Six months had passed since Yl’Vael had killed the bird and stolen its powers. Winter had come, coated the mountains in thick, powdery snow, and passed. Springtime was nearly over and the snow that had remained after winter had thawed about a month ago. In that time, all he’d done was grow stronger. Yl’Vael had spent nearly every waking moment training or growing stronger. With his father and with other members of the tribe, particularly those who had absorbed powers from a bird, training to fight. Now, Yl’Vael was a practitioner of the falcon and hawk martial styles of the tribe. When he wasn’t training, Yl’Vael was hunting beasts and searching for energy treasures that he could absorb to get stronger. With each core and treasure that he consumed, Yl’Vael pushed himself forward, becoming stronger and gaining access to slightly more of his powers.

With his relentless pushing, Yl’Vael had managed to raise himself up to the Second Stage of power. Before he had managed to push himself to the First Stage, all Yl’Vael had managed to do was increase his physical abilities and push his new senses to their limits. Even with that, though, it had been so laughably easy to just throw himself at a First Stage Cored, scratching and clawing at the beast, and punch its head until it caved in. For good measure, Yl’Vael had ripped out its brain, but the beast had almost certainly been dead at the hands of Yl’Vael’s new, profound strength.

After consuming the core, which involved breaking it into pieces and shoving it into his mouth – in a similar manner to the baby bird – as quickly as he could so the energy didn’t dissipate, and pushing himself to the First Stage, though, Yl’Vael had become so much stronger. At the First Stage, Yl’Vael had gain the first of his abilities. Not only could Yl’Vael manipulate the air with enough strength that, when the air hit you, it felt like being shoved, but he also gained the ability to transform the hair on his body into the metallic feathers of the bird. With some testing, Yl’Vael had found that they were even harder than stone and were nearly impossible to penetrate with the tribes’ stone blades. Blunt force travelled through the feathers quite well but, unless a beast was significantly stronger than Yl’Vael, their claws could not harm him.

What made the feathers even stronger was that, with a little bit of effort, Yl’Vael could raise them up like the quills on a porcupine and use them as blades that could cut notches in stone. Finally, with some focus and practice, Yl’Vael was able to actually shoot the feathers from himself. Razor-sharp feathers, fired like an arrow from a bow, would streak through the air and slam into targets, leaving sharp notches in trees and tearing holes through flesh.

Of course, the abilities that Yl’Vael had gained weren’t unlimited. Yl’Vael was limited in the number of feathers he could fire off at once, not only by the number of feathers he could transform his hair into but also by the number of feathers he needed to conserve to protect himself. Each feather that Yl’Vael shot needed roughly a day for him to regenerate which, while not particularly long, did limit him in battle. Additionally, Yl’Vael was initially able to only cover small parts of his body with feathers, with him being restricted to an area the size of his forearm. As Yl’Vael progressed through the First Stage, this area expanded until, finally, just before he broke through to the Second Stage, Yl’Vael was able to coat his entire body – bar his eyes, ears, and nostrils, in the silvery feathers like he was wearing a coat of shifting armour.

Once he broke through to the Second Stage, all of his abilities once again improved. Not only did his ability to control air grow stronger; enough to lift a person of their feet for a second or so; which allowed Yl’Vael to run faster when he pushed the wind into his back but his strength, agility, and senses all improved significantly. The best part about the abilities that he gained, though, was that he gained the ability to manifest wings. When he called on them, silvery, metallic wings sprouted from his back and, each time he did so, Yl’Vael imagined them sprouting in a burst of silvery feathers. Yl’Vael knew that’s not what happened, considering no feathers fell to the ground.

While the wings weren’t strong enough to lift and carry Yl’Vael by themselves, with the help of his enhanced ability to control the air, they allowed him to fly in the air for a couple of hours at a time. Of course, Yl’Vael had needed to train and practice, slowly increasing his ability to remain aloft, but now that he had the ability to fly around the mountain ranges, he was so much faster and could push himself to grow stronger at an even more prodigious pace.

