Dragonheart Core - Chapter 90: One Final Gift

The jungle, unnamed, unconquered, blurred together in endless waves of emerald and verdant and teal and olive and viridian as she flew overhead, wings outstretched to capture the last of the setting sun. She swooped over the clouded trees, the golden tips of her scarlet feathers spearing through the light as she soared.

As was her way, when the sun died over the mountains, she flew to the meeting-place.

It had been her mission for many long years.

She was more aware than she should be, she knew. Her brethren back in her birthplace had been brash and uncurious, searching for fruit and flashing their feathers, and she had been that way as well, flitting beneath the stony sky above. But then came the Last Day, and she had escaped, and as she flew beneath an actual sun she had begun to think. Not her own thoughts, not in the beginning; she had been filled with a rage and a fury unbecoming of her inconsequential stature, and there had been words and feelings and metaphors unknown that had filled her skull.

It had been difficult. She couldn’t fly, so consumed as she was with these new thoughts, and the world was large and bold and frightening; so to the jungle she fled, fleeing the destruction of her previous home, searching for any familiarity even though these trees were large and unrestrained by stone. There she huddled, fiery wings curled around and hidden beneath the fronds of some massive plant, and she had tried to understand her thoughts.

But they were not her thoughts. They spoke with a much deeper voice, one much older, one she remembered from her creation. One she had never heard outside of the caverns she called her home.

And once she recognized that, once she was able to even comprehend the concept of recognition, let alone do it, she had been able to talk back.

The world had opened to her, after that. She only held a figment of that voice’s power; but it let her think. Let her stay young and unchanged as the years strode past. Let her fly free when the voice was so chained.

And thus, her mission.

The trees faded away, lost to cragged stone not unlike her former home, and she flew lower—stone to sand to street, that cursed pirate city, built over ruins that should not have been ruined. She screamed, a loud, piercing cry, as she flew; but with the approaching dusk and the clever twist of her wings, there were none that could see her, and she went uncontested. The lesser parrots of this land had none of the intelligence she so cradled and they screamed for reasons like territory or mating; hers would go unnoticed, as it needed to.

And there. Below her.

Past the city as she was, flying over the encircling slopes of the mountain, her destination was easy to miss; a mere section of blank earth, no moss or lichen overtaking its surface, surrounding a narrow black spot. A hole.

She flared her wings and slowed her descent, spiraling down. Quiet, always quiet when she was in the city present—pirates would kill for her feathers, those cleverer would kill for her magic, and the one that could not be allowed to notice her wouldn’t kill but do far worse things. It was not to be risked.

Her talons thumped into the loamy soil, crest flaring, and she paused—there, in the shadows of the looming mountains and the rising darkness, her brilliant feathers stood out like firelight; but there were no pirates in this abandoned hole to lower places, and there were none to find her. And if there were, she would merely be another bird, prone to squawks and preening; they had no reason to suspect the intellect she wielded.

She had no magic, no abilities to call her own. But she was clever, and that would have to be enough.

Ever the darkness spread, deep and calling, as she perched near the hole. She hadn’t dared to venture inside, not since she had fled all those years ago, and now it was a hollow and empty place. She couldn’t trust it. All she could do was wait.

And eventually, as the moon rose high and beings in the city below slipped into sleep, she felt the voice return.

Over the years it had weakened, losing its position in her thoughts and slipping further and further away; it was only at this ancient site she could still find it, when the sun disappeared and he fell asleep. Even then, it was sluggish, tugging itself upward in mere motes of mana and slipping into her thoughts with a weary exhaustion.

Hello, little bird.

She chirped, shuffling closer to the edge.

The voice reached outward, extending careful pressure to her thoughts as it picked through what she had seen; it paused long and hard on the boy she had guided through the jungle, on the mana she had tasted intertwined with his soul, and stopped outright on the wolf-hatted man leading adventurers to the mountain base. Something old and furious flashed through their connection.

And when the memory continued, showing how the man had looked at her, the voice recoiled.

She chirped again, trying to sound soothing, but she understood the fear. Understood what the man noticing her meant.

You’ve been too visible, little bird. He will notice you soon.

She flared her crest at the hole.

You know I’m right. A sigh, mighty as the mountains, echoed through her thoughts. It’s my fault, in part. I made you too bright.

In the darkness of the mountain, in the darkness of the gateway before her, she was a spark of sunlight with her scarlet-gold feathers. It was impossible to miss her if she didn’t fly in the clouds, if she didn’t stay in the jungle; it made gathering information difficult. It made the mission near impossible.

Before the Last Day, she had never known the concept of failure. Of all the things she had gained since then, this was not one she appreciated.

There’s nothing for it, I’m afraid. Go to him. He will take you in.

She twittered, talons sinking into the soil. It was– it was the right decision, her awareness told her, and it would be a return to the home she had lost; but it wouldn’t be her home. It wouldn’t be her voice.

I’m sorry. You know there is no other way.

She did.

So you must go. Continue the mission. I know you will succeed.

A brush against her thoughts, pushing mana through their connection; immediately the voice weakened, slipping back beneath the ground, energy exhausted. A final gift. She closed her eyes, leaning toward the hole, pouring thanks and gratitude and love back.

In its last moment awake, she felt the gentle caress of its presence.

One day I will find you again, little bird.

And then it disappeared.

She stayed there for a moment longer, mourning what had been, before she spread her wings and took off for the distant mountains.