Page 107 of Of Serpents and Ruins
My heart clenched. Buttercup bellowed her disapproval, shaking her head and stamping her left hoof.
"Ambush," Elias growled.
"Keep close," Kine responded. He leaned forward and sent up a reptilian call, a coughing grunting sound that was far larger than him.
The terror birds backed away. The largest snapped its black and gold beak at the air.
"Grip your ring and roar," Kine whispered to me, gripping my hand and guiding it into a fist.
I balled my fists up tighter and obeyed. A great roar reverberated out of me, somewhere between a dragon, a lion, and an angry woman. It shook me to my core.
Kine roared as well, and the terror birds shrieked in surprise, flapping their enormous wings as they retreated several feet. The largest, a brute with dark blue plumage and grey stripes on its back, shook its feathers and stomped forward. It cocked its head, its muscular neck bobbing.
Shafts of grey sunlight speared through the canopy above, casting everything in an ethereal glow. The mist swirled around our feet like spectral dancers. The terror birds had us surrounded. Kine and Elias roared again. I joined in again.
It wasn’t deterring the birds. The smallest one was easily six feet, the tallest probably closer to twelve. They scratched and clawed at the earth. Buttercup snarled in response. She stamped her feet against the ground and snorted.
"It’s all right, girl," I whispered to her. "I’ve got your back."
She huffed, giving me a dark expression that suggested she had my back rather than the other way around.
I cut my eyes at her and summoned my water serpent form. It was much heavier to be a water serpent on land than in the sea, but already, I felt so much stronger. A terror bird lunged in at me, and I snaked back just in time.
Elias swept his quarterstaff around and clubbed one on the side of the head.
Kine had also transformed. He struck and snapped one of the terror birds in his jaws, dropping it to the ground.
Mimicking his pose, I lunged at the next one.
My aim was poor. A grey-green terror bird leaped at my back, and its beak dug into my spine. Pain erupted through me like branches of fire, burning a path up my back and across my lungs.
Kine launched himself at the terror bird as Buttercup charged at a second.
I flattened and then coiled myself inward. The wounds were healing. They itched as the flesh knit back, creeping and crawling, but they healed!
I snapped once more at the nearest terror bird. My jaws caught only air. Feathery bastard was fast.
Buttercup took down the one at my left.
More and more circled, darting in with snapping beaks. I bit one and nearly took a beak in the eye before I recoiled.
Ihlkit! They were slick.
Heavy footsteps jarred the ground, sending out ripples in the glassy puddles and jarring the little stones. A dark-orange spinosaurus pounded into the clearing, followed by a second dark-red one.
The parasaurs and Buttercup dropped back, flattening their necks and bellowing. Their tails snapped out like defensive weapons, but the spinosauruses lunged at the terror birds. Theirroars reverberated through the ancient forest as they charged our attackers, their massive frames like impenetrable walls of scales and muscle.
The largest terror bird screeched in defiance, unfurling its wings in a show of dominance, but it was too late. Razor-sharp teeth glinted in the filtered light. Massive jaws closed, feathers puffing into the air, bones crunching. The spinosauruses had the terror birds outmatched in both size and ferocity. Feathers and blood flew as each spinosaurus dropped a corpse and seized another. The remaining terror birds scattered, their claws cutting the dark earth and flinging up pebbles and soil.
I fell back, jaw agape, preparing to run. There was no chance we could fight off two beasts like that.
But Kine hadn’t retreated. He’d dropped back into his human form, his hands resting against his thighs as he shook his head. "It took you two long enough."
Elias dropped off his parasaur and ran alongside me. When he looked at me, his dark-blue eyes were soft and comforting. He waved his hand as if to indicate it was all right despite his rapid breaths.
The dark-red spinosaurus snapped the neck of one of the attacking terror birds and turned on Kine. "Well, well, did we miss your announcement informing us you'd be stopping by?" a gravelly male voice boomed from the spinosaurus’s jaws.
The dark-orange one laughed, tilting her head as a much softer but no less intimidating voice rang out. "They thought they would just drop in."
