Yes.
But that was peril aside. Peril included? Bittersweet.
“Flying here sucks!” Evan cried out.
I quickly discovered why. A clear path opened up, I took it, and found a copse of trees just in front of me. A virtual wall.
A bird’s beak stabbed at my hairline, and came away with a chunk of flesh.
I angled myself to the left, aiming for a thicket of branches, and flew straight into it.
I paid for it in buckets, with the loss of balance and momentum, but wood stuck to my back and my wings, and the birds were scraped off.
A large snow-covered boulder seemed to rush at me, twice as fast as everything else. An optical illusion, helped by the deeper shadows and layers of snow that suggested it was a part of the background.
Still off-balance, I was too slow to move entirely out of the way. I felt my wing clip it, but only the tip broke away.
Birds descended from the thicker collections of branches, scattering snow and ice as they lunged, snapping beaks at me as we crossed paths.
Doing their best to go for the wings, and the eyes.
They almost bordered on the suicidal, as they collided with me in attempts to hit my wings or spear me through the face. I had to twist my face away to save my right eye. Each action I took and each collision served to put me even more off balance, costing me precious fractions of a second I needed to raise one wing, to flap, to descend.
I was supernaturally tough. What might have happened if I were flesh? If these beaks and talons were digging more than mere millimeters into my flesh?
Picked to pieces until I couldn’t fly anymore?
An area opened up. I could make out shapes in the distance.
The others.
I headed toward them.
“No!” Evan cried out.
As fast as I’d turned their way, I steered clear.
Into branches, some as thick around as my wing was. Some grew together, as if they’d meshed together, to better break my speed.
Around the time that the last of my forward momentum was gone, I folded my wings, and let the weight of my body carry me to the ground. I dropped five feet, snagged on more branches, and stopped partway.
I moved my arm free of my wing, and the lack of support meant that the wing stopped holding me up. I dropped the remainder of the way, landing knee-deep in snow.
Two seconds after I’d stopped, a buzzard came right for my face. I caught it, holding it, with its wings pounding in my direction, talons scratching.
When I let go, it flew away.
“Yeah,” Evan said. He climbed out of my chest cavity, “So… that happens.”
“Can’t fly and defend myself at the same time,” I said.
“You can, you just need practice. Barrel roll roundhouse kicks, maybe.”
“I can’t do a roundhouse kick to start with. Why would I be able to do one while flying?”
“You just need practice,” Evan said. “You’re good at fighting.”
“I’m good at scrapping, if I’m good at anything,” I said. “That’s not the same thing as fighting.”
I started picking my way through the snow on foot.
“Scrapping,” Evan said.
“Fighting when the chips are down. Keep going when I’m missing an arm and a leg, when I’ve lost my self, or my enemies force me to relive my worst memories. You were there for that last one, I know.”
“I was?”
I blinked. “Yeah. Sorry. Forgot that just about everything prior to Rose taking over got erased. Yeah, you helped me through it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Evan said, with a kind of sage gravity, as if he knew what I was talking about.
“Why did you steer me clear of the others?”
“Trap,” Evan said. “Definite trap.”
“Right. What sort of trap?”
“Not sure. But something felt wrong.”
“Well, keep an eye out,” I said.
“Will do.”
We headed to the others, moving around a collection of trees. At a glance, they were ordinary evergreens. When I examined them, or tried to figure out how to climb them, or move through them, I saw how dense they were. The way branches crossed one another in twos and threes, the way that the openings between branches were never in the same place that the footing was solid. Sloped rocks and dips in the snow that suggested small pits.
Then, again, the clearing. The one I’d very nearly flown over. Twenty feet across, maybe a hundred feet to reach the others. Snow, flat but for the periodic animal track, blemished only by a small few fallen branches.
Hard to tell in the dark, if there was anything more going on.
The others were trudging through the snow. I could hear them from here, their boots, hands, and legs tearing past the icy crust just on top of the fluffy white snow. Peter, Roxanne, Tiff, the satyr, the maenad, and Green Eyes.
My eyes roved over the snowy expanse.
No clues.
If I were to go around, loop to the right of the impassable cluster of trees…
No. It might well have been a dead end.
I looked the other way. Moving across the clearing, perpendicular to the direction I’d need to go to meet up with the others, disappearing off to the left…
I was pretty sure that path fed back into the clearing.
Why here?
Evan had picked up on it in an instant. Now that I wasn’t trying to fly, I was getting the same vibe.
Trap.
I raised a hand for others to stop.
They did.
Gloomy figures in darkness, they peered at me, cold and waiting.
My eyes roved over the snow.
Tracks. Something small that might have been a rabbit, something slightly larger, like a fox or wolf…
And something larger.
I approached the other tracks.
Masked, well hidden under a fresh snowfall, but not quite right for deer. Definitely not big enough for moose. It wasn’t that I was any expert in this sort of thing, but the tracks were close together.
“What are you thinking?” Evan asked.
“Someone passed through here earlier tonight,” I said.
The tracks had been covered by a layer of snowfall. They were now a slight trench, where the snow was fractionally lower.
I followed it. Moving diagonally across the clearing.
The tracks stopped at a group of trees. A rock jutted up.
I examined the surroundings.
No runes, no markings, no wires.
Evan peered down.
“The rock,” he said.
“Hm?”
“The rock. Less snow on top.”
“Trees,” I said. “Cover overhead.”
In the distance, Peter muttered something to the satyr that I couldn’t make out, and got a response.
“Hey!” Peter called out. “I know you’re made of wood, but it’s cold! Colder when we’re not moving! Can we get a move on?”
“Compared to the lower branches?” Evan asked. “Look. There’s enough snow on that branch to bury me, but on top of the rock…”
Not much snow at all.
“Good eye,” I said.
“I know.”
I dusted snow off the rock, very carefully.
Again, no runes or ropes or wires. A triangular rock.
Tall and triangular, shaped like a doorstop.
Was there passage here?
Or was the wedge serving another purpose?
I used one foot to push snow aside.
A lot of loose dirt had mixed in with the snow.
“Ah,” I said.
“Digging?” Evan asked.
“Moving the stone,” I said.
“Hello!?” Peter called out.
“Trap!” I replied. “Back up!”