Kaia the Argent Wing

“You’re not going to kill it,” Cynath told us the moment I suggested killing the Storm Bird.

Frowning, I shared a momentary look with the Captain and asked, “Why?”

“Your current martial abilities are simply not up to the task. Even if you mustered every man, woman, and child within these walls, it would not be enough,” my goddess explained sombrely.

“We've gotta do something Cynath,” The Captain murmured, too low for the small crowd of curious onlookers to hear. “This place is one or two missed meals away from imploding. I have hungry, bored, cold citizens on my hands, and folks like that are liable to burn the whole house down, even if they're inside it.”

“I'm sorry,” the ancient deity said, and she sounded genuinely apologetic. “By my very nature as a divine being, I am bound by the processes of thought that my domains provide me. You cannot defeat it in hunt nor a battle, it does not adhere to any laws save those of nature, and it derives its power from the fear it elicits in man and beast. I have no solutions for you. I am sorry.”

“Fuck,” I said, stomping my foot in the sand of her shrine in frustration.

The Captain held up a hand. “Hold on, Silver. Our goddess here has just given us a couple of avenues to explore.”

“She has?” I asked at the same moment that Cynath said, “I'm not certain what you mean.”

“The domains you have power over, war, hunting, justice, they're the ones that might've helped here, right?” He said slowly, his thick eyebrows furrowed as he followed his train of thought. “Obviously nobody is going to seduce the bird, but there's other options besides the avenues we've highlighted.”

“Go on,” Cynath said, encouraging him.

“So, what does this bird want?” He asked, beginning to pace back and forth. “It's intelligent, but it's an animal. It has desires and they'll be fairly primal ones, correct?”

I gave the Cap a sceptical look. “I don't think we're going to be able to negotiate with the—”

Cynath interrupted me. “Its desires are to further increase its power within its domains, to feed, to conquer territory it can call its own, and to find another of its species to mate with.”

“Baby god birds? That sounds bad.” I blurted, alarmed.

Goddess, I was so far out of my depth here. Give me a crafty problem and I could figure it out, give me an enemy and I could kill it, but this was just…

The Cap shot me a gentle, quieting look before he asked, “It feels fear, it feels anger?”

“Yes.”

“So, what makes it angry?” He asked, ticking it off on a finger. “What makes it scared, and of course, what does it like to eat?”

Cynath was silent for several moments, then hummed wordlessly in thought. After a couple of seconds, her ethereal form focused its attention back on the settlement’s leader. “Heat, and fire more specifically, will anger a storm bird whose domain strays into that of blizzards. I've also heard tell of ancient Native American peoples who would drive this particular individual from their lands with great towering walls of flame. Aside from fire, all storm birds hate and fear their rivals, the titan wyrms. They also, coincidentally, enjoy eating them. Otherwise, it will target the largest, most powerful creatures within its territory.”

“Interesting… Interesting…” The Captain said, a smile beginning to form. “We don't have any big, scary beasts, and I'm not using our people as bait… but what we do have are several highly trained and motivated firefighters.”

My eyes began to widen, even as his gained an increasingly unhinged sparkle.

“The bird is down the hill, towards the river, correct? Riddlebank?” He asked, naming the neighbourhood that was down the opposite side of Edgewood Ridge from Bandon.

I could answer that one. “As far as I can tell, yeah…”

His grin turned positively vicious. “I always thought that neighbourhood was a shithole.”

I gulped. “Just… so we get the record straight… What are you planning to do to Riddlebank?”

“The mother of all controlled burns, my dear Silver,” he laughed. “I'm going to burn that cancerous pile of mcmansions to the ground, for the good of Edgewood.”

 

We left to gather all of the surviving firefighters, plus as many mages with fire abilities as we could find. There weren’t many of them, obviously, but the five we found were enough. We were meeting in the nearest classroom to the admin office. Thankfully, nobody had to be cleared out of this one. Unlike if we’d gone further back inside the main L-shaped main building of the school. The rear classrooms were where we were keeping most of the non-combatants, since the facilities we had working were all back there. Plus, it just made sense to have people close together so we could heat their living spaces better, despite the fact that packing people together like that caused… friction.

“Welcome, everyone,” the Captain said once everyone was seated.

On the whiteboard of the room, he'd drawn a rough map of Edgewood and its surrounding neighbourhoods.

He tapped the area marked ‘Riddlebank’. “According to reports from all of you, the bird that's behind the blizzard has made its nest somewhere here. Now, Silver helped me speak with our divine benefactor, and our odds in a knock-down drag-out fight are slim.”

He went on to explain the rest of the plan, such as it was. I was beginning to feel uneasy about the idea, though. There was something we were missing—something we were forgetting.

“—So, we're going to need significant amounts of gas and other flammable material. Using our magic people, we'll light the initial fire. With a few well placed points of ignition, the heat should make it easier for everything else we've doused to go up. Now, I want questions, of course. Pick holes in the plan if you see an issue, and most importantly, let me know where you think we can set our first fires.”

