Charles had never really been an early morning kind of person. Even now, in his second life, he could confidently say that he despised mornings.

Though, the reasons were very different now.

“Can you piss off!?” Charles' loud cry warped between bird-song and what might have been more proper to come out of a velociraptor’s throat.

The target of his anger stopped - or rather, ‘targets’ - and stared at his abode blankly, fat birds that initially had caught Charles’ eye for their beautiful fluorescent feathers and the designs the colors made out on their bodies. Now, they drew his ire as the nemesis of all sleep.

After a few seconds the birds seemed to glance away from his position, never quite fully finding Charles’ form, and thus, disregarded the sound he had made as unimportant.

‘Alright, now just shuffle off and leave me be.’ The bladebeak pleaded mentally for a second, examining the cluster of six birds. One of them was very slightly larger than the rest and had ridiculous plumage atop their head. The others were watching the pompous bird - Charles’ assumed it was a ‘him’ - and had been adding their own eye-wateringly bad cries to his own ad nauseam. For a few blessed seconds, they simply chittered and chirped at one another in a more reasonable tone and volume, and the predatory bird wasn’t alone in exhaling in relief in this arm of the forest at the sudden absence of the noise that sought to gouge out their eardrums.

No sooner than he’d begun to turn around and curl back into his nest did the shrieking resume.

Before he could consider his options, Charles had thrown himself fully into a dead-on sprint, shrieking in rage. Sapphire blue, burgundy red, and black feathers burst forth from the clearing of trees with a noise and rage that overwhelmed the previous cacophony. The birds froze all at once, stunned at the sudden emergence of the blade-beak and its anger. At that moment Charles’ human mind and bird instincts were in total agreement that the obnoxious birds needed to be gone, and eagerly went to work on the situation before him. 

Even so, his first reflexive action was both humorous and terrifying to the birds. The bladebeak threw himself at the tree, long gouging talons pulling it upwards along with its hooked wing claws. He ascended the tree to ten feet in an instant before pivoting to the lowest branches. In a burst of adrenaline-rage-fuelled motion, he managed to launch himself onto the branch nearest, clambering over it clumsily but surely in his single minded pursuit. 

Charles’ gaze never left the birds, and in a flash they vacated their branch - a mere three meters more for the clearly athletically inclined predator to reach. As they took to the air, Charles’ beak snapped open wide and released a cry that promised violence if he caught them, just before he managed to come to some semblance of his senses.

‘W-well, I guess that’s fine. Yeah, just get out of here,’ Charles’ conflicted thoughts rested clearly on his face, ‘I didn’t want to eat you for a free meal anyways.’ 

He watched them fly off, trying hard not to feel bad about not filling his thoroughly empty stomach, and taking some measure of satisfaction that the birds were at least leaving.

Which lasted all of three more seconds before they landed on a branch opposite to his nest. 

‘Don’t you feathering do it.’ Charles unheard thoughts and narrowed eyes focused entirely on the birds. It was almost like they’d somehow forgotten that just moments ago they’d had to flee something trying to eat them.

As their piercing, obnoxious cries began again, Charles had to admit that there were indeed some species in the avian family that should just die off.

That was a thought for later, though, as Charles was already bounding off of the branch, deflecting off of the trunk of the tree on his way down ingloriously to the forest floor. He staggered several steps, but the bladebeak felt almost like he was magnetically drawn to the offending bird-brains now. This time, though, there was no noise from the predatory bird, the movements he made were close to the ground, faster, and after the initial stumble bore none of the reckless charge of before.

Charles’ mind worked in tandem with his instincts, an unspoken accord that this wasn’t just about chasing them off now. He wanted to eat one of the bastards.

The red and blue mass of feathers darted across the forest floor, never losing sight of the prize on the branches above. Of those birds, several of them seemed to huff ingnobly, and he imagined that they were almost pompously disregarding him, as though he was the one intruding.

Rather than fill with anger, Charles’ felt his conscious mind chill murderously with that, surpassing even his instincts. In the span of his approach, he raced over possibilities. There was no way they’d stay put for him to ascend the tree, and lacking a ranged option other than maybe getting to throw a stone at them, he’d have to reach them directly.

The possibility of that jump never entered his head, the distance upwards four times his own height. In that moment, he felt his instincts squirm under the encompassing demands of his mind, and pressed his muscles to the limit.

And then he felt a familiar hot rush of energy race down his spine. Charles’ only barely didn’t react by throwing himself to the side, the only thing stopping him was the difference in sensation. If the other times had felt hot water getting dumped down his spine, this was more like a tingle of lightning, electric and seemingly coming from within, rather than without.

