They didn’t have to look for long.
The cry came again as they crossed a broad shelf of rock scattered with white feathers. Some were longer than Max’s arm, and their edges looked sharp enough to cut skin.
Cass picked one up, turned it over and dropped it immediately.
"Ow!"
A thin red line opened across her palm.
"That’s a feather?" she muttered.
Max crouched to examine it. The shaft was hollow, with a faint blue sheen along the inside.
"It’s reinforced with mana," he said. "The whole thing."
"Just tell me whether it’s going to fall on us," Ilan said.
Max looked at the feather again, then toward the clouds above. "I wouldn’t stand under it."
The air around them suddenly grew heavy.
A ring of stones rose from the ground, hovered for an instant and shot sideways. Darius stepped in front of the others, forcing his own field outward. The stones stopped before reaching them, but his boots sank into the ground under the effort.
"Back!" he shouted.
The clouds split.
Something enormous came down through them, its wings spread so wide that they blotted out most of the sky. It had the head and hooked beak of a great hunting bird, but its neck was armored with overlapping plates, and transparent sacs glowed beneath its breastbone. Four bright eyes studied the party as it descended, while each beat of its wings sent pressure rolling across the stone.
A new window flashed before Max.
[Warning: Abnormal Boss Signature Detected]
[C-rank Gate Boss: Skybreaker Roc]
"C-rank?" he said aloud.
Darius heard him. His expression tightened.
"That explains the gravity changes. We leave. Now."
Ilan turned toward the broken bridge behind them. "We don’t have a crossing."
"Cass can take us in pairs," Darius said. "I’ll hold the current."
Cass unfolded her fins and sprang into the air. She had barely risen above the island when the Skybreaker Roc turned one wing.
The current reversed.
Cass dropped like a stone.
Darius caught her with a burst of gravity just before she struck the ground. She landed on her hands and knees, gasping.
"It’s controlling the air around us," she said. "I can’t lift against that."
The Roc gave another cry and swept toward them.
"Split left and right!" Darius shouted.
Max dove beneath its first pass. The talons tore a trench through the stone behind him, and the wind from the creature’s wings threw Ilan onto his back. Ilan rolled and fired from the ground.
TWANG!
Three arrows curved toward the Roc’s exposed chest. Two struck the armored plates. The third slipped between them and made the creature shriek.
Blood.
Max saw it running beneath the feathers.
’Darius is right. That thing’s C-rank. But it can bleed.’
The Roc rose and stopped in midair without moving its wings. One foot pressed against something invisible, and the air beneath it rippled like water.
Max stared.
’It’s standing on the air.’
The creature kicked off that invisible foothold and changed direction so abruptly that Cass didn’t have time to dodge. Its beak struck her folded fins, snapping one at the hinge. She spun away, hit the ground and lay still.
"Cass!" Ilan shouted.
He started toward her, but the Roc was already turning back.
Max moved first.
Burst Step hurled him across the shelf. He caught Cass by the back of her jacket and dragged her clear just as the creature’s talons struck where she’d fallen.
BAM!
Stone burst around them.
Max pulled her behind a broken pillar. She was conscious, but one arm hung awkwardly at her side and blood ran from a cut above her eye.
"Can you move?"
"Give me a second," she managed.
"Take two."
He pushed a healing potion into her uninjured hand. Then he sprang back into the open before the Roc could circle around the pillar.
Darius was holding a ring of rubble around the creature, trying to pin its wings. The stones shook violently each time the Roc forced more mana into the air.
"Max!" he called. "The throat sacs! Ilan’s arrow hurt them!"
"I saw!"
Max raised his left hand and fired Stormbolt.
KRRRAACK!
The lightning struck the Roc’s breastbone. The creature convulsed, losing height for a moment, but then a wall of compressed air formed in front of it and drove Max backward.
He skidded across the stone, his boots gouging two long lines through the dust.
’Great. It can block lightning too.’
The Roc struck again. This time Max didn’t try to dodge around it. He caught its descending talon with the gauntlet and twisted, using its momentum to pull himself alongside its leg.
Its strength was enormous. His feet left the ground, and pain shot through his right shoulder as the creature tried to shake him loose. But he’d already identified the thin flesh behind the knee joint.
SHNK!
He buried the claws there.
The Roc screamed and dragged him through the air. Max felt his grip slipping, so he drove the gauntlet deeper, tearing an ugly wound beneath the feathers.
[Sanguine Claim Activated]
Warmth rushed into his arm. The shallow cuts across his shoulder closed, although the deeper strain remained.
’Now!’
He fired Stormbolt into the exposed joint.
KRAACK!
The creature’s leg spasmed. It crashed against the island’s edge, and Max jumped clear before its body could crush him.
For a moment the whole island tilted.
Darius raised both hands and forced the stone beneath them to steady. His face tightened, and a line of blood ran from one nostril.
"I can’t keep doing that!" he shouted.
The Roc pulled itself up, furious. Its wings snapped open, filling the air with black, razor-edged feathers. Ilan fired until his bowstring hummed, knocking several aside, but too many were coming.
Max saw the loose iron support he’d stored from the broken bridge in his mind.
’Let’s see if this works.’
He summoned it in front of him.
CLANG!
The beam appeared across his arms, wider than his body and heavy enough that his boots dug into the stone. He swung it sideways, catching the first volley of feathers with a series of sharp metallic impacts.
TINK! TINK! CRACK!
Three feathers punched through the metal. One grazed his cheek. But the others struck the beam instead of Ilan and Cass.
Darius stared for half a second, then lifted a hand and caught the beam in his field.
"I don’t know where you got that," he said, "but hold it steady!"
The beam rose, turning into a shield over the three of them as the last feathers struck.
Max ducked beneath it, grabbed the broken end and shoved upward. He and Darius held the improvised barrier until the storm passed.
Then Max stored the beam again.
Ilan looked at the empty space. "All right. I’m definitely asking about that later."
"Later," Max agreed.
The Roc circled above them. Its wounded leg hung lower, and the lightning had left black marks around its breastbone. For the first time, it wasn’t diving whenever it saw an opening.
It was watching them.
Darius stepped beside Max, breathing hard. "We can’t outrun it. Cass can’t fly, and I’m nearly out of mana."
Max looked at the Roc’s glowing throat sacs. Each time the creature planted a foot on the air, one of those sacs dimmed, then brightened again.
’It’s shifting the pressure through them. That’s how it stops itself from falling.’
"Then we bring it down," Max said.
Darius glanced at him. "You have a plan?"
"A terrible one."
"Does it involve getting close to that thing again?"
"Very close."
Darius looked at his injured shoulder, then at the Roc, then back at him.
"Fine," he said. "Tell me what you need."