Dragon Aster Trilogy

17: PIGEON



“Not bad for a dumb pigeon,” a teenage phelan somnus laughed with two of his friends. Sybl stopped down the hall that led to Gwa’s workshop, trying to get a fix on what was going on.

Something was thrown to the ground with a crunch from within. Sybl looked into the room to find Gwa and Loki. They were cornered by three teenage phelan somnus of Helios’ Pack. On the floor before them looked to be a broken panel. When the leader of the group grabbed Gwa by the cuff of his shirt, she stepped in and grabbed the phelan by his other arm.

“Hey! Just what do you think you’re doin—?” the leader of the group shouted and spun around at her touch, striking her in the nose. He turned red in embarrassment on realizing it was the Caelestis.

“Ow! You creep!” She retaliated by punching him in the face, and it sent him scattering back and finally falling to his butt.

Loki jumped in then, and swung his fist at the first phelan somnus who tried to help the other, landing it across his jaw. The somnus retreated at that.

Sybl looked then at Gwa who looked frozen in shock. “You alright?”

“Nice right hook.”

“Clearly they never studied high school 101.” She started picking up the pieces to his broken panel.

“Just for the record, I consider you my hero,” Gwa said as he took the broken pieces from her hands.

“What are you both doing?” Sybl asked.

“Oh, nothing really. Just building a device to take over the world. Loki has a useful talent of turning my sketches into a reality.”

“You have interesting Tech,” Loki spoke on having calmed down, and looked at the old computer on the worktable.

Sybl looked at the screen of it too. “How do you have electricity—let alone a computer?”

“It just takes combining aeri and estus energy to make it. The trick is keeping it contained, as it does make for a nasty explosion,” Gwa explained. “The computer is a long story.”

Sybl looked to the wall to see that it wasn’t a bomb or the sorts that they were building, but what looked like metal wings. “What are those?”

Gwa went to them and picked them up. It was wing armor. He held it before him like an oversized shield, with his eyes peering over it as if braced for an incoming battle.

Loki was not impressed.

“Okay, so it’s more for my wings,” Gwa said, standing back up straight. “But we did get it to fold rather nicely. I’ve been trying to make it do that for months.” Gwa folded the armor like a giant accordion then to demonstrate.

Loki picked up a sheet of metal from the worktable and melted it with his fire in his hands to show off.

Sybl crossed her arms at the metal figure of what she could only guess was her. “I can see why that Pack was angry—you guys are dangerous.”

“Loki, what the hell? She’s skinnier than that.”

Loki looked at the statue, then at Sybl, then back at the statue. “It’s in perfect proportions.”

“Dumbass,” Gwa grumbled. “It’s not what you think it should look like, but what she does.”

Loki blinked, and then hastily made the statue a bit skinnier.

Sybl only shook her head in futility. “If you guys start building a bomb or anything, do give me the heads up so I can evacuate, okay?”

Loki melted the statue and formed a metal crown of it. Then he set it on her head with a smile. “As you wish, Princess.”

“Well, that won’t do for a birthday present.” Gwa went to a shelf and pulled out what looked like a stuffed toy. “You need something softer, or Kenshe will be bald before he loses his baby fluff. For your belated birthday present, I give you my somn.”

Sybl lifted an eyebrow at the stuffed white owl he handed her. “Seriously? Do I look like I’m four?”

“I’ve been trying to find his somn since I came down here. He’s rather good at hiding it,” Loki added.

Sybl stretched the wings of the stuffed owl, just in case. “I see that. Well, wouldn’t his somn be like a birdcat walking around here?”

“That’s the thing; their somns don’t look like what they change into,” Loki replied.

“What do they look like then?”

“It’s like a wispy, spirity thing.”

“Oh that tells me a lot,” Sybl replied.

Gwa tried to keep his giggles quiet as he listened to them debate over him. “Ah that’s right. The all-powerful, and incredibly beautiful Caelestis is not familiar with the griffin species. We came after the Last War.”

Sybl sat down on a high stool, resting one arm on his workbench. “Enlighten me.”

“I’m telling you, it’s right there in your hand,” Gwa insisted.

Sybl sighed. “Okay…”

Then the stuffed animal moved its wings, and startled her right off of the stool.

Loki caught her before she could collide with the ground, shaking with an equal fright while trying to console her.

“I’m so sorry!” Gwa panicked, and came running to her rescue. “I thought you would have sensed it in there.”

Sybl wanted to kill him at first, before giving into laughter when the spirit left the stuffed animal it had possessed. But it wasn’t an owl or even a bird, as the wispy creature flew before her like a ribbon of wind. She reached out to try and physically touch it, but her energy had no effect of making the spirit solid.