Everyone kept talking, hashing out ideas, asking pointed questions about issues, and all that stuff. I kept coming back to the bird though. It had animalistic motivations and thought patterns, but it was still a freakin’ demigod. It was smart, and we weren't giving it enough credit on that front.

Gah! There was something, a nagging subconscious realisation that just wasn't surfacing. What was it?

Chloe, who'd taken a seat beside me, asked, “Are you okay?”

Looking up distractedly, I nodded. “Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out why my brain is throwing up warning lights. I'm forgetting something important, something obvious.”

“It seems like a good plan to me—” she said, but right then, I heard someone say something that really caught my attention.

“—provided the wind is with us, of course.”

I had no idea what the context was, but it was enough to snap everything into place. “It's a storm bird!” I exclaimed.

Everyone looked at me, curiosity and confusion on their faces.

“Storms are, among other things, something that brings wind,” I said pointedly. “What happens if the bird summons a wind that sweeps our fire back into our faces?”

Silence descended on the room as eyes widened. The Captain got a look of mild frustration or irritation, but then he fully realised what I was saying and his expression joined everyone else's.

“Shit,” he muttered, slumping to lean against the wall. “Fuck. Fucking gods and magic and—” he took a deep breath, and clicked the cap back onto his marker. “You're right. There's nothing we can do. Even a carefully prepared fire break wouldn't help if the bird called fast enough winds.”

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly, wishing I'd brought the idea up earlier, before he called a whole meeting.

He sighed in defeat. “Alright. Well, let's put this idea on hold. If by some miracle anyone has an idea to mitigate that particular problem, come see me. Otherwise, it's back to the drawing board.”

We all filed out, and the mood was considerably less jovial than when we'd gone in.

“Man,” Chloe said. “That was a downer.”

“Right?” I said with a wince.

She was quiet for a minute after that as we made our way through the school. Then she glanced up at me. “You know your theory about the dungeons respawning was accurate? Quinton and I took another group into the library, and it was basically the same. Layout was different, but the enemies and mechanics were identical. We even found some books in a crazy-ass language that nobody recognises. Like, it's one thing for people to not know how to read, say, Arabic, but you'd still recognise it as that. Extra sus, if you ask me.”

I turned my whole damn head to stare right into her eyes. “You what? Where are they?”

“Uh…” she mumbled, looking all over the place, except back at me. “They're in my gardening closet? I didn't know where to put them.”

“Show me them,” I demanded.

“Fine, fine,” she grumbled, giving me a confused, almost judgy look.

I ignored her expression and followed as we began to walk with a destination in mind. It'd been so fucking long since the first day, but I still remembered the warning that the angel had given me. Someone was coming, an empire or an army, and they weren't human. Now we had mysterious alien guard towers in the woods, wonky library information desks, and now books in a language that nobody even recognised?” It couldn't be a coincidence.

When we got to the rear atrium where Chloe had her herb garden, she veered off and opened a janitorial cupboard. Inside were all sorts of gardening implements, scraps of cloth, stacks of finished hex bags, and a small collection of books.

“Here,” she said, pulling one book off the janitor’s trolley.

She passed it to me, and oh damn but I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The curves. The book wasn't rectangular, not completely. It had exponential curves for the corners. Just like the tower’s walls. Just like the desks in the library. Just like the chalkboard in the library.

“That is downright creepy,” I muttered, tracing the curve with a finger. “Where’ve we seen that curve recently, Chloe?”

“Fuck me,” she breathed, staring at it like it'd suddenly burst into flames. “It's all from the same place, the same… culture?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, and flipped the book— oh, yuck.

They apparently read right to left. The front cover was on the right side when you opened it, anyway. I know it wasn't the chillest thing to think about another culture’s writing system, but man… a Treatise on Growth Patterns of Numific Flora sounded boring as hell even before you factored in having to read backwards to what I was used to.

“Silver?” Chloe asked tentatively. “Why… why does it look like you're reading that?”

“Oh, I am,” I said absently, flicking through a few pages. Yeah, this shit was thoroughly mid. Did anyone really need to know the average width of rings in a fervi oak? What even was a fervi… oak…

I dropped the book and took several steps away from it. “What the fuck?” I squeaked. “I can read it!”

Chloe rushed forward and took my hand, her expression alight with curiosity. “What's it say? What's it say?”

“It's a… a Treatise on Growth Patterns of Numific Flora,” I said, thoroughly shaken. “Don't ask me what Numific Flora is. I don't know.”

“What's this one?” Chloe asked, shoving the second book in my face excitedly.

“Uh… um…” I blinked, pushing it away so I could actually see. “Harmonic Chanting and its use in Civil Engineering.”

“What's harmonic chanting?” She asked breathlessly as she utterly forgot what the concept of personal space was.

“I don't know!”

Pouting, she squinted at me for a moment, then turned and scooped up the other book before taking my hand and dragging me towards… well, I don't know.

“You're going to help me read these. I need a rosetta stone.”

Well… crap. I guess my armour adjustments would have to wait.