Post by Crow • ᚴᚱᚬᚴᛦ on May 30, 2024 17:59:10 GMT
Content Warnings: Extreme gore, self-harm
It was just supposed to be a quick errand.
Agnes needed some fabrics to sew Frida a new dress for her birthday. He’d volunteered to make the journey to the Dawn Market in Daring Heights, and maybe pick up a few other things whilst he’s there. Simple.
As the boy walked in through the Stone Gate, the grey, block-shaped building that is Daring Academy entered into view. He thought that it wouldn’t be such a long detour to check in on the door to the Harbour.
But when he looks into that narrow alleyway, the painted door that always looked real is gone. Scrubbed away until the wood it was painted on is raw to the touch. Whoever did this — and he has a good idea as to whom — did this recently.
Gripped by a sudden anxiety, the boy digs in his pockets for the golden compass and flicks it open. He couldn’t have lost the way forward just as he found it, could he?
The needle is pointing somewhere, much to his relief. There must be another door nearby. The Collector’s Club can’t stop them from going down to the Harbour if Fate wills it.
And so it is that the boy follows the needle to the southern quarter of Daring Heights, picking up a few companions along the way — his closest friends Rae and Keros, a fairy named Bella, and the disguised one who calls themselves “Penny” today. He doesn’t know what to expect other than another painted door; he’s never even been to this part of town before. Regardless, he feels better having people by his side, in case the Collectors are waiting for them there with swords unsheathed.
The small, winding streets abruptly end at a treeline, which gives way to a large, enclosed cemetery. The compass needle is pointing at a midnight blue building that sits just outside the enclosure. Sure enough, the image of a door has been painted on a wall at the back of the house, accompanied by three symbols: a bee, a key, a sword.
The boy pauses in his tracks as he wonders why the door reappeared here of all places. He walks around the building to see what’s in front.
An open doorway greets him invitingly and leads into a single small room, wherein a life-sized statue of glistening black marble stands against the back wall, half-obscured in shadow. The silhouette in the flowing lines of the statue’s marmoreal robes suggests that this is a feminine figure, and the white porcelain mask affixed to her face glares like a full moon in the darkness of the room. A smoking bowl of incense and a plate of copper coins sit on a low table before her.
An olive-skinned man dressed in a tunic with black feathers stitched to the shoulders is sweeping the floor inside, and he turns around to regard the boy. “Welcome to the Shrine of the Raven Queen. May I help you?” he asks.
“N-no. Sorry. Took a wrong turn,” the boy says, awkwardly stepping back. The Raven Queen? He vaguely remembers having heard the name before; some Northmen call her Hel — death itself. But why is the door here, at this shrine?
Behind him, his murder of crows have gathered to perch on a yew tree across from the shrine, watching on in uncharacteristic silence.
He tries to think nothing more of it as he goes back round to face the door.
When he reaches out for the painted handle, it rises out of the brick to fit in his palm, cold as tarnished brass ought to feel. It has been waiting for him. He pushes the door open to reveal the familiar flight of stairs, winding down and disappearing into the welcoming darkness of the depths.
The last remnant of the Starless Sea is but a still and shallow lake, lying far from the Heart, past a derelict, once-sunken village now inhabited only by restless spirits and forgotten stories. The lake, with its golden-amber hue, almost shines like a pool of sunlight in the pitch blackness of this cavern.
Just beyond the shore — which is demarcated by tiny crystalline deposits — is a stone plinth rising out of the viscous liquid, and perched atop the plinth is a great horned owl. The same one that he saw in the archives mirror months ago. Its wide yellow eyes stare right at the boy as he approaches, his companions trailing behind him, and he stares right back.
As the boy wades into the lake towards the plinth, thick honey clumping around his ankles, the owl speaks.
“You must know that there is knowledge too terrible, a price too high to pay. What will you give up for it?”
The boy frowns. “Are you the king?” he asks.
“I am not,” replies the owl. “Our king is nowhere and everywhere, dead and alive, and always watching. He watches us even now, at this very moment.”
These riddles that the owls speak confound even him. He feels the blood rushing to his head. “Do not stand in my way. If you’ll not tell me the rites, then get out.”
The owl seems unperturbed by his sharp words. “What do you offer in return?”
The boy feels his stomach drop into a cold pit. His heart starts beating faster than it ever has since he came back, battering against his ribcage like it’s desperate to leap out of his chest. This is it.
