Chapter 320: The Sovereign of the Skies

The tribe that had been begging its guardian for help was left without a voice.

Their guardian was dead. They had killed it in front of them with an ease that made no sense, and on top of that the enemy shaman stood on its head, laughing his head off, the mace resting on his shoulder.

A man sat down in the mud, nothing more. A woman pressed her child’s face against her lap.

The blessing went out on Kellar.

Little Green hit the ground and the scream came out long and dirty. The fury had taken the pain away while it lasted, and now it came back whole, and not even the vitality had helped, because the wounds and the bones had been opening again and again during the fight and had not had a single moment to close.

Kellar jumped off the head and ran to its face.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, master." The eagle had its beak open and its chest rising in jerks. "They are minor wounds."

Kellar put both hands on it and began to use [Healing] to stabilize it. The edges of the wounds stopped pulling apart.

"Master," said Little Green, when it could breathe. "Will you give me its corpse?"

Kellar looked at the burst head.

"If I consume it, I am sure to reach my next evolution." The eagle turned its neck toward him. "I have been at the edge of ascending for a while. I was missing a push. Its core is very compatible with me."

"Of course. Devour it."

Little Green did not make him wait.

It began to peck at the head, tearing off the plates, and under them the skin, and it worked its way down to the soft parts. It ate with its neck stretched and its eyes closed, as if that were the most delicious thing in the world.

Then it began to absorb it.

The core was earth, but not common earth. It was a variation, and the variation had a name. Nature. Inside it were three elements stirred together, earth and wind and water, and that is why the serpent had withstood so much without falling. A body like that is not broken with strength, it is broken with time.

If it had been given enough of it, if they had not killed it right there, it would have saved itself alone. It would have wrapped its body in a cocoon and molted whole. A strange and effective ability.

Kellar was no longer looking at the serpent.

The eagle was growing in front of him.

The feathers snapped as they opened and the chest widened until the shape stopped looking like a bird. The bones creaked and stretched. The claws drove into the mud and lifted it out of it. The wings spread above the trees, and kept spreading, and kept spreading.

A hundred and twenty meters.

The shadow covered the whole clearing.

Little Green rose.

As it climbed it took the air with it. The clouds closed overhead in a handful of seconds and the storm began to turn around the body, fitting itself to it as if it had waited its whole life for the shape. Lightning ran along the feathers and did not hurt it.

The tips of the wings turned bluish. The beak and the claws darkened almost to black.

Below, the recruits grabbed whatever they could and the villagers threw themselves into the mud, and not out of devotion this time.

Kellar stood looking up with his mouth open and the mace hanging from his hand.

"Seems the girl has potential," said Karkadann. "She woke a new bloodline. She is no longer an emerald eagle." It paused. "Congratulations, master."

Kellar laughed.

"What is he, then?"

"No idea. I had never seen an eagle with those colors." The turtle turned its head slowly. "But I have seen hundreds of eagle kings and there is not one like her."

Little Green landed without a sound, folded the enormous wings and lowered her head to the ground in front of Kellar.

"Good girl. Seems you still have not forgotten your place."

"My place is at my master’s side." The beak was a hand’s width from the mud. "I have no other place in this world."

"Good girl."

Kellar jumped onto her head. It was a giant platform now, wide and flat between the eyes.

"What new abilities have you gained?"

"Hold on, master. I will show you."

The eagle took off in a jump and climbed straight up until she cleared the clearing. When she was already above the treetops, she beat her wings once.

"Now I do not only control the air. I can use water too."

She beat them again, and again, and in a few seconds a thick fog covered the whole forest, rising from the ground until it swallowed the trees.

Kellar used the [Eyes of the Tribe Lord].

From outside they were nothing. One more cloud, high and white, moving across the sky without the shape of a bird.

"Good God." Kellar leaned over the edge. "It is impressive. Now you can camouflage yourself and go unnoticed."

Four or five ideas came over him at once. An ambush machine that could not be detected and that moved the way that thing moved.

"What else can you do besides this?"

"You are going to love this, master."

Little Green began to spin on herself. The clouds churned and closed into a funnel, and the funnel began to come down.

"I can do two things. If I let it go, it forms a tornado that flattens everything, and I can also steer it wherever I want." The air began to whistle in her feathers. "Or I can do this."

She spread her wings.

The tornado came apart from the sky and converged whole onto them, and the wings swallowed it until they were loaded and taut. Then the eagle fell in a dive.

She hit the ground in the middle of the forest.

The blast of air rang out and spread in a circle. Kilometers of vegetation were torn out by the root and thrown, and the trunks flew like splinters.

Kellar held on with both hands and took the blow in the face.

When the dust went down, there was a new clearing, enormous, and its edge was stripped bare.

"Impressive," said he.

It was an area attack with a monstrous destructive capacity.