She could feel her limbs starting to grow stiff from the unrelenting freezing cold. Hopefully, this one would be fruitful. She didn't know how much longer she could stand it out here.

She needed to ensure that the creature she was attacking was truly gembound. She pulled for her earthen magic, which she so rarely felt the need to rely on, and activated. She could feel them, up above, those that had stones. And she held that spell as the first swooped down - she could not feel the presence of a stone on it, so she held tight to her branches as it swooped by.

It tugged on the leaves and pulled some out, but the branch stayed firm in her grasp. A few more chances.

The second to swoop by, she heard the wingbeast but felt no aura of gem from it. She held the branch tight and let it take a few and kept herself from lunging out at it.

How many more would swoop by? Would any of them have stones?

Finally, the third bird that swept down to scavenge the last of her leaves, Tectus finally felt the thrumming of gem on it. Her muscles tensed, senses trained on it as it swooped down, closer and closer and closer...

Once it was in range, she erupted from the snow. The ghostbird screeched, but couldnt pull itself up in time as Tectus struck out with her muzzle, the hard scaled slamming into one of its wings and knocking it straight out of the air. It wasn't broken, but the moment had disabled it for a second.

The bird tried to right itself, the bruise forming on its wing painful but not impossible to fly on. But the ghostbirds were soaring birds, not fluttering ones. Tectus reached forward and hooked a claw into it, barely snatching it before it flew away, and dragged it back to the ground.

Her teeth sunk into it and dispatched it quickly. She wasted no time in searching the bird, until she found its gemstone embedded into its wing, right at the elbow, parting some of its feathers.

It was amazing that it had survived this long - it must not have been a particularly strong flier. She carefully grabbed that part in her jaw and bit down around it, tearing the stone free and curling her tongue over top.

With it now safely in her grasp, she began the descent down the mountain, looking forward to get out of this freezing cave.

*exit