Notail Simulator Beta (4/4)

You have a single capture cage in your bag and a sense of pity.

You know that if this baby is left here, it will die soon. It already laid on death's door among the bones of its kin. You were the only thing in the world who did not reject it even when its mother did.

Fortuna rolls a 200 sided die. A 40 is rolled.

You point the device at the child, and it doesn't struggle as it is taken in. It was your first time using a capture cage, but you think you did it right. The screen shows an image of the eyegret child upon it with the word "Fabled eyegret" above, similar to its mother.

You take a quick scan of the area. The mother was still not in sight.

An opening for an escape. You jump to your feet and run across the nearest bridge. It creaks and groans with every step. You feared it would break under you at any moment due to how woefully in disrepair it was.

One bridge crossed.

Then two.

A third one and yet there still seemed to be a hundred more left. They weaved in and out, and it seemed impossible to tell which one took you closer to the exit and which one took you deeper into the limbo of bridges and platforms.

As you ran across another bridge something caught your eye.

A blur just out of the range of your vision. You didn't want to look down, to see what you knew was coming-

-but you did.

Fortuna rolls a 20 sided die. A 4 is rolled.

You were too loud in your escape, and the mother found you.

She ducks below the bridge in her flight and lands on the platform you attempted to escape to. She doesn't attack, merely tilts her head side to side in thought. She was confused, not angry. In fact, she puffs up and clucks in her odd language, one you almost feel you can understand. It feels she's asking you a question.

"Where are you going?"
"Why did your friends run?"
"Why do you act like this?"

You think in your mind, attempting to give her a voice.

She ruffles herself up before straightening herself out and taking flight. For a moment, you think she might have let you go, but you watch her fly to her nest, and you know what will happen next.

You move.

You move, and you wish you didn't hurt your leg.

Fortuna rolls a 20 sided die. A 5 is rolled.

She screams.

She screams because her baby is gone and she refuses to blame herself for it.

You don't look back.

You don't dare look back.

But you feel her eyes come closer and closer to you.

It feels like a physical weight on you that makes it harder to run until finally, you stop. There's a tug on your bag. She's got you, but she hasn't killed you yet. You try to not think of the violent onslaught she inacted on her own child.

You try not to think of yourself in its place.

You just try to pull away.

Fortuna rolls a 20 sided die. A 4 is rolled.

But she's giant. You've never seen a creature this big before since the N-class in your village transformed.

You're able to pull out the capture cage with her child in it. Thinking if she got her baby back that she would focus the attention on it instead of you, but with one shake she ruins those plans. The cage tumbles out of your hands and into the depths below.

Before you felt anger. A will to live. Fear and confusion, but as the cage disappeared from your vision so did all of those feelings.

It was unusual. As she took to the sky with you in tow, you felt nothing.

She placed you in her nest and scoward through the bones trying to find where her dead baby might be. You looked towards the dying creature who had given up on trying long ago and felt a kinship. Both of you were destroyed on a nonphysical level.

When she failed to find her dead child, she pulled out a random bone from the pile and tossed it at your feet while screaming in her strange tongue to you.

And yet you couldn't hear her. Everything was muffled, and you couldn't focus on her, and however couldn't look away. Only staring at her to appease her need to scream at you.

You blinked, and she was gone, but as you lifted your head to the sky so was the day.

Suddenly you just started to cry. It was irritating to you that you were doing this because you didn't feel stressed. You didn't feel sad, or angry and yet you were crying
like
a
stupid
idiot
who
got
caught
by
a
bird
and
deserves
to
be
stuck
here
forever
and
"E-2732! <:)"

You look up to E-4 and two of the others trying to get your attention from far away. They attempted to wave you over, seemingly with a plan of action for if the mother came back. There was suddenly fear in your chest. Not for yourself but for them.

The mother seemed to have no intention to kill you or else she would have by now but if this plan fails you don't think she'll be so merciful to all of them. They didn't get to see just how terrifying she was. How powerful.

Were you really going to let them risk their lives to save you? What if they died?