Kingdom Of The Weak

Well, since seeing the Roc King, Mindy began to realize that bringing an airship or ten would have been a very bad idea. That one bird alone could easily have wiped out her entire fleet before breakfast and still need more exercise to work up a sweat. Roc aside, just the dragons at Dragon Lake were enough to ensure a fleet of airships never got past them. Har"es-dras proved that easily enough.

But even so…! Compared with her dreams and expectations, this reality was just...

Mindy shook her head and shook off that train of thoughts before she rode it right into the pits of despair. With a fluffy red chick in one hand and a compa.s.s in the other, she sneaked her way through every bit of tree cover she could find as she fumbled her way south.

She was all alone. Well, not really, since she had a bird in her hand; wasn"t that supposed to be better than two birds in the bush?

But at this point, Mindy would gladly have traded her one for two in the bush if it only meant she could get her red crystal back. If nothing else, that crystal represented a whole lot of firepower she could use to defend herself in the deep wildlands.

During her crawl, Mindy came across quite a number of grubs. Maggots, worms, beetles, stuff she didn"t even know the names of… she saw lots of them. Every time she found them, she offered them to the little bird that she unceremoniously named "Chirpy". "Here! Breakfast!"

But always, Chirpy would turn away from those bugs, refusing to eat.

"What kind of chicken are you?" Mindy scowled. "Chickens eat bugs, right? Stop being so fussy! Eat up and p.o.o.p the crystal out already!"

Despite its refusing to eat, though, Chirpy turned out to be more cooperative than she expected. For example, it didn"t try to run away any more, instead looking to her intently as if expecting her to produce even more red crystals for it to eat.

More importantly, Chirpy seemed to know the area better than Mindy. Several times during their trudge, it warned her of danger ahead. Like most of the Wilds, Chirpy had at least a little bit of Psionic ability. While the thoughts of the little bird were nowhere near as clear or coherent as that of Aeyrie or Carrie, it was enough for Mindy to understand when something fearful was ahead.

***

As one day pa.s.sed into the next, Chirpy started to give her directions. It knew easier trails, safer pa.s.ses, quicker ways south. Every time it did, the bird would look to Mindy pleadingly, as if hoping it had earned some merit in its favor.

"Okay, fine. You have been helpful." Mindy admitted by the second day. "But that doesn"t mean I"m just going to let you off the hook! When are you going to p.o.o.p out my crystal?"

"Chirp…" Chirpy lowered its head apologetically.

"Hey, don"t you go pretending it wasn"t your fault!" Mindy scolded.

***

But on the third day, she relented.

"Okay, so maybe it wasn"t entirely your fault. It might have been mine, too, holding out those things in my hand. You must have thought I was offering them to you." Mindy admitted grudgingly. "And then you mistakenly ate something you"re not supposed to. How would you know better, after all? You"re just a baby."

"Chirp…?" Chirpy peered at her hopefully.

"Yeah, yeah, okay. You"re forgiven." Mindy sighed. "h.e.l.lo, Chirpy. I"m Mindy. Let"s be friends... but I still want my crystal back."

***

Two days later, she got worried. "Hey, are you okay, Chirpy? You haven"t eaten anything for days… is your stomach okay? Did the crystal get stuck? Is that why you"re not hungry? I still have some of that fruit we found earlier, and yesterday"s berries… you should eat something, even if you don"t feel like it..."

But Chirpy refused to eat. Not even Mindy"s cajoling could coax her.

Yes, Chirpy was a "her". Mindy felt sure of it now. At least, her gut said so.

And by this time, Mindy was glad for her company. Otherwise, she would truly have been alone, out here in the endlessly dangerous Wildlands, with no one to warn her of dangers ahead, or better paths to take. Mindy felt sure she owed her life to Chirpy several times over by now, and her well-being at least a dozen times over.

"Chirpy, you have to take care of yourself." Mindy whispered. "Because I don"t know how to take care of you."

***

The next day, they began to enter a thin fog. Mindy was worried, at first, sniffing the air cautiously, wary of falling into another Bog-dream. But this was no Bog; the ground beneath her feet was solid, often rocky and relatively dry. The fog smelled clean, and there was no way around it as far as the eye could see. If she was going to continue south, she would have to enter the fog.

"Chirp." Chirpy sent her a direction psionically.

"You still know your way around?" Mindy let out a low whistle. "If this fog gets much thicker, I won"t even be able to see my way around any more."

"Chirp." The little bird said confidently.

***

On the seventh day, Mindy found herself entirely lost in the immense fog. If not for the bird and the compa.s.s, she wouldn"t even be able to tell that she was still headed south. The mists were thick now, and strangely, getting warmer.

Weren"t clouds supposed to be cold? She could understand lower clouds covering the mountain, and over the past week the terrain had generally been on an incline, so they had to be pretty high up above sea level, but… why were these clouds warm? It was like she was surrounded by steam rather than mist.

And then the worst thing happened.

She began to smell something bad, and the farther they walked, the worse the smell got.

"Hold up…" Mindy coughed, cleared her throat, and worked a bit of wind magic. It was a few minutes before she could breathe clean air, but filtering away the stench was going to be a steady drain on her mana. She"d have to be careful not to drain it all up too quickly, which meant breathing sparingly. "Let"s hurry, Chirpy. I"m not sure I can keep this up for long."

"Chirp!" the little bird tugged at her urgently. "Chirp!"

Trusting her new friend, Mindy stumbled through the fog, almost blindly fumbling her way across the mountain, not knowing what the smell was or why Chirpy chose the trails she chose, only that they were still heading south and that the mana density was still getting thicker, as was the fog and the weird yellowish colors starting to show in the steam.

And then they broke out of the fog, into the open, and Mindy found herself staring down a sheer cliff at a huge pit of fire and lava.

Oh, and one more thing.

Staring straight at Mindy out from the volcano were a pair of eyes of a size comparable to the quarry at KarGoth, over a beak large enough to eat an entire Sky Fortress whole. Comparing the Roc King to the bird in the volcano was like comparing Chirpy to Aeyrie. Its very figure and feathers appeared to be formed of flame itself. It was actually hard to tell where this bird ended and the inferno all around it began.

Mindy didn"t need anyone to tell her who this bird of fire was.

It could only be the Flame Emperor.

"Chirp!" Chirpy announced brightly.

Then she jumped off the cliff and went straight down into the lava.

"Chirpy!" Mindy gasped, instinctively grasping for the red chick in a valiant but vain effort to save her.
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Too late. Far, far too late. Chirpy was already gone, disappeared beneath the magma.

Along with, Mindy figured, all her hopes of ever getting the red crystal back.

And then Chirpy burst out of the lava, completely on fire, growing in size right before Mindy"s eyes. Her wings stretched out, her body and tail lengthened, even her head shaped up as she matured visibly in moments…

"C...Chirpy?" Mindy gaped.

"Keaa!" Chirpy greeted her with a deeper voice, and then flew straight into the eye of the Flame Emperor.

"Chirpy!" Mindy was completely slack-jawed by now. That bird had given her far, far too many surprises already but this had gone beyond mind-blowing.

Yet even as she watched, Chirpy turned into a stream of flame and disappeared into the Flame Emperor"s eye.

And then a Psionic voice that made the entire cavern visibly shake thundered in her head.

The Flame Emperor said [h.e.l.lo, Mindy.]