The faces of Agnes, Leo, Bernard, and Frida flashes before his mind’s eye. Their kindness, their warmth, their laughter. He wishes he could apologise to them.
“I…I seek the knowledge of what caused me to return.” With a shaking hand, he draws the knife strapped to his belt. Every little hair on his skin has pricked up and his breath grows heavy with fear. “L-Let this be my offering.”
“Crow,” Keros calls out from behind him, “what are you d—”
I just thought I had more time.
The boy pulls his right eye wide with his free hand, to let the blade slip under the eyeball, prying it loose. He screams and screams as horrible pain stabs through his skull. Half of his vision is drenched in crimson red and bursting black spots, hot blood pouring down his cheek. His voice breaks into tortured whimpers when he plucks the eyeball free with his own hand.
The sounds of Keros’s panicked voice and stomping hooves grow louder from behind, but it’s too late. He flicks the knife to sever the nerve connections, and the blood-soaked eyeball rolls around in the boy’s palm, so warm and slippery. He drops to his knees, splashing into the lake of honey, and with his entire body trembling and wracked with sobs, he holds his right eye up to the owl on the plinth.
It’s too much. The whole cavern seems to spin as a mound of vomit pushes at the back of his throat. The others are shouting, but their voices fade quickly. The boy collapses forward into the lake, the eye rolling off his limp hand.
Before his eyelids flutter shut, some little bit of the Starless Sea drifts into his open mouth, cloying on his tongue, and he delights at how sweet it tastes.
He remembers now.
The Butcher wrapped its claws around Víðar and the force of the grip almost crumpled his body, but it wasn’t done with him. It wasn’t satisfied with just that. It lifted a finger on its other hand and slowly, agonisingly, pushed its long talon through Víðar’s chest, burrowing deep into his flesh and out through his back. His gurgled screams faded into air from his gaping mouth as he could no longer make a sound.
In the distance, he heard Geirþrúður cry out his name in anguish.
Somehow, he was still conscious when the Butcher plucked him from the tip of its claw and strung him up by the neck from the branch of a tree. Fresh meat being hung out to dry. The flesh-coloured vultures flock around him, their eyes large and bulbous and greedy like that of flies.
It was the moment a bone-like beak tore into the hole in his chest when the gods decided to grant him mercy, and let him die.
And then there was nothing.
And then — a haze. His vision returned. It was different, somehow — the edges around his mother’s face sharper, the blue tones of her raven hair saturated while the blood that dripped from a gash on her forehead was muted; more violet than crimson.
It took time for Víðar to get his bearings, time to realise that his perspective was an impossible one — Geirþrúður was slumped, collapsed against a wall, her arms out to hold him…up, above her.
The haze began to clear, and he could tell that he was not alone. Not anymore. Not ever, if he so chose. Nearly twenty crows perched around him, staring at his mother and staring at him.
Their new kin.
Geirþrúður’s breath was ragged, short. Her blue eyes were wide, wild, desperate, and searching. Searching him, and staring behind him, where he could not see. She held him tightly, in both hands, her knuckles white from strain and blood loss and exertion.
I…I forsake my duty. I cast off my bonds. I cannot take him. I will not take him.
She paused, as though listening to someone, something, speaking, though what it was he could not hear.
I offer repayment with interest. He ha— has died and so he will die again, and thrice.
Geirþrúður winced, as though what she heard pained her. Then I demand a boon in turn. These souls will be his company until they are returned.
I— She coughed. —don’t have time and he doesn’t know how. I never taught him. These are my terms, and you will accept them or lose them all.
I— Ergh—! I accept.
As his mother spoke these words, her gaze turned back to him, her eyes already beginning to lid, her voice already a whisper, lost of its desperation.
Víðar, sweet child. I am so sorry. This is not the end. Not yet. I had so much I wished to teach you. Know this. When all is lost, seek respite. At the crossroads there is always another path. Trust Fate as much as Fate trusts you. Time watches all but can be reasoned with. Death is always a whisper away.
She breathed out, sounding ever more ragged, blood foaming at the corners of her mouth.
I am sorry, Víðar. I must leave you now.
I love you, my beautiful son.
And so it was that Geirþrúður Einarsdóttir died.
Víðar Geirþrúðarson hung from that tree for nine days and nine nights, until a band of adventurers rode out of Fort Ettin and slew the Butcher of Bloody Creek. None of them knew his name — he’s no one important — but they took down his body, falling apart and almost unrecognisable by then, and laid him down gently before the Chauntean shrine, next to the neighbours he once loved.
