Chapter Seven: Torn Wings and Seeping Yolk
Year 203 of the 82nd Era, The Era of the Dying Lands; e82-203
Late Spring
Somewhere in the Dying Lands
It was raining again.
Blood-Seeker had left her two hatchlings, Tempest-Bleeder and Tattered-Night, in a small alcove. Luckily, the two had fallen asleep quickly on full bellies and the lull of the rain. Yet, Blood-Seeker couldn't fall asleep. Her mind was a whirlwind of thoughts —thoughts that hadn't calmed since her eggs had hatched and Blooming-Umber exiled her from the Pack of the Scarlet Feather.
The elderly formel huffed. The Pack of the Scarlet Feather would unlikely keep its name, especially under the russet-feathered formel's leadership. So much for keeping the pack in her family bloodline for generations.
Tonight's rain was as cold as the last rain. Fog rose from the hot ground and gathered around Blood-Seeker's feet. She couldn't see more than a few steps in front of her nor smell much farther. But, as always, she walked. She knew her children were safe, and she could easily find the path back to them. She just needed the time to clear her head.
However…as she kept walking, strange scents and sounds wafted over her. The smell of swiftlegs of the ringwrist variety overwhelmed her, their pitched cries echoing through the mist over some prize they had won. But there was something else. Something was lying in the downpour, the sharp smell of blood piercing even through the heavy rain—the body of a strange, winged creature that looked like Blood-Seeker.
It was a skytalon. A very familiar skytalon. A dark-caramel feathered formel sporting beige rosettes across her dorsum, a black underbelly, and a slate-and-black ringed tail. It was Hecate, the gravid skytalon Blood-Seeker had chased off her territory — the one whose mate Blood-Seeker had killed.
Blood-Seeker continued to approach until she stood in front of the prone form. The formel's body had been torn to shreds, copious amounts of blood pooling around her body, mingling with the rainwater. The rogue clan of ringwrists Blood-Seeker had smelled and heard earlier had done a number on the skytalon.
As Blood-Seeker scented the air again, she caught the smell of freshly laid eggs. With another glance through the pounding rain, the former alpha found a freshly dug mound beside the body, but no eggs rested within it. The scuffle had upturned most of the earth, and the scent of yolk greeted Blood-Seeker. The ringwrists must have eaten the skytalon's freshly laid eggs.
A shame. Blood-Seeker had let the formel go so she could lay and raise her young, even without her mate, whom Blood-Seeker had killed. Nonetheless, that was how life moved on — a vicious cycle of life and death. Still…for such a rare and unusual creature to go through such trauma and for Blood-Seeker to have spared her, it seemed like such a waste.
Blood-Seeker sniffed the air once more. Even through the rain, it was heavily tainted with the sharp smell of blood. Hecate would not make it much longer. Even if the bleeding miraculously stopped, those wounds were too great.
Nonetheless, Blood-Seeker approached, something within her saying that the skytalon still had a spark of fight left in her. Fight and something else. A longing and desperation slowly fading with every raindrop that splashed upon her dark-caramel feathers and washed away another drop of blood from her body. She was giving up on something, and Blood-Seeker wanted to know what it was.
"Skytalon."
Blood-Seeker's voice was cold and sharp, her dark-amber eyes locked on any movement of the decimated keentalon. Hecate did not open her eyes, but her flanks still shuddered with shallow breath. The scarlet greatshadow narrowed her eyes and reached forward a sickled talon. She flexed her deadly talon, driving it into the skytalon's side, nearly adding another injury to the mutilated formel. "I know you are still alive, keentalon."
Hecate moaned, keening pitifully.
"Open your damn eyes before I decide to finish you off, keentalon!" For some reason, a sharp talon of irritation ripped through Blood-Seeker. Even though the skytalon was beyond living, even though she had lost everything — her mate and her eggs, Blood-Seeker felt it was wrong for her to give up. Give up to the world and let everything slip away. Deep in the former alpha's heart, she felt that there was something that could be done, something that could help a piece of the skytalon to live on, but she needed Hecate's last spark of life to save that fragment.
Finally, Hecate croaked and cracked open an evergreen and dim-caramel eye. She gave a vicious, bloody hiss, gurgling on her blood as she uttered the word. "You!"
Blood-Seeker grunted, fixing her gaze beyond the prone formel to the misting rain and slinking shadows of other creatures around them. The land was dying, and everyone was starving in some capacity. Hecate was dying before her, and the scavengers were waiting for Blood-Seeker to finish her life and devour her, hoping to swoop upon any scraps of blood and bone left. But that was not her plan, at least, not yet. "Yes… I was not expecting to see you either, skytalon."
