Turi broke free from his egg, covered in gunk. His body burst with power, but at the same time, it felt raw and… unused- like he hadn’t broken it in yet. The feeling hadn’t been there last time because the changes had been minor, he guessed.

‘I don’t really need to break it in to free them.’ Turi thought. His ability to move and dodge would be impaired, but his skill with essence… was absurd. Out of curiosity alone, Turi called over his Tome, checking his Aspects of Ascension.

Strength: Ascendant

Senses: Transcendant

Durability: Ascendant

Intelligence: Abnormal

Essence: Legendary

The words weren’t perfectly accurate anymore, but Turi still felt a rush seeing the incredible measurements. He was very likely the only third Realm avian on Earth.

Turi took only a minute to get a decent control over his body, his mind having long-since hit the point where he learned things almost instantly. Turi broke free from the cube of stone he’d surrounded himself in before Ascending, and then leapt into the air. With only his legs, Turi soared twenty feet into the air, and with a beat of his wings, he shot forward.

Within seconds, Turi was back at the ‘container’. Humans, armed to the teeth, were swarming around it like ants after someone stepped on their nest, but not a shadow of fear existed within his heart as he plummeted towards them, making zero effort to hide his presence- in fact, he pushed his aura outwards, making it impossible to ignore them.

He hated these people, well and truly, and he wanted them to know what was about to happen to them all. Turi could kill most of them with a flash of essence, but the least they deserved was for him to test his new form on them. After Ascending, Turi had embraced the ruthlessness of animals towards those they hated.

Turi pushed a bit of essence into his body, causing it to double in size. Moreover, his mass increased massively, allowing him to put some actual force into his attacks. He slammed into the man nearest to him, his talons bursting through the bullet-proof vest with ease.

He didn’t move an inch as a hail of bullets slammed into him. His feathers stopped most of them, but a few that came from the largest of firearms broke through, stabbing into his skin a bit. Of course, that was because his body wasn’t being enhanced by essence and only enlarged.

A minute later, there was only a floor of bodies on the ground. The only ‘powerful’ human had tried to flee, the result being her body a few hundred feet away rather than surrounding him. Turi looked at the container, his eyes peering through the stone with ease. He was glad to see that the prisoners were still alive.

Before saving them, Turi wanted to make sure he was a little less scary. Thus, his body began to shift towards his humanoid form for the very first time. It was not agonizing, but it was tremendously uncomfortable for his body to rearrange itself, and the process took an entire fifteen seconds.

After that, Turi’s aura shifted, becoming more friendly but also more authoritative. It was a result of using his aura to project his pharaoh attunement. Finally, Turi’s golden eyes flashed and the building before him was torn to shreds. The people sitting within the cages were unable to not notice the commotion this time, looking around in awe and shielding their eyes from the sun.

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The cages went next, and lastly, the guard that had tried to hide in there with them. Approaching the prisoners, Turi spoke with power and authority.

“I need you all to follow me. It is doubtful that your captors will simply allow you to walk away, so I’ll bring you all away.” He told them all. Having already gathered the essence cores of these peoples’ captors into a large pile, he continued, “To have the strength necessary to flee this place, you must absorb these essence cores,”

***

It had taken almost a half-hour for all of the twenty prisoners to understand what was happening. He made them all absorb two essence cores at minimum, which gave them the essence necessary to sustain their bodies and heal some of their wounds, but they still needed food and water. That could come later, though, because the people were finally starting to talk and realize that he wasn’t just a figment of their imagination, and was indeed a bird person.

Rapidly, it became clear that all but two of them had been imprisoned long before the ascension of the Earth, because none of them understood where they were, how he was a bird person, what an essence core was, why Las Vegas was composed almost exclusively of essence, and et cetera. At first, they simply complied with everything he said, but as they came to their senses, a few of them regained enough of their wits to ask questions.

“Did you kill everyone here?” A frail, middle-aged woman asked.

“What’s your name?” Another- a young man- asked.

“I did, indeed, neutralize your captors. I am Ascenturi.” Turi answered- and the moment he showed a willingness to answer questions, he was flooded with them.

Turi did his best to answer them, but, as much as it stung, Turi had to temporarily withhold some pieces of information to avoid causing hysteria. The knowledge that the world was in shambles might just break these people, and he didn’t want that- they could afford to wait for a few hours so that he could find them food and such.

Speaking of, even as Turi went about keeping the small group of former-prisoners content, he was thinking of what he would do next.

In no specific order, Turi wanted to save as many people as he could, help them to recover enough to get back to Henderson- the city he’d come from-, decimate those complicit in these atrocities to prevent them from happening again, hunt for food and essence cores to give these people…

There was a lot that he needed to do, and Turi had no time to waste. Lamenting that he hadn’t brought someone else with him to protect these people and keep them in control, Turi located the strongest person amongst the prisoners- a dark-skinned woman with long, brown and braided hair- and called them over.

She was only of the first Realm, but she hadn’t been locked up for long, it appeared. Few wounds covered their body, and she only appeared mildly starved and dehydrated- a problem that had disappeared when given a bit more essence.

“What is your name?” Turi asked.

“I am Deja… sir,” The woman replied, steadily but uncertain of what to call him. Rapidly sifting through his recollection of only a minute or two ago, he realized she’d been one of the people to stay far away from him and not pester him with questions- it made sense, considering he was distinctly inhuman. His aura made him personable enough that most of the people here didn’t seem to mind, but a handful did- Deja included.

Peering into her eyes, Turi confirmed a tiny spark of life in there still. Most of the people he’d rescued just now still had dead and depressed eyes, their awe only visible from the rest of their body language- Deja, on the other hand, looked like she had not yet given up a hope to resist even before he’d freed them all. Again, it made sense, considering she appeared to be a recent addition.

“There is no need for you to call me anything other than my name,” Turi clarified to her. “I want you to keep these people in line while I’m gone. I will return in a few minutes, with food and water, but I’ll be leaving again shortly after that, and it’s very plausible I won’t return quickly.”

After receiving a tentative nod in response, Turi uncertainly flapped his wings. It was very, very strange to try to fly in this form- his center of gravity was all wrong. After immediately face-planting into the ground, and embarrassedly glancing at the on looking crowd, Turi simply ran. It wasn’t like he was slow on the ground- at least not in this body. Still, having never been a humanoid before, he was… not very coordinated. If not for his incredible Durability, Turi’s legs would likely be mangled messed with how often he kicked blocks of stone and metal.