Rune Seeker - Book 3: Chapter 32: Why Didn’t I Think Of That?

“Seeyela!” Seena screamed, obviously seeing the same thing Hiral did, but then a purple Bamf of smoke appeared on the Roc’s back.

End over end, Seeyela rolled across the feathers until her arm stabbed down, one of her Fangs of the Lady cutting through to the flesh beneath. Her body jerked to a painful halt near the back of the monster, and the second dagger appeared in her other hand.

Down came her green-glowing weapon to drive into the Roc’s back, but she might as well have been a flea for all the damage it did, and the thing turned its head just enough for its eye to focus on Seena.

Another beat of its huge wings shot it practically straight upwards—poor Seeyela barely hanging on—then it twisted in the air and dove back down. Scars of flame tore across its face and shoulders as it shot in Seena’s direction, but they didn’t do any more harm than Seeyela’s daggers had. Vili, so tiny compared to the plunging Roc, furiously beat its wings and weaved past the snapping beak and reaching claws.

Coming out the other side, Seena spun on her mount’s back and continued her barrage of Cinder+. Three more slashes of flame struck the monster as it again twisted around to swoop in for another pass, and she even hurled a fireball straight for its face.

Except it missed. The Roc angled its body just enough for the ability to soar past its belly. And then the chase was on again, Vili doing everything it could to swerve and dodge the much larger predator while Seena peppered it with fiery attacks. On the Roc’s back, Seeyela continued to stab and stab, each successful strike adding another dose of the deadly Ghost-WebVenom. But how much would it take to start to make a difference against an opponent that large?

“Yanily, we’ve got to help,” Hiral said, standing up on Drake’s saddle and activating Foundational Split; he couldn’t do anything with all his abilities sealed.

“You’re on your own,” Yanily said. “Looks like somebody is up for round two.”

“Round two?” Hiral asked, but his eyes went to the crater on the ground below. The burned and scarred Roc from Yanily’s earlier encounter was back on its feet and spreading its wings like it was ready to take off. Feathers and flesh sloughed off to reveal a healthy body underneath. What kind of trick was that? “Okay, that one’s all yours. I’ll…”

“You’ll what, exactly?” Left asked from beside him, both doubles holding on to Drake’s ribcage to avoid falling off.

“Make it up as I go along,” Hiral said. “You two will have to stay here. Make sure Drake stays safe or I’ll have nowhere to come back to.”

“Come back to?” Right asked. “Where are you…?”

Hiral shot off Drake’s back with a burst of Rejection so powerful it pushed the Dracolich twenty feet in the opposite direction and made both his doubles yelp in surprise. Hiral didn’t have time to worry about that, though. He was miles above the ground and had a monstrously large bird to deal with… somehow.

The huge Roc was still completely focused on Vili and Seena, who kept doubling back and forth to take advantage of the phoenix’s higher mobility, but every pass was a close call. One break in concentration, or even the slightest nick on Vili, would be the end of the chase. And they were moving too fast for Hiral to line up a big hit with the Emperor’s Greatsword like he had before.

So, instead, he raced towards the large bird on planes of Rejection, pushing his Dex to its limit, and hefted the blunderbuss in both hands. With Vili and the Roc playing a tight game of cat and mouse, it didn’t take Hiral long to get to them, even though he was losing altitude with every step, and he pulled the trigger.

Running as he was, his aim wasn’t great, but it didn’t need to be with a target that big. The explosive sphere of Impact scored a hit on the beast’s left wing, stuttering its flap just enough to buy Vili an extra second to slip past. It didn’t seem to do any real damage, though, and Hiral hurled himself forward with another infusion of Rejection at his feet.

“This thing isn’t giving up,” Seena said, tossing out Cinder+ after Cinder+ at the Roc constantly on her tail.

“And it’s practically ignoring me,” Seeyela said. “Kind of pissing me off.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind it ignoring me right about now,” Seena said, tossing another fireball at the Roc, but the splash of flame against its shoulder didn’t even make it flinch.

Neither did Hiral’s next shot against its wing.

“Seeyela, the feathers seem like they’re acting as some kind of protection,” Hiral said, noting the complete lack of damage to them.

“Yeah, it’s almost like they’re metallic,” she said. “Half my stabs aren’t getting anywhere here. Like I said, pissing me off!”

Even with his Internal Injuries ability, Hiral wasn’t doing any significant damage to the beast. Its health bar sat practically full over its head, but they needed to do something to at least chase it off.

“Can you bring me to you?” Hiral asked Seeyela, firing off another shot as the Roc whizzed past after Vili.

“Barely hanging on here myself,” Seeyela said.

“Didn’t answer my question,” Hiral said, tracking the Roc with his blunderbuss and scoring a fourth useless hit.

“You’ll fly right off…” she started.

“Just do it,” Hiral said, sprinting across the sky as he pulled his trigger a fifth and sixth time, though now he was forced to aim up. He was losing too much altitude.

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“Fine. Just keep going straight…” Seeyela said, and a black curtain dropped down fifteen feet straight ahead of Hiral.

He sprinted to—and through—it without hesitation, then immediately changed the Rejection at his feet to Attraction. His whole body jerked as he got caught on the Roc’s speeding back, its momentum flopping him down to his back even though the soles of his boots stayed firmly planted.

“Ow,” he grumbled, though it didn’t really hurt.

“Think you can help me too?” Seeyela asked.

“Sure thing,” Hiral said, tossing the blunderbuss into the Ring of Amin Thett, then standing and helping get Seeyela secure with Attraction on her feet. “You won’t be able to move, but at least you won’t fall.”

