Notice

Just a notice that I have done several fairly minor revision to the prologue chapters. I have also changed two names. Ulric is now Corvus, and Zalik has been changed to Belys. I'll blabber more at the end as usual but wanted to warn readers ahead of time.

[Corvus POV]

[Low Realm: Primordial World, Belys]

As Corvus was falling the [window] welcoming him to Belys floated in front of his vision. He couldn't really see what was beyond it too clearly but as he was a soul he wasn't too worried. 'What could hurt me in this state?' he thought as he waited to reach the world's surface.

*Swoosh*

He felt a rush of resistance as he passed some sort of barrier around the world. Peeking past the still present [window] all he could see was a billowing black cloud. The air rushed past him as he hit penetrated into the cloud. 'It stings.' Corvus cringed as his eyes began to blink and water, trying to clear themselves. A few seconds later he burst out through the bottom of the cloud.

As he did though, he felt like something was itching at the back of his mind. Then it hit him, his eyes had been stinging. He tried to scream.

"Caw."

"Caw?"

"Caw!"

Confused he looked the direction he was falling, but his vision was blocked by that message. 'Dammit, go away' he screamed in his mind, only to be shocked as it vanished almost instantly. Now he could see below him, see the ground racing towards him. He could feel his heart beating through his chest as he tried flailing his arms. Corvus felt them yanked backwards. Looking to his side he saw that he no longer had arms but instead had black feathered wings.

He was no longer exactly falling, doing something more akin to gliding. He was still going too fast, so he tried to flap his wings to slow himself down more. He soon realized he would crash into the mountain in front of him before he managed to slow down enough. Closing his left wing he gave his right a bit of a flap and tucked his head towards his left. This caused him to twist almost his body now parallel to the ground. Corvus' body crashed into the mountain rolling upwards a bit before coming to a complete stop.

'Ugggh,' Corvus groaned internally, 'that hurt.' He was laying on his back. Shifting his weight he spread one of his wings using it to push himself so that his feet were under him. Corvus gave himself a bit a shake to knock some of the dirt off.

*Ding* *Ding*

Two [windows] popped up in front of him on hiding the other.

Skill PromptSkill NameFlightSkill DescriptionThis skills is for those who wish to take to the skies. While it won't help just any Dive bombing dunce become an aerial ace, for any species that commonly flies.. It is the quickest way to become and Adept Avian, even more so if it wasn't your original form. Requires a winged form.Skill RankAmateurRank Progress02%Register Flight?

Quickly reading the top window Corvus noticed it was prompting where or not he wanted to learn the skill Flight. 'Flight skill, huh? Well, I'm definitely some kind of bird. Now how do I do this? Register Flight? Accept Skill? Yes?'

*Ding*

A new window popped up in the old ones place. Before he could begin to read it, he heard a hissing sound.

'Go away, go away!' Corvus dismissed the windows worried about whatever made the sound.

*Ding*

'Argh, Go away!'

His vision now clear, he could see a snake coiled on the dirt ahead of him. It looked like it was about to strike. Extending his wings, he watched the snake carefully. When the snake launched itself at him, Corvus jumped towards the side giving his wings a small flap. As he landed he started to watch the snake again. The snake was mostly a brown color but had a stripe of vibrant red from just above it's eyes to the tip of it's tail.

More than anything else, this red stripe concerned Corvus. He wasn't sure why though. He had felt like this a lot, since he entered that void but he had only realized after the talking white tree appeared. He hadn't really had a proper moment to think since then.

The snake lashed out again. Repeating the same manoeuvre from before Corvus barely managed dodge. 'Not the time to think about that,' he chided himself. Having decided he needed to get away somewhere safe to think about things, Corvus hopped back continuously until he thought he was certain the snake presented no danger.

Turning away he gave his wings a flap. He was about to try for his first real flight. As he did, several blue rings appeared close together in front of him. 'Whaa!' he exclaimed giving his wings a couple quick flaps, making him rise in the air a a bit. As he did the rings moved appearing elsewhere. 'Could this be the Flight skill?' he asked no one in particular as he touched ground again. The rings vanished.