Hecate choked out a hateful retort, blood still dripping from her jaws, staining the faded-caramel scales around her maw red. "And…you have some nerve to show your face after my mate's blood is on your claws? Have you no shame? Or is this how you find pleasure, sickleclaw?"
The elder's liver-red plumed tail twitched, and her lips curled into a scowl, displaying yellowed serrated teeth. This skytalon knew the Thorntongue language better than she had expected. Then again, the language of the skytalons was an off-shoot of Thorntongue, but, at the same time, it sounded completely different altogether. When Blood-Seeker heard it as an adolescent, it sounded like she should have been able to understand it, but she didn't. She picked up some words and others similar to those of Thorntongue, but it wasn't enough for her to understand a conversation well.
Nonetheless, she could have a deep conversation with this skytalon. Teeth bared and sickled talons flexed, Blood-Seeker spoke. "Death is always everywhere, yet you and your mate ignored the consequences of splitting from your pack. You two may have as well rolled over and offered your tender bellies to me. Did not your parents teach you safety in numbers, pitiful eyass?"
Hecate let loose another vicious hiss. "You speak as if you know everything, yet your age has blinded you, Beldam! If there is any solace to this, it is that I will die knowing that you were a hypocrite!"
Blood-Seeker huffed. "It is not my concern what my prey thinks of me. Maybe I am ignorant of your situation, but when has my food's personal life stories ever been a priority?"
The dark-caramel skytalon managed to lift her head, her entire body trembling with the effort. Those dual-colored green and brown eyes locked with Blood-Seeker's dark-amber eyes. That spark of life was burning hot, but there would soon be an end to the ever-shortening wick. "Then why do you linger? You enjoy watching your prey suffer and die! Some carnivore you are! Why are you wasting both our time humoring me? Kill me or leave! I have nothing left to lose!" Even in her weakened state, Hecate's voice rang loud through the rain, crescendoing over a rumble of thunder.
Silence proceeded them, only disturbed by the rain, thunder, and the howling wind. Why hadn't Blood-Seeker finished the formel off? Why had she approached her, nonetheless began a conversation with the dying mother?
The former alpha pressed her sickled talons into the sodden earth near Hecate's belly, snagging a stray dark-caramel feather. She repeated the action, gaze drifting to the similar, more gracile, sickled talons upon the younger formel's feet. Then her gaze trailed to the featherless tail adorned with glossy iridescent black vanes, following the hindwings on Hecate's hips, and finally to the tattered and bloodied wings that made up her forearms.
Hecate was a mother. She was a skytalon. And her offspring had the same sire as Blood-Seeker's two youngest children. The pair shared a connection. A connection that Blood-Seeker had hoped, deep in her heart, would have remained longer than it had. But now, there was nothing. Still, she couldn't bring herself to not interact with the dying skytalon, just for the satisfaction of speaking to one of the strange and wonderful creatures and knowing the two of them could have been connected through their children.
The scarlet greatshadow sucked in a deep breath. The air was so thick with blood that the scavengers drew in closer. "You don't have much time left."
Hecate's head collapsed against the edge of her nest. She squeezed her eyes shut, her tears mingling with the rain as she caught a glance of shell fragments and the yolk still clinging to the earth, not yet washed away by the rain. A chuckle bubbled from her throat, more beads of blood dripping from her mouth as the laughter grew in volume until she fell into a fit of wet, metallic-scented coughs. "You're as pathetic as me, old formel."
Blood-Seeker did not respond, simply turning away. There was nothing more she could do now.
"Hey… I am not done with you yet."
Blood-Seeker halted, only turning her head to listen to Hecate.
"From one female to another, please… take me back to my last baby—the one the young ringwrist took. You owe me that much. You owe my mate, Artemis, that."
Blood-Seeker snorted. "Has the blood loss made you delusional? The egg is gone."
The dying formel shook her head, eyes drooping. "You don't understand… The ringwrist that took it, she hesitated and looked me in the eye. She's been manipulated into this vile practice… She didn't eat the egg when she left. She… spoke to me. She told me… she was sorry."
Blood-Seeker tapped a sickled talon to the sodden earth, dark-amber eyes narrowed in disbelief.
