Venti woke up in a cage, and she was not amused.

She hung from a glass orb tied to the ceiling, among a collection of other trapped specimens. Venti spotted insects and plants and bones in the orbs. Scattered occasionally about, there were samples of still-living things. Sentient slimes, tiny earth spirits, other sunbirds, a mass of twitching eyes, and…

Her.

Venti ruffled her feathers and pecked at the glass in indignance. The audacity of this Hag to trap her like this! A muted tink plinked through the room, and Venti scowled. The glass was made well, like the potion lady’s vials from back home.

Her beak wouldn’t be enough to get her out of it.

She twinkled out a frustrated sound, the bell-chime sound of her voice sharp and annoyed. Venti fixed her glare on the Hag pacing around below her, much smaller than when she’d first caught Venti by surprise in the woods. The hunched old woman stumbled around her underground workshop, muttering under her breath. Green and purple torch flames lit the room around her. They cast the vials and bubbling liquids in necromantic shadows, casting the jars of ingredients in an eerie light.

For a shoddy Hag’s alchemy station, Venti had to admit that it looked suitably terrifying. Very evil. Villainous, even.

Not bad, for an ugly worm-ridden bitch.

Venti wasn’t planning on staying trapped just because she was a little impressed, though. She had to get back to Rowan quickly, or she’d lose so much progress! Even now, the sounds were already slipping from her perception, the voice of the world beginning to mute themselves away from her.

She had big problems with losing her new half-troll translator so soon. Learning how to sing from him was her ticket to freedom! Venti didn’t trust that guy to escape whatever that darkness thing was by himself, so naturally, she would have to come find him.

As was her role as the underappreciated butt-saver.

And that meant she was getting out of here quick.

With a skip and a hop, Venti kicked her talons at the front of the glass orb. It swayed forward, and she hopped back, supporting its acceleration as it reared back towards the other end. Her glass orb bumped into one behind her with a sharp chtink! The orb in question was knocked aside, and Venti braced as it began to swing straight back.

Venti kicked at her glass orb again, intending to shatter both on collision.

Some stupid glass bead wasn’t going to keep her trapped.

She readied herself for the crack and the shatter and the fall, but only found her eyes widening as the shadow of five, long fingers covered her glass cage. The other orb bounced off of the Hag’s marsh-green knuckles without so much as a crack.

Venti chirped out several angry curses in birdsong as the Hag lowered her glass orb down to face level.

Now that the old crone’s curse wasn’t in effect, she was just a withered old woman, covered in painful, red rashes. Liver-spots littered her face, and her shriveled thorn-stem hair was a light, gravestone grey. Unfortunately, the lack of an active curse didn’t spare her terrible hooked nose, desperately trying to imitate a bird’s graceful beak. As if it could ever be the same. Hmph. As if to add further insult, there was even a stray booger hanging off the witch’s nostril.

Venti scoffed in disgust.

Why were her captors always the ugly kind? Couldn’t she get grabbed by a pretty, leather whip-wielding lady villain? Or maybe a dashing, rugged rogue with a tragic past? At least those didn’t make her baser instincts ask for a prompt regurgitation of yesterday’s meal. She just wanted something nicer to look at.

So why in the wind’s name was she stuck with this goblin and not them?

Venti watched the Hag climb down from the stepladder she’d used to grab the cage.

When the crone got to the bottom safely, Venti rolled her eyes. Not even an accidental fall to off the dumb old crone? Or a sudden accident, resulting in a broken neck? Couldn’t her captor be clumsier? Pretty please? Venti chirped at the Hag as if to ask nicely.

“Shut up,” the Hag said, and Venti raised her beak in affront.

Well, screw you too, old lady.

The Hag brought her to the workstation, where a plethora of ingredients lay scattered across the desk. Venti eyed the red and black smears that marred the surface of the table. Messy, she noted in disgust. Neither Rowan nor his mother were this neglectful when they worked—and Venti would know. She’d watched them practice for years, under the shadow of the light, where mortal eyes did not reach.

For all her posturing, the Hag seemed to be second-rate compared to them. The corner of Venti’s beak smirked up, her eyes watching the Hag ground paste into a mortar.

She was passable at best, as Rowan’s mother used to say.

“Damnable glekk, bring problems to my doorstep,” the Hag muttered, the pestle in her hand grinding and grinding. “Leading that boy here, making the void things he attracted aware of this area… I should curse them. Make the food they eat rot the moment it enters their mouths.”

Her face pinched up into a scowl that made her even uglier than Venti thought possible. The little sunbird sat back in her glass cage, watching the crone work.

