Chapter 491: Straight Teeth

The bird looked Silas dead in the eye.

It slowly lowered its head, pinched its scythe-curved beak tight, and mimed an exaggerated biting motion around an imaginary chunk of shale.

It clamped its jaws, shook its head violently from side to side like a dog tearing through sinew, and dragged its beak across the slate, grinding its lower mandible in a scraping demonstration.

Behind them, Thora stepped up, leaning her weight against the broad shaft of her dwarven pickaxe.

The smith wiped a smudge of black soot from her cheek, squinting down at the bird’s theatrical performance with a calculating, sharp dwarven eye.

"Well, stone me sideways," Thora muttered, spitting a speck of grit into the snow. "Look at the angle of those fractures, my Lord. See how the impact points lean to the left, but the exit drags curve up and out? That wasn’t carved with hands as no set of fingers swings a chisel at that downward cant."

Silas’s blue eyes flicked from the slate to the bird, and then a sudden absurd realization clicked into place.

"She held the rock in her mouth," Silas stated, deadpan. "She was biting a sharp stone and violently whipping her neck around to gouge the letters into the slate..."

The bird froze mid-peck. It stared at Silas, slowly rose to its full height, and nodded its head in slow affirmation.

’Yes... Exactly...’

"She wrote a diplomatic plea for aid... with her teeth," Silas summarized, the unorthodoxy of the situation hanging in the freezing mountain air like a brick.

"Damn," Aurelia murmured, stepping up beside Silas’s shoulder as she folded her hands over her waist.

Her golden eyes analyzed the desperate, scratched stone with deep pity.

"To be reduced to carving scripture with one’s own jaws... whoever she is, her suffering must be immense."

"Aye, or she’s just completely lost her bloody mind," Thora snorted, resting her fists on her hips. "A goddess who writes with her mouth and demands roasted meat like a tavern drunk at closing time? Sounds like a handful... We’ve already got one blonde thunder-head who eats us out of house and home so we don’t need a feral dog-goddess gnawing on the furniture in the Keep."

"Hey!" Thor yelled from the back, her voice booming over the wind as she polished off the last scrap of dried salted mutton from her pouch.

"I heard that, little smith! The divine appetite is a sign of boundless vitality! A warrior who does not eat cannot shatter mountains!"

Silas ignored the bickering, his mind shifting into the cool gears that had kept him alive for so long as he looked down at the shivering battered obsidian bird.

"Listen to me, bird," Silas said, keeping his voice level, calm, and grounded. "I can barely read ten percent of this. The intent is clear enough... someone powerful is locked down and she needs a key to break the seal, and she’s starving too but I can’t just drop what I’m doing, mount a war-pack, and charge blind into that part of the Umbral Basin based on a handful of scratches on a rock. We are in the middle of a massive territorial mobilization as Blessed Land’s entire logistics pipeline is running right now."

The bird’s crested head drooped.

Its feathers sagged, its scythe-beak hovering an inch above the permafrost in crushing defeat.

It looked as though every ounce of life had been violently siphoned out of its hollow bones.

"However," Silas continued, tucking the heavy slate tablet securely beneath his left arm, "I’m not throwing the message away. If there really is an uncontracted Goddess of Beasts entombed in this basin, I want to meet her."

His blue eyes sharpened with ambition gleaming within his pupils.

A high-tier entity commanding authority over beasts, lingering directly within the Umbral Basin?

If she was an enemy, she was an existential threat that needed to be cataloged and neutralized before she thawed out but if she was willing to bend the knee... if she was desperate enough to offer herself as a Hero just for a warm hearth and roasted meat then the strategic value to Blessed Land was immeasurable.

His cavalry corps was expanding, the Umbral Basin was infested with wild monsters, and a Beast Goddess could turn the entire natural ecosystem of the northern territory into an unassailable defensive bulwark.

"If you want this tablet back, you can take it," Silas offered, gesturing with his chin toward the stone. "Or... you can come with us. Fly south to the walls of Blessed Land and once we reach the Keep as wel as offload the mining haul, I’ll have Eluned sit down with you. She’s a Goddess herself so she understands the language of nature, plants, and beasts far better than I could ever... She can translate every single squawk in your throat and tell me exactly where your mistress is pinned."

The bird looked up as its beady black eyes blinked once and then twice.

Then, it let out a sharp chirp that sounded like a rusty latch snapping open.

It flapped its ragged wings, launching itself three feet into the air, hovering eagerly against the freezing breeze.

"Good," Silas said, nodding smoothly.

He raised his right arm, extending his forearm outward in a firm horizontal perch with the dark leather of his vambrace offering a broad stable platform... It was the classic stance of a falconer calling in a royal hunting hawk.

He kept his posture relaxed and effortlessly cool.

"Come on. Land."

The bird hovered, its wings beating rapidly against the snow as it looked at the extended leather arm then, its gaze slowly drifted upward, locking onto Silas’s face.

From the bird’s perspective, Silas did not look like a comfortable wooden perch.

Beneath his dark hair, Silas’s piercing blue eyes were narrowed in that intense look that never truly left him even if he smiled.

His Mythic Gold Core hummed with a suffocating weight that distorted the atmospheric pressure around his shoulders.

To the tiny hyper-sensitive avian creature, looking at Silas’s outstretched hand was like looking directly down the throat of an ancient golden dragon that was casually baring a double-row of serrated fangs, waiting for an excuse to snap its jaws shut.

It had spent the entirety of its life savings in pure courage just to land that stone tablet at his boots so it was not about to push its luck by sitting within arm’s reach of those dangerous Gold-Core-reinforced fingers.

Its gaze flicked frantically across the gathered group.

Aurelia? No...

