Dreams of Fire by Nathaniel Wayne

Author:Nathaniel Wayne [Wayne, Nathaniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Council of Geeks
Published: 2021-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

The yellow-eyed crow glanced about from its perch atop one of Barreth’s numerous inns. It looked to the Torvec’s main gate, now closed to be reopened at dawn. It peered down at the figures beneath it, its sparkling eyes lingering on the tall woman in a long rust-colored coat as she dismounted from a visibly tired horse and entered the inn. The crow looked out from the small village to the darkness of the woods and the shadowy mountains beyond. Its eyes flashed, and it took flight toward the edge of the Everwood.

The bird’s eyes pierced the deepening darkness as it glided from civilization to the wilds of its true home. Crows existed somewhere within the in-between—they were as much a part of the Fey as they were members of the animal kingdom. While the Fey enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with most plants and animals, with crows, it was something deeper.

In the times of the Old World, warriors believed seeing a crow before a battle was a sign their own death was imminent. Some still held the belief that any human who harmed one of these birds would meet a swift and brutal end inside of a year, though they were a minority as most now chalked the entire notion of omens up to superstition. Even the ardent skeptics of the Science Guild found themselves uneasy around these black birds, and in a city like Torvec, the appearance of a crow was something authorities took very seriously, if only for the unrest it stirred.

It had never been clear what percentage of the crow population acted as direct agents of the Fey. Much as any tree in the Everwood could be a dryad, any crow could be serving the mystical forest denizens. Most humans would never get close enough to see the colored glint in the eye that would identify a Morrighan crow.

As the soaring black bird neared the tree line, it fixed its eyes upon a figure standing on a stump at the forest’s edge. The alabaster figure was draped in a long black feather cloak. At first glance, she appeared quite youthful, bordering on child-like, but there was something ancient about her presence that ran deeper than her physical body showed. Not that any could even guess at the age of the Morrighan.

Her long, wild hair was several vibrant shades of red. At the root, it was almost orange, but over the length of each strand would subtly darken into deeper shades of red until it was obsidian black at the tips. It resembled nothing so much as the bright flames of a fire fading into the blackness of night. Any foolish enough to look into her eyes would have noted something odd about their color. They would be best described as grey sky eyes, but there was a glint to them that was almost imperceptible, just in the corner of the iris. This glint, when it could be seen, was constantly shifting in color: starting with green

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