"KUUU-KA-KIE-KUUUU!"
The cry split the air like a flag tearing. It was a crow they'd heard before, not the usual declaration of dawn, but the other one, the crow that had last rung out eight days ago and made the hill sit up and listen. This time it rolled across the flower-draped field and every creature paused in mid-motion as if the world itself had been pulled on a single invisible string.
Weights thumped to the ground. Vines slipped from scales. Rabbits froze mid push-up, chickens stopped their stone-hopping in the middle of a comical prance; snakes let their dragged rocks settle with soft, dusty thuds. Hundreds of eyes tilted toward the summit and the morning air became a hush of mass anticipation.
At the crest, where light always loved him most, the rooster stood. The sun pooled behind him like a backlight painted by the gods. Feathers drank the dawn and melted into molten reds; a quiet gravity hung about him, the kind that made grass lean and dew hesitate. He felt heavier and clearer than before, as if something in his bones had been rewritten.
The black lizard crested the slope with its squad of smaller lizards and nearly stumbled. It craned its neck, swallowing against a sudden dryness. 'Is that…Boss? When did he get so big?' it wondered. He had been able to look a boss in the face before; now he had to tilt his head upward.
The rooster surveyed his subjects. His heart thudded with a ringing certainty. He lifted his head and spoke; his voice carried like a bell across the slope.
"My little ones" he said, "The sky has spoken. The Otherworlders are here."
He stepped forward and his claws sank into soil shaped by sweat and training. "For seven days we have bled, clawed, hopped, dragged, and pushed beneath this sun!"
His words rolled down the hill heavy as stones. Rabbits straightened. Chickens ruffled into sharper silhouettes. Snakes lifted their heads.
He raised a wing and the sun kissed its edge into a blaze of red-gold. "Those who descend will come with strange eyes and stranger hearts. They will see us as beasts, as points, as numbers to harvest. But hear me now!" his voice thundered, "We are not numbers! We are alive! We are a family! This land is ours, and while I still stand, no one will take it!"
The black lizard translated with lungs made for simpler truth. "Boss says they will try to take our worms, take our fishes and our clovers! But we will not let them!"
The rooster nodded, satisfied with that translation. "You've trained, you've grown stronger, and I'm proud of each feather and scale here. Whatever comes, we face it together. So I ask you this! Will you protect our land with me!?"
Intent poured from him like sunlight and needed no syllables. Heads lowered. Eyes brightened. The valley inhaled his vow.
The black lizard, chest heaving with a sudden and inappropriate pride, planted its feet and bellowed the message down the ranks. "We shall defend our worms, fishes and clovers!!"
A ripple answered: thumping rabbit feet, clacking beaks, hiss-snap of snakes, the rumble of tails on dirt. Awe warred with a thread of fear at how large their boss now seemed, but awe won; fear folded into devotion.
The rooster let himself one heartbeat of triumph. He looked at them all in turn. Then his gaze snagged on a small shape by the pond.
At the water's edge, where the light turned every other feather into a mirror, a single hen sat with slumped shoulders and dull plumage. The sight unsettled him, his heart shifted, and all his seriousness melted away, replaced by tenderness and concern.
He signaled with a flick of the wing. The "Little" Whites snapped to ritual. "Worms," he clucked, voice a notch softer. "Quickly."
They knew the ceremony. They sprang, dug, and returned in a trembling parade with fat, glistening prizes. The rooster took the largest cluster, stepped to the pond's edge, and laid them out with ceremonial care.
"For you," he said, as he had said a hundred times.
She did not move.
He nudged the worms closer. They writhed; the pond's light set oily rainbows on their skins. Still, no change. He leaned nearer, careful as one approaching a sleeping snake. "My beautiful hen, are you hungry? Thirsty? Angry with me again? You can be angry, that is fine, but please eat. Just one. The smallest."
She did not grant him even the mercy of a glance, as she usually did. For the first time he could remember, something cold and unfamiliar crept beneath his keelbone, as if the hen before him were detached from reality itself.
He nudged her with his beak and to his absolute shock she didn't move away.
For a disorienting moment the world seemed to flip. He nudged again. "Hello? Please, look at me. Are you okay? Did someone upset you? Tell me I'll beat them up!"
Silence. Panic laced through his voice. "Are you hurt? Did I miss something? Do you not like the worms today? Should I throw them out? I'll find new ones. Fish! I can get fish." He half turned to the field, half to the sky. "Little Whites! New worms! No, wait, stop, hold, listen maybe fish!"
