Two golden eyes, faintly glowing, stood out like a sore thumb in the night. Rain fell from the dark skies in waves, and Turi felt like his body was weighed down by a hundred pounds worth of water.
Turi was beneath a small stone platform that he had made, and a few feet away, the fox was trying to warm up by a fire that Turi had made. It was fueled by the shattered remnants of a dresser, and was only dry enough to burn because Turi had rid it of water.
Magic was quite useful.
As the rain fell, Turi gazed at his tome. It was on the fourth page, and he was redoing the map, as it had changed significantly since the last time he updated it, with the Earth finishing its ascension to the second realm and all that.
Even as Turi manipulated the ink on the page into a more accurate representation of the city in its current state, Turi’s thoughts were elsewhere.
He had searched for his flock for days, and had finally learned where they were. Unfortunately, Four-wings had taken the flock out of the city, and Turi was unwilling to leave the city. He had too many things to do here.
Turi needed to get into contact with the Evergreens to learn more about the third realm and the empire that Earth was inside of. Turi needed a powerbase beyond a single fox that followed him partially out of fear but mostly because he paid it essence cores. Turi also didn’t want to leave Anoptera behind, as he had come to value several of the humans; particularly Jeremiah.
Originally, he had pinned his hopes on recruiting Four-wings’ help, but that wasn’t possible. Ultimately, it was unrealistic for him to find and reunite with his flock.
Turi didn’t have any bargaining power. Even if he returned to Anoptera and pursued the answers he needed, the Evergreens would never take a single bird and its fox employee seriously. Turi would need some sort of bargaining chip, but he had none.
Turi needed to do something, but he didn’t know what. He couldn’t build the large group of animals that Turi would need to force the Evergreens to take him seriously. Paying the fox a few essence cores every week wasn’t difficult, but paying, say, twenty creatures a few essence cores a week was impossible to the current him.
Turi needed some sort of… something that could cause more clever beasts like the fox to join him that wasn’t essence cores or second realm essence crystals. As it was, the fox was already becoming increasingly unhappy with following him.
Turi sighed, and tried to think of some other way to build a large group, but he couldn’t think of anything. Even the clever beasts weren’t like the humans. Turi couldn’t convince them to follow him because they believed in his ideals, nor could he convince them to follow him because they liked him.
Turi knew that it would be difficult for humans to accept a crow as their leader, though, no matter how desperate they were. They were too used to being the dominant creatures of Earth.
He couldn’t try to make the Evergreens give in to him through the brute force of a singular individual, either. Turi wasn’t strong enough to cause an entire, massive organization to bend to his whims, and even if he was, Turi was pretty sure that that would go against the morals that he was still trying to comprehend even now.
The entire thing was a mess. Turi needed information that he couldn’t gain access to.
With a sigh, Turi dismissed his tome, tired of drawing maps. He wasn’t tired, though, and so he simply stared out at the rain for a while.
‘What do I do?’
Turi had ten years before the empire that Earth was inside of would start interacting with them more, and Turi could possibly gain access to the third realm. He wasn’t willing to wait that long to gain information on them, but it did mean that he had roughly ten or so years to build himself up.
Such a long period of time felt absurd to Turi. He was only a single year old; hell, he was still a fledgling.
‘I suppose I have no other choice, though.’ Turi thought, and with a sigh, Turi closed his eyes and went to sleep.
***
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Turi looked the recently-ascended pigeon over. It had been bulky before, but after ascending to the second realm, it was at least twice as large as Turi. It wasn’t very aerodynamic, and it would clearly not be able to fly very quickly or for long distances, but the ability to fly at all was very useful. Its eyes were a piercing, icy blue, but aside from its size and eyes, it looked like an ordinary pigeon.
“Well? Can you speak?” Turi asked the pigeon.
“I can.” It responded, and Turi winced. Apparently, the pigeon had gained the ability to speak, but in a very different way from how Turi had. Its voice was raspy and cut out at least three times in that short answer.
“What’s your name, then?”
“Deri,” The pigeon responded, and Turi nodded.
“Stay with me, and I will make sure to bring you to the third realm, Deri. Now, if we’re to work together, I’ll need to know what your variant species is.”
