Chapter 248: Angry Birds

The birds had assembled. Their coos had turned into shrieks, high-pitched and piercing, cutting through the forest like blades.

The sound was unnerving, a chorus of anger that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Darion looked up, his eyes scanning the canopy. The birds were no longer just watching. They were preparing to attack.

Then the first one dropped. Not falling, diving. Fast and deliberate, talons forward, aimed at the nearest archer.

Its body cut through the air like a stone, its wings tucked close, its eyes fixed on its target. The archer froze, his bow half-raised, his face pale with fear. He knew he couldn’t dodge in time.

But the bird hit the undead Yuimon positioned behind that archer instead.

It slammed into the creature’s armored body and bounced off, disoriented, its wings flapping wildly as it tried to regain its balance.

The Yuimon didn’t even flinch. It just stood there, its green eyes glowing, its body still and waiting.

Then the second dropped. Then more. They came in waves, their bodies plummeting from the sky, their talons extended.

The archers scrambled, their training kicking in as they dove for cover. They were fast, but the birds were faster.

These were not small birds being territorial. These were large forest birds that had apparently decided that the group in their section of forest had overstayed its welcome...killing their fellow birds just for the fun of it.

They were going to handle that collectively!

They moved with purpose, their attacks coordinated, their shrieks filling the air. The sky above the clearing filled with circling shapes. Fifty of them, maybe more.

Darion shouted. "Take shelter. Move back. Now."

His voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding.

The archers responded, their bodies moving before their minds had fully processed the command. They scrambled back, their bows raised, their eyes fixed on the birds above.

Darion was already summoning as he shouted. All eleven birds from his inventory released simultaneously, the green light coming in a wave.

They rose immediately, orienting upward, engaging the circling flock.

The undead birds moved with precision, their bodies cutting through the air, their green eyes glowing. They were faster than the living birds, more aggressive, more relentless.

The wild birds reacted to the undead birds with a sort of alarm?, y’know seeing their fellow birds differently as an enemy... as undeads.

They shrieked, their bodies twisting, their wings beating against the air. They didn’t understand what they were facing. They only knew that it was wrong.

Darion gave the order. He told the Yuimons to catch the birds as they flew near or closer. The massive creatures moved, their bodies shifting, their jaws opening.

They were fast for their size, their reflexes sharp. They swiped at the birds, their claws tearing through feathers and flesh. The birds shrieked, their bodies crashing to the ground.

The archers, including Seren, were told to move back to a spot beside the trees. They scrambled, their bows still raised, their eyes scanning the chaos. They were exposed, vulnerable, but they were also trained. They knew how to survive.

Darion summoned an undead knight for each archer to stand at their backs and protect them from any creatures that might come out of the forest.

The knights materialized in a flash of green light, their armor rusted but intact, their weapons raised. They formed a protective circle around the archers, their eyes scanning the trees.

He stepped in front of the nearest Horned Yuimon, his body tense, his eyes fixed on the birds above.

Then he looked up at what was coming and thought: this is going to be a lot.

The birds were circling, their bodies forming a dark cloud against the sky. There were so many of them, their wings blotting out the light. They were angry, confused, and determined. They were going to fight.

Darion raised his hand, his fingers forming a fist. He was ready. The battle was about to begin.

The fight was loud and fast and completely unlike anything Darion had managed before.

The air was filled with shrieks and feathers, the clash of bodies and the thud of impacts.

The undead birds worked well in the air. They didn’t tire, didn’t flinch when hit, and they moved through the flock causing disruption wherever they went.

Their green eyes glowed against the dark shapes of the wild birds, their movements precise and relentless.

They were a force of chaos, breaking formations, scattering groups, creating openings that the others could exploit.

But fifty-plus large angry birds against eleven undead birds was still a numbers problem.

The wild ones were fast and coordinated in the way creatures were coordinated when they were acting on collective instinct rather than individual decisions.

