33 CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: IT’S A MAN, IT’S A BIRD, IT’S BOTH!

The party all ignored Mouse's question and ran to the railing where Gabriel just dived off after [Otori]. What they saw left them all shocked.

Gabriel was flying! The blood red cape he always wore, had turned into a large pair of stiff wings. He was gliding straight towards [Otori] but didn't seem to be able to close the distance. They had both flown past the precipice and into the open sky. Becoming smaller and smaller to the eyes of their party.

"When the hell did [Osiris] become Batman!?" Mouse yelled.

Gabriel had activated the special [Glide] skill of his feathered cape. As it was only gliding, he couldn't increase the speed. He also knew there wasn't a lot of time left on the skill duration. The distance between Gabriel and [Otori] wasn't more then 15 feet. She appeared to be having trouble of her own too. Feathers started to fall off in clumps, like she was molting.

Gabriel thought after seeing the falling feathers 'The power given by the [Horned God] seems to already be disappearing'.

Sticking his hand out Gabriel activated [Recall]. Due to the nature of the spell, if the axes were buried deep enough you could pull enemies towards you. If, however the enemy weighed more then the player would be pulled towards them. [Otori] in her crow form was at least four times larger than Gabriel. As he used [Recall], the tug off the axe stalled [Otori] for a moment before they pulled Gabriel flying forwards. Narrowing the distance between them in a few moments.

Gabriel was just above [Otori] now. He deactivated [Glide] and dropped the short distance between them. Landing on the Crow's back, Gabriel's weight made [Otori] screech and flap her wings furiously to maintain balance. They started to descend slowly as [Otori] was not strong enough to hold Gabriel up as well.

"Get off me you worm!! You will kill us both!! CAW!" [Otori] screeched at Gabriel, punctuating her sentence with a caw.

"That might be true but I don't plan on letting the fall kill you. The EXP you give will be halved if the environment kills you and not by my hand"

[Otori] turned her head like an owl and gave a confused look at Gabriel. Her eyes bulged after a moment though, looking just like an owl now. Gabriel ripped one of his throwing axes out of her side. Raising it up high, he threw a menacing smile at [Otori] before slamming his axe down onto her back with a [Heavy Chop].

[-500 Critical hit!]

The last of [Otori]'s health finally bottomed out. The crow started to nose dive, as her body went limp in death. Gabirel grabbed a fist full of feathers and rode her down, all the while laughing in mad joy. The cooldown on his feathered cape hadn't finished but Gabriel had another ace up his sleeve, to come out of this free fall at least partially alive.

"Wiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!" With a long yell accompanying the falling crow, sounding as if Gabriel was on a roller coaster. They both slammed into the ground with an earth shaking, SPLAT! Feathers, bones and blood going everywhere.

They managed to fly over the forest near the Village at the bottom of Eagle Peak, before crash landing in a small clearing next to a crystal-clear lake.

Sitting on a rock just to the side was a beautiful, small woman in a hooded priest robe.

"What the FU*K!" she screamed.

(Minutes before Gabriel's kamikaze.)

A small woman was dipping her dainty toes in the cool water of the lake, in a small clearing. A look of boredom and impatience marred her face, as she muttered to herself in a bitter voice.

"Why do I always get the weirdest quests. It barely gave me any details. It just says to wait here for a falling star. It has already been half day and I haven't seen so much as a falling fly. Stupid Goddess and her stupid ques.."

She stopped her muttering as a feather slowly drifted down from the sky landing to her left, followed by another then another. Getting up to walk over, she only took one step before hearing a loud voice screaming from the sky "Wiiiiiiii!!".

Looking up, she saw a large black object plummeting towards the ground. The young woman couldn't make out much of the falling object but noticed a pair of glowing purple orbs in the black mess before it landed with a SPLAT.

"Da FU*K!"

Gabriel's vision went black as his health dropped to 0 from the impact. He heard a notification go off in his head.

["God of Death" Unique title has come into effect. You have become a LVL 7 Draugr Warrior – Time before reverting to original race 1:00 – Inventory, quest and messenger system is currently unavailable]

Gabriel opened his eyes, everything around him looked like shades of grey and white. He lifted his now, dried up undead body and got out of the mess of feathers and bones. Stepping out he tried to get his bearings, when a high-pitched scream in front of him gained his attention.

"AHHHHH!! A pervert flying Zombie!!!"

A familiar woman in a priest robe was standing only a few feet from Gabriel, with her strawberry blonde hair and dimples. Gabriel recognized her immediately. She had a beautiful white staff in her hand and looked to be preparing a spell.

Gabriel panicked. As he was a lower LVL now and an Undead, any priest class spell with godly power would decimate him in a moment.

"Wait!! Lil Tiger it's me!! [Osiris]!!" Gabriel shouted.

"How can I believe such an obvious lie! [Osiris] is handsome and tall. You are a shriveled-up bag of bones. You must have him captured and imprisoned somewhere! Tell me now! What unspeakable perverted things are you doing to his butt!?" [Lil Tiger] commanded with a face full of righteous fury.

[Lil Tiger] finished her spell, summoning a [Golden spear]. She held it above her head in a threatening gesture but hadn't released it, yet.

Gabriel was panicking inside. He didn't know how to prove he was the real him. They hadn't previously spent much time together and they didn't share any secrets that he could use to prove his identity. Gabriel also didn't know what to make of her suggestion that he was being tortured in the butt.

