Traveling on foot, even by road, was not a pleasant experience. Of the three of them, the snake was best suited to overland travel, and even they weren’t exactly built for going significant distances. Further hampering their travel speed was the weather. It had turned hot and humid, the sun bearing down and threatening to bake Ink-Talon alive thanks to his all-black plumage. It also made him painfully aware of part of being a bird that he’d been unfortunate enough not to learn about in his past life.

Birds did not sweat.

This meant that they must have had other ways of regulating body temperature, ways that the former human was entirely unaware of and unable to perform without an example. In the end, what should have been a full day of travel instead turned to maybe a quarter of a day’s worth, halted by frequent breaks and cooling in the shade of shrubs and roadside grasses. All the while, Ink-Talon bent the full might of his Attunement towards the goal of experimenting and figuring out how the hell birds could ever live anywhere hot.

He’d expected to just be able to intuit what to do like he could for his motor skills, but he very quickly ran into an important difference here. When he used his Attunement to teach himself how to walk or eat or fly, he already knew exactly what movements he was trying to perform and just needed his body to cooperate. His Attunement let him bypass the need for practice by standing in for muscle memory. For this, though, he had no idea what his goal was other than “cool off.” He wasn’t struggling with moving, he was struggling with a lack of knowledge of what to move.

The most aid his Attunement could give him in this was informing him how close he was to dangerously overheating at the moment and how effective a given attempt at cooling himself off was. Still, he learned a few important things by trying random ideas. First was that increasing the exposed surface area of his body helped. Unfurling his wings and holding them to his sides both exposed his core to more air flow and allowed heat to bleed off the much thinner flesh of his open wings. As an added bonus, his open wings also provided shade to Gray, who while not suffering nearly as much, still struggled a bit in the sun.

The second was that he could almost pant like a dog, opening his beak and breathing rapidly through his mouth. He was certain that he was doing something wrong in terms of the technique, but it did help a bit. It made him feel extremely silly, but it wasn’t as if either of his companions cared.

In the end, though, the day was more or less a bust. The only upsides were that they didn’t encounter any other travelers, and that they managed to make camp alongside a stream that more or less alleviated any of the problems with ambient heat for the evening.

“You… didn’t really plan for the climate out here, did you?” The snake, presumably the human half, asked once they had come to their final stop for the night. Before Ink-Talon could answer, though, her body seemed to seize for a moment. “Hey! Don’t-”

“The crow clearly has not planned anything, as is natural.” The snake rattled its tail, the more animalistic half interjecting out loud to make sure Ink-Talon heard it. “Time spent planning for the unpredictable is time that could be spent reacting appropriately to events as they happen.”

“I disagree, but you’re right that I failed to plan ahead.” The crow finished splashing around in the shallow water and shook himself off, moving to examine the small satchel that he’d been wearing since leaving the College. “If I had ever intended to travel, I would have packed more than a length of twine, a metal wire, a chunk of cork, and a shard of flint.” He sighed, turning his head to preen the feathers on his back where the bag’s straps had been sitting for the last two days and wincing a bit as he discovered that he’d developed a rash from wearing it too long.

“With gear like that, you make it sound like you were planning a heist on a budget.” The snake’s smirking tone quickly faded as Ink-Talon just stared at her with a tired look in his eyes. “Oh. You were, almost. Sorry.”

Everyone was too tired to make much conversation after that, and a sleepy silence pervaded the final hours of the day as the sounds of crickets and other buzzing insects began to fill the air. The air cooled and Ink-Talon spent his time cleaning and tended to his feathers enough to put his satchel back on, this time with a little more slack for breathability. Eventually, however, Gray perked up, sniffing the air and looking around with apparent concern.

“Is someone coming?” Ink-Talon asked the kit, trying not to outwardly display any of his sudden spike in anxiety.

“No,” Gray answered, before asking a bizarre question. “Why is the air so heavy?”

“...Heavy?” The crow tilted his head.

“I feel it on my eyes and ears.” It chittered quietly, its eyes transfixed on the sky.

“Wait, is it talking about… barometric pressure?” The snake lifted its head and moved closer. “Is it sensitive to that?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out, given how delicate its body must be, no offense.” If the kit was bothered by the observation, it didn’t show it. “It’s kinda like how an old person’s joints will ache before a… storm...” The moment Ink-Talon expressed the comparison, a chilling realization struck him. He’d been present in this world for a little over three weeks, and not once had it rained. There clearly wasn’t a drought, judging by the health of the plants and the patches of mud in the wasteland around Darksoil when they had first arrived, but that left another, far more terrifying possibility. “Stay here, I need to check something.”

