Having had more than a grazing brush with death with the ursina, Shawn knew what would happen next, and ducked into cover as best he could in this dangerous exposed area. He felt the whiz of spines by him, and one breeze dangerously close by his ear crest.

  He did not have a lot of effective cover, and if that beast got closer, it was game over. He tapped his arcom device. "I could use a little help right about now!"

  “Working on it!” More rifle rounds rained down as Garrett’s response, pinging off the tough hide, but doing little damage. The beast’s cws found easy purchase on the surface, and it snarled and screeched, rock crumbling in its wake. The rats all frantically tried to get out of its way, but it snapped one in half with its Cthulhu-like mouth. Both pieces plummeted to the world below. “Damn it, Shawn, you were right! We need magical guns!”

  “Least of my problems!” He scrambled into a crevasse as another volley of quills rained upward, and missed. He heard a few crumble the rock nearby, and he grabbed one that had wedged into a gap, and he lined up his shot. “Right back at you, asshole!” He screamed out, the ursina now a mere fifteen meters away. He gripped the cliff for dear life while he took the makeshift quill and flung it like a harpoon, energy coursing through his arm. Trask had done the same thing, to surprising effect.

  What he did not expect was a bst of golden sparks forming, propelling the quill with enhanced speed, along with the gravity boost. The quill dug deep into the beast's shoulder, and it lost footing on two of its legs, dislodging a chunk of the cliff. It slid back several meters, but dug its cws in deep, tearing gouges into the solid rock and the screech of rending material was painful to his ears.

  It felt like a victory until he saw it tear out the spine with its tendrils on its mouth, screaming in rage. He wasted no more time and leaped onto the next ledge, the next volley of quills aimed higher. He felt one breeze dangerously close to his head, and none of them embedded–they all bounced off of the cliffs, though one embedded in a stubborn tree nearby, out of his reach. He leered down at the creature, with several choice words coming to mind.

  Did it just adjust the force on its projectiles? Clever girl. He would commend the problem-solving of this beast, but it was trying to make him into a feathery pincushion that would be problematic for his continued existence. He kept his force barrier up, pondering on this possible new utility of his power. He hadn't exactly focused on his ability, but even an undisciplined use of it had resulted in a discovery. Okay, the raw force barrier does not form an actual barricade. It just kinda explodes. And propels stuff.

  The thought dawned on him. Despite the danger he was in, he couldn’t help but feel a joyful grin cross his beak “Super gravity gun time!” He screeched with joy. He wasn't a theoretical physicist in this analog, but theoretically, he had a new secondary power utilized. He had tried it with sparring to protect his limbs and try to add some force to his strikes. But had never thought to use it for projectiles. He grabbed a chunk of fragmented rock and heaved it, timing his force barrier so that it formed for a brief second, then let loose his mental focus, feeling a light trickle of pinpricks on his arm.

  The result was reproducible from the quill, as the rock screamed downward and hit the ursina in the mouth, and he heard teeth crack. It reeled backward and almost lost its footing again, but each setback brought him more space. He shimmied up a narrow set of parallel cliff faces, wedging himself with his wings to keep going upward. He was panting from the exertion, and Garrett fired off two more rounds.

  “Shawn take cover!” Garrett had a silver canister in hand, a small safety tch already loosed. He tucked into a wedge at the corner and loosed the lit grenade right at the beast. Shawn would have been grinning if he wasn't focused on channeling his Etteria for a full body force barrier, and he felt a tingling sensation that told him he was about to hit his limits soon.

  Cnk.

  His eyes widened when he saw the beast loose a volley of quills that somehow deflected the live munition, back upwards and dangerously close to him. “Oh, you mother–”

  He didn't finish his reaction of panic because the device detonated just outside his cover spot. The concussive wave edged past the cliff, sending chunks of shrapnel and banging into the barrier, where it cracked dangerously close to failure.

  He slid down the terrain after getting dislodged, small pebbles being loosed by his cwed feet and he gripped for dear life, grabbing onto a root that wrenched his arm, and a shooting pain drove up it. He clung to the root as more debris rained down, smacking him around and bruising him, even with the force barrier barely holding on.

  “Shawn hang on!” Garrett screamed, scrambling down the cliff and along the rope above him. They were so close, but the ursina, not bothered by the rocks, had continued to follow the narrow pathway and was getting dangerously close.

  “Yes, hanging on being the operative term!” If he wasn't in pain and near exhausted, he might be just a touch more pissed about the bad choice of words. He grabbed one more piece of debris, knowing this would put him dangerously close to burnout, based on that slight warmth of his core he already sensed. At the same time, he put down a slick of ice, on the immediate path. He wanted to bait this monster for one st gambit because Garrett wouldn't get down in time.

  The beast dug in, past the ice, and snarled, spines bristling once more. It was only about five meters below him–there was no way he was dodging this one.

  This is a bad idea, Shawn!

  She knew what he was about to do, and he didn't disagree. It was dangerous. Stick around, Halsey! Apparently, engineers are full of bad ideas across the entire cosmos!

  He flung the rock–but without his force bst. When the beast flinched from the strike on its chest, he let go of the root, and slid down, and pulled a dangerously rge charge from his core to his limbs, His trajectory was aimed right towards that disgusting maw of tentacles. If he didn't get this right, his death would likely end up adding to a disturbing statistic of Remaria: eaten by predators.

  “Bird wizard with a kick!”

  He fred his wings to drift out just enough the beast couldn't lunge from its near-vertical position, and his cwed foot came down on its forehead. He bsted his barrier point-bnk range off his foot, feeling that channel of energy nearly rupture, and recoiled backward. Meanwhile, the ursina sprung backward off the cliff face from the force, cws no longer able to grip sufficiently against the ice.

