The shadow against the sun grew and grew, gradually taking on a color of its own. The great eagle's feathers were a shimmering rainbow, their hues changing with every wing beat. Color rolled across it in waves, and then back again, in an endless cycle of coruscant light. It was beautiful; it was terrifying.

"Is this bad?" I asked. "Is it going to be mad at me?"

"The tower is whole," Esmelda said. "And it was Fladnag who broke it."

"I'm not sure this is something that's going to have a conversation about its feelings on the matter."

"You do not need to fear." Torgudai looked healthier now that he was no longer burdened with keeping the Pebbleheart from regenerating. Still tired, but no longer sheltering in his cloak like he was fighting off a chill. "The Great Eagle is peaceful unless it is in the presence of shadow."

His mouth quirked. "If you are fond of that demon, say your farewells."

Everyone was standing around, watching the mythical creature's approach, including Astaroth. Atlans were still cheering, or laughing and congratulating each other on having the luck to see their holy protector in the flesh. While my little group had formed up in a semi-circle facing the rising sun.

"I am not sure if it is a wonder or a terror," Gastard said.

"I miss flying." Leto was watching its approach in a way that suggested he was more on the side of it being a wonder. "Do you think Noivern will come back soon?"

"I don't know," I said. Some individual mobs could appear night after night, even if they were killed, but though most trolls and zombies were interchangeable in other ways, they weren't the same entity being reborn again and again. At least, I didn't think they were. Noivern might come back or he might not. The underlying laws weren't clear to me, and several new twists had been added to my mental model over the last few days.

The demons had cores. Though like my own, they were immaterial, rather than a literal diamond egg in their bellies. It allowed them to maintain their continuity when their essence returned to Bedlam after death. None of the demons I had killed were dead. They were banished. I thought core was a misleading word, they could just be called souls. Except in the case of the pebbleheart, apparently.

The essence of weaker monsters, like zombies, was probably recycled, so it wasn't the same monster that appeared every night unless they ate enough Survivor skin to level up or however that worked for their species. I wasn't sure where Noivern sat on that scale, but I hoped he would eventually find his way back through the veil.

Astaroth was staring up at the incoming kaiju, utterly still. The blue feathers of his crown pressed down against his skull, making him seem smaller. A bit of a bird himself; maybe he would get a pass.

"Do you want to run?" I asked.

He ground his beak for a moment before replying.

"It would only draw its attention. I am trying to diminish my aura." He tugged on his hood. "Perhaps it will not notice me."

That was optimistic. Before it arrived, I put away all my tools and weapons, either in my inventory or as medallions. And I put my helmet and gauntlets back on. My aura was still neutral as far as I knew, but the marks of demonic corruption were unmistakable in my physical form. Like Astaroth, I wanted to make myself as inoffensive as possible.

It wasn't as large as the pebbleheart had been, but its wingspan was well over a hundred feet, which was already too big for comfort. In my spiritual sense, its presence was even broader than that, and a sense of building pressure accompanied its approach. The harpies did not retreat. Instead, they dove to the earth, becoming a carpet of black feathers as they prostrated themselves before a superior raptor.

The Great Eagle came to a stop eighty yards ahead of us, its downstrokes stirring up a fierce wind as it slowly lowered itself to the ground. It didn't look like the sort of bird that could hover, but there was something supernatural in the way it controlled its descent. Horses balked, and some broke and ran at the sight, ignoring the demands of their masters.

Even Marie looked nervous.

Torgudai held his arms up and out, standing tall as he stepped forward to greet the immense, glimmering bird.

"Great Eagle!" He called. “You honor us beyond words. I am Torgudai, first among the Orkhans of the endless plains. How can I serve you?”

The bird's eyes were as large as buckets, and now that it was close, I didn't think it looked like an eagle at all. Its neck was long, and its face and beak were slender, like a heron’s. Its gaze fell blankly upon the recently completed tower.

(It broke. I felt it break. What did you do?)

Telepathy was more unsettling than I'd thought it would be, maybe because I wasn't expecting it. The creature's voice was high and reedy and inside my skull. Could it hear me thinking about it? From the reactions of the Atlans, and Esmelda beside me, I realized it wasn't addressing me directly. It was in all our heads.

"It was the sorcerer, Fladnag, great one, with the help of the Dargothian king." He gestured at me, and the bird's gaze followed, its attention dropping on my spirit like a lead weight. Torgudai quickly gave a follow-up statement. "But Fladnag is defeated, and the Dargothian is in a truce with us. We fought together against the giant that hid within Salenus, and he sealed the monument once more."

(Come here.)

My feet responded to the command without input from my brain. Did the bird do mind control, or was I just that intimidated? So far, my armor had withstood everything this world had to throw at it, but as I gazed up at the Great Eagle's beak, I had a feeling that it could peel me open like a tin can.

