As soon as the impact came, Kaldalis got a rude awakening about his expectations. He’d been mildly pecked at by enemies for a long time - when he wasn’t kicking back and fishing off the boat. The giant beast that lunged at him dished out nine hundred and sixty-six damage on impact, and gave him a stack of the Gust debuff.

Just shy of a third of his health in one blow that he hadn’t had a chance to see coming.

It probably would have been fatal if Balrim or Myrin had faced it first.

This was no sickly little pushover of a monster, cultivated to be killed. It was a real monster. This thing was here to kill him to get him out of its territory. And it probably wasn’t even a boss mob.

He was reminded of the terrifying experience of facing down the Irritator on the first day on the island. This fight would be won off the back of his actual fighting skill, not just hiding behind his health bar and waiting for it to be over.

Kaldalis was not in Baimer anymore.

As his weapon came up, he took stock of what was arrayed against him. It had been only a dark shape a moment ago, and as he warded it off with his spear, it lurched away warily. It was a feathered mass, but all in dusky brown colors. The coloration would camouflage it perfectly in the dirt-colored rocks of the surrounding environment.

When it first lunged, it had appeared to be about the size of a horse, but it had been crouched down for that attack. Now that it straightened up, it towered over him. It was quadrupedal, but its back legs were much more heavily muscled, and from the bulk of its haunches and tail, he suspected that it could rear up and bring its heavy-looking forelimbs to bear in combat. Though it was possible that the bulk was all feathers.

The monster’s head was smooth and aerodynamic, with a bill-like mouth lined with blunt teeth, marking it as an herbivore. The back of its head had a horn-like growth at least two feet long, supporting thin frills that attached to the sides of its conical head, covered in large decorative feathers, making it appear much larger from the front. If Kaldalis’s vision were a bit poorer, or if he weren’t squaring off against it from such close range, the extra apparent size added to its head might have brought to mind an unusually large and slightly off-color Daemonraptor.

It lunged again, swinging its head to batter Kaldalis with the horn-like growth, but he was too fast for it now that he wasn’t flat-footed. He was able to duck fast enough to let the attack sail over him. He thrust his spear in at it as soon as the attack went past, stabbing into its shoulder.

Despite the monster’s offensive power, its defenses weren’t as strong as expected, and he dealt one hundred and twenty-three damage in return, and his new spear dished out a stack of poison. The debuff ticked away at its hit points as he withdrew the weapon and danced back, readying himself for its next attack.

“What the fuck,” Balrim spat. A potion hit Kaldalis, restoring a healthy chunk of hit points, but not completely undoing the damage the ambush blow had done.

“Yeah, I know,” Kaldalis said, “I can’t afford to take more hits like that.” He carefully eyed the Gust debuff on his UI, knowing that a few stacks of that could be the end of him, if the monster’s affinity multiplier was high enough.

“No, not that,” Balrim said, fumbling with his bow for a second before firing an arrow into the monster’s flank. “Where the fuck did it come from?”

“There’s a nest,” Myrin said from around the corner of the building. “This building has a basement and it’s full of brown feathers and tree branches.”

“Could you get the fuck over here and help?” Kaldalis snapped, nearly throwing himself face-first in the dirt as the monster lunged at him. There was a grunting growl in the monster’s chest that reverberated deep enough to make Kaldalis feel like his bones were being shaken. “This thing is no joke!”

“Just letting you establish aggro!” Myrin chirped cheerfully as she came sprinting around the corner. Despite her relatively short legs, she practically flew over the ground to smash her comically oversized greatsword into the monster’s hip. There was a flare of fire on impact - a sign that she had landed a critical hit immediately - and the monster reared up with a bleating roar.

Kaldalis was glad for overworld aggro rules. Despite whatever ridiculous damage Myrin had just done, when the monster came back down to all fours, Kaldalis still had its undivided attention.

The monster’s head swept down in a vicious headbutt, and he barely scrambled out of the way.

He slashed the side of his spearhead against its cheek to dish out another hundred damage and another stack of poison.

Kaldalis danced back, leading the monster in a semicircle through the open space between ruined buildings. It followed after him, its weight turning its steps to rumbling thunder, making Kaldalis all the more embarrassed that it had ambushed him. It reared up and swiped at him with it’s thick forelimbs. It had distinct fingers on each “hand” but they were thick, and not prehensile in the least. They ended in stubby nails like those of an elephant rather than claws.

