Gravity sucked the bird and the butterfly straight down from a dramatic height.

They had been close to the mountain as the battle played out, but not close enough to land high on the mountainside when they fell.

A part of Adon wanted to worry about how he might land—human concerns that had still not completely faded yet, despite his rebirth as a butterfly.

He quickly suppressed that ridiculous feeling and instead focused on the pleasant touch of the wind. The air whipping the sides of Adon’s body felt exhilarating.

And then there was the magnitude of his hard-won victory.

He heard a coughing sound and looked over to see that the Golden Eagle had drifted closer to him.

It was still on fire, and as he watched, he saw that it was coughing and wheezing, its body writhing with the effort to breathe.

The smoke must be getting into its lungs, Adon thought. It was remarkable that the bird was still alive at all, but the coughing and writhing was probably a sign that the end was nigh.

Adon flapped his wings and fluttered a little further away, so the eagle would not get close to him and set him on fire too.

That was the thing about starting a fire, he knew. It was all too easy for it to get out of control. When it did, there was no telling what might get burnt.

I’ll have to be careful next time. If I used this when I was totally spent, I could end up caught in the middle of a fire. He could understand why Rosslyn had praised the efficacy of fire magic, though. The impact had been far disproportionate to the Mana expenditure. From what he saw, he had been able to set the eagle’s entire body on fire. There’s no way it could survive that…

Then the ground was looming up at him, and there was no more time to think.

The butterfly struck as softly as he had imagined and rolled gently away from his landing site.

Several feet to the right, he heard and saw the eagle crash with a sickening crack. Its body skidded slightly, leaving a trail of scorched earth and grass.

That crack sounded like broken bones, Adon thought. Sure enough he looked and saw what appeared to be a wing, twisted at an odd angle, poking through the haze of smoke. He knew that even if he left it alone right now, the Golden Eagle would never fly again.

He again felt a twinge of sympathy for the noble creature that he had brought low. It had been the king of this mountain, he imagined.

Now, after one bad encounter, the eagle was near the very bottom.

But that was the law of the jungle. The strong preyed upon the weak. And Adon was the strong. It was simply this creature’s bad luck that they had crossed paths.

You are incredibly tough, though, he thought.

Remarkably, the Golden Eagle had not died on impact with the ground, despite falling from an incredible height. It still choked, wheezed, and writhed in the midst of the fire and smoke.

Adon saw its scorched head suddenly jut through the fire—it was almost completely bald now, the feathers having burned away except in a small patch under the chin—and the bird cried out.

It didn’t sound hateful or even scared. The cry was one of pure pain.

Even as it made the sound, its sporadic flailing movements were slowing down and drawing close to a stop. There was still more pain for the eagle to endure as the burns that continued to ravage its body killed it, but the fight had gone out of the bird.

Adon knew that now was the time to finish the eagle off. He hoped he still had the strength in him to do the job quickly and as painlessly as possible.

He flapped his wings and started to move toward the broken-winged bird.

Then a sound rang out from way up on the mountainside.

A soft cry, answering the Golden Eagle’s pained wail.

Adon landed beside the eagle’s head and looked up cautiously, ignoring the dying bird for a moment.

The cry from above repeated itself.

The sound did not frighten Adon, and on hearing it a second time, he felt reassured of this impression. He struggled with the reason why for a moment, and he finally realized that the call had seemed to come from the same position both times, and it had been softer than the adult eagle’s cry from earlier.

If the bird calling to the dying eagle had been an adult of the same species, it would have sounded louder and slightly deeper. This must be a juvenile. The fact that the cry came from the same position both times proved that the little one crying out could not fly yet. Otherwise, it would probably rush to its father’s aid.

Adon felt both reassured and saddened.

He did not want to think about what fate might befall the juvenile without its father to bring it food and protect it from predation.

Stop feeling bad for these predators, he told himself a little irritably. They would eat you and all your friends in a heartbeat!

The butterfly still opened up his Status, just to confirm that he had not, in fact, been given the Evolution Points from this encounter yet.

Yeah, I thought so. It expects me to at least kill the eagle, whether or not I consume it. And his Mana was as low as he had thought. It was far from enough to heal the eagle, even if Adon had decided that he regretted this fight.

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He transformed one limb into a blade, and he quickly drew it across the eagle’s charred throat.

There was no more wind shield to stop his direct attacks, he noticed. Probably another sign that the eagle was circling the drain, with or without Adon’s help.

The knife cut into the eagle’s neck. It was slightly crispy and then tender before he reached the uncooked parts. The bird’s life’s blood began spilling out onto the ground. Some splashed onto one of Adon’s feet, and he tasted it.

Ambrosia. Nectar of the Goddess…

Adon uncoiled his proboscis quickly so that it would not go to waste.

Into his mouth pumped what he thought must be the most nourishing liquid he had ever consumed. He could feel that every drop was full of life force.

Slurp slurp. Guzzle guzzle. Gulp.

Adon sank into a feeding trance.

He did not know how long it lasted, but when he woke up, the sun had changed position noticeably. The eagle was visibly lighter.

Adon felt sluggish and heavy.

He checked his Biomass, and saw that it had exploded to 75/50.

