The roar did not stop.
It rolled out across the cliff face and bounced off the rock and came back doubled, and every vulture on every platform felt it in their hollow bones. The younger ones were already gone, launching off their perches in a panic, scattering into the sky like leaves in a storm.
The older ones held.
For about four seconds.
Dà Jiāo Huǒ descended onto the main platform with a landing that cracked the stone beneath his claws, and the ones who had held their ground reconsidered this decision immediately and comprehensively.
He did not let them reconsider for long.
The first one bolted left. His tail caught it mid-flight, a casual, almost contemptuous motion, and the vulture hit the cliff wall and slid down it and did not get up. The second one tried to go right. A single golden claw closed around its wing and held, and the sound it made was not dignified.
The lead vulture, the large one, the patient one with the old scars and the pale eyes, had not moved.
