Green Bird [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AP1GczOUSrUui-oBv6pDUQqQ0TOkmRPNRqI4bEjnwuTkrOlVyzhtONQyks2koyE7kv98fklD2Nmp6JgdNnH-QTFtX9gnZC8pvyqvQC3PEJ326BOGRQ-mmdCANUDALjPcAQbSep8n2Ti32hkJzqv0u4VtXomT=w661-h992-s-no-gm?authuser=0]
Phoenix awoke to the smell of something savory, and she blearily wondered what Uriel had decided to make for breakfast today. Then she looked around the room and remembered that it couldn’t be Uriel in the room below, where she heard the sound of something cooking on a crackling fire.
She triggered her [Embrace of Shadows] aura effects and slowly moved closer to the opening she had climbed through the night before. She carefully peeked down below with her onyx dagger already conjured in her hand in case the person turned hostile to their uninvited guest. However, a voice in the back of her mind told her that the bird was the invitation, and whoever it was had plenty of time to kill her while she slept if that’s what they wanted.
Her concerns seemed to be for nothing, though, as the room was utterly empty except for the small green bird bathing in a small bowl of water that was hanging from the ceiling in the corner of the room.
She carefully made her way down the ladder to investigate the source of the smells and found a pot filled with some kind of soup cooking over the small fireplace.
Phoenix was briefly distracted from marveling at the ingenuity put into constructing a home from inside an icy tree by Tala manifesting again from within her to go bathe with the new little friend, and she couldn’t help but laugh at the pair. Now that she wasn’t so tired and desperate for shelter from the night and her nightmares, she took the time to take a closer look at the tiny guide from the night before.
The creature looked like a pale green sparrow with some paler green markings on it, and its eyes were a match of her emerald ones, except she thought they were an even more vibrant shade. It startled her by flying past her suddenly to land over the stoney grey fireplace and began twittering at her once more. It seemed to be trying to tell her something as it hopped around slightly, never seeming to sit still for long.
“I’m sorry, I can’t understand,” Phoenix said with a lopsided grin, hoping this was some Sapphire Caster’s Familiar despite her senses telling her that it definitely wasn’t.
She yelped and fell backward onto her arse as the bird flew to the side and… shifted. Suddenly, it clicked why she couldn’t figure out what the bird was because it wasn’t a bird, nor were they any other species Phoenix had come across yet.
Standing in front of her was a slender person dressed in a patched blue tunic and darker blue cloak, their brightly glowing green eyes stared at them as they leaned over her slightly to help her stand. They spoke with the androgynous voice of a child, though they clearly were not one, and Phoenix couldn’t stop staring at the pair of swept-back horns sprouting from their platinum-blonde hair. Was this person actually some kind of demon? The whip-like tail with a spade shape on its tip made her think they definitely were.
“Ren sorry. Been many moons since Ren last spoke to city-dweller,” the stranger said, then gestured to the pot and scurried over to it to give it a stir with a ladle they seemed to conjure from thin air. “Ren say Chosen should break fast.”
“Breakfast?” Phoenix reiterated as her stomach growled with want. As the stranger gestured towards the food again, she nodded and said, “Yes, please, and thank you. All I had was a Sapphire Bit yesterday.”
The pinkish angular face scrunched up as they said, “Bits not good food.”
“I’m actually inclined to agree with you on that,” she said, carefully making her way over to her new host as they handed her a bowl and spoon filled with broth and vegetables. She glanced around the small room, then gestured to the floor and asked, “Mind if I sit and eat?”
They nodded, and the movement made Phoenix notice that the pale hair had steaks of pale green running through it that matched the coloration of the bird feathers the person had before. Then they grabbed the entire pot and set it on the ground while eating straight out of it with the large ladle, and Phoenix had to reassess if this demon person actually was a child despite looking around her own age.
After a few silent moments of slurping down soup, Phoenix asked, “So, you’re a shapeshifter?”
“Ren is Spiritus Daekin. Class is Free Shifter,” they said in response as they kept eating.
“Spiritus Daekin? Is that different from a demon?”