"Okay hold on... The first time we met, was when you were tripped by a Draugr and then proceeded to bit*h slap him to high heavens. It left the Draugr using me as a shield, as he was more scared of you than me."

Gabriel decided to just recite to [Lil Tiger] about the embarrassing moment when they met at the Draugr Cemetery and how she managed to turn a Draugr into a damsel in distress.

[Lil Tiger] blushed in shame and released her Golden spear in a fluster.

"I don't know what you mean. I believe I was the Damsel in distress at that time and a handsome Viking man, came to my rescue" [Lil Tiger] rebutted with a slight glare, daring Gabriel to say differently.

Her glare reminded him of the ferocious face she pulled when she was torturing the poor Draugr. Gabriel wisely decided to stay silent and just nodded his head. [Lil Tiger] saw him nod and changed her glare to a charming smile and skipped over to him.

"Okay I believe you! So, what happened to you? Did you fall in with the wrong crowd? Is it a curse?" [Lil Tiger] questioned while walking around him inspecting his Draugr form.

"Ha no, nothing like that. It is part of a [Unique] title I have that upon death I have a chance of turning into a Draugr for an hour" Gabriel explained.

He tried to open his PM to message his party about where he was and what happened. The message screen wouldn't open for him and he instead got a notification, telling him that he couldn't access his PM while in Draugr form.

Gabriel asked [Lil Tiger] if she could search for [The Handsome Gremlin] in the player list and send him a message for Gabriel instead. In the message he explained what happened and told them that he would just meet them at [Manius] manor to hand in the quest. Tom replied that they understood and they received a notification telling them the quest was completed so they had guessed Gabriel had killed [Otori].

After getting [Lil Tiger] to message his party for him. Gabriel decided to wait in the clearing for his countdown to revert back to his original form. He then looked at [Lil Tiger] again and asked.

"Why are you here by the way? Do you have a quest in this forest?"

"Oh yeah, that's right!" [Lil Tiger] slapped a dainty hand on her forehead.

She looked up at in the air for a second, checking her notifications and turned to Gabriel with a dimple filled smile.

"Yeah! My quest is completed! I had a quest from my goddess that told me to wait here 'For a shooting star'. I think it must have meant you!" [Lil Tiger] explained while she seemed to read a new notification before continuing.

"Okay, now it says that I have to retrieve a [Unique] item called [Ishtar's tears] from something called [Otori]. Do you know what that is?"

Gabriel panicked for a second at the thought that [Ishtar] seemed to already know that he would end up here, even before he did. Once he heard the second part of the quest though he relaxed. Gabriel summarized that this must be where [Otori] is scripted to crash land after her battle.

"Yeah the [Otori] you are looking for is that pile of feathers behind me. It was a shapeshifting boss, my party and I fought. She turned into a giant crow and flew off the mountain top we were fighting her on. I followed and managed to kill her in the sky, leading us to end up here." Gabriel explained while pointing at the Crow corpse.

Gabriel couldn't loot the body anyway so he asked [Lil Tiger] to do it. After looting she told him what items she received.

30 x Gold

1 x [Ishtar's tears] (Unique)(Quest item) - return to Ishtar's temple for reward and (RP)

1 x [Spell book - Steel Feathers] (Rare) Req. Mana based class. 20 Intelligence. Description: Fire three Feather shaped steel arrows at target doing base DMG-50 x INT level. Cast time - 5 seconds. Cooldown - 2 minutes

1 x [Shadow Raven egg] (Legendary) (Mount) Description: Egg of a Shadow Raven, said to be one of the fastest birds of prey in Valhalla. Boasting an impressive wing span of 40 feet. Thought to be extinct as their nesting grounds in Fangu Forest were destroyed. Hatching time remaining: 14 days.

1 x [Helmet of the Raven] (Rare) (Medium armour) Req. LVL 15. Melee based class. Armor value – 60. Special effects: [Skill: Eagle Eye] Allows you to see the vulnerable spots on enemies the same level or lower than you.

"HELL YEAH!!!" Gabirel shouted out loud and broke out into dance from hearing the list of goods.

[Lil Tiger] giggled at Gabriel's horrible dance moves. She was infected with his excitement too and started to dance with him. It ended in them holding hands and jumping around in a circle laughing. Gabriel finally gained some clarity after his moments of bliss and let go of [Lil Tiger] who looked disappointed that they stopped.

Gabriel asked her if she could wait with him as he couldn't accept the items from her until he was out of [Draugr] form. They sat next to the lake and talked about random things for a little while. Making for quite the odd sight in the setting sun, as it was a rare sight to see an ugly Draugr and small woman in priest clothes sitting side by side.

Once Gabriel timer was up he changed back to his Human form and received the items from [Lil Tiger].

"Do you want to come back to [Roma] with me?" Gabriel offered.

"No, I am good. I am heading off to [Ishtar]'s temple which is in a spot only I can go. Then I am meeting some friends to do some hunting together. However, the next part of my Quest I imagine is going to be quite hard, could I send you a PM if I need a hand?" [Lil Tiger] asked.

"Yeah, sure thing!" Gabriel replied.

Gabriel was sad to see [Lil Tiger] go, she seemed to be the type who could make any dull situation turn into something fun. With her unbridled enthusiasm and cheery smile. She was a breath of fresh air to Gabriel.

He got up and started to walk back to Roma to hand in the Witch's quest. He also needed to go through a back log of notifications.