“I do not feel welcome,” Cadryn said, climbing quickly to join her. “So this is what you’re inspecting?”

“Mmmhmm, Sefton has a list of expected collapses from Rof, and he’s tasked me with monitoring the points of greatest instability, to ensure nothing falls when were not ready for it.”

Cadryn immediately recalled his many unplanned walks around to roof of the Citadel below. All that time, death had been hanging above him just beyond the Hanging Gardens. Chewing his lip he glanced at Gita. “So, this monster, I imagine you mentioned it to Sefton?”

“I did! He thinks I’m being dramatic. That, because of my size, I’d mistake anything bigger than me for something horrible. The nerve. Rake, Swiper of Flocks, is real!”

“Rake, Swiper of— you named this thing?”

“There’s power in a name,” Gita said, looking at him, “the world rarely thinks beyond it . . . I wanted it to see the threat I saw.”

“Gita,” Cadryn began, and started to relax.

But Gita wasn’t looking at him anymore, rather, something in the wreckage over his shoulder. “Cadryn,” she said, softly, “Draw your sword.”

Doing so, he spun, staying in a low crouch for balance on the obscenely precarious footing. There, opposite him, no more than a stones throw, was Rake, Swiper of Flocks.

Gita’s monster, Cadryn discovered, was of a type he knew: A Panthraptor. One of the multitude of strange and unnatural creatures the Mages of the world had brought forth in their apparent quest to become like the gods, the Panthraptor described any combination of a large hunting cat and bird of prey.

This one, was an actual panther, with the wings of a hawk. Having lost the element of surprise, the creature dove off the edge of the spire, winging upward and out of sight behind the wreckage.

“You really should have told me it was damn Panthraptor, Gita. I’d have brought a crossbow!” Cadryn yelled, his eyes seeking the monster.

“I was afraid you’d change your mind,” Gita replied, sheepishly.

I’m going to die up here, Cadryn thought. “But I won’t be dying alone,” he whispered. “You,” he said, pointing at Gita, “Tell me where the most open space is, where I might actually be able to move and fight.”

Gita led him upward, to the center, of what remained, of Raznir’s nest, once full of treasures, long since claimed. The space was barely larger than Sefton’s office. “It’ll do,” Cadryn said, and moved near the edge, “now hide, and give your signal when it comes for me.”

Gita obeyed, burrowing into the space beneath an upended driver’s bench, and the suspended carriage ruins it was bolted to. Time began to stretch, seconds, to minutes, to an hour. Cadryn made a show of walking around the edge of the nest in plain sight, challenging, apparently searching.

The sun rose fully, and the heat and dehydration of the night’s drinking began to wear on him. Mirages started to play tricks with his mind, and more than once he jumped at the shadow of some carrion bird or actual hawk.

Then Gita squeaked out her warning.

Ducking, he turned, almost too late to react to Rake’s dive, and claws found his shoulder, sunk in, and wrenched his body off balance. Fangs sought the nape of his neck, but Gita flashed down from her hide, clawing and biting Rake’s eyes.

The three of them tumbled to the broken planks, wood biting into Cadryn’s back. The sound of wings beating the air, and Rake’s hind claws gouging the edge of the nest, filled his senses. The creature was going to pull him to his death.

Cadryn lashed upward with his sword, felt it bite bone, and heard the wing crack. Rolling away from the shrieking monster, Cadryn kicked him in the chest, and with a scream of his own, Rake’s claws tore free from the flesh of his shoulder.

Howling, the Panthraptor fell. There was crash as he hit one of the lower masses of wreckage, then a much deeper rending as the cluster broke free of its spire. In the seconds that followed, echoing crashes of the mass’s passage through the Hanging Garden’s followed, ending in a low boom as it impacted the Citadel’s roof.

Panting, Cadryn and Gita just listened to the sounds. The wind felt alive with the thrill of the victory, and Cadryn started to chuckle.

“What?” Gita said, flowing over his chest to appear in his line of sight.

“I wonder if Sefton had that one marked to fall today.”

The two friends lay there laughing, until they’d recovered enough to go find out.