The merchant, Ash and I found ourselves outside of town, our gazes pointed upwards. Without my new ability to see in the infrared spectrum, it was no surprise that I had completely missed the outside section of town, given that it was completely obscured by tree branches. I grabbed hold of the other two, and flew us all up into the trees. Once we passed through a few layers of limbs, space opened up and we could look out upon the previously hidden part of the beastkin town. Sporadically, as though with no intercommunication between the different people, nests were placed. Some were right next to each other, sharing the same branch, while some were hundreds of feet away from everyone else. It seemed that the birdkin had a tendency to be a bit more solitary than other kinds of beastkin.
I stayed hovering in the air looking too long, and realized that faster than I had thought, I was about to run out of mana. Hurriedly, I flew us to where I saw the lowest set heat signatures, unintentionally ending up in a nest with a couple random kids. Does this count as breaking and entering? I mean, I didn’t actually break anything, and it’s not like there are walls or ceilings to tell people not to enter, but then again, putting your house hundreds of feet above the ground does kinda scream “Visitors not welcome”.
Due to the fact that I had literally just almost run out of mana, we were stuck in this nest for a few minutes. Turns out carrying three people up hundreds of feet is a lot harder than just carrying yourself. Almost three times as hard to be exact, I know, weird right? And so there we were, three random people chillin in a nest with a couple of screaming kids, scared of the strangers who had just appeared in their home with no warning or invitation. It wasn’t that long before I heard, “For land dwellers you three are very high up. Mind explaining what exactly you are doing in my home?” from somewhere above me.
Apparently a weakness of my blindfold is that it’s not all that good at looking upwards, and my 360 degree field of vision only extends outwards, leaving a rather large blind spot directly above me. Something to address later, for now, I explained our predicament to the wary birdman whose nest I was currently trespassing in.
“My bad man, I’m looking for a bluebird chick named Elizabeth, friends with a red haired fox dude named Michael. I ran out of mana and had to land somewhere where people were so I could ask how you guys have your living areas set up up here, and just made my way towards the closest nest with people in it. So you guys got stores or communal areas? Or just a bunch of private nests?”
The birdman ignored my questioning the layout of their pseudo town, and pointed behind me and to the left, about 100 yards away and 30 higher up. “That’s where you’ll find your bluebird. Now get out of my house.” A part of me had to question whether you could call something a ‘house’ or even really expect any privacy if you didn’t have any walls or anything. I mean shit, did they just do everything right out in the open for anyone to see? I managed to hold that in though and just thank the man for his directions, before picking Ash and the merchant back up and making the quick flight over to hopefully the correct nest this time, as I would end up needing a few more minutes there to restore my mana again.
It was the correct nest this time. When we landed I saw Liz lying off to the right, her long brown hair amusingly seeming to blend into the walls, making her look bald, and her large brilliant blue wings forming a sort of bed and blanket. Mike was behind her, his ears pressed flat against the top of his head, and his tail tightly wrapped around his body. He was interacting with what looked to be an enchanted branch in the side of the nest, getting her a glass of water. When he saw us Mike admonished, “About damn time, we’ve been waiting for you guys for hours!”
“Yeah that’s my bad,” I answered, voice thick with sarcasm, “I should have known that instead of the one spot we all knew to meet at, you guys were instead hundreds of feet above the ground in a place that none of us even knew existed. I guess we bugged that poor fox woman and trespassed in that bird’s nest for no damn reason guys, we should have just known that these two were here despite them literally never mentioning it once.” Ash had her brows wrinkled together and her lips pressed. Whether it was because she agreed with my annoyance at the other two or she didn’t like me speaking to Mike that way I had no idea. Just to be safe I dropped the subject. “So you guys are ready to go then? Great, just give me a few minutes to restore some mana then we’ll go.” Liz looked displeased at the sheer nerve that I was demonstrating in making her wait a few extra minutes. The only reason I knew it was a displeased look was that Mike made us very aware of how Liz was feeling.
I turned to Ash and joked, “Remember how I said I kinda regretted threatening them when we met? Yeah nevermind.” Fortunately she took it as a joke as intended, and broke into a fit of giggles. We sat around chatting until I had enough mana to be comfortable carrying us all down to the ground, and picked up Ash and the merchant, asking, “Does this count as a trust fall?” I then launched us over the side of the nest, spending a couple seconds in free fall before using magic to apply an upwards gravitational acceleration to gradually slow us down without impact, landing softly on the ground.
Apparently, the merchant wasn’t all that good with heights, so when I jumped over, his screams echoed throughout the forest, probably bothering every nest around us. I probably should feel bad about that, but ehh, it was funny. Definitely gonna try and go out of my way to make this man climb a mountain at some point, just to freak him out. While he was recovering and trying to breathe, I was busy explaining my joke to Ash and Sophia, telling them what trust falls were normally, and describing other similar team building exercises.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Wait but wouldn’t it be more effective to just go hunting together, that way you learn how everyone around you fights and thinks and stuff?”
“I concur, it seems that these exercises hold very little actual value. Teamwork is only built from time working together, it’s not something that can be accomplished quickly and efficiently.”