Despite Kaldalis’s best efforts, one of those knobby limbs caught him across the shoulder, dishing out another nine hundred damage and an additional stack of gust debuff.

“Fuck,” he cursed as he scrambled to get clear of the monster’s headbutt as it came back down. “Can’t take another one of those.”

“No kidding,” Balrim grumbled. The monster’s left flank was studded with arrows now, but the Talsar’s healing ability wasn’t off cooldown again yet. Kaldalis was going to have to anticipate the next attack he couldn’t dodge. If he could absorb it with Shrug Off, he might be fine.

Of course, if he could anticipate it, he’d have dodged it, so maybe he needed to work on his reflexes instead of his guesswork.

The feathered monstrosity gave a bleating roar again, lowering its head and charging. Kaldalis had to activate his Jump ability to get out of the way as the monster rocketed forward at unexpected speed. He felt a little better about being blindsided, seeing this attack. Without being able to leap over the top of the charging monster, there was no way he could have gotten out of the way of the combination of size and speed.

“Come back here, you bitch!” Myrin barked, her own impossible speed sending her after the beast at similar speed. She wasn’t able to stay in sword range of it, but she was moving fast enough that when Kaldalis came down he didn’t land directly on top of her.

From his new vantage point, he could see how much work she had done on its hindquarters. Much of the feathers had been singed, if not burnt to ash. Beneath the cover of feathers was a pebbled hide.

Despite the camouflage color of the plumage, its hide was bright pink and green, standing out clearly in the darkness. Kaldalis’s curiosity was peaked by the idea of the hidden coloration. Did it molt during mating season to show off its bright colors, and grow back during the off season? Did it migrate to a pink and green environment during the summer months after shedding its feathers? Was it an evolutionary holdover from an earlier state of the islands, perhaps even selective breeding by Lataxinans?

Or was it Monsoon’s meddling in the ecosystem to make cool crafting materials for players, to let them develop iconic looks and attract more viewers?

He didn’t have time to reflect further before the next disaster. The monster blundered into the ruins of the building with the metal vats, and its weight crushed one of the crumbling constructions. It crashed into the opening with a rumbling snarl of alarm, and the noise redoubled as the rubble of the ruin had to settle into a new configuration to accommodate for a feathered beast roughly the size of a small elephant thrashing around in the newly-formed pit.

Myrin pounced, hacking away at the monster with gleeful fury.

“Finally, some good luck,” Balrim grumbled as he finally tossed another potion to Kaldalis in between volleys of arrows.

For his part, Kaldalis whirled around, squinting into the darkness in horror. His vision couldn’t pierce the dark beyond the globe that Monsoon’s rules had decided his darkvision encompassed right now, but he knew this was a problem.

They were within spitting distance of the raid. He’d bet big money that the Contender had posted a separate group of guards here. The thunder of its hooves, and the occasional bleat could be attributed to normal monster activity. A crash of it dropping into a pit might warrant investigation.

If he heard the stomp of booted feet, or cries of alarm, they might need to clear out in a damn big hurry.

There was a sudden tingle and Kaldalis earned one hundred and ten experience points for the death of a Windy Parasaur. He even got a sheaf of notes about it. Kaldalis entertained the idea for a brief moment that his fears were unfounded. If it stopped kicking and thrashing, anyone who heard might have interpreted it as background noise from a particularly clumsy monster. Maybe they were far enough away that the clatter was inaudible altogether. Maybe they were fine.

The monster’s death rattle didn’t pass through its billed mouth. It passed through the horn on the back of its head. The feathers on the growth shook and shimmied as the creature died with a thunderous trumpeting noise. It sounded like someone punched a trombonist in the gut.

It wasn’t a sound that just carried through the night. It echoed.

The blast of sound filled the ruins, and then came back to them, as if echoing off of the nearby ruins.

And then again as if echoing off the hillsides.

And then again as if echoing off of the mountain itself.

“What’s that?” a gruff voice bellowed out of the darkness. Too far to see, but sounding terrifyingly close. He was either just out of view or had an impossibly fantastic set of lungs to be so loud from much farther than that. “Who’s there?”