Far into the mountains, as he was flying around the range, Yl’Vael had managed to find a massive lake, a few days’ journey from Yl’Vael’s tribe. When he’d first seen the lake, he’d been amazed by its sheer size as it would have taken him at least a full day to fly across and it was only thanks to his enhanced vision that he’d been able to even make out the other side of the lake. Islands were dotted around the lake and, underneath the water, fish and other freshwater, aquatic creatures swam in bunches. Yl’Vael hadn’t seen anything remarkably powerful in the lake, just a few eels at the First and Second Stages and one large water snake that Yl’Vael had seen undulating across the surface of the water. If he’d been stronger, Yl’Vael wouldn’t have hesitated to attack the reptile but, at only the start of the Second Stage, he wasn’t quite confident in confronting the cold-blooded lake-dweller. Perhaps he’d do so once he got close to the third stage.

When the sun set over the lake, though, was when its beauty truly struck Yl’Vael. Yl’Vael had managed to find a grove of flowering trees, with purple blossoms hanging off of vines and fruits growing on the trees. Sitting inside the small glade and looking out to the lake as the sun set, Yl’Vael felt a few moments of peace that truly calmed his mind as the day ended. First, the water turned a silvery grey as the sun disappeared behind the mountains and the reflection of the mountains dominated the colour of the lake. Then, as the sun began to dip below the horizon proper, even if Yl’Vael couldn’t actually see the sun, the water changed from the stone grey of the mountains to a beautiful, fiery range of colours, including yellow, orange, and sometimes red and pink that reflected in fragments off the slightly choppy water. Then, at the very end of the sunset, just before the sun truly left the sky, the water had a very small chance to turn a beautiful purple colour that slowly faded to white-spotted black.

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Yl’Vael had spent many sunsets there since finding the place, but that wasn’t what he was focussed on. Right at that moment, he was in a marsh just next to the lake. Fed primarily by the water from the lake as it moved into a series of winding, mountainous rivers, the marsh spread across an area that almost rivalled the size of the lake. Normally, tall reeds lazily waved back and forth in the winds that came down over the mountains, situated primarily around the small, dry islands that dotted much of the marsh. Very rarely, a small tree sat in a prime position on one of the larger islands and Yl’Vael had noticed a fruit or two, one that emanated energy, growing on some of those trees. Despite the desire to consume the fruit for power, Yl’Vael didn’t dare to get remotely close to those trees as they would almost certainly be guarded by powerful creatures just waiting for the fruits to ripen.

As it was, Yl’Vael had instead decided to roam the marsh, avoiding stronger creatures in his search for a second creature to absorb. Yl’Vael hoped that it would be some sort of amphibious creature that would allow him to gain dominance on both land and water, just as the bird had given him the power to rule the skies. What he’d found, though, while not quite an aquatic creature, was too good to pass up.

Flying over the marsh the day before, Yl’Vael had come across a battle between two creatures. The first of the creatures was some sort of amphibious creature that, while powerful, had seemed rather mundane as Yl’Vael had come across large numbers of them, most of them weak or without any power. They were some sort of lizard that seemed to have an air-based repulsive attack that pushed everything away everything nearby and an extremely powerful healing ability. There wasn’t much else unique about them at their stages of power, though, so Yl’Vael didn’t have any interest in them. What did attract his interest was the marsh hydra it was fighting. The creature was rare and powerful enough that even Yl’Vael knew its name.

One or two of Yl’Vael’s tribe members had fought the beasts in the past before and had come out of the exchange worse for wear. Marsh hydras had extremely acidic blood that could melt through stone, an extremely venomous bite, and poisonous saliva that could kill you even if their teeth didn’t penetrate your skin. They also had the ability to control caustic, venomous, and poisonous substances, like their blood, venom, and saliva, in the same way that Yl’Vael could control air. Finally, their extremely potent regenerative abilities, similar to the lizard it was fighting, made the hydra a very tempting acquisition to Yl’Vael.

