Assassin Crow Evolution

As Jimmy essentially rustled his own feathers, one very important thing happened.

The blood that was stuck on his feathers, around his chest, which was fresh enough to the point that it hadn’t even dried yet, sprinkled right into the middle of the Summoning Circle.

"I hope that worked," He held his breath.

As if to answer his question, he then suddenly saw his shadow in great detail.

This prompted him to turn around swiftly, and as he did, he noticed that the Soul Core, which was prompted in what would be considered the jaw of the carved Wyrm of the Summoning Circle, was emitting a great deal of light.

It was blinding! It surprised him, even, because even though he had initially known where to put the Soul Core, Gundor hadn’t told him what it was supposed to do after.

"Cool," He said, and took a couple of steps back.

The core was spinning within the mouth of the stone head, and the more it spun, the more light it emitted.

Not knowing what to expect, he backed away further. He had a feeling that he wasn’t supposed to stand in the middle of the Summoning Circle anymore.

"I hope that I didn’t just offer myself as a sacrifice," He tried to shake his fears away with humor. "If this kills me, I swear I’ll haunt Gundor’s anus for decades."

The ritual did not kill him, thankfully, even if he was expecting the worst more and more by the passing second.

The moment he walked away from it, the body of the circle, all the way to the tail, began to emit the same color of light as the stone head did, primarily along the spine. Pale blue, beautiful, soft enough to the eyes, and yet, it still seemed threatening.

Jimmy felt as if he was witnessing the full power behind magic. It finally dawned to him how important magic could be, and this was a perception that he felt that he couldn’t have ever gotten if he spent his life flinging fireballs around.

The Summoning Circle almost looked alive! The light it emitted was so beautiful, and painted such a seemingly big event, that he started thinking that the carved serpent which represented the circle, was starting to move!

"Please don’t move, please don’t move," He repeated after every breath he took.

This beautiful show went on for five minutes. It was distracting, but he eventually reached the point where he began to worry if he did the ritual right.

He was sure he followed Gundor’s instructions to the letter, but then again, he didn’t fully trust that old soul, so he was almost sure that he’d get hurt at some point throughout the ritual. A desperate old soul would say anything to bear flesh and bones once more.

Just before he started debating if he should ditch this scene all together, something caught his eye.

A bone fell from the sky. It landed right in the middle of the circle, disrupting the light show.

It was tiny, it seemed like a broken finger bone, but for reasons he couldn’t fully understand, it was there.

One bone became two. Then more flew over at great speeds, whistling their song as if they were bringing the depths of hell along with them.

"A bone magnet? Makes sense, kind of. I was starting to think the summoning failed." He said, "If I can even call this a summoning. I think I’m resurrecting the motherfucker."

A pile of bones stood in the middle of the circle. Some were bigger, some were tiny fragments, but ultimately, he was sure that he didn’t see a single whole bone within the midst.

"Those are his bones, aren’t they?" He asked himself, "What the fuck did he do? Did he get thrown into a shredder or some shit?"

Before he could finish his sentence, the bones started moving again, except they were barely flying.

Instead, they were throwing themselves together like pieces of iron pulled by a strong magnet. Every piece of bone acted like it knew where it belonged, and so, little by little, this ritual began to make sense.

The bones formed a skeleton, And from the looks of it, it was a bird’s skeleton.

"Yup, those are his bones," He said.

Life, in its most crude, and basic way started forming across the skeleton.

Flesh grew out of it, seemingly out of thin air. It was followed by veins, nerves, brain matter, and everything else that a living body would require.

Jimmy was amazed by this. It was the last thing he expected, and at the back of his mind, he had thoroughly believed that he would’ve brought Gundor back as a mindless zombie or something of that equivalent.

It was surprising, because the very roots of the plan had been for Gundor to possess another body, preferably a bird. The first idea had been to snatch a body, but he had initially changed that plan when he figured out what Jimmy was capable of. He knew he could depend on the young crow.

The details of the conversation he had with Gundor became more fuzzy by the hour, and so he grew more and more surprised as the ritual unfolded.

After about ten more minutes of slow, seemingly agonizing, and yet precise growth, the skeleton grew everything it needed to host a soul.

It was a crow. It looked healthy.

Ridiculously healthy. The crow was five foot tall, as opposed to Jimmy’s two-foot tall height, and that alone was absolutely intimidating, regardless of the fact that it did not move a muscle yet.

Moments later, the Soul Core stopped spinning within the Summoning Circle’s stone head.

The pale blue glow across the swirling spine of the circle, dissipated.

The Soul Core’s radiant light seemingly lost its power too shortly after, and then, the orb dissolved into a thick mist.

The mist floated towards the fresh, tall crow’s body like a gentle breeze, and it dissipated once it made contact. The core, which had contained Gundor’s soul, found its host.

As Jimmy observed the crow, he noticed that it opened its eyes.

It was sharp, and instant. Predatory.