BODY:
Overview
The Height-Sight Drake is the tall, thin, high shape — light through the shoulder, narrow through the crest, the eyes wide for the height, and the whole of it reading as one long line from beak to tail-tip, built to stand where the spear cannot reach and to see the whole of the pit at once. It is the second of the Drakes a stranger meets in The Scale Pits, and the one the pit keeps for the quarrel no one else is patient enough to finish.
Habitat
The Height-Sight Drake keeps the highest ground of The Scale Pits, the rim ledges above the pit where the quarrel sounds small and the whole of the pit is one view. It needs three things: a height that no quarrel can reach, a view wide enough to count the pit, and a word kept long enough to be worth the spending. The young are born into the high roost-chambers, two to a dozen to a roost, and the high roost is the one place in the pit the young learn to count before they learn to argue, because the counting is the whole of the Height-Sight line, and the counting is the thing the pit needs more than the arguing.
Appearance
The silhouette is the tall, thin, high line — light through the shoulder, narrow through the crest, the head a little high on a long neck, the whole of it built to read as one held view. Males run 9.14 m nose to tail, 1,600 kg to 2,000 kg, lighter than the One-Breath males, with the narrower crest and the wider eye; females run 5.49 m, 640 kg to 830 kg, quicker still. The base scale is a dull bronze-green fading to ash-grey at the wing-tip with the umber spine running dark down the body, the eye flat amber and wider than any other drake's, and the young carry the high-veil of pale bone-cream over the crest.
Behaviour
The Height-Sight Drake does not circle and it does not hold; it watches. It stands on the rim ledge with the wings folded and the eye wide, and it sees the whole pit at once, every quarrel in it, every straying of the small game, every stranger who has made the mistake of the loud, and it counts them, and the counting is the behaviour, and the behaviour is the whole of the line. When the word is chosen, the dive is slow, 30 m/s down the pit-wall, deliberate and certain, because the Height-Sight dive is not a burning, the Height-Sight dive is a choosing, and the choosing is the last word of the quarrel.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the view, and the view is the promise: the Height-Sight drake sees the whole pit, and the seeing is the choosing, and the choosing is the word. The dive is the spending — 30 m/s down the pit-wall, slow and deliberate, the long narrow wing open, and the choosing that comes with the dive is the quarrel ended the quiet way. The second weapon is the claw, because the choosing is not always the dive, and the claw is the word the dive is too patient for.
Magic Alignment
The Height-Sight Drake stands in the service of Pyrra, the First Flame, the god of the first burning, and its magic is the keeping of the word — the power to make every quarrel in the pit into a counting and the counting into a choosing. Height-Sight is the primary gift: the wide amber eye that reads the whole pit from the top, every quarrel in it, counted and kept, and the choosing that comes from the keeping is the word the pit spends. The secondary gift is the quiet, because the Height-Sight line speaks with the eye, and the eye is the quarrel made seeing, and the seeing is the thing the pit keeps as its own ledger.
Society
A Height-Sight Drake lives in a high roost of two to a dozen on the rim ledges, and the roost is run by the one who counts longest, because the roost is the only room in the world where the counting is the law. The hierarchy is by the width of the eye: the one whose eye sees farthest eats the rim game first, and the one whose ledger is longest keeps the word-mouth. The young of the high roost share the ledge and share the counting, and the counting is the only school the roost has, and the school is the height, and the height does not grade, the height only keeps.
Culture & Lore
The Height-Sight Drake keeps its lore in the ledger, and the ledger keeps it better than the quarrel does, because the ledger is the only book in the world that gets longer when someone wins. The old say the first Height-Sight drake was a quarrel that learned to look up, and the height gave it a body because the height had no other way to keep the counting. They call the strays the height takes "the ones who were worth the word," and they keep the best of the high game — the wings of the ones the dive has chosen — on the rim ledge, which is the finest teaching in the line.
Home
Its home is The Scale Pits, the part of it that is above the quarrel and older than the arguing. The Height-Sight Drake is the pit's second voice, and the voice is quiet in the way the height is quiet, and the quiet is the one thing the pit cannot lose, because the quarrel needs the counting the way the burning needs the breath. The rim is kept quiet by the roost, the ledges are kept high by the line, and the broken wing is left where it fell, which is the one law the height does not break.
Relations
The Height-Sight Drake keeps a quiet, word-kept peace with the One-Breath line of The Scale Pits, a peace of the kept word and the spent breath that has held as long as the pit has been counting. To Pyrra, the First Flame, the Height-Sight line is the first burning made patient, and the line keeps a single ash-grey wing-tip scale at the word-mouth for the god, which is the one offering the flame has asked for and never taken, and the asking is the keeping.
In the Story
In the story of the six who arrived, the Height-Sight Drake is the second loud test the pit offers, the counting that asks which of them the height will keep and which of them the height will spend. It is the figure that keeps the word while the oaths are made on the ground, and the figure whose ledger is the map the war is counted by, because the eye on the rim has seen every approach the warrens have taken, and the eye has counted them, and the eye is the one page in the world the war cannot close.