Ancient Wings, New Soul

by Kowlickkid


Chapter 5: Farewells

Farewells

I listened enraptured to the beautiful melody that was being sung to me by a collection of birds. They had come while I was unconscious and gotten ready so that when I woke up, they started to sing. Tens of parrots and a few other birds all raised their voices and it was quite beautiful. Even the raucous squawks of the parrots tied into the song that in my opinion, had to be rehearsed. It was undescribable. When it finally came too an end, I smiled widely at them.


"That was quite impressive, little birds. A beautiful melody."


They all chirped happily and some of the parrots bowed and said 'Encore, encore!' in their squawky, high-pitched voice. I got up to my feet, or should I say, talons, and stepped out the door, banging my head on the top.


"Doh! Must remember that I'm twice as tall as the normal inhabitants."


I rubbed my head, annoyed at myself and the door. The birds flew out after me and soared away, a few of them turning back and almost waving, which I took to be a goodbye. I heard hooves clopping towards me on my right.


"So you awaken once more. I'm surprised that you actually awoke so quickly. Magic as powerful as yours should drain you considerably. Yet here you stand once more, and I thank you again for protecting our village. It is rather unfortunate that both a dragon and diamond dogs visited so soon, but thanks to you, they are no more."


"Wasn't there a huge flying ship around?"


"Indeed there was. It was meant to carry slaves back, but when they saw the destruction, they turned back. Your magic was powerful."


"I did magic..." I said to no one in particular. "So why were those diamond dogs here?"


"From what we know, they come to take slaves to their mines in Gem Fido. They rarely come to the Zebra Isles, but instead prefer to enslave the griffins who live next to them. We were quite unprepared this time around, due to the recent dragon attack."


"So you could fend them off?"


"Perhaps. Now that we have the scales of the dragon to add a better edge to our weapons, it would be even more difficult for them to take us."


"That's good."


"You are planning to continue elsewhere?"


I was shocked. She had noticed right away.


"Well, yes. I don't want to seem ungrateful to you, but there seems to be something I'm missing. A reason all those birds came to me. What I'm destined to become."


"I understand. You wish to learn more about your ancestors, even if they weren't your ancestors per se. You feel the need to learn magic, and accomplish what you need to accomplish."


"How did you know?"


"I'm not as stupid as I look. We figured you would have such an ideal."


"So do you have any idea where I should go?"


"I would think that the best course of action would be to go south, to Zebrica. It would make sense that you would be able to find information in that area, for it is mostly unaffected by pony explorers. Few get to Zebrica, for it is far away, and most are easily distracted by other places."


"Zebrica... the place where ventolians once resided. It would make sense."


Suddenly, a little ball of black and white tackled me. Or at least, tried to. Hard to tackle something six times your size. I looked down at my chest and there was the little zebra filly.


"You are going already, Truenis?"


"It would seem that way, little one."


"Why?"


I stroked her mane.


"We all must find our way in life. I intend to find mine, back in Zebrica."


"I would have liked to spend more time with you, but I guess that it can't be helped. Will we see each other again?"


"Most indubitably."


She looked up at me, an eyebrow raised. I chuckled.


"That means of course. We both have long lives ahead of us, and how could I forget you?"


She squeezed me one last time and then let go.


"Okay, but if we don't, I'll come back and haunt you."


Of course, I knew she was joking. Or at least, I hoped she was. You can't really tell what can happen and what can't when you're in a world like this one.
I opened my four wings, crouched, and leaped into the air, letting out an eagle's screech as I went. I steadied myself and headed south, from what I could determine from the sun and something that seemed like a sort of internal GPS thingamabob.


'I just noticed something: I love flying. It is awesome. Such freedom, such wonder, such- TREE! SWERVE! BIRD! STORK! EVASIVE ACTION!'


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After a while, I had left the island behind, and was flying over the open sea, blue and calm, scarcely a wave. Occasionally, I whipped my claw forth with incredible speed to nab an unfortunate fish, swimming foolishly close to the surface. Funny thing, I ate it raw. And it tasted good. Meat, blood, even bones. Just went down the hatch, and I didn't even notice the lack of it being exposed to sufficient heat to cook it.
At one point, I noticed a dark patch ahead of me in the water. My wings sort of took over, and sent me zooming upwards, and a good thing, too. Out of the water came a huge reptilian blue blunt and very toothy predator head with a long neck, roaring at me.


"SWEET APPLESAUCE AND HAMBURGER GRAVY! A SEA SERPENT!"


I just managed to stay ahead of it's giant jaws and jabbed my weapon into one of it's four yellow eyes. It roared in pain and retreated beneath the surface, leaving me hovering in the air, heart pounding and eyes wide. I gradually calmed down, and took a moment to examine my weapon, noting a curious spark of blue electricity running periodically across it's shaft and it's blade, as if it was charged and was demonstrating this.


"I need to name this blade. Heck, I don't even know what kind of weapon it is. Sword, no. Shaft is too long. A spear has a different blade, and nothing else seems fitting. I'll give it a proper name, so I don't have much doubt about it. Hmm, let's see... Made from the scales of a purple lightning dragon, has slayed diamond dogs, highly dangerous... Drawing another blank here... I gotta get better at naming things... HOLY TOLEDO!"


My last statement was directed at the creature lifting it's heads out of the water, clearly angry at me. Yes, I said heads. It was my old buddy the sea serpent... with 8 of his bros. I immediately started dodging as best I could.


"Okay, note to self: Not a sea serpent, a sea hydra. Now that that's clarified, I can die happy. I really need to stop talking sarcastically and losing breath when trying to evade giant sea monsters. And yet I continue."