Looking off into the sky, Corvus decided to try again wanting to reach that point. A bunch of the blue rings appeared forming something like a path to the point he wanted to reach. There were a bunch of rings close together right at the start but they became further apart the closer to the end they got. He had a vague feeling that each ring should represent a flap of his wings. Trying to time his flaps with passing through the rings Corvus launched himself forward. It was a bit of a struggle to flap his wings at the start but as the distance between the grew it became easier.

Somehow he had miraculously managed to reach the final ring of his path. Once he did he just spread his wings, and let himself glide. He knew he had things he needed to think about, but right then he just couldn't bring himself to do anything but enjoy the experience.

[????? POV]

[High Realm: Hallway Outside Audience Chamber]

She sensed a short red headed man stands outside the chamber. This is the one she was searching for. 'Now, I just need ...' her mind rambles as she cast her perception around the area, settling on a decorative plant. It looks like a miniature tree with fall orange leaves. '... that one!' she exclaimed exuberantly.

Slowly two small shoots grow of one of the branches. They grow until they have both produced a single ovalish leaf. Unlike the rest of the tree the two small leaves are white with a green border. A couple seconds pass as they grow a bit more revealing small green veins. As they stop growing the two small shoots fall from tree drifting through the air, until they touch the ground about a foot or so apart.

Now that everything is prepared she moves her conciousness over the two, and the grow rapidly. The two grow upwards arching towards each other eventually twisting together as they met. They continued to grow and when they reached a certain height two fairly thick branches grew out perpendicular to the main trunk. As those branches, grew the main trunk extended upwards a bit. Branches of varying thickness grew so fast they almost shot out, wrapping around what was already present causing the trees to take on a short human shape.

Leaves began to burst forth covering the figure. Like the leaves that started this whole process, these were white with green borders and veins. When the figure was entirely covered by these leaves the overlapping leaves seemed to merge into each other, the colors shifting as they did.

Standing there now she examined herself. She was quite pleased to note that her skin was even more unblemished and translucent as it had been before, and glad that her hair seemed to have retained it's length, reaching between her shoulder blades, and it's extremely near white green. Since that hadn't changed she assumed her eyes were still green, but she couldn't check. 'Well, there's no reason, the should have changed.' she mused to herself. The one thing she really hadn't expected was the dress. All of the green from the leaves seemed to have gathered on the single layer of leaves that formed it. The edges of the dress looked exactly like someone had cut a cloth in a pattern of overlapping leaves, color wise they formed a gradient going from the green of the leaves, to almost pure white.

After a couple of moments testing out her new body she couldn't help but run towards the red headed man who had yet to notice her. As she reached him she leaped on to him. As they were similar in height, it seemed as though she should cause the man to topple, but she knew she wouldn't.

"Daddy!" she exclaimed, grabbing on to him, her arms around his neck.

"Uwaa!"

The man was startled for a moment before leaning forward, flipping the girl around as he did, somehow managing to set her on her feet.

"You're too old to still be climbing all over me like that." her father scolded her.

"I'm not old, I'm only 20." The girl pouted.

"That's old enough," he barked.

Sticking her lower lip out she grumbled, "Mean old Drus."

"Ort!" came a summons from inside the audience chamber.

She jumped a bit, snapping out of her pout. 'That was uncle Telrok,' she reasoned. He was the reason she had come to the High Realm today. Supposedly he had some instructions regarding his grand children for her and the other Celestials.

"Wait here, Belys," Ort ordered, "daddy has to go talk to his majesty."

With that he opened the doors, stepped through and closed them behind him.

'Bor~ing' Belys complained to herself as she leaned her back against the doors. She almost let her self slide down to the ground, before she got inspired, and started to manipulate some of the plants.

[Corvus POV]

[Low Realm: Primordial World, Belys]

Corvus had flown around for about an hour or two before he finally found a rocky ledge near the middle of a sheer cliff. He managed to land there, this time his landing was slightly more graceful, he only ran into the wall.

Standing there, for the first time in days his mind was actually clear enough to think. That bothered him a bit. He wasn't clear on why but he definitely felt like his mind shouldn't be so calm. Thinking about it he decided it was an effect of the void he had been in. Corvus clearly remembered that he had been somewhere and something else before the void.

