Chapter Five: Raven

Chapter Five: Raven.

Grek sat, head held in his again human hands, peering through a telescope that pointed out across the lands he had so unwittingly decimated. The lenses of his telescope were focused on a gruesome sight: a skeleton, lying in the moonlight atop an oddly grass-covered hill, flesh clothing its leg bones. Grek had been watching for nigh two hours. His eyes were bloodshot, his muscles ached to move, but he remained seated before the glass, watching the still image of his former friend. His tears had long ago dried up, but his thoughts still seeped with sadness. Grek had fallen into the deepest of depressions. His thoughts were beginning to crack under the depths’s pressures.

Why did I scare her so? he asked himself again and again. Why did I make her run? He had not wanted to frighten her so badly; sometimes the fangs, the bulging eyes, just came out naturally. They were his true face, after all. She was my only friend. There will never be another. He had thought about creating another familiar, but he knew the new one would run from him as well. He was a horrible monster. Nothing could ever love him. Besides, a new familiar would tarnish his friend’s memory. It would be like slapping her in the face. In time he might even grow to forget her, and he could never allow himself to do that.

So he watched, and watched, and the moon swept her glow across the tiny hill outside his reach. In the morning he would ride out to her on his Hell-called mount and collect her remains, then bury them in his crypt. A new coffin would have to be built, one that surpassed Lucenda’s in its beauty and craftsmanship, adorned with the jewels that fallen from it. He would hold a memorial service, something he had never done before or been a part of. He would have to learn what they entailed. Then he would spend the rest of his days in mourning. It was the least he could do to honor her.

The familiar passed in and out of sleep as the moon passed over her. Being awake and being asleep were not too very different. She saw nothing, felt very little. Dreams and reality blended together so that she wasn’t always sure which was which. It took time for her to realize the difference: in dreams she could see. That was how she learned to recognize them when they came.

In one, she soared in flight over the crumbling walls of a dark castle. Grek stood on its highest tower, applauding her majesty, and just as the stones beneath his feet fell, a flock of white birds gripped his shoulders and carried him safely to the ground. The familiar flew far away from the castle, so far away that she left the lands ruled by it, and found another world on the other side of a wide river. There was another castle there, a white castle called Modern, where she landed. It was a pleasant dream, and when the familiar woke out of it she wished it had stayed.

Another dream came to her later, but it was more like a nightmare. A giant shadow was growing out from a black flame, sucking in all light it touched and killing everything around it. The familiar was a stone, covered in green moss, and she sat right in the shadow’s path of destruction. She tried desperately to move, but found it impossible. The stone was too heavy. The shadow engulfed her, and the world turned blood red. The moss that coated her burned away, and screamed as it died. Then the shadow began burning her as well, and an intense pain flooded her body. The pain was so real it shocked her out of the nightmare. The familiar was very relieved when she woke.

The night passed her in this fashion, waking and dreaming, slipping in and out of so many separate realities. There was no way to tell if the fantastical worlds that lived in her mind alone were being formed with her own subconscious thoughts, or those of Lucenda, or Grek - or perhaps all three; the visions were universal in their symbolism, however: change, escape, freedom, and new beginnings. Across the valley, past the tainted air that had done her body in, and that kept Warlorn isolated, Grek retired from his glass and slowly, grudgingly, he went to his bed. His dreams were always the same - billions of ants in a jar that he held - but that night, his dream was somewhat different: there was but one ant, and the jar was held by no one.

In the morning, Grek went to the castle stables, ready to begin his task. He brought with him one of his ten reanimated slaves; it clattered around behind him as he walked. He wore the same dark cloak he always wore, and his face was subdued. The skeleton looked weary, insomuch as a skeleton can; the hundreds of tentacles that held its bones in place were drying up and beginning to flake away. Grek took no tools with him, for he needed none, only the skeleton. It would serve as his hands. Grek trudged unhappily toward the stable exit, and looked out at the shattered lands before him. He did not mind the black sky, nor the wet, jagged, purple hills; he loathed the light and the beauty of nature, and would soon have to set his eyes on it for the first time in years. Beside him, his stallion snorted, its shroud puffing up around what hopefully was its nose. Grek pat it gently with his bony claw.

