The hunter clawed upward against its folded wing until the tether snapped taut and wrenched straight through Hajin's left fist. He let the root vein under his heel eat that weight while venom spat beside his sandal from the beak.
'Yeah, keep flapping, you overgrown chicken, every pull just ties your own knot tighter.'
"It keeps offering me the same wing," Juna called from the curtain's edge, Solar Vanguard angled clear of the shelter, "I could make it shorter."
"Keep everything else from offering me its teeth!"
"This one already owes me a landing, and I'm collecting," he barked, dragging the ankle loop across the floor before the next heave.
Juna watched Mother's opening while Loccy ripped threads from the nursery gap beside Toby and kept the packs above water. Vella held her close ward over the contractors, waiting for the falling quills to stop before she let it drop.
Hajin ignored the beak swinging under the wing and waited for the keeper's next upward stroke.