What he could recall was vague. He knew he had recently lost something, but couldn't recall what. The next thing from before the void he could recall was that his grandfather was somehow responsible, both for him losing whatever it was he lost, and his current situation. The final thing he could recall was that whatever this situation was, he was being tested somehow and there was a reward for doing well. Corvus no longer recalled what the reward was but, he didn't care, he knew he had no interest in it as it would help the bastard responsible for this mess somehow.

He was still unclear as to what exactly his current situation was. He knew he was a bird of some kind, but beyond that he wasn't sure. He had seen what looked like water, but it was so murky he doubted that he would get any sort of reflection off of it. Grumbling to himself he thought, 'Come on, give me something to work with here.'

He halfway hoped that one of those [windows] would pop up, but nothing did. He had rushed to close them earlier, when he had encountered the snake so he hadn't had a chance to read them, but he did catch the word reopen. So, he knew the windows could be brought up again, but had no clue how to do so.

'Nothing I can do about it though,' Corvus resigned himself. as he settled down for the night.

---The Next Day---

He unfurled his wings as he jumped off the ledge. As he had been accustomed he flapped his wings whenever he passed through a blue circle.

Corvus began to worry. He had been scouting the immediate are looking for some sort of plant or insect to eat. While he had gotten an idea of the landscape he hadn't found any other life than snakes like the one he'd encountered early on. It had turned out that he had started not that far from the shoreline and that the snake was amphibious.

*Growl*

Corvus was hungry he hadn't eaten in over two days or one, he wasn't sure the day in his original form still counted. Knowing he needed to do something about his food situation, Corvus decide to observe one of the snakes, as they had all seemed healthy and full.

At first he had circled one of them from up in the sky, but he lost the snake when it went back into the water. Next he tried to force a snake away from the water, in the hopes it was one of the varieties that would die if they didn't go back into the water every once in a while. This seemed like it might work but eventually he ended up in the same sort of stand off he had with the first one. It would strike at him, forcing him to dodge and the snake would move closer to the water.

By then the sky had begun to darken, casting a subdued orange glow across the landscape. As his night vision was nothing special, Corvus decided to retire to his ledge as he had done the night before. More tired than usual because of his hunger, he descended for a break.

While he resting, Corvus walked around, looking for any seeds or signs of insects. Finding nothing, Corvus snapped, screaming in his mind, 'Damn you, you old bastard, I wanted no part of this.'

'Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!'

'I'm so hungry ...' he almost wept to himself not realizing he had been cawing when he let loose..

"Caw!"

"Caw!"

"Caw!"

"Caw!"

"Caw!?" Corvus almost yelped, as he was bombarded by the sound of others.

Looking up from the ground, Corvus saw, four birds. He recognized them as crows where he was from. These for seemed to be a pair of two mates, and they all looked terrible. They were thin, their feathers were ruffled, dirty, some were even bent or missing. Not bad enough to stop them from flying but more than bad enough to make it difficult.

"Caw!" he greeted them more firmly.

The largest bird hopped forward flapping it's wings. Frightened Corvus did the same only to have the other knock him on his back. 'A show of dominance? From a crow?' he mused incredulously. Pecking towards the other crow, he forced it to jump back. Righting himself, Corvus pulled his head up and stretched his wings back. Part of this was to make himself seem larger hoping to intimidate the other, the other part he adapted from his encounters with the snakes. He noticed that they had pulled back their head before they struck and that it seemed to allow them to strike faster.

The other crow jumped towards him taking off a bit, Corvus waited until it had committed, then sidestep to it's side using his beak to grab the feathers on the other's wing dragging it to the ground. Once there Corvus let the feathers go, jumping with a few flaps only to land on the other birds back.

It struggled to knock him off, and the other three kept cawing, as if trying to encourage the one he had pinned. 'What do I do now?' Corvus wondered to himself. He didn't want to have to fight the other three but he knew that if the one below him didn't yield the other three wouldn't either. Their was still a part of Corvus that hoped the other birds would accept him, because he figured that the five of them together could probably kill the snakes.

