She eventually stops doing the bird equivalent of spitting in disgust, then trills again and hops away, looks at him, hops half a step towards him, then away again.

"...?"

Hop forward, hop farther away, glance at him, glance in the direction she's going, repeat.

(She doesn't have a concept of 'grab someone's hand and drag them,' but if he doesn't follow her she'll start getting frustrated.)

...huh. Sure, okay, he'll follow her.

She'll lead him through the maze to a large nest full of shiny. (He is a shiny and she is tired, and there's an empty nest nearby). There's a few other occupied nests, and the other bird women poke their heads over to trill at her.

She makes the 'not a food, not a predator probably' chirp, and pecks at one that gets too close because he is her shiny and that one keeps trying to edge in on her place in the order.

Huh. Bird nest. It vaguely occurs to him that 'kill some bird ladies' is an option on the table, but it's hard to kill things when you have to pick one between 'sharp edges' and 'the ability to move under your own power', and also there's a bunch of them now and he has recently discovered that beaks hurt, so maybe he'll pass.

She flutters up into her nest and starts rearranging her shinies. A lot of them were taken from the flesh people. Flesh people have neat shinies.

Anything interesting in the collection?

A lot of coins and ribbons and pieces of jewelry (some of it has a bit of dried blood in a crevasse), a small collection of flashlights, some glass cubes with little designs in them, doll furniture, Faberge eggs, somebody's collection of Russian nesting dolls, keys, fancy scented candles, six different mermaid sequin pillows, a whole mess of sequins and glitter, wind chimes and Christmas tree ornaments she figured out how to hang over the edge...

It's sort of adorable. Nothing in there that he particularly has an urge to steal, though.

She starts settling in, cooing a bit under her breath as she does. Indeed, most of the bird women seem inclined to sleep.

Awwwwww that's a really cute noise!! Benefits of not murdering bird women: you get to hear them make CUTE NOISES.

Most of them quiet down as they drift off. One makes a half cooing noise just breathing. They usually ruffle their feathers and go 'wraaaaa?' if something makes them wake up halfway.

Cuuuute.

He's gonna get bored if he just watches them sleep for hours, though. Is he even the sort of thing that sleeps? He's not sure. How do you tell if you are? And what can a bored sword do around here?

The labyrinth still exists, with all its twists and turns and surprises, and there's holes high on the wall or in the ceiling that Kate hadn't gone through, on account of not either being particularly athletic or a bird.

Climbing through holes in the wall looks like fun! He'll try that.

The dungeon's fancier higher up, flecks of something shiny embedded in the walls, more perches and handholds and interesting spaces (some of them have clearly been used as a stash for everything from 'rocks' to 'jewelry' to 'bones'. The bone collection ranges from mouse skeletons to a complete human skeleton dragged up here a few bones at a time).

Gosh. What a variety of things. He finds that he appreciates the human skeleton especially.

The tunnels eventually lead to a massive chamber, with bird women sleeping along the walls, but far, far more empty nests, and tiny glittering cubes coating the floor and most flat surfaces, and a pedestal in the middle with a jarringly out of place dark black stone that's been shattered into pieces.

...huh.

He inspects the stone.

It feels weird, sets something in the back of his teeth to aching. The pieces don't shine or have shadows, looking like little flat holes in reality.

That's... concerning??? He is concerned??? What???

It looks like it broke when someone knocked it off the pedestal. Most of it's in fairly big chunks, but there's smaller ones scattered about.

He pokes one suspiciously.

It's slick, like watery glass. Feels almost goopy, and his finger tingles oddly.