While Sera would have liked to say that the next few days were a blur, just like in a training montage, that hadn’t really been the case. They had been boring as sin, though. As it turns out, the early stages of magic training were intensely boring, little more than sitting there and thinking really hard about how much one wanted the mana inside oneself to move. She’d actually fallen asleep a few times trying to compress mana into a core, and she didn’t feel that she’d made much progress.

Weren’t people supposed to gain special powers instantly in these situations?

As one might guess, she had decided to take the mage path rather than the warrior path. The odds were low that Sera might be able to devise a way back to Earth when no one else had in three thousand years, but she wasn’t quite ready to take someone else at their word when she was told it was impossible. Even if she did figure it out, there was a possibility that she wouldn’t even want to go back by then, having built a life here in the meantime, but that was a decision future Sera could make if it came down to it.

At any rate, Sera had spent a whole lot of time doing absolutely nothing but meditate while Tiriana went about her duties. Apparently the elf wasn’t as idle as she might have appeared at first glance; as one of two adventurers on duty in camp, she was tasted with patrolling and hunting, and she had only been able to trade those duties off to someone else for so long. In exchange, she had given up her place in the schedule, allowing the other person on duty to leave when Aisinct returned instead of her.

The dragon man had quickly made himself scarce upon returning, and Sera had only caught glimpses of him on the way in and out of camp since then. It remained a mystery to her what he did in his time off, although it certainly wasn’t socializing.

Days later, though, another adventurer returned to camp, causing Tiriana to announce that she was going out for her turn to explore the new frontier region. With no one else to talk to and nothing better to do, Sera had, of course, requested to tag along. Desperately.

“Are you still sure you want to come? I really don’t know what we’re going to find out there, and I can’t guarantee your safety,” Tiriana asked for the umpteenth time as Sera walked in the door, back from having Vivi refresh the miracle placed upon her. Sera sighed heavily, wishing Tiriana would stop worrying about it.

“What would I even do here while you’re gone? Come on, Tiriana, I’m an adult and I can make my own decisions about my safety.” Sera took a seat nearby as Tiriana triple checked her pack to make sure she had everything she might need. Most of it wouldn’t have been out of place on Earth. A tent, sleeping bags, raincoats, flint and tinder, and some ration bars she tentatively identified as similar to pemmican. There were a handful of magic tools as well, not all of which she could guess the function of, but she was certain one was a flashlight.

“Even so, your death would be on my conscience,” Tiriana asserted in response, making sure to have eye contact when she spoke. “But, fine. If you insist on risking your life, I can’t stop you.”

The other woman was clearly a bit annoyed by Sera’ stubbornness on the matter, but the feeling was mutual as far as Sera was concerned. She felt as if Tiriana had backtracked on her eagerness for a partner days earlier, although it may have been that she expected to have more time to prepare Sera for it first. But learning in the field was the best way to gain experience in Sera’s book, and it’s not as if they were walking face first into a monster den.

Given that this region was all frontier, the local monsters weren’t even supposed to be all that dangerous. Whatever mana was, it didn’t spread like air or water, instead building up in concentration over the course of centuries and millennia. Area closest to the center of Omichlódis had the highest concentration, and it dropped the closer one got to the rim. Since higher concentrations of stagnant mana drew in more dangerous creatures, the most dangerous place to be was also the most civilized.

Presumably the people of Omichlódis had developed ways of dealing with that, but Sera hadn’t really asked about it given how irrelevant the information was to her current situation.

Tiriana huffed a bit, but handed Sera a pack to carry and led her to another building that turned out to be a stable of sorts. She touched a spot on the wall and the lights came on, illuminating a series of stalls a bit wider than would be used for a horse- an important distinction, because what Sera found within weren’t horses. The feathers gave that away.

“Have you ever ridden before?” Tiriana asked, skipping over what the two feathered quadrupeds were entirely.

“Horses, yes. I don’t even know what those are.”

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“Oh, these are flokkas,” was the response, as if that explained everything on its own. Tiriana set her pack down and set about putting a saddle on one of them while Sera watched, getting a closer look in the process. The beast looked like a mammalian dinosaur, if she had to sum it up in as few words as possible. “Watch closely, so you can put a saddle on yourself if you need to.”

It had a triangular head with a narrow snout that wouldn’t look out of place on a bird, had it had a beak, which it did not. Instead it was blessed with a padded nose and lips- the type that wrap around the snout like a dogs, not the entirely front facing lips of a human. Feathers flared up bit behind the eyes, making its head look just a big larger. Its frame was thin like a horse’s, but its hind legs were further apart than its forelimbs and its pelvis seemed to sit higher, causing its back to slope upwards a bit to the reach of its front shoulders. Its legs terminated into thin, flexible-looking things somewhere halfway between a hand and a paw. From head to toe the flokka was covered in feathers in a leafy green up top and transitioning to an earthy brown towards the feet.