Down the slope, the flock felt the tremor in his tone. Heads rose. Bodies tensed. A murmur rolled outward: worried trills, low clucks, hissed concern. The black lizard cut three paces up the bank, eyes darting between rooster and hen, unsure whether to charge a visible enemy or a ghost.
Shivaya's feathers shivered.
Until a few breaths ago, she had been a hollow. A quiet pit in the earth. An echo chamber where the word futile spun and spun until it wore grooves in the soul. The noise struck those grooves and sparks flew: irritation, bright and petty, rushed in from the stupidest corners of the world, the worms, the insistence of the rooster's voice and his breath on her shoulder. The spark found dry tinder.
Her head snapped up. Wings flared and threw knives of light across the pond. Her voice came out of her like a falling tree.
"LEAVE ME ALONE YOU DAMN DICKHEAD!!"
Silence swallowed itself. Even a worm seemed embarrassed and went limp.
The hill stopped. The pond forgot how to ripple. Rabbits stood frozen with worms held mid-offering. The black lizard's mouth hung open. Snakes formed parentheses around the moment.
The rooster did not flinch.
He stared in shock as if witnessing a miracle. His eyes widened until sunlight spread across his face like a halo. "You can talk," he whispered, reverent.
A beat. Two. Three. The world inched back into its seat.
"Full sentences," he added, awestruck. "You spoke full sentences!!"
Something old and ridiculous rose from the sea of knowledge lodged in his skull, the same archive that had taught him the words Novice Village and Otherworlders and fourth wall and don't eat yellow snow.
An idiot's conviction knit itself.
"Did you just call me Dickhead?" he asked, voice hovering between joy and glee.
Dick… head…Dick… Richard?
He spun, voice exploding up the slope. "My subjects! My most beloved hen has bestowed upon me a name! From this day forth," he thundered, "this Boss shall be known as RICHARD!"
There was a beat where the black lizard's brain performed a full somersault.
Then the lizard chose joy.
"RICHARD! RICHARD! RICHARD!" it bellowed, leaping and thumping its tail with the devout sincerity of an earthquake. The creatures didn't understand a thing, but one thing they did love was rhythm. They also loved belonging. Confusion bowed to momentum.
Rabbits thumped in time. Chickens tossed their necks and clacked. Snakes hissed the consonants like a storm in dry grass. The chant swelled, rolled, and tumbled down the hill a ridiculous, glorious avalanche: RICH-ARD! RICH-ARD! RICH-ARD!
Shivaya's eye twitched so hard the pond nearly sloshed. Heat, honest and alive, surged up her throat. The emptiness inside her cracked. In that moment without her realizing, it began: something new forming in her once-empty heart. A conviction. 'That's right!' she thought. 'I haven't taken vengeance on this stupid rooster for humiliating me yet! How can I die now? At the very least, I need to beat this stupid rooster up first!'
Her heart found a new hinge not vengeance burned to ash by time, but a target, feathered and beaming, right in front of her. With that target in sight, she inhaled sharply and glared at him. Her wings tucked tight.
A purpose not grand, not cosmic, but sharp and personal threaded itself into this place. The chant of "Richard" pulsed with the impossible rhythm of creatures who, despite their limited understanding, had innocent hearts. They found joy in the smallest things and so they kept chanting, happy simply to share the sound together.
The rooster turned back to the pond, bent low, and gently touched his forehead to hers for the briefest moment like a pledge.
"Thank you for the name," he murmured, so softly it barely skimmed the air. "It's beautiful. By the way, do you want a name as well?"
"Back. The. Fuck. Up." Her beak snapped like a cold guillotine, and with one swift motion she kicked his head away.
He retreated with perfect dignity, which is to say he tripped on a pebble and recovered as if he'd meant it.
Then, with a satisfied smile, he cleared his throat and drew a deep breath, summoning his panel with a thought. A translucent square unfurled before him like a banner.
[Talent: The Path - Activated]
"Show me," he whispered. The world obliged.
Threads of light arced from his chest filament-fine roads of possibility. Some were pale and distant; others bright and winding. One burned a clean, deliberate red, as if painted by the blade of sunrise. He leaned toward it. The filament thickened, and images gathered like dew: a Novice Village shimmering with new rules; a gap in descent routines; the damp, dazzled moment when Otherworlders would stumble clumsy and unready.
