The great migration had barely disappeared beyond the northern peaks when the scavengers arrived. Massive rocs, their wingspan casting shadows like storm clouds, descended upon the abandoned nesting grounds. " hurry you decrepit fowls, a buffet awaits the chosen of Spigier". The roc chirped. Far below, where the mountain's roots touched gentler lands, stretched a lake unlike any other. Its borders were defined not by stone or earth, but by an endless flow of leaves that moved like liquid mercury along its edges. The leaves; some golden as autumn maple, others silver as moonlight, Among them danced the fae, creatures of such ethereal beauty that they appeared more like living light than flesh. They skipped across the flowing leaf-borders as if the cascading foliage were solid ground. "Catch a fae or two and ill reward you with a few Amino bass at the roost." Scarbeake said.

  The boldest among them, a roc with talons the size of boulders. Dove straight for the largest clutch of abandoned dragon eggs, his beak cracking through shells like thunder splitting stone. Yolk the color of molten gold spilled across the rocky ledges as he gorged himself, his cries of triumph echoing across the desolate peaks. "How does one require more! This delicacy should be shared with the youthling at roost. It'll give them something to strive for" Scarface chirped.

  But the dragons had not left their homes entirely undefended. Three young adults, too proud to abandon their birthplace completely, erupted from concealed perches among the craggy mountainsides. "Rats; if gave them feathers and rid you of yours, will thier be a difference." The dragon roared. Their scales, mottled with the gray and brown hues of weathered stone, had rendered them nearly invisible until they struck. The lead dragon, compact and built for speed, slammed into the roc, sending both creatures tumbling through the air in a whirlwind of wings and claws.

  Her companions flanked the remaining flock, using hit-and-run tactics that turned the sky into a deadly maze of dive-bombing attacks. The lead dragon Tessava, pinned the roc she'd struck against a cliff face. Its talons were hooked beneath its wing joints. Her plumage, steel-gray barred with bands of storm-violet, bristled along her spine like a thousand unsheathed daggers. She was built narrow, aerodynamic, every bone hollowed for speed, every feather edged with power of wind.

  The roc thrashed beneath her, its massive beak snapped at empty air. Then its plumage ignited with light.

  A lattice of electricity erupted across the roc's body, arcing between the barbed tips of its primary feathers in a web of crackling blue-white. The discharge hit Tessava full in the chest and flung her backward, with her feathers smoking. Tessava muscles were locked in a seizure that sent her tumbling end over end through the sky. She had shed altitude in a spiral, and her wings twitched uselessly as residual current raced through her hollow bones.

  "Tessava!" Korrin banked hard, the second of the three defenders. He was broader than his sister, his feathered scales a mottled amber-brown that blended with autumn stone. The plumes along his forearms were longer, thicker. More so built for speed but for the kind of aerial acrobatics that turned dogfights into art. He tucked his wings and dove after her, catching her by the scruff of her neck in his jaws before she could strike the mountainside. The impact of her weight nearly buckled his flight, but he beat his wings and each downstroke displacing enough air to flatten trees and hauled them both back to altitude.

  "I'm fine. Let go." Tessava shook herself free the moment her wings obeyed her again, shedding a cascade of singed feather-tips that floated down like gray snow. Her eyes locked onto the roc that had shocked her. "Since when do carrion birds throw lightning?"

  "Since always, you hatchling," Korrin growled. "Mother warned us. That Spigier clan of rocs store charge in their flight feathers. Each quill is a capacitor. They build voltage with every wingbeat and discharge on contact."

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  "Wonderful. Any other ancestral wisdom, or shall I just avoid touching them entirely?"

  "Don't be stupid. You're a sky dragon. Use the wind."

  Above them, the third defender was already demonstrating what Korrin meant.

  Velpyre was the eldest of the three, and the smallest was barely six hundred meters from beak to tail-tip. Though her body was so heavily feathered she looked more like a titanic peregrine falcon than a dragon. But what she lacked in mass she compensated for with an instinctive mastery of atmospheric currents that bordered on sorcery. She didn't breathe fire. None of them did. Sky dragons breathed pressurized wind.

