The Legacy of Dirty Birds

Liquor and Blood are the Same Color Here

(Content Warning: graphic description of child abuse)

Idris Opaling had a glass of dark wine perched in her palm. The alcohol running through her blood left her mind sensitive, almost painfully aware, of how Harold Tarif lacked the buzz her welfling counterparts commonly developed because of how exposed they were to natural elements like sorcery and misery. She didn't realize how peaceful it was without that kind of noise.

"Heavens, is that a real bird?" Harold gestured with his glass over to the large white avian perched his stand in her living room.

"His name is Pax, he's a lunar phoenix. He owed a debt a while back and now lives with all the High Welves, keeping track of the experiments and picking up magic where we cannot. He looks nice but he'll bite if you aren't careful."

"Absolutely mad." Harold giggled.

"We should talk about tomorrow; I've alerted the council and they'll wish to get this ordeal over with quickly."

"My dear, you should have brought it up earlier if you wanted to talk seriously."

She let her eyes close, and let her hands drift along the cool stone of her table. "Probably true. You've found my only weakness Harry; I can't ever wait to celebrate."

"Harry?" He raised a jagged eyebrow.

Idris ignored him. "I want it to be you."

Tarif seemed to stumbled across that sentence. "You want me to do...what?"

"I want you to kill them, you're the only one fit to do it."

Tarif leaned over the counter. Idris remembered, just for a moment that one of the deadwings had been under his care for a long time. She wondered if he still felt a connection to it. She desperately hoped he was a strong as she thought he was.

"I am, aren't I?" His voice was dangerously sober. "I'm the only one to do it."

She took another sip from her glass, the taste of grapes and pride burned across her cheeks. "My champion."

"You think the boy is really going to be the key to it all?" His eyes were dark, she loved the way they looked like coals. There was so much potential there.

"It's the only deadwing that has never been through my residential. It has to mean something."

"Oh, I've heard so many rumors of that place. They're supposedly completely docile after a few weeks, how do you do it?"

A stained smirk unfolded across her lips. "You're asking about my proudest accomplishment Harold, my magnum opus. You should have asked earlier if you wanted to talk serious."

"Well?" His face grew ever closer.

She smiled like a forked tongue might slip out from between her fangs, "I can't touch them, that's a rule. Once they pass the walls, I make myself a punishment on sight, while that makes it impossible to train them myself, it makes breaking it open so much more fun."

His coal eyes were wide and so intoxicatingly fixed on her. She craved this. She wanted every single living thing to stare at her like Harold Tarif did. She wanted the country to be her residential.

"I control food and water, I'll train the older deadwings to go after newcomers for rewards, if one of them hears plans to escape and tells me it gets rewarded, therefore none of them trust each other. I train them so that as long as I'm within its line of sight it's eyes will always be on me. Then there's...extracurriculars."