They gave her an odd look and slowly nodded. “Daekin born from daemon. Not same. Daekin be Vauva. Daemon be like Vanhin but trapped in Abyss.”
“So you’re like half-demon, er, daemon?”
Ren shrugged and took another bite of food.
She continued her questioning, feeling like she really had returned to those first few days with Paul where it took constant prodding to get any conversation out of him, “I can sense you’re Sapphire Caste. Is turning into a bird all that you do?”
Ren shook their head in the negative and clarified, “Ren is lots. Bird that’s free to fly. Mouse that’s free to roam. Whale that’s free to swim. Free to change is Ren.”
“You can turn into a mouse and whale, too?” Phoenix asked, getting slightly confused with the person’s manner of speaking as if they had never done it that much before, and she wondered just how much work her translation power was doing just to manage what she was getting.
“Ren be whale to swim through sea. Nom the Chosen and bring her home, Ren did,” the daekin added before picking up the pot and tipping the remainder of the soup into their mouth.
Her eyes went wide at not only Ren’s appetite but also at the knowledge that this person was the reason she had landed on the island here instead of at the bottom of the ocean, and she asked in a rush, “What about the others? My party? Did you rescue them, too?”
The daekin wiped their mouth on their sleeve once they set the pot back down and shook their head, “No others.”
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“What?” she asked in slight disbelief. Then became upset as her slim flicker of hope had been promptly smothered, “Why didn’t you save my friends?!”
Ren shrugged indifferently, “Rebel asked, the Chosen saved. Saved the Chosen, Ren did get.”
Her mind reeled at the information, and she had to clarify, “Rebel asked you? She actually appeared?”
Another shrug and the androgynous voice answered, “Rebel whispers; Ren hears, not sees.”
“Do you know what happened to them?” Phoenix asked with a last grasp for some good news.
The daekin extinguished that hope as well, though, as they shook their head. “Ren knows not of Chosen friends.”
She scrunched her face at the repeated title, “Please stop calling me that. My name is Phoenix. Yours is Ren?”
They simply nodded, then stood and walked over to the door, pot in hand, and disappeared outside briefly before returning with the pot full of snow that they abruptly dumped over the fire. The daekin then walked over to pick up Tala, who had been enjoying her bath still, and handed the Familiar over to Phoenix before saying, “Phoenix take phoenix. Follow Ren now, yes?”
“Wait, where are we going? I need to get to my friends,” she began protesting as she plopped Tala atop her head in her usual perch when the Familiar wasn’t merged inside her.
“To friends, Ren takes Phoenix. To city of luxury, we all go.”
“City of luxury? You mean Serenydi?”
Ren nodded and opened the front door once more, gesturing for Phoenix to go ahead of them, “Friends going to Serenydi, they are.”
“How do you know that?” Phoenix asked as she exited the tree home.
The daekin tilted their head to the side and repeated a bit slower as though they weren’t sure Phoenix would understand, “Rebel whispers; Ren hears.”
“Rebel told you? Just now?”
Ren nodded once more, shutting the door behind them, then gave her a sharp, toothy grin, “Blessed by Rebel, Ren is. Free to wander, free to serve. Rebel called, Ren did answer. Ren chose to follow Chosen of Rebel. Ren follows Phoenix now.”
She rubbed a palm over her face finally making the connection that this hermit shifter in the middle of the deserted icy forest was one of Rebel’s zealots; she thought she recalled Everin calling them the ‘Avowed’ but wasn’t sure if that’s the exact type of Anointed Disciple Ren was. Still, she was grateful for the guide and said with a forced smile, “I hope not right now ‘cause I need to be the one following you to get to the city.”
The laugh that came from the daekin was so adorkable that Phoenix was completely caught off guard as Ren said, “Right! Ren forgot! Ren will lead now! Phoenix follow!” Then they began… skipping happily through the snow.
Phoenix shook her head in wonder at how her life here had managed to collide with such random people and wondered if that was just another aspect of her divine curse or maybe it was simply fate.
“Come, bigger Phoenix!” Ren shouted from a ways into the treeline, “Ren shows way!”
“Right, coming!” she replied and began following the eccentric shifter.
