[Player Log Start!]
[Log Holder: Jared Caliber]
[Level: 2]
Jared saw the flare etching through the sky.
On reflex, his heart jumped in excitement, thinking that it was a sign of other human activity. Then his eyes recognized the green tint in the smoke that exactly matched the color of smoke their party used in their own flares.
It had to be one of their own, not a new person.
Still, if they had thought to fire the flare, it had to be pretty important. Best to follow the call and hope that he could help in some way. His skillset was very restrictive, but when it was something in his specialty, he would kick absolute ass.
His crutches kicked up sand as he made his way over the bridges of stepstones he had scaled to get all the way over here. The flare wasn’t far away. In fact, it seemed to look like it had erupted from where Michael would have ended up after they split paths from each other, after Michael made him a bridge over the waves of the ocean.
Click, click, click, the thicker amount of loose sand being thrown everywhere made him slip and struggle a bit, but he managed to deal with it, at least not falling facefirst into the sand.
He managed to get to the island where Michael was standing, and found that he had beaten by Verity, and Asadullah as well. Which was very unfair because they both had gone in the direct opposite direction from them.
“Hey.” He waved a hand tiredly towards them. Asadullah beamed back, tail flicking as a wave.
“Just came here.” He whispered to Jared, “You were with Michael for longer, right? What’s going on?”
“Hell if I know, you beat me here.” Jared whispered back, before raising his voice to catch the attention of the pair, who were still staring at the rocks and trees scattered across the island, and the bird perched on top of it all, “Snap out of it, you two, what’s going on?”
“The bird is talking.” Verity explained, her voice shaky as she stared up at the crow.
“Huh?” Asadullah blinked, “How’s that- how’s that possible?”
“It’s possible because we learn the ancient tongues.” The crow croaked, human words flowing out of a distinctly inhuman beak.
“And it speaks fucking English. Of course it does.” Asadullah scoffed, “Because I’m the only one who has to deal with a language barrier. Unfair.”
“Get over it. Terry’s learning Urdu for you, isn’t he?” Verity pointed out, looking distractedly between Asadullah and the crow, “So, you said a lot of shit, and have proven none of it. What happened to the people here?”
“They died.” The crow responded, without an ounce of emotion behind the words. Did it even have the capacity to feel emotion? He wasn’t sure.
“How?” Michael asked, quivering on the spot.
“I don’t know. That was generations ago.” The crow said, twisting its head to the side to make direct eye contact with them, “These details are not thought to be worthy of being archived by our sparse history keepers. What we do know is that there were once humans. And then they were no longer there. Now, we corvids are locked in constant conflict with the cephalopods.”
“… What?” Asadullah muttered, his ears flattened and pupils shrunk into slits, “That- that doesn’t make any sense. How’re we supposed to fix the Apocalypse if all people are dead? This is a dead end.”
Jared frowned, trying to think of a solution around this. Unfortunately, no matter how he spun it, it was indeed a dead end. People were essential for a fit and healthy world. He’d been expecting something more difficult for Level Two, but this was a bit much, wasn’t it?
“You wish to fix an… Apocalypse?” The crow repeated, its voice gurgling and laced with disbelief, “What do you mean by that? The war? We would very much like to fix the war.”
Everyone exchanged unsure looks. Nearly half of their party was missing, so they had no right to be making such an important decision. And yet… what else were they supposed to do?
“I guess so.” Jared agreed for them all. The crow backed away, puffing up all its feathers. Everyone in the party braced, watching as it threw itself into the air, doing a joyful loop and a barrel roll.
“Oh, joyous day!” It cried, warbling and throaty, “We have found allies in the war! They have promised to aid us in our quest!”
It let out a series of caws that seemed to be a repetition of what it had called out. The sound rippled through the endless islets, carried over by hundreds of small, black birds that he hadn’t noticed before. Jared watched in trepidation as the swarm of birds rose into the air, flying away and crying out the message of their bird host to any ears that could understand.
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There were a lot of them. Way too many to take in a fight. And the cephalopods were fighting these things? They had to be worse than the crows.
…What was a cephalopod?
He didn’t get the chance to whisper this question to Michael, who would be able to access the Console’s search engine to figure this out, because by that point, the crow came back down, feathers still fluffed, but slowly smoothing out.
“Honored guests!” It cawed, “I will now escort you to the main nest! Very few of our avian infantrybirds get to see it in their lifetimes, so it is unheard of to be granted shelter inside it as soon as you are being inducted into our army.”
“Sounds… uh, honorable?” Michael squeaked, the person closest to the bird, his eyes darting back at Jared, trying to get him to step in.
Jared sighed and took over, flexing his Card of Compulsion, just in case the crow had second thoughts.
“We’d love to head there.” He told the crow, “But first, we need to pick up more of our members.”