The Saintess was surrounded by an invisible suffocating shimmer of pure Argent Flame that smelled of divine incineration.

Vala? Absolutely not... and as for Thor? That was suicide! The blonde giant was still licking grease from her lips and eyeing its tailfeathers like a skewered appetizer.

Thora as well as terrifying. The dwarf was clutching an oversized wrench and glaring at it with deep suspicion.

Then, the bird’s eyes landed on the Princess.

The blue-haired royal woman was standing near the flank of her Blessed Wolf with her hands tucked neatly into the fur-lined cuffs of her winter mantle.

She looked soft, harmless, and remarkably pretty as her azure eyes were wide and sparkling with innocent girlish fascination the more she watched the ragged creature.

SWOOSH!

The bird banked violently to the right! It completely ignored Silas’s outstretched leather arm, dove through the freezing air like an obsidian stone, and flared its wings at the last second, coming down to make a neat delicate landing dead-center atop the Princess’s royal head.

FLUMP!

Its dark talons tangled gently into her soft azure locks.

The bird puffed out its chest, tucked its scythe-beak down against its throat, and closed its eyes, trembling with relief as it nestled comfortably into her thick, fragrant hair like an oversized nest.

"Eep!" The Princess gasped softly, her shoulders hitching upward as her face flushed a brilliant adorable crimson.

She raised two delicate gloved hands, gently patting the side of the bird’s ragged feathers.

"Oh... goodness," the Princess giggled, her blue eyes fluttering with delight as the bird let out a contented clicking sound against her crown. "It... it’s remarkably light! It feels like a little woolen hat!"

Thor leaned her massive frame forward, squinting at the bird with genuine wide-eyed amusement, letting out a booming chuckle that rattled the shale.

"Gwahaha! Well look at that! The feathered runt knows quality when it sees it! That’s a royal throne, you scruffy little parasite!"

Silas stood frozen.

His right arm remained extended horizontally in the freezing air, stiff as an iron rod and completely empty.

A gust of bitterly cold wind howled across the rocky plateau, carrying a flurry of pale snow that dusted the dark leather of his empty vambrace.

Slowly, Silas lowered his arm.

He brought his fingers together, casually brushing a speck of nonexistent dirt from the cuff of his mining tunic as his face was set in a rigid deadpan expression.

"Ahem," Silas cleared his throat, subtly rolling his shoulders as if he had intended to stretch his muscles the entire time. "Yes, naturally. The avian recognizes royal diplomacy so that’s a sound decision."

Thor didn’t let him have the victory for even half a second.

"GWAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The God of Thunder threw her head back, slapping her leather-clad thigh with enough concussive force to blast the snow away from her boots!

"Did you see that?!" Thor roared with tearful breathless glee, pointing a thick finger straight at Silas’s face. "The great Lord Of Blessed Land! Finessed! Utterly rejected by a half-starved crow! It looked at your hand, looked at your ugly scowl, and chose the soft blue hair of a maiden instead! Oh, by Odin’s beard, that is magnificent!"

A chorus of muffled trembling snickers instantly rippled through the ranks of the women.

Brenda turned her face toward the limestone cliff, biting her lip so hard it turned white, while Sarah and Helen aggressively cleared their throats, their shoulders violently shaking with suppressed laughter.

Aurelia lowered her chin with a soft graceful smile tugging at the corners of her lips as her golden eyes danced with amusement.

Silas let out a slow long-suffering sigh, closing his eyes against the cold.

’I am surrounded by comedians,’ Silas thought, though a wry smirk tugged at his mouth despite himself.

FZZT.

From the collar of his tunic, a soft crimson glow flared. Kael-Drin, the newly contracted Higher Spirit, floated upward until it hovered directly beside Silas’s left ear.

The little ruby orb pulsed brightly, chiming with an indignant defensive sequence of silver-bell tones, puffing out tiny waves of comforting warmth against Silas’s cheek as if declaring that it would never reject its master.

Silas reached up, gently tapping the side of the glowing red sphere with a gloved knuckle.

"At least someone here respects the territorial hierarchy. Good boy, Kael-Drin."

"Alright, that’s enough clowning around!" Silas commanded, raising his voice over the rising gale.

He brought two fingers to his lips and loosed a sharp piercing whistle that cut cleanly through the freezing drafts of the basin.

HOWOOOOOOOOOL!

From the jagged shale outcrops lining the perimeter of Cavern KB-22, a chorus of powerful howls answered.

Pounding across the frozen drifts with terrifying coordinated speed came the pack.

Leading the vanguard was Valkyrie, her wolf frame moving with majestic grace and her golden harness humming softly against her broad chest.

Behind her bounded the rest of the Blessed Wolves, their dense coats shaking off the accumulating frost as they fanned out in a clean disciplined perimeter around the squad.

The recruit maidens immediately moved toward their mounts, checking the tension of the girth-straps and securing their tool-sacks.

Thor, however, did not have a mount.

The God of Thunder didn’t even look at the wolves as she stepped into an open patch of clear bedrock, cracking her neck from left to right with a succession of violent deafening snaps.

Her storm-blue eyes ignited with a crackling blaze of sapphire lightning, and the air around her sculpted frame began to violently distort with raw ozone.

"Racing you back to the Keep, Silas!" Thor bellowed, her wild blonde locks whipping into a frenzy as arcs of blue static danced across her bare shoulders.

She grinned, pointing a thick finger toward Thora.

"First one through the main gates of Blessed Land takes every single keg of dark dwarven stout in the royal cellars! No limits! No bans! Winner takes all!"

"WHAT?!" Thora shrieked with her wrench flying into the air as her face turned volcanic purple. "YOU CANNOT BET MY CELLARS, YOU OVERGROWN LEAF-BRAINED BLONDE—"

KRA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!