From beneath her, Faye heard the faint rustling of the leaves along the forest floor. Looking below, her eyes widened in surprise. There, walking along the forest floor was a creature that Faye had never encountered before. It was a small creature, with leathery wings that had a smattering of feathers across them. It walked upon it's two hind feet, and occasionally extended it's wings out, almost as if stretching them, revealing claws at the ends. The feathers were thick and pointed, almost not resembling feathers at all. More like spikes.
It's mouth was a beak, and it's head had a number of spikes atop it, causing the creature to have quite a strange and intimidating presence. It squawked in a raspy high pitched voice. As it did, another squawk seemed to answer the creature. Faye watched as another joined the first, with three much smaller versions of them following behind.
Faye wasn't sure what the creature was, but she knew that it would probably be worth a fair amount considering she'd never seen one before.
She readied her dagger as the group grew closer to her tree.
As they came to stop right under her, Faye acted.
She threw the dagger toward one of the larger bird like creatures. It must have heard her or sensed something was wrong, because it jumped sideways, causing the dagger to miss entirely. Faye cursed, but hurried to jump down. She wasn't going to let these get away. As she landed, the babies cried out in fear and scattered, leaving the two adults behind.
Faye reached for her sword as the second bird attacked with a screech. She felt it's beak tear into her flesh as it bit down. She shrugged it off, but noticed the wound was changing color and felt strange. She ignored it for now and attacked the other creature. Her sword barely grazed it as the bird jumped backwards. Faye gritted her teeth as a surge of energy coursed through her. She swung her sword for another strike, this time trying to also throw the creature off balance. She swung wide.
The second bird, seeing her struggle, jumped forward to attack. It wasn't hard for Faye to avoid that attack, but the other came in on the side and bit her once again, this time on her leg. She felt that same strange feeling again, but it went swiftly away. She swung her sword once again towards the one that was already injured. It caught it's neck. Faye watched as the creature's head flipped through the air. It landed with a squelch. The other seemed less brave after the death of its partner. It turned and swiftly ran away. Faye swung her sword again, but failed to find purchase.
Seeing the bird flee, Faye grabbed her dagger from the ground and hurried to throw it. The dagger sliced the bird, but flew a little ways past it. The injury wasn't deep enough to cause much harm.
Faye tsked as she walked toward where her dagger fell. After retrieving it, she returned to her kill. The bird was roughly the size of a medium dog. It wasn't overly large, but Faye hoped that with it's novelty, she'd be able to fetch a fair price for it.
She picked it's head up and shoved it into the magical bag. Then, she readied the rest of the bird for her journey back. She held it's legs as she walked. She hung the bird up for a while, hoping to drain out a fair bit of blood before leaving. This meant she wasn't as covered in blood as she would have been had she decided to leave right away.
She thought of checking her trap as she left, but thought better of it, since the smell of the blood of the creature could cause smaller prey to stay away. She hoped that if she caught something, it wouldn't escape before she could return again.
Returning to the city, Faye didn't get nearly as many strange looks as before. Perhaps because the creature was so small, many people didn't pay much attention to it. Those that did were dumbstruck to see a young woman carrying what appeared to be a combination of both a lizard and a bird. It was a strange creature for sure.
First, she brought it to the tanner, but they had no interest in the bird. They suggested taking the bird to a fabric shop to see if they would be interested in the feathers, but that also was no good. The feathers weren't like any feathers they'd come across before and didn't appear to be utilizable in any of their regular works. Faye then decided to take the creature to the butcher. Unfortunately, even he was at a loss for using the creature for anything. He as least gave her a name for the creature and another idea of where to take it. The creature was called a Cockatrice and it's meat was unsuited for consumption. The bitcher said he was sure there were pieces of the bird that were edible, but he was unaware of what they were or how to prepare them for cooking. Most of the creature was toxic or just plain nasty.
He told her to try the potion master to see if he would be interested in any parts of it. With that, Faye started heading toward the merchant district. Most of the high end shops were there, or even just regular shops. The ones in the mud district, where Faye usually stayed, were of a lower class. Of course, that didn't include the tanners and butchers. Those trades were all within the mud district. It seemed the higher class wanted to be as far away from the loud and smelling trades as possible, so the smiths, butchers and tanners were working in the mud district.
Faye found her way to a shop that she'd never seen before. It was actually rather ostentatious. The sign was large, larger than any other of the signs along the road. The colors were bright and eye catching. Faye made her way into the shop. There, she found what appeared to be a small herbalist behind a long countertop. The tiny herbalist was barely able to peek over the counter. When she entered, the little old man glanced up to see her enter.
"Can I help you?"