Bridget caught up to Charlemagne while the rooster was still wallowing in indecision.

  “Oh, there you are, boss. Say, can you turn on the thing that lets us talk to each other from really far away? You’re a lot faster than I am when you get up to speed, and I’m worried that one of these days you’ll forget little old me.”

  Charlemagne glared at the mosquito.

  “Bawk,” he answered.

  “What if I promise to only use it for emergencies?”

  The rooster considered the request. Despite Bridget’s annoying chatter and her tendency to mooch off his kills, she had saved his life in the Kine Dungeon. On top of that, Charlemagne’s flocking instinct was strong. Now that he had largely accepted Bridget as neither food nor mate, it was difficult for him to turn down a request that would help keep the Party together.

  “Bawk bawk,” he finally acquiesced, enabling the mental link once more.

  “Yay! Thanks a million. I promise not to overdo it this time, all right? You’ll see, I’ll be so quiet you won’t even notice that I’m around,” the mosquito promised.

  Charlemagne allowed his Party member to take refuge underneath his plumage as he considered his next move. As someone who was long accustomed to solving his own problems, he hesitated to articulate something that would make him look weak. It wasn’t exactly out of shame, since the rooster did not experience that rather human emotion. Rather, he didn’t want to appear weak in front of other members of his flock.

  “B…bawk,” he finally admitted to Bridget.

  “Oh, you need some ideas on where to look for chickens? Well, I don’t know a whole lot, seeing as I finished pupating two days before the System arrived, but I bet I can help you find some. I actually have a Skill that allows me to locate blood sources near me, and since each creature type has its own unique feeling, I think I could find other living creatures like you if I worked at it.”

  “Buwack!” Charlemagne responded with enthusiasm.

  “Well, I’m not picking up anything now, but why don’t we combine our efforts? You fly around and use your eyes while I see if I can locate anything that has a similar blood signature. Does that sound like a good idea?”

  Charlemagne bawked his agreement, and soon the pair were back in the sky, heading east and searching for signs of chicken habitation. The rooster landed twice during the day, when the pair came across small groups of chickens that had survived the System’s brutal initiation, but the flocks weren’t large enough to entice the rooster to put down roots. So, after mating with all the hens of egg-laying age, Charlemagne moved on, hoping against hope that he would find another farm like the one in Parakou.

  As the sun went down, Bridget became particularly annoying, her prattling reaching a frenetic pace as she, like most mosquitos, became more active in the slowly fading light of the early evening.

  Charlemagne, on the other hand, immediately landed and began looking for a choice spot to roost.

  “Hey, hey boss, are you already going to bed?” Bridget asked. In response, the rooster landed on a nice horizontal branch near the top of a baobab tree and put his head under his wing.

  “I’m gonna go out hunting for a bit, okay?” the mosquito added, once again getting no response.

  Charlemagne slept quietly through the night. He dreamed that he was a baby chick, growing steadily inside of a warm, safe, protective shell. But then, without warning, the shell was violently ripped away.

  The rooster awoke with a start and immediately told the whole world that, since he was awake, everyone else should be too. Then he took to the air. He searched for three wonderful hours before Bridget finally woke up.

  “Oh, morning boss! Say, I’m mighty thirsty, I didn’t find hardly anything to drink last night. What do you say we find a couple of those cows and go to town on them?”

  That sounded good to the rooster, who had spent most of the previous day on the wing and wanted nothing more than a hearty breakfast, so the pair took to the skies. It only took about half an hour before they spotted a small herd of cattle. A small human was leading the cows toward a nearby river. Charlemagne dove and took out the herder first before quickly downing two of the steers: one for him and the other for Bridget. The rest of the herd scattered.

  “Oh wow, these are really juicy!” Bridget exclaimed as she dug into her steer. Charlemagne quickly gobbled up the best parts from the human before moving on to the cow. As he ate, his Ember Core took the majority of the nutrients to help recharge his reserves, but plenty went to the rooster’s stomach as well.

  After getting a drink from the stream, the pair flew off again. The sun was just starting to get properly hot as they ascended into the clear skies, making the rush of air feel a bit cold against Charlemagne’s face as he flew high into the air. His keen eyes roved here and there, trying to find something that resembled the deserted chicken farm that he missed so badly.

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  “I can sense a large number of what I think are chickens over that way!” Bridget yelled suddenly. Charlemagne, overjoyed that they were on the right track, swung his head left and right rapidly, hoping to spot whatever it was that the mosquito had found.

  “Turn left!” Bridget clarified, giving Charlemagne better directions. “A bit more, more…okay, straight ahead now!”

  Charlemagne flew faster, his wings fueled by both anticipation and mana.

  “Bawk!” he demanded.

  “I don’t know exactly how much further they are, only that we’re getting closer. Can you see anything yet?”

