The giant armadillo screamed in agony as it was cooked alive within its own shell.

Miss Beak had dug her webbed talons into its shell, right between and under the little bone plates, and was expulsing her heat downward. The whole area around the two monarchs was a strange myriad of reds and oranges, yet there were no actual flames. As the heat intensified, the colors went from the reds and oranges to whites… and then blues…

My eyes began to grow blurry, and little black and white spots started to form, and I had to blink and look away as I realized the heat she was releasing in a concentrated cone beneath her had grown so hot it had brightened the very air to the point it was blinding me.

While my eyes healed I heard things pop and boil. Like a giant pot of soup boiling over, I heard something slosh with a bunch of bubbles, and then the armadillo’s screams came to an abrupt stop.

Rubbing my eyes as they quickly adapted to the bright light, I sighed as I felt them start to heal and then adapt back to normal.

“Vim, shall I eat this heart too?” Miss Beak asked as I rubbed my burning eyes.

“Yeah. Just eat it,” I said.

“All right,” she sounded a little bored as I then began to hear her peck at the monarch’s body. I heard her tear skin, or rather its outer shell, and then I heard mushy sounds as she picked through what was likely still boiling innards.

She had found the heart and devoured it by the time my eyes had finished reverting to normal, and as her heat dissipated and cooled there was a rush of cold air all around us. The air flowed in from the surrounding area, as if the hot heat had left a pocket of void that it now needed to fill. In a way it likely had. She hadn’t used her full ability, but the amount of heat she had just created was far beyond anything natural.

Miss Beak finished swallowing the heart and I sensed her own heart grow louder as it slid down her throat. Multiple hearts inside the same body always ended with the stronger heart absorbing the weaker. Sometimes it happened instantly. Other times it took years. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to how long it took, since this one didn’t immediately get absorbed even though just recently a far stronger one had done so.

My theory was it wasn’t how strong a heart was, or how pure, but instead the god which had made them. Each heart had different levels to which the divine power they were conduits for, different purity levels, but then one had to take into the divine power itself.

The heart could be powerful and pure beyond reason, but if the source of its power it was drawing from was flawed it didn’t matter. If one looked at the hearts like sieves or spigots that poured out water from a different source, it didn’t matter how good of a flow or how much it released at once when the water itself was tainted and gross.

Though how to tell the divine power’s pureness they siphoned from, or the strength, was as far as I could tell impossible.

I could sense the hearts, the divine power they withheld and pulled from, but I couldn’t sense anything else. And as far as Miss Beak could explain, she couldn’t either.

“Hm. It wasn’t that strong,” Miss Beak said as she stepped away from the defeated monarch.

“Only to you, Miss Beak. It had withstood your heat for a long moment, longer than most,” I said. It had taken almost a dozen minutes for it to have boiled alive. Considering it was a creature with a pre-built oven wrapped around it that was rather telling of how strong it had been.

“Hm. I suppose,” Miss Beak tilted her head at it but didn’t seem impressed.

“Plus as we’ve figured out a heart’s power doesn’t directly correlate to how much it will give you,” I said. A few hearts ago, the sixth one she had eaten, had been from a very small and weak monarch. A heart that had been so dull it had barely glowed even in the dark. After the month or so it had taken to absorb it, Miss Beak had a growth spurt. She had grown several feet in height, and her eyes had begun to glow a little brighter.

She hadn’t just grown in size though. She had also grown heavier. Stronger. It had taken her many days to adjust to her new strength, basically learning how to walk and fly again since she had grown so strong such simple tasks had become difficult for her.

“Nineteen, Vim,” Miss Beak reminded me.

I nodded. “Nineteen monarchs. So…” I tried to remember how many hears I’d fed her from my vault. Twenty eight? Nine?

“Forty eight total so far,” she answered for me.

Right. How come I always forgot if it was twenty-eight or twenty-nine? So weird.

“I’m glad to keep eliminating these mindless ones, Vim, but how many are even left?” Miss Beak asked as she glanced to her defeated foe.

“The fact we’ve encountered nineteen recently tells me more than I want to admit,” I said with a huff.

We were chasing after her parents. But along the way whenever we encountered a monarch, even a lesser one, we stopped so she could defeat it and eat their heart. Both to grow her strength, but also to give her more experience in battle.

Honestly she was fine now. I held no qualms anymore about taking her into battle with me. She’d survive her parent’s heat, and wrath, likely longer than even she thought she would. And now… well…

Glancing up at my friend, who was still studying the corpse of the armadillo monarch nearby, I wondered how tall she was now. She stood far over the nearby trees, which loomed over me like giants.

She had to be at least thirty feet tall now. Maybe even forty. In fact, she may even be taller than her parents now. Or at least, her mother.

The next time we caught up to her parents, may be the last moments they will ever have.

I was looking forward to it.

“Vim.”

Turning a little, I nodded up to my friend who had looked at me.

“There is a village nearby. I think one of non-humans. Would you stop there for me?” she asked.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“What for?” I asked. Did she want snacks again? It’s been years since she’s asked for any. Her size had made it hard for her to even taste certain things anymore, even if she wanted to. Even a whole wagon full of melons was barely a bite for her.

“I wish for you to spend time with people,” she stated.

I frowned at my friend who had just said something ridiculous.

“What…?” I asked. What’d she mean?

She nodded down at me. “How long have we been together Vim?” she asked.

I shifted and pondered her question. It was impossible to answer, but I wanted to at least give her a rough guesstimate. After all, she was my friend. My only friend. I should at least be able to remember how long I’ve known her, roughly, out of mere respect.

“By my counts, Vim, we’ve known each other for several hundred years now,” she told me.

“Well… likely, I suppose,” I admitted. Had it really been that long? It made sense, I guess, but jeez did the years come and go quickly.

