After a month of cohabitation, Lillian’s loot pile grew large enough to attempt another tempering. Lillian had sampled each venom and was happy to discover that she could withstand them all with the aid of mana. Her general tolerance building, and she finally felt comfortable enough with the poisons to continue cultivating. She did her best to communicate to Genius what she was going to try, and she had a large cache of cores to help support her recovery.
Lillian tore open the various glands and sacs and poured their contents into the clay carafe that she had made. The mud snails had tempered her body the first time, and the overwhelming pain from that experience was still fresh in her mind. This time, she was willingly subjecting herself to the torture. She labored under the flocks' adoring gazes for over a month, all for this moment.
The green and purple fluids mixed as she added the venom to her pit. The mixture sizzled and bubbled, releasing toxic fumes that flooded into the air. The fumes created a strange haze in the air where it passed that seemed volatile.
Lillian wiped the sweat from her brow as she realized how her small oversight had brought her close to death once again. She hadn't considered the potential flammability of the mixture. If she had done this in the morning with the cookfire nearby, the birds would have been finding pieces of her all over their territory.
The toxic fumes were only an annoyance to Lillian. She had tempered herself with poison. Besides a minor increase to her constitution, the benefits her body had received from the tempering had, for the most part, remained hidden. She was glad to finally take another step on her cultivation journey. She cupped her hands, brought the deadly drought to her lips, and forced down the vile concoction. Her throat burned and began dissolving as the mixture of poisons and her blood clashed in her gut. The core she had ingested diffused and disintegrated as the volatile substance ate away at her. The poisons crawled through her circulatory system. Her anxiety was building, but she soldiered on before the panic could set in.
Lillian swallowed another core and then washed it down with another mouthful of poison. The pain should have been unbearable, and it likely would have been if she had done this a month ago. This vicious cycle repeated nine times before her body gave off the feeling of saturation. She instinctively knew that ingesting any more would push her over the line. The mixture throbbed in her veins as it circulated around her body. Every pump of her heart felt as if molten fire ran through her blood. Her nerves fried and melted, only to be rebuilt again. Her circulatory system began building a tolerance to the mixture, and the pain subsided enough for her to move about.
Lillian climbed to her feet and began her painful trek to the water's edge. To accelerate her body’s absorption of the concoction, she had created a rudimentary form of resistance training to help break down her muscles. The heavy stump she dragged held her small cache of cores. The muscles in her body screamed the entire trip. Unlike a normal human body, her muscles were broken down and repaired with mana. Each step was heavy as her muscles drew the poison from her veins and dispersed it throughout her body. Wave after wave of pain crashed into her as the veins cleansed themselves and her muscles became saturated with poison mana. The vitriolic nature of the poison created a cycle of destruction, which was offset by a cycle of creation that sprung from the mana. Her muscles were fundamentally changing into something new.
She stopped her agonizing trek and looked back towards Genius’s nest with a frown. She had only made it twenty feet before her body returned to normal and the mixture that she had ingested dissipated. Lillian stifled a cry as she calculated how much venom she would need to harvest before her entire body was re-tempered.
The heat from the sun beat down on her pale skin as she returned with the stump. The bloody girl sat back down at the pit and swallowed another core before repeating the process again. Her throat burned and bled a little less each round, and she made it closer to the river until night fell and she was forced to end the day's suffering. The hours of labor had rebuilt around 5% of her musculature. Lillian returned to Genius’s nest and hardened her heart. She would have to cook for these birds for a year at her current pace before she would complete her breakthrough.
Genius didn’t seem to mind her current state and happily guarded the door like he always did. The homely nest seemed to shrink a bit every day as the bird grew. Lillian had noticed after the first day under the arch that Genius ate much more food compared to other birds. The other birds she cooked for were far more modest when compared to her roommate. Genius’s limits were higher than the other birds she had interacted with, but the reason was unclear. Their diets varied, but most of the birds ate the same types of foods, and the other crows she had met didn't have as voracious an appetite. Lillian could only assume it was the extra mana that was allowing him to grow so fast.
Lillian had begun brushing up against her own limits that were gated by her circulatory system. There was a hard limit to how much mana she could contain in her body at one time. Any mana added beyond that point caused an uncomfortable buildup of pressure that made her feel like she was teetering on the edge of a knife. The saturation of mana in her body was not centered in a core but spread throughout her muscles. The mana was rebuilding them into something better, but the process was slow. The beasts all seemed to have a core, and that dense sphere of mana seemed to bring them great benefits. Lillian wanted to rush, to sprint through her tempering and move on to the next phase of cultivation. Who said humans couldn't make cores too?
