A Zoologist’s Guide to Surviving Magical Creatures

The moment my fingers brushed the fragment, I braced for the usual skull-splitting headache that usually came with touching Unknown God fragments—like getting mentally dropkicked by the universe.

But the pain didn't come.

Instead, a blinding light swallowed me whole.

Oh no. Not again.

The sensation was weirdly familiar, like being flushed through a glowing cosmic toilet. Kind of like the time I got yanked into Mythica on my first day as an intern and landed face-first in a field of sentient mushrooms.

Here we go again.

I hit the ground face-first with the grace of a dropped potato. The floor was cold, hard, and unreasonably smug about it. Pain bloomed across my forehead like a regretful tattoo as I groaned and peeled myself off the ground.

Light gave way to space. Endless, vast, starless space.

Darkness stretched in every direction—an endless, echoing nothing, like I'd just belly-flopped into a void with floor privileges.

And then I saw it.

Something massive loomed in the center of the emptiness—too big to ignore, too quiet to be safe. It stood motionless, shrouded in the kind of stillness that made every breath feel like a sin.

My first instinct? Panic.

My second?

Squint dramatically and hope it wasn't about to eat me.

Right in the middle stood a giant bird.

Not a bird.

A bird.

Three-legged. Towering. Majestic. The kind of creature that made phoenixes look like fried chicken. Its feathers shimmered in layers of crimson and molten gold, each plume glowing like embers in a divine forge. A burning crown marked its head, not ornate or jeweled—just raw light shaped like a crest.

It wasn't moving.

Eyes shut. Wings folded. Still as a statue.

"Is it… dead?" I muttered, inching closer.

Or maybe it was sleeping? The eternal nap kind? I couldn't tell. All I knew was that I was now standing in some kind of celestial loading screen with a massive flaming bird and zero idea what was supposed to happen next.

Cautiously, I reached out and gave it a light poke.

Like a polite prod you give to an ancient, mythical creature just in case it has a short fuse and a long memory.

Nothing.

Still as ever.

"Well," I muttered, scratching the back of my head, "what kind of bird has three legs anyway? Is it defective? Or is this, like, a rare collector's edition?"

Apparently, that was the magic word.

The bird's eye snapped open.

I screamed.

Like, full-volume, undignified flailing.

"ARGHHH! PLEASE DON'T EAT ME! I HAVEN'T SHOWERED AND I SMELL!"

I threw my hands over my head like that would help against a monstrous hunger-driven beast.

But the bird didn't lunge or peck or flambé me. It just… sighed. Except not with its beak. The sound didn't even come from its mouth.

"Are you always this cowardly?" a voice echoed—not in the air, but in my skull. Calm. Dry. Very unimpressed.

"You're so noisy."

I peeked between my fingers. The bird was staring directly at me, one huge golden eye like a molten sun pinned to my soul. Then, with all the grace of a tired elder god who'd seen too much, it blinked and closed its eyes again.

I lowered my hands slowly, throat dry.

"Sorry," I muttered, shuffling awkwardly closer. "You just caught me off guard, is all."

The bird didn't respond. Just breathed—slow, deep, quiet heat radiating off its form.

I swallowed hard. "So… uh, who are you?"

One golden eye slid open again. "I thought you'd figured that out by now."

"Huh?" I blinked. "We've… met?"

The bird tilted its head slightly, studying me with an expression that screamed you absolute moron without having to say it.

And then it spoke, that same dry voice curling inside my head with just the right amount of sarcasm to make me want to shrivel.

"Well, weren't you the one who said I was 'just a bird'?"

I frowned, trying to place the memory. Just a bird? That didn't sound like me.

Wait.

Oh no.

Oh gods, no.

A flashback smacked me in the face like a divine soul-slap.

It all came rushing back—the moment in the Ancient City of Kazan when Jiuge casually dropped a bomb I didn't realize was nuclear.

"Kaleon's mount was a Roc," she'd said.

And like the ignorant intern I was, I'd squinted at her and replied, without a shred of hesitation:

"A Roc? You mean… like a bird?"

Yeah. I said it. Out loud. With my whole chest. In front of gods. With witnesses.

The memory burned hotter than a phoenix's armpit. I could see Agnos's expression even now—his signature deadpan turning even flatter than usual, like I'd just insulted a celestial bloodline. Jiuge had blinked slowly, her nine tails twitching like they were trying not to slap me in the face.

And me? I just stood there, absolutely unaware that I had just downplayed an ancient divine beast into a feathered sky-pigeon.

And now this bird—this Roc—was staring at me like it had been waiting all this time just to deliver this moment of divine irony.

"You…" I whispered, stepping back, horrified. "You heard that?"

Its beak curled in what I swear was a smirk.

"That's right," the voice echoed, full of smug vindication. "I'm that Roc."

The space around us pulsed. The light shifted. And suddenly, the air was thick with realization.

"I'm Vorta."

The Roc's crown shimmered brighter, like a sun rising inside a god.

I just stood there, very aware of my insignificance.

My mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

I had, officially, roasted the Unknown God of Space-Time leylines.

And lived.

Barely.

But in my defense—a Roc is technically still a bird.

Right?

You can't blame me for jumping to conclusions when your world's version of "a sacred mount of the gods" looks like a fire-drenched phoenix with a third leg and a personal vendetta against sarcasm.

It's like being told the god of war rides a "kitten" and then finding out it's a sabretooth tiger with PTSD.

So yeah. Maybe I said something dumb.

But I stand by my confusion. Mostly.

"Just out of curiosity…" I swallowed hard. "Er… were you always inside the fragment?"

My voice cracked halfway through like a badly tuned flute, and I immediately regretted asking. My palms were clammy. My face? Probably pale enough to qualify as a ghost intern.

Vorta didn't answer.

He just stared.

Not in the normal "hey-I'm-considering-a-response" kind of way. No. His gaze pierced straight through me—past bone, blood, and bravado—right into whatever was left of my pride.

The silence stretched.

I have no idea what strange cocktail of nerves and stupidity gave me the courage to ask that out loud. Maybe it was my incurable curiosity.

Maybe it was the secondhand embarrassment crawling up my spine.

Or maybe—just maybe—I was too mortified to admit I'd blurted something borderline insulting to an ancient celestial being the size of a three-story temple bird bath.

I felt… judged. Thoroughly. Spectrally. Like I was being weighed, measured, and found embarrassingly stupid.

For a terrifying moment, I swear I saw it: that subtle tilt of his massive crowned head, the kind reserved for watching ants fumble with sugar granules.

Yep. I was the ant. And I'd just asked if Mount Olympus kept their phoenix in a shoebox.

I cleared my throat, trying to play it cool. "Right. That's a no, then."

Still nothing. Just that quiet, soul-poking scrutiny.

Gods, why do I talk?