The Bonehost fell silent.
Sixty skulls lifted in unison, their crimson eyes flaring in unison at the figure descending before them.
They had finally noticed her.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Her wings beat powerfully as she landed in the center of the swarm, in front of the pack leader.
The downforce wind from her wings cleared the sand and dirt beneath her feet as she completed her descent.
She alone, stood encircled by ravenous bone dogs
under the gaze of the ever watchful full moon.
She looked down upon them with the arrogance and superiority of a true apex predator.
She was the dread phoenix, a Demigod, they should prostrate themselves and bow before sacral feet.
But these were Bone jackals, and they did not feel fear.
Their jaws snapping, and clattering uncontrollably together in unison as they looked back at her.
Not all of them were clean skeletons.
Vultyr eyed them down with new found disgust.
Some still wore torn scraps of flesh, blackened muscle clinging to their ribs and shoulders.
Dry sinew hung from their jaws and limbs, snapping and stretching with every twitch.
A few had half-faces of withered meat pulled tight over their skulls, lips shrunk back to expose rows of yellowed fangs.
The Jackal alpha was one such canine abomination.
Its skeleton was larger than the others.
Within its skull — one eye was veiled in shriveled flesh, the dead socket sealed shut beneath a layer of ossified scar tissue, the other burning with a brighter, more malignant red.
Slowly… it tilted its head to the side.
Then the other way.
A shallow, curious motion — like a dog trying to understand a sound it had never heard before.
One by one, the rest of the Bonehost mirrored it.
Dozens of skulls tilting in unison.
A field of broken things trying to comprehend something greater.
Then the alpha moved.
It stepped forward alone, ribs creaking, vertebrae grinding.
Its limbs dragged slightly through the sand as it lowered its skull, bringing its snout inches from Vultyr's feet.
It inhaled.
A long, slow, unsettling draw of air through its hollow, fractured chest —
sniffing her.
Not out of instinct.
Not out of caution.
But recognition.
The winged creature standing before it, was its next meal.
It was the most delicious thing it had ever seen.
Filled to the brim and overflowing with essence and magical power.
Vultyr's soul smelled absolutely divine.
It did not know any better.
It could not.
It stopped sniffing and looked up at Vultyr, its menacing red eyes pulsing with rabid hunger.
It wanted to tear her limb from limb.
Rip apart her heart and consume her soul.
Vultyr's sublimely beautiful face twisted into a slow, wicked smirk— the kind reserved not for prey… but for something that had just made a fatal mistake.
She did not step back.
She did not flinch.
She simply leaned in slightly, letting it breathe in her dreadful aura.
Letting it commit to her.
Because domination meant nothing…
if you were not chosen first.
And the alpha chose her.
Its jaws creaked open, sinew stretching, bone splitting wider than should be possible like a serpent's wretched maw.
A hollow suction rolled out from its ribcage.
It tried to drink her.
Tried to consume her life force, her fire, her decay and corrosion into its own starving skeletal frame.
For one heartbeat…
it thought it was succeeding.
Then its large frame seized.
A violent, choking tremor ripped down its spine.
Its ribs flared outward as cracks spidered across its skull.
The red in its eye flared bright…too bright… overloading.
A sound crawled out of it
—a dry, distorted howl of strangled bone.
Not pain.
Not terror.
Realization.
It wasn't feeding.
It was dying.
Its own decrepit lifeforce warped.
Corrupted.
Decaying and corroding inside its own structure.
Her essence didn't flow into the poor thing.
It overwrote and consumed it entirely.
Its bones blackened and its skull split as her presence burned through it from within.
The alpha staggered back, convulsing.
Then collapsed onto itself.
Its frame folded inward, bones crumbling to ash, its red eye guttering out like a star choked to death in a void too large to fight.
Silence fell over the now alphaless Bonehost, their spasms and clattering jaws oddly stopping.
Their ghastly red eyes pulsed curiously, staring at Vultyr who broke into a triumphant villainous laugh.
"MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"You skeletal mutts will prostrate your lesser selves before me. KNEEL!"
She released a powerful wave of her Dread Phoenix aura throughout the swarm.
Miasma drifted through the air like toxic spores, silently seeping into their marrow.
Their beady red eyes pulsed with ghostly recognition.
They recognized her—her essence—Mirus's essence—as something altogether greater in stature than them, ranking higher up on the food chain.
Upon the death of their old alpha they were ready to follow.
They were starving and the new alpha would provide.
It did not matter if they were not of their bone.
Only that her aura was stronger.
One by one, they lowered their skulls toward the sand in submission—their spines hunching as their rattling frames bent before her.
"You will all serve my master—our god, as I serve him. Without question and in perpetuity."
"You do not get recompense for this, his bidding is your profane duty."
"You will be his ravenous hellhounds that seek out the light, there will be no shortage of enemies. Only endless viscera and soul for your wretched selves to feast upon."
Their jaws snapped and rattled together in unison gnashing at invisible flesh in anticipation.
As if saying, "Yessssss… feed us…We will serve him for eternity in endless hunger..."
"You will become a part of his profane army, and rip through his enemies for him as you've ripped through these pitiful Maw-Elk."
They lifted their hollowed skulls and howled in allegiance at the full moon.
"Go!"
Vultyr pointed menacingly towards the arid expanse known as the Mythic Desert.
There was sand, some pyramids, long forgotten structures belonging to ancient civilizations withered and eroded over thousands of years of neglect, sand and some more sand for miles and miles and miles on end for as long as the naked eye could see.
"Venture into the desert! Run along the Ecotone borders! Fetch the Master more HellHounds for his legions!"
"Any skeletal abominations that dare stand before the Bonehost can only fall into its rib by his divine majesty's profane will!"
"Let them fall in line!"
She leaped into the air, spinning as her wings encased her figure—her wings unfurling in a burst of Dread Phoenix fire.
Through her burst of Phoenix fire and miasma, the bone jackals took south, charging into the desert like bats out of hell.
"Return to me and the master tomorrow night your numbers no fewer than the thousands!"
Having successfully secured her first group of minions for Mirus, and more on the way—at top speed, Vultyr headed east.
Towards the Blood Canopy.