Tiss leered at the small device that was keeping him from cracking the safe. It was, he knew, one of the more expensive locks you could get from the mainland, and he’d heard the money-humans claim it was impenetrable to both magic and physical lockpicking. That claim was only half true. The lock was enchanted to explode outward and then seal whatever it was attached to if magic was used to open it, making it the choice for every halfway wealthy merchant or shipowner in the Spiral Isles.

Glancing around the room, Tiss rubbed the feathers covering his arms subconsciously. He was wearing a sleeveless white shirt and loose brown pants in the same style of the sailors always by the docks, and his target was apparently rich enough to buy a cooling enchantment for the room. Tiss also knew it wasn’t the only enchantment here, glancing back and forth to every single trap and alarm he’d scouted before the job and imagining their effects. With one last look around the room, he turned back to his target in the desk’s hidden compartment and gently lifted the device with his curved fingers. One problem, he thought, with a lock as effective as this: the lazier humans would all end up with the same defences. Well, not his problem, as this was the sixth one he’d picked since the model had started showing up on the island.

Holding the lock in one talon, Tiss used the smallest needle-like claw on his other hand and a thin iron pick to start working the contraption open. Impenetrable to magic and lockpicks, huh? Definitely only half true, and Tiss thought it was lucky he didn’t know any magic.

Hearing the final click, the lock popped open peacefully. Tiss inspected the small safe’s door briefly before grasping a charm woven from branches and gently opening the safe. Just because he didn’t need magic didn't mean he was willing to risk his target being paranoid. His caution was unnecessary, however, when nothing happened as he took one look at the contents of the safe and swiped it into his pouch.

Standing back up straight, he retraced his steps back to the door. His human partner had told him he could distract Captain Maze Maudi and his mercenary guards for 10 minutes, and Tiss’s time was almost up. Stalking as fast as he could while avoiding the security spells laid thick throughout the room, Tiss was only halfway out the final window to a quiet escape when he heard alarmed shouts from inside the building. Slipping the rest of the way out, he ran for the nearby edges of tropical jungle that lined the south of his home island.

Behind him, he heard a particularly angry man yelling orders, and as he passed the first few trees a crossbow bolt thudded and reverberated in a trunk to his left. Not looking back, Tiss weaved through the low hanging vines and encroaching branches faster than any human, island native or not, could ever hope to.

Another mistake by this Maze fellow, Tiss thought as he pushed off a dense thicket of thorned underbrush with his scarred taloned feet. The human had built his home just by the jungles, most likely because he’d thought any threats would come from downhill where the rest of the humans lived. Maybe he did it to show off, having the highest building in the entire bay? Humans were weird like that. Tiss would much rather keep his belongings safe than put his home in full view of any enterprising young Kenku?

On the other hand, maybe the mercenary wasn’t too dumb, Tiss thought as he reached a sloped clearing and turned around. Afterall, no one lived in the jungles save a few Kenku, and most of the human islanders ignored his species’ existence when possible.

He thought of the hourglass he had imagined in his head, the grains of sand cascading at a constant rate, the time he now needed to stall for lessening every moment. Eventually, three towering humans bumbled into the clearing; making as much noise as they possibly could, in his opinion. When they saw him standing across the clearing, two of the three men instantly unloaded their crossbows at him. Moving before they’d ever finished aiming, the first bolt was wild without any effort on his part and the second was lost in the jungle behind him, passing through the spot his chest had been.

All three humans were equally red and huffing, unused to traveling the jungle at its constant slight upwards incline. The two crossbowmen seemed unsure what to do, looking at the third human for instruction. Much larger than most humans Tiss had ever seen, Maze Maudi had the typical tanned brown skin of the other islanders, and even the scars covering his face and arms were common among the seafaring people of the Spiral Isles. It was his eyes and his hair that set him apart from what Tiss understood about merchant-humans. While most of the other humans kept their dark brown and black hair long and braided, the head of the Krakensbane Mercenary Company had chopped his off completely. His steely eyes glared at Tiss, devoid of all emotions except for rage and disgust. Tiss didn’t take it too personally, he knew this human was like that with everyone.

“Well, the thief’s a bloody bird, of all things. Lucky for us though, it’s not like you can fly away.”

Tiss stayed silent, counting down the second deadline his partner had given him.

“Not gonna sing for us, eh?”

“Lucky, lucky.”

Maze’s forehead popped a few veins at his own voice coming out of the Kenku’s beak, and signaled his two subordinates.

“Always mockin’ us, even ‘til the end. Now then..”

In the next moment, one crossbowmen dropped his weapon, pulled out a short cutlass and advanced, the second began forcing the string of his crossbow back to reload, and Maze warily moved to encircle the Kenku.

A few more seconds, then… before the men could get too close, Tiss tightened the muscles in his legs and jumped straight up, grasping a low hanging branch before smoothly spinning into a perch atop it. With one last look at the three humans, and Tiss started leaping from branch to branch, as slow as he dared to. The humans had come into his territory, his home, and were trying to chase him down - he couldn’t resist a bit of fun watching them struggle hacking through the thicket.

He glanced up, letting the slowest of the three humans catch up, and saw the bright blue sky filtering through the canopy. His people, Tiss knew, were never meant to soar through the skies. Without wings, the Kenku had always been destined to watch as their feathered kin flew about freely, never restrained to the dirt. When Tiss ran among the branches and treetops in the jungle he was borne to he understood it was the closest he could ever get.

A trickle of doubt now entered his mind, but it was erased immediately. He knew this day would be the last time he’d step foot in his home, as long as Maze Maudi and his Krakensbane were based on the island. And he’d known this when he made the deal with that other captain, the one that always argued loudly with Maze. But it was too late now to change his mind, and so Tiss jumped from tree to tree, talons digging into bark to find purchase as the three figures struggled below him.

Tiss quickly reached the opposite edge of the jungle, as it thinned out and revealed the highest point of the island. He stood at its edge, only a few strides from the end of the inverted cliff, hundreds of feet tall with the choppy azure of the sea far below him. Behind him, the humans limped exhaustively out of the trees, and climbed the slight slope as the one that had kept his crossbow began to reload once more.

A flock of seabirds rode the wind in the distance, and swirling gusts of wind ruffled the feathers of his arms and filled his loose clothes. He imagined the hourglass for his partner’s second deadline, watching with his mind’s eye as the last few grains of sand trickled away. Tiss didn’t bother checking the humans behind him as he took a few steps towards the ledge. Muscles bunching, talons pushing outwards, the Kenku leapt as far as he could; seeing the seabirds surging forwards on the same swelling wind he felt at his back.

If he’d been paying attention, he might have heard Maze Maudi yelling like a madman behind him. Or maybe he would have noticed the ship lurking silently below, concealed by the cliffs, a flag whipping in the wind atop its tallest mast: a pale white hand emblazoned on a dark blue background, fingers outstretched upward as if beckoning the sky.

Tiss didn’t see any of this, however, as his eyes were set on some faraway place. Arms spread, wind at his back, sky and sea mingling on the distant horizon, nothing else mattered. For now, Tiss knew, he was flying.