Vulture hung motionless in the sky.
She looked down upon the beautiful carnage below.
What a feast! What a spread! What a cornucopia of carnal delights!
Her sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, continued to arrive from all points of the compass, now in the hundreds, soon in the thousands. There would be no infighting amongst their own today. Today, there was plenty for all. Everyone would feast and satisfy their most gluttonous appetites. Eat all you can! Carry what you will! Come back for second and third and even tenth helpings. Eat till you cannot fly. Sit and digest and then eat some more.
It was heavenly.
Vulture loved battles.
If only the humans could host a battle every day, vultures would feast all their lives.
But not only their kind—even the other scavengers, both winged and on foot, would have ample repast. Even those who did not usually scavenge could not resist such a festival of savories.
Vulture could spy them gathered at the edges of the battlefield. Hyena, rat, wolves, even lazy lions and panthers and leopards and wild dogs . . . In the sky there were crows and jackdaws and even a few gulls who had somehow come this far inland and stayed to feast.
But what was this, now?
Rising up in the sky like a pack of squabbling birds, a mortal fighting a nest of snakes?
No.
Vulture knew snakes well. She loved snakes. They were a fine delicacy and one of her main sources of nourishment. She could spot a snake from a mile high. Those were not snakes.
These furiously writhing things were shaped more or less like snakes, but they were something else entirely. She smelled a peculiar odor from them. Somewhat mortal, yet something other than mortal too. Urrkh, then? Naga? Pisaca? One of the other snakelike demon races? She had thought they were mostly extinct, but who knew what lurked in the far corners of Arthaloka. Those rabid monsters had a way of coming back when least expected.
She could not tell precisely what manner of demon this creature was, but it was a demon, no doubt. And yet it smelled of mortal blood too. A crossbreed, then. Vulture had eaten a few of those in her time. They did not taste good. She cried out to her flock, cautioning them to avoid the crossbreed that flew like a bird and moved like a snake. There was plenty of better fare to enjoy without spoiling one’s appetite on urrkh flesh.
But what was this, now?
Clearly, the crossbreed was winning the unequal fight. He had picked up the mortal male from the surface of Arthaloka and carried him high above, much as a carrion bird would do with prey. Using his unnatural crossbreed abilities, he was raking and cutting and puncturing the prey with furious energy in midair. Already, from the smell and sight of the mortal blood spilled, Vulture could see that the mortal could not possibly survive this assault. It was an unequal battle whose outcome was a foregone conclusion.
But there was something unusual happening now.
For one thing, the mortal blood that Vulture smelled was again not solely mortal.
It was something else.
What, then? Was the mortal also a crossbreed like his attacker?
Hmm, yes. But not a demon-mortal crossbreed. This was a different species of being.
A demigod.
Part god, part mortal.
And he was not succumbing as any mortal would have long before now.
He was fighting back.