Jun set his lunch to the side.
He’d really only needed the bag in any case. He grabbed the sack and held it open, as if raising the rumpled thing to the heavens in offering. In all of its liberally stained and savory smelling glory.
With a thought, a glowing blue rectangle appeared before him, covered in scrolling texts and spinning icons. Evidently familiar with this impromptu menu, he quickly selected the coin shaped icon on the far left with another mental command.
In the next moment a new screen appeared to overlap the first. He looked blankly at this new screen for some time while the page scrolled, before he eventually pulled a face.
With a disgruntled tsk he made a mental confirmation. After that—with a series of brilliant golden flashes—a stream of marble sized pills materialized out of thin air only to fall with a series of clicks into the proffered hole.
Without pause, this miraculous stream of round medicines continued to rain down for quite some time, until the sack was nearly filled to the brim.
Jun, for his part, despite the inconceivable sight occurring not inches away, looked as if he were being made to watch his entire family being butchered. When the spontaneous stream of pills finally stopped, Jun pulled the drawstring tight and got to his feet. He stared at the bird with only a hint of resentment, and a boatload of weary resignation.
“Look, Feathers, if you’re going to be munching on anything it might as well be these. Can’t say they haven’t served me well, but I’m pretty sure they’ll do a lot more for you than my brains ever could.”
And with that, he tossed the sack practically overflowing with peak grade mending pills and revitalizing tonics at the beak of the titanic feathery beast.
The ones worth a small fortune in spirit coins.
The ones he’d just paid a small fortune for.
The ones that would soon be swept down the proverbial drain like so much drainage disposal. It was like the worst of his nightmares made manifest. It was fine, though. It was ok. He was nearly a man grown now. He wouldn’t weep over something as trivial as this. No matter how much he wanted to.
The bird looked at his incredibly generous offering, and he could’ve sworn, for a second, it almost appeared skeptical.
Oh, you ungrateful little-! Big-! Well, alright, you’re pretty darn huge, I’ll grant you, but that still doesn’t give you the right to-!
After taking a tentative sniff, however, Feathers lowered its head sharply, pinched the relatively tiny cloth sack between its massive beak, then tossed it down its gullet with a swift and fluid motion that belied its massive size.
Jun suddenly felt weak.
Not just in the body, but in his very soul as well. Feathers quickly finished swallowing and then looked down at Jun somewhat ominously.
An errant thought hit him then. Ramming into his mind like the head of a sledgehammer, and neatly embedding itself there for all to see.
What if it just ate him?
Because, really, what was stopping it? It was a spirit beast after all, they weren’t exactly known for their good will. It was a possibility he hadn’t fully appreciated until now. And, as he felt was only natural, now it was all that he could think about.
When he ruminated on the thought process that’d led him this far, he found that he’d predicated much on the unfounded belief that this bird would be suitably grateful after his grand and noble sacrifice. But that begged the question, could it even feel gratitude? Or was this plan actually doomed to fail from the very beginning?
And even worse!
If so, did that also mean he’d just thrown away all that coin for nothing!?
He’d been running on pure intuition up until this point and praying his improvisation would be enough in the end. But what if his intuition was actually terrible? He couldn’t be eaten! He had so much left to do! Recoup his losses on this disaster for one. No. He wouldn’t be eaten. He outright refused. He would fight! … somehow… in some way… surely…
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Well, he wouldn’t go down easily, that was for sure! Oh no, not him. No way no how. If he was going to die here, he would choke the life from the damned bird, if it was the last thing he did. He could do that much at least.
Hells, if the bird was so keen on eating him, he would do that much and more! He would-! He would-! …he… paused, then he sighed. No. No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t go down kicking and screaming like a petulant child.
If these were to be his final moments, he would accept his death with the dignity and poise he’d always hoped to show when his time finally came. Sure, he hadn’t imagined this to be the way he’d go out, but who knew better than him how things rarely went to plan?
