Raella was ashamed to admit she felt better than she had in years. There was something so comfortable about this solid physical body with low intelligence. Without all the lessons, breathing techniques (pranayama), and Chi manipulation usually taking up her concentration, Raella could fully allow herself to simply be and take in the world around her. She felt like a puppy again as she bounded through the early night wind, which carried with it the lingering warmth of the day, and the ominous scent of smoke.

Raella could still access to all her knowledge in this form, but she felt like a dog that had memorized an encyclopedia. Being a lvl 1 Spirit Wolf kept her "hard drive" the same, but her 'RAM" was almost non existent. This limitation mostly affected her ability to manipulate Chi, (something she wouldn't be doing with an empty core anyway.)

There shouldn't be anything on this weak Plane that my naked fangs couldn't handle, right? ...Not to mention Elder Jihe is with me.

Everyone still called her a child, but at 18 winters old–Raella would be considered ancient for a mortal Canine. Compared to her father and Elder Jihe, it was nothing. She doubted she would ever be anything other than little “Rae-Shi” to her Clan, Sect, and Father. Reishi was a mushroom. Her father loved them so much she was almost named after one. “Raella” was the compromise. It was the one thing about her Mother she was thankful for, even if she loved mushrooms just as much as her Dad.

Raella smelled mushrooms in the forest right now! Drool flowed from her mouth as she resisted the strong urge her body had to bolt towards the nearest source of food. Raella did her best to keep her eyes fixed on Elder Jihe and her nose on the scent of fire as she ran.

Another reason she was glad to be in this simple mind–Raella was terrified. Being a wolf made it harder to be afraid about thoughts. Instinct told her fear was only for threats directly in front of her. But it was she who first noticed things had been strange with her Dad.

This all started seven years ago when a mangey old Coyote with three legs (he was missing his left pawhand) came to their home looking for Master Shen. He mentioned a strange name though–Skagi. It was a name that her Father knew, but was not happy to hear. He whisked the Coyote away to a sealed chamber and presumably had tea with the shady beast for three hours before sending him on his way. Raella had asked about the guest, and the name Skagi, but her Father had said what he did everytime she asked something important: “I will tell you everything when you are older.”

Elder Jihe had agreed with Raella that the meeting was weird, and promised to look into it himself. The owl said that Father wouldn’t tell him anything about it either.

So even Elder Jihe couldn’t know, and he was REALLY old!

It wasn’t fair. Their family didn’t keep secrets. The only reason the event stood out was how unusual it was that her Dad wouldn't talk about it. But that was a long time ago, and they let themselves forget.

Until three moons ago, the same Coyote showed up again! This time during the night. Nobody saw anything (as it was Henlohoji who must have brought him in), but Raella smelled him. Even though it was seven years ago, Raella had remembered very well that particular Coyote’s scent. The traces of him were in her Dad's tea room the next morning. He had burned cleansing herbs, and smoked a lot of Mapacho in there to try and cover it up, but Raella's nose could cut through it easily and she detected the odor of the mysterious visitor anyway.

Raella told Elder Jihe, who was very concerned about the secrecy, and the coverup. The Elder told her his owls said that Father had snuck into the North Wind Pagoda late on that same night to collect a young disciple named Noren-Yan Ninra’Suul, and that the owl had not been seen since! Elder Jihe asked Father about the owl, and Father had said that he sent the boy far away to “gather a rare herb” for him. When Elder Jihe pressed him further, he said the herb was called “Ligma”, but she and Elder Jihe had never heard of it. The library revealed nothing, either. Then, the very moment Noren-Yan returned, her father ran off somewhere in the Middle World! Raella hated this, but the new Wolf Raiment Weeps Over Reeds had given her was AwEsOmE!

She loved the way the feather's swooshed as she ran. It seemed like the Raiment responded to gravity much less than it should, which gave its adornments an uncanny, underwater quality as they trailed behind her. She was using her set bonus to talk to all the owls in the forest as she went. Elder Jihe had asked her to help him gather them.

Elder Jihe could speak Owlish, but he could only use Telepathy with fellow Cultivators or Spirit Beasts. Telepathy was a branch of mind magic, and somewhat invasive, while Chi Speak was just creating real sound with Chi manipulation. It was a common skill mastered by beasts that lacked the tongues for human speech. Owlish was an odeously poetic, abstract language, and every phrase had multiple subjective interpretations. Direct translation to English was impossible.

It was not an efficient communication medium in a crisis.

The description of Raella's Wolf Raiment said she could speak telepathically with all owls, which proved true. However, the unawakened ones could not understand much besides simple instructions.

“Hey owls, hey owls, hey, owls come here, owls, hey, owl, come here owl, hey owl, come here, follow US!” She shouted into the trees all around her using telepathic link.

"Who is it? Who goes?"

"Who calls?"

"A Great One has come. A hidden Master. An Ancestor."

"We must go."

"Heed the call. Follow he who sings the song of embers, and we too shall rise."

"He will find me beneath his wing."

