Ornis ran.
As fast as he could, to wherever he could hide.
Women… Women are scary!!!
And as he dashed away, hiding from the conglomeration of women with flowery hair and dresses, he bumped into someone. Deja vu hit Ornis like a freight train, and he staggered backwards in disbelief, thinking that he’d found himself back at the mercy of the women.
But to his surprise, when he looked up, he saw the brilliant and dreamy heterochromic eyes of the Light Lord Phos. Salvation!
“Lord Phos! Why did you abandon me….” Ornis’s voice held contempt, disappointment, and a hint of relief.
Phos had a flashback of their first meeting. Ornis seemed much more… cooler? Suave? But gazing into the helpless face of the Lord the size of a child, Phos couldn’t bring himself to ask Ornis why he hadn’t kept up. Rather, Phos wanted to give him a head pat.
Raising his hand, Phos shuffled Ornis’s feather-like black hair.
Ornis stiffened, his eyes widening. For the entirety of his 150 million years of living, no one had acted so familiar with him. Not even his best friend Erpeto, nor his mentor Aer. Phos’s hand, smooth and warm, brushed across his tangled hair like a wave of soft light. He melted under it for a second, relaxing as he nuzzled into Phos’s palm.
Phos thought: I’m adopting Lord Ornis.
Kass, Nymph, and Pyre had fallen behind at some point, and when they approached Phos, they found the tiny Lord of Birds leaning into a head pat. With any other Lord, Nymph would have given them a thorough beating. But the scene before her reminded her of her past admiring the God of the Sun, feeling like part of a family, beaming with happiness whenever he gave her words of encouragement.
All Lords longed for such human relations. This was only natural…
Meanwhile, Kass and Pyre stood to the side, dumbfounded. Pyre held hostility towards Ornis, and Kass could practically see the electric sparks flying everywhere between the two, even when Ornis didn’t even so much as glance at Pyre. While Phos petted Ornis like an older brother, Pyre looked almost like he wanted to tear them apart from each other.
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Ornis, squinting in happiness, snapped out of his daze when he realised the number of Lords who had caught him in this act. He shoved Phos’s hand away, rescrambled his hair to resemble a bird’s nest, and put on a concealing and cold expression.
“Lord Phos, Lord Kass. You have some explaining to do!” He shoved his finger at the two of them. “I turned for a second, then you disappeared!!”
Kass avoided Ornis’s gaze, while Phos retracted his hand, stunned. The first Lord to respond to Ornis was not Kass or Phos, but rather….
“So you three were having fun at the festival together?” Pyre shouted with a childish intonation, back to sounding like an idiot. “That sounds nice, invite me next time!”
Nymph nodded next to him. “Me too—I didn’t know any of you were here! Especially you, Ornis.”
Ornis’s ears perked up. He hadn’t expected to get called out by the Lord of Nature, whom he considered his direct superior right next to Aer. Glancing up at the woman, Ornis marvelled at the smooth design of her white silk dress. She blended in with the environment, like a goddess of clouds. When she smiled, the dark atmosphere diffused in an instant.
If he’d known that Nymph was so easy to approach, he would have talked to her sooner.
On the other hand, Pyre, the Lord of Fire, stood out like a sore thumb. This wasn’t a problem of his beautiful blue, frosted-tipped hair nor of his iridescent white eyes—nothing to do with his appearance which fit in with the azure sky—but rather of his personality. Ornis had never heard of such a peppy, energetic, orange cat-like Lord, except for a couple token lords who were definitely not the young man standing before him now. Furthermore, the undisguised killing intent in the Lord’s eyes sent a cold shiver up Ornis’s spine.
Phos noticed Ornis’s discomfort and quickly introduced the man.
“This is Pyre, the Lord of Flames.”
“I figured. What other Lord has such a dynamic outfit choice and colour scheme… wait, doesn’t Lord Pyre carry around a sniper gun??” Ornis blanched. He sure didn’t want to lose his life—this Lord seemed vicious.
“Does he carry it around all the time, though?” Phos examined Pyre from head-to-toe, taking in the sharp fitted creases in his trench coat.
Where exactly would he hide that entire sniper rifle..?
It had such explosive power too, from what Phos remembered of their first encounter. While Phos similarly carried a small pistol in his back pocket, he never had to worry about it misfiring. But was that the same for Pyre?
Pyre shook his head with a sigh. That rifle could only be summoned with very specific means—why would he tell anyone? An image flashed through his mind, of the Sun God Helios bestowing him the gun and proclaiming him his younger brother.
Helios….
His pupils shrank, and he glanced at Phos. His mission….
When Nymph and Kass joined the conversation by promising an outing with all five of them at one point, Pyre blinked his thoughts away. He could work later. For now, he just had to watch over Phos. A fairly simple task, as while Phos seemed reckless and blunt, he had a surprisingly cautious side to him.
Having internalised from Phos’s descriptions that Pyre was a good man, Ornis visibly relaxed, his hunched shoulders dropping as he untensed his body and mind.
Right… his main request for Phos and Kass!
Ornis turned to Nymph. If Phos and Kass were too untrustworthy, he’d simply ask the one person he seeked out the most. The Lord of Nature, Nymph, who was like a goddess in Ornis’s eyes.
“You are sworn sisters with Aer, correct?”
Nymph wondered about this sudden shift in conversation, before nodding resolutely.
“Please help me talk to her.”