Numbness. Lack of physical feeling. That’s what I was struggling with, except in my brain. I couldn’t think. All I was doing was staring at the wall, my dinner of cold baked beans and weenies forgotten in front of me. My list of short term and long term plans next to my plate had no additional entries, even though I had a bunch more to add. The desire to move, let alone think, had completely left me. I felt safe in these walls, why would I ever leave them? I had freaking sorcery, epic magic of a scale that no human has possessed in millenia, and no desire to use it. A literal dragon was on my front porch, and I didn’t want to talk to him. Pathetic. Everyone I knew, gone. Taken from here, and there was nothing I could do about it. Soldiers in a war, and they were going to be fixed ‘genetically’. Miserable alien cunts thought they were doing us a favor by drafting humanity in a war they never knew about. This all stemmed from where I knew we all were on the totem pole, the very fucking bottom. Literally lower than the bottom feeders though, right down there in the muck where bugs eat the bits of flesh that flake off a corpse and blow away in the wind. Insignificant is the word I’m looking for. Small just doesn’t cut it. Miniscule sounds too smart for we humans, as if we aren’t worthy of it, cause we’re beneath that still.

A jolt ran through me, my flesh sorcery reacting to the unhealthiness of my thoughts, correcting the imbalance of chemicals, the imminent cascade to depression. “Lemme in! Lemme in, lemme in, lemme in!” Rath’s scream cut through my internal struggle as he bounced up and smacked off the window outside my house. It was almost dark out. He jumped to another window and smacked into it screaming some more, “For the love of all that is mana, LEMME IN!” Right behind him was a giant bird, pitch black with flaming blue eyes and wicked talons the size of my leg. This bird was big enough to fly off with a minivan. I used to my flesh sorcery to finish rebalancing my brain, then stumbled to the front door and opened it just enough for Rath to plow his way in. I quickly shut the door just as the talons of the bird bounced off the reinforced wards. Ten minutes of an annoying giant crow banging at my house was enough to make me angry, angry enough to do something about it.

Grabbing Gungnir from where I leaned it against the wall, I calmly walked outside, my shield at max power. As the big fucker spied new prey, I channeled mana into just the rune of wind on Gungnir, waiting for the right moment. The bird didn’t dive down like an eagle, he swooped down about thirty feet away and braked, flapping his humongous wingspan. A gale of wind almost knocked me over, but it was diverted by Gungnir and gathered into a very small, condensed ball of air. With a thought from me, the spear sent the ball of air above the crow, and released the binding keeping it together. The air expanded rapidly without a controlling influence, smacking the bird down into the ground like a giant hand. I channeled even more energy into the air rune on Gungnir, creating a powerful downdraft to keep the bird in place. The spear turned into a mace, and I clubbed the bird in the head, knocking it unconscious. Cutting my palm and placing it on the bird’s head, right where I smacked it, I channeled my flesh sorcery through the animal and focused on one thought alone, MINE. The bird twitched as my energy washed through it like ocean waves. MINE, I sent, over and over.

My flesh sorcery instinctively embedded in the creature’s brain and body that it belonged to me, and my commands were ingrained in its blood. Using both hands, I lifted it beak and examined the bird, no wonder Rath ran away. Looks like this dude could hunt small dragons. I put my hands on its forehead, and instilled the idea that the World Tree is its next, and it needed to guard all the lands around it. Healing the bird took less time than dominating it, but this was the first time I had done this. I wanted to test it. I woke the bird up with my flesh sorcery after making sure there was nothing wrong with it, no old broken bones that hadn’t fully healed or anything like that. It popped up like nothing had happened and chirped at me. “You, you are my noble steed.” I declared, “And your name shall be Norn, for your fate is tied to mine.”

It sounded pompous, but I loved the name. Being a nerd all my life grants me certain liberties in my own head, especially since there’s barely anyone around to object.