Gomer crept up the winding stairs of the tower, following close behind his master -- he dare not do otherwise. The Skyward Tower of Grand Magus Malthus Erestris, Gomer's mentor, had many stairs, and it was easy to become lost upon them. If one was so foolish as to assume that negotiating these steps was as simple as walking up them to descend, and down them to descend, for example, they would almost certainly be lost upon those stairs forever.

Despite his trepidation at having to tread the impossible spiral staircase at the heart of the wizard's tower, Gomer was excited. He had always wondered where his master had learned the secrets of magic, and his master had always avoided the question. Until tonight, that is, when he had roused Gomer from a sound sleep, and told him they were off to converse with his master's master.

Malthus suddenly halted on the steps, then stepped back down. Gomer, having walked the perilous stairs with his master before, automatically copied the wizard's movements. Up a step, back down a step, up half a step and then back again, they went along the staircase, making dozens of seemingly random movements that appeared to take them nowhere.

And yet, after several minutes of this precarious dance, they somehow emerged onto the top of the tower, where Malthus Erestris' menagerie of birds slumbered in their spacious sheltered aviary.

"He's meeting us here?" Gomer asked, eagerly.

"He's always here." The old wizard replied. "But he's only customarily awake at night."

Gomer frowned, scanning the aviary. He'd been there on other occasions, and never seen anyone. Was the wizard invisible?

A few birds were in coops or cages, but the majority rested on open perches, either ensorcelled to remain in the tower, or simply inclined to do so for one reason or another. Malthus led his student over to a wooden perch stand, where a smallish white-faced owl sat, its large bright eyes half closed.

"And here we are." Malthus announced, gesturing to the owl. "Grand Magus Emeritus Agramor -- my venerable instructor."

Gomer looked from his master to the owl. It was, of course, possible for powerful wizards to turn themselves into birds or other creatures, but Gomer was quite certain he'd seen this particular owl before, when tasked to clean the aviary, and it had given no signs of being anything other than a bird. Deciding it was best to err on the side of caution, and assume his master was neither fully insane nor playing a prank on him, Gomer bowed to the owl.

"Master Agramor." he greeted the bird, respectfully.

Despite being prepared for the possibility, he was still startled with the bird replied almost instantly.

"Young Gomer!" the bird said, "I am given to understand that you're an idiot."

Malthus nodded in agreement.

Gomer blinked. "Uh..." He struggled with many of the more esoteric aspects of magic, but he'd thought his training was going fairly well.

"Uh indeed! Yes, you're clearly quite thick-headed. But don't worry, I'd be more concerned if you weren't a fool, at your age. No one's fit to be wise until they've put in a good few years as a moron." Agramor the owl opined, sagely. He cocked his head to the side. "Why are you staring, boy? Ah! I see. My disguise, is it?"

"Yes sir," Gomer admitted. "Master Malthus has taught me some about transmutation, but..."

"No worries, no worries." Agramor said, waving a wing dismissively. "I'll dismiss the spell, if it'll make things easier for you."

With a mystical gesture of his wing tips and a softly hooted invocation, Agramor dispelled the illusion surrounding him...revealing a tiny, pointed hat atop his feathery head.

"There we are. The real me." Agramor proclaimed.

"You're an owl all the time, sir?" Gomer asked, incredulously.

"He's retired." Malthus explained.

"Semi-retired." Agramor corrected, testily. "But yes."

"You retired...to being an owl?" Gomer said, hesitantly.

"Of course. How else do you retire?" Agramor said.

"To a house on the beach?" Gomer suggested. "A quiet country manor?"

Agramor snorted. "Mundane! Common merchants and craftsmen with money to spare might do that: go someplace nice, be waited on by servants, and do what they like -- they live carefree as a child."

"But you...didn't want to be carefree?"

"Of course I did!" Agramor snapped. "But children aren't nearly carefree enough: they're always worrying about who's going to play the knight and who's the dragon, having to eat vegetables, or getting sent to bed just after dusk. Who needs that sort of aggravation? Owls are much more liberated -- I sleep all day, eat the odd mouse, and that's all I have to worry about, full stop. Besides, children have a sort of native wisdom and insight, and I was damned tired of being wise and insightful all the time."

