“You damnable creation!” the flamingo roared as it flew higher.

I clung to feathers as the winds roared around me. I was lucky this thing was a monarch and not a creature of simplicity. The feathers would not have survived, or stayed connected to its neck, had it been.

Though I suppose if it had been a normal creature I’d not be having this much difficulty in slaying it. Or would need to slay it at all.

The air was still hot; even though we were high enough now that I was struggling even to breathe. I knew soon my lungs would adapt, but our elevation kept changing. It’d fly upward, and then tried to swoop down. Likely in either an effort to shake me off, or to make me pass out.

It was a little startling that this monarch was so smart. Or maybe it just had crazy good instincts on how to effectively kill other creatures. I couldn’t imagine it had many opportunities to learn that quick changes in elevations and going from breathable air to none made animals pass out, or just outright perish. How often did it face enemies that could even make it struggle let alone to the point it tried to flee, after all?

Or maybe it did. Maybe there were others out there fighting monarchs and gods too.

I scoffed, and the monarch spun in the air, forcing me to cling onto its feathers tighter.

It had likely heard my scoff, which had been directed at my own thoughts, and thought I had been belittling its efforts.

The world spun as the creature did, and I felt some of the feathers I clung to start to snap and break thanks to how strongly I had to cling to them in order to keep hold.

This wasn’t going to work. It was eventually going to dislodge me. Then, being a creature without the ability to fly, I’d just fall back to the ground. I’d survive the fall, but then this thing would be able to escape again.

I’ll not allow it to escape again! It had taken years to find even a hint of its existence and then years more to track it down! Not again!

This monster didn’t just slaughter people. It didn’t just harass and eat sentient life.

It eradicated everything. It killed entire ecosystems. Whole nations were wiped out thanks to the heat it exuded.

If I failed to kill this damned bird here and now, untold numbers of life forms will die.

While the flamingo spun in the air, trying to create enough torque to either throw me off or dislodge the feathers I clung to, I sensed its heart. Like before, and every other time, it was at the head. Right behind the beak, as if in the back of its throat.

This one’s heart didn’t move. At least, it hadn’t yet. So you’d think it’d be easy for me to get to it. Break the beak. Crush the head. Snap the neck.

Yet I was struggling something fierce, and I had no choice but to admit it.

Two huge wings snapped open, stopping us from spinning and descending, and the whole creature jolted as the wind pressure pushed it back upward. Thanks to me clinging to the side of its neck, or rather its neck feathers, I and the feathers I clung to flung the other direction. The bird went upward, we continued down. The momentum of the forceful switch in direction midair was so great that half the feathers bent and buckled under the pressure.

Feathers stronger than steel snapped loudly, audible even through the great roaring wind passing by.

Although feathers broke, and a few dislodged, I still clung on. I didn’t hesitate to release a few feathers with my right hand, punch deeper into the layers of feathers, and grab more. Ones I’d not damaged or touched yet. I repeated the process with my left hand, and prepared myself to start digging deeper into the feathers.

“Let me go!” the flamingo roared at me, feeling that I had just renewed my position and secured myself better.

I’d be happy to if you’d just die already.

As the flamingo flew higher, likely to try and skydive again in an effort to forcefully remove me, I clawed deeper and deeper into the layers of feathers. The feathers were thick, strong, and at least a dozen thick. It made me wonder if the thing’s neck was far scrawnier than it looked.

While burying myself into the feathers, I felt things grow hotter.

The feathers themselves started to sizzle, releasing steam-like plumes of smoke as they grew hotter and hotter. I felt my skin start to scorch and blister, but I ignored it all as I pulled myself deeper into the feathers and eventually found skin.

Or at least what I thought was skin. It looked leathery, and hardened. As if scaled. But I didn’t take even a moment to examine it as I threw a punch.

My fist hit the flesh, and I was surprised to feel my bones break upon impact.

The flamingo noticeably jolted in shock, and I heard it let out a loud guffaw, but it was obvious I had only knocked the wind out of it. My punch had not broken skin. Had not punctured its neck.

The skin was harder than the feathers.

“Shit,” I groaned as the temperature noticeably increased. I felt the flamingo stop moving, folding its wings inward into itself. I knew better than to think I had knocked it out, or that it had reached its desired height for its skydive. The air wasn’t thin enough yet.

No. This was it preparing to use its ability. Its heat.

Punching again, and again, I striked with more force each time. I ignored the bones that broke and shattered upon each impact, and then healed just enough to break and shatter again on the next blow. I ignored the intense heat all around me, growing hotter with every moment. I ignored my blood boiling again.

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I wasn’t sure how many punches it had taken, but by the same time my eyeballs started to boil and pop, I felt blood. Blood that wasn’t my own.

I was splattered in the fact as my fist punctured the flesh. The blood felt cool, especially compared to all the heat around me, yet the moment the blood touched me I began to boil again.

The heat was boiling the blood, which was now covering me.

“Be gone!”

A roar, a shriek, of pure pain and anger was all I heard as I became weightless… and then felt myself falling.

Unable to see, I relied on what little sound and feeling I still possessed. I heard the rush of air, a familiar sound of falling from a great height. I felt pain as flesh boiled and melted, yet healed and grew back just as fast only to be melted again.

I heard a voice in the distance, likely the flamingo, but it was unintelligible. It was distant.

Some time passed, more than a few dozen seconds, which made me wonder how high up in the sky we had been. I healed enough that sight began to return, and I found myself staring up at the wide expanse of a blue sky. Once again, a sky without a cloud in sight.

