Nikki hadn’t exactly meant to kill the strange bird-thing, just pin it so it wouldn’t go flying and hurling boulders, so when it collapsed entirely she was rather surprised.  “Well, I suppose that works,” she murmured to her lizardly friend as she got to her feet.  She’d have a nice bruise on her knee but aside from that she was unscathed.  The others seemed more or less alright as well.  Someone was cheering at their success, and the magpie was introducing herself as Sera.  Nikki couldn’t help but grin as Blin, now awake again after his fainting spell (really?  /really/, Blin?) made the joke she’d wanted to make.  “Yeah well, that’s what heroes do, right?  I mean, we’re all fine.  Heya, Sera, I’m Nikki~”  The young woman started to offer a hand to shake, but a glint in the pile of bones caught her eye and distracted her before the other girl could accept.  Something shiny.  “Oh hey, what’s that?”

It was just a pile of bones, not really a corpse, and she’d gone through bones of animals when exploring the islands anyhow.  So it was a simple matter for the teen to shove them out of the way and reveal a sword.  “Hey Blank, come look at this!” she called.  “That bony bird had a sword in it!  I wonder if that’s normal for them.”  Curiosity sent her over to the second pile of debris, and moments later she triumphantly held up a key.  “Ooh, I wonder what it goes to?  It looks like some stuff I’ve seen in the ruins....”

But there were no locks anywhere around, so she tucked the key away and took a good look around.  It seemed most of them had an animal companion now.  Blank had a cold-looking wolf, Sera a flaming bird.  Blin had a winged lizard too, though his Kal didn’t have the feathers and frills of her friend.  She should come up with a name at some point, Nikki reflected, giving her partner a scratch on the chin.  And Eli...oh.  oh dear.

“PFFT Ahaha~”  Maybe it wasn’t very nice, but she and Eli were rivals, and /she/ had a fierce bird lizard and he had -- “A fire mouse!”  Grinning fit to split her face, the young woman came up to her friend and looked at the glowing rodent.  “Aww, just look at da widdle cutie~”  She giggled.  “Just like you, Eli~”