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Without even waiting for a response, the crow launched himself upward, fighting through the horrible lurching in his head as he did. The evening sky was perfectly clear, but that could easily change. He needed to see farther into the distance, because if his half-remembered high-school science classes were correct, a sudden increase in air pressure likely preceded rain, and there was no reason to assume that the climate or seasons here were like any he was familiar with. If it was going to rain, it was probably going to rain hard.

And sure enough, as he climbed higher and the air grew colder, a dark, roiling line of clouds became visible on the horizon. As if to shatter any hope that it wouldn’t be that bad, three jagged forks of lightning arced across the storm front in quick succession.

We need to move! We need to find shelter! Where? Circling about, Ink-Talon scanned in every direction to find anything that stood out from the dirt and grasses. He spied what might have been burrows for small animals scattered about the immediate vicinity, but they were liable to either flood or collapse in a torrential downpour. The low shrubs nearby wouldn’t cut it, either. There weren’t enough clumped together to properly break the wind. The only thing he could see was the treeline of some woods in the distance, south of the road.

It was also the only option they had.

“Both of you, we’re moving!” Ink-Talon screeched as he touched back down, stumbling a bit as his vision swam from the too-fast descent. “There’s a massive storm front coming this way, and we’re going to get swept away in the wind and rain if we don’t find shelter.”

“Shelter where? We’re in the middle of nowhere!” The snake coiled like a spring, clearly having been afraid of this the entire time Ink-Talon had been flying up.

“There’s a forest to the south. If we move as fast as we can, we may just make it to the treeline before the worst of it hits.” He opted to leave any estimations on their odds out of his urgent squawking. “Gray, climb on, we need to go faster than you can manage!”

As the crow and snake began their wild sprint, Gray was just as silent as it had been during the escape from Darksoil. But there was one key difference this time. This time, Ink-Talon could feel the squirrel trembling as its paws gripped the feathers on his back as tight as was physically possible. Its fear was contagious, but he couldn’t afford to feel it. He couldn’t afford to risk any of their lives.

The snake was faster on the ground than he was, but he was faster in the air than it was. It made for an awkward start-and-stop pattern of flight, but he ignored the strain of it all and pushed forward. He refused to let himself entertain the idea of just leaving the snake behind, lest his Attunement take the idea and run with it as a goal. The sky was growing dark, and a cold wind began to whip across the plains in short gusts. He could only barely see the distant trees when fluttering above the grass when the first drops of rain began to fall.

“Are you… Doing… Okay?” The snake swerved a bit in their movements to ask the question, the expression coming across strained and fragmented as a result.

“Yes!” Ink-Talon screeched the lie, immediately regretting letting a breath’s worth of air out of his lungs to do so. As if to rub it in, the downpour started in earnest, the deluge of raindrops impacting his small body with the proportional force a torrent of golf balls. Painful and hampering, but not enough to stop him just yet. No, the actual part that stopped him was the wind gusting as he flew to catch up. The moment he spread his wings, he was lifted and thrown sideways, barely managing to draw his right wing back in before he hit the ground hard.

“Ink-Talon! Get up!” A panicked squeak managed to pierce through the ringing in his ears from the impact. The situation was not helped as a thunderclap boomed overhead, and Gray’s entire body locked up, its tiny claws painfully digging into his skin. The sharp pinch was just enough to clear his head, though, and he stood and kept running, angling back towards the snake and keeping grounded.

Another stretch of stinging rain and chilling wind later, the trees were finally in sight. They had maybe 20 more yards to go, give or take, but the storm decided Ink-Talon in particular would not be allowed to go any further. Even with his wings closed and Gray on his back, he found his talons leaving the ground as the gusts picked up into a full-on gale. His desperate attempt at anchoring himself to the grass only lasted long enough for him to realize just how screwed he was.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he put every ounce of consciousness he had into trying to find a way to survive. He immediately knew that between his weight, hollow bones, and the sheer force of the storm, he was going to be whipped about and horrifically dashed against the ground some distance away. By the time the last clump of grass beneath his feet had been torn up by the roots, he realized that there was nothing he could do. If he opened his wings, the wind would only throw him farther and faster. He would just get to control the angle of the smear he’d leave on the soil.

He was going to die.

“NO!” Sudden, searing pain accompanied by a SNAP that reverberated through every bone in Ink-Talon’s body shattered the cold, emotionless assessment of his own cause of death, and he found himself hanging in mid-air. “YOU ARE STAYING HERE! WE ARE GOING TO SURVIVE!” The pain intensified further as he was wrenched downward, pinned to the ground as dark, scaly coils wound themselves around both him and Gray, whose grip went slack the moment it was secured. The last thing Ink-Talon saw before blacking out himself was a brief glimpse of the snake’s mouth clamped down his left leg, his own blood mixing with the mud beneath them, and a look in the snake’s eyes that directly communicated one simple message:

“I will never let go.”