Flight School: Predator

Still Wind

Somewhere in the night, he heard a sound; a dull, trepid thud that startled the creature within and made him turn, anxious and afraid of the source—imminent. Approaching.

There was nothing behind him. The room remained fairly lit, doors closed and everything else in the world left where it should have been.

He made the decision to return to his humble dinner that consisted of miso soup and a bowl of rice, then, upon further consideration, thought against it. He rose, quietly, and checked his master's room.

Nothing was out of the ordinary. Windows were examined, and doors scrutinised for any sign of damage but he returned to the dining table, unable to comprehend the sudden emptiness of his world.

The nightingale brushed the thought aside.

Perhaps it was the wind.

__________________________

There was a dull thud as a ball of white fell flat into a pool of blood, wings spread wide as it landed beside its Winged—limp and awry.

Blood was everywhere. It seeped through the earth and tainted the soil, splattered on the trunk of a nearby tree; sprayed all over the dried leaves that now clung to the body that was still. Red lapped against his neck, still desperate. Flesh and bone was visible from where the vulture was standing.

He was backed away, eyes wide and afraid. "What?" He tore his gaze from the body.

"Oh, you speak too?" Reux mused as he wiped the blood off his dagger, "same. I mean, it's a rule so we don't usually do all that in front of the prey, but since there's none of that around." He shrugged.

Vaughn was not feeling too well. Light-headed, he reached out to a nearby tree for support and stared at the shrike. His leader. "Excuse me?"

"Are you alright, scavenger?" Reux stepped over the owl's corpse and onto the owl's wing. It made no protest. "You look pale."

The question seemed impossible for him to answer. Was he alright? Surely, such a question was redundant, at most, irrelevant in the current context? He willed his eyes to examine Slayne's body, face-down, in the earth; limbs in complete disarray. Could he have saved him? Seconds ago, the owl was alive, speaking to him through an established Link and now, he was...was he?

Vaughn reached down, hovering his finger under the nose.

He was.

"Oh God," he bolted upwards and backed away at once, turning. "He's dead. Oh fuck."

"I mean, obviously." Reux was checking his shirt, slightly disappointed by the bloodstain on his upper sleeve. Inevitable, the blood would have splattered far since he'd slit the jugular vein and the windpipe. "Seriously, are you okay? You look as though you haven't killed someone before."

The shrike's Avian screeched a laugh at his reference. Reux himself was fairly surprised that the infamous vulture with a soul-stealing gun was wrought over the death of someone he barely knew.

"Are you kidding? I—" It was different. What he'd stolen were not the lives of his victims but their humanity, the individual living within, that was what he took. "You're insane."