And she saw the Hag throw ingredients in. The wrong ones.

Stupid old lady. Didn’t she know that bristlebane canceled out the effect of that squishy moss-thing? Or that the sparkly blue powder had an inefficient reaction with the green solvent? Venti never studied alchemy, but she knew at least that much. Rowan had kept making the same mistakes in the past—until his mother scolded him out of the habit, that was.

Venti chirped at the dumb woman tapping her beak against the glass orb. The Hag glared at her, a handful of unoptimized ingredients in her hands.

“Did I not tell you to be quiet?” the Hag growled. “Or do you want to be eaten?”

Venti rolled her eyes at the stupid crone and chirped. She tapped at the cage, motioning to the vial of pewter flakes that the witch held. As much as Venti would enjoy watching her struggle, she didn’t want to suffer from the Hag’s mistakes as well. Pewter always bubbled and overflowed when mixed with an acid the Hag had thrown in. Didn’t this walking fossil know that?

Being in a cage was bad enough by itself. Venti was going to start molting if she had to suffer through smelling alchemy-tar as well.

Venti walked forward and the glass globe rolled across the table, moving with her stride. She stopped next to one of the jars containing a different element and pecked at it through the glass. Tink, tink, tink! She signaled, tapping a foot in impatience.

The Hag watched her, frowning, before thankfully setting the pewter down.

After a moment of thought, the Hag took a pinch of Venti’s request and threw it into the bubbling cauldron to her left. The old woman even had the capacity to looked surprised when her concoction didn’t blow up in her face. Venti gave her a smug look, and the Hag scoffed. She reached for another ingredient.

Venti chirped again and the Hag’s hand stopped.

Chirping in exasperation, Venti pointed her to the next ingredient. Then the next. And the next. Honestly, it was like babysitting a brain-challenged child. With every suggestion, the witch looked more and more shocked, her eyes wide and her mouth agape as her concoction shifted into a pretty, blue shade.

Venti motioned for her to strengthen the fire and the witch did as instructed. Venti felt pretty good about that. It seemed the Hag finally knew her place.

The two watched the mixture in front of them reduce, evaporating until the mix that remained was a crystal-clear cyan. The Hag leaned forward and gingerly dipped a spoon into the mixture. She brought it to her mouth. Sipped.

And her eyes widened like saucers.

Venti watched her run to the mirror. The old lady stared at herself there, as the red-hot rashes that seared her face disappeared at once. Fading into nothing. The same thing happened to several miniature scars all over her arms and hands.

She turned to Venti, astonished.

“Where did you learn this?” the Hag asked. “I’ve never seen a healing potion this… this potent. Who taught this to you?”

Venti shrugged. Rowan’s mom, she supposed. But she only really learned from watching her kid practice. Venti didn’t really know what she was doing outside of rote memorization, but she had to admit—knowing stuff was fun. It made her look so much smarter than the dumb bitch in front of her.

The crone in question grabbed her orb and brought it up to her face, watching Venti with the eyes of a star-struck student in front of a master. The bird smirked.

“Do you know any more of these recipes?”

She chirped. Of course!

The Hag licked her lips. “Will you show me?”

Venti replied by narrowing her eyes, then pecking at the glass cage around her. Tink, tink, tink, she went once again, and the Hag hesitated.

“…You won’t run if I release you?”

A chirp.

There was a moment of quiet contemplation on the Hag’s part before she took Venti’s cage and twisted. The orb split open with a pop. Venti went free. She flew over the Hag’s head for a moment, glancing at the staircase leading up, knowing she couldn’t be caught if she escaped at full speed.

But she didn’t.

Instead, Venti flew down and perched at the edge of the alchemy table, chirping at the Hag to hurry up and come. The old woman immediately hobbled forward. Venti got straight to ordering her around. She pecked at jars and piles of ingredients, making the woman throw in one thing after another. The cauldron bubbled and churned with the recipes of one of Caereith’s greatest minds.

Knowledge that was plundered all by a single bluebird.

Venti chirped happily to herself, smug in her vast wealth of memorized knowledge.

Rowan could wait. She was sure he was safe, anyway. He was good at staying alive like that, so she’d just go and get him later. Right now?

Right now, she was enjoying herself.

Being smart was fun.

Hungry.

That was what Watcher felt. It felt that way all the time. In fact, it could be said that being hungry was the only thing it could feel. It was the core of its very being. The little seed of instinct that defined its existence.

Until a few hours ago, that was.

Until it had followed the noisy color-thing out of her home.

