Considering I had something comparable to a small sniper round sitting on my head, I could only quietly follow along while hoping the bird was not too high in grade to be scared by the Bureau cleaners outside. With a narrow ivory-like beak about five inches in length that could have probably penetrated my visor if it really wanted to, there was no reason to fight with it. Especially with just two of us.
The rest of our trek back to the hill was not as eventful, Poniard did not even find much to put in the basket despite returning from further around the hill. When we got to the hill, though, the bird seemed to wake up and coo in short clips while looking around. Almost as if it was alarmed.
As a creature who could escape to safety from most enemies and lived in this area, there was no way it did not know about the revenant field here. However, despite becoming alert at the sight of the oddly perfectly round hill, the bird slowly calmed down as we started walking up the hillside. Of course I offered to carry Eliza's basket for her since my ruck only had a few bodies and materials in it but she said no.
Halfway up the hill the bird hopped down and glided to the ground to hop around us while searching and pecking through the grass. Every now and then it would pick something up and drop it to look at then move on to a new spot. At first I thought it was looking for food but soon Poniard stopped following me to follow the bird as if he knew what it was doing.
For a moment I was reminded of how Poniard had somehow known to pursue the impure crystals that could not go into the death stone and wondered if the bird was not seeking its own benefits. Since the bird was not riding me like a beast of burden anymore I was quite content to let it do as it pleased.
Until, of course, we neared the top and someone in the camp called out to us. The presence of another human voice seemed to catch the bird's attentions, making it fly up to land on my head where it could better view the world ahead. The bird, seeing the others at work or rest in the camp with the sun half of the way down the sky, simply clucked or clicked it beak before hopping back down to the ground to search in a new area.
In the camp, Emilia, Ms. Gwyn, and Karen had taken over the scouting and sniping duties for Eliza and I while the other guys on the team were all stuck working on the camp. Apparently, in the event of another undead attack, a short wall of chopped wood was being stacked around the entire perimeter of the camp. Likewise, on the opposite side of the hill from last night was a small pile of small game bodies among three larger bodies.
The time we spent away from camp was not exactly quiet for the camp, either, but I doubted they had bagged anything as interesting as the bird. However, it was assured that our overall gains would be great despite whatever percentages we got taxed by the Bureau. Assignments like these were different because there was no recognized targets so the Bureau usually just takes ten percent of whatever gets brought back before they go a-logging.
When Eliza and I finally unloaded all of our loot, included the ruck I took from Poniard so he could help keep the bird occupied, the others gathered around to see what all we had come up with. Out of our larger game, the portal eagle and the evolving komodo were certainly our best hunts. However, the best gains were definitely in the basket.
Because of her extensive secondhand knowledge that came from living and working with Karen, Eliza alone had found quite a few valuable alchemy ingredients for restorative tinctures. Between her AND Poniard, though, they had found a vast array of different magical and medicinal plants with properties ranging from pain relief to elemental affinities. Those last ingredient types were what Karen used to make things like her fire bombs.
Despite what I had initially thought when we left, the others had actually managed to find a few more shapes of revenant ivory. As well, Emile and Carlos claimed to be more than happy with the 'welded' swords they would have made using the death stone materials and had waived rights to death ivory swords. Poniard could make great use of my current ivory short swords that were basically one-handed longswords to him.
On top of the extra pieces that had been found, some small armaments could also be made with the remaining ivory even after one or two pieces were given to the Bureau.
Ms. Gwyn was already on top of paying our taxes, there was a large iron-bound oak chest under the sentry tower that contained a combination of our gains to date. The bottom was lined with two dozen pounds of bone material under two pigorilla hides folded around numerous small game pelts and a small cube of transmuted death ivory. On top of this were some paper wrapped plant parcels as well as vacuum sealed bags of otherworldly food stuffs.
From our cargo to the chest went large samples of our different alchemy and food ingredient finds, a half-pound portal truffle, the normal komodo and wolf skins, as well as the magical inner parts and beak and talons of the large raptor we bagged. It was painful to find out the dead bird had wind or air elemental affinities and parts that could be used to augment tools for those mages. However, the more important feathers were going to be saved and used for Eliza.
While Karen and Eliza set to work processing materials I decided was as good a time as any to question Karen about the bird that was still wandering the hilltop with Poniard. "You really did not know?" Eliza asks flatly as Karen looks out and about for the bird in question.
"I told you that," I reply just as flatly while Karen turns to Eliza impatiently.
"Well, girl, spit it out," Karen teasingly says while lightly poking at Eliza's proto-padded shoulder and pouting.
"I don't know," she replies flatly, simply staring at the finger poking her. "Remember when that B party brought that breeding pair of familiars to us, the phantomgale songbirds? It's a smaller white version. I know the spiritingale is the golden holy element version, so I have just been calling this one a lightingale in my head."