"Please…" Hecate's voice was desperate as she lifted her head again, meeting the scarlet-feathered elder's eyes. "I know you were a mother, too. Many times over, more than I'll ever get to be. Your heart has hardened over the years. Deep down, you know you put on a mask as this cold hunter abiding by the amoral cycle of death and life… But I know you're still kind. You have lost a clutch before…haven't you? I can see it in your eyes. You wouldn't have stayed this long to listen to me if you hadn't. I'm not as delusional as you wish to think me to be."
The skytalon strained her head further with the last of her strength, bearing her bloodied teeth. "Will it kill you to fulfill a fellow predator's and mother's last will? Or are you satisfied knowing you could have saved a mother's unborn child? Will that truly make you happy in the end? Those memories of your loss keep you up at night, twisting your dreams into horrible nightmares of that moment. A moment that never leaves a mother, not even the most stoic and steely kind. Not even the likes of you."
With that, Hecate lowered her head for the final time. "I will take your secret to my grave. After all… I am dead where I lay before you."
The scarlet feathers along Blood-Seeker's back bristled despite the pounding rain. She turned, striding toward the dying skytalon once more. She leaned in close, teeth bared, and sickle talon posed over Hecate's vulnerable throat. "You don't know me, skytalon."
She withdrew, fanning her creaking, liver-red-feathered wings, dark-amber eyes aflame. She bared her teeth again, restraining her tongue from speaking unneeded words. But no one, not even the pack elders who watched her hatch her first clutch of three children with Night-Ponderer, spoke of the slaughter of children and her first mate. Those memories were only for Blood-Seeker to live, over and over again, within her mind. Now, a dying skytalon of all things who knew nothing of her life brought those memories forth. They slammed into Blood-Seeker, full force, reddening her gaze, searing through her as she thought of the black-feathered, violet-eyed singlecrest she saw as her sister, betraying her after years of absence.
And that hate and sorrow needed an outlet.
She leaned in close again. Words hissed through bared teeth. "You do not know the life I have led. You have not survived the decades I have survived. You have not been a mother! You will never be a mother! You lost that right when you ran from your pack, you sniveling coward. You lost that chance when I claimed your mate because you were too weak and naïve to the real world. You lost it all the moment you thought you could survive without your pack. Next time, do not pry into a stranger's life with your manipulative and honeyed notions."
Hecate stared back, eyes half-lidded with death.
Blood-Seeker skulked away, hot under her feathers and heart racing. Yet, she hadn't moved more than a step. What Hecate had said replayed in her mind, intermixed with images of her first mate and children, followed by the scent of blood and their dead bodies. Over and over, the memories played until she lifted her head to the rain, squeezing her eyes shut.
Why had those words brought up those memories in such a raw state? It had been decades since Night-Ponderer was killed. She had all that time to come to terms, to find a new mate and have many more children, but still… Something about the skytalon's words had brought those memories forth in a crashing wave. Maybe it was because Hecate was the first to address her loss in a long time.
Something stirred within her, and Blood-Seeker turned back to Hecate. The dying formel had ruffled her feathers in a way no one had in a very long time. So, she made her decision. A clap of thunder accompanied her. The former alpha did not look at Hecate, only staring off into the distance as she spoke with a softness unlike her. "You've twisted my wing…and my heart. I shall indulge you, but my act of generosity will go with you to your grave, skytalon."
The mother smiled blearily, no longer rational, too much of her lifeblood flowing around her as she bargained with a predator and her mate's killer. "Hecate… My name was Hecate. You better remember it to your grave, Bloody Beldam."
Blood-Seeker turned to her. "Hush. Save your breath. I shall grant your death wish."
Gently, she lifted the wounded mother onto her back.
"What's yours…?" Hecate slurred.
Blood-Seeker ignored her in favor of running, but as she jostled her passenger, she quietly spoke the two intertwined words that formed her name. "Blood-Seeker."
"What a suiting name…"
The alpha hummed. "My mother was not foolish when she named my sisters and me."
"Neither were mine… One was Hera, after all. And the other, Hestia…"
"Quiet. No more family lines. Speak no longer, Hecate. Save your waning energy until we find your unborn."
And so, from one aging mother fourteen times over to a young but wilting mother fated to be only once, the greatshadow conceded and agreed to the skytalon's final request.
Blood-Seeker would save Hecate's last egg.
Blood-Seeker sprinted through the rain and darkness of the night, following the all too familiar scent of the ringwrist clan. It wasn't long before she spotted their long-legged shapes and spindly hands. The smallest and youngest of the group stood on the outskirts, staring at something clasped between her long-fingered hands. Two ganders stood on either side of her, conversing in the lilting voice of Roottongue.