They didn’t hesitate, didn’t second-guess. They just attacked, their bodies diving, their talons extended, their beaks snapping. They moved as a single entity, a swarm of feathers and fury that seemed impossible to stop.

The Horned Yuimons were catching birds that dove too low.

Their massive hands closed on wings, their jaws snapped shut on bodies.

They dealt with them efficiently and without ceremony.

A bird would dive, aiming for an archer, and a Yuimon would intercept it, its claws tearing through flesh and feathers.

The bird would fall, its body crumpling, its life ending in an instant. The Yuimons didn’t slow down, didn’t hesitate. They just kept moving, kept catching and kept killing.

The undead knights beside the archers were fending off birds that peeled off from the main assault and went for the elevated positions.

The knights stood like statues, their weapons raised, their green eyes scanning the sky.

When a bird came too close, they would strike, their swords flashing, their movements precise. They were the last line of defense, the barrier between the archers and the chaos.

The archers were not just sheltering. Seren had them shooting. "This is training," she told them through the noise. "These are the fastest moving targets you’re ever going to see. So shoot."

They shot. Some birds dropped, their bodies spiraling down from the sky. Others dodged, their movements too fast, too unpredictable. But the archers kept shooting, kept learning, kept adapting.

Pannett’s arrows were landing with a consistency that was almost unreasonable given the conditions.

She moved with a fluid grace, her bow rising and falling, her arrows finding their marks. She hit a bird, then another, then another. Her face was calm, her eyes focused. She was in her element, a predator among predators.

At one point Darion had twelve birds circling him directly. The flock’s attention had somehow focused on him specifically, possibly because he was the one directing the undead and they had registered him as the source of the wrongness.

They dove at him, their bodies cutting through the air, their talons extended. His Horned Yuimons closed around him, their massive bodies forming a wall of flesh and bone.

He was effectively behind a wall of undead with birds diving at it from every angle and bouncing off.

He watched this happen and thought: this is absurd. He was the center of a storm, the eye of a hurricane of feathers and fury.

The birds were relentless, their attacks coordinated, their shrieks filling the air. But they couldn’t reach him. The Yuimons were too strong, too fast and too relentless. They swatted the birds aside, their claws tearing through feathers and flesh.

He summoned more Yuimons to push toward the archers’ positions when the birds started concentrating there.

The fight broke into three zones. The air, where the undead birds were working through the flock. The ground level, where the Yuimons were operating.

And the positions, where the archers were shooting from cover.

When birds came too close to the archers, some shouted like "Ahhhh!"

The sound was sharp, cutting through the chaos. One archer stumbled backward, his bow falling from his hands.

Another dropped to the ground, covering his head with his arms. But they didn’t break. They held their positions, their eyes fixed on the sky, their bows ready.

It took a while. The birds didn’t stop coming in waves until the numbers thinned enough that the ones still alive reconsidered their collective decision.

The fight was brutal, a clash of predators that seemed impossible to stop. But gradually, slowly, the tide began to turn.

From their positions, the archers watched in awe. They had never seen anything like this, a battle between birds, fought in the air and on the ground.

The undead birds circled above, their green eyes glowing, their bodies relentless.

The Yuimons moved below, their massive forms catching the birds that dove too low. The knights stood like statues, their weapons raised, their presence a constant reassurance.

The birds kept coming. Darion kept fighting. He was killing them by the dozens.

His undead birds were a force of nature, a swarm of death that tore through the flock. His Yuimons were a wall of muscle and bone that nothing could penetrate. And the archers were learning, adapting, becoming what Seren had wanted them to become.

Then they peeled away. Not all at once, but in groups. The circling dispersed, the dive attacks stopping.

The sound changed back from coordinated to scattered. The birds were retreating, their shrieks fading, their bodies disappearing into the canopy.

The clearing was covered in birds. More than fifty dead on the ground. Their bodies lay scattered across the forest floor, their feathers torn, their eyes glassy. The silence was heavy, broken only by the heavy breathing of the archers.