I tried to evade the beasts, giving aerial maneuvers in some occasions, and glancing blows in others(Stupid slippery scales don't allow me to cut their head off, not that it would help much.) but eventually, I got surrounded. Adrenaline set in. The weapon in my hands crackled. I heard thunder. To my shock, dark clouds were forming overhead. A drain on my energy was present, and I fought to stay awake. With a thunderous boom, lightning flashed from the stormclouds and struck the hydra heads. They roared in pain and anguish before retreating to their dark home in the deep. As if sensing my exhaustion, the clouds rolled under me and somehow lifted me up in the sky, enveloping me and providing me with a sleeping location till my energy was restored. As my thoughts ebbed away, I thought of a name for my sword.


"I shall... call... you... Thunderhilt."


And then I blacked out.


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I awoke with a yawn and a cracking of joints, a habit of mine that was one of my greatest skills. Seriously. In my hands alone, I could pop 20 different joints. Just in my fingers. Then there were the various back-cracking methods, the knees, the ankles, the toes, even the elbows could make a satisfying noise once in a while. Not to mention the neck, one of the most satisfying of all.
I realized with a start that I was laying on a cloud. A dark thundercloud. I bounced experimentally. The thing was practically a trampoline. I started jumping, something that nobody had ever allowed me to do on my bed back on Earth. Any birds that passed by must have thought I was slightly mental, but I didn't care. I suddenly noticed that my jumping was making rain spurt from the cloud, and that small crackles of lightning also came. With a smirk, I leaped off, flew up into the air and dive-bombed it. The thunderous roar that erupted would be deafening to anything that had above-average hearing. As it was, my ears merely resorted to pounding terribly, accompanied by a small headache. I looked below me and saw that the lightning bolt that had jumped out had somehow managed to strike a shark, and it was now floating, roasted, below me.


"Uuuuuh... breakfast is served, I guess."


And it wasn't too bad, but I had a distinct feeling that I would have preferred it raw. Weird taste buds, huh?
I decided that after the events that had passed, namely, the sea hydra, I would fly high in the sky. It was up there that I discovered something curious. Trees and other vegetation are the fruit of the land. Algae, coral and similar things are the fruit of the sea. And to my surprise, wisping around in the upper atmosphere was the fruit of the sky, almost invisibly translucent masses that blew around in an invisible wind, with soft textures and various tastes to acoompany them. They made a decent dessert, and some of them were salty, making good travel snacks. I put some of the finer examples inside my pack.
I continued on my way, alternating using my front smaller wings and my larger back wings, a process that allowed me to continue for quite some time before getting fatigued. Of course, eventually my wings couldn't take much more, so I gathered a few clouds and layed to rest myself, finding curiously that I could shape the cloud using what I thought to be magic. Eventually, I grew bored of that, and resorted to thinking about other things, and found myself examining my voice.


"My voice is way deeper than what it was before, but not so deep that it sounds like an old warrior. More like a really noble person. Cool. I guess it makes it easier to role-play someone legendary. I can live with that. But why am I able to make the screech sound, then? Perhaps another set of vocal chords? Ah, who cares? I'm awesome, even though I don't know how."


I took off once again, wings beating against the atmosphere as I bit into a sweet sky fruit.


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The process continued for a couple days. I would fly and eat, and when I got tired, I would rest. At night, I would sleep on dark thunderclouds(So I like thunderclouds. Big deal. They're way cooler than ordinary white clouds. Deal with it.). After a while, I finally sighted a thick line on the horizon. As I approached, it got thicker and was revealed to be a sort of orange-ish color. When I finally reached the coastline, I could see that it was no mere island. The landscape stretched on and on, farther than the eye could see.


"So... This is Zebrica."


I walked for a while, seeing nothing but sand. The beach just kind of turned into desert practically immediately. After some time, vegetation started to appear, and it quickly turned into a savannah, with tall grass interspersed with open spaces with dry ground. I heard a thud to my right. To my astonishment, walking along was a giant creature that was made out of stone. It had a flat head that was perfectly parallel to a hunched back, no mouth, the two purely brown glowing eyes peering out from the middles of what could only be described as it's head. It's legs were boulders interlocking together, that plodded along with grand thumps. What was surprising was that there was a sort of crater in it's back that glowed with the light of a few gems, and it's hands, attached to stone boulder arms, were made entirely out of precious stones. As I watched, a single large yellow-ish diamond fell out of it's back and disappeared into the ground. It appeared to have not noticed, and continued on it's way, soon being little more than a speck in the distance.


Then, a small crowd of zebras came out of some tall grass and immediately started digging where the diamond was. Soon, they unearthed it, and held it up high for all the others to see. They all cheered and patted each other on the back, and then turned their heads toward where the stone monster went off to, and said 'Our thanks to you, stone gem-bringer!' in Zebrican, and turned and went off in another direction, in a very good mood. I watched as they disappeared, deciding to keep away for the time being. Suddenly, I heard a noise, as if the ground was breaking. A gravelly voice from behind me(I don't know how it was gravelly, but that's the best word for it) spoke.


"So. A ventolian is in Zebrica once again. I thought I might not see this day, yet here I am, in the presence of one of my cousins."


I looked around, and what I saw left me speechless.









Sorry it took so long to get this chapter out. Oh well, I guess. Before you ask, the rock monster was invented by me in a chance encounter while I was doodling. I like doodling. You draw a simple shape and try to turn it into something cool. Going off on a tangent here. Anyways, thanks for reading, and keep your stick on the ice.