The Southwinds came back and buried the half-elf boy from Norheim in the graveyard behind the shrine, along with the rest.
The boy gasps as he wakes.
He pushes himself up with both hands. Half his vision has gone dark, his head is throbbing with unbearable pain, and his body feels sticky all over, soaked in blood and honey.
But all that is shunted to the back of his mind when he looks up and sees that the owl is no longer on the plinth. A black-feathered bird sits there in its stead, head cocked to one side, beady eyes staring down at him. Another crow—?
No. It’s larger than any of the birds in his flock, its beak is long and curved, and there is a tuft of flared feathers on its neck. It is not a crow, but a raven.
“Wh… What are you?” the boy croaks out.
“What do you think I am?” the raven answers in a clear and calm voice.
“I…I don’t…” He hacks out a cough and steadies himself against the plinth. “What do I call you?”
“I have gone by many names. But you can call me Memory.”
The boy rests his right cheek against the rough surface of the plinth, the coolness of the stone soothing the pain on that side of his head ever so slightly. His mouth moves on its own volition to repeat the word soundlessly: Memory. Yes, that feels strangely familiar. But…
“Where’s the other ‘un?”
Memory looks up at the cavern ceiling, pausing as if listening for something. “It takes time for a broken thing to recollect itself,” is all it says on the matter.
“Well, come with me then. So I don’t lose you again.”
The raven hops onto his left shoulder, and it immediately feels like a familiar weight, not unlike a satchel one is used to wearing. But it makes the empty space on his right shoulder all the more apparent. He climbs to his feet and ambles towards his companions on the shore, themselves looking dazed and in the process of standing up, as if they too had fainted a moment ago.
“Keros, Rae, Bella, and…you. You’re alive?”
“Penny” looks a bit offended at that, but Rae answers for them all. “Yeah, I…I think we are.”
The boy looks at each of his companions in turn, and seeing that they are indeed fine, sighs with relief. “I don’t know how, but I felt you all had died just now.”
Not just died. Killed — and absorbed into his flock. But he keeps that to himself.
“Crow, what the Hells?!” Keros yells, finding his anger again now that they’re all conscious. “You gouged out your own eye!”
In times past, the boy would shrink away whenever he found himself in front of the large minotaur’s display of ire, a touch scared by his loud, authoritative voice. Now, though, he meets Keros’s gaze with calm indifference. “It was the sacrifice I needed to make,” he says simply.
“Penny” nods empathetically. “Hey, I can understand that.”
He winces and inhales sharply as a fresh spurt of blood begins trickling down his cheek, staining the right half of his mouth. “It still fuckin’ hurts, though.”
As he raises a hand to wipe his lips, his mother’s face reappears in his mind, blood dripping from her own mouth.
“It really hurts.”
He glances up at the faces of his companions, who have gone silent, and he sees it plainly in their eyes — the looks ranging from concern to bewilderment to a hint of guilt. They too had seen what he saw.
“Say what you want to say about it,” he says gruffly. “I shall hear you out.”
The three of them exchange glances with one another.
“Crow, whatever you need, we’re here for you,” Keros says. The others nod in turn.
He feels that warm glow in his stomach and chest again, just like when Agnes told him that he’s always welcome in her home. It’s deeply touching, their…devotion…to him.
He lays a palm flat against his chest and bows slightly. “I thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I can only dream of repaying your kindness to me.”
“That’s great and all, Crow,” says Bella, “but can I please tend to your injuries?”
The fairy is already holding a roll of gauze in her hands and she wastes no time in tending to his bloody eye socket, wrapping bandages tightly around the right side of his head. Keros and “Penny” prop him up as all four of them walk away from the lake, but they quickly find that he requires no help. His stride is more confident than it has ever been since coming back to life; he feels no need to keep his gaze down or to squirrel away behind something to avoid speaking with another person. It’s as though being one-eyed is his most natural state.
No one but him notices that the crows have come back, perched in the shadows far away. Despite the distance between them, he hears their whispers clear as day.
“Welcome back…”
“We’ve been waiting for so long.”
“I knew you’d find it in you. I always believed in you.”
“We’re so happy for you. For us.”
“Hail! Hail to our shepherd!”