"But...aren't owls wise?" Gomer asked, confused.

"Owls are a symbol of wisdom." Malthus corrected.

"Exactly!" Agramor agreed. "The word 'wisdom' is also a symbol of wisdom, but try writing 'wisdom' out on a sheet of parchment, and then ask the parchment for advice and see how far you get."

"Ordinary owls are actually fairly dim, as birds go." Malthus added.

An awkward silence hung in the air after that, before finally being broken by the old wizard.

"Ah! Right. I brought you here for a reason," Malthus said, snapping his fingers. "Magus Agramor mentioned he had something important to tell me, and that I should bring my apprentice along."

"Oh?" Gomer said, perking up excitedly.

"Yes, yes." Agramor said impatiently. "Don't get yourself all in a tizzy, it's nothing that important."

Gomer deflated slightly. "Oh. Well, what is it, sir?"

"I've had a prophetic vision," the owl explained. "The world's going to end in a year or so." He gestured to Gomer with a wing. "Seems like you're the only one who can stop it."

Malthus nodded thoughtfully.

"What?" Gomer cried. "How is the world going to end? How can I stop it?"

Agramar shrugged. "How the hell should I know, boy? I'm just an owl! And we've been jabbering here for so long that I've used up all my 'semi' -- all I've got left is 'retired'."

The owl made another gesture with his wing, and the tiny mage's hat vanished from his head. Without another word, he took to the air, and flew off into the night.

Malthus smiled, and clapped Gomer on the shoulder.

"Well, I'm glad you two finally met. Breakfast, then?"

"... Your pet?"

Master Pompadomp, Protector of the Shimmering Valley and grandest of all the Arch Mages, shook his head. "No more my pet than you- well, actually, less of a pet than you are. This owl possesses the very powers you were seeking when you knocked on my door seven years ago. Her name is Appilbeak, by the way."

Poor Alfred didn't know what to say. He stared at the hatted owl, helpless. Maybe, this was one of Master Pompadomp's pranks? Like that time he gave Alfred the task of finding his clothes, which he had hidden somewhere in town, in the middle of the night? He said it was an exercise to practice his stealth, and that there wouldn't be that may people about in the dark of night anyway. Well, shortly after he turned the moon into the sun.

But no, he looked much too serious now. And thinking back, he *did* always seem to pay more attention to the owl's health than his own. Always gave it - her - the cleanest bowl, the biggest meat chunks in the broth, the softest blankets to cuddle into, although the owl was so small it would get lost beneath the fabric and hoot angrily, until the Master helped her out. And that hat did seem too... sophisticated? It was black and shimmered like the rivers of the Shimmering Valley, like the night sky made liquid, with gems in a thousand different colours buried underneath. Had it always been so beautiful?

"Hoot- I mean Hoow!?" Appilbeak buried her head beneath her wing and began to snore. Master Pompadomp watched her lovingly. "It is a marvel, is it not? When I was a boy like you, she was already a legend. The Moon Bird. The beak that dug the valley. The orange eyes that outshone the sun, and see all."

"So, is she a polymorph? A phoenix, maybe, or a dragon? Or a wizard like you, cursed and imprisoned in this form?"

"Um, no. As far as I can tell, she's just an owl."

"That is..."

"Even more fascinating?"

"Yes! But how could you know? If that bird is older than you, I mean?"

"You know of the Decade of Death?"

"Yes, Master. My parents told me of it. When they were small, the wizards vanished from the Valley and left the simple folk behind. They told me of the terrible monsters that emerged from the rivers in your absence when I didn't want to brush my teeth, saying the smell would make them return. They told me the monsters killed and burned everything and everyone they could get their hands on. When you returned, my parents said, many had grown to hate the wizards. You... You left us. And you only ever told the people that you had no choice, but would not say another word."

"Yeah. So, there's this mushroom that grows in a far-of land, hidden in an illusion that takes the combined powers of hundreds of mages to clear away. Its taste is magnificent. Actually, we should maybe take another trip there. The mushroom grows once every 33 years and next year-"

"Master."