Plus, Yl’Vael had the hope that, even if he wasn’t able to grow multiple heads like the hydra did every time one of them was cut off, he would be able to regenerate his own if he ever lost it. So, once he’d let the hydra rest up and recuperate – it was cowardly to fight a foe after they’d just had a long battle – he’d come back to fight the hydra.

So, it was with acidic green blood coating his silver scales that Yl’Vael stood knee deep in the brackish marsh water. Shoulders heaving, Yl’Vael only held himself back from grinning to stop the acidic blood from dripping into his mouth. A large corpse lay slumped on the ground, the long necks of the hydra limp and the numerous heads bobbing in the water. Lodged in the beast’s scales, dozens of silver feathers poked out from the mass and green blood dribbled from the body, trailing rivulets that led into the water and swirled away on light currents. Yl’Vael almost certainly had a number of broken bones; he felt them grinding whenever he moved; and he couldn’t let go of his scales or the blood of the hydra would melt his skin but, regardless of that fact, Yl’Vael was elated.

Rather than wearing down the prodigious regenerative abilities of the hydra, which would have almost certainly led to Yl’Vael’s demise, Yl’Vael had decided to win the fight in one single, decisive blow. After gaining the hydra’s attention and starting the fight, which mainly involved the hydra spitting at him and controlling its poisonous saliva to chase Yl’Vael through the air like a guided, watery arrow, Yl’Vael had taken to the skies and began trying to whittle it down by shooting his feathers at it. While they hurt the beast, they’d done practically no actual damage so Yl’Vael had decided to just go in for a quick kill. Soaring high into the sky, Yl’Vael had dived down towards the hydra, wrapping his wings around himself at the last moment to protect himself as he smashed into the hydra and also letting Yl’Vael wrap himself into what amounted to a spear or lance head, at least with his sharp feathers.

With his momentum and the sharpness of the wings, Yl’Vael had smashed a massive hole into the hydra’s chest, smashing into its core with his sharp, bladelike wings and fracturing it. Of course, Yl’Vael had taken damage in return, his wings snapping near completely and his ribs breaking. So, after dematerialising his wings and extricating himself carefully from the dead hydra’s body, Yl’Vael had found himself staring at the body of the hydra in excitement. After a few moments, with acidic blood dripping off of him and forming small, green eddies in the water, Yl’Vael strode towards the hydra and began to feast. Ripping piece after piece of the hydra off, he stuffed it in his mouth and ignored the acidic blood that burnt his throat even as the energy that the hydra dissolved into was healing him. Quickly, the hydra disappeared and, when Yl’Vael had only the four heads of the beast left and all of his wounds had been healed by the beast’s energy, he snapped off the creature’s fangs and drank its venom, the liquid burning his throat lightly even as it dissipated into soothing energy, and then drank its unusually sweet saliva before finally dissecting the heads of the beast. As he ate the last bite of the beast, Yl’Vael felt the energy settle into him and he revelled in the sensation of new abilities being unlocked.

Instinctively, he knew that he could shift his skin into the scales of the hydra, could shift his teeth into fangs, and had gained a prodigious sense of smell. On top of that, his physical strength had more than doubled and he’d gained the hydra’s healing ability, poison control ability, and the ability to regenerate his head if it was chopped off. Of course, he couldn’t create more and more heads like the hydra could; his body simply wouldn’t support that; but once he gained the ability to shapeshift into a hydra, he would definitely be able to do that. So, feeling stronger and more energised than ever, Yl’Vael decided to head back to his tribe for a celebratory feast; his family would celebrate when they learnt he’d killed a beast like the hydra and, Yl’Vael suddenly grinned – a wicked, brutal thing especially as the caustic, green hydra blood coated his face, when he told them that his spirit still wasn’t quite full. He could take another beast’s powers yet.