As expected, it was difficult to explain to Agnes and the bairns what had happened to him. He settled on a simple story: a robbery gone awry. Fortunately, his friends were around to help and he still had money to buy the stuff from the market. Agnes was anxious and fussed over him for a while, forbidding him from doing chores and brewing cups upon cups of tea. But eventually, she settled down.
As things return to normal in the little cottage in New Hillborrow, he swaps the bandages over his lost eye for a loop of leather. He let his beard grow out whilst in bedrest, and it’s already going grey at the roots. And he finds that these days, he prefers the comfort of baggier, looser clothes on his skin — they’re just easier on his creaking old bones.
One day, he stirs awake before the break of dawn, drawn to consciousness by a sudden urge to go for a walk. So he pulls on a hooded robe and slips out the door, unnoticed by the family in deep, peaceful slumber.
The village is quiet, the rooster still asleep. The man pulls his hood up to guard against the early morning breeze, and he wanders south into the formidable Feythorn Forest. Along the trail, he finds a long fallen branch and he picks it up to use as a makeshift staff, to lean on when he’s tired, as he often is nowadays.
Listening to the choir of cicadas as he roves, the man does not need to look up to tell that there is a murder of crows sitting high up on the branches of the trees around him. One of them is a raven who flutters down to perch on his shoulder, its rightful place.
The raven does sometimes remind him of his mother, its feathers sharing the deep obsidian colour of her hair. It’s a damned shame, he thinks, what happened to her. She struck a deal with an entity beyond her mortal comprehension, and deals like that never turn out the way one wants them to. She asked for her son to be returned to life, and whilst it is true that his body is now breathing and walking again, the same boy never really did come back. That boy is gone.
Now the adventurers of the Dawnlands, those people Víðar admired in life, accept him as one of their own, as “Crow”. The man can’t help but smile at the moniker now. He supposes it’s yet another name to be added to the list.
Flame-Eye. Death-Blind. Spear-Slinger. Riddler. Deceiver. Evildoer. Just-As-High. Ancient One. Shadowed-Face. Masked One. Sage. Terror. Rope-Rider. Glad-of-War. Greybeard. Victory-Giver. Protector. Waker. Spellcaster. Dangler. Killer. Valfather.
Wanderer.
The man stops to sit on a boulder, sighing blissfully as he stretches his arms. He casts his one-eyed gaze on the way back to the village, watching sunbeams spearing in between trees, and he feels at peace.
᛫ ᚠᚬᚱ ᚢᚦᛁᚾᛋ ᛫
The Well of Knowledge
Maybe, down below, he’ll find what he’s been looking for.
It was just supposed to be a quick errand.
Agnes needed some fabrics to sew Frida a new dress for her birthday. He’d volunteered to make the journey to the Dawn Market in Daring Heights, and maybe pick up a few other things whilst he’s there. Simple.
As the boy walked in through the Stone Gate, the grey, block-shaped building that is Daring Academy entered into view. He thought that it wouldn’t be such a long detour to check in on the door to the Harbour.
But when he looks into that narrow alleyway, the painted door that always looked real is gone. Scrubbed away until the wood it was painted on is raw to the touch. Whoever did this — and he has a good idea as to whom — did this recently.
Gripped by a sudden anxiety, the boy digs in his pockets for the golden compass and flicks it open. He couldn’t have lost the way forward just as he found it, could he?
The needle is pointing somewhere, much to his relief. There must be another door nearby. The Collector’s Club can’t stop them from going down to the Harbour if Fate wills it.
And so it is that the boy follows the needle to the southern quarter of Daring Heights, picking up a few companions along the way — his closest friends Rae and Keros, a fairy named Bella, and the disguised one who calls themselves “Penny” today. He doesn’t know what to expect other than another painted door; he’s never even been to this part of town before. Regardless, he feels better having people by his side, in case the Collectors are waiting for them there with swords unsheathed.
The small, winding streets abruptly end at a treeline, which gives way to a large, enclosed cemetery. The compass needle is pointing at a midnight blue building that sits just outside the enclosure. Sure enough, the image of a door has been painted on a wall at the back of the house, accompanied by three symbols: a bee, a key, a sword.
The boy pauses in his tracks as he wonders why the door reappeared here of all places. He walks around the building to see what’s in front.
An open doorway greets him invitingly and leads into a single small room, wherein a life-sized statue of glistening black marble stands against the back wall, half-obscured in shadow. The silhouette in the flowing lines of the statue’s marmoreal robes suggests that this is a feminine figure, and the white porcelain mask affixed to her face glares like a full moon in the darkness of the room. A smoking bowl of incense and a plate of copper coins sit on a low table before her.
