“Stay away!” the female voice shrieked out as I dug my fingers into the beak, not far from its nose. Huge orange eyes glared at me with a fury as hot as the heat boiling my skin and melting my flesh. I ignored the glare, the heat, the pain, and the shriek of pure agony and fear as I squeezed.

I had begun to adapt to the heat. Although utterly shocked to find that there were two flamingo monarchs, not one, it had turned out to be a positive for me.

The male flamingo had not been willing to abandon the female one. And she was not as big as him. Not as stout. Her heat not as strong.

And he was right now far below, still trying to mend a broken wing. Stuck on the ground as she tried to fly higher, to escape my hold.

“Toss him off!” he roared at her, and his words gave her strength. Fueled her urgency. She shook her mighty head, and thus me on her beak, with a violent movement that would have likely worked at any other moment. But right now?

Right now I was furious.

I clung to the beak, my fingers dug deep into it. I squeezed, I gripped, and tightened every muscle I could muster. As if giving the beak a great big hug, I held onto the beak with such force that I could feel it starting to break. I could feel it starting to crack and bend.

So I squeezed harder.

“No!” she screamed.

And squeezed.

A piece of the beak broke and snapped not far from my face. It hit me in the cheek, and I felt it slice to the bone, but I ignored it as I squeezed some more.

Like its mate, or brother, or whatever the male was to her; her heart was near her beak. A little lower than his. His was at the top, and in the back, of the throat. Hers seemed to be at the bottom, as if beneath her tongue.

I was attacking it from the wrong angle, but I knew it’d work. I knew if I could snap and break the beak here, near the nostrils, I’d be able to put myself into her mouth, maybe even her neck itself. From there I’d be able to dig and claw my way to the heart. Ripping it from her throat, without having to go through the thick steely feathers and even harder outer flesh.

Plus while inside her even if I melted from the intense heat, I’d be able to just heal back up. As long as I made sure she didn’t throw me up or peck me out, somehow.

“Come here!” I heard his voice echo from a far distance. She had flown too far away, with him stuck on the ground. Too far for him to help.

I felt her shift. I felt her mighty wings beat a different way, to send us back towards him.

Not good. He’d be able to hit me with a different type of heat. Or just outright try and grab me, or peck at me, even if it hurt her in the process.

Calling forth more strength, I squeezed even harder. I felt her whole body jolt in pain as the beak cracked right down the middle. In-between my arms, I suddenly found myself staring down at a foot wide-gap in the beak. A gap that was bloody, oozing with strange liquids and had spider-web like gunk throughout it. Yet through all the blood and mucus like gunk, I saw light on the other end. From the open beak, the open mouth.

I had cracked it, at least this section, in two!

Overjoyed by the chance of a lifetime, I quickly swung a foot and leg into the crack. It wasn’t wide enough to get my whole body into it, but this was enough. I kicked downward with enough force to get my foot stuck, then I turned just enough to apply pressure with my knee. I wasted no time, and quickly grabbed at the edges of the crack with my hands, going from hugging to trying to separate them. Like trying to snap apart a piece of half-broken firewood, I pulled and tugged with all the force I could muster.

The monarch hadn’t been able to endure the pain. I felt all the wind around me rush in a new way. She was no longer trying to descend, to get to the other flamingo, and was now simply writhing and flailing every which way.

Odds are this pain was like nothing she had ever experienced. Far beyond it, too. It was the kind of pain that was cruel. The type one experienced while under great torture. She began to screech out in pure agony, the type that busted eardrums. The scream was so pure, so real, it would have likely broken hearts from sympathy in more normal conditions.

I didn’t care, and continued to shatter the beak and widen the crack.

Now that I had a better grip and angle, my strength was making quick work with it. What had been maybe a foot-wide gap at best quickly became large enough that I could slip my whole body into it. I did so, and went to pushing on both sides of the broken beak with all my body. I used my legs to push and kick off one side, and my hands and arms on the other. The result was another deep, loud crack that further separated and broke the beak.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

And upon doing so, the screaming stopped.

I went weightless all of a sudden, and at first I wondered if I had somehow killed the thing already. It shouldn’t have been possible, what with its heart still within it and thumping strongly, but the whole monarch went limp. From beyond the crack I saw huge wings flutter and flail above us as we fell, and I realized she had passed out. Likely from the pain.