“There are more of you?!” The crow warbled, “Oh, joyous! I will be given so many accolades for this achievement!” A rippling caw echoed through the islands, returning a message, putting them on the opposite side of the announcement the crow set out.
Whatever information was being conveyed by the caws, it was not good for their specific crow, who drooped sadly, “Unless another bird finds the humans before me.”
“They found someone?” Verity asked, perking up excitedly, “Which one?”
It cocked its head, “A female. With hair like the sky?”
Jared almost jumped to the thought that it was Terry they were describing, before remembering that the sky here was yellow, not green. (It wasn’t green back in ZombieWorld, he remembered giddily.) Which meant that it could only be… Ben.
She had made it through.
“That’s the one!” Michael agreed, “Take us to her!”
The crow wiped its beak on the branch it was standing on, before taking off, wings flapping as they soared through the air at a pace none of them could keep up with.
“Hey, slow down!” Jared called after it, just before it could vanish over the horizon. Thankfully, the crow managed to pull back enough before it got that far ahead. None of them wanted to test its patience, though, so they all booked after it.
“What a freaky raven.” Verity complained, jumping over the narrower channel between the waves.
Jared stumbled on his crutches for real, sending him hurtling into the sandy beach as he stared at her, “What did you call that bird? It is not a raven. It’s a crow. Ravens are much larger.”
“And that is large.” Verity replied with a frown, looking up at their guide, which was beginning to circle above them, “…It looked pretty large.”
“Oh, you won’t understand until you actually see a raven.” Asadullah laughed, shrill and terrified, “That is definitely a crow.”
“And we’re going to lose it if he disappears!” Michael interrupted, “It doesn’t matter what kind of bird it is if that happens.”
“Right, right.” Verity agreed reluctantly, shaking out some sand from the inside of her coat and readying herself for a run. Jared watched the others prepare themselves for a sprint, and he reached his crutch forward to poke Michael in the side.
“Do your sorcery thing.” He commanded, “I don’t think you’ve noticed, but I’m not a long jump guy. Care to float me across instead?”
Michael frowned, looking unsure, “This isn’t a taxi service.” He pointed out, “But I suppose I’ve got the mana to float one of the trunks across the sky?”
“…Acceptable.” Jared shrugged, reaching over to roll the one piece of wooden trunks left lying on the ground, still intact from whatever blast had struck this settlement. Michael tapped it, his hands being overtaken by a green light, that quickly transferred onto the trunk.
[Michael Kapok is Applying Sorcery…]
The trunk bobbed up, like a cork in water. Jared perched on top of it, stretching out his legs in relief as he set his crutches aside.
There was not much room for relaxation, however, as the trunk lurched forward, sending him rocketing forward, wind whipping against his face, pulling at his hair and making his eyes water. Below him, he could see even Verity struggling to keep up as she wove over the waves of ocean, stretching deep under the islets that covered the Earth’s surface like broken eggshells.
It was much more horrifying to see it all happening from above, moving faster and faster and at every moment expecting to see the end of the curve except it… never came. It just kept stretching on and on, and endless nightmare in its own way, no matter how idyllic it all appeared from first glance.
Birds were flying towards them, and Jared made to greet them with a wave, intent on surprising them with the sight of a airborne human, except, before they managed to become eye level, a giant pillar of muscle exploded out from the ocean, huge and washed out green, dotted with sucker-like pustules on the paler side. This massive appendage twisted midair, catching hold of the flock of birds and pulling down, bringing them into the ocean that was to be their watery grave. The whole interaction took less than a few sparse seconds, and the feathers from the birds had not even touched the ground by the time the waters were back to innocent ripples.
Everyone froze. Even their guiding crow. Watching the forlorn descent of the black feathers, until they too sank into the blue depths.
“Those are cephalopods.” The crow explained, its voice low and mournful, “We need to take care to not broadcast our positions so, lest they attack.”
“I saw those things around.” Verity agreed, and Jared’s trunk lost a little height, allowing him to hover a few inches above their eyes, “But… they didn’t seem as large then. Still scary, but this was… another level entirely.”
“They vary in size much more than us corvids ever do.” The crow replied, careful and measured, “We once believed that we ruled the skies. The squids have reminded us that that is not so.”
Despite himself, Jared couldn’t help but blurt out, “Oh, so cephalopods are like squids?”
"No, they are not." The crow replied.
“How do you know what a crow is and don’t know what a cephalopod is?” Verity asked judgmentally.
“Careful, I can kick you from up here.” He warned, swinging his foot to further prove his point.
“I hope you’re enjoying your banter.” The crow clicked its tongue sternly, “Our flock does not find violence against flockmates as humorous as humans do, and we expect you to respect that.”
Right, of course. Jared tried to put on a charismatic smile, but it didn’t seem to do the trick.
[Player Log End!]