The horse was like him, old in the castle’s gloom. The air it craved was different, the water it thirsted for was different, the blood that sustained it was different. It could not last long without the castle’s walls, and neither could Grek. For them, passing outside the aura of magick that surrounded them would be deadly, for the clean, pure air of the world was dead to magick, and so those of magick were dead to it. This is why Grek needed the skeleton, for it was only bone, and its bonds were merely enchantments that could exist in either world, and the skeleton could pass outside the aura of Warlorn to gather the familiar’s body and take it back to be entombed. Grek and his horse would wait inside the protective field.

The leg flesh that still clung to the familiar’s bones would burn away on the trip back, but Grek wanted it to be so. He did not want to be tempted to touch them, to feel what he could have felt. He wished to remember the familiar as it had been in his mind, a companionable voice, a partner in his thoughts and feelings. Grek was a horrible beast, but even horrible beasts have hearts.

He pointed across the hills and whispered something under his breath. The skeleton started running off in the direction he had pointed. Grek took the horse’s shroud in hand and tried to pull it off, but it stuck to the beast in spots, and Grek had to rip it off forcefully. The horse shuddered as the shroud came loose. Patches of its skin were missing, and the cloth had adhered to the open sores beneath. An odor not unlike the one encountered by the familiar in the crypts assaulted Grek’s nostrils, but of course they were dead to its attack. Grek’s eyes, however, were not blind to the visual horror they then faced.

The Hell-called stallion was almost all gray, a heavy gray that bordered on black, but it was not the ashy gray of a beautiful steed; no, it was the gray of rotten skin, the gray of an exhumed cadaver. As mentioned, large chunks were missing, and the wounds revealed below them - though ages old, cut in some ancient conflict - bled profusely, as they had continued to do since the horse was reclaimed by our physical realm. Its mane and tail hairs were matted down by said blood, hardened into sharp clumps when the liquid had dried. Its legs were still strong with no deformities of the muscles or hooves, and its back, though slick with blood, still held, but its face had not fared as well. Its eyes were crawled over by worms - they did not eat the meat, just sucked the moisture there. Its nostrils had practically been closed by dried mucous, and heavy yellow clouds of dust puffed out when the animal exhaled. Its teeth were the worst. None of them had grown in properly. The ones that fit inside the mouth did so at crooked angles, and the ones that did not fit inside the mouth, they pierced through the nose, chin, and head of the horse, bending into points that formed a gruesome mask, or armor around its face. The horse did not seem disturbed by this, and that was perhaps most unsettling of all, for it stood casually beside its master with little discomfort. It did not try to blink away the worms, did not bash its gnarled teeth against the stone walls to be rid of them, it just stood there, dumbly awaiting Grek’s weight upon its back.

Grek hardly reacted to the monster before him, what had once been a great warhorse. He looked off into the distance to see the skeletal soldier making good progress, then lifted himself up onto the horse’s back. It wore no reigns, and Grek didn’t need to spur it forward. He caressed its neck with one hand and slowly clenched and unclenched a fist with the other, mumbling a command. The horse heard and obeyed. It could do nothing else. It walked out of the stable and set out across the broken ground. Its hooves sank into the wet earth, but it stood firm as it moved. It wore no saddle, and Grek felt every step painfully between his legs, but he hardly minded. The pain was fitting, in a way. He was on his way to bury a friend. He should not enjoy the trip. It was also for this reason that he kept the horse at a walking pace. The skeleton ran ahead of them with a wide lead.

The path the familiar had taken when running from the castle curved around the hill to maintain speed. Going up and down each hill would tire her out and slow her down. But Grek had no need for speed, and he went up each hill slowly and down each hill slowly, as they came within his straight path out. At the top of one hill he spotted a stroke of blue rising against the black sky. At the next hill, a strip of green was revealed beneath it. Grek scoured and spat at the ground. The natural look of the world, it unsettled him. It marked the edge of his power. Each hilltop revealed a little more of the world outside Warlorn’s influence, and a little more space between Grek and his skeleton servant. The familiar was nowhere to be seen, but Grek knew the remains would come into view soon enough.

