Wings of the Emerald Wind

If the Panther was the secretive, deadly shadow of the Bor Forest, and Grisha was its wise and unshakable rock, then the Rooster was its raging, indomitable wind.

Despite the strange and slightly comical nickname given to him by the bullying sailors in the port taverns of the southern coast, he was not an ordinary bird at all. The rooster was a large, proud parrot with emerald plumage, shimmering in the light with all shades from deep malachite to dazzling light green. The fire of indomitable freedom constantly burned in his large, lively eyes, and his reckless nature did not allow him to sit in one place for even a couple of minutes.

The Rooster's homeland was the distant Sorting Cliffs, lost in many legends - a land where winds blew with such force that they could knock an adult man off his feet, and frequent storms forced all living things to hide in deep caves. But for the young parrot, the storm was never a threat. On the contrary, he was his best teacher and favorite playground.

From early childhood, the Rooster learned not just to fly, but to subjugate air currents. While his fellows preferred to fly carefully from branch to branch, he rushed down from the highest cliffs, catching the rising currents of air with his wings and developing an insane speed that surpasses human imagination.

Nature has endowed him not only with emerald beauty, but also with amazing anatomy. The flight feathers on its wings were as strong and sharp as the best steel blades. When the Rooster cut through the air at top speed, the sound of his flight resembled the ringing whistle of a drawn sword. Flight gave him an incredible speed advantage over any foot warrior or forest creature. In the air, he felt like the master of the situation, and the ground was for him only a temporary haven where he could rest on the shoulder of a faithful friend.

With years of training on the windswept cliffs, the Rooster honed his fighting skills to perfection, developing a completely unique, lightning-fast fighting style.

His favorite tactical trick was the fast forward thrust. Accelerating in a straight line, it turned into a blurry emerald meteor. At this speed, the Rooster flew right through the enemy formation, cutting them with its sharpest wings and returning to the starting point so quickly that the enemies did not even have time to understand where the blow came from.

But if the situation required the display of real brute force, the Rooster soared to the very skies. Flying higher than the tops of ancient pines and hiding in cumulus clouds, it froze for a split second, and then rushed down like a stone. The speed of the fall endowed his body with colossal kinetic energy. When he crushingly grounded right into the thick of the enemy formation, the ground beneath his feet shook, and the powerful shock wave instantly stunned ordinary monsters and put even giant forest leaders into deep shock.

However, the pinnacle of his skill was considered to be the ability to cut through the air itself. Accelerating to maximum speeds, the Rooster created ghostly, completely identical illusory copies in the space behind him. These aerial doubles confused opponents, attacking them from all sides simultaneously, while the parrot himself delivered the decisive, deadly thrusts.

Despite his bellicose fighting style, in everyday life the Rooster was an incorrigible optimist, a joker and a lover of a good joke. Behind his constant bragging and loud laughter, there was a subtle and incredibly sensitive nature. He hated despondency, and when difficult, gloomy times came in the detachment, it was his ringing voice and caustic jokes that restored the fighting spirit of his friends.

Before meeting the Bor Brothers, the Rooster wandered around the world for a long time. It was fun to travel alone, but over time the restless bird became lonely. He had no one to share the joy of another victory with, no one to boast about his complex maneuver in the sky.

When fate brought him together with the cold-blooded Panther, the wise Grisha and the noble Felix, the Rooster realized that he had found more than just a company for traveling. He found a real pack. For these people, he was ready to rush into the most brutal battle, shielding them with his emerald wings from any harm.

The Rooster sincerely admired Felix Steiner. In the eyes of the parrot, the captain of the detachment was the embodiment of knightly honor, courage and composure. But the bird's sense, honed by years of living among storms and predators, sometimes gave subtle, alarming signals. Birds have a special sense - they sense the approach of a storm long before the first black cloud appears on the horizon. And from Felix, at times, there was just such a storm.

One afternoon, after a difficult journey through a swampy swamp, the detachment stopped to rest. While Grisha slept under the oak tree and the Panther cleaned his blades, the Rooster sat on a high branch, watching the camp.

Steiner stood a little far away, by a small forest stream. A small, lost bird with a broken wing flew up to the water - it fluttered helplessly on the sand, trying to get a drink.

Felix dropped to one knee. His face remained perfectly calm, friendly, even sympathetic. He carefully took the wounded bird in his palms, as if he was going to bandage it or bring it to the water. The rooster on the branch was about to joyfully shout words of approval to the captain, but stopped short.

Steiner did not treat the bird. He just stood there and watched with deep, detached interest as the bird beat in his fingers. And then, with the same even, barely noticeable smile on his lips, he slowly and methodically began to squeeze his palm. Not out of anger, not out of anger - but as if he was conducting an ordinary scientific experiment, testing exactly how much pressure a small living heart can withstand before it stops beating.

When the fragile bones broke with a quiet crunch, Felix didn’t even flinch. His face showed no disgust, no pity, no pleasure - only emptiness and satisfied curiosity. He carefully unclenched his fingers, allowing the dead body to fall into the water, and carefully wiped his stained hand on the dry grass.

The rooster on the branch instantly pressed his head into his feathers. His entire emerald plumage stood on end with chilling fear. This was not the behavior of a warrior or a protector. This was the behavior of a creature for whom someone else's life and someone else's pain had absolutely no meaning.

At that moment, Steiner raised his head and looked straight at the branch where the parrot was sitting. A familiar, warm and open smile instantly flashed on his face - the same one that all the Bor Brothers loved so much.

- Hey, Rooster! - Felix called out to him cheerfully, waving his hand. - What's stuck on the top? Go down to the fire, Grisha will soon finish cooking the stew!

The parrot swallowed the lump in his throat, hardly spread his stiff wings and flew down, forcing himself to laugh loudly and fervently:

- I'm already flying, captain! Be careful not to eat my portion!

That evening the Rooster joked louder than usual, but, settling on Steiner’s shoulder, he felt for the first time how pure, hopeless cold was pulsating under the warm leather jacket of their leader. But the parrot drove away these thoughts. “He is our captain,” the Rooster convinced himself, looking at his friends laughing together by the fire. “He saved us a dozen times.” It just seemed to him. At least that's what he thought...