Turi was right; once the adrenaline wore off, he regretted how stupid he had been in his fight with the stone-clad squirrel. It was midday now, and he had spent the entire time cursing his earlier self. Turi was perched on the red octagonal sign at the flock’s meeting area, expending essence to heal his injuries and re-grow his feathers.

Finally, Turi was finished. His injuries were healed, and he manifested his Tome. The leather clasp undid itself and the thin book swung open to the second page, which was his ascension page. The stone-clad squirrel had allowed him to ascend two of his Aspects of Ascension, and he chose durability and intelligence. He didn’t even notice the process of his feathers, bones, flesh and muscles toughening as his mind expanded and grew more capable.

Turi, thoroughly exhausted now, fell asleep on the hard sidewalk. The dark crow and several other injured crows were nearby, so he was probably safe, and even if he wasn’t, he would probably be woken by his thought acceleration ability.

***

An entire two days had passed since Turi’s fight with the stone-clad squirrel, and he had ascended his senses and intelligence again. Turi felt like he was on top of the world, not only because of how strong he felt, but also because of how well his ability to speak was coming along.

Similarly, Turi had become so proficient with his eye-based magics that he could even crush small bugs from a distance without even a bit of effort.

Turi summoned his Tome and flipped to the fourth page, which was a mental map of the city. He still hadn’t gone anywhere near the south, as the fog still gave him the creeps, but he had explored the west and found a large number of tiny human camps, none of which were even a fraction of the size of the one to the north. He figured the tall human nests acted as beacons that attracted the other humans.

The detail of the city map was quite good, in his opinion. Every tree in the park was accounted for, and every still-standing human nest was, too- aside from those that might or might not be within the fog.

Tomorrow was the day that he would make first contact with the human, he decided. The only question was how to go about it. He had observed them over the past few days, and they were very aggressive. Turi flipped to the eighth page of the Tome and started to jot down his plan.

***

“What the hell were you thinking?!,” Leo shouted, his face so close to Aaron’s that Jeremiah was pretty sure Aaron’s face was covered in spittle.

Aaron shoved Leo back, taking a deep breath to scream at him in return, but before he could, Leo grabbed Aaron by the hem of his shirt and pushed him against a wall, shouting in his face with such rage that Jeremiah could hardly understand what he was even saying.

Jeremiah let out a sigh as he looked around, praying that their shouting didn’t attract any monsters. A shiver ran down his back as he looked at the huge, man-sized beetle with at least twenty tentacles sprouting from his back. Aaron had charged the thing the second he’d laid eyes on it, and six people had been severely injured trying to save him, one of which might die from the injuries.

Leo, the captain of their group, was pissed, and Jeremiah didn’t blame him. Aaron was an annoying, stuck-up, self-centered bastard, but he thought Leo was being a bit stupid. The only reason they hadn’t just let Aaron die was because he had ascended to the second realm. Leo was also of the second realm, as was Jeremiah, but Aaron was very dangerous due to his variant species.

Jeremiah sent some essence into his hand and, soon after, he had created six illusory, floating eyeballs. He directed them to search for danger and to stay nearby and then directed his attention at the group.

There were twelve of them; Leo, Aaron, Jeremiah, and eight people of the first realm. He didn’t know most of their names, as they had only joined their small three-man group yesterday.

One of his eyes signaled him, and he looked through the illusory eyeball. It was a relatively normal-looking crow, only marginally larger than a pre-ascension raven. It had golden irises and a mystical air to it, but it didn’t look very dangerous. Jeremiah told the eye to watch the crow and started walking over to Leo and Aaron to break up their fight.

“-off of me, before I break your goddamn jaw!” Aaron threatened, and Jeremiah pulled Leo away. Leo let himself be pulled away, and Aaron stomped off, his body shaking with rage.

“Hey, big man,” Jeremiah said, wrapping his arm around Leo’s neck as he led him back to the group. Even as they walked, his eyes sent him several signals, and he glanced at them briefly. Several monsters, only a couple of which were even slightly dangerous, were coming their way, attracted by the fight, the smell of blood and the bickering. “We’ve got company incoming, and we’ll need to get going, now. I’ll act as a distraction, so you need to lead everyone back to camp.”

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Leo nodded silently, breathing heavily. Jeremiah led him into a small building that had used to be a bakery, and gathered the young man that had fled in the middle of the fight.

Leo and the young man went over to the group of injured, and the young man was made to carry one of the more badly injured as punishment. Leo took the woman who was hurt the worst; she had lost her leg to the beetle’s mandibles.

Jeremiah took a deep breath and quickly flipped through his illusory eyeballs. The monsters were coming closer, except for the crow; it must have been too weak to try to kill them. Jeremiah sent his illusory eye away from that one; it was unimportant.

Jeremiah started constructing a large, illusory tiger. By the time he was done, the closest of the monsters were only a block away, and his essence core was close to empty.