It was not the familiar’s bones that made the first appearance, but a little black bird. Grek thought it was a tiny dot until he saw it hop up and flutter about a few feet in the air before landing. It had been many years since Grek had seen an actual bird; the closest things to birds he could think of were the wraiths that flew around the high ceilings of his towers. The tiny black dot looked sufficiently macabre to be one of Grek’s minions, with its feathery wings and its sharp beak, but it was too small for his liking. Anything he would summon had to be powerful, able to strike fear in its victim’s heart. This thought was dashed from his mind when he crested the next hill. The bird was not alone; instead, a large group came into view, maybe ten or fifteen. All with the same pointed faces and crazy staring eyes, Grek decided maybe the little dot wasn’t as weak as previously thought. A mass of them could do some serious damage, if they all attacked at once. A wicked grin grew slowly across Grek’s face, but when he realized it he quickly frowned it away. This was a somber journey, after all.


At the next hilltop Grek saw the birds again, but this time there were more, maybe thirty, and it was clear they all gathered around one place. With sick agony, Grek realized the area they stood was the same he had stared over so sadly the night before; it was the resting place of the familiar’s remains. The birds were picking at her bones, and eating her legs!

“Damn you! Go away!” Grek shouted, while the birds tore apart their feast hungrily. Grek commanded his horse into a gallop and began charging toward the birds. He instantly regretted this. He was kicked up into the air by the horse’s sudden burst of speed, and when he came back his testicles slammed hard into its bony back His face swelled red and he yelped with pain. He had to clench his teeth hard and grip the horse as tight as he could. He wanted nothing more than to roll off onto the ground and curl up and pass out, but he knew he had to press on. Still, he whimpered and did his best to raise his crotch away from the damned horse. Tears would have shot from his eyes if his tear ducts hadn’t been scorched shut long ago. The birds were just a few hills away. Grek ached and cursed and through it all clung desperately to his horse. He knew the birds were violating his precious friend and it made him want to kill them all. Luckily for the birds, he never got the chance. At the next hilltop he saw that his skeletal servant had reached the group before him. The servant ran through them on its mindless dash, sending them all back into the sky, cackling and screeching. Grek sighed with relief and quickly made the horse stop. Its feet kicked up four squelching mounds of dripping earth. The strange thins was that it didn’t seem tired at all after the first run it had seen in ages. It stood calmly, almost motionlessly, with the same vacant look in its eyes and the same yellow clouds of dried snot blowing out from its nostrils. Grek got down off the horse very slowly, cradling his testicles in his hand and cursing under his breath.

He looked up to find the skeleton still running, past the remains and off into the far away world. Grek froze its movement with a wave of his hand. He decided, perfectly intelligently, not to ride the horse anymore, opting instead to walk the rest of the way to where the end of his world went. As he did so, an interesting sight caught his eye. Closer now, he could see one of the birds had not flown away with the rest. Instead, it wobbled off away from the corpse, looking as if it was wounded. Grek assumed as much, thinking maybe he would get a chance to torture one of the little bastards after all, until something else odd happened. A different bird suddenly plummeted out of the group that had flown away. It spiraled down as if shot. As soon as it landed, the wobbling bird, the one that looked wounded, lifted off into the sky with incredible speed, perfectly taking up the position the dead bird had lost. Grek found all of this rather strange, but it was not until the bird flew away from the flock and headed off directly away from him, did he realize what was going on.

“I don’t believe it!” he shouted, amazed and almost senselessly happy. “She’s alive!”

He ran after the bird, shouting, “Come back, come back my love!” but the bird did not respond. It flew against the blue sky, swiftly becoming a mere speck. Grek chased after the unattainable bird, in his elated state of mind not realizing he was about to leave the safety of his magick field. The fingers of his right arm passed through into open air, but Grek hardly noticed. With a few more steps, his entire body was out of the magick barrier and the clean, untainted world that he had been so long away from began to press in on his tarnished, twisted flesh.

The effect of unaffected air on a being of magickal corruption is almost the exact opposite of what happened when the newly birthed flesh of the familiar met the acidic nature of the magick field. Then, the magickal residue had tasted her new flesh and devoured all that was pure about it, feeding on its energy. Thus the makeup of the familiar’s skin was pulled apart, and it became like melting liquid. For Grek, whose flesh had been turned into a falsehood of itself and become magickly laced, the clean air of the outside world burned away all that was magick about him, sucking the life out of him, making his skin grow dry and hard like aged leather. At first his fingers on his hands began to shrink against the bone, but Grek felt nothing, only going after the bird. Soon his arms too began tightening up, losing their pigment, turning a sickly pale, and wrinkling. Still Grek did not notice, instead continuing to run after the bird, though he could barely see it. Only when his face pulled against his skull, making his eyes shut and his mouth cinch up, did he realize where he was. At once he turned back, and ran as fast as he could toward the safety of his magick. The pain hit him all at once, all of his nerves being pinched tight by his own skin all across his arms and most of his face. He nearly fainted under the sudden anguish, for it was worse even than the horse’s back crashing against his balls. Still he ran as hard as he could manage, for every second meant another patch of lost flesh, another bite of horrid pain, and another second closer to a torturous death.

