Most of the rest of the walk to Mazehold passed quickly and companionably with Dav on one side and an interesting puzzle in her other hand. Sophia listened with one ear as Jax described creating a Grand Talent.

It boiled down to a simple concept, literally. You had to figure out what you wanted your Grand Talent to be and then push on your Abilities to get it there. Jax spent a lot of time explaining what he meant by "push," but it was obvious to Sophia: he meant focusing on the Intent portion of the Ability to take it outside its default usage. It required aura control and was something Sophia was taught as a child for use with spellforms as well as Intent-based casting, so it wasn't difficult to understand.

Jax seemed more than a little surprised when Ci'an demonstrated it for him by manifesting feathers on an arm without completing the shift into her Night Owl form. Sophia felt proud of her; she'd started teaching Ci'an not long after she started teaching Dav, but Ci'an's Abilities were generally harder to alter than Dav's were, so she had a hard time learning. Ci'an had clearly overcome her initial difficulty.

That left Xin'ri as the only person who didn't know how to use aura and Intent to influence Abilities. Jax spent more than an hour walking Xin'ri through the concept before he finally mentioned something Sophia didn't know.

It wasn't about managing Intent; it was about how the Guide worked. Apparently, Grand Spells and Grand Abilities were sort of like training wheels for a Grand Talent. Most people learned them some time after the second upgrade, as they tried to find their Grand Talent. Jax was one of the handful that started one earlier, but that simply meant he had more time to find out how it didn't fit him, break it, and creature a true Grand Talent from the remains.

The Guide wouldn't call it a Grand Talent until you took the third upgrade. At that point, Everything revolved around the Grand Talent; it replaced your Sphere. Only Species Abilities could exist outside a Grand Talent, but they didn't have to. Jax no longer had the capacity for Species Abilities; they were part of his Mask. Without them, he wouldn't be able to Mask as anything but a human.

"There are two ways to look at a Grand Talent," Jax added. "I think they're both important and that everyone should think about both when they choose their Talent, but some people pick only one or the other. For example, many people would call my Grand Talent a broad one. It lets me do a lot of different things within a few limits. This is obviously very useful, but it is its own limit. If I Mask as a fire mage, I will never be as strong as a true fire mage of my level, but more importantly, I've also locked myself out of anything my Grand Talent can do that isn't fire magic until I change my Mask. At the same time, you can say that my Grand Talent is extremely narrow and focused. No one is as good at taking on a role as I am; that's what my Grand Talent is for."

"Focused on a result but broad about how it gets there?" Ci'an asked. "Then is the other option to have one tool that can be used a lot of different ways, like that fire mage? Fire can heat or burn, warm or sear; it all depends on how you use it."

"It can heal, too," Sophia added. The man who healed her as a child and youth was a fire mage, a phoenix. She'd been surprised to learn later on that most healers were associated with nature, blood, water, or even light rather than fire. It just showed how much your approach changed things. Grand Talents sounded a lot like that, even if they were more restrictive.

"Most fire mages only focus on destruction," Jax said discouragingly. "That's what I want you to avoid. If you can find something that resonates with you and ties everything together, that's good, but you have to think of both."

Wind almost knocked Sophia over as Jax paused. Dav's hand was ripped from her grip. When she turned to find out what happened, Dav wasn't there.

He was up in the sky, suspended by his backpack, held up by an enormous blue-feathered bird. It looked like an eagle, but anywhere that would have been cream or white was blue instead.

It was also at least three times as large as Dav, even before the wings.

Taika's flap was open, but Sophia couldn't see the colorful chinchilla. It almost looked like one of the talons went right through where Taika's head would have been if he was perched where he could see forward, but there was no sign of blood. Sophia had just enough time to realize that the giant blue eagle had probably attacked because of Taika before the eagle's talons opened with Dav twenty feet in the air.

Dav started to fall, but before he actually got very far, he was encased in purple light and his fall abruptly slowed. It was obvious what he'd done, and why, but Sophia's memory flashed to the pain he'd hidden for the entire walk from the fireflower hollow. The pauses had gotten less and less frequent as they walked, but they were still happening. He hadn't dared to try his Overflowing Health Call, which told her just how much it had to hurt.

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Sophia's feather domain flashed into existence around her and her wings manifested as she jumped straight up, towards Dav. The others could handle the eagle; she needed to get Dav down so that he could release his Call without landing badly.

Later, all she would remember of the fight was individual moments, frozen in her memory as they happened.

Dav, in his draconic form, twisting in midair even though his backpack interfered with his wings. His sword was buried in the eagle's chest, even though that made no sense; the eagle's shield should have stopped it.