It seemed to be working. A whole bunch of owls of a couple species were following behind them. Elder Jihe must have seen something, because he changed direction and led them to a small hill where he landed on a bare and very dead Oak Tree. It looked like it had burned in a previous fire. Raella laid down beneath the tree to pant and rest, as over the next few minutes the entire tree became filled with owls.

They all quieted down after Elder Jihe flared his Chi and made some owl noises only they could understand. There were (4) owls on the opposite branch, slightly below Elder Jihe. Every owl was bowing so low they were almost hanging upside down by their talons. The tree looked like it was full of bats!

“These lowly ones have heeded the Elders command and gathered before the esteemed Patriarch!” said a Great Horned Owl in Telepathic English.

“Rise.” said Jihe.

The four leaders of the owls rose, and the rest of the owls followed in a radial wave that made the whole tree bounce and shake as nearly two hundred owls all flipped upright on their perches at the same time.

“My name is Elder Jihe-Ganquin Yolanra’Suul. I am on a mission of utmost discretion and secrecy, and I need help. However, for you to be my eyes and ears on this night, you will also become additional witnesses to things that must not be seen. Therefore, I cannot ask any of my mortal cousins to help me unless they have been bound by a soul contract of secrecy. Also, should you choose to help, you will no longer be permitted to live here in Middle World.'

'This necessity shall be your reward. All of you will return with me to my home in Lower World, where I will take full responsibility for your lives. It is a place of opportunities beyond your imagination, but the chances you will ever return to the Middle World are low. I will give you three minutes to decide, and owls that do not accept the contract must fly one hundred Li from here and speak nothing about this again, or die by my talons. If any deserters should escape me today, I will find you eventually.’ declared Jihe with telepathic link.

‘Make your choice.”

The four most important looking owls, (who Raella guessed must be weak Spirit Beasts) turned their heads around and presumably squawked a translation of what Elder Jihe had telepathized to the rest of the unawakened owls. There was a lot of bird noise in the tree after that, but before the three minutes were up, it had stopped.

"If I may ask the Great Benefactor a few questions, we could decide our fates with confidence." said a smaller awakened owl, trembling.

"It is wise to understand agreements fully before oaths are taken. Speak, Pinep." said Jihe.

"How do we know we can trust you? How do we know you're not working for...'

Pinep paused for dramatic effect as she panned her head around, gazing fearfully at the other owls in the tree.

...a witch!"

The rest of the owls puffed up like blowfish and their eyes opened wide as they huddled closer to one another in fear.

"Aye, a witch!" an owl said.

"It could be..." said another.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Iss as tha smeh ah wishes ah ova it!" said a Opossum using Chi Speak to produce barely discernable English.

He couldn't even understand what the owls were saying. The Opossum just heard a bunch of noise in his tree, looked out, saw it was full of owls, and concluded that witches were responsible. He spat out the hole in his tree to get the word "witch" out of his mouth after using it. Then he thumped his pink tail three times against the wall of his hole, spun three times clockwise, three times counter clockwise, mumbled something to himself, and began to plug the entrance of his hole in the tree with a flat stone by surrounding the edges with mud and dirt.

Elder Jihe leaned down and said:

"Sir, you need to evacuate; a forest fire is coming this way, we are-"

"I'ant leav'n. Been tru dis before. We gunna ride it ou lie las time. Ope da wishes burn!" he said, spitting once more before sealing the final crack in his "door" closed with a think smear of clay.

"BURN THE WITCHES!" the four Spirit Owls across from Elder Jihe screeched in unison. The unawakened owls began to screech as well. Raella listened to her Owlish to English translation over telepathic link with amusement:

"May the sun melt before the forge fires of my rage, its fire devours the dry fuel of witch flesh!"

"I wish that I were molten lead so that I may pour down upon the foul bodies of witches and become a sculptural representation of their pain!"

"May my talons pluck a thousand witches eyes so I may hurl them into burning coals and watch them pop like grapes!"

"I will put the witches in a room full of rats and the rats will eat them and then I will eat the rats and after I puke the rat fur and bones up again, I will fashion a Great Zuggurat from their remains, and then set that whole thing on fire before extinguishing it with my-"

"Silence!' said Jihe.

And it was so.

'Why do you think I would be in league with...'

Elder Jihe reconsidered saying the word again.

'those foul things." he recovered.

"Besides the scary moon, the storm, the fire, and the she-wolf wearing bones and owl feathers who can speak to us in our heads?" said Vigil.

"I'm guessing the bitch is a witch, and you're her familiar! She will add our feathers and bones to her grim regalia! And use our offal as offering in a dark ritual!" said Yarok.

At those words, thunder boomed in the distance beneath the gathering storm. It was not helpful to Elder Jihe's negotiations, and the owls started hooting and spinning their heads around like the lights on a firetruck. After several wasted seconds, the commotion stopped.

"You make a compelling argument,' said Elder Jihe, as he glanced down at Raella.

"However, I can prove that she is not one of them, and that her magical abilities come from her clothes." said Elder Jihe as he activated the storage ring on his ankle and produced a length of golden thread.