A taupe and dark-grey-backed gander made an alarm call. The rest of the small clan gathered in a tight formation, but they hadn't anticipated Blood-Seeker breaking through their stockade without as much as batting an eye. They scattered, the elderly sickleclaw disregarding the aching in her joints as she narrowed in on her target. If there was one thing that proved true about Blood-Seeker, she kept her word.
A low growl rumbled through her as disgustingly familiar scents hit her nares. The pair speaking to the clan's youngest member, who was familiar in sight, were also familiar by scent. They were the brothers who had taken two of Pebble-Pouncer and Silent-Torrent's eggs. At the thought of the family, Blood-Seeker's resolve hardened.
Her gaze fell upon the youngling still clutching Hecate's last egg close to her body. The youngling — no, hatchling — was kin of the vile goose who had tried raiding Blood-Seeker's nest a few moon-cycles ago. The gosling looked like her mother — the same clay scales and dark-sepia feathered back— except for startling golden eyes. To think that one of that nest-raiding ringwrist's offspring hatched and survived to raid with her abysmal uncles.
Blood-Seeker forced the gosling to the ground with a foot, pressing her sickled claw into her back. The clay gosling cried out, the azure egg rolling from her grasp as she fell to the sodden earth. Blood-Seeker watched as the egg wobbled into a rising gulley that had formed from the heavy rainfall. She cursed as it bobbed through the flowing water, too fast for Blood-Seeker to snatch it as the rest of the nest-raiding swiftlegs surrounded her.
The brother ringwrists lunged for Blood-Seeker, sharp beaks making stabs for her legs. She pivoted out of their range, releasing the hatchling from underneath her massive foot. The younger, dim-clay brother dislodged Hecate from Blood-Seeker's back while the lighter-colored brother continuously pecked at her legs to trip her up. The skytalon fell with a thud onto the rain-soaked ground. Her eyes stared, half-lidded, at the rain pouring from the heavens. Breath still rattled from her lungs, but it was weaker with every inhale.
The seasoned huntress regained her bearings and turned on the brothers with a ferocious hiss. Powerful jaws nearly snapped the older brother's long, slender neck in half while a swipe of her claws drew blood on the younger brother's flank. Another hiss and snap of her jaws sent the brothers to stand amongst the rest of their clan, leaving their niece in the mud and rain.
Blood-Seeker turned back to the gosling, laying her foot again onto her back before she could scramble to her feet. Her gold eyes were wild with horror, silently pleading for her life. Blood-Seeker could feel the gosling's fragile ribs beneath her crushing weight, heart fluttering. The former alpha would spare the trouble-maker.
But not without leaving a permanent reminder.
Raking a sickled talon across the clay and dark-sepia ringwrist's shoulder, she split feathers and broke the skin in a way that wouldn't be fatal but would mar her for the rest of her life. The brothers squalled at her in Roottongue. Blood-Seeker struck with her sharp foreclaws as they approached her, hissing and screeching, slicing across their faces and drawing blood.
She freed the terrified gosling beneath her as the two recoiled in pain. The tiny ringwrist warbled and limbed over to her uncles, holding her right arm tight to herself, scarlet blood coating the dark feathers on her back and trailing down her arm. Her two uncles shook away the pain and blood before doting on her, checking her over, and offering comfort in their winged arms. The two hissed as they clutched their niece close, disdain in their fiery eyes as they stared Blood-Seeker down.
Blood-Seeker stared back, feeling some much-needed justice had been served. Priority shifted back to Hecate as the rest of the clan surrounded the skytalon, harassing her with pecks and kicks, attempting to finish what they had started. Promptly, the elder chased off the malicious sadists with flapping wings, flashing teeth, and fuming hisses. She retrieved the poor, mangled form of the mother, who steadily bled from her many wounds. Hecate upon her back again, Blood-Seeker followed the direction the egg had been ferried off.
When she located the wayward egg, Blood-Seeker scented something. Longnecks. Nesting ones. It smelled of two mares, clutch-sisters. Above was an oasis on a terrace formation lined with zamites. Blood-Seeker scented more vegetation hidden within the glade through the pass.
The scarlet greatshadow hunkered down into the cycads, watching through the fronds as the two sail-necked longnecks did their business. Her eyes narrowed on a tiny azure egg washing ashore on the terrace.
The longnecks, with shorter necks and backward-facing spines along their necks, a stretch of skin between each spine, were known as Earthborn, Longneck, Whiptail, Crestback, Sailnecks.