His blade was clean when Sophia hit him and pulled him away from the eagle. Sophia wasn't sure why she noticed that, specifically, but it was just as obvious as the fact that he was falling, rather than floating.

Taika was on the eagle's head. Sophia had no idea when or how he got there, but he bit down on its neck, behind the skull. The eagle didn't seem to notice; that had to be the shield protecting it.

As Sophia landed, Amy … Ci'an … flew in front of the eagle. It moved to snatch her out of the sky, but she glared at its talons and they swept right past her without closing.

Dav dropped his sword as Sophia carefully set him on the ground. He gave a pained shout as he lost control of his Call and shifted back to his new default human shape.

Everything was set into stark relief as an intense light bloomed behind Sophia. Later, she would realize it was Jax's blinding assault on the eagle, a light bolt from his sword. What was frozen in her memory was the image of a pair of dark streaks running down Dav's face from his eyes, rivulets of purple blood that showed clearly how much trouble he was in from using his Call.

A Call he shouldn't have needed.

They hadn't been attacked as they traveled in more than a week, and they'd gotten careless. The fact that none of the attacks had been from above and none of them were stealthy might be a reason, but it wasn't an excuse. They'd gotten careless and sloppy and it hurt Dav.

Sophia couldn't heal Dav. That wasn't something she had the magic. She did have some alchemicals, but all they were good for was temporarily getting someone back on their feet and maybe stopping bleeding; they weren't designed to deal with whatever happened to Dav.

She could, however, kill a bird.

Sophia turned and looked up. The sky was empty. A quick glance around showed her why: the eagle was already on the ground. She couldn't tell who brought it down; it looked like a group effort, from the seared feathers, blood at the back of its head, glassy eyes, and the heavy stones that lay scattered around the bird.

Stones that seemed to be evaporating as Sophia watched. Sophia knew that particular Ability; it was one of the things Xin'ri could do with her earth staff. The basketball-sized rocks didn't last long, but she'd clearly helped to bring the bird to the ground.

With the bird taken care of, Sophia turned her attention back to Dav. "Are you okay? I mean, I know you're not, but uh, is there anything I can help with? Do you think you can get up, can I help you? Or uh do you want to lay there for a bit?"

She was babbling. Sophia knew that, but she couldn't get herself to stop. Bleeding from the eyes was not a minor thing; it was dangerous and might potentially even be deadly. If nothing else, it was certain not to be good for the eyes. Back home, she'd know what to do and who to call, but here? The best healer they had here was Dav, and Dav wasn't a trained healer. He depended on the body to know how to fix itself, at least as far as Sophia could tell. It worked better than it should, but that didn't matter when Dav's injury meant he couldn't heal himself.

"I'll be fine." Dav groaned as he lifted himself to his feet. It was obvious that he was anything but fine. "What happened? We were walking and the next thing I knew, I was dangling fifty feet in the air."

Sophia grimaced. She knew he'd seen the bird, so that wasn't really what he was asking, even though it was. "That's pretty much what happened. No one was watching the sky. I think the blue eagle was after Taika."

"I don't think so," Taika disagreed. Sophia turned quickly to find that the colorful chinchilla had appeared out of nowhere like a Cheshire cat.

Again.

Sophia opened her mouth to tell him to stop doing that, the way she had repeatedly since he picked up the habit with his second upgrade, then froze. That was probably why it was alive, wasn't it? And how he reached the eagle's head, too.

"That bird is big enough to carry off a person," Taika continued. "I think it was going after Dav and just happened to grab the pack. It was going higher, but let go when I bit it. I didn't think we'd actually bring it down, but it was a lot more fragile than I thought."

"That bird is a skyeagle," Jax turned towards them as he spoke. "They live in the Maze, but they aren't limited to it. Outside the Maze, they don't usually pick on anything as large as a person, so I didn't think to warn you about them. It wouldn't have helped much; they can make themselves nearly invisible and are hard to see in the first place. Fortunately, they're still easy to kill."

"What do they do inside the Maze?" Sophia stared at the bird. Ci'an and Xin'ri had already started to take it apart. It was clear that they thought it had a lot of valuable bits.

Jax shrugged as if it should be obvious. "Wait until you're in a fight and distracted, then grab someone. Sometimes they're caught and killed, sometimes they aren't. This one was small, which probably explains why it's out here; monsters don't like to leave the Maze. The big ones can fight back, too, and fighting a giant eagle that can blind you or knock you around with water is harder than it sounds. I've only seen skyeagles a couple of times, but I'm pretty sure I've encountered them at least once where I didn't see the eagle."

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