The Disciple Of Aoide

While Arthur was thinking of ways to free the bird from its prison without harming it, his eyes moved around the area and something caught his attention from the corner of his eyes.

It was a pool of something black. It was very conspicuous to Arthur especially since everything else in this world was mostly in the hues of pink and white.

Arthur turned to look and he realized it was the 'blood' of the monster he had slaughtered earlier. He only gave it a passing glance earlier but after he laid eyes on it for a much longer period, Arthur realized perhaps it deserved a closer inspection.

Arthur walked away from the hole in the tree and squatted down to review the carcass of the flower monster. The monster's body was broken at multiple places and a black substance was leaking out of its wound. It was this black liquid that had arrested Arthur's attention.

This was because Arthur noticed the black liquid which he believed was ink, was seeping through the hole that it had corroded through the wooden platform.

The wooden surface was so tough that Arthur was unable to do any damage to it with brute force but this black liquid managed to cut through it like acid. Arthur did not quite understand the theory behind it but he supposed it was one of the rules for how this strange world operate.

The ink that ran through the veins of the painted creature was able to wash out the other painted objects. Arthur could see that making some sort of sense.

Either way, the important part was Arthur could make use of this to his advantage. If the ink could cut through the wood, then it should be able help Arthur's avian friend.

However, before that, Arthur had to make sure the ink would not harm him directly. He did not want to end up having being corroded by the ink itself.

To test that theory, Arthur used his shoe to tap at the edge of the pool. It was just normal ink to Arthur. With that confirmed, Arthur scoped up a small pond of ink in his palms and slathered it generously over the wooden bars of the prison.

The bars eventually fell off and the bird found its release. The bird extended itself when it was out of the hole in the tree. It grew to such a size that Arthur had a hard time believing it was able to fit inside the hole earlier.

A pair of intelligent eyes looked at Arthur. The creature that he had rescued was an owl, the bird of wisdom.

Similar to the color palette of this world, the owl had a whitish coat. Arthur realized the owl's frame was smoother and crisper compared to when it was inside the hole. The lines of the bird's frame probably overlapped over itself due to constraint of space to create that weird phenomenon that Arthur observed earlier. After it had enough space to expand, it just looked like everything else Arthur had seen.

While Arthur was wondering what to do, the owl lowered itself to the floor and turned its head between Arthur and its back.

Arthur grasped what it was trying to communicate instantly. "You want me to get on your back?" Arthur asked.

The owl seemed to understand human language because it nodded in response to Arthur's question.

Arthur wondered where the owl was going to take him and when he asked the bird that, it did not give him a clear answer. That gave the young man some hesitance.

Ultimately, Arthur did not think the owl would have harmed him. After all, he was technically its savior. On top of that, Arthur did not have much of a choice. The field of flower was still rising and it would have reached Arthur's platform soon.

The owl seemed to be the only other alternative, and Arthur chose to place his trust in it.

Arthur climbed onto the owl's back and soon enough it prepared for take-off. The owl flapped its wings a couple of time, perhaps to gather momentum before shooting out towards the flurry of peach blossom flowers.

Arthur grabbed hold of the owl's feather and burrowed his face into the cl.u.s.ter of feathers as the wind flew through his hair. Even though it was inside a painted world, Arthur was flying and that was quite a feel-good sensation.

When he had gotten used to the sense of elevation, Arthur pulled his head out from the feathers. The cherry blossoms were all around him, creating this mirage that he was caught inside a pink haze.

Arthur turned to look behind him and from his vantage point, he managed to get a clearer perspective of the cherry blossom tree. The tree seemed to reach into the sky and even from afar, Arthur could not tell how tall it truly was.

The field of flowers was rising so quickly when Arthur was trying to out-climb it but seeing it from this perspective, the flowers barely reached one-forth of the tree's height.

Arthur turned his head back and through the haze of cherry blossoms, he saw something familiar. It was black and circular. The seal that he saw on the painting earlier!

The owl seemed to be flying towards it. This confirmed Arthur's speculation that the owl knew the way forward. Now he only needed to fly through the seal... but if only things were that easy.