And so, with a lighter heart than he’d thought himself capable, and a reaffirmed resolution, Jun open his arms wide, closed his eyes, and embraced his fate with a wry smile.
image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]
The Roc looked down at the strangely standing human while waiting for her bones to reset. She cocked her head to the side in obvious confusion.
Well, it certainly seemed like an odd way to stand, but then again, what did she know?
Perhaps this was the way all humans stood when they weren’t moving around or making loud noises. She’d honestly never paid close enough attention to their comings and goings to be sure one way or another. She knew others in her clan paid closer attention to such things. Perhaps she would ask one of them when she returned.
Even still, it certainly seemed very peculiar. Let humans be humans, she decided sagely. So long as they weren’t encroaching on the nest. She’d already known from his aura that this wasn’t one of the truly scary ones. True, there was a stink about him that she didn’t entirely understand, but that was no reason to kill the youngling, only frighten him a bit. Just so that she was sure he knew his place.
She’d learned over the course of these last few cycles that you could never be too trusting of their kind, after all. He had surprised her though.
Against all expectations he’d offered her a gift, if a meager one.
Nevertheless, she was grateful for the aid. And a gift received must always be repaid in kind, she asserted with a wise bob of her head. And so, it was with slow movements, as not to stress the healing process currently mending the worst of her wounds, that the Sheer Talon Roc plucked free a single feather from her plumage, and immediately began imbuing it with the heights of her Resonance Pillar. Not in a bid to empower it, as she might do by invoking a chosen mantra, but instead to suffuse it with her present understandings.
And then, in another few moments the process was done.
Finished with her obligation—and recognizing that her body was as recovered as it was likely to get—she released the feather. Allowing it to drift down towards the interesting little human.
With a grateful nod in his direction, she propelled herself into the sky with a single beat of her wings.
She’d traveled far and wide to stamp out the last embers of this rebellion. Even going so far as to test the bounds of one of the dangerous human settlements. One last beast lord in need of putting down before she’d finally feel safe in returning to her clan, mate, and rambunctious little chicks.
And just like that, with images of home on the forefront of her mind, Skyfar Clawdancer, Aerial Noblesse of the Astari Clan, propelled herself towards the enemy.
image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]
Strangely enough, despite the flurry of torrential winds which tore at seemingly everything around, the lightly drifting feather didn’t shift off course by a hair—entirely unperturbed by anything and everything outside of its predetermined path. Held fast, as if by an invisible tether, it merely drifted its way ever closer, towards the one it had been meant for since its spiritual conception.
image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]
After the furious winds settled, the air around him became eerily still. Bracing himself for the worst, Jun hesitantly opened his eyes to narrow slits.
Nothing.
He wasn’t dead. Huh. Well, wasn’t that a pleasant surprise. He let his arms flop back to his sides somewhat lamely.
Though that did beg the question, where’d the big bird go?
A loud yip sounded from somewhere behind him. Turning, he just barely caught the streaking blur of obsidian fur and brown feathers, as the big bad wolf was snatched up into the air—its flailing claws and massive teeth little use when dangling from several stories up.
Now that he could properly take a second to compare the two, he realized that Feathers was indeed significantly larger than the wolf. To what lengths had this wolf gone to get the upper hand in the end, Jun wondered.
Thinking on it, for a moment, he almost felt bad for the poor pup. But then he remembered how it’d tried to eat him less than a minute ago and all empathy he might’ve felt quickly evaporated.
Without warning Jun’s legs gave out.
Now lying atop the lumpy carpet of torn up earth and blood-soaked sod, he reveled in the sensations of simply being alive.
It was only then, as his eyes appreciated the bright blue color of the sky, that he noticed something peculiar floating lazily towards him. Was that a feather?
Feather’s feather.
He chuckled. Must’ve tugged free in its sudden departure. Almost absentmindedly, Jun reached out a hand as if to catch it. When his finger and the feather finally touched, however, the world around him first warped, then smeared, and then vanished entirely.