“I know you once led armies. That you used to have friends. Family. But do you know how many times I’ve seen you spend time with others since I’ve known you?” she asked.

I frowned at her again. “Was that what you mean? That I’ve become some kind of recluse or something?” I asked, and smirked at her strangeness.

Really. I mean, sure, I’ve likely not bothered with spending time with anyone else lately. But what was wrong with that? I was not normal. I could go that long without any kind of communication, or relationships. I was built in a way that kept me from going insane like that, per my father’s words at least.

“Your dedication to righting the wrongs of my kind is a just one, Vim. One I can understand, and even support. But you’ve not allowed anything else into your heart or mind during this journey. It’s blinded you,” she warned.

“Let me guess, blinded me to the gentler and more important things of life,” I said with a smile.

“Yes.”

Keeping a sigh from escaping, I nodded as I looked away from my friend and to the nearby forest.

She was just worried for me. There was no need to get offended, or ignore her… but recently she has become very motherly. She spoke to me no longer like a child that was fascinated with everything we saw, but instead some old bird that saw me as the child instead.

Did she forget I had been old before I even found her? Really.

“Don’t ignore me Vim,” Miss Beak said gently.

“I’m not. You’re not wrong, I admit. People, animals, anything, goes insane when alone for too long. People especially need communication. Society. Relationships. Love, physical and mental,” I said as I parroted stuff my mother had taught me.

“I do believe you are insane, already, but I’d like you to not get worse,” she said.

“You think I’m insane?” I asked, a little surprised. Me? Really?

“You yourself are insanity. Yes.”

Oh… “That’s not insanity,” I said.

She smirked at me and chuckled. “Says who?” she teased.

Sighing, I rolled my eyes at my friend.

Yes. I myself was insane. I broke the rules just as much as the things I hunted.

But my mind…?

I wondered for a moment if I even could go insane. Wouldn’t my abilities just fix whatever broke? Or did they not work on things not so… well…

Not so real. Not flesh and bone.

It was an interesting thought.

“You’re wondering if you’re insane right now,” she noted.

“Yes. But I don’t believe I am. Many of the gods had tried to use certain abilities. Ones that had afflicted the mind, the soul, more than the flesh. They had never worked,” I said as I thought of them. Many of those gods had been seen as powerful beings. Great beyond measure and feared even by other gods.

They had died easily by my hand, since their abilities had not worked on me.

“I’d have liked to meet a god. Are any left?” Miss Beak asked.

“Oh I’m sure a few are left somewhere. Though there can’t be many left. There hadn’t been very many in the first place,” I said.

“Really now…? Did you ever meet the one who had made me?” she asked.

I shifted again as Miss Beak lowered her head some more, to look closer at me.

“What are you thinking of now?” she asked before I could answer her previous question.

“Why we haven’t talked of this before. You never ask the same question twice anymore, so that means we’ve not spoken of this yet. Which is odd since you always ask questions. And no, I don’t know which god created your line. I remember a few who used heat and flames as their abilities, but I couldn’t tell you if any had been your source. But there had been many I had killed before they had gotten the chance to do anything, even speak, so there is a good chance I had killed them without realizing it,” I said.

Good thing too, actually. Considering I’m going through such lengths to kill their pets, their creations, I could only imagine how difficult it would have been to kill the source itself. I wonder, if I had actually killed their source and thus only was able to thanks to how swiftly and cruelly I had done the deed… I wonder how many had been like that.

How many times had I actually been super lucky and simply destroyed those bastards before they had been able to hurt or kill me instead?

“You do simply walk up and start killing mercilessly,” Miss Beak said with an amused tone.

“What else am I supposed to do? Have dinner with them first? I’m not there to make love with them, I’m there to end them,” I said with a huff.

She chuckled at me. “Yes. I suppose.”

“If we do ever meet a god though, my friend, I ask that you stay back and let me handle it,” I said gently, before she asked another strange question.

“Hm…?” she tilted her mighty beak at me, and I smiled.

“They break more rules than your kind do. Far more. Plus…” I hesitated to say it, since I didn’t want to be rude. But I had to. It was not only the truth, it might one day save her life. “Plus, well, Miss Beak you are their creation. Just as they could create you, they could end you. With a snap of a finger,” I said as I lifted my hand and repeated my mother’s motion.

She blinked at me. “They have that much power over us?” she asked.

I nodded. “They do. I’ve seen them create you from thin air, and then wave you away the next,” I said. Honestly it took a little more than that, was a little flashier, but it wasn’t far from the truth.

“I see,” she said softly.

I nodded again. “So please. If you ever encounter a god just flee. As your parents do against me, even, if you must. Flee until you can let me handle them,” I asked of her. Almost begged it.

She was my friend. My lovely little flamingo that had grown so wise and strong yet remained as gentle and sweet as she had been in her youth.

She worried about me going insane. Well… if there was any chance of my mind breaking, or soul, then it was likely only through such means. Only by losing such precious people, such a precious friend and family member, would such a thing even be possible I think. After all there was no physical pain that I couldn’t endure. Nothing on this planet could hurt me enough to break me. If that was possible I’d have broken long ago.

So the only thing I could think of was losing her. Or those like her.

And although her death would hurt, it was more than that. Losing her to time, to age, would likely be brutal but understandable. But to lose her to a god?

To one of those bastards?

I’d likely once more go into a rage as I’d done before. And unlike last time there wouldn’t be an entire civilization of gods and monarchs to wipe out.

Which only made me hope and pray I didn’t find any more like her. One was dangerous enough.

“Please, Miss Beak. Never face a god on your own. Don’t even try,” I asked again, with a tiny whisper.

Miss Beak slowly nodded again, and I noted her kind smile in her eyes. “Okay Vim. I promise.”