He directed the tiger to make a lot of noise and run in the opposite direction, and it did. In the time that it had taken him to sculpt the illusory tiger, the group had only traveled two blocks away. He directed the illusory eye that followed them to scout the streets ahead of the group, as there were a lot of places to hide, with the streets covered in hills of rubble, and the buildings half-destroyed but still somewhat standing.

Sweat poured down his body and he breathed heavily, and Jeremiah started after the group, who were slowed down significantly by having to carry food, water, weapons, other miscellaneous supplies and the wounded.

Even as he climbed up and down the hills of rubble, narrowly avoiding a rusty nail here and there, he continued directing his constructs. The tiger was being pursued by the majority of the monsters, but there were several, such as the crow flying overhead, that hadn’t fallen for it- most of them had some sort of scouting ability or, like the crow, could fly.

His illusory eyes, of which there were fifteen, were spread too thin. There were gaps in his vision. Jeremiah worked to fix it, but it was difficult to escape, direct the tiger, and fifteen floating eyeballs at the same time.

Jeremiah wasn’t able to do all of that and catch up with the group while he was exhausted, and so he didn’t. He stopped in the middle of the street and entered a small, mostly-intact shop. It was covered in rubble, but he managed to crawl inside regardless.

Jeremiah sat down behind the counter, focusing on controlling his constructs instead. The group was significantly louder and was a bloody mess, and attracted most of the monsters’ attention- but not all of them.

Jeremiah drew the sword that hung at his waist as a leopard-sized housecat prowled down the street, its nose working overtime. The crow flew overhead, too, but it would only be a problem if he survived; it would probably attack while he was weak.

His essence core had recovered a tiny bit of essence, but not much. A minute crawled by, and he watched from one of his illusory eyeballs as the huge housecat stopped right in front of the shop he was in. It peered into the shop, and Jeremiah switched back to his own vision.

The cat started to crawl through one of the rubble-filled windows, but pulled back when he swung at it. As long as he kept it outside, he’d be fine.

That plan fell apart immediately, as the cat vanished from his vision. He switched to his illusory eyeball’s vision and saw the huge housecat standing on the building’s roof.

Jeremiah swapped back to his own vision just in time to see the housecat fall through a hole that it had made and land silently on the floor a few yards away from him.

‘It’s not even in the second realm. Can I beat it?’ Jeremiah wondered, but the answer was clear. ‘I can’t. I’m exhausted, and my variant species isn’t meant for this.’

Jeremiah gripped his sword and glared at the cat. His body trembled slightly; partly from exhaustion, and partly from fear. He didn’t want to die.

***

Turi landed on the rim of the hole that the huge housecat had just made in the roof, and peered into the shop. The housecat and the strange sword-wielding human were on opposite ends of the shop, and he was surprised to see the human’s sword trembling. The human was afraid, but he could tell that the human was in the second realm.

Turi thought back to when he had first stumbled across the human group. The humans had been excavating the essence core from the man-sized tentacle beetle. Was the human already exhausted, or were the strange, illusory constructs just extremely taxing? They weren’t very useful in a real fight, so surely not?

Turi shook his head, as he had seen many humans do to clear their thoughts. He briefly turned away from the hole so that the human wouldn’t be able to see him and briefly practiced a few expressions. He tilted his head to the side in confusion, and recoiled in disgust. He puffed out his chest and looked smug- which was very natural for him- and he hunched over a bit to look less threatening.

Turi nodded to himself in satisfaction and returned to the hole. The cat was taking its time, playing with its food as cats tended to do. Turi knew from personal experience.

As Turi mentally prepared for his dramatic entrance, in which he would save the human and, by extension, create immense goodwill between his brilliant self and this small human camp, the cat stopped playing. It lunged forward, but the human sidestepped with unnatural quickness, and he slashed the sword across the huge housecat’s flank.

The cat moved back, and its wound healed with visible quickness. From this engagement alone, Turi could tell that the human was manipulating his essence; it was the only way that he could have moved so fast, based on how quick he had been prior to now.

Meanwhile, the huge housecat seemed to have gone all-in on strength. The human’s cut hadn’t had much force behind it, and had been meant more for speed, but it had still cut a pretty deep gash. The incredible healing factor suggested that the housecat might have had a unique baseline species- sort of like Turi himself- that allowed it to unconsciously manipulate essence.

The cat lunged again, and this time, the human was a bit delayed. Turi hadn’t expected the human to be so confident- it would die, right there and then, if he didn’t do anything. Turi wasn’t close enough- or large enough, for that matter- to stop the bird quickly, so he channeled essence into his eyes, and willed the air to slow the cat. His eyes glowed golden, and the air condensed around the cat and resisted its movements, just barely enough that the human managed to move out of the cat’s range and slash his sword across its nose.

Turi scowled. The inside of a shop wasn’t an ideal place for him to fight, but… the human would die if he didn’t help in a more deliberate manner. Turi sighed- another expression he had learned from observing humans- and hopped down.