You once met a great adventurer who managed to tame a griffin well enough to ride on its back. He did a number of tricks for an audience in the town square… One of which involved flying up to a great height and then ‘accidentally’ slipping from his saddle. He fell for a good long while before his mount caught him mid-air.

“It’s not the fall that kills you,” he told the crowd. “It’s the sudden stop at the end!”

That quote replayed in your head every day as you stood in the large frame of the window, the only entrance and exit to the abandoned tower.

Based on the wall-to-floor bookcases laden with magical tomes, you guessed this tower once belonged to a great witch or wizard. Now it belonged solely to Amalthea, the female harpy keeping you captive here.

Why? Perhaps she wanted something to love. Or maybe that was just a ploy and she planned on eating you as soon as you were plump enough. It was hard to tell with harpies.

Today --like every other day-- you debated throwing yourself from the window and praying you survived the fall. Deep down, you knew you wouldn’t, though. You needed to find another way out of here. Preferably before you went mad.

A familiar shape appeared on the horizon, so you scrambled away from the ledge and back into the nest. A lot of care obviously went into making it. While the wizard’s old bed formed its base, Amalthea had adorned it with soft skins and furs as well as a number of her own feathers that she’d shed.

“I saw that,” she said as soon as she ducked into the tower chamber.

She was taller than anyone you’d ever met and only vaguely human-shaped. Feathers in various shades of red and brown sprouted around her neck as well as from her forearms and thighs. Her legs were completely avian. She had a set of human hands, be they tipped with long, dark talons which looked sharp as daggers.

“How many times have I told you to stay away from the window?” She cooed, shaking her head in disappointment as she readjusted the woven basket hanging from the crook of one of her arms.