The tail seemed sort of like a peacock’s, if shorter, and Sera wondered briefly if it could fan out in the same manner.

Sera noticed that the saddles Tiriana was putting on them had subtle differences from those used for horses; they were narrower at the front and were angled such that the rider could set level with the ground even on a flokka’s sloped back.

“So…no horses, then,” Sera commented, finding the flokkas just a bit intimidating. The flokka she was watching, for its part, tilted its head to look at her with one big eye and made a sound that sounded like ‘wark’.

“No horses. Flokkas are better in forests and other uneven terrain. See the flexible feet? They kind of shift to maintain stability. They’ve also got no fear of people and don’t need to be trained like horses to have a rider,” Tiriana told her, tightening the straps on the first flokka’s saddle and tugging at it a bit to make sure it was secure.

“Wark!” the flokka interjected, bobbing its head as if in agreement.

Sera narrowed her eyes. “…does it know what you’re saying?” she asked, staring into its one visible eye. Tiriana paused to look at it, then shrugged.

“Honestly, no idea. They’re pretty smart though. They will run from danger, by the way, so make sure to always keep a hold of yours and tie the reins to something when you dismount.”

Tiriana, finished with the first horse-bird-dinosaur mix, began to work on the second, going through the same steps. Sera tore her gaze from the first to continue watching Tiriana, doing her best to learn the process. This flokka seemed a bit less energetic, regarding her sleepily. A thought occurred to her, casting her mind back to when she first saw Aisinct.

“Does Aisinct just walk everywhere, since he’s too big to ride a flokka?” Sera didn’t even entertain the idea something so big could fly on wings smaller than a football field.

“I think he usually uses basic magic and strengthening to fly or something. I don’t…think he can use advanced magic, anyway. Either would probably do the trick though.” She stood. “Alright, you’ll be on that one,” Tiriana said, pointing to the first flokka, “and I’ll take sleepy over here.”

“Do they have names?”

“Yes, but they’re in Sylvan.” As Tiriana said the last word, Sera felt her connection to the woman break, and she said the next words without translating them. “Verinilla, Soswa.” The connection came back. “Sorry, they won’t respond unless you address them with the actual Sylvan. They’ll take commands by rein though, so you should be fine otherwise.”

Sera returned to Verinilla and reached out a hand tentatively. The flokka nuzzled up to her hand without even sniffing it first, letting out a long ‘waaaaaark’ as it did. Behind her, Tiriana was already leading Soswa out of its pen, so Sera hurried to grab Verinilla’s reins and do the same, fumbling a bit as she unlatched the door. Once they were both outside, Tiriana hopped up and glanced Sera’ way, waiting for her to do the same.

She found herself with a bit of trepidation at the idea, but planted on foot in a stirrup and tried to hoist herself up the way Tiriana did. It was difficult with a backpack weighing her down, and she got an unimpressed look from Verinilla while she mounted up, but she managed it after a couple of tries. Now seated, she noticed the rear of the saddle had a sort of shelf shaped to the backpack she was wearing that allowed it to take the weight without her having to remove the bag first.

“Tell me if your butt starts to hurt. Riding can be rough on a beginner, so you’ll probably need to take frequent breaks until you get used to it,” Tiriana told her as she tugged the rains of her flokka lightly, setting it into motion.

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Codex Entry: Flokkas

The flokka was discovered on an isolated island in the middle ring. This island is believed to have been cut off from the outside world for thousands of years, and likely far more, even before appearing in Omichlódis due to the nature of the animals local to it. Every single animal on the island larger than an insect has feathers, which has been attributed to a genetic bottleneck resulting in one single family of animals diversifying to fill most ecological niches.

Flokkas were the largest animals on their island and filled a niche similar to deer. They eat primarily plants, but have been known to eat insects if given the opportunity as well. Flokkas have a gentle temperament that makes them well-suited to domestication and a build suitable for riding, which, in combination with their adaptations for forest life, led to them being adopted as an alternative for the horse. This temperament makes them poor battle mounts, but the use of animals in warfare waned in the decades prior to their discovery anyway, so it was not seen as a demerit.

Flokkas have no particular family structure due to a lack of predators making grouping up for protection unnecessary, but they are a social species nonetheless because overpopulation forced them to tolerate the company of each other. Although they have no natural sense of danger, they are very intelligent, and can identify threats by observation rather than instinct. Flokkas possess no means of self defense and will flee instead of fighting.