Torgudai stepped back, bowing as I came under its vast chest. The giant bird raised one taloned foot and brought it down on top of me. Even if I had been at full strength, I didn't think I would have had a chance of fighting back. I could have dodged, but something was telling me not to move. Its aura, its will, wrapped around me, was holding even my thoughts in check.

It smashed me flat, my visor pressing into the dirt.

(You're dirty and bad. I'll clean you.)

There was something odd about the way it spoke, aside from the whole telepathy thing. Was this a juvenile version of whatever massive species of magic bird this was? It sounded juvenile. Its talons dug into the soil as it pressed me down, powerless to resist.

"Stop," I heard Esmelda, but I couldn't turn my head to see her. "He isn't your enemy!"

Golden flames, the same that banished the lesser entities of Bedlam when exposed to the sun, sprang up around me. They weren't as hot as regular fire, at least not at first, but they burned. My skin prickled. My eyes and throat dried out.

image [https://i.imgur.com/RkxkuOY.png[/img]

Oddly, the armor itself did not grow hot. That was a relief. No one wanted their plate-mail to be converted into a portable oven, but the flames seemed to ignore the fact that I was wearing armor entirely, and they were starting to seriously sting. I felt its weight shift slightly as it swept its wing. Gastard’s shout was cut short. He had been coming to rescue me?

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Esmelda was saying something else, but her words were lost beneath the Eagle's cry as a fireball erupted against its head. The sound cut through me, leaving my ears ringing. Its aura was still pressing down as firmly as its foot, but I resisted. The stinging heat was worse by the second, and the pain cleared my mind.

It had said it would clean me. That wasn't necessarily bad. Maybe it had meant it would cure me of my taint. But a less generous interpretation would be that it was going to purge me from Plana as thoroughly as Torgudai had purged Fladnag. Besides, I didn't like being pushed around, psychically or otherwise.

One of my arms was free, sticking out from under its long toes. Selecting an item from my inventory took all of my willpower. The buster sword appeared in my hand as the heat intensified. I screamed and failed to lift the sword. The angle was bad, and I wasn’t strong enough to use it anymore, certainly not one-handed. Letting it go, I selected my ax and brought back my forearm up on the hinge of my elbow to hack its leg. It was a blow with little leverage, but one the eagle had not been expecting.

It lifted its foot, and I crawled forward, granted a reprieve from the mystic flames. I was barely strong enough to get to my feet, and when I turned, I saw Esmelda and Leto were both in the hands of Atlan warriors.

Gastard was giving them a tougher time, dueling three men at once. His longsword flashed against their scimitars.

I'd seen him come out ahead of similar odds before, but these weren't the Dargothians we had surprised in the barracks of a way station so long ago. The Atlans fought fervently and with coordination. If not for the armor I'd made for him, they might have cut him open already.

"Gastard," I shouted to him. "Surrender!"

If he heard me, he gave no sign, and I was barely able to avoid the eagle's claws as it brought them down again, leaping to one side. I didn’t see Astaroth at all. He’d been the one to lob a fireball at the bird, but all that remained of the demon was a pile of robes in a circle of scorched grass where he had been standing.

"Great Eagle!" I called up to those vast, bright eyes, "Please speak to me. I am not your enemy."

It pulled back its head as if preparing to drive down and snap me into its beak.

(You're dirty and you cut me and I don't like you.)

"I'm sorry," I dropped the ax. "I'm very sorry. I panicked. Your fire hurt me."

(It hurt you because you're bad.)

"I'm not—-"

It didn't let me finish the sentence. Its beak lanced down, striking me in the chest, my armor ringing like a bell as it flung me onto my back. Before I could roll, its foot dropped to pin me once more, and the flames blazed back to life. There was no grace period this time, it just burned.

My vision blurred, and the noxious scent of searing hair filled my nostrils.

image [https://i.imgur.com/S8c2vls.png[/img]

As I cried out, the Eagle answered with another shriek of its own. The world faded to shadows beyond the flames, but I saw a shape lifting the buster sword and knew it was Gastard. It was too heavy for him to wield properly, but he swung it into the back of the Eagle's narrow, scaly leg. The pressure intensified as the giant bird kicked off the ground and took to the air.

Feathers fell in a shimmering cloud, reflecting all the colors of the rainbow. My mind was still sluggish, and I didn't at first understand what I was seeing. The Great Eagle was changing its legs and body thickening even as the feathers dropped from its wings in droves and vanished into puffs of light. New muscle widened its neck, and claws sprouted from the joint of its wings as it swung around Salenus.

