[Player Log Start!]
[Log Holder: Benedict Carrey]
[Level: 2]
The nest was firm and sharp under her knees when she landed on the nest. Ben had partially been expecting that, though, so she wasn’t too startled by the odd texture.
What she was more focused on was feeling for whether the nest was shifting from the jump they had made. It was a floating clod of branches and earth, no way that jump wouldn’t cause some notice. But the nest remained solid, unmoving. They had gotten inside.
“Or, well, on top.” Michael whispered to her, “Feathertooth said that this is a bit of a pendant nest, I think. The actual nest should be inside.”
“Really? It looked like a cup nest from the distance.” Ben frowned, looking around her at the sloping tip they were standing on. This would be easier if they had the bird with them to advise but… well, he had his own issues to work out.
Michael hummed, putting his hands out.
[Michael Kapok is Applying Sorcery…]
[Spell: Sensitivity!]
His eyes glowed blue for a few seconds before he shuddered and relaxed, “The nest can change shape. It’s being controlled by… some sort of energy.”
“Can you trace it?” She asked.
“It’s not going to lead us to Verity.” Michael replied with an unsure frown, “What does it matter if I can? But it’s possible, even though the magic isn’t exactly like the type I use.”
“If the nest changes constantly, we won’t be able to find Verity.” Ben reminded them, “The best option is to go to the reason that the nest is changing and cut off that ability, leaving us able to search for her without being led around like a labyrinth.”
Michael frowned, nodding along, “Huh. Okay, then. That’s actually clever.”
“Save the fawning and get to it.” Ben told him, perhaps too sharply. Sue her, the cover of darkness would only last so long, and they needed to work fast. Michael seemed to come to grips with the situation, and nodded, flexing his fingers as his eyes were overtaken by blue again.
[Michael Kapok is Applying Sorcery…]
[Spell: Magic Tracing!]
His eyes trailed through the platform they were staying on, as if tracing some thread of Ariadne. She wondered for a second if that myth had existed in Michael’s world, too, but then decided that it simply didn’t matter.
“Follow me, it dips down here, but I’m not sure if…” Michael wandered forward, experimentally putting a foot down on the spot he was talking about. It slipped right through, the leaves and twigs soft and malleable where in other places they were tough and unmoving, “Great!” He dove inside, immediately swallowed up by the soft spot.
Ben hesitated for a moment, for a second unsure where the spot was, it was so well-disguised. But with some careful groping, she managed to find her way through the opening, landing on solid ground some feet below, just narrowly sidestepping Michael.
“Be careful, would you?” He asked, “There isn’t much space to move around in here.”
“Must be more than enough space for a bunch of crows.” Ben noted. She’d taken care of birds before in her veterinarian job, and she knew how much space a regular enclosure for them required. And this? This was a lot more than most birds would need.
“Probably. But we gotta move now.” Michael nodded, ducking down, “Hope you’re up for crawling.”
“Funny you should ask, it’s my favorite thing!” Ben joked, already feeling her knees burn in agony as she bent down. This wasn’t how she had expected to infiltrate the Main Nest of the Corvid force.
They moved, quickly and efficiently through the corridors. No one said a word, and the only sound was the crackling of twigs and leaves. Except for the light emanating from Michael’s eyes, it was dark. Whether from the night, or if the walls were so thick that the daylight could not pierce through it, Ben didn’t know.
“Wait. Be quiet.” Michael whispered, and that’s all she needed to freeze in her tracks.
There were caws coming from behind a wall. It was thick. Muffled. Must be some sound-proofing on these twigs and earth.
“Think you can translate?” She hazarded a whisper. Michael shook his head.
“Don’t know anything about birds. Or have any experience with Nature Magic. Terry was the one who could do reliable translations for bird.”
So they were stuck here, listening to a conversation that might be the exact intel they were looking for, and they couldn’t even understand a word of it, all lost into cawing, cawing, and more cawing.
There. In the midst of all the bird sounds. It was a human sound. An English word.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Cancer.
Michael went incredibly still in front of her, even as the conversation between the unseen birds devolved once more into cawing.
They were talking about how their fire backpacks were giving them cancer, if she had to guess. It had been a pressing issue she wanted to bring up to them if they ever got around to talking. But someone else had to have told them. No prizes for guessing who.
“Why would Vera warn them of this?” She asked Michael, because Harbinger secrets aside, he knew her the best out of all of them. Except Jared, that was.
“She’s not heartless.” He pointed out, “Of course she warned them of the danger. Nothing Verity hates more than people endangering themselves out of ignorance. Or, well, birds.”
“Great. Now let’s hope they take the warning.” Ben whispered, “Would be a lot easier to figure out what they were thinking of the situation if well…”
“I already told you that I can’t do that.” Michael replied.
“Then think you can find us an alternate route?” Ben asked. The tunnels were constantly branching off in different directions, so there should be some way to go around the discussing birds. Michael thought on it for a few seconds, before flicking his fingers and turning around.
“This route isn’t the most optimal, but it should suffice. Follow me.”