An olive-skinned man dressed in a tunic with black feathers stitched to the shoulders is sweeping the floor inside, and he turns around to regard the boy. “Welcome to the Shrine of the Raven Queen. May I help you?” he asks.
“N-no. Sorry. Took a wrong turn,” the boy says, awkwardly stepping back. The Raven Queen? He vaguely remembers having heard the name before; some Northmen call her Hel — death itself. But why is the door here, at this shrine?
Behind him, his murder of crows have gathered to perch on a yew tree across from the shrine, watching on in uncharacteristic silence.
He tries to think nothing more of it as he goes back round to face the door.
When he reaches out for the painted handle, it rises out of the brick to fit in his palm, cold as tarnished brass ought to feel. It has been waiting for him. He pushes the door open to reveal the familiar flight of stairs, winding down and disappearing into the welcoming darkness of the depths.
………………………
…………………
……………
………
…
.
Just beyond the shore — which is demarcated by tiny crystalline deposits — is a stone plinth rising out of the viscous liquid, and perched atop the plinth is a great horned owl. The same one that he saw in the archives mirror months ago. Its wide yellow eyes stare right at the boy as he approaches, his companions trailing behind him, and he stares right back.
As the boy wades into the lake towards the plinth, thick honey clumping around his ankles, the owl speaks.
“You must know that there is knowledge too terrible, a price too high to pay. What will you give up for it?”
The boy frowns. “Are you the king?” he asks.
“I am not,” replies the owl. “Our king is nowhere and everywhere, dead and alive, and always watching. He watches us even now, at this very moment.”
These riddles that the owls speak confound even him. He feels the blood rushing to his head. “Do not stand in my way. If you’ll not tell me the rites, then get out.”
The owl seems unperturbed by his sharp words. “What do you offer in return?”
The boy feels his stomach drop into a cold pit. His heart starts beating faster than it ever has since he came back, battering against his ribcage like it’s desperate to leap out of his chest. This is it.
The faces of Agnes, Leo, Bernard, and Frida flashes before his mind’s eye. Their kindness, their warmth, their laughter. He wishes he could apologise to them.
“I…I seek the knowledge of what caused me to return.” With a shaking hand, he draws the knife strapped to his belt. Every little hair on his skin has pricked up and his breath grows heavy with fear. “L-Let this be my offering.”
“Crow,” Keros calls out from behind him, “what are you d—”
I just thought I had more time.
The boy pulls his right eye wide with his free hand, to let the blade slip under the eyeball, prying it loose. He screams and screams as horrible pain stabs through his skull. Half of his vision is drenched in crimson red and bursting black spots, hot blood pouring down his cheek. His voice breaks into tortured whimpers when he plucks the eyeball free with his own hand.
The sounds of Keros’s panicked voice and stomping hooves grow louder from behind, but it’s too late. He flicks the knife to sever the nerve connections, and the blood-soaked eyeball rolls around in the boy’s palm, so warm and slippery. He drops to his knees, splashing into the lake of honey, and with his entire body trembling and wracked with sobs, he holds his right eye up to the owl on the plinth.
It’s too much. The whole cavern seems to spin as a mound of vomit pushes at the back of his throat. The others are shouting, but their voices fade quickly. The boy collapses forward into the lake, the eye rolling off his limp hand.
Before his eyelids flutter shut, some little bit of the Starless Sea drifts into his open mouth, cloying on his tongue, and he delights at how sweet it tastes.
🐦⬛
He remembers now.
The Butcher wrapped its claws around Víðar and the force of the grip almost crumpled his body, but it wasn’t done with him. It wasn’t satisfied with just that. It lifted a finger on its other hand and slowly, agonisingly, pushed its long talon through Víðar’s chest, burrowing deep into his flesh and out through his back. His gurgled screams faded into air from his gaping mouth as he could no longer make a sound.
In the distance, he heard Geirþrúður cry out his name in anguish.
Somehow, he was still conscious when the Butcher plucked him from the tip of its claw and strung him up by the neck from the branch of a tree. Fresh meat being hung out to dry. The flesh-coloured vultures flock around him, their eyes large and bulbous and greedy like that of flies.
It was the moment a bone-like beak tore into the hole in his chest when the gods decided to grant him mercy, and let him die.
And then there was nothing.
