Turi woke up to a feeling of intense pain suffusing his entire body. The sun was in his vision, and it was midday. Not long had passed since the fight with the stone-clad squirrel. His brain still felt like it was going to burn his skull, but a familiar question was still at the forefront of his mind.
Turi chose to ascend his intelligence, and was relieved as his mind expanded and morphed, and the pain dulled. Almost immediately after, the same question was posed again, and this time, he ascended his strength. Turi, already barely awake, blacked out from the pain almost immediately, and awoke an hour or so later, judging by the sun.
Another question was at the forefront of his mind. Turi chose to ascend his senses, and every nerve in his body felt like it was on fire. Again, he blacked out, and this time, when he awoke, the sun was setting. No questions of ascension were at the forefront of his mind, and honestly, Turi was relieved.
The four-winged crow and its followers, which now numbered six, were flying around, circling the area where he was. Turi stood, relieved at having a second leg to hop about on, and the crows landed in front of him. The four-winged crow cawed at him, and Turi finally realized why it had helped him.
The four-winged crow was so bizarre that he hadn’t even noticed the familiar patterns of its feathers and its behavior. This was one of his friends from before Earth’s ascension. Turi cawed at the four-winged crow and shuffled his feathers in excitement. The four-winged crow responded with similar excitement.
After a while, their excitement wore off, and the four-winged crow, who he decided to call Four-wing, took to the air. Its six followers and Turi followed it, and soon, they were back at the flock’s meeting area. Turi landed on the red, octagonal sign as he always did, but glided down to the ground when Four-wing cawed at him. Four-wing held a stick in his beak, and poked Turi with it.
After a short scuffle where Turi completely and utterly failed to take the stick from Four-wing, he fell asleep. Turi was exhausted.
***
When Turi woke up, it was midday. He had been seriously exhausted; he hardly even remembered most of the day before despite his incredible memory. He looked around, and the world seemed entirely different. The colors were more vibrant, his vision seemed high-definition, his hearing was crystal-clear, and everything was more potent in smell. He could feel every feather rustling. It was incredible, even if it did smell horrid.
Turi saw himself in the reflection of a metal panel on the ground nearby, and was shocked by how much larger he was. While he was only half the size of Four-wing, he was also larger than even a raven, which were the largest type of crow; he had learned this by concentrating on the word ‘crow’ in his species, ‘Turi crow’. There were a lot of crows.
Turi felt his stomach grumble and headed toward the park. It hadn’t been very conducive to growth, but it had a lot of bugs to eat.
He flew higher than he ever had before, even before the Earth’s ascension, and could see the ground with stunning clarity. Turi saw tribes of humans roving rubble-covered streets, groups of huge rats roaming the city and ravaging anything they came across, and a few of the weirder creatures; the ones like the stone-clad squirrel, the super-beetle with a tentacle on its back and Four-wing.
Turi soon arrived at the park, and as he flew over, he was shocked at how drastically it had changed. It looked nothing like it had a few days ago. The trees were huge, and he was shocked to see a few of them impaling bugs with their roots. The ground was a sea of ants clashing with ants, and towering mounds of dirt. There were a few super-insects, such as the beetle with a tentacle on its back, which had doubled in size and now had three such tentacles, that the ant armies avoided, but it was otherwise the territory of ants and ants alone.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Turi turned away from the park immediately and went towards the north of the city instead. There were a multitude of the humans’ nests over there, and while he wasn’t capable of establishing communications just yet, he also knew that humans wrought death and destruction wherever they went.
As he flew over, Turi saw several groups of humans. One of them shot chunks of metal at him using a weapon he couldn’t comprehend, but that human was hit in the head, hard, by another.
Some of the groups of humans had dogs, which were abnormally large. He had even seen one human riding one.
He found a camp of humans, with walls made of piled-up concrete and metal. Nearby, there was one of the tall human nests. It took Turi a while to figure out why they didn’t just live in there, and he was embarrassed by how simple it was; all the other nests had fallen apart under the slightly-increased gravity, and they must not trust its integrity.
The most eventful thing that happened as he flew over the human’s territory was when he saw a huge cat mauling a human. It looked like one of the human’s pet cats, but the size of a tiger, and very aggressive. The humans shot tens of their metal rocks at them, though, and the cat was covered in blood by the time it managed to escape, if only barely. Turi soon perched on one of the human’s tall nests to make a mental map of the city.
The park was in the dead center. The human’s territory was to the north, but he had seen humans elsewhere, too; this was their city, after all. His flock’s home was to the east, at an intersection of the city’s streets. The north-east was where he had encountered the stone-clad squirrel. The south was visibly strange and gave Turi a creepy feeling. That area of the city was permanently enshrouded in a thick mist, and while he couldn’t see anything going on in there, he could hear plenty. Roars, screams, gunfire, et cetera. Turi wanted no part of it, and instead headed north-east once again, hoping his drastically-improved senses would help him to find suitable prey this time.
Roughly an hour later, based on the sun, and Turi had not encountered any assailants, but he hadn’t encountered any suitable prey, either. Being able to fly meant that he could pick his battles pretty easily; the scary beasts of the ground couldn’t touch him, and the weak ones couldn’t escape him.
The problem was that there weren’t any ‘weak ones’ anymore- at least, not many- and he was hungry.
Turi eventually chose to risk it against the closest thing to prey he could find; a group of rats. There were at least twenty of them, and he intended on nabbing one and flying off. It was dangerous, though; if they spotted him and got a hold of him while he was grabbing a rat, he’d be torn to shreds.
It wasn’t like he had much of a choice, though; he was really hungry. Turi silently moved as close to the rats as he could without alerting them before he commenced his kidnapping attempt. Turi dove, and as he did, his thoughts accelerated. He didn’t commit to the kidnapping too much, and grabbed the rat without even stopping. Any other crow would have missed, but Turi had timed it perfectly, and caught the large rat in his talons without even slowing down.
Turi flew a good distance away before he was forced to drop the rat, as it was struggling fiercely. It fell several tens of yards and struck the ground, and while it was mostly fine, it didn’t matter, as Turi was close behind. He pinned the rat to the ground with his talons and killed it swiftly.
Half an hour later, Turi was back in the air, his stomach full. He decided to head back to his flock’s area, as he really needed some time to rest and think.
***
As the sun set and the rest of his flock arrived home, Turi could hardly contain his excitement. His dictionary was practically a hundred times larger now, as he had figured out a trick to learn new words, and about those words. When he concentrated on a word; say, crows, it would go further in-depth on what a crow was. He could concentrate on the words provided in the explanation of what a crow was to lead to another explanation, and so on and so forth.
Turi was preparing to go to sleep when Four-wings cawed at him. He glided down to the ground where Four-wings stayed, and was mildly confused when the large crow dropped a small, bug-sized and faintly-glowing crystal in front of him. After about five minutes of cawing back and forth and an annoying amount of miming, Turi was certain that it was meant for him, but not what it was for. Turi took the small crystal and mimed eating it, like one would do with an essence core, and Four-wings cawed at him approvingly. With no more hesitation, Turi ate it.