[colour=aquamarine][b]Calign[/b][/colour][hr]

Between two great quillwort trees of ancient stature, about four or five metres up from the forest floor, there fell a bright and dazzling sunbeam. In that sunbeam drifted nothing but the dust of travelling fern spores, and, occasionally, a wizard. The light dappled past the swaying leaves of the canopy, changing shape with the wind. Like the wizard, the flecks of sunlight were now broken, now unbroken, now here, now nowhere to be seen.

Now nothing. Now a wizard.

Calign levitated in silent upright meditation, the white folds of its robes spilling down around it, arms limp at its sides, its wooden horns blooming gently in the light of the afternoon sun. At no particular signal, it fell slightly, flicked its cervine ears, and pushed off from a bough to float weightlessly forwards to where its curios were waiting.

It was an androgyne, delicate as the doe and yet hard, antlered, like the buck. Its body was slight, its face quite soft; yet it bore the claws of a hunter, and so its people called it Sire.

They were simple people. Their women gathered pith and fern and nursed. Their men would hunt and fish. They seldom spoke, and often sang, and rarely ever thought; Calign kept them because they were family, of the tribe that had once borne him. He kept them also to study them, and for this they were left untouched, bound by his spell but labouring under no command, permitted the art of wooden spears and body paint and even the use of fire.

There was no fire here today.

Calign's feet touched the ground and he crouched over what had been brought to him without making eye contact with the men and women of his forest, without even speaking to them. They watched him with nervous, flighty eyes as he laid his hands upon the body of the outsider.

The outsider was taller than the people of the fern forest, and wore... much more. His beard was thicker, his body stronger. His muscles were honed, sculpted even, not wiry and worn like the ragged fern dwellers, not lacking in protein. Calign rested a hand against his forehead, over his bulging eyes. Vomiting, seizure, paralysis of the lungs... a sure sign of poisoning. Malnutrition. This man had taken to the fruits of this forest in hunger, without knowing how to purge their poisons.

Calign explored his clothes until he found what he had hoped not to find, and retrieved it.

Sleek as a fish and sharp as a fang, denser than granite and embedded in ornate bone. Calign saw his own delicate face reflected in the blade of the knife. Unable to touch the strange thing, his fingers fading into fog the moment he grasped it, Calign wrapped it in a leaf and took it with him, marvelling once again at the unearthly weight of the alien tool. The little gathering of foragers watched him go, then disappeared into the forest.

[colour=aquamarine][i]Kampret. Astaga, astaga...[/i][/colour]

Calign kicked off from the lichenous floor and floated in one smooth, slow motion to a second grove. He set down the knife on a bed of moss, next to seven others. He looked around.

Hung on branches and splayed over rocks were helmets, tunics, cuirasses, and cords laden with charms. Bone, bronze, and polished jade glinted at him all around. On the ground, pairs of boots arranged in a row, as if standing to attention. Between the roots of a tree, seven skulls, all of Calign's collection but one.

He stood once more over the center of the grove, and the great skeleton.

It was two heads taller than him, easily, and laid out next to its spear. The bones had been picked clean in record time by worms at Calign's command; their smooth surface belied their freshness. Calign saw once more the deep scratches on its ribs and cranium, the shattered assemblage of its left wrist. In one place, its spine had been visibly broken- in another, beneath the head, completely torn in two.

[colour=aquamarine][i]Astaga...[/i][/colour]

Calign picked up the lower vertebra he had broken. There was something very wrong about the way it had shattered, and the way it was formed. There was too much smoothness and growth around the break. Between the destruction of the spine and the removal of the head, this bone had [i]healed.[/i]

As he well knew.

[colour=aquamarine][i]What is going[/i] on [i]out there?[/i][/colour]

Materials that did not chip. Hides bathed in some concoction of brain and urine that did not rot. False armour that protected against no earthly predator. Giants that would not die.

Calign knew there were great men beyond his forests, beings like him that bore powers from the Great Before. Men of sorcery, knowledge, and influence. Wizards. Magi. He had never met such men, only heard their presence whispered on the clouds. 

It was past time for that to change.

As quick as a cat, the spirit flung itself across the forest, now flying, now running. It passed pools of disc-bodied salamanders, duels of giant dragonflies, the trunks of mighty ferns that speared through the canopy like fireworks. When it emerged on the white sands of the coast, a great beast was waiting for it.

[colour=aquamarine]"Buaya! Datang, datang."[/colour] The big suchus wiggled her huge, studded shoulders and looked at Calign with dumb eyes. [colour=aquamarine]"We will go. Come, now, datang. We have a great journey ahead of us."[/colour]

The crocodilian beast roused itself, yawning its enormous mouth, as large as a rhino and almost as stupid, much taller than its aquatic brethren. For its part, the spirit turned back to the heavy fog of the forest and started to trill a high, resonant whistle from the back of its throat, singing far across the ocean and deep into the woods. 

Before it had finished, a dozen glossy black birds had emerged from the woods before it. They were plumed like ravens, but bore teeth and horny snouts instead of beaks, claws on their wings, and a second wing on each foot. Their tails were long as lizards', and ended in sleek vanes of plumage.

[colour=aquamarine]"Pergi keluar. Go out over the lands and seek the great magi."[/colour] As it spoke, the spirit handed each of them a magnolia blossom plucked from its horns. [colour=aquamarine]"Give them this, that they might know a wizard is coming. Fly safely."[/colour] One by one the birds departed.

Calign mounted the waiting suchus and clicked its tongue, beckoning the beast to move, and plucked a leggy little lizard from a nearby liana as they began to saunder steadily northwards.

[colour=aquamarine]"Witness me,"[/colour] Cal murmured to the lizard, sliding it into its robe, next to the leaf-wrapped knife. [colour=aquamarine]"A long journey lies before us, and we have much to learn."[/colour]

[hr]

[hider=Notes]
Calign has encountered some of Aurochylys's Immortals and Undying, and sets off to find out more, riding an aetosaur.
His people are extremely primitive, with knowledge of fire and very little else.
Cal has sent out some [url=https://artsandculture.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/microraptor-photo-zhao-chuang-courtesy-of-peking-natural-science-organization/XwHRCf0-AEcwmw?hl=en]raven-like microraptors[/url] bearing magnolias to any wizards they may find, to alert them of his presence.
Not every raptor will find a wizard and not every wizard will be found by a raptor.
He does some [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7__Iu-nB-4]throat singing[/url]. Apparently raptors like that.
He takes a lizard with him.
[/hider]