Deri nodded slowly. “I stole your thing. Manipulate water, ice, with eyes. Am big, and speak. That it,”
Turi nodded. “What is it called?”
“Big water bird,”
Turi winced. It was a shame that Deri wasn’t smarter, but it was enough that he was able to speak. Still, Turi felt bad for Deri. He would have to spend a long time being known as a ‘big water bird’, after all.
***
Turi’s assessment told him that he was two years old now. He wasn’t sure when that had happened, but it didn’t matter all that much. He had gotten better at telling time, and knew that it had been two months since Deri had joined him, and he had found a somewhat efficient way of recruiting beasts to his group.
Turi just needed to save first realm beasts whenever he could, help them ascend to the second realm, and they ended up being pretty grateful to him. It wasn’t all ‘sunshine and rainbows’, as Leo had once said, though. The raccoon that he had saved had ditched him at some point, and he was left with only one new addition.
It hadn’t taken the ability to speak, unfortunately, despite his encouragement. It was a huge tortoise that seemed to be as obsessed with its shell as Deri was about being as large as he could realistically be while retaining the ability to fly.
Quite frankly, it wasn’t very strong, but it paired quite well with the invisible fox. The tortoise was a pretty good distraction that allowed the fox to ambush whatever was attacking it.
Turi was still working on a way for mute creatures like the turtle and the fox to speak, but it wasn’t easy. Until then, they had allowed themselves to be called ‘Fox’ and ‘Tort’, although the tortoise hadn’t been very happy about his nickname.
Deri had taken to the second realm quite well, though. He was even larger than he had been when he first ascended, and he was significantly larger than Four-wings had been. He was mildly annoying, though; despite his very grating voice, Deri was almost perpetually happy and babbling.
Turi himself hadn’t changed much. His strength, durability, senses and his intelligence were all better than they had been two months ago, but he hadn’t eaten an essence core in… two weeks, now? Ascending his Aspects of Ascension was becoming increasingly expensive, and Turi found that it was more efficient to let others have them.
***
Another three months had passed, and Turi had finally figured out how to make the group. He had been trying to make it a very dense group, like the human’s camp had been, but Turi found that it was naturally growing into a loose group of more intelligent beasts that used it for all sorts of purposes. The second realm beasts would trade with the first realm beasts, for example, using second realm essence crystals, which held little use to them, in exchange for essence crystals or, in some cases, assistance.
It was working out incredibly well. Turi didn’t even have to give out any essence cores to maintain the group; he only paid Deri, who he had turned into the group’s manager of sorts.
Turi had taken over an entire block of the city, and, over the course of three months, had molded it into quite the nice place. He and several other beasts had cleared the rubble from the area, and Turi had erected a five foot wall around the area, less as a real wall and more as a divider.
Inside the walled off area was shelter; lots and lots shelter. There were small huts, most made by Turi but some made by others, that creatures like Fox lived inside. There were burrows underneath the stone huts, and there were nests on the roofs, with small stone platforms overhead to protect them from rain.
It all worked because Turi and several other beasts, like Deri, Fox and Tort, worked to maintain the peace. Attacks from animals were rare, as it was quite stupid to try to bring down so many different powerful and intelligent animals.
***
Three more months had passed. Turi had named the area the ‘Sanctuary’, and the name stuck- luckily. The names that the other speech-capable beasts dispensed were not very good. The Sanctuary was significantly more populated, and Turi was surprised by how well everything was working out. It was all because beasts now were significantly smarter than they had been before Earth began its ascension, even if only some of them could speak.
Turi didn’t even have to protect the base anymore; any animal stupid enough to attack something inside the walls was torn apart by the base’s inhabitants. It meant that Turi had enough time to go hunting, and he had finally started progressing once more.
By now, he had spent so long without growing that hunting was a legitimate danger. After returning from a hunt, Turi realized that he had spent too long living in the Sanctuary.
When he made this decision, Turi immediately decided to go on a long-term hunt. Turi put Deri in charge of the Sanctuary until he returned, and then left. Now that he finally had a territory that was large enough to make the Evergreens take him seriously, all Turi needed was to not be on the same level as a stone-clad squirrel.