This time I didn’t just break his wing, I tore it off.

A wave of heat exploded outward from the fresh wound alongside the blood. It was so hot it felt like I was being hit by a wall of stone. I ignored the very angry roar of shock and pain from the flamingo, as I tried to reposition myself and grab onto more feathers.

Before I could get a hold of the monarch again however, I was hit by another wave of hot air. It hit me with enough force to make my whole body go numb for a few moments, and in those few moments the monarch was able to slip away from me.

I fell backward, and hit the ground half a moment later. Instead of rolling like usual when falling onto the ground, I instead felt myself splash into liquids.

Great. More molten slag.

The sudden drop into molten liquid was a shock. And not because I was surprised over it. My whole body tremorred as everything went white, and I began to get boiled alive. I tried to swim upward, at least where I thought the surface would be, but I could barely feel what I was doing. My body was rapidly trying to adapt to the sudden change in environment, and it was affecting my senses.

For a long moment my world was nothing but pain and agony. I burnt alive until my body adjusted to the molten liquid I was swimming in, and I regained enough control over my own senses that I was able to swim to the top.

The moment I breached the surface however, I recoiled as my eyes began to burn something fierce. I ignored the pain, but it made me unable to see anything as I blindly swam in a random direction. I searched for any feeling of solid land, as to get myself out of the molten slag, and found it rather quickly. The stuff was just now hardening, however, and it crumbled as I tried to drag myself out of it.

“C’mon!” I shouted in annoyance as I continued to try and pull myself out of the molten slag. The hardening slag kept crumbling and breaking apart under my weight, and I couldn’t see well enough yet thanks to my eyes trying to adapt to the lack of boiling slag.

Right as my eyes began to work again, I was grabbed by the waist.

My first instinct was to grab and tear apart the thing grabbing me, but I kept my instincts in check as I felt the size of the foot grabbing me.

It was far too small.

Some wings flapped, harsh enough to make the slag around me splash, and I was lifted upward. A few moments later I was dropped onto more solid ground, ground that was hot and sizzling but not hot enough to burn my skin. In fact it felt cool, almost relieving, compared to what I’d just been in.

“You really are strong,” Miss Beak whispered as she stared down at me as my vision slowly returned to normal.

So it had been her. She had pulled me out of the slag. I’m glad I hadn’t hurt her.

She was bigger than she used to be. By far. When had she gotten so big? Or was it because I was looking up at her from my back? She looked as tall as a tree, though she was not yet the size of her parents.

“No. Your parents are the strong ones. This is the ninth time I’ve failed to kill them, even though they’re growing exhausted and running low on steam,” I said with a cough. My lungs were still adapting to the now cool air. Or at least, cool air compared to the hot I’d just been enduring.

How long had I been stuck in the molten slag again? If she was here, helping and talking to me, then her parents were likely long gone.

“They don’t use steam, Vim, they—” Miss Beak started to correct me, reminding me how she’d become very literal recently.

“It was a metaphor Miss Beak. I know,” I grumbled as I rolled onto my side. Doing so made me cough.

“Huh… you really do heal quickly, but it isn’t true healing is it? It’s more like your body just continues to adapt to its situation. Almost as if it… simply reverts to its original state. You adapt to heat, then adapt again as that heat dissipates. It’d almost be easier for you to not adapt at all, and simply continuously heal through the damage since you heal so fast. Your continuous adaption is what slows you down,” Miss Beak spoke evenly, as if talking about the weather or the recent food she had eaten, but every word she spoke made me shiver in pain as if she was stabbing me with her sharp beak and not her words.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

“I would if I could. I can’t control what my body does,” I groaned as I spat up some blood.

“A pity. Must be your lack of heart. That also explains why you can’t control your weight,” she said, as if it made sense.

She was wrong, of course. But I’d not correct her. If I did it’d just reveal the truth of other things. Things I wasn’t ready to speak of just yet.

While I coughed up some gunk I turned to look at the pool of slag I’d just been pulled from. It was farther away than I had realized, and was already starting to cool. Only a few dozen foot wide section was bright hot, the rest of the slag was already cool enough to be darker colors. Some sections were sizzling, with tiny puffs of smoke coming from them, but the rest had not even a hint of smoke coming from it.

I’d been in there for longer than I thought. Again. Hours maybe.

Damn my body. Miss Beak was right. My own abilities were kneecapping me. I could heal quicker than anything on this planet, yet my stupid body tried to adapt to the damage it was enduring instead of just outright healing from it.

“Your parents?” I asked through clenched teeth. My lungs hurt something fierce.

“Ran off after you were dropped into the melting stone, Vim. It seems to me that you’re very dangerous, but when one knows how to deal with you it’s not a danger one cannot handle. This is the third time I’ve watched them use this method to escape from you,” Miss Beak calmly assessed my predicament with cold honesty, but it only made me hotter.

The heat from anger was a surprise, since I had not thought myself to be so prideful. She wasn’t wrong. Plus it wasn’t like she was belittling me either. If anything it was a compliment to be told that beings such as they, essentially gods, needed to use such methods to escape from me. Yet here I was, upset over it all the same.

Upset over the truth.

How humiliating.

“Vim…?” Miss Beak gently said my name, and I knew it was time I got up. My body was still adapting to the normal air, the more normal temperature, but I had enough control over it to get up.

Yet I almost didn’t want to get up.

Nine times. Nine damn attempts. The first couple I understood. They were reasonable. Understandable. But nine?

Nine times I’ve allowed them to slip from my grasp. Nine times I’d allowed two monarchs, first born ones at that, to escape from me. To further spread their rule-breaking atrocities onto the world.

Each failure was countless lives. Lost forever. All because I wasn’t good enough.

“If you hurry you might be able to catch them. Father’s wing will take a long time to heal. Days, if not moons,” Miss Beak said as she turned, likely to look at the wing in the distance.

“Right…” I groaned as I slowly stood. It hurt, and I felt heavy and weak as if still covered in hardened slag. But I knew she was right.

Without a wing there was a chance I might be able to catch up. Especially if I hurried. Even though a monarch, one of the strongest I’d ever encountered, it couldn’t outpace me on foot. Not forever.

If I didn’t hurry I’d miss this opportunity and have to spend years searching for them again. I was growing tired of this hunt. Tired of them.

Tired of failure.

As I stood up, I took a deep breath of cool air and looked around. At the remnants of my battle. The blood. The steam coming from the slag as the cool air hit the hot stone. The distant feathers all around and the huge pink wing in the distance. The structures even farther away, like little silhouettes on the horizon. Reminding me of the civilization that had just been here. That had been growing healthily, rapidly, before the monarchs had arrived.

Before I had chased them here.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to those people. An untold number were now gone, thanks to me. An entire culture. Maybe even a whole race.

“For?” Miss Beak tilted her head at me, not understanding my meaning. Not because she couldn’t comprehend it, though. She had grown rather wise in her own way.

“For failing the people that had lived here. The lives. The life,” I said as I stepped away from the hole I had just crawled out of.

“Ah. Yes. But it is not you who should apologize Vim, it is them. My parents did this, not you.”

“No. Or well, yes. They did. But I also failed to stop them,” I argued.

“To be honest Vim I believe you may be the only one anymore capable of even doing so. So I find that to be quite a statement,” she said.

I coughed one last time as my lungs finished adapting, and I nodded. Right.

Right…

The last one capable of fighting them.

Funny.

“Let’s go,” I said, deciding not to let that conversation go any further. I hated that conversation.

“They flew this way,” she said as she stepped away, heading north.

I nodded and followed my monarch friend, as we once again returned to the hunt.