I awoke in the same nest as before yet not everything was the same. My feathers were now a mix of blue and red forming unique and strange patterns. Every single one pulsed with mana when I concentrated on them, that meant they were runes. But the markings were nothing like our modern ones.

Modern runes are complicated diagrams that adjust mana flow by themselves. Usually they work on stabilising the mana of the ritual/surroundings making spells easier to cast. Natural runes or the ancient runes usually amplify mana in the surroundings or suck the area completely dry to create some absurd effect like making something unbreakable or someone unable to die from old age.

My ‘home’ itself didn’t change although there were some objects on the shelves that are required to properly clean feathers. Also the room layout changed, the room to the bathroom was in the same exact place as the bathroom in my home I was born in.

This was quite strange, but core having memories from mortal life, being sane more or less and not trying to kill anything that wasn’t made by it is unheard of. There was some research about cores having memories from before but their situation and inability to make peaceful contact made them insane.

I think the core changed my room to suit me more by using my memories during our exchange yesterday. Speaking of which, I tried making use of my new powers. They didn’t work the crystals did. Normally you focus on your tattoo and use either your imagination of the desired effect or the incantation.

The incantation is nothing more than saying what you want to achieve with the crystal you have, the higher tier you are the less focus and shorter incantation becomes. Imagining effect is a lot harder and is usually used by Great Mages or Great Artisans.

Great Artisan is someone who got offered a guild leader position whether or not it was accepted doesn’t matter. The door creak made me aware that I didn’t in fact eat anything normal during my stay on this island. Creature that opened the door was one of the Zodarii. It was called Gen Hz, the name at first sounded exotic but further inquiries clarified that it was an acronym for Generic Healer Zodarii.

It was here to act as my guide during my stay in that room. I stopped his monologue about what we are going to see and how great the core is, to say that I’m in fact starving and would like to eat something. Gen asked me to mount him and when I did so he started moving flawlessly dodging his cousins and keeping me from falling.

The endless junctions and heavy traffic was nauseating, thankfully we finally left the labyrinth and the view left me in awe. I’m not a herbilogist but my mother sometimes used herbs when I got hurt as a child. The sheer amount of magical plant life that formed a thick glowing forest with big dark pillars that supported the ceiling that was covered in more plant life and the road we were going through. The road or bridge was very wide and heavily used to my left the mage caste trained their magic in the side cavern. To my right were gigantic buildings made out of flesh that housed the queens that laid the eggs.

My power was feeding me information about origins of everything that interested me even slightly and to my despair it explained with excruciating level of detail everything about the birth and stages the larvae goes through to achieve full adulthood.

I was in disarray the beautiful scenery and horrifying details of it. Starving and feeling disgust that makes me unable to eat. Possibly great life from economic perspective but a terrible one from social perspective. While being friends with an existence akin to god is good, I’d like to have more of them or have some form of contract with my family.

We reached the central shaft during my internal struggle. The rays of sunlight hurt my eyes. Being so long underground made me quite good at living there, at least for the bird folk standards. I’m sure humans would be a lot better and would’ve adjusted in minutes but my lineage comes from predatory birds making our eyes very sensitive.

Gen sensing what is happening to me forced me to open my eyes with his superior strength while healing me. My feathers pulsed twice before the pain stopped and I could see again. During my blindness the platform we were standing on was slowly reaching the surface, I could already see the grass around but the safety railings didn’t come down.

When we finally reached the top I could see we were inside a fort looking structure with several buildings inside that were adapted both to birdfolk, human and dungeon helper use. Gen guided me into one of the bigger houses where the food was being served by fish people to anyone, the dishes were a combination of the animal meat from the island former natives and magical herbs.

The server gave me a big fish and a mug of poison that was mixed with healing potion. Apparently this was used in the place of the alcohol and didn’t leave anyone with a hangover...