Chapter 19: Party of Four

Gustave had been following him for weeks.

Andy knew this because the shadow kept showing up during his speed trials, a dark shape cutting across the canopy gap at the apex of his downhill runs. The wind patterns had been wrong, shifting against the prevailing current whenever something large moved through the air above the treeline. And his ears had been tracking a sound he had first heard as a frog: the whoosh of something with a wingspan wider than Andy’s body cutting through the atmosphere at speed.

The hawk. The shadow that had breached the lake’s surface while Andy was a jellyfish, circled above the shore while Andy was a frog, been a persistent silhouette against the sky in every body he had inhabited since his second tier.

The hawk was watching him the way the fox had watched him before introducing herself: with patient, intelligent, evaluative attention.

“I’m collecting observers,” Andy thought, trotting along the ridge trail at ninety-one percent gallop efficiency. “First the fox. Then the ranger. Now the hawk. I’m a cream-colored horse with a glowing horn and apparently every creature in this forest with functioning eyes has decided that watching me run is better than whatever they were doing before. My horn is attracting admirers again. At this rate I’ll have a fan club before I have a voice.”

The fox, trotting beside him, sent an impression: the bird is following us again. The impression was colored with the specific irritation the fox reserved for creatures she considered competition for Andy’s attention, a possessive streak the Companion bond had amplified and that the fox would deny if asked.

“I know,” Andy sent. “It’s been following us since the ridge.”

The fox sent: I don’t like it.

“It hasn’t attacked. It’s just watching.”

The fox sent: the psychic equivalent of a narrow-eyed, suspicious glare directed at the canopy.

Andy stopped at his clearing (the ranger’s clearing, the clearing of apples and books and horn-stroking and the lean-to shelter he used every night). He raised his head. His ears rotated upward, locking onto the displaced air above the trees.

“Hey,” Andy thought, pushing the thought outward through his horn at maximum volume (still the default; his psychic broadcasts had the subtlety of a foghorn). “Hey, up there. I can see you. I’ve been able to see you for weeks. You’re not as stealthy as you think you are. Come down here and introduce yourself or stop circling my clearing because the fox is getting territorial and I don’t want my two observers to fight.”

The broadcast went out. The golden-blue pulse radiated upward through the canopy. Silence. Then: a response.

Not from below. From above. A psychic impression that arrived through a channel similar to the fox’s but fundamentally different in texture. Where the fox’s impressions were warm, canid, close to the ground, this impression was sharp, clear, and cold. The emotional equivalent of mountain air.

The impression contained: acknowledgment. Assessment. A crisp, formal quality that communicated: I have been observing you. You are correct that I have been observing you. I was not attempting to be stealthy. I was evaluating.

“Evaluating what?” Andy sent.

The response was immediate and precise: whether you were worth descending for.

The hawk came down.

It dropped through the canopy gap with a control that was aerodynamic and also, Andy suspected, magical: the descent was too slow, too precise for a creature with a meter-and-a-half wingspan to be purely the product of gravity and wing surfaces. The air around the hawk’s body was moving wrong, curling inward in patterns that suggested the hawk was not riding the wind but directing it, with the casual authority of a creature that had the wind’s phone number and called it regularly.

The hawk landed on a branch three meters above Andy’s head with a snap of folding wings and folded its wings shut like a book snapped closed.

It was beautiful. Plumage in a gradient of deep bronze to pale gold, shifting with the light. Eyes of hard amber (gemstone amber, not the fox’s honey amber), and the intelligence behind them was real, evaluative, aware of itself.

The hawk was Tier 4. Andy knew this the way he knew the fox was Tier 4: by the psychic complexity of the impression and the general bearing of a creature that had evolved beyond the baseline and knew it.

[ORGANISM DETECTED: STORM HAWK (RAPTOR ADEPT). TIER 4. ELEMENTAL AFFINITY: WIND.]

Storm Hawk. Raptor Adept. Wind affinity. The hawk could manipulate wind, which explained the controlled descent and meant he had been steering air currents around Andy’s clearing for weeks, watching from angles aerodynamically impossible without magical assistance.