"There," he murmured, tapping the flament like road in the air only he could see. "The best path."
He turned to face the slope and raised his wings. "Listen up!" he called, his intent falling like rain. "Rest now. Eat until your bellies hum. Drink until the pond kisses your noses. At noon, when the sun sits on the tallest branch, we march."
"RICHARD! RICH-" The black lizard corrected itself with squealed devotion. "I mean, YES BOSS!" The chant receded as orders unfolded with clean, simple grace. Rabbits broke to forage and bundle. Chickens fanned and preened and checked straps and stones. Snakes coiled in tidy circles. The lizards black and small checked every logs with care.
Under it all, unseen but felt, a golden warmth pulsed from his Path, knitting little gains into muscle and nerve, smoothing fear, singing small songs to tired bones.
Shivaya watched with half-lidded eyes. She did not move. She did not eat yet. When a nervous rabbit tried to take back the worms she pinned it with a look so frigid its whiskers went rigid. The worms remained.
Across the slope, the so-called "Richard" paced, checking lines, clucking instructions. He moved with conviction and confidence.
Occasionally his gaze snapped back to the pond as if it were a magnet; seeing her look, he puffed his chest out.
Shivaya rolled her eyes.
She dropped her gaze to the water. The face there was still a hen's common, small. Her past life towered behind her like a palace dreamed by a starving traveler. Somewhere very far away, an age she had loved had not yet been born. A spark popped in her chest again anger? irritation? Indignation? she didn't know, but it was a useful compass. She would live, if only for the satisfaction of watching that feathered idiot regret every smug breath he had taken.
...
The sun climbed.
Morning meal ended. Ranks thinned and thickened again as groups rotated through rest, water, and shadow. The hill murmured like a hive. The lizard ran simple drills "don't fall," "hit hard," "kill the enemy" with a ferocity that would have been comic if not for the trembling sincerity shining at the edges.
Richard stood at the summit, letting the world settle around him. Sometimes his eyes drifted half-shut and he felt luminous threads tug gently at his thoughts.
The black lizard stomped up at that moment, saluting with a vigor that nearly tipped it backward. "Boss. The troops are fed, mad, and ready."
He looked once more to the pond. Shivaya had not moved far. The worms still sat there, fewer than half eaten at her side. His chest tightened. He almost went to her.
He didn't. Instead his eyes sharpened as his conviction to protect this place burned brighter.
He exhaled, faced the slope, and breathed in. The field held its breath with him.
The sun inched. The Novice Village on the horizon shimmered with its usual light.
Richard lifted his head. "My subjects," he called.
He stamped once; the hill answered with a hard little beat.
"We go," he said. "We meet them deep in the forest, before their eyes learn the shape of us. We will kill them. We will teach them that we are not prey. We will warn. We will show them that this land belongs to us. And if they keep coming back" his beak clicked, soft as flint "Then we will kill them until they learn!"
The black lizard laughed, a savage, happy sound. "KILL!"
Rabbits thumped in echo. Snakes coiled like commas ready for a sentence. Chickens squared their shoulders around their strapped stones and nodded, solemn as knights.
He lifted his wings, vast and red, and the crown's warmth spread again, gold sinking into limbs like courage flavored with sunlight.
"Onwards!" he said, and the slope tipped into motion.
They marched, not in lines yet, but in conviction. The hill unrolled under their feet like a vow. The pond glimmered behind them.
A small shape by the pond did not move.
Shivaya watched them go, eyes slitted against the glare. She heard him at the front, voice bright and impossible, shouting his own name as a rhythm to rally the troops, which made her beak twitch uncontrollably.
"Richard," she said aloud, rolling the word in her beak like a stone.
Her panel blinked. She ignored it. She pushed herself to her feet and watched the figures recede on the horizon.
"One day… I'll beat you to pulp, so don't die," she muttered, uncertain whether she meant him or herself.
She glanced at her status panel and her eyes brightened.
Talent: Yet to awaken (98% → 99%)
'His Path effect is unusually strong for someone newly awakened.'
With that thought she closed her eyes and focused on the awakening while the creatures of Flower Hill moved to meet the Otherworlders.
At the head of that moving arrow strode a rooster, feathers blazing in the sunlight.
And thus, before the first Otherworlder had fully found their feet, the newly awakened crown of a hill had chosen them as its target.