Raella knew that this was a scroll receipt. Some scrolls that give instructions, create maps, or print information, etc–leave behind the thread that tied it together before it was unsealed. By tying a simple knot in this thread, you can make the blue box the scroll originally produced appear again. Pulling the knot loose dismisses the box. Most people would throw them away, (Raella did) but Elder Jihe saved every one he had. She could see the wisdom in that practice now.

Jihe tied (5) of these scroll recipts together, (one for each item in her set) and then joined them all in a ring. An identical blue box to the one Jihe viewed earlier appeared in the air, and with a spreading motion of his wings, he willed the box to grow large enough for every owl in the tree to read.

Vigil broke the silence:

"Why's it called, ...of the Made you Look, Owl?"

"What's a Made you Look Owl?" asked Koti.

"I did not craft the item' said Jihe.

...But the feathers on it are mine, freely given. As to the name... It made you look, didn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Yep."

"It did."

"I looked."

'Very well then. And I trust that the fact she is wearing System Sanctioned Items proves the Young Mistress is not a witch?" asked Jihe.

"Of course."

"For sure."

"Without a doubt."

"The System hates witches, yes."

"Very well then!" said Jihe.

In the end, only (3) owls flew away from the tree.

(188) owls accepted the Soul Contract of Secrecy, as well as swore oaths to become a [Disciple of Elder Jihe].

“Our planet small, Elder Jihe.” said Raella.

“Begging forgiveness is better than asking permission, as recent events keep instructing me. Fear not Young Mistress; my new disciples shall eat mice in the forest until they prove themselves. They will not be roosting among my inner disciples of the North Wind Pagoda.” said Elder Jihe with a sadistic look in his eye that Raella remembered well.

It meant that one hundred and sixty-seven owls will soon be boiling water over and over until they can tell him the temperature by sound, among other ridiculous things. She was sure many of them would regret their decision to come home with them. But for beasts toughing it out on the Material Plane, the deal Jihe was offering them was the chance of a lifetime.

As long as most could remember, Middle World had been a very difficult place to be a Spirit Beast. They have been hunted mercilessly by Cultivators for their cores to the point of near extinction. Not to mention the loss of habitat to industrialization by the mortals. For most creatures, advancement is like tusks on an Elephant; a source of power and pride, but also a vanity that could get you hunted down and killed. For that reason, most did not follow the path of Cultivation (if they even know about it). Because the strongest Spirit Beast living on the Material Plane was only as strong as the average human cultivator. The only good thing is that human cultivators were rare.

They are so rare, most humans don’t even know what Cultivation, or the System, or Chi even is! Raella asked her Dad once how many human Cultivators were in Middle World on Earth, and he said it could be as high as ten thousand or even as low as one hundred! No one knew for sure. Earth Cultivators were VERY secretive about stuff, especially who they were.

Spirit beasts are much more common. And the fact that FOUR owls out of the one hundred and eighty-eight here were awakened was an extremely high number. There was an awakened Puma family here as well, and that Opossum... which caused Raella to wonder if they might be on Sacred Land or above a leyline of Chi. But the animals also seemed to have a grasp on cultivator culture, rank, and deference–so that made Raella suspect that the spirit beasts in this area had been awakened and taught by someone.

Elder Jihe seemed to be done giving orders to his new slaves disciples. The smoke was getting thick overhead now.

One hundred owls would go scout the perimeter of the fire and assist in warning the forest before reporting back to Elder Jihe. The rest would remain as a retinue for Raella and Elder Jihe–fanning out in the four directions and reporting what they find.

Yarok, (the Great Horned Owl from earlier) would lead the owls in charge of the fire. The other awakened ones were Burrowing Owls named Koti, Pinep, and Vigil. Raella was amused to learn they were triplet sisters. They wanted to stay together, and went with Raella and Jihe as well to look for her Father. Elder Jihe’s job for them was to “Guard Shri Raella and keep her safe”, which she thought was stupid. The three owl hens accepted this new duty with annoying seriousness.

Yarok and his centurion broke off to the Northwest. Raella, Jihe, Koti, Vigil, and Pinep doubled back towards the Oak Node [closed] to pick up her Father’s trail. They also learned something interesting as they traveled; Telepathic Link is better than normal telepathy!

Each owl in the link is linked to every other owl within 50 meters, meaning the range could extend far beyond 50 meters as long as each individual owl stayed less than 50 meters away from at least one other owl in the network. If Raella moved 50 meters from the owls in the link, the link would break and all the owls would lose contact. But as long as the owls formed a "chain" and Raella was one link of that chain, every single creature in the chain was basically in a private group chat. Raella thought it would be noisy, but the owls limited their communication to brief status reports, while Elder Jihe dispatched orders.

They were quickly forming a line of owls back towards the fire team to reconnect them to the network.

Raella’s stomach filled with dread when she heard that their first report was of a death.

Even more alarming, the deceased wasn’t any of the owls that were with them, or the (3) owls who left.

They waited for Yarok's owls who carried the body to arrive. When they did, they laid it on the ground at Raella’s feet.

It was Noren-Yan Ninra’Suul.