“Yeah but these are for people who have non-violent jobs. The people who own the companies want their employees to work together efficiently despite high turnover rates due to bad working conditions, so they put together a bunch of dumb exercises and tell all of their employees that it’s mandatory for them to do. This way the people in charge feel like they did something to solve the problem, despite the fact that it doesn’t actually help at all and the only thing that actually would solve the problem is giving their employees better working conditions to make them want to stay with the company for a long time, thereby giving them the time to develop proper teamwork.”
“That sounds rather gormless.”
“That’s just stupid.”
I laughed and agreed with them both. By this point, the merchant was shakily standing up, and Liz and Mike had finally made their way down to where we were. We all did a final round of checks to make sure we were ready to head out, and finally started walking, ready to begin our new adventure together.
Ash’s POV
I couldn’t figure out what to think about Leo. He’s really funny, and a good person to talk to, but only really to me and Aozia, the merchant who hired us. The moment he met Liz and Mike, he threatened to kill them, and has kinda kept up that vibe the whole time. I have no idea why he doesn’t just try to get along with them, I mean, we’re going to be traveling together for a couple years right? Do you really want to start that off angry?
Aside from the social aspect though none of us really had any complaints about him. His enchanted equipment made him a god tier scout, keeping us all aware of what was around us at all times, and any time one of us ended up out of sight of the rest of the group while walking, he was always able to instantly locate us, showing that he was keeping tabs on everyone, despite his own personal feelings about them. He was also an incredibly hard worker, seeing as how I watched him repeatedly completely empty his mana pool with those flying knives of his. If I were to empty my pool even just once like that I’d be liable to immediately pass out, so watching him do it, let his mana refill, and just jump right back into work again was beyond impressive. Not to mention the practiced air he gave off, indicating that this was typical behavior for him.
I asked him how he dealt with the mental exhaustion that comes with emptying your mana pool, but he just laughed it off and mentioned that ‘his old life was worse’, without providing any additional details. That was another big thing with Leo, is that none of us really knew anything about the guy. He was truly an enigma, and seemingly completely chaotic. On one hand, his large frame, the blindfold around his eyes, and the bearskin cloak he wore gave off the impression of a wild barbarian, mannerless and brutish. But then he’d speak and immediately give off the impression of an endearingly dorky kid, excited about magic for the first time, only to slip up and make some kind of morbid joke or casually talk about murder like it was something normal and make you worry about how safe he really was to be around. I was the one who interacted with him the most, and yet even I knew basically nothing about his life, only his enchanting projects and his mate.
The existence of this mate of his was another mindboggler, because not only had Leo described Sophia as some sort of quasi-elemental who lies with a human, but she is so adept at spacial magic that she can teleport Leo to her whenever she desires, no matter where he his. That level of range and control is so far beyond anything I’ve ever known that in my eyes she was basically a goddess, and somehow she chose a human? Why?
After a good 10 hours of walking, we all decided to stop for the night in a small clearing. Leo had managed to take out some kind of goat during the trip with his flying knives, and when we settled down, he immediately got to work on disassembling it. He kept all of the tendons, the pelt, and the bones, and separated the meat into several different kinds of cuts. As he was sorting it out, he asked everyone else to go around gathering sticks to burn. When we all arrived back in the clearing, he had already set up a circle of stones to prevent the fire from spreading outwards. He then neatly arranged all of the sticks we had brought and then…
A story played out in my head. A group of travelers wearing pelts and leather just like Leo settling down, gathering sticks as we had just done, peeling off the inner bark to use for kindling. The atmosphere was tense, as though they had been chased away to this place, as though there was something out there, waiting, hunting. Something wanted to kill them, and they had no idea where it was. But they still needed to sleep right? For some reason, none of them used magic to light the fire. Perhaps they had all emptied their mana pools in a battle against that which chased them, and they were all fighting desperately to avoid passing out with sheer force of will. Without magic they were stuck striking rocks against each other, creating sparks to ignite the kindling. I felt an unbearable release when it finally worked, a small flame in the middle of the inner bark, cradled in the hands of he who had struck the stones, as he held it close to his face, gently breathing life into the flame. He then placed it underneath the sticks they had gathered, the flame rising to catch onto the firewood. And in that brief moment, when the night air was illuminated by their flame, I knew what they thought, what they felt, for I was one with them. I felt their hope, their desperate prayer, their heartfelt dream that just for the night, they would know peace. That this flame, this light, this warmth, would protect them from that which hunted in the night.
As the story faded from my head, I looked at the source of the vision, Leo, calmly starting his flame, unaware and unconcerned about the tears rolling down our cheeks. The flame was interesting in that as long as it was within your field of vision, a sense of security, of relaxation washed over you. It’s like, as long as you could see his flame, as long as Leo was there, there was nothing in this forest that could harm you. What was far more interesting to look at however, was Leo himself. All around him, a beautiful white cloud was emanating, adorned with streaks of brilliant gold. Just looking at it filled me with feelings of relaxation, of adventurous spirit, and of anticipation. As though rather than the mundane act of starting a campfire, Leo had just told us all a heroic tale of exploration and conquest, ending in an unfinished manner, leaving us desperate for another.
In an instant, I understood why a being such as Sophia would choose this man despite his weakness, his human condition. For at this moment, he didn’t appear to be just some little mortal, utterly inconsequential. With the gorgeous cloud emanating from him, Leo appeared positively Divine.