And then — a haze. His vision returned. It was different, somehow — the edges around his mother’s face sharper, the blue tones of her raven hair saturated while the blood that dripped from a gash on her forehead was muted; more violet than crimson.
It took time for Víðar to get his bearings, time to realise that his perspective was an impossible one — Geirþrúður was slumped, collapsed against a wall, her arms out to hold him…up, above her.
The haze began to clear, and he could tell that he was not alone. Not anymore. Not ever, if he so chose. Nearly twenty crows perched around him, staring at his mother and staring at him.
Their new kin.
Geirþrúður’s breath was ragged, short. Her blue eyes were wide, wild, desperate, and searching. Searching him, and staring behind him, where he could not see. She held him tightly, in both hands, her knuckles white from strain and blood loss and exertion.
I…I forsake my duty. I cast off my bonds. I cannot take him. I will not take him.
She paused, as though listening to someone, something, speaking, though what it was he could not hear.
I offer repayment with interest. He ha— has died and so he will die again, and thrice.
Geirþrúður winced, as though what she heard pained her. Then I demand a boon in turn. These souls will be his company until they are returned.
I— She coughed. —don’t have time and he doesn’t know how. I never taught him. These are my terms, and you will accept them or lose them all.
I— Ergh—! I accept.
As his mother spoke these words, her gaze turned back to him, her eyes already beginning to lid, her voice already a whisper, lost of its desperation.
Víðar, sweet child. I am so sorry. This is not the end. Not yet. I had so much I wished to teach you. Know this. When all is lost, seek respite. At the crossroads there is always another path. Trust Fate as much as Fate trusts you. Time watches all but can be reasoned with. Death is always a whisper away.
She breathed out, sounding ever more ragged, blood foaming at the corners of her mouth.
I am sorry, Víðar. I must leave you now.
I love you, my beautiful son.
And so it was that Geirþrúður Einarsdóttir died.
Víðar Geirþrúðarson hung from that tree for nine days and nine nights, until a band of adventurers rode out of Fort Ettin and slew the Butcher of Bloody Creek. None of them knew his name — he’s no one important — but they took down his body, falling apart and almost unrecognisable by then, and laid him down gently before the Chauntean shrine, next to the neighbours he once loved.
The Southwinds came back and buried the half-elf boy from Norheim in the graveyard behind the shrine, along with the rest.
🐦⬛
The boy gasps as he wakes.
He pushes himself up with both hands. Half his vision has gone dark, his head is throbbing with unbearable pain, and his body feels sticky all over, soaked in blood and honey.
But all that is shunted to the back of his mind when he looks up and sees that the owl is no longer on the plinth. A black-feathered bird sits there in its stead, head cocked to one side, beady eyes staring down at him. Another crow—?
No. It’s larger than any of the birds in his flock, its beak is long and curved, and there is a tuft of flared feathers on its neck. It is not a crow, but a raven.
“Wh… What are you?” the boy croaks out.
“What do you think I am?” the raven answers in a clear and calm voice.
“I…I don’t…” He hacks out a cough and steadies himself against the plinth. “What do I call you?”
“I have gone by many names. But you can call me Memory.”
The boy rests his right cheek against the rough surface of the plinth, the coolness of the stone soothing the pain on that side of his head ever so slightly. His mouth moves on its own volition to repeat the word soundlessly: Memory. Yes, that feels strangely familiar. But…
“Where’s the other ‘un?”
Memory looks up at the cavern ceiling, pausing as if listening for something. “It takes time for a broken thing to recollect itself,” is all it says on the matter.
“Well, come with me then. So I don’t lose you again.”
The raven hops onto his left shoulder, and it immediately feels like a familiar weight, not unlike a satchel one is used to wearing. But it makes the empty space on his right shoulder all the more apparent. He climbs to his feet and ambles towards his companions on the shore, themselves looking dazed and in the process of standing up, as if they too had fainted a moment ago.
“Keros, Rae, Bella, and…you. You’re alive?”
“Penny” looks a bit offended at that, but Rae answers for them all. “Yeah, I…I think we are.”
The boy looks at each of his companions in turn, and seeing that they are indeed fine, sighs with relief. “I don’t know how, but I felt you all had died just now.”
Not just died. Killed — and absorbed into his flock. But he keeps that to himself.
“Crow, what the Hells?!” Keros yells, finding his anger again now that they’re all conscious. “You gouged out your own eye!”