Torgudai blew a horn, and the Atlans went into retreat, no longer shouting about joy and honor, but running for their lives. The eagle was not an eagle. Its skin hardened into green-gray scales along its underbelly, and glossy black covering the rest of its body. A shriek modulated into a roar as the transformation completed, and it looked down upon us with eyes as violet as Celaeno’s.

The harpies, for their part, were scattering as fast as their wings could take them. They had always been loyal to me, but there had to be a limit somewhere, and that limit was dragons. I didn't blame them.

(Stupid man. You're going to burn.)

"I do not know what you are," Gastard raised his voice against the wind beat out by its great wings, "but I will not allow you to harm the man to whom I have sworn my service."

(Whatever.)

The dragon sucked in air as it landed beside the monument, then breathed out a cone of purple mist. Gastard rested the buster sword against his shoulder and pressed ahead, maybe intending to make it under the cone, but the cloud swallowed us both. Bitter, and acidic, but largely filtered by my visor. Strangely, I felt the elder sign on my hand grow warm.

I ran toward the dragon with the ax in both hands. While I preferred swords, fighting this thing was going to be more like chopping a tree than having a duel. The fact that it had morphed from bird to dragon reminded me of something, but I was still having trouble thinking. Its aura was so strong that it was hard to put one foot in front of the other, let alone strategize.

The mist was heavy; it sank rather than rose, and as I burst out of it, I turned my head to see Esmelda pulling Leto away from the edge of the cloud.

They were no longer being held by the Atlans, though that was minor consolation. Whatever the dragon's breath did to someone without my resistance, it wouldn't be good.

I jogged toward the dragon, shouting.

"I'm not bad! I made some mistakes! But we can talk this out!"

Its tail swept around behind me and slammed into the back of my knees, and the world spun as I flipped end over end. Then it batted me with one of its claws like a cat playing with a mouse, and I went flying.

image [https://i.imgur.com/O91zHlj.png[/img]

I was certain that I would die. The next couple of strikes would kill me. Under other circumstances, it wouldn't have been a big deal. But if I woke up tomorrow back at my point of origin, or beside Bojack’s Anchor, I would be too far from Mount Doom to have a hope of making it home before being completely incapacitated.

Death also meant leaving my wife and son out here in the wilderness undefended. From the way things were going, it didn't look like Gastard was going to be around to protect them either. I tried to raise my ax, and just couldn't. Maybe the purple mist had more of an effect on me than I'd realized. More likely, it was all that fire. I could still feel it on my skin, like the aftereffects of touching a hot stove if you had somehow touched it with your entire body.

The dragon rose over me, and I waited for the end. Armor or no armor, it was strong enough to batter me to death. But it didn't. My ears had been ringing so badly that I didn't realize someone was shouting at it. I sat up. Leto was in front of me, facing the dragon.

"Stop it!"

The dragon's was quieter, perhaps because it wasn't directing its thoughts at me, but I could make out its responses as well.

(You're a kid. You don't understand.)

"No! You don't understand."

(He's tainted. He's bad.)

"You're bad if you hurt my dad."

He was standing up to a dragon for me. Leto didn't even seem afraid. I probably could have stood, but that wouldn’t have helped. David would have just thought I was still trying to fight him.

David. Also known as Captain Murder Face. My mind was clearing.

The dragon, who I was now sure was a shapeshifting-immortal-child, shifted awkwardly on its claws. Kevin had been a teenager for as long as he'd been on Plana. He'd never really grown up. According to Fladnag, David had reincarnated as a child. What a curse that would be.

(He's tainted.)

"He looks that way because he killed so many demons."

(Why did he break the cage?)

"Because of me. Fladnag was going to kill me if he didn't help him. He almost did. I got poisoned."

(Oh.)

The dragon shrank. The scales dropped from its skin like so many coins, vanishing just as the feathers had done. What must have been hundreds of tons of muscle and bone melted down into what, for a moment, was little more than a blob, but soon solidified into a boy.

He had black hair that had grown out to his shoulders, and a tan, round face. David looked healthy, ridiculously healthy, with glowing skin and white, perfectly aligned teeth, but he was wearing a tunic that was uncomfortably similar to the zombie hide leathers I had made in my first days as a Survivor. I stared at him for a moment, and then it occurred to me I didn't

know what had happened to Esmelda.

She would have never let Leto run in front of a raging dragon. I turned around. The purple mists were almost gone, with only a few inches of nearly liquid fog remaining like a carpet of alien moss over the ground.

Gastard had failed to avoid the breath weapon and fallen shortly after it washed over him. He was laying still, and it looked like Esmelda had gone to help him as it cleared, only to be caught in the lingering effect. She slumped on top of his armored form, the mists just covering her feet.

"Esmelda!" Suddenly, I could move, racing across the field to scoop her up in my arms. She was breathing, though shallowly. Gastard wasn't.