  She exhaled now, and the air in front of her compressed into a visible shockwave. A lens of distorted atmosphere that screamed forward and struck three rocs in formation. The concussive blast displaced everything. The rocs were hurled apart like leaves in a gale, their careful attack formation shattered. One tumbled into a cliff, its wing crumpling with a sound like a ship's mast snapping. Another was thrown so far off-axis that it took nearly a full minute to right itself.

  But the third Scarbeake, the bold one rolled into the shockwave. He let the pressure flip him, used the energy of Velsha's own breath to accelerate into a barrel roll that brought him screaming back toward her at twice the speed he'd been travelling.

  His feathers were already singing with accumulated charge. Every primary, every secondary, every covert bristled with potential. The air around him ionized, turning the moisture in the storm clouds into a corona of blue fire that wreathed his body like a second skin.

  "Clever hen!" Scarface shrieked, his voice a piercing raptor's cry that cut through the wind. "But you breathe air and that conducts!"

  He discharged everything at once.

  The bolt didn't arc from feather to feather this time. It lanced forward in a single concentrated beam, following the corridor that Velsha's own compressed breath had carved through the atmosphere. Her shockwave had displaced the moisture, yes, but it had also superheated the air, turning it into a perfect channel for electrical discharge.

  Velsha twisted sideways where a millisecond's hesitation meant collision with a thermal wall moving at three hundred meters per second. The bolt passed close enough to ignite the tips of her tail feathers, leaving a line of tiny flames that she extinguished with a flick.

  "He's using our pressure lanes against us!" she called to her siblings. "We need to fragment our attacks. Don't give them channels to ride!"

  Korrin understood as he rose above the engagement, climbing with powerful beats until the air thinned and the temperature plummeted. At this altitude, the moisture in the atmosphere crystallized on his feathers, turning his amber plumage white with frost. He exhaled a dispersal technique. His breath exploded outward in every direction, a spherical burst of compressed air that turned the ice crystals on his feathers into a blizzard of razor-edged shrapnel.

  The frozen cloud descended on the roc formation like a curtain of glass. The shards were too small to wound, but they served a different purpose: they scattered the electrical charge. Every ice crystal became a tiny conductor, bleeding voltage from the rocs' feathers into the ambient atmosphere. The careful reservoirs of stored lightning bled away in a thousand tiny sparks that crackled and popped like distant fireworks.

  "My charge!" one of the younger rocs shrieked, its feathers going flat and dull as the accumulated electricity dissipated. "The frost, it's grounding us!"

  "Then fly higher, you useless fledgling!" Scarbeake bellowed. But his own feathers were dimming, the corona around his body flickering as Korrin's ice-cloud continued to drain his reserves. He beat his wings furiously, trying to rebuild charge through friction alone, but the sky dragon had stolen the atmospheric advantage.

  Tessava saw her opening.

  She came in low, hugging the mountain contours where the thermal updrafts from the leviathan's carcass created unpredictable wind shear. The rocs, built for high soaring and diving strikes, struggled in the turbulent low-altitude air. Their broad wings, perfect for riding thermals, became liabilities in the chaotic crosswinds that swirled between the peaks.

  Tessava's wings were different. Narrower, with individually articulated flight feathers that could adjust their angle mid-stroke. She carved through the turbulence like a needle through silk, each course correction so precise that she left contrails of displaced mist in her wake.

  She struck the nearest roc with speed.

  At the moment of closest approach, she exhaled a focused lance of compressed air directly at the joint where the roc's wing met its body. The pressure burst didn't break bone. It hyperextended the wing, popping the joint out of its socket with a wet crack that echoed off stone. The roc screamed and spiraled downward, one wing flapping uselessly while the other beat in compensation.

  "That's one!" Tessava whooped, banking hard to avoid the retaliatory discharge from two of Scarbeake's lieutenants. The lightning bolts cracked past her, close enough to raise every feather on her body, but she was already gone. A gray streak threading between the peaks like thread through a needle's eye.