The muted-purple mare had been calmly raking her teeth across fronds when the tiny egg had caught her eye. Craning her neck away from her meal, she gasped as she discovered what had been washed ashore wasn't just a stone but an egg. The mare grumbled something in Leaftongue as she sniffed the tiny, splotched azure egg. She glanced around before returning to the egg, a grimace passing over her face as she spotted blood staining its shell.
After a moment, a smile graced her lips, and she gently scooped the egg in her gumline with a tenderness only a near-mother could offer. Circling back to her nest, she nosed a new space between the clutch of cream spherical eggs and a tan, more ovular-shaped one. Packing the teardrop-shaped azure egg among the rest, she gingerly sealed it up with the reddish soil of the terrace.
Her cinnabar and ocean-blue-backed sister tore off some fronts from the plant she was eating in one fluid motion, noticing her sister rooting in her nest. She swallowed and rumbled something, voice deeper than her muted-violet clutch-sibling.
Blood-Seeker caught a word from the muted purple mare as the siblings spoke. "Brother." The cinnabar mare was no mare, not by heart, at least.
A conversation was had between the siblings. Blood-Seeker caught more of the conversation and intonations of their voices, understanding the surprise of the cinnabar brother as he learned of the newly added egg to his sister's nest. As emotions waxed and waned between the two, it seemed the brother finally accepted the newest addition to the family.
"She buried it with the others… she accepted it… My…my littlest one… my little Nyx…" Hecate spluttered, her wounds drying against her ruffled feathers. "They have a chance of life, Blood-Seeker… She's such a…a good mother-to-be… I… I'm so happy…"
Hecate managed a harsh, raspy laugh, tears falling from her eyes as she stared across at the sailneck siblings. "They'll…watch over them now… I pray my baby will have my eyes…" Hecate's eyes drooped, but her soft smile never faded. "Look at them… taking in a clawhand's egg… I…I never thought I would see the day… A longneck adopting… a keentalon… It's beautiful…"
Blood-Seeker smiled to herself as she watched the miraculous display. The greatshadow hadn't had high hopes that the sailnecks would take kindly to some cold pebble of an egg washing up at their nest. The brother surely hadn't. But, they seemed to have calmed after grunting and grumbling back and forth.
"Truly, maternal instincts burn bright in us all. Is that not right, Hecate?" Blood-Seeker sighed, speaking louder. "Well, skytalon, your wish has been granted. I have done all I can do. I had my doubts, but fate has found its way. You can rest knowing your young has found a chance at life…"
Blood-Seeker felt Hecate limpen upon her back, a rattling breath escaping her. Had she finally…?
The dark-caramel and light-beige-rosetted feathered formel lay inert on Blood-Seeker's back, lifeless as a stillborn. Her light-beige-masked face was peaceful despite all the agony she had endured. She was an earthborn who died with little regret. Her bi-colored gaze was half-lidded, glassy, staring into oblivion.
Blood-Seeker was her undertaker now.
Gently, the elderly formel crouched down and laid Hecate's body out. She stared at the keentalon, her eyes blank but an undying smile still present. Blood-Seeker closed Hecate's eyes and lowered her head in respect. "You're welcome, Hecate. Perhaps I do only let on. But only you shall share that prospect. I shall join you when the time comes, and the secret will die with us." She settled down, tucking her winged arms against her sides. "But for now… I will keep an eye on your eyass. Someone must bridge the gap between our blood. And you deserved better. I see that."
The scarlet formel opened her eyes before closing Hecate's eyes with a gentle foreclaw. "We all deserve to live on somehow, be it through memories, tall tales, myths, legends, or history. Death discriminates against no one. And all things draw to a close, do they not? And I am merely biding time. Farewell, Hecate. I'll see that the runt survives, but only within what power I can provide."
Blood-Seeker picked up Hecate's corpse and returned it to her two hatchlings. There, she and her young feasted until nothing but blood, feathers, bone fragments, and the undesirables were left. In deep respect, they left nothing for lowly scavengers to pick at.
When they had finished their fill, Blood-Seeker buried the remains. Hecate deserved a proper burial, after all. There, she and her brood moved on, continuing their journey through the dying lands, fighting for survival.
This chapter is a partial rewrite of the latter half of my friend, Trookay's, first chapter of their Land Before Time Fanfiction, Metempsychosis: It Whispers. I reworded some things, updated others to fit into my story's plotline and world-building, and added a little. Please give Trookay's chapter a read. You'll find more details in their version since my goal was to keep this as close to Blood-Seeker's POV.