When Turi awoke and undid the stone cocoon that covered him, it was the middle of the night and was raining. Turi remade half of the stone cocoon, giving himself a roof to stay under, and shuffled his wings nervously.
The last storm had brought down a large amount of the few standing megastructures, and he didn’t feel very safe atop one in the middle of a storm.
Turi’s stomach growled, and he sighed. His essence core was full, but his stomach most certainly was not. Feeling a bit thirsty, Turi’s eyes flared as he made a stone bowl, just outside the stone cocoon. As it gathered rainwater, Turi gazed at the rain.
He hadn’t been awake for the last storm, and he had always hated them before Earth’s ascension. He had changed quite a lot since then, though. The rain felt strangely soothing to him now. The ever-present patter of rain made him relax.
Turi’s tome manifested itself, hovering in the air just outside the stone cocoon, as there wasn’t enough room for it inside. It didn’t matter; it wasn’t a real, physical object, anyway. The rain fell through it with ease.
It flipped open to the eighth page, which was the page he had used for his diplomacy notes. It was only half full, and Turi made a series of minor adjustments. The only new addition was the note that not all humans were as smart as Turi was. He could still only barely comprehend why the eyeball crafter hadn’t gone with the rest of the group.
Its floating, illusory eyeballs were quite interesting, though. When Turi remembered them, his eyes widened.
‘I want to make one.’
Turi made his stone cocoon a bit larger so that he wouldn’t have to be huddled up anymore and got comfortable.
The only problem was that he had no clue how the human had gone about creating the illusory eyeballs, but Turi was confident in his own brilliance.
***
Three hours later, and the storm had come to an end- for the most part, at least. Turi had spent almost the entire time trying to create something even remotely similar to the illusory eyeballs, but he had only succeeded in wasting the majority of the essence.
Turi waited a bit longer for the last remnants of the storm to leave, and also for his essence to regenerate. Once he was satisfied in both aspects, he took to the air and started flying towards the human camp. Hopefully, the construct crafter would be awake and willing to vouch for him.
Turi took to the air, the slightly turbulent air and occasional raindrop doing nothing to slow him down. The human camp was only three blocks away, and he was directly above it under a minute later. Turi’s prodigal senses had no problem monitoring the camp even from twenty stories high.
He didn’t see the eyeball crafter anywhere, so he evaluated their strength. After an hour of monitoring, he was relatively certain that they had six people, including the eyeball crafter, within the second realm and thirty in the first realm.
Even if they turned out to be hostile, Turi was relatively confident that he would be able to escape. With this in mind, Turi slowly started to descend, aiming for the front gate.
***
Jeremiah was unconscious and recovering right now, but he had told Leo how he had survived. Leo had had a hard time believing it, but the crow was sitting on the front gate, right in front of his eyes. It looked just like an ordinary crow, but the golden irises told him that it was the same one as Jeremiah had described.
“Hello?” Leo said, cautiously. The crow tilted its head to the side in confusion, and Leo scowled. Why was it here? What did it want?
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“I am here to establish communications. Do you speak the language of the god-creature?”
The words seemed to come from every direction at once. Leo was glad to hear that the crow didn’t seem to have any negative intentions, and he understood the language that the crow spoke just fine, but the intelligence and power of the creature worried him.
“I do. What do you want, crow?”
“Moving too fast. Good relations should be established first,” The crow responded, “I am Ascenturi. Are you this flock’s leader?”
“I am Leo, and I am.” Leo said slowly, “Why did you save Jeremiah?”
“Is Jeremiah the eyeball crafter? If so, then I did it for diplomacy.” The crow answered simply. Leo opened his mouth to speak, but the crow got there first.
“We will trade knowledge. I will ask question next, and then you.” The crow said, and stared at him expectantly. Leo reluctantly nodded, and the crow continued, “How did Jeremiah craft the eyeballs?”
Leo frowned, but answered, “I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.” Before the crow could respond, he asked his own question, “What do you want from us?”
“Knowledge,” The crow said, “What do you know of ascension?”
“That’s too broad; we’ll be here all day if I tried to explain everything we know about ascension.” Leo said, “My turn. Are you dangerous to us?”
The crow looked at the sky, seemingly in thought. Soon, its response came, “I am dangerous, but not to you; not unless diplomacy fails.”
Leo didn’t like this response very much; he was especially not a fan of the implication that it would become aggressive if diplomacy failed.
“What are the mechanisms of your metal shard launchers?”
Leo’s eyebrows shot upwards. “What do you want to know of firearms for?”
“Curiosity,” The crow answered, “Answer the question.”
“They’re very complex. It’s not something I could explain to you, let alone in a timely manner.”
Its golden irises flared, and when the crow next spoke, it sounded more menacing, “I have time.”
“I’m not an expert on the matter of firearms. I will have somebody explain them to you, later. Is that acceptable?”
The crow thought for a while, but eventually nodded.
“Can we take this to somewhere more private?” Leo asked.
“Does that count as your question?”
“I suppose.”
“Then yes.”
***
When Turi left the human camp, he was only somewhat dissatisfied. The humans were very adept at wordplay, and it was hard to get the answers he wanted out of them. They seemed to accept his short, unhelpful answers, at least.
He had every intention of returning soon, if only to speak with the eyeball crafter. Turi decided to stay in the area for a while, and flew over to where he had weathered the storm last time. Once he was settled in, Turi manifested his tome and started processing his gains.
He hadn’t learned a lot about ascension, but he had learned a good amount about humans and their technology. Turi had even disassembled and reassembled one of their firearms, under the supervision of a specialist. He was only capable of it because of his more articulated talons, and it was impossible for him to do anything with the knowledge, but it was good nonetheless.
Turi was becoming increasingly certain of what he wanted. To be the smartest crow was not enough for him anymore; he wanted to fill his brain with as much knowledge as it could fit. He wanted to know everything; useless or useful, it mattered not to him.
To do that, though, Turi would need to ascend farther.
Turi’s tome flipped to the eighth page, and the first thing he did is update his knowledge of humans and their wants and needs- specifically, the wants and needs of Anoptera, the camp that Turi had just established communications with.
The humans didn’t like that they had gained nothing from his conversation with him, and Turi would need to amend this problem. An exchange of knowledge was not enough for them; particularly because he didn’t know very much just yet.
Turi had promised to assist them in their hunt a week from now, in exchange for knowledge and, of course, a share of the essence cores.
As the sun crawled through the sky, Turi’s tome became gradually thicker as he wrote and wrote. He kept much of the information in his brain, but some things, such as the mechanics of the human’s firearms and ascension, were easier to understand and piece together when they were all written down.
Soon, Turi had run out of things to add to his tome, and it flipped back to the first page. Nothing much had changed, and he moved on to the second page.
He was only mildly excited to find that he could ascend yet another of his Aspects of Ascension. He chose to ascend his durability, and he flipped back to the first page to find that it still read above-average. He could feel that it was close to becoming prodigal, but he guessed that, by the time he ascended it yet again, the average durability of the other crows would have increased significantly, and it would remain as merely above-average.
It was midday now, and the winds had picked up yet again. It wasn’t raining, but, based off the grey clouds coming towards the city and the low air pressure, Turi felt it was likely that it would, soon.
Before then, he wanted to kill and absorb something on the level of a stone-clad squirrel at the least.