The fox stared at him from within a small stone hut that he had made for it. It had agreed to work together, and Turi didn’t want to bring it into Anoptera just yet. He didn’t trust the fox all that much and he didn’t trust the humans not to kill or scare it.
He hoped to devise a more complicated communication system, but until then, Turi resolved to try to build trust with the fox, mostly so that it would be willing to follow him into Anoptera, where it would be significantly safer, and, indeed, more useful to him.
Turi looked up at the sky. The sun was three quarters of the way through the sky, which meant that it was…, 16:00? He was mostly guessing, honestly. Turi was still learning the human’s twenty-four hour clock, and it was hard to tell the time based on the sun alone, especially because the days got shorter during some seasons.
His essence core was only three quarters of the way full, but Turi was feeling impatient. He wanted to ascend faster; everything was so slow. With how fast Earth had finished its ascension to the second realm- in less than two weeks-, he hoped that it would start to ascend to the third realm soon, but he knew that that was an absurd want.
Turi hated that he had no clue how to progress to the third realm. He felt so… aimless. Turi had plenty of things to do, of course, but they were all long-term projects; gradually improving his Aspects of Ascension, allying with more human settlements, building a support network of underling crows- and possibly other animals, if they were willing, just like the fox.
Would he really have to wait around for a century at minimum for the Earth to ascend to the third realm? Would he even be alive by then?
It all only reinforced his desire for knowledge. He wanted it as badly as a starving man wanted food. He hungered for it.
"Be good.” Turi told the fox, and he took to the air and headed for Anoptera.
***
Ascenturi was perched on a desk, and on the other end was Leo. This time, he would not accept no for an answer. He would get the human’s knowledge of the third realm.
The human looked stressed. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and Turi wasn’t surprised. The human hadn’t slept much in the past two days; keeping Anoptera hogged all of his attention, and Turi had started this ‘conversation’ just after Leo finished training. It had all been deliberate, of course.
“I’m not going to steal from you, of course. I will have the knowledge I need, and you can have the second realm crystals that I have gathered.” Of course, this was only mostly true; Turi hadn’t been the one to gather most of them, in reality, most of them had come from the fox. Apparently, second realm crystals had a very distinct smell that he had been completely unaware of; he regretted not having thought to mess with his sense of smell when he became an Ascended Crow.
Leo’s eyes lit up at the mention of second realm essence crystals. It would solve so many of the problems that kept him awake and working even at night.
“Fine,” Leo said, but Turi knew that he didn’t care. They were only so resistant to giving him the knowledge he knew for leverage over him, and with so many threats and gains on the table, it was past time for him to ‘spill the beans’, as he had heard a human say.
Besides, Turi doubted that he knew much more than Turi himself did.
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"Please bear in mind that I have not personally confirmed any of this.” Leo said, “A few days after Earth began its ascension to the second realm, a woman met with the leader of the Evergreens. You know of them, no?” Leo asked.
“They’re the huge human camp to the north.” Turi answered.
“The woman claimed to be from the empire that Earth lived within, and that she was of the third realm. Nobody believed her, of course; only a few people were even of the second realm at the time, and so she proved it, by tearing a hole in space." Leo said, looking slightly frightened despite that making no senses whatsoever.
“She said that Earth was of incredible interest to her empire, as it had a lot of potential; the fact that it finished its ascension to the second realm in a mere one and a half weeks does quite a lot to prove that. Apparently, the more potential a planet has, the more likely it was for incredible talents to emerge from it.”
“She said that, ten years after Earth’s ascension is finished, they will open their empire to the Earth. Until then, they’re keeping us isolated, to protect us.” Leo said, and Turi waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.
“That’s it?” Turi asked, his mind somewhat blown by the fact that Leo had bothered telling him this at all. Who would believe something so absurd, especially without evidence?
“It is. Do not think me stupid; this story came from the Evergreen’s leader himself. Moreover, people from outside the city have spoken of similar events, too.”
“…Is there anything further you know of the third realm?”
“I know nothing more of the third realm than you do, beyond that single story. Now, hand over the second realm essence crystals.”
“I will retrieve them.” Turi said with a sigh. As he flew towards the stone vault that he had stored them in, he fell into thought.
‘Surely, the story is exaggerated. Tearing a hole in space? What does that even mean? Isn’t space the void outside of Earth’s atmosphere? I need to ask about that. More importantly, if the story is true, does that mean that I’ll need to wait ten whole years before I even get an opportunity to ascend to the third realm? I need to find a way to get into contact with the leader of the Evergreens, and I need to find something valuable enough for them to bother cluing me in. Any information on such a life-altering subject would be incredibly valuable, after all.’
Turi landed on a nigh-mythical rubble-less patch of asphalt, and his eyes lit up. The stone shifted, and over the course of half a minute, a small stone cube emerged from the ground. Turi sculpted a small opening into the cube before finally manipulating a handful of crystals through the gap. Turi stored them in his beak, and, after fixing the stone cube, put it back beneath the street and covered it up. With his incredible memory, it looked almost identical to how it had before.
Turi’s eyes felt hot from having been used to channel almost half his core’s worth of essence in the span of a few minutes.
When Turi returned to Anoptera, he coughed up the essence crystals- literally and figuratively- and, after clearing up the matter of how one could tear a hole in space, Turi manifested his tome and flipped to one of his many note pages and wrote down his findings. Once he was done with that, the sun was setting, and Turi felt tired. Before he went to bed, though, he flipped back to the second page. Six opportunities to ascend his Aspects of Ascension were laying in wait of him, and Turi wondered how to distribute them.
His hunting speed had practically doubled since Earth finished its ascension to the second realm, as many more creatures fit his criteria of being worth the effort of hunting while not being overtly strong, and he hadn’t spent a single opportunity in the past two days. He had wanted to wait for knowledge on the third realm; for all he knew, there may have been something he could do with them to ascend there faster.
There was not, though, and Turi was more than ready to ascend a few of his Aspects of Ascension.
Before he did, though, he moved to the first page. His strength was merely above average once more, and only in the middling areas of it, too. His senses were above-average, too, but they were close to prodigal. His durability was above-average, and was on the verge of falling down to average. As always, his intelligence was abnormal.
Turi wasn’t happy with being merely above-average in any aspect, let alone truly average. It would be hard to stay ahead of the competition, though; animals of the second realm were more common than those of the first, lately.
Turi ascended his senses once, his strength twice, and his durability thrice. The first two were, once more, prodigal, and his durability was above average.