A perfect opportunity! I was already feeling the colder air, thanks to the lack of heat!

I stopped trying to break the beak and quickly went to pull myself deeper into the crack. To get beneath the top part of the beak, and enter the mouth. To go for the throat, and the heart located there.

Yet right as I was about to do so, we hit the ground.

The impact hurt. I was slammed against the beak, the sections I had just broken. They were sharp beyond reason, and I felt my left arm go completely numb as a piece sliced deep into it. I felt the broken beak cut to the bone, and cut even the bone as I grinded against it while rolling forward, still moving from the impact.

I fell fast first into the other part of the beak, and while blinking through the pain of broken bones and sliced skin, I took a deep breath… and regretted it.

The world was suddenly hot.

Hot beyond reason.

The breath I had just taken made me instantly start to cough, as my own lungs charred and burnt from the inside. I felt as if I had just inhaled flames. Flames of pure rage.

Then I was hit by the source of the fire. A familiar feeling. One I had experienced several times before.

The white hot flash of heat blinded me further, and I began to melt… once again, as I was buffeted by the hot wind expelled by the male flamingo.

I tried to cling to the beak. To keep myself in the crack. I wasn’t sure yet if the monarch’s abilities worked on each other, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

If this heat didn’t melt its ally, then I’d be able to cling to the beak until I adapted to the heat. If the attack melted the beak as much as it did me, then my goal would be reached anyway. I’d be able to get the thing’s heart all the same, even if I had to scoop it out of muck.

Yet as the heat continued to blast me, melting me alive, I felt the still solid beak all the while. It wasn’t melting as I was.

Great. That meant their abilities didn’t bother each other at all.

Not really that great of a surprise but it meant…

I blinked, and frowned as I found myself staring up at the blue sky.

A blue sky that seemed…

Taking a deep breath, I groaned at the feeling of cool air.

“You have to be shitting me!” I sat up quickly, in a rage, and looked around.

I was surrounded by a familiar pool of hardened slag. I was in the center of what looked like a sunken hole, and all around me were wavy rolls of stone and muck. It looked like I had been lying in a pool of molten slag, as before, and it had now hardened.

Oddly I wasn’t too deep in the slag this time. I easily stood, only having to break a few small layers of the stuff. Odds are I had been dropped onto the slag after it was created, and it had been done after enough time that most of the slag had settled before hand.

Hurriedly climbing out of the small hole of hardened slag, I climbed out of it and stood… and sighed as I looked around for my enemies.

Although there were tiny fires here and there around me, and giant pink feathers all around, there were no flamingos.

“Damn it!” I shouted angrily and clenched my fists hard enough to break skin.

I had been so damn close! I had been just about to get into that flamingo’s throat! Yes it had been the smaller, weaker one, but its heart had been there! Damn near in my grasp!

It was infuriating. Beyond reason. I knew if I had killed the female, the male may have followed after. It had been so enraged, so worried, over the female that it hadn’t fled even when it had needed to.

Odds are if I had killed the female, the male would have gotten so enraged I may have been able to kill it too before it had escaped. Or even thought of doing so.

Kicking the earth, the hardened slag beneath me cracked open. A huge crack shot forward in front of me and also back behind me. It cracked open the hole I had just climbed out of and the other side of the crack ran forward to one of the nearby fires. A bunch of trees had caught flame, likely from the intense heat.

The crack shifted the ground I was on, so I stepped away. I knew any moment parts of the earth would break and fall into the crack. I should have been more careful.

Coughing as the cold air stung my lungs; I groaned and searched for any sign of them. I had broken rather thoroughly the male’s wings… and the female had even passed out from the injuries…

Yet they were nowhere in sight. And there was nowhere around me, nearby enough, for me to climb to a higher elevation in an effort to search around the area for them.

“Next time,” I vowed as I stepped away. I didn’t care for the burning fires around me, or the crack that was still enlarging nearby.

I was getting closer. Better. Quicker.

Last time I had only broken a leg. This time I had nearly killed one of them, and had maimed the other enough that it too would have perished had I succeeded.

That meant next time I might not just kill one of them, but both.

It might take me decades to find them again… but there was nothing I could do about that.

I’d kill them both.

Next time.