And no giant pink flamingo monarch.

“Damn,” I groaned, and then hit the ground.

My world went black again upon the impact, and I quickly felt two more impacts as I genuinely bounced off the solid dirt. I felt my limp body roll, and within my skull I felt and heard a bunch of shattered bones make strange mushy sounds within the boiled flesh… and then I came to a stop.

Groaning again, in pain, I felt my body begin to heal with the utmost urgency. It still thought I was in battle. That my need was dire.

My own body didn’t realize that the monarch had already escaped. I couldn’t even hear its wings flapping in the air, or the sizzle of its heat burning the very moisture out of the air.

For a good few dozen minutes I laid on the ground, even long after my body healed enough to allow me to stand up. To open my eyes.

I just remained there. Silent. Going through my memories, and searching for my mistakes and how to correct them.

This was the second time I’d allowed that monarch to escape. The second time I had failed to inflict any real damage to it, too.

I could count on one hand the number of times I’d failed so spectacularly. And of those I believe this was the first time a monarch, not a god, had made me feel this weak and useless.

“Sorry mother,” I groaned as I slowly pushed myself off the dried grass.

The world felt a little wobbly, but I knew that was not because I was actually hurt. It was just my own feelings causing me to feel worthless.

I stood up, winced at a weird pain in my neck as if from a stiff muscle, and creaked my neck enough to crack it. After doing so I felt a part of my spine actually snap, and break, making my left arm go limp.

The pain faded instantly, and very quickly I felt a bone in my spine reset and feeling return to my arm. I must have healed improperly somehow.

Rolling that shoulder, I glanced around to make sure the monarch really was gone. I could see for a far distance, thanks to this place being a rather open prairie, but no matter where I looked I didn’t find the pink monster.

Nor was it even in the sky. Not even as a far off speck.

“How the hell am I going to kill it?” I asked myself.

It was tough enough that it took multiple blows just to break its skin. Even if I could cling on to it as it flew, and tried to shake me off with all its movements and maneuvers, I couldn’t withstand its heat. Not forever. Eventually its heat melted the very flesh off my bones, which inevitably made me lose grip upon it and fall off.

That meant I’d have to be able to kill it, or disable it, before it could burn me to such a degree as that.

How though? It seemed to have to go still, to not even be able to flap its wings, to expel its great heat… but that didn’t help me.

It wasn’t its mighty strength that stopped me from defeating it, after all, it was that damned heat ability.

I spat as I snapped my neck again, and this time didn’t feel anything weird.

I could adapt to its heat. But the problem was the adaption time. It took my body experiencing the environment, the heat, to adapt to it. That meant I needed to endure it long enough, to get hurt and then heal enough times, for my body to adapt. That meant enduring the heat for many minutes, if not dozens, before I could just outright ignore its heat entirely.

There was no way the monarch would wait that long. It was smart. It already figured out that I healed as fast as it did, and knew in a battle of attrition it would lose eventually. So it destroyed me enough to give it a chance to flee. It put me out of commission long enough to escape, nothing more.

It was a little strange that the monarch didn’t at least try to finish me off. Just now for example, it could have flown past overhead while I laid on the ground and healed. It could have attacked me, even from a distance with its heat abilities. Yet it hadn’t.

Maybe it knew what I was. Or who I was. It had not recognized me on our first meeting, but now it seemed to know I was a damned creation.

“A damnable creation,” I whispered.

Maybe it had put one and two together.

It was a possibility. I hadn’t confirmed it yet, but I fully believed that flamingo was a firstborn monarch. A source, not a descendant of one. Its powers were far too potent, too strong, to be anything but.

So it had existed during the age of gods. It had been around back then. During those wars.

Stretching my back, I sighed and wondered which way it had flown. I hadn’t even noticed. If it had flown high enough, I’d not even be able to track it down by the trail of dehydration and scorched earth as I had before.

“It might also be able to stop its heat entirely,” I mumbled in defeat. If it was smart enough to flee from me, a thing most monarchs didn’t even try until it was too late, then it was likely smart enough to realize that I could track it down by the rampage it left in its wake. The carnage, or rather the dried out husks of plant and animal life alike.

Taking a deep breath of hot air, I scratched at the back of my head and wondered how many firstborn monarchs were even left.

“How had it taken me this long to notice this one?” I wondered as well.

Such heat was rather noticeable. It affected a huge area around its source. Even the outer rims of the heat, where animals and plants could still somehow survive even if only marginally, were noticeable even by those without knowledge of monarchs and divinity. Strange weather patterns, and unnatural animal migrations were just the tip of the iceberg. People, humans and non-humans alike, noticed such strangeness. Though they all had different names for it. They all had different things to blame for it, but I could read between the lines once I heard of such strangeness.

“Next time I’ll go for the wings,” I decided. If I couldn’t get past its heat, not without adapting first, then I needed to make it so that it had no choice but give me that opportunity. If I grounded the bird, then although it could escape and create a vast distance between us while I healed it wouldn’t be as massive as the distance its wings gave it.

Honestly although annoying it wasn’t the first time I’ve had to fight this way. To hunt like this.

Such powerful monarchs, like their creators, could not be killed outright. They were not destroyed from simple damage like creatures of normalcy. You had to wear them down. Whittle away their divine life force.

To win by attrition.

“Wings…” I mumbled as I stepped away, heading in a random direction. Hopefully it was the right one, but I doubted it.

Yes.

Wings.

Next time.