His legs bundled up for the jump, only for that energy to instinctively fill them. In that instant, Charles felt a disturbing amount of weakness in the wake of that energy surge. Despite that, he made for the leap, a sudden acceleration far faster and higher than he thought should be possible. 

The birds recognized the attack far too late. The sounds of flapping and cacophonous squawks filled the air as the flock’s panicked escape attempt began. 

‘Ah, crap!’ Charles’ focus weakened as he realized that he was on a direct crash course for the tree. He doubted he’d be able to grab onto it, but Charles managed to drag his focus onto the male bird with the obnoxious pompadour, just within reach.

Not willing to waste the effort for nothing, Charles snapped out with his jaws in an attempt to grab the bastard bird. It’s wings flapped wildly as Charles’ beak clamped shut on its tail feathers, seizing it in an iron grip.

That nearly fell apart when Charles’ body hit the branch full on. The sudden stop smashed the air out of Charles’ lungs, but still he kept his beak shut tight. Almost comically, he could hear the surprised and pained squawk of the bird he latched onto, though any amusement he might have felt vanished as gravity took hold of Charles’ descent.

The weight in his beak suddenly decreased as he fell down, along with the shrill squawk of the bird that he’d previously snagged. His instinctive human response to protect his head overpowered his instincts for food and self-assuredness of safety. The fall was a short one, but nonetheless filled him with a sense of panic. He fell straight down, braced for hitting the forest floor painfully. Instead, though, he felt his body smack into several smaller trailing branches, just barely slowing him. He lashed out, trying to catch any branch, but failed. 

He tumbled down through a bush instead, cracking through its thicker portions and still hitting the ground hard enough to set his vision spinning. After a second of simply lying there, Charles’ focus returned shakily. At the end of his face, clenched in his beak, was a collection of tail feathers of vibrant colors, plucked freshly from an annoying bird that had fled with abandon from the angry bladebeak. 

“Uuuugh… this sucks.” Charles moaned, unable to muster the energy to even feel bad about the fact that the bird he’d tried to catch was long gone now. 

He stiffened as he felt the warmth in his legs from the energy surge, still tingling and gradually receding. There was a part of him that recognized that he’d just used something in his body to do that. It was the same thing the snake had done to throw itself at him, the same thing that the badger had done to empower its body and claws to completely destroy his morale to fight.

“Holy pecking hell,” he steadily rose after flipping over onto his sore legs, “I can do that? What… What else can I do?”

The answer, after almost an hour of testing, was nothing. 

Or, rather, Charles’ suspicion wasn’t that he couldn’t do anything, it was more that he just didn’t have enough in the tank to do anything else. He sat in place focusing on his own body, and vaguely sensed what seemed like that energy, only latent, inactive in his body. Every time he pushed for it, though, he became much more aware of it. The problem was getting it to move, and beyond that… there simply didn’t seem to be much there.

He was wary of trying to force it to move, given how profoundly weak he’d felt immediately following the jump before. Was that normal? Or was that because he hadn’t eaten anything substantial in…

“Three days?” He paused, in thought, knowing he’d wasted the first day with failed sneak attacks, the second day with his food being stolen, and then this morning trying to catch a flying bird.

Not a good track record, he had to admit.

Already he felt the deep, gnawing hunger transforming into a sucking pit to the abyss that was his stomach. The adrenaline had faded, and with it he could feel the shakiness of his nerves, the exhaustion of muscles that didn’t have enough material to repair themselves properly. Especially in his legs, he knew that if he didn’t get something to eat soon, things would go poorly for him. On the bright side, Charles realized that his body was far more durable than he’d given it credit for. As a human, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d significantly wounded himself with that fall and impact. Perhaps his instinctive insistence that he’d have been fine wasn't unfounded. But, that said, he would need to make sure to keep his ‘after the attack’ plan in mind...

“Water first,” Charles, sighing, was pushing down the sensation of hunger with willpower. Soon, though, he knew that he’d resort to eating literally anything. He needed meat. Veggies and roots wouldn’t cut it without a source of protein for his growing body. With that in mind, he hoped filling his stomach with water would stave off his stomach for a while. He prowled through the forest, doing his best to remain silent on the off chance that he could smell something along the way to hunt. 

When he reached the water he drank it down greedily, thoughts going over what had just happened with a mixture of ambivalence and wariness. He didn’t know enough about this energy or why he had it. After gulping more water, he couldn’t help but look at his reflection.