Now, there was a whole world around it, threatening to overwhelm Watcher’s poor senses. Suddenly, it could touch and taste and feel and smell and see. It sensed the world around it in a thousand different new ways, constantly shifting and changing. It made Watcher writhe on the ground, stunned and in agony as the new perceptions overwhelmed its capacity to think.

Then it stopped.

It could think.

How strange. How delightfully strange.

Watcher rose from the ground, simply disregarding the pain. It wasn’t like it impeded its ability to think or act. Not when Watcher was what it was. No, it was just a distraction, wasn’t it? An interesting one, for all that it was unpleasant. Rising to its full height, Watcher stared in curiosity at the world around it.

Strange bark-things rose from the… ground. Hm. Another foreign concept; having something solid beneath it. Watcher poked at the ground with its mass, tasting it. Learning.

Soil. Bitter dirt. Moisture and water. Color and temperature and taste and texture.

With a thought, Watcher absorbed them all. The patch of ground in front of it immediately turned pale. White. Completely devoid of color and substance in way that made it seem wrong when placed among the colorful world around it. Watcher felt something inside it at the thought. Remorse?

Watcher felt sad. And then It shivered happily at the sensation!

It was all so new! Being sad was fun.

Writhing forward, Watcher’s mass extended out into tendrils, tasting the air. Listening to the world. This new place sure was nice. It had so many neat things in it. One thing in particular interested it, though.

The noisy walk-thing.

Watcher’s tendrils caught the scent of its target in the air, and the little mass of nothingness followed, slithering over the ground and leeching the color from everything it passed. When it saw a frog, it ate that too. It ate the flesh off the bones, then the bones off the air. It tasted the memories and instincts the creature held. Its short life. It ate the sounds and the smells and the light from the sky until it understood. And yet, despite how much it was learning, there was still so much more.

And the noisy walk-thing was only leading it to more knows! It had to see what the walk-thing was like for itself. With its new senses.

Watcher slurped up the world and followed.

Three days passed.

Watcher was bigger, now. It had grown from the size of a shrub to the size of a dog. And it could change! It could look however it wanted to look! All it really took to do so was to understand how things worked. And to do that, it just had to eat! As Watcher moved over the ground, its form shifted continuously.

It took a step with a wolf’s leg and hopped with a cricket’s limbs right after. Its tentacle arms slingshot-slung it past the trees and its centipede legs let it skitter-scuttle around the trees. And whenever it felt tired, all Watcher had to do was copy the brown and green and red things growing out of the ground. All it had to do was sit under the sun, absorbing strength from the sky and the soil before continuing onward.

It was all so very pleasant.

One thing frustrated Watcher, though. Its target.

The noisy walk-thing was fast! It wasn’t just a noisy walk-thing. It was a noisy run-thing! Every time it moved, Watcher felt its home enter the new world. It sank into the wind and commanded it to obey. To push the noisy run-thing forward and away. Far from Watcher’s reach.

How annoying. After the first day, Watcher had almost lost its target’s trail! Utterly embarrassing.

That mattered little now, though. Now, Watcher was faster. Watcher had all these new limbs to follow its friend! Was it a friend? It wasn’t sure. But Watcher liked the annoying noisy run-thing. It had opened the door and let Watcher through.

Without it, Watcher would still be in the dark. In the nothing, just drifting around with all its bigger siblings. Being boring for all eternity.

This place was a lot more fun in comparison.

And best of all, it had someone to experience it with! Watcher just had to catch up to him. Was it a him? Probably. If the data Watcher had gathered from the animals was correct, then its target was a male of the species. Why else would it make all that annoying sound in the distance, screeching out from its wood-stick?

Mating calls were such strange things.

Still, it didn’t blame the noisy run-thing for having base instincts. Watcher had tried it once; being a dumb animal that only knew to sleep, eat, and reproduce. It was fun. Until it started getting the urge to nap, that was. Napping was boring after the first time. It wasn’t the noisy run-thing’s fault that it didn’t know any better.

Watcher was smart, after all. Very smart.

It worbled in happiness at that thought. Watcher was very smart indeed. It had created the perfect way to travel through the forest, catching up to the noisy run-thing in just three days! Watcher felt itself draw closer to it, wriggling excitedly. Its friend was right over the copse. Behind the trees, past the brush, and—

Watcher slithered out into the open and saw the run-thing. A tall animal on two legs, with leaves for hair and stone skin! It even had the stick thing in its hand.

Very cute.

Watcher waved at it.

The animal friend screamed.