  The rooster strained his vision to its upmost limits, but not only were they flying too fast for him to get a fix on anything, he was also limited on how far away he could see by the curvature of the Earth (although he didn’t know that, having never taken geometry in high school).

  “Bawwwk,” he concluded sadly.

  “That’s okay!” Bridget yelled. “Just keep going…I’m sure you’ll spot it soon.”

  The pair continued at a breakneck speed for a few tense minutes, the green forests beneath them being broken up periodically by green fields and the occasional not so green hill. Charlemagne continued to slowly ascend as his sheer speed generated so much lift that each beat of his wings sent him soaring higher. The world below turned into a smudge of green and brown blurs, save for where the rooster was actively focusing his gaze.

  “Wait, something is happening! The signal is straight ahead but it’s getting weaker. Hurry up!” Bridget announced out of nowhere.

  The rooster didn’t need to be told twice. He beat his wings frantically, his speed increasing yet again as he expelled mana from his backside. Since he was flying, and not falling, his speed bonus from the Kine Dungeon’s Bald Bull was active, granting him a maximum speed fifty percent greater than he could achieve on his own.

  A strange pressure began to build against the rooster’s face as he flung himself forward with every ounce of strength that he could muster. Suddenly, flight became much more difficult, as if the entire sky itself was pushing back against the rooster. He refused to be slowed down, however, and began straining even harder to accelerate. His Ember Core pushed itself to the limit as it both reinforced his wings and expelled mana to create thrust. But then something deep within Charlemagne’s soul began to surface, transforming the way that the rooster understood his power.

  Pyro, the skill that had led to rooster’s Mana Core transforming into an Ember Core, asserted itself as the rooster continued to demand more from the skill. And what it wanted surprised Charlemagne: it begged to be let out so that it could create a flame. At first Charlemagne didn’t understand why the fused skill was so insistent, but he was desperate to reach his destination as fast as possible. If creating a fire could help him do that, he would at least try it.

  So he gave his Ember Core free reign to burn.

  The effect was as impressive as it was immediate. A gout of blue flame spewed out from behind the rooster, its thrust more than a magnitude greater than simply pushing mana out had been. His wings, which had not been designed for high speeds, were almost ripped from their sockets until his wings managed to find a new equilibrium.

  The sudden burst of velocity pushed Charlemagne straight up to the edge of the speed of sound, and then right past it: the rooster had gone supersonic. A message from the squiggles appeared, which Charlemagne read eagerly until he realized that it did not have anything to do with other chickens.

  “Bawk,” Charlemagne said to Bridget.

  “You just got an Achievement? I didn’t get anything, but I guess it’s probably because I’m letting you do all the work here. I think we’re getting close to where the other chickens are, but there must only be a few left, since the signal is coming from just ahead and below us but is still getting weaker. Can you start to descend?”

  The rooster began his descent, slowing down only reluctantly as he and Bridget neared the location where she had detected other chickens. There was no movement on the ground from the facility that Bridget indicated was the source of the chicken blood, but that wasn’t a big deal to Charlemagne. Maybe the hens were inside the main building, like they had been at the last chicken farm.

  “It’s weird,” Bridget added as they came in for a landing. “My skill is telling me that there is a lot of chicken blood nearby, but I can’t detect the other signs that a large group of warm-blooded animals would give off.”

  Charlemagne ignored the mosquito and landed near a large rectangular building made of grey, featureless concrete that was surrounded by a low wall. It didn’t look exactly like the chicken farm he remembered, but the rooster had hopes that his could become his new home. As he picked himself up and shook the dirt from his rough landing out of his feathers, he cast around for signs of hen habitation. The place definitely smelled of chickens…Bridget surely had led him to the right place. But where were the hens?

  There were a number of smaller outbuildings that were part of the compound, but none of them seemed large enough to house the number of hens that he hoped to find. So, without ceremony, Charlemagne stalked over to the large grey building and found the nearest entrance. The door, which was made of metal painted a rusty red, was already standing open. The smell of chickens and a few other things that Charlemagne couldn’t identify hung thick in the air. The rooster raced inside, expecting to find a new flock for him to take care of. He froze.

  The building had been part of a chicken farm, that much was evident, and there were still plenty of hens inside. Chickens were everywhere, in fact. The floors, the walls, and even in some places the ceiling were covered in pieces of dismembered, disemboweled, and decapitated fowl. The floors and walls, which were presumably grey at one point, were painted red with the blood of hundreds and possibly thousands of hens.

  Charlemagne stood in the doorway, his eyes drinking in the horrific sights. Had he been human, he might have simply fainted, but the rooster was made of sterner stuff than that. No, Charlemagne did not feel lightheaded, or weak in the knees.

  What he felt was an unending, unyielding, unstoppable rage at whoever or whatever had done this to him.