[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Michael Kapok]

[Level: 2 (Sub-Level)]

“Okay, we can do this.” Michael assured himself, “How hard can it be to find her? They probably took her to do a trial.”

“Feathertooth said that they only did that in the daytime.” Ben pointed out.

“Yeah, you’re right, she probably failed a test and has now been fed to the demon birds.” Michael agreed, his breath tight and panicking.

“There weren’t any fresh human bones in their lair. It’s fine.” Ben told him sternly, “Calm down, kid, we don’t need your powers going haywire on top of all this.”

Fine. He took a breath, and forced himself to be calm. When he spoke next, his words were measured and careful, “What’s our next move? Do we look for the center of this nest, or do we start investigating where Verity was taken to after leaving this place?”

Ben thought it over, before shrugging, “This could be a false lead. As long as they have power over the playing field, we’ll have the short end of the stick. I say we trust Feathertooth to fulfill the mission that it volunteered for, and stay on the mission we started out with.”

Alright then. The decision was made. He reactivated his Sorcery, pulling up the spell that he’d been using to track the ebb of magic. In his eyes, it appeared almost like ocean waves, washing through the walls and corridors without any disturbance, and then pulling back into an epicenter nestled somewhere inside the Nest.

That epicenter was where he was trying to get them to, watching the tendrils linger on spots and rearrange the insides of the walls to change where the secret tunnels lay.

Two steps ahead from them, a new tunnel was opening up. But it would lead them away from where the strongest waves were ebbing from. He walked past it and instead went for the passageway that was built into the floor, and was barely wide enough for him to fit into, but he managed it.

“You couldn’t find a better way through?” Ben whined behind him.

“I can get us to the source of the power in the next hour if we use this tunnel.” Michael told her to tide her over. It wasn’t a lie. Judging from how strong the waves were here, and how tight the circle seemed to be, they were in the final stretch of their journey.

“Brilliant.” Ben didn’t look too cheerful at the thought as they slipped out of the trap tunnel and onto the corridor below. Then a hand landed on Michael’s back, forcing him to the ground. Right above him, there was a flutter of feathers and a dark silhouette of a bird passing over them.

He held his breath, watching as it zipped up into the tunnel that they had just been in.

“You think it saw us?” He breathed.

“No. Otherwise it would’ve at least stopped.” Ben replied, “But let’s pick up the pace, anyway.”

Michael nodded, looking around with an analytical – and very magical – eye, watching the waves pulse and return back to their epicenter, right… there!

“Left turn, unhidden.” He told her, and Ben was already charging ahead. He followed suit, casting a proximity alert spell to make sure no one was creeping up on them. The halls here were roomier. Enough for them to even walk around upright without having to worry about getting twigs in their hair, or stretch their arms out wide without being able to touch the sides. On one hand, that meant it was easier to run and hear birds coming. On the other hand, it brought up images in his head about the size of the raven which would require such a passage to be built.

He shuddered and shrunk into the side of the wall, careful to sidestep any soft spots that were currently being built into them, magic flicking over them like a tongue of flame.

The energy pulsed once more, and the waves burst back out, stronger than ever. No doubt about it, they were getting close. He could feel it, lighting up the path that it was trying so hard to obfuscate with other meaningless red herrings.

“Come on, I think we can get to it with just one more step…” He looked around carefully as he made his next move. Couldn’t mess this up. Verity was counting on him. From the mess of outlines and empty spaces and tangled threads of magic, he pointed down a tunnel that tilted slightly down.

Ben nodded sharply, understanding the command and skirting over to the tunnel. She put a foot down on it, testing for… something. Michael didn’t understand. What he did understand, though, was the feeling of his proximity alert going off, followed by the raucous cry of crows, mostly unintelligible save for one dire word.

Verity.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

Ben moved quick, grabbing him by the arm and pushing him down into the tunnel. The slope was just steep enough and the twigs just flat enough to send him sliding downwards. Michael went tumbling down, end over end, errant twigs scraping at his skin and pulling at his hair, until he landed in a heap at the bottom.

Ben slid in after him, expertly balanced on her feet the whole while. It was much quieter here, Michael noted, not that he could make out much of their surroundings, the air so thick with magic at this point that he was blinded by it.

“You think they found out she disappeared or that they know where she is?” Michael asked her, his voice a raspy whisper.

“I think-” Ben was contemplating her next words carefully, “I think that we could really use Terry in this situation.” Yeah, no surprise there.

“Let’s just hope that the world isn’t burning down around us as we speak and stick to our objective.” Michael decided, wiping at his eyes as he stood up, as if that would help any.

“About that…” Ben’s voice was distant. In tone, not physical distance. She was standing right beside him, if he could feel it right, “Seems to me like we’ve completed it.”