The bird beneath him, nearly knocked him off causing Corvus to resign himself to a less than ideal outcome. Bending down he started rifling through the pinned crow's feathers, finding one that was bent and didn't have a big impact on the bird's ability to fly. Clamping with his beak he pulled it out. This caused the bird below him to struggle even more. Jumping up and down, to avoid getting knocked off Corvus managed to keep the bird pinned. Giving up Corvus clamped down on a feather that would have a major impact on flight. The bird beneath him went dead still, while those around him went quiet.

Torn and uncertain of what to do, Corvus' beady black eyes narrowed. 'Hrrrr!' he grumbled to himself. 'Fine, then. I'll try this!'

Releasing the feather, Corvus turned to face one of the other crows and belted out, "Caw!"

He watched the other crow silently, until it replied.

"Caw!"

"Caw!Caw!" Corvus tested.

"Caw!Caw!"

Satisfied Corvus turned to the next crow repeating the process. Then third, once again testing the response. Finally he lowered his beak towards the head of the one he had pinned, and repeated the process. Happily, all four responded the same. Deciding to risk it, Corvus jumped off and shuffled a bit away. All four crows lined up in front of him let loose a caw. He wasn't sure why but he almost instinctively replied. Then all four jumped around a bit flapping their wings. Unlike before this seemed almost celebratory, it felt silly to do so, but Corvus joined in as well.

The sun was beginning to fall below the horizon, so Corvus gave the foursome a caw and hopped in the direction of his ledge to see if they would follow. He was almost ecstatic when they did, and he flapped his wings several times. This was half in celebration but it also served to indicate he intended to fly. A bit of a rush forward he took off and flew towards his roost. He still wasn't a very good flyer so it wasn't until he landed on the ledge that he was able to verify that the four had actually followed. It was a little tight on the ledge with all five of them on there, but Corvus just figured, 'At least we'll be warm.'

---The Following Morning---

'So stiff,' Corvus complained.

He had been right that, it was warmer with all five of them on the ledge, but he had ended up sandwiched between the two pairs of mates. So when he work up he wasn't even able to stretch his wings until they had flown down to the base of the cliff. He had been a littel worried that they might have just flown off, but luckily the didn't. 'Maybe they view me as their leader now.; he considered. He hoped so, because he really wanted their help taking on one of those snakes.

Flying down, Corvus went through his little ritual of cawing and flapping his wings to get the others to follow him before taking off towards the shore. Disappointingly, he had to stop to rest three times for the other birds. It appeared they had been much worse off than he had thought.

Finally reaching the shore Corvus saw something new. With a swoop he dropped himself closer to the ground, to get a better look. 'Seaweed!' he cheered when he recognized it. Falling quickly he swooped in, only noticing at the last moment that there was a snake entagled in the seaweed, Corvus let out a shrill warning caw just before the snake's fangs struck him. The other birds landed aroud the snake cawing and pecking at it, causing it to let Corvus go.

Feeling his insides begin to burn, Corvus knew that nothing could save him. Leaping forward, he aimed his feet to scratch at the snake's eyes while simultaneously pecking at it's back. At first he just pecked randomly but he noticed rather quickly that his beak wasn't sharp enough to penetrate with each strike. He managed to peck the snake nine times. The first two in different spots. Then two in the same spot, breaking through the snake's skin. Reacting quickly he attacked a spot a small distance away from the first puncture, nailing it twice with his beak. Clamping his beak down on the seventh he ripped a small chunk of flesh out, instantly tossing it aside. Again moving slightly further down the snakes back he slams his beak down. Feeling the snake position itself beneath him, Corvus drove his beak down onto the same spot, this time with more force than before. Rather than pull out this time, Corvus opened his beak while still in the wound, causing it to create a tear wound on top of the snake.

However, this last move afforded the snake the time necessary to clamp down on his leg. Dragging him along, the snake headed towards the water. Looking at the other crows doing nothing Corvus let out a caw too weak for them to hear, he accused them, 'You cowards.'