“Alterra, what am I supposed to do?” Charles whispered to himself, trying hard not to lament and despair. On paper, he knew he shouldn’t necessarily starve for a while longer, but something told him that the energy he’d wasted was more important than he gave it credit for. He needed to refill the tank, and he guessed that, since it didn’t seem to be filling quickly on its own, he needed to get it from food.

The bladebeak rose, water shimmering in the morning light that filtered through the canopy, and stretched. He admired his reflection in the water despite the fact that he knew he really needed to be on his way. No matter how many times he’d see his new body, he felt as though he just couldn’t get enough of it. He really was a very pretty bird, just the right balance of ‘cool’ and ‘beautiful’ in his totally unbiased opinion. With a chuckle to himself, he started to turn away, before freezing.

‘Is that?...’ The thought rolled across his mind, but didn’t get the chance to finish as he darted forward into the water, beak snapping down with vicious force.

Instead of a loud clack of beak against beak, though, he snapped through bone, instantly killing the thing he’d been aiming for. He clenched the silver-scaled fish in his beak, elation and unadulterated joy filling him. 

‘Yes, yes, yes! Oh my gods, yes! Food!’ Charles’ teared up with his morsel clenched tightly there. This time, he had no reservations about killing it, and especially less when he flicked the food around, lightly tossing it to place it head-first towards his throat. Unwilling to risk a repeat of the badger incident, he scarfed the fish down as one whole, scales and all.

Contentment flooded through him as he sat down, tears flowing freely as he looked up, “Alterra, if you had anything at all to do with that, thank you.” Charles said aloud, grateful beyond words for the fish.

Maybe it was dumb luck, but he felt like he really, really needed a little dumb luck after everything that happened.

As he sat and digested the fish, Charles made sure to examine himself. Just as he’d assumed, he could feel waves of energy washing across him from his stomach and settling into his body. Like a parched landscape, his body soaked up the warm rain of that energy. Perhaps if he’d never gone hungry, Charles wouldn’t have been able to feel the sensations in detail. At least, he decided to think of it like that, needing some kind of silver lining after the sinking despair that came with the possibility of starving for a prolonged period.

‘Yeah, moving on,’ he shook his head, as he rose and stretched. Before he did anything else, he walked up and down the creek, peering into the water carefully as he went. 

Much to his utter embarrassment, the creek wasn’t at all devoid of life, and fed into a large river further down the way. It was teeming with fish, though most of them were too small to bother with. Charles’ guessed that this might have been a spawning season, so perhaps early to mid spring? There were a few larger fish here and there, but he expected that there would be a great deal more in the time to come.

“Well, at least that’s one source of food that’s reliable.” Charles clucked, annoyed at himself for the massive oversight. He wasn’t perfect, but not checking a damned water source for fish was beyond foolish for him.

Charles took a second and watched the shallows, low to the ground and utterly motionless. He kept an ear out for his surroundings, but his eyes peered at the largest fish in the area, nearly double that of the one he’d caught previously. It had a rounded head, save for what appeared to be blocky teeth in its mouth. Charles wasn’t sure if teeth in a fish was normal, but then, he didn’t figure that the teeth in his mouth were normal, either. 

Well, maybe for this world it was perfectly normal. Something to consider, he supposed.

The moment the fish moved closer to the shallows, Charles urged a slight warmth into his legs, the energy in his body tingling. Contrary to expectation, the small amount of energy seemed to do nothing as he bolted forward. Whatever threshold he needed for something to happen, Charles didn’t manage it with the pinch of energy he’d tried to use. 

Thankfully, he didn’t end up needing it, his jaws snapping down around the fish’s neck and crunching the spine. This time, without hunger overriding his thoughts, he couldn’t help but to feel a little bad about what he just did to the fish, and he wasn’t quite sure how to feel about the crunch of bone under his beak’s not-so-gentle ministrations.

The moment afterwards, though, he froze, feeling a slight warmth of energy sink into him.

‘Whoa, what the heck? I haven’t even eaten it yet?...’ Charles pulled the weighty fish out of the water warily before dragging it back from the shore. The fish was almost half as large as he was, plenty of meat to sustain him for a while. He’d cut straight through the back of it’s neck, and for a moment Charles was a little alarmed at how much damage he could deal. 

Deciding to be cautious, Charles immediately turned around and jogged through the forest, doing his best to keep the noise down whilst unbalanced by the shockingly heavy fish. After a few more minutes, he managed to make it back home before tossing the fish on the ground outside of his main nesting zone. During the day, the white bark of the trees here stood out amidst the duller grey and browns of the rest of the forest, something that Charles found convenient in order to be able to more easily spot his nest from afar. 