Michael spun around, much too dizzy from the slope to do that with any grace, but he didn’t care.

Above them both, there loomed a pulsing cocoon of something, a solid, yet flexible green membrane, floating in midair, anchored by thick, cherry-red cables that seemed to be organic, protruding out from the walls and the ceiling.

The contents of the membrane were easy to make out, as the slowly-roiling liquid it held was glowing so brightly that it illuminated everything inside. Including the body of what looked to be a bird, nearly twice the size of a car, that slowly drifted about inside it.

“Eurgh, what is that?” He found himself asking before his brain could catch up to his mouth. It was the center of the magic, obviously. The nest was being controlled by a giant bird stuck in a control cocoon of sorts. What else could it be?

Ben, however, didn’t see the question from that angle. Instead, she looked at it carefully, “Appears to be some sort of pupae, like a butterfly’s.” She mused, “Or perhaps more akin to a pitcher plant?”

“What makes you say that?”

“The body inside is breaking down.” Ben explained, “There’s a distinctiveness to it which implies that the juices are digestive.”

Michael didn’t know much about digestive juices and the way they acted, but he could see that through the light, there were bits were the flesh of the bird was coming loose, and where the bones were sticking out, all illuminated in grisly green. It sure looked like it was stuck in a vat of stomach acid.

“You think it’s a prisoner? Or it’s in on this?” Michael asked.

“No idea.” Ben replied, “We can’t tell through a membrane as thick as this if it’s even aware that we’re here, or we could’ve tried to communicate with it.”

“This thing has been controlling the entire Nest, purposefully trying to keep us off the scent. You think it’s interested in communicating?” Michael asked, bewildered. He would’ve given Ben an outraged look, but for the life of him, he couldn’t pull his eyes away from the bulging sac of fluid hanging above their heads. It pulsed once, the entire membrane jostling at the motion, and he feared that it would pop.

But it held fast. For now.

“Couldn’t hurt to try, right?” Ben suggested.

“It could hurt!” Michael replied, “We don’t know how versatile its abilities are. It could trap us in here. It could throw us back into the baby raven nest we barely got through. It could-”

He was cut off by a rumbling behind them, like a stampede in midair, and crows – not submerged in unidentifiable liquid and coming apart the seams – flew in from a corridor that had only just materialized.

They rose up as a single swath of feathery black, surrounding them on all sides. Beady yellow eyes stared at Michael from all directions, their beaks and talons shining menacingly. There were so many of them crammed in there that they blotted out the unearthly glow of the magical sac attached to the ceiling.

“It could notify them that we’re here.” He finished, his mouth so dry that he could barely get the words out. Ben gulped from beside him, similarly reduced to silence.

High-pitched caws rustled around them, incomprehensible to Michael’s ears. He waited for them to surge forward and rip them to shreds. They didn’t. It seemed that for the moment, they were content swirling around, seething in rage.

Finally, something broke through the swarm. Another sleek, ink-colored bird. Except this time, when it opened its beak, words came out.

“Hello, humans.” It warbled, “Do you have anything to do with our interrupted trial? Because I found that your friend had been doing quite well so far. Until she broke the solemn protocol that we have been conducting our trials with for generations.”

What to say in response to that? Yes, that was why they were there, but also that no, they had no idea what was happening? Lie and obfuscate? Make an even taller tale about plans to infiltrate and assassinate their future bird overlords who were sleeping within the nest? There were too many options, and none of them particularly appealing.

“We were planning on doing that.” Ben replied, choosing to go with the most straightforward option, “But it seemed that she broke out already. That part we had nothing to do with.”

It clicked its tongue in disapproval, “Ah, well, you see that as transgressors in a court of law, you must die, right?”

“Uh, no?” Michael asked, his voice hitting a new octave.

“Now I have informed you of such.” It spread its wings wide, “See the sentencer of your doom, for I am Lapika, leading raven in the Avian Judicial-” It was cut off by a tearing sound from above them, right where the heart of the Nest’s magic was anchored. Everyone immediately turned to look, the birds fluttering back to give it a wide berth lest it fall.

Because of the absence of birds to obscure his view, Michael could once again see the heart, pulsing intermittently with green light that bathed the room.

Except it wasn’t completely green anymore. There was yellow mixed in. Yellow like the sun, which was pouring in through a gash in the ceiling, situated right above the heart, which was rocking backwards and forwards, thick membrane twitching and curling into itself until a seam split open at the very top of it, allowing no liquid or half-decayed bird monster to escape.

There was a person sitting on the lip of the gash on the ceiling, leaning in far enough to just nearly bridge the gap between it and the heart.

“What is that idiot doing?” Ben asked incredulously. Because that person was Verity Monroe, looking dead to the world.

[Player Log End!]