In times past, the boy would shrink away whenever he found himself in front of the large minotaur’s display of ire, a touch scared by his loud, authoritative voice. Now, though, he meets Keros’s gaze with calm indifference. “It was the sacrifice I needed to make,” he says simply.
“Penny” nods empathetically. “Hey, I can understand that.”
He winces and inhales sharply as a fresh spurt of blood begins trickling down his cheek, staining the right half of his mouth. “It still fuckin’ hurts, though.”
As he raises a hand to wipe his lips, his mother’s face reappears in his mind, blood dripping from her own mouth.
“It really hurts.”
He glances up at the faces of his companions, who have gone silent, and he sees it plainly in their eyes — the looks ranging from concern to bewilderment to a hint of guilt. They too had seen what he saw.
“Say what you want to say about it,” he says gruffly. “I shall hear you out.”
The three of them exchange glances with one another.
“Crow, whatever you need, we’re here for you,” Keros says. The others nod in turn.
He feels that warm glow in his stomach and chest again, just like when Agnes told him that he’s always welcome in her home. It’s deeply touching, their…devotion…to him.
He lays a palm flat against his chest and bows slightly. “I thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I can only dream of repaying your kindness to me.”
“That’s great and all, Crow,” says Bella, “but can I please tend to your injuries?”
The fairy is already holding a roll of gauze in her hands and she wastes no time in tending to his bloody eye socket, wrapping bandages tightly around the right side of his head. Keros and “Penny” prop him up as all four of them walk away from the lake, but they quickly find that he requires no help. His stride is more confident than it has ever been since coming back to life; he feels no need to keep his gaze down or to squirrel away behind something to avoid speaking with another person. It’s as though being one-eyed is his most natural state.
No one but him notices that the crows have come back, perched in the shadows far away. Despite the distance between them, he hears their whispers clear as day.
“Welcome back…”
“We’ve been waiting for so long.”
“I knew you’d find it in you. I always believed in you.”
“We’re so happy for you. For us.”
“Hail! Hail to our shepherd!”
As expected, it was difficult to explain to Agnes and the bairns what had happened to him. He settled on a simple story: a robbery gone awry. Fortunately, his friends were around to help and he still had money to buy the stuff from the market. Agnes was anxious and fussed over him for a while, forbidding him from doing chores and brewing cups upon cups of tea. But eventually, she settled down.
As things return to normal in the little cottage in New Hillborrow, he swaps the bandages over his lost eye for a loop of leather. He let his beard grow out whilst in bedrest, and it’s already going grey at the roots. And he finds that these days, he prefers the comfort of baggier, looser clothes on his skin — they’re just easier on his creaking old bones.
One day, he stirs awake before the break of dawn, drawn to consciousness by a sudden urge to go for a walk. So he pulls on a hooded robe and slips out the door, unnoticed by the family in deep, peaceful slumber.
The village is quiet, the rooster still asleep. The man pulls his hood up to guard against the early morning breeze, and he wanders south into the formidable Feythorn Forest. Along the trail, he finds a long fallen branch and he picks it up to use as a makeshift staff, to lean on when he’s tired, as he often is nowadays.
Listening to the choir of cicadas as he roves, the man does not need to look up to tell that there is a murder of crows sitting high up on the branches of the trees around him. One of them is a raven who flutters down to perch on his shoulder, its rightful place.
The raven does sometimes remind him of his mother, its feathers sharing the deep obsidian colour of her hair. It’s a damned shame, he thinks, what happened to her. She struck a deal with an entity beyond her mortal comprehension, and deals like that never turn out the way one wants them to. She asked for her son to be returned to life, and whilst it is true that his body is now breathing and walking again, the same boy never really did come back. That boy is gone.
Now the adventurers of the Dawnlands, those people Víðar admired in life, accept him as one of their own, as “Crow”. The man can’t help but smile at the moniker now. He supposes it’s yet another name to be added to the list.
Flame-Eye. Death-Blind. Spear-Slinger. Riddler. Deceiver. Evildoer. Just-As-High. Ancient One. Shadowed-Face. Masked One. Sage. Terror. Rope-Rider. Glad-of-War. Greybeard. Victory-Giver. Protector. Waker. Spellcaster. Dangler. Killer. Valfather.
Wanderer.
The man stops to sit on a boulder, sighing blissfully as he stretches his arms. He casts his one-eyed gaze on the way back to the village, watching sunbeams spearing in between trees, and he feels at peace.