“Glad to hear you two are getting comfortable over there,” Seena said. “Any… chance… you could… hurry things… up?” Her voice swung in time with Vili’s evasive maneuvers.

“I take it you have a plan, Hiral?” Seeyela asked.

“Well…” he said, kneeling on the back of the speeding Roc to take a closer look at the feathers.

Like Seeyela had said, they were almost metallic, but razor thin, and they had to be light for the bird to be able to fly at all. Each one was about as long as his arm, and he gave one a gentle tug, but it stayed firmly in place. A stronger pull, and it still didn’t move. A third yank with all his strength didn’t even budge it.

“Your plan was to pull the feathers out?” Seeyela asked flatly.

“Just testing different theories,” he grumbled.

“Test. Faster,” Seena ordered over the party chat.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Hiral said, cupping his hands like he had when he’d dealt with the first Roc. A thread of solar energy to each of his Runes of Impact, Increase, and Expansion, and the same egg-shaped blast of force erupted outward… only to splash across the feathers like water. “Amazing.”

“I hope you’re talking about your plan to stop this bird trying to eat me,” Seena chimed in.

“Feathers disperse abilities, and likely provide protection like normal armor as well,” Hiral said, rapid-firing his assumptions as his brain worked. “We can’t punch through them, and Seeyela getting a single dagger through was likely pure luck. Yanily was able to injure a younger one pretty badly, so we have to assume the feathers get stronger with age.”

“How does any of that help us?” Seeyela asked, working her dagger under one of the feathers to poke at the Roc. “Can’t you just hit it with your really heavy sword?”

“Pretty sure the feathers will spread the force of the impact out over the Roc’s entire back, so it won’t do any real damage,” Hiral said. “No, we need something genius if we want to stop this monster…”

The Roc screeched at Seena and Vili as it just barely missed them again, turning its head to make sure it didn’t lose them. As soon as it did, Hiral almost slapped himself in the forehead.

“Seeyela, go stab it in the eye,” he said, almost disappointed in how obvious the answer was.

“What?” she asked, only to look at the same place he did. “Oh. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Bamf! She vanished in a puff of infernal smoke and reappeared in the air beside the Roc’s head. Before it even registered she was there—or got away—she drove her dagger straight down into the eyeball bigger than her entire head.

Unseen Strikes must’ve activated on the hit, because the eye practically exploded under the blow, Seeyela’s dagger driving in until she was up to her wrist in the side of the monster’s head. Oh, and how it screeched in agony, its whole body jerking to the side as if to escape the pain.

The move didn’t save its eye—there was nothing left to save—but it did prevent Seeyela from stabbing it straight through the brain as she went flying out into the open sky.

“Oh, hell…” she said, but Hiral had already leapt after her.

Rejection sped his descent with small explosions of force from the soles of his feet, and he caught her around the waist not even five seconds later.

“Got you,” he said.

“That’s great, but whose got you?” she asked.

“Drake,” Hiral said, spotting the Dracolich already swooping in his direction. A thread of Attraction pulled him to the saddle, and Left and Right quickly helped Seeyela get settled. But, as soon as they all had their weight on Drake’s back, it began to flounder in the air.

“Three passengers,” Left said quickly.

Hiral nodded and canceled Foundational Split without another word, and Drake quickly stabilized itself.

“Nice catch,” he told the Dracolich, sitting down on the saddle and giving the mount a pat. “Seena, you okay?”

“Took you long enough,” the party leader said, but Vili swept down and took up position flying beside Drake. “Yanily?”

“Sorry,” Yanily said over the party chat. Then Hiral spotted him flying in their direction. “It got away.”

“Got away? How is it even alive?” Hiral asked. “We got an experience notification for it and everything.”

“Rocs are a distant, distant relative of phoenixes,” Seena said. “That relationship gives them a small chance to resurrect on death.”

“Phoenixes can… resurrect themselves?” Hiral asked.

“Yes,” Seena said. “There are limitations on how often, but it’s why my patron was so angry to find the undead phoenix back in that dungeon. Whatever was done to it ruined its chance of coming back. No, don’t look at me like that, Li’l Ur. I know that wasn’t your fault.”

“If your patron can do it, does that mean you can too?” Hiral asked. “Come back from the dead, I mean.”

“Maybe at a higher Rank,” Seena said. “Right now I’ve just got an ability that gives me a chance to immediately recover from near-fatal damage. Haven’t exactly been looking for opportunities to put it to the test.”

“Makes sense,” Hiral said as Seeyela shifted behind him to get more comfortable. “Not going to call Bliss back out?”

“She can rest after all the excitement,” Seeyela said. “Besides, one less monstrous mount approaching the islands isn’t a bad thing.”

Hiral looked at the islands only a few miles away. The battle with the Rocs had brought them closer, and he’d be surprised if at least a few of the Growers—and maybe even people up on Fallen Reach—hadn’t seen the fight. The Rocs were gone now, though, already back on their side of the river and somehow out of sight—How does something that big vanish so easily?—which left nothing else to stop the party from going back.

“Where should we land?” Hiral asked. “Your uncle’s dock?”

Seena seemed to think about it for a moment, then finally nodded. “Yes. It’s one of the higher islands, so if we approach it straight on, maybe the others won’t raise an army in alarm at our mounts.”

“They must’ve seen us fight the Rocs,” Yanily said. “We could use the column of mist to hide our approach. Either go straight through it, or around it at the last minute, so they don’t see us coming.”

“I don’t want them to think we’re sneaking up on them…” Seena said.

“But we need to sneak up on them so they don’t try to shoot us out of the sky,” Seeyela interrupted.

“You’re right,” Seena said. “Okay, we’ll use the water as a screen and head for Caaven’s dock. Follow me.”