The cry from the first bird was followed by a cacophony of squawks as all the birds began shrieking. The birds rushed at the two Automata shells but split around them, blinking out of the way or staying out of reach. These things didn’t seem particularly interested in them and were actually avoiding them. A huge straggler was rushing straight for them, it seemed to be hemmed in by other birds and had decided to barrel straight through the pair. Suddenly a lightning bolt cracked straight through the thing and it fell to the ground, slumping up against Cyclone’s metal foot.

Cyclone looked around and spotted Elita. She had her lightning sword over her shoulder and gave them a little wink and salute as she calmly sauntered over. Cyclone looked down and nudged the possibly-dead-but-definitely-slightly-smoking bird, while Carnivac kept an eye on the other birds. The flock had mostly run around them and into the village, the sounds of things being knocked over and smashed-in erupted from what was now, basically, an open grave.

“This your first time seeing Blink Birds?” Elita asked as she got closer.

“Yeah, they’re kinda creepy” I said through both shells in unison. “Are they teleporting? I couldn’t get a single hit on any of them.”

“That’s really creepy, Prime. Don’t do that. Pick one and stick with it.”

“Ha! Right, sorry.” I said via Cyclone. I had Carnivac quietly follow after the birds to see what they were doing.

“Yeah that’s better. So I don’t know, maybe? They seem to be able to jump or “blink” from one spot to another but usually only a couple meters away. Also, ones that have been captured don’t seem to be able to escape from cages or go through walls or anything so who knows. We had a quest once to kill one. Even though they travel in flocks it’s still hard to get one of them.”

“Can they be domesticated?”

“Sometimes, but I doubt it’s worth it.”

“Ah. Apparently they’re scavengers. Carnivac is watching them tear into the villagers. Good thing we got here when we did, if we’d taken the couple days to get here, there’d be nothing left. Still, it’s pretty strange that they lasted this long. Why wouldn’t wolves or vultures or something else have cleaned up this town?”

“I think I might have found an answer there, come with me,” Elita said.

Cyclone followed after Elita to a fountain in the center of the village. There we found some sort of magic device that would normally generate a barrier as long as it was kept powered up. Elita explained that these things were usually the standard defense for these small villages. She said that the device is normally set to keep all manner of monsters or people out of the village unless they pass through a small gate on one side or have a special token on them. The barrier wasn’t running now, but the device was still warm. I assumed that it must have only just stopped working at some point during the night.

“That is pretty strange”, Cyclone said, “So if it just conked out tonight, then how did we get in? We didn’t enter through the gate and we don’t have special tokens.”

“You got me there, no idea.”

The sun was starting to rise so Shea would be waking up soon. Hopefully she would be able to help the boy we’d found. It would have been nice if we could have woken her when we found him, but that girl sleeps like a corpse and with her barrier up we couldn’t get near her. I ejected from Cyclone and poked the kid with a stick a little bit, until Elita threw a small stone at my head, that is. It didn’t hurt, at least not in the traditional sense, but I was a bit surprised at the bell-like TONG sound it made.

I looked around for Sparky and noticed him sleeping in the embers of Shea’s campfire. I’ve seen him sleeping in the forge back at the shop before too, so I couldn’t imagine what a Fire Squirrel nest must look like in the wild. Is there a hollowed out tree that’s perpetually on fire? If his species needs to sleep in really hot places, then you’d think he’d be found in a lava based level instead of the forest one. That Hydrofox that was going to chomp on Sparky was suited well enough to the forest. I assume all of the water it was generating had evolved in order to eat flaming rodents..

I picked up some little pebbles and started throwing them at Shea’s barrier. It was kind of neat to watch as the magical energy rippled out in glowing green rings from the contact point like ripples on the water. Before I knew it, I was tossing handfuls of pebbles at the barrier to watch all the rings criss-cross each other, and— TONG... another hit from a stone, courtesy of Elita.

I was getting bored, maybe looking at that Blink Bird would help. Via Carnivac, I dragged the dead Blink Bird over to the camp and retrieved its mana crystal. I couldn’t imagine that it would taste very good for Shea or the boy so I put its body into my [Inventory] to sell to Najii later. I suddenly regretted that Shea was the only one with water magic as my arm was now covered in black Blink Bird blood— say that five times fast —, and I had to walk back into the village and wash it off in the fountain.

Around me the Blink Bird flock was happily munching along and with the light starting to pour into the village I could really get a good look at these things. They were ugly as sin with some jagged and serrated beaks and vicious looking talons. I couldn’t really tell if they actually had wings or not though. As the light hit them, they stopped chewing on dead people and ran off back into the woods. Maybe it was time for the shift change and with the barrier down, all manner of beasties were going to be coming in here to have a snack.

I finished washing up and headed back to the camp, Shea had woken up and dropped her barrier so we were able to bring the boy over for her to look at. She conjured some clean and clear water to wash the boy off and was able to get some small sips down his throat. She had a potion on her that should help to heal him but he needed to be awake to drink it. While she worked on bringing him around, Elita got coffee and breakfast ready for her. It was nice to see how these two were working together as a party. Carnivac and Cyclone kept watch for anything, while I inspected the mana crystal with my [Console].

This crystal appeared to have some control over a sort of Gravity magic. It used the laws of Attraction and Repulsion for a spell called [Blink] which would allow the user to set a point some distance from them and then generated an intense attraction to that point while also generating a repulsion from where they were. The result was more like Instantaneous Movement in Dragonball than teleportation, which explained why the birds couldn’t get out of a cage or go through walls, they are simply moving at ridiculous speeds for a very short amount of time and space.

I was tempted to install this into Carnivac, but he didn’t have any open crystal ports and I didn’t want to sacrifice his shadow abilities, so I installed it into Cyclone. The ability to [Blink] as a motorcycle could be pretty useful, I was sure. I had finished the installation and was closing Cyclone back up when I heard a high pitched scream. The boy had woken up and was staring at me with eyes full of terror.