The hawk sent a second impression: he had been observing Andy since his arrival in the forest. His amphibian form (a speck with a glow). His equine evolution. The fox. The ranger. The hawk had been evaluating the entire situation with the patient, slightly condescending thoroughness of a predator that considers itself above (literally and metaphorically) the affairs of ground-dwelling creatures but has reluctantly concluded that the glowing horn is interesting enough to warrant a closer look.

The condescension was unmistakable. The hawk looked at Andy the way a tenured professor looks at a promising but sloppy undergraduate: recognition of potential, disapproval of execution.

“Well,” Andy sent, his horn pulsing with the amused, slightly offended energy of a man being judged by a bird, “nice to meet you too. I’m Andy. The glowing horn is a long story. The fox is my friend. The ranger is… complicated.”

The hawk sent: your gallop is inefficient. Your turns are sloppy. Your horn management is poor. You broadcast your emotions at maximum volume with no attempt at modulation. Your shelter is adequate at best. You have the magical signature of a nascent mythic creature and the physical grace of a newborn foal. I have been watching you trip over roots for thirty days.

Andy stared at the hawk. The hawk stared back with eyes that did not blink.

“He’s been CRITIQUING me,” Andy thought, aiming the transmission at the fox but definitely overheard by the hawk. “He’s been sitting in the CANOPY for a MONTH forming OPINIONS about my GALLOP EFFICIENCY and he’s a BIRD. A creature whose relationship with the ground is OPTIONAL is judging me for not being good enough at TOUCHING IT.”

The fox sent, from her rock, a single, clean impression: I like him.

“You like him? He just called my shelter ‘adequate at best.'”

The fox sent: your shelter is adequate at best. He’s not wrong.

“The RANGER built my shelter.”

The fox sent: and?

The hawk, who had been following this exchange with the alert, slightly disdainful attention of a creature eavesdropping on a conversation that confirmed its low expectations, sent a new impression: enough. I have decided to join you.

Andy’s ears both rotated toward the hawk. “Decided to join me? I didn’t invite you.”

The hawk sent: I do not require invitations. I am a Storm Hawk. We affiliate with the worthy or we do not affiliate at all. You are marginally worthy. Your horn compensates for your many deficiencies. I will affiliate.

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“My horn compensates for my many deficiencies.” Andy had never felt so simultaneously complimented and insulted by a single sentence about his horn. The hawk communicated with the specificity of a creature that considered truth and politeness mutually exclusive.

Andy loved him immediately.

“You,” Andy sent, his horn blazing with unfiltered delight, “are my favorite bird. You are a magnificent, judgmental, wind-controlling bird and you have been watching me trip over roots for a month and you still showed up and I am HONORED.”

The hawk sent: please reduce your horn output. You are emotionally blinding. Your horn is throbbing.

“It does that when I’m excited. I’ve been told it’s a whole thing.”

The hawk sent an impression that communicated, with the concise elegance of psychic contempt: clearly.

[PARTY FORMATION: UPDATED]

[NEW MEMBER: STORM HAWK (RAPTOR ADEPT). TIER 4. ELEMENTAL AFFINITY: WIND.]

[PARTY FORMED: 3 MEMBERS]

[PARTY BONUS XP: +25% ON ALL XP GAINS WHILE PARTY MEMBERS ARE WITHIN PROXIMITY RANGE.]

[HERD BOND: ACQUAINTANCE (RAPTOR ADEPT)]

Twenty-five percent. The hawk’s presence was justified on purely mathematical grounds, independent of the fact that the hawk was the most entertaining personality Andy had encountered in this world. The fox was sardonic. The ranger was wonderful but couldn’t hear him. The hawk was an entirely new flavor of companionship: someone who thought you were mediocre and had decided to associate with you anyway. The bird equivalent of a backhanded compliment that never stops.

They spent the afternoon together: Andy on the ground, the fox on her rock, the hawk on his branch (his branch; claimed within minutes, adjusted twice, settled and did not move again). The hawk sent periodic assessments: his head was held too low (the horn’s weight pulling him into a forward lean), his breathing was adequate (could be more efficient), his ears were unfocused (lacking directional discipline). The horn was too bright (always). His posture screamed “prey animal” (work on it).

The hawk had descended from the canopy, joined his party, and immediately started coaching him, because the hawk’s personality was, at its core, that of a creature that found the gap between potential and execution personally offensive. Andy was going to have to accept that his party now contained a life coach with wings, opinions, and zero regard for his feelings.