Ben did as he said, casting a look over her shoulder, “Is it just me or did they get quieter all of a sudden?”
“Let’s hope they’ve moved somewhere else.” Michael brushed off, “Best not to think too much about it.”
So their trek continued, through the tunnels, and through quite a few soft spots in the nest matter. It never got any less jarring. Down she went, in another tunnel.
Only this time, instead of slipping down onto solid ground, her feet met nothing, and a hand latched onto the back of her shirt, keeping her from falling down into this murky abyss.
Below her, several feet below, there was a huddle of fledglings, fast asleep in a large bundle of fluff. Cute as it may be, it didn’t take away from the blood glistening on their beaks and the bones left discarded on the ground.
“Good job, Michael.” She whispered, “You’re surprisingly strong.”
“Not true.” Michael said, strained, “Quick magic is doing all the work.” One glance upwards, and it confirmed his words with the sign hovering above him.
[Michael Kapok is Applying Sorcery…]
[Spell: Super Strength]
“Great! Now get me out of here.” She demanded, as angrily as she could without moving or waking up the birds.
“I can’t! The exit we’re looking for is right through here.” Michael told her, swinging her a little, “When I let you go, duck and roll.”
That was all the warning she got before he was winding up his arm, and throwing her into the air. Ben had a lot of experience in parkour during the zombie days. Curling into a ball in midair was not one of those things.
So yeah, her landing was a little sloppy, and she got a mouthful of hay and… something she definitely didn’t want to identify.
But she was alive. And out of the room where the fledglings were kept. Safe, finally!
Michael followed after, glowing in a greenish blue aura that allowed him to levitate as he set himself down next to her.
“Okay, the hardest part should be done.” He assured her.
“I would hope so. How much higher could the stakes get?” She asked. Michael opened his mouth to reply, and she shot him a glare, effectively silencing him before he could implant horrific ideas into her mind, “Where do we go next?”
Michael turned his gaze towards the invisible trail that only he could see, “Looks like we’re supposed to be going through another false door.” He told her, “Whatever is moving us around doesn’t seem to have noticed us here, because the trail hasn’t moved much since it was set up. It’s probably a one-way connection, then…” He shook himself free from the distraction, “Take two steps forward, and walk into a shallow part you come across.”
Ben nodded and followed his directives. There was indeed a soft spot in the wall like he had described, so Ben leaned into it, arms outstretched to take the fall. Except something must’ve gone wrong. Some step must have been misheard, because the last thing she heard before her head fully passed through the dense branches was Michael’s desperate cry, “Wait, don’t-”
She didn’t land in a pit of acid. That was the most she could say about this place. The ground was firm and solid beneath her feet, trustworthy like the rest of this tight, anxiety-inducing place wasn’t.
It was too dark. Even as she could feel branches scraping over her scalp, and the edges of the wall brushing against her still outstretched fingers, she could not make out a single sliver of detail in this little hollow Ben found herself entrapped in. Not without Michael nowhere near to provide light from his glowing eyes.
She wasn’t stranded in the void for long, as there was rustling, and the wall to her right began to bend, filtering in the aquamarine light that was pouring out of Michael’s eyes like a car’s headlamps. It would’ve been goofy if she wasn’t relieved that they weren’t in a well-executed trap.
“I misjudged the distance. We should’ve aimed for a step more.” Michael explained, before turning his gaze downwards, “Woah, what’s that?”
Ben gagged, almost unable to turn and look down at what had shocked Michael so much. That wasn’t his scared-for-his-life voice, so it wasn’t imperative to know. It was probably just something disgusting. Like human bones.
She had still never gotten over her squeamishness around human corpses. Even after all the time she had spent fighting zombies. Sure, she had been able to compartmentalize it at the time, and tell herself that it was fine because she was just keeping herself alive, but once they weren’t up and trying to bite her lungs out, she wanted nothing to do with a corpse. And she especially didn’t want to know that she was standing on one.
“It looks like… footprints.” Michael mused, crouching down to look at it, “Human footprints. And fresh ones, at that.”
Oh, thank god, no corpses. She took a breath and looked down, only to find spongy earth interwoven with twigs and branches and hair, just like the rest of the Nest. But there was a definitive track of human feet clad in shoes marked into the soil, pacing around and around.
“Since when do you have the tracking experience?” She joked, as Michael tilted his head, looking at the mess of footprints. Ben had done her own fair share of tracking, before they had magic abilities to help them, but it was strictly relegated to animals.
“Since I spent my formative years growing up in a wasteland where humans were left squabbling over precious few resources.” Michael drily responded, “And I recognize these as Verity’s bootprints. No one else has anything like them.”
“Maybe they miraculously made shoes with the same pattern on the soles here?” Ben offered, trying not to get their hopes up.
“No, I’m sure. See that smooth bit? It’s from the piece of leather she sewed on herself to repair the boot. These were made by Verity’s boots. They were keeping her here.” Michael told her with dead certainty.
The only question was… where had she gone now?
[Player Log End!]