"Bring. Me. The. Bird." Karen says carefully and plainly while slowly turning her head toward me. "That might be a B grade elemental songbird. The first discovered of their species was a C grade fire elemental called the fauxnix because it set itself on fire without taking damage as a defense mechanism. At C grade, it burned with a heat of over three thousand degrees Celsius- like magnesium."
Pointing to my visor, I ask, "What grade would it have to be to do this? CASUALLY."
Narrowing her eyes gravely at my helmet, she says with a deathly seriousness, "C grade armor, so upper C or higher. You won't be able to keep a creature of that grade no matter how much you paid or who you knew while you're at least two grades below."
"If you want it, you can have it," I say in the same gravely serious manner as her. "I just wanted to see if I could interact with it, now it thinks it owns-"
"Coo?" An upward melodious noise above my head suddenly cuts me off as if I had actually been asked a question. Leaning my head ever so slowly back, I soon find that off-white bird looked down its needling beak at me in an almost haughty manner. Then, without any further ado, it pecked the same exact spot as last time.
This time, pieces of synthetic acrylic fell into my helmet as the beak easily penetrated the previously damaged location. Taking its time just as casually as it had struck, the bird works its head around while twitching its beak to almost gently enlarge the hole. Once it could fit its entire beak in the hole, the lightingale lightly tapped my forehead three times and flew away to continue its searching.
Everybody in the camp was currently staring in my direction with wide-eyed horror, some of them probably wondering how I was still standing after being shot in the face. After a few seconds of silence, I exhale a breath I did not know I had been holding and say, "That bird terrifies me in the same way my guardian does. It's so small and pretty that you enjoy having it around but then you piss it off and remember how easily it could kill you."
"You can't take that thing back to Earth," Karen says in a way that brooked no argument.
"Tell the bird that," I say tiredly while flopping back on the ground. "If that thing perches on my head, I'm leaving it to the clean-up crew outside to deal with. It only seems to get mad when I say somebody else can… you saw, so I think it really does think it owns me because it's asserting dominance. I… I don't know how to deal with that from a bird that fast. Did you see or hear it show up? I did NOT!"
Holding her own head in a miserable manner while resting her elbows on the table she was working on, she says, "Over a year ago, the black phantomgale versions Eliza mentioned showed up in a B grade territory up in Canada. A mage clan from American managed to catch them and they were brought to America where they started touring from one research center to another. It was found that not only did they have intelligence levels like ours but they were capable of speech. They were brought to the center where I was training at and I brought back videos of the lectures and birds for Eliza."
"They liked Russian opera but spoke multiple languages perfectly," Eliza emphasizes from the side, looking off in the direction the lightingale had flown. "There are four known species, two of which are in captivity. The phantomgales themselves confirmed that there were not only elemental variations of them but also all forms of magical variations. The father of the phantomgales was a living undead elemental manifestation and the mother, like them, was darkness elemental."
Giving Eliza and Karen both skeptical looks, I say, "Hold on a second… are they birds or… mana?"
"Birds are the form they usually choose, but they can come in other physical bodies," Karen agrees. "They all like music and have eccentric personalities. The phantomgales themselves only chose to be captured to learn more about the world when one of them was finally hit with a bullet after four days of skirmishing. The fauxnix and the phantomgales are the only captive bird elementals that we have on our side of the portal, but there are many guilds and groups around the world who have elementals. Yours is just the newest one."
"His?" Eliza asks curiously, looking down and sideways at Karen in a pointed manner.
"Well, his owner," Karen agrees before tiredly sighing once again. "Whatever friends in places you think are high that you have, you should get a hold of them as soon as you can. That bird might be the death of you or your career."
I was tempted to say that I might be an amateur but I could always be a professional killer but instead chose to just silently hang my head in shame. There were different departments that handled agricultural and wildlife 'imports' through the portals. Director Carlyle was pretty well connected in general but I could not help but worry about what he himself would say about this bird.
"Smart bird… smart bird..." I find myself mumbling aloud while trying to think of a way out of my situation. Then, climbing up the side of the nearby sentry tower, I look around the hilltop to spot the bird and Poniard hard at work.
I honestly considered just running for the portal but the bird would probably start holding Poniard or one of the others hostage until they brought it to me or vice versa. There were people in higher grades who could probably fight it but then my reputation as a Protector, let alone a professional tamer, would be ruined. Goblins would be all I could ever work with after that.
"I'll go to the portal to make some phone calls," I say in defeat after climbing back down from the sentry tower. "Will you guys be alright here, Ms. Gwyn?"
"There's still plenty of time before it gets true dark," Ms. Gwyn calls down to me. "It'll only take a minute or two to get there, maybe an hours for calls, and then a couple minutes to get back. You skipped breakfast so don't even think about not being here for dinner," she adds right as I turned to start running away.
*