He moved deeper into the nest, noting that nothing seemed out of place. Not that he had much, but Charles had at least tried to memorize where all of the bits of moss were and the sticks outside. Nothing seemed disturbed, but he couldn’t be too sure that he’d have known if something had come in here while he was away in the first place.

He turned back to his fish meal, “Alright, so I get energy from eating, but I didn’t even eat you yet and I got a small bit from you…” Charles’ eyes stared inquisitively at his fish-shaped soundboard, “So, that’s got me thinking about a few possibilities. I think I can safely call it Essence, because that just makes sense all things considered. Furthermore, it’s obviously able to augment my body, and the bodies of other animals, but I have no idea what else it does otherwise. Somehow, I can eat things like you and get more energy, and apparently by killing you, or being in proximity of you when you die? Unless I get energy because I was the one who killed you.”

Charles' explanation tapered off as his thoughts became more internal. It was a fact that he was getting energy from other things, not gaining it passively. Partway through his thoughts, he began to tear into the fish, decidedly not thinking about the fact that he was eating yet another fish raw. He loved sushi, but this was a bit more engaged than he’d normally be with the process. 

Still, he needed to restock his essence supply and eat, so this activity was unavoidable. While he ate he wondered if his siblings were going through similar periods of discovery now. The thought was bittersweet, Charles’ hope that they were doing well was also matched with the slightest selfish wish that he was doing better. He doubted it, considering that they’d probably be well attuned to their own instincts. 

Hell, he’d be shocked if they weren’t flying around hunting things by now.

Expectedly, he felt more than a little jealous about the fact that they could fly, but decided he could be the bird version of a velociraptor just fine.

Charles shocked himself by being able to eat the entire fish, and then curled up on his moss bedding as he contemplated the changes he felt. He felt a considerably fuller sensation of energy in his body. He was limited in how accurately he could sense the energy, though he could feel it permeate his muscles and bones and saturate his organs. It did give him a much greater sense of his own anatomy. However, he felt like the energy was doing other things that he frustratingly just couldn’t sense.

Instead of letting that bother him, Charles rose and stepped out of his nest site. ‘No sense in just sitting around, I guess.’ He thought before moving through the forest and picking out decent sticks. Steadily, he picked up a branch here, a stick there, and brought it back to his nest. Even doing all of this, he did his best to focus on himself, only slowing to examine his surroundings for any sign of danger.

He only stopped when he realized the light of day was fading, shocked that he’d worked tirelessly the entire time.

“How the peck?” His questioning chirp rang out as he focused back on himself. The energy within him had been fading with his exercise, and he realized shortly that this energy wasn’t just for special abilities. This was everything, all the things that his body ran off of.

“So, I guess essence is the catch-all in addition to being a special resource,” he murmured the thought, considering the fact that all living things likely had this energy, and he seemed to gain it in predation. In essence - hah - this was the fuel behind everything that demanded physical exertion, including the supernatural abilities he’d already witnessed previously.

That said, he was also feeling mentally exhausted. It didn’t seem that this energy was working for his mind, though he wondered if that could be changed somehow? He wondered briefly if he could reduce his need for sleep, or maybe ameliorate it altogether. 

He discarded that rapidly, deciding that he liked sleep far too much to ever surrender it entirely.

“Alright, now, let's try to debark and delimb some branches.” Charles’ said as he dragged the first of many branches he’d fetched closer. At first, he pecked at it, before pausing in thought. A grin tugged the corners of his lips as he focused and gradually moved the energy towards his beak. He tried a small amount first, feeling almost no change as he smacked into the branch below. A six centimeter deep divot was the only evidence of his strike. 

He poured a little more energy, this time feeling his strike come down faster and heavier. Almost twelve centimeters deeper than the previous.

‘Alright, let's keep going…’ He pushed even more energy upwards, feeling a sensation similar to his legs accompanied by a shift in something in the back of his head, like his body was somehow keying into the movement more closely. He frowned at that, wondering at why that was, before he brought his head down once more.

This time he sheared through the limb easily, his strike continuing down towards the ground before Charles’ struggled to move the energy away. He nearly couldn’t stop it, though, only stopped short of hitting the ground narrowly.

“Okay, wow, that’s pretty good… Not too pricey, either?” He noted that some of the energy seemed to have disappeared from his body. His spine still tingled from the warmth, but it wasn’t like he could actively see the energy, or essence, in the environment. 

Looking to the rest of the branches that yet needed processing caused Charles’ grin to widen. “Time to make a real nest.”