Gwa double checked to make sure she was unhurt, then watched as she tried to catch his somn in her hands.

“That is so weird,” Sybl said.

“It sucks,” Gwa said as he picked up his own somn and set it afloat over his worktable. “But I have achieved the impossible by frightening the Caelestis with a stuffed toy. I should have totally dropped some bets around for that one.”

“Oh spare me,” Sybl replied, straightening out her dress.

Gwa sat down across from her when she sat back in the stool she had been moments before, and studied the piece of himself with her. “Can it be fixed?”

“You’re not broken, Gwa,” Sybl insisted.

Loki tried to poke at his somn as if it were.

“As long as my somn is the size of a spirit snack, I’d like to think something is wrong with me. And that tickles, stop it.”

Loki brought his hands back to himself at that.

“Do all griffin somns look like this?” Sybl asked.

“Yes, but those from the Falls have bigger ones.”

“Why’s that?” Loki asked.

“I think it’s because they can recreate the radiation that exists on Earth. All chimeras are essentially from Earth, and the bird-like ones even more so. Theory there being we’re still dinosaurs in the chain of evolution, and that doesn’t change just because we’re on Aster. Well, that’s the argument, anyway.”

Loki looked around the workshop, until coming to a stop by his thoughts. “What is a dinosaur?”

Sybl caught Gwa’s hands, then shook her head to stop there.

“Sybl…” Loki whined on being robbed a story. “Fine. So what’s your story, Gwa? You just a random griffin to come across this place?”

“Avian, who goes by Exoir now, is my grandfather,” Gwa said, as he started to reassemble his broken panel with some spare parts, and those that weren’t shattered.

“Seriously?” Loki asked in disbelief. Then he looked at Sybl to further explain. “Exoir is the leader of the Falls.”

“My father, Mersael, is the one currently occupying the Atrum with the Fall’s forces. He is his only son as well. From what I know, Exoir wasn’t able to have children of his own, so he used science and Tech to create Mersael. Something like cloning.”

“Wow,” Sybl replied in disbelief.

“You don’t have to worry about what side I’m on,” Gwa said to ease their concerns. “That was settled when my father tried to shoot down my own mother, while she still carried me.”

“Are there no Laws that your race follows?” Loki asked, brought out of the shock of Gwa’s revelation with disgust.

“In the Falls,” Gwa said as he continued to fix the panel, “power is everything. Your status is worth more than gold, and sometimes even more than your own family. When my human mother got pregnant, the Fall’s Elders questioned Mersael’s right to be next in line to rule after Exoir. My father chose to eliminate the threat to it. Jru was by miracle alone near the Gate my mom escaped the Falls from, taking a bullet that nearly killed him to save her. His heart had stopped for five minutes before her skills brought him back. No aeri or Sano.”

Loki and Sybl looked briefly at each other.

“You must go a long way back with Kas then,” Sybl added.

“Yea, you can say that. Kas was an angry kid slapping the bottle out of my mouth before I could crawl,” Gwa said with a short smile.

“Kas? An angry kid? Are we talking about the same Kas here?” Sybl asked.

“Clearly you have never seen him on one of his bad days. Though I don’t think even he is brave enough to take you on with a tantrum.” Gwa finished fixing the panel, and turned the thin screen on. “I’ve fixed so many of these that I’m starting to think that I could do it blind.” He flipped it around for Sybl to see.

On it, was a really bad stick-figure sketch of Kas.

“Shh, don’t tell him I still have this. He really hates Tech. Especially ones with pictures of him as a brat.”

Sybl laughed and Gwa smiled. He turned the panel off and then hid it in a drawer. “Oh, I plan on getting you back for scaring me like that.” She picked up the stuffed owl and shook it at him as a warning. “Until I figure out how to take over the whole world or you both figure out how to for me, I’m taking Fluffy here as my hostage.”

Gwa laughed and lifted his hand to her, for her to do as she would with it. “Happy belated birthday, Sybl. Hey Loki, wait,” he called after him as he left with Sybl.

“I’ll be back. I’m just taking Sybl to her room. Last thing we need is Helios’ renegades jumping her when she’s alone.”

“I can totally handle myself,” Sybl said, as she hugged more confidence from the stuffed toy. “For I am with Fluffy, who was created in perfection to reign in godliness.”

“I didn’t sound THAT bad,” Gwa retorted.

Loki only shook his head, not wanting to add his own thoughts to the topic.