"Ah, yes. The mushroom was the last ingredient I needed for a ritual I had been working on for seven hundred years. Just like you, I suspected that Appilbeak had another form, hidden beneath this body. The ritual is supposed to reveal the true nature of a being. And, well, it appears that Appilbeak's true nature has brownish feathers instead of speckled grey, and possesses a very dashing hat."

"Master, please tell me you're lying." Alfred clutched at his heart, where his love for his master clashed with his compassion and his past.

"You do not find it dashing?"

"MASTER!" Alfred did not think that he had every raised his voice against Pompadomp - he did not think anyone had ever dared - but right now, he didn't care. "Do you mean to say you *abandoned* us, put the village - no, the whole *Valley* through the horrors of the Decade, took away all who could have protected us, because of *one owl*?"

Alfred could see Pompadomp purse his lips beneath his scraggly beard. A frown creased his forehead into a thousand folds, and, for a moment, the young apprentice did not sit across the most powerful creature in the visible realms, but just an old man. It scared Alfred to see him like this.

"I made a mistake", Pompadomp admitted. "After all those years... I was no longer myself. I had become maddened. I don't expect anyone to forgive me, but if it helps you to understand... I had heard all those stories of a powerful being. Back then, I was a mere knight and my lord had turned out to be an evil abomination. He had imprisoned my dear friends and my little brother out of despicable, low reasons and threatened to kill them. I was desperate. So I went on a quest to find this mythical bird. I presumed it to be a divine thing. In my dreams, its wings covered the night sky, and its feathers crushed mountains when they fell. I thought the Storm of Centuries was the wind it caused when it flew off. And then I found..."

His gaze drifted towards Appilbeak, who was no longer sleeping, instead trying to to eat the hat firmly attached at its head. When that didn't work, the owl - perhaps attempting to bring the hat into a vertically lower position - flipped upside down on its bird bar thingy, clinging to it with little yellow claws. It turned its head and looked indignantly at Alfred.

"Anyway, of course I thought I was mistaken. But when I walked past the bird, it followed me. I ignored it, at first. When it woke me up the following night, I did not think and tried to hit it with my sword, and my damned arm simply fell off."

"It *fell off*?"

"Yup. I knew then that this was no normal bird, but was still convinced that the Moon Bird had to be somewhere else. So I continued my quest like the fool I was back then, until I walked right into the nest of a Dragon Worm, deep inside the Jaw Mountains' caves, and the two inhabitants, each five times larger than our town, came right at me. I was still inexperienced then, so I thought it was over. Next thing, I heard an angry hoot, and Appilbeak flew right towards them. I called it back, but it listened to me back then as much as it does now. So I just watched. And I saw how the worms' hundred tentacles reached for her, and, right as they touched the owl, became grey and rigid. In the blink of an eye, the monsters had turned to stone. They tumbled and fell down towards me. I blacked out, but when I woke up, I was lying outside, wet feathers in my face and beak rubbing against my nose, almost tender. The moon shone right behind the bird, illuminating the silhouette of my saviour and it was then that I knew I had found the Moon bird, and it was then that I knew its name was Appilbeak.

It took only days to learn that whatever Appilbeak touches is either destroyed or gifted magnificent power. Depending on whether the bird likes you, or not, I assume. She gave me the power to defeat my old Lord and save my brother. And when her gift threatened to corrupt me, made me want to control everything around me, or else... Let's just say she took me down a couple of pegs, or rather pecks. Still hurts, I tell you..."

Appilbeak croaked, and it sounded a whole lot like laughter.

"And I still don't know much about Appilbeak. Just that she is the greatest force in the visible realms, probably in all other realms as well. My magic is a splinter of her forest. And, thankfully, she is truly benevolent. And adorable, too."

Alfred was speechless. But his heart thrummed with emotion, for he knew what was about to come next.

"Oh yeah, sorry Alfred! You're sitting there, and I'm blathering on and on and on... Of course. Your friends are awaiting you. Well, your ceremony is complete, and I have told you all I know, except for that mushroom, which we will come back to. Gods, it was delicious...

Ah. All that is left for you now, my once-apprentice, is to step into the moonlight with Appilbeak, and let her touch you. Let her determine whether you carry a true hero's heart, or whether you are to be destroyed. Any questions, my friend?"

"Yes Master Pompadomp, just one. Do you still have one of those owl treats left over?"

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

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