Chapter 4: new family

The little crow could not feel anything in his surroundings thinking that he was dead, he began to remember the last moments of his life.

He had followed the thing that took his mother when it left, he went to his mother but couldn’t go near for some reason. Then he felt it, an elemental energy that was calling to him, unlike all the other elements that he could vaguely move but never store in his body like his brother, this one had something special to it giving it a feeling like it belonged to him.

Instinctively he charged towards it and let out a cry for the fist time in his life while opening his third eye and seeing the world for the fist time, momentarily the he stoped to take in everything but that only lasted a second before he realized he could now see the energy that would belong to him and he once again charged in ignoring the two creatures fighting. After that he was simply stuck in this place left alone to sort out his thoughts. At this moment a fluctuation happened in this space and information flowed into the little crows head while his body changed.

The information was from the two creatures that where fighting creating the energy that he charged into. This information centered around humans, in an instant he understood their language along with the understanding that his body had now changed into the equivalent of a three year old of one of the human race.

As knowledge of humans was flowing into him he understood something great, while humans were born week that was what lead them to develop ways to gain strength. If he used the same methods maybe he would be able to grow strong and see his mother, father, and brother again one day. But this was also on the assumption that he was not dead and just in some weird place or dreaming.

The humans separated their strength into three stages the human stage, the grand stage, and the master stage in each stage were three ranks primary, intermediate, and advanced the ranks were further divided into nine levels.

These levels were reached by practicing in one of the eight elements which were fire, water, wind, earth, wood, lightning, light, darkness, and space. Fire, water, wind, and earth were the most common elements humans developed while wood, lightning, light, and darkness were well known and ways in which to practice these elements but only low level forms were commonly availible and the higher levels were guarded as secrets of certain groups, space on the other had was known but no one understood and had never truly been seen or practiced.

The only thing he wasn’t sure about was that humans had something they called a spirit which helped them in forming their core, this spirit would take different forms in different humans, for example the holy knight had a shied spirit while the death knight had an elemental essence spirit.

These two were vastly different from one another one took the shape of an object while the other was formless and simply represented the power of the earth. The little crow also understood that elemental beasts did not have spirits like those of humans and instead relied on blood essence, the blood from their powerful ancestors in order to form a core and grow stronger naturally. The little crow then figured that he did not contain blood essence and that was the reason he could not become stronger as a beast, but by obtaining a human body maybe he had also obtained a spirit.

Once the information stopped flowing into his head the little crow began to go through it and learned that he only obtained general information of humans, their language, and the way in which they gained strength after going through all the information and understanding it two more fluctuations occurred in this space and two people appeared one was Alexander the holy knight and the other was David the newly turned death knight, both appeared to be unconscious. All this took place over what seemed to the little crow like a couple of hours, feeling that he no longer desired to be in this space the little crow felt himself leaving, slowly fading from this mysterious place.

Ban looked at the unconscious child sleeping among the pile of equipment left by the two knights that had disappeared, the child was the only living thing remaining from the confrontation between the two knights and the abnormal crow.

Finally making a decision Ban decided to take the child back to his home and raise the child, his own sons and daughters had long sense become independent with their own families and so had his grandchildren and would only visit him every five to ten years not for lack of love between the family but everyone had their own family and different circumstances and places to live, so apart from his attempts to reach a higher level in power he had nothing to do and raising another child would be a good way to spend time especially one that came to him in such an interesting manner.

Ban then proceeded to store all of the equipment on the floor into his holding bag and while he did that he retrieved a cloth for the child to cover himself in. lastly his appearance changed from a dying sickly old man to that of a rather healthy complexion and an adequate amount of meat on his bones, previously he had changed his appearance just in case an unforeseen events occurred but now that everything was solved he could safety go back to his regular appearance, after a couple of hours the child began to stir from his slumber and Ban decided to wait for the child to notice him before speaking in order to avoid startling him.

The little crow was waking up and felt great joy he had practically been reborn and could potentially become one of the pillars of the murder upon returning or start one of his own. Noticing the changes in his body he flexed his arms and legs stretching out his body and getting a feel for it, he also had noticed through his sense an old human staring at him in so the little crow also turned his head towards the old human.

“Hello child my name is Ban Corvidae. Do you have a name?”

