously as a swift, gliding shape struck from above. The light brown blur latched onto the pine marten’s tail and yanked forcefully, while Adon stared in disbelief.

Twice in one day? he thought. Really?

Another predator had appeared to snatch Adon’s prey.