Her mood took a dive as she began to understand why Renaxuss had said she was an undesirable candidate for the sect. Her mana circulatory system was incomplete. The searing pain caused by the poison helped her highlight the mana pathways that snaked and intertwined within her veins. Those pathways were broken, coming to an abrupt stop in her head. The vital veins that ran from her heart stopped when they led to her dead eye.
This night, sleep did not come easily as she pondered the nature of cultivation. She was getting by with the simple instructions held within “The Body”, but it seemed more like a cheat sheet than a real guide. She had already pushed beyond the guide once, using cores before being instructed. Why not continue to expand on or improve on some of the things she learned? The initial tempering was already finished, and she was set on her poison path already. The only other thing imparted to her by the scroll was the breathing technique.
The breathing pattern felt rough and unrefined, as if it were made without any care. Lillian tried making small changes to the pattern but wasn’t having any luck until she noticed Genius’s slumbering breaths. Even in his sleep, the bird seemed to pull the mana from the surroundings, thinning the mana in the air with each breath. Lillian felt something similar when she used the breathing technique imparted by the sect, but the effect was much more prominent when Genius did it, and he wasn’t even actively trying.
Lillian spent several hours ingraining how the bird breathed. She attempted to mimic his breathing, but the rapid influx of mana overwhelmed her. Her body was wrung out from the tempering, and she hadn't eaten since the morning, yet each breath felt like having a small bite of mana-infused flesh. Lillian lost herself in the technique until her body felt fully saturated over an hour later. It was the first time she had been full of mana, and each additional breath became painful. There was no more space within her for the mana to fill, so it began to raise her blood pressure as it forced its way into her veins. Lillian cut off the technique before things could spiral out of control. She was traveling through uncharted territory, and a single mistake might take her life without her even knowing what she did wrong.
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Lillian was shaken from her thoughts by a nudge from her only friend in this new world. The bird seemed excited as he rolled her out of the nest and followed her out. She watched in wonder as the entire clearing came to life as every denizen climbed out of their homes and turned to the riverbank. They searched the sky in anticipation of some grand event she couldn't see. The dark sky was cloudy, hiding the array of stars and lights she was growing to love. Golden rays of sunlight abruptly shot from beyond the far bank of the river. The light melted away the darkness as a burning star crossed the sky like a meteor. The comet of light rose swiftly and was growing ever larger. She was forced to avert her gaze until the light dispersed, dulling as a large creature entered the nest at the top of the arch. The light that lit up the sky snuffed out, and darkness descended on them once more.
The birds seemed to flatten themselves in a show of deference. Some even looked at the golden rays with reverence reserved for a ruler. They remained still and prostrate as the light flickered out. The clearing was still except for Genius, who danced around on the ground before flying up to greet the Lightbringer. The show had ended, and the flock returned to their nests with great fervor. The birds were riled up and seemed filled with anticipation for the coming morning.
Lillian was gobsmacked as Genius’s identity became clear. The little bird was the son of the leader. It was no wonder the fluffy bastard was able to bring her in and get the other birds to at least stop from devouring her. Their meeting must have been a curated training experience that was supervised by the older birds. They were always nearby, watching as they struggled against the squad of hornets. This world was too cruel to allow even a princeling to avoid the bloodshed. They would have swooped in if he had been overwhelmed by the enemies, but he needed to learn how to fight for himself. Lillian would have been an afterthought to the birds. She was lucky she had made it out of that hellish fight alive.
Lillian sat underneath the Arch and waited for the little Prince’s return. The Gateway Arch was the tallest building in New Louis, but it was dwarfed by the sprawling trees of the forest. She couldn’t see or hear anything from the massive nest far above, so she waited for him in the open.
The night ended, and the true sun had started cresting the horizon before Genius finally flew back down. The bird flew a few circles around her before plopping his butt on the ground and calling out. The call was answered by a massive blur that rushed down from the top of the arch. Lillian felt a chill run down her back as she came to understand how the rats in the cities felt when falcons dove at them from the skyscrapers. The mighty crow, if you could even still call it that, had a bright gold sheen to its feathers—feathers that looked almost metallic. The regular adult crows she had seen were all the size of sedans, whereas this golden monster was as large as a hummer. The bird arrested its descent with a single flap that blew a rolling ring of dust that carried well past the surrounding nests. It dropped to the ground without a sound and examined her with a critical eye. Lillian could feel that the being before her was something far beyond a normal beast, even in this world. This bird could end her in the blink of an eye if it wanted to, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Lillian was once again forced to come to terms with how pathetic she was. Genius sat by her side as a show of solidarity but didn’t dare to meet his mother’s gaze as she circled the two, observing them both with scrutiny. Lillian would have laughed if she wasn’t so terrified. The bird was acting like a mother-in-law who was unsure of her child's life choices.