Almost as though, they had been woken up by this Two of them jumped forward to block the snakes path, while the other two, began to peck at it's tail. Bleeding from the wound Corvus had created, and the small punctures cause by the others, the snake released it's grip on him. Then it started to move forward snapping at the birds to drive them back. Corvus struggled to right himself, while the others were failing to prevent the snake from escaping. By the time he managed to right himself the snake had already entered the water.

Corvus was about to despair, feeling that his life here had been entirely futile, when he noticed a small red-ish brown tinge in the water. Flapping his wings as he took off, following it. As he flew past the trail got a little clear, as blood flowed from his own puncture wounds splashing into the water. He hadn't explored out into the water because he was afraid of getting lost, but right now it didn't matter too much. The longer he flew the lower he flew, his talons started to skip along the water. Looking down, he struggled desperately to flap his wings harder, but he just didn't have anything left. He collapsed, crashing into the water.

Corvus closed his eyes, hoping to keep the water out of them as he fell, but only the lower half of his body felt wet. Peeking he took in his surroundings. He saw fronds of seaweed peaking up out of the water, while small tadpoles swum in it. He could hear croaking off in the distance, so he assumed there were adult frogs around.

All of a sudden a [window] popped up.

Inheritance Test GoalPrimary ConditionSurviveSub ConditionsTaskCompletionBe Healthy001%Establish Roost100%Find Five Crows080%Find Food Source100%Mate000%Total Completion056%Participant NameCorvusGoal StatusFailure

'Hahahahahahahaa,' Corvus couldn't help but laugh hysterically. 'This is the perfect end to quite possibly the shittiest week of my life.'

'Go away,' he pleaded, 'let me at least die in piece.'

"Kaw!Kaw!Kaw!" he heard as the four other crows landed. He was kind of glad they had followed him. At least that way his life would have had some meaning. His body had gone numb, but by the scenery sliding past his fading vision he guessed the other crows dragged him out of the water. One of the crows walked near him looking him straight in the eye, then reared it's head back. Corvus felt a flash of pain in his eye, as the other birds beak pierced through it, then felt nothing as he was soul was released from his body.

Authors Note

And there is the first true chapter. I felt the need to warn reader of the changes I made before they read hence the notice, but writing an authors note always blows up on me, so as before the will remain at the end of the chapter. I have no set word count on how long I intend to make chapters, but this one came in at over 4,500 words, which is nearly triple what the prologue chapters were.

As the poll came out with over half voting for crow, that is what I went with. I did some research on crows, most of which I completely ignored during this chapter. The whole crow dominance bit is all me, but some sources did claim that crows will fight and kill each other. Sometimes when a crow was weak or injured so they don't teach predators how to hunt them. Anyway it was interesting to learn about them to say the least. As I stated at the top I changed Ulric's name to Corvus which is actually the Genus name of crows. I thought it fit a bit better but you can feel free to whine about it if you want. Actually that goes for the title as well as any of the names, I am always open to suggestions, though I may not use all suggestions.

Spent a fair amount of time properly introducing a character from the prologue, she will be popping from time to time and is one of the possibilities for a love interest. Characters are in my opinion one of the weakest parts of this story at the moment. This is because I started writing the story before planning. I know this is a bad practice, but for me it was something I needed to do as otherwise I would remain in planning forever.

To clarify on Dryad and Drus, I am using them as tree spirits, but defining them as I see fit beyond that.

Several places I looked cited crows as being omnivores which wasn't a big surprise, but some mentioned they eat snakes, and I thought it would make a good antagonistic force for this chapter. There are actually videos on youtube about crows fighting against snakes, as well as other animals. Most though seem to indicate a certain lack of ability on the crows part. While there are ways I intend to mitigate this later on, for the immediate future I will probably be forced to use Corvus' nature as reincarnated soul to bootstrap them on to the same playing field.

One thing I have been trying incredibly hard to do is avoid an info dump, but I am really not sure how well that has worked out. I also spent a lot of time on Belys' entrance trying to be detailed. I have the scene in my head so I can see it playing out, and I tried to describe it to you guys but that may not have worked out well. If you want an idea of what the leaves look like they are colored similarly to the ones in this link except they are more like maple leaves.