  He came down on a rocky outcropping, bruising his wings from the impact and felt a sharp spike of pain going down his back–that had been rough. The ursina, however, tumbled and screeched in a cry of terror as it picked up speed, gyrating and unable to stop itself. It bounced off a ledge and went into free fall, screaming, quills firing futilely as it fell down the abyss.

  The screams faded as the monster plummeted, and Shawn leaned back, letting out an anxious ugh, even as he hurt all over. He’d never tried channeling his Etteria with his legs, and his inverted knee joint hurt from the effort. He rubbed at his back, still ughing. “Happy ndings, you overgrown sin against nature!” He ughed until it hurt, and tears stained his feathers. It almost hurt to breathe, and he clutched his chest against that discomforting burn of Etteria overuse. Though, it wasn’t as bad as the st time he’d overdone it.

  You are crazy, Shawn. I think you were crazy before I got stuffed into your head.

  Even with her reprimand, he heard a forced chuckle inside his head, and he y prone on the ground, enduring the pain of his efforts. A ctter of rocks above him got his attention, and Garrett peered down, worry etched in his eyes.

  “Uh…Shawn? You okay?”

  “I just roundhouse kicked a bear off a cliff, Garrett!” he uttered, trying to not break into a fit of ughter again. “I hurt all over, but goddamn, did that feel awesome!

  No Etteria boost this time though. Could you have maybe kicked it somewhere a little more…accessible?

  He ignored that one too. He was just happy to be alive as Garrett mantled over the ledge, shimmied down that narrow parallel face he’d almost got stuck on, and knelt next to him. “By the chasms, Shawn, that was something,” he grinned and thrust out an arm to help him up. He took his hand with a grip of iron, and hoisted himself upright again, unable to stop grinning. “How you feeling?”

  “Well, I’m in pain, but, hey. I don’t have any extra piercings.” Garrett gave him a bear hug and let out a squawk of triumph; though, he wobbled a bit on the narrow ledge. “Okay, maybe we do this when we aren’t on the edge of the world.”

  “Drinks are on me when we get back. I’ll be happy to report you’re a lot tougher to kill than I thought,” he added pointing up the cliff, where the rope still dangled close by. “Think you can climb that?”

  “I think I need a minute or two.”

  One minute turned to several, as Shawn wrapped cut hands with bandages, and Garrett handed him an Etteria potion. It took the edge off the burn–mostly. He sat silently for a moment, feet dangling off the cliff edge. The breeze was blowing steadily, and the sun would sink behind the edge of the adjacent tectonic mass. It was the strangest approaching nightfall he’d ever seen. And still, despite the danger, he couldn’t help but marvel at the beauty of it.

  “You know something? I was nearly killed by ravenous rats the size of dogs, and two mutated bears tried to take their pound of flesh out of me today,” Shawn stated quietly, now that he’d finished with the bandages. His hands' scale-like flesh was tough, but free-hand climbing in his haste had shown there was a limit. “You know what was scarier than that?”

  “You tell me,” Garrett said quietly. He sensed Shawn must have something important to say.

  “I was worried about Raine, whether he’d make it. And Cire, and what she’d do if I bit the dust and became another statistic of this world.” he let out a calming breath, and one of his talons knocked loose a pebble that bounced down the cliff, distantly. The rats had long given up and slunk back into the cavern, far below. “Does that mean I’m crazy?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I think it just means you have a lot of capacity in your heart to care,” he responded, rubbing his hands together gently. He kept the rifle leaning up against the cliff next to him, and his emerald color eyes gleamed with a focus on the vista before them. “I wish more people had that. Were you the norm, back on Earth? Or the exception?”

  “I’ll be honest, and say I don’t know.” He flexed his hands gently, trying to wick away a small amount of Etteria from his core. It certainly felt cooler out here, with that stiff breeze. “I cared enough after Maggie was gone, that I dedicated a lot of my efforts to try to build stuff that would help people. I worked a lot. Maybe too much, even. I spent my days in a b, working on technology that would build affordable parts for vital supplies, medical stuff, and construction staples…sometimes till te at night. Cire would occasionally find me asleep at my desk, and nudge me to bed.”

  “Dedicated.”

  “Or obsessed.” he let out a trickle of his forge fire Etteria to warm his hands–but the process also brought a bit of discomfort. “Maybe it was part of my redemption. To find something to dedicate myself toward, to make up for being the son of a psychopath. Or maybe, to somehow make up for being unable to save Maggie. Everyone thought I let her down–that I didn’t try hard enough to rescue her, despite nearly dying myself.”

  “Seeing you in action, the past couple of weeks?” Garrett cpped a hand on his shoulder firmly. “You’ve got demons that drive you, that give you that urge to try to do right, huh?”

  “Who doesn’t?” Shawn asked and felt that calming warmth as he channeled his fme forge across his body, warming him up a bit. “I just wonder what shape I’ll be in if I ever find Maggie. I hope I don’t lose myself in the process.”

  “Not while I’m around,” Garrett said, squeezing his shoulder gently. “Or Regia, who I’m pretty sure has an odd taste for you. Or that feathery pain in my arse.”

  “Which one, Varrick or Telga?” Shawn quipped. Garrett fought back a ugh, unsuccessfully. “C’mon, Varrick has got a stick up his arse, and if he’s pushed, he pulls it out as his backup weapon!”

  “Haha! Damn, you know something, you’re right!” Garrett cawed loudly, the sound echoing across the chasm. “Don’t tell him I said that, though!”

  “My beak is sealed.” After taking a moment of contemption, he gnced back up. “Well, back to climbing. We still have to get back through the caverns. That’s gonna be fun.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But I’ll never get rid of that mental image of Varrick with a stick up his arse. It almost makes it worth the trip.”