The beautiful bird completed two full circles before stomping its massive talons on the ground. Genius squawked twice in defiance. The golden crow moved faster than Lillian could see and held her child tightly in one claw. His panicked gaze tried to bridge the gap between them as if to communicate what was happening. Lillian could only watch in despair as the Queen took off and flew towards the river.
“Too… weak” The words filtered through her mind, resonating with the mana in her body. The mana was like sunlight felt on the skin. The message sent shockwaves of pain to her eye, which bled through her eye patch. The golden crow looked away with indifference and forgot about her.
The clearing was full of flapping wings as most of the larger adult birds took flight, joining their leader to conquer some unknown adversary. They left a small garrison of adults to defend their chicks as they streaked across the sky into the woods on the far side of the river.
Lillian stood at the base of the arch as her heart began to ache. The absolute disdain she felt from the golden bird’s message nearly brought her to her knees. Her tired body was held aloft by a burning shame, a shame that she had at no fault of her own. She wanted to shout at the nearest bird, at anyone, at fate itself, but there was no one to blame for her weakness but herself.
She hated how everything in her life was dictated by others. Eric had controlled her before with his charm and manipulations, and now she clutched at the scraps she could gain from the birds as she did work for them. Her bubbling emotions evaporated as one of the larger birds that had visited the fire pits approached her. The cardinal was smaller than the crows were, but his stark red plumage was quite beautiful. She immediately knew what the bird wanted. It had already collected its prey from the river, and it expected her to do her duty and cook it.
“Not today, Big Red. I'm gonna try to get some sleep," she said to the impatient cardinal as she began walking towards Genius’s nest. She stayed up all night waiting for Genius and was dead tired. The pressure the golden crow had placed on her was still fresh in her mind.
Chirp!
The cardinal screeched at her and pecked her in the back of the shoulder. The bird's razor-sharp beak broke her skin, allowing a small rivulet of blood to roll down the girl's back. The pecks rained on her back as she tried to escape the onslaught.
“Ahh! Stop pecking me, you bastard!” Lillian shouted as she tried to run into the nest that had represented safety for her up until now. Another peck hit her back, and the small stream of blood grew. The black feathers adorning her clothes fell to the ground as her feet slid to a stop, and the small ember of warmth in her heart for the birds of the clearing cooled and died. Her hand nearly went to the stinger hidden on her thigh, but she stopped herself at the last second. These were still Genius’s people. She would suffer this indignity for him.
Lillian lifelessly walked towards the firepit and started stoking the flames once more. Her shallow wounds slowly scabbed over while she cooked as they drew mana from her lungs and the emergency core she made sure to have at all times. With a practiced hand, she prepared the fish and presented the prize to Big Red. Another swift peck to her hands established that there wouldn't be any tax collection anymore. The little patriarch’s halo of protection was gone. Her fingernails dug into her palms as she stuffed the core back into the roasted fish, spilling as much of her poison-laced blood as she could in those few seconds. She doubted that the poison she had built up in her blood would harm the bird much, but even if it only got the shits, it would be a small revenge.
Big Red swallowed the fish whole and flew back into the wilderness as other birds came out of the woodwork to make use of her services. She tested the waters with the cores, and only Dovetail allowed her to take the core as payment. The variety of prey they brought to her was much smaller, as they only seemed to bring fish and the occasional rat.
Genius must have been making them bring the poisonous creatures to help me out.
Lillian left her little gifts for the more violent offenders as she slaved away at the firepit. Her stomach started acting up as her wounds had long overcome the core she had ingested. The mana in her body was rung dry, and the hollow hunger that mana deprivation brought had returned. She wasn’t allowed to leave the fire to hunt for herself. She tried to use Genius’s breathing technique while she worked but abandoned the idea after one of the bugs she was grilling burnt to a crisp under her lack of focus. The bird who hunted the bug left her with a nice scratch along her cheek as a reminder to pay more attention while cooking.
The painful morning went by slowly, but eventually the vultures left her, and she abandoned the pit and returned to the nest. She immediately put on the backup clothes she had made and secured the remaining cores she had gathered. She didn’t dare stay with the birds any longer. She needed to eat and to cultivate! Her fingers turned white as she clenched her makeshift spear and exited the nest.
She took a long look at her temporary home, engraving the fond memories she had for Genius into her heart before turning away. She swore to herself that the next time she returned, it would be as an equal.