He sensed that his body would start trying to shed its skin if he ate anymore, and he wasn’t entirely certain how that would work now that he had become a butterfly.

Better to get moving now instead of trying to be greedy. Maybe his appetite would recover if he did a little exercise.

He re-coiled his proboscis, then straightened up his posture.

I’m going to fly, he thought.

But it had roughly the same energy as saying, “I’m going for a swim” after a heavy dinner.

He flapped his wings and felt very heavy, but he pushed past that and persisted in getting into the air.

He moved his wings again. It was like he was trying to fly through water.

Guess I’ll have to keep doing this, though. Don’t eat so much next time, body…

As he fluttered above the eagle, he realized that he had actually consumed less of the body than he thought. The front half of the eagle looked like a deflated, half-cooked turkey. But the back half was still more or less intact, if one didn’t count the horrible burns.

I guess it’s not surprising that I couldn’t eat a whole eagle, he thought. I have a big appetite, and I burned a lot of energy before, but that would have been pretty crazy.

Adon flapped his wings again and began flying up the side of the mountain.

Perhaps part of what made his wings so heavy was psychological. The thought of where he was going and why.

Adon was on his way to the eagle’s eyrie. He had the location memorized, though to anyone else, the space would just look like a random crag in the mountain.

He wanted to examine the situation of the eagle’s offspring. Had they already been eaten by some other predator? Would they be able to survive without their father? Was their mother alive? If they would just die anyway, Adon might take the easy Evolution Points and simply mercy kill them himself.

It’s not like I can stay here and raise them to adults myself, he thought. If I’m gone much longer, my friends will be missing me.

He rose a bit higher so that he could catch an updraft and move further up the mountain without too much effort. Though he had replenished his energy by consuming the eagle, he felt very sluggish and heavy as a result. Every flap of his wings only highlighted it more. It was as if he was human again and had just eaten half a turkey for dinner.

Still very rewarding, though.

Adon wanted to smile at the thought of the number of Evolution Points that were currently burning a hole in his metaphorical pockets.

Only the somber nature of his journey kept him from fully enjoying his present situation.

He made the trip meditatively, thinking about the nature of the circle of life as the wind carried him like an old dead leaf up the mountainside.

I’ve killed so many, he thought. Why does it bother me that I killed the Golden Eagle? I got 5,000 Evolution Points. Killing it probably saved me from needing to kill multiple other creatures lower on the species hierarchy. In fact, if I take a broad view, I also saved every animal that bird was going to kill to feed itself for the rest of its life.

But the rationalizations did not ease the strange pit in his stomach. He had made the eaglets into orphans, and that felt wrong.

It feels wrong even though I totally would have killed the bluebird back in the garden, when it had a bunch of eggs counting on it. I even set out to eat a bunch of those eggs on purpose to get back at the mother… and to accelerate my own growth, but still. What is with this feeling like I did something really wrong here? My moral standards don’t have any logical kind of consistency, I guess. It’s just whatever tweaks my emotions that day.

Adon felt lost and a bit slimy for his lack of any true moral compass.

But at least he reached his destination before he could really get into psychoanalyzing himself.

The opening that he remembered the Golden Eagle emerging from was small and narrow, barely large enough for the bird to enter and exit. He remembered how it had performed a sort of aerial acrobatic to get inside.

For tiny Adon, of course, it looked like a gaping wide entrance.

He easily entered, and as he fluttered slightly further in, he saw them.

Two hatchlings. Unlike their father, who had been a uniform brown, the eaglets were covered in a mix of pure white down and a spotting of darker, more adult feathers.

They’re so young, Adon thought. He had the slightly ridiculous urge to pet them. They were terribly cute.

He suddenly doubted that he would have the will to kill either of them, even if the alternative was a slow death by starvation or probable predation. He had killed grown creatures before, as well as eggs. But a hatched, cute baby bird might be where he drew the line.

Well, I couldn’t have known that without seeing them.

One of the little birds let loose a soft cry that Adon recognized. It seemed to be looking at Adon. He tilted his head to look down at his own body and realized that at some point, probably during his feeding frenzy, he had allowed Color Change to slip. He was clear, glass-like, as he had been post-Evolution, but not invisible anymore.

He looked back up at the eaglet that had made the sound.

So, you were the noisy one, he thought. Gosh, what to do with you… Maybe I could carry you back to the palace. I bet there’s someone there who would raise a pair of eaglets. Nobility are always into hawking and stuff like that. I bet they can do the same thing with eagles—

Adon’s thoughts were cut off by a loud shriek.

He involuntarily flung himself backward at the sound—and found himself staring up at a large Golden Eagle, even bigger than the massive bird he had just killed.

The predator stared down at him, and Adon swiftly flapped his wings and flew back out of the eyrie.

The mother bird chased after him, but her moves were slow and careful as she avoided stepping on her babies.

By the time she reached the entrance, Adon was in the air and invisible again.

At least I know that those little birds aren’t alone, he thought.

Adon climbed high into the sky until he could see where he was going and find the right air currents to take him there as quickly as possible.

He had accomplished all he set out to do with this hunting trip. He had Telekinesis, plus Evolution Points to spare for when he had time to quietly consider his options.

It was time to return to the palace.