Well that's sure a thing.

He checks himself over, and then before the blood has a chance to dry, consults his little bit of notepaper from his little bag and reads in a low voice, something about destroying things.

And then he disappears.

Huh.

Tias flies away a bit, so that Cor won't come back to the middle of an earthquake, and experiments with making mountains. Turns out he can totally do that. It's - weirdly easy, actually, to work at that kind of scale; the difference between scooting hills and raising mountains is more like a shift in perspective than like an increase in effort.

Cor is back six hours later!

By that time, the scooted hill and little mountain and miniature forest are surrounded by fields of grass and wildflowers, and there's a mountain range nearby that wasn't there before, lightly forested and attended by an entourage of soft white clouds.

"Oooooooh!"

A distant winged figure emerges from the clouds, spots him, and glides down for a landing.

"Hi! I made mountains!"

"You did! They're fantastic!"

"Thanks!!"

"How far out have you been working, is it just what I can see or would there be a heck of a view from uphill?"

"There's a pretty good view from uphill!"

"Can you do the scooty thing, I'm not nearly surefooted enough for mountain climbing."

"Sure."

A nearby tree uproots itself, scoops Cor up gently with a leafy branch, and carries him up the small mountain. Tias flies.

"Wheeeeee! Is flying as fun as it looks?"

"Absolutely!"

Up on top of the small mountain, the tree puts Cor down and re-roots. The view from here shows lots and lots of lovely flowering fields, dotted with interesting features like rivers and ponds and for some reason a small castle. In some directions, a bit of actual wasteland is still visible on the far side of the greenery, but near the mountains the flowers extend all the way to the horizon.

"Oooooooooh."

Tias lands and beams at him some more.

"I wish getting wings were a thing where I'm from, it'd be neat, and I would obviously get a set for saAAAAHWHAT," says Cor, suddenly bathed in a pillar of light.

...

Tias cracks up.

"Eep!" says Cor.

When the light clears he has long narrow wings.

The scapulars near where they join his back are exactly blood-red. The tips of the primaries are flame-colored, yellow orange scarlet, fading into the black that is the rest of the feathers. The... extra-ultra-black black. The hole in light.

"...oh, nice," says Tias. "Those are some good wings."

Cor looks at one.

"Yes," he says. "Yes they are."

"Also that was hilarious."

"Yes, I suppose it was."

"Congratulations, though!"