After being led in silence for quite a ways, with Ren staying a couple of meters ahead of her, Phoenix realized she had more questions for her new companion, “You said you were blessed by Rebel. Does that mean you have a Soul Mark like mine?”
She merely blinked before losing sight of the blonde until they spoke quietly from beside her, “Phoenix too loud. Whisper Phoenix must, or monsters hear.”
“Monsters?” Phoenix asked in confusion, “I don’t sense any… wait, one second, and I can expand my aura to—”
“No!” Ren said in a hushed reprimand that caused her to pull back the aura she had started to unleash, “Aura loud. Monsters hear. Keep voice quiet. Keep aura quiet. Sneak through monsters, we will.”
She tilted her head in confirmation that she would heed the warning and quietly asked, “What do you mean my aura’s loud? How are you sensing any monsters? What if we walk straight into them?”
The daekin shook their short, messy hair and said with a curious tilt of their head, “We won’t. Ren not using aura to sense. Phoenix aura loud. Odd aura is too strong.”
“Oh, that’s because I have a Natural Talent that lets me have multiples of them,” she said quietly in explanation. “I’m an Aurabreaker… which is a type of Limit Breaker,” she added at the momentarily confused look.
Their emerald eyes stared into hers for a long moment before whispering softly, with a slightly pained smile, “Ren is too.”
Her eyes went wide, and she almost reactively reached out with her aura toward the Sapphire Caster to examine theirs once more. She could detect the daekin’s species flavor within it now that she had a label to give to it, and she also sensed extreme flexibility followed by curiosity as Ren sensed what she was doing in turn.
They shook their head and clarified, “Ren breaks Perception limits.”
Phoenix was surprised once more by the strange person next to them. She had only heard of Sensebreakers before when she had looked a bit more into the phenomena of Limit Breakers.
From what she had heard of that particular type of Limit Breaking, however, it suddenly made a lot more sense why Ren was living out in the middle of the forest away from the crowds of the city. Hesitantly, she asked, “You mentioned that you want to follow me. Does that following end once we reach Serenydi?”
The daekin winced slightly, then shook their head. “Ren wants seeing what Rebel saw. Ren wants understanding. Ren will follow.” They grinned widely again and jokingly added, “After Ren leads first.”
They started walking ahead once more, and Phoenix realized the daekin was shifting their course ever so slightly as they scouted ahead. Now she understood that Ren was using all of their other senses to navigate the dense forest full of threats that she wasn’t entirely sure they could handle alone. She decided to ask with a quiet whisper that she was sure the Sensebreaker would be able to hear, “What kind of perception abilities do you have?”
Ren appeared beside her once more with a smile, which she hoped was of approval. They lifted their hands in circles over their eyes like a pair of binoculars and whispered back, “Ren sees far sights like bird.” Then they cupped their long tapered ears, “Hears far songs like whale,” followed by setting a single finger on the tip of their slightly upturned nose, “Smells the air like mouse.” Finally, they put a fist over their chest, “Ren senses everything stronger from further.”
“That sounds a bit overwhelming,” she sadly whispered, thinking of how overwhelmed she sometimes got from social situations trying to shove more information upon her at once than she could process and wondered how that would feel if it was superpowered.
The daekin gave that slightly pained smile again and tilted their head in acknowledgment, gesturing to the icy woods around them, “Better in forest; quieter outside.” Then they tapped at their temple and said, “Better as animal; quieter inside.” Their smile became a bit more genuine as they cheerfully patted the top of Tala’s fluffy head, “Ren will be okay. Phoenix not need worry.”
As they moved ahead to lead the way once more, Phoenix considered what this stranger was doing for her, including what they had already done and what they had said they would continue to do. It seemed odd to her that they would give so much to someone they had just met, but faith seemed to be a funny thing that way.
“Well, I like Ren,” Tala replied to her thoughts and happily cheeped towards the daekin.
The sound caused Ren to look back with a bright smile and transform into a tiny green bird once more for Tala to fly with.
At the sight of her Familiar dancing through the air with their new guide, Phoenix decided to try and have some faith as well.