The little crow thought about this and although he knew that his mother called him something, he could not understand it and so he could not tell this old human and shook his head instead. The old human, Ban Corvidae, looked pensive and continued

“Hmm then you’ll need one in the future, but before that would you allow this old man to ask you some questions?”

the little crow again thought over what the man in front of him said and nodded sense he had no particular reason to decline.

“I thank you young one, then lets start out with this can you speak?”

“Un… yes” the little crow answered in a quiet voice even surprising himself by the fact that he was no longer mute.

Ban waited for the young boy to focus on him again before continuing his questioning

“Then young one can you open your eyes?”

Again the little crow was startled by this and began to think before attempting to open his eyes, slowly his two eyes opened and he saw the world, previously he could tell the old man’s facial expressions and reaction due to the fact that his life sensing ability had strengthened considerably after gaining this new form.

Seeing the world for the second time amazed him this time even more so than the first, previously he had seen it in a flash before diving into the clash between two knights. Ban was surprised to see the boys eyes, on the boys left eye the was a swirl of darkness and where the whites of his eyes should have been was instead gray the other eye in contrast was a swirl of gold while still having the whites a gray color.

After a minute the boy stopped looking around and stared at him while nodding his head making an “Un” sound.

“then on to a more important questions, do you know what you are?”

“… Un… crow.”

This child’s speaking reminded Ban a lot of his second daughter’s, answering with only one short word and expecting others to fully grasp what they meant, for now that would be fine the questions where fairly straightforward and the answers matched but this way of speaking had caused his daughter no end of trouble.

Thinking this Ban decided to give the child one last question.

“In your current state you would not be able to go to your murder and have no where to go, would you like to become my grandson and come with me?”

Ban was fairly nervous at this point the boy was very cooperative and seemed like he would be fun to raise but if he did not wish to be adopted there was nothing that could be done.

“…Un”

This was truly a habit that Ban would have to do something about or else it would hinder the child’s social skills because while these things wouldn’t be necessary on the level of a politician making good dependable friends to fight along side you would be difficult.

“Good! Then your going to need a name… let me think… how about Aion and you’ll take my last name as well so you will be Aion Corvidae, from now on you can call me Grandpa”

“Un, Grandpa” the little crow, Aion now, accepted his new grandfather for two reasons, one simply because what the old man said made a lot of sense, without power every day would be a struggle for survival and would give him little time to truly figure out what happened to his body, but the most important reason was that he desired a family somewhere to belong.

“Haha good, then I’ll call you Aion form now on, also we will be headed to the Flame Wrym Kingdom, it should take us about three month by carriage.”

“Un.”

Ban simply sighed getting his new grandson to speak more was going to be a challenge.

“But the most important thing about Flame Wrym Kingdom is that your fourth uncle is the vice-principle of the Royal Flame Academy, in that kingdom there we will be able to enter you as a student when your five and I will begin to work as a teacher.”

When Ban had decided to raise the child he found, he had also decided to put everything on hold and focus on the child for the next twenty to thirty years, and taking him to his fourth son’s academy seemed like a good idea.

Flame Wrym Kingdom was one of the strongest kingdoms of the central lands and would make for a nice place to raise his new grandson. While the kingdom had its constant border wars and the near by forest of elemental beasts, the capital city where the academy was located was safe and finding a place to train Aion would never be difficult.

Ban waited for a response but simply received a nod, seeing this he sighed, this would truly be difficult. Ban then waved his hand and out of his holding bag come a carriage with another wave of his hand two bone horses raised themselves out of the ground while the harnesses attached themselves to the bone horses.

Ban then turned to Aion feeling proud to see a look of amazement on the child’s face. As they rode the carriage towards the Kingdom Ban thought about how he would proceed from this point and decided to let his son worry about it instead and summoned an undead hawk to deliver a letter informing his son that he would be visiting him and would need a place to stay for the next ten or so years, also mentioning about adopting an interesting child which would be his new nephew.

Having finished all the preparations on his part all that was left to do was try and communicate with the child and learn all he could about him in order to know what he would need to teach him before reaching the capital. Ban could feel that these were going to be a hard three months of trying to pry information out of his grandson and making sure he at least knew some basics of human society before he could cause any problems.