All he thought as he ran was I’m a fool! I’m a fool!, but not so much in words; the idea of being foolish mercilessly pounded him in the brain with every footfall. He crossed out of the natural world and into the magickal field that protected him. He fell to the floor as the horrible tightening of his flesh came to an end. The pain was still great, and he rolled on the wet earth screaming and crying out loud. He had just been running for his life, but now that he felt the pain full on he longed for death. He curled up in a ball and rocked back and forth, slicking himself with the ground’s seeping oil. His entire body shook, and his arms and face throbbed harshly. His mind begged his body for an end, but none came for some time, until the point Grek started to think he would be stuck writhing in the dirt for ever. He clenched his teeth and got up on his hands and knees, and fighting his desire to pass out, vomited red, spicy sick.

The worst of the pain seemed to flush away with the vomit. Grek broke out in a cold sweat, and his vision blurred. He held himself in the crawling stance for a moment, assuring himself the worst was over, then slowly he got to his feet. He sucked in air and let it out, letting his body relax, the sweat cooling off his face and arms. He looked at his arms and cringed. His right was completely pale, white like a pile of salt. The skin was parted in deep trenches cutting down almost to the bone. The left had faired mildly better, for there was some pigment left, but it still looked shrunken, dried. The skin around his finger nails had pulled back revealing the truth of his claws. His fingers were now even bonier than before, with the sharp nails visible down to the first knuckles. With trepidation he reached up to feel his face. The first thing he touched was his nose. The nostrils were flared wide, and stung when he brought his nails to them. His cheeks no longer gave to his touch or squished in against his teeth; instead they were like stretched drum skins. Grek could feel the individual teeth through them, and knew they were probably identifiable visibly as well. He touched the skin around his eyes and accidentally poked one with his claw. It hurt, but not so much that it made any difference to his already pained face. He tried to blink it away and had difficulty. The skin was stretched away from the eye so that he could barely close it anymore. In time his eyes began to burn with dryness, and he had to keep them partially closed.

He knew he needed medicine, for the skin that had been dried would soon begin falling off his bones in thick strips. The castle infirmary would contain something, anything to help. Cool water perhaps, to re-moisturize, or maybe just a wrapping of bandages around the affected spots. It was little good thinking of it all now. He had to get back to his home. He remounted his horse and started to ride again, slowly. He had forgotten his servant; it stood where it was staring back at him with witless subservience. The remains stayed where they lay as well, but intentionally. Grek no longer held any reverence for them. The familiar had left them behind, and so had he.

Halfway back to Warlorn, Grek began to sob. No tears dripped from his wrecked eyes, but he felt them burning inside, just the same. He hated himself, hated what he had done. The familiar, his only friend, gone far away in the body of a tiny bird. Who knew how long she could last, or if she could even survive in the wilds? The worst part was Grek had no way to follow her, for he had already come close to death in mere seconds outside his magick. As he rode, Grek damned himself and damned his cursed lands, and wanted nothing more than to rid of them, wrapped in the loving arms of his friend. But he knew that none of this would ever be possible, and he knew that everything was his own fault.

He arrived back at the castle and remembered the skeleton, but quickly forgot it again. It no longer mattered. Little did. He went back into the storerooms, went through the servant’s quarters, and as he walked he began to remember the way Lucenda’s body had looked in those last seconds of her life. Seeming to glow, she was, with a beautiful face and a way of stirring the air around her as she ran. Even intense fear could not wrest the serene coolness from her eyes, nor tackle any fleetness in her step. Grek thought of the clothes she wore, the servant’s faded white shirt and town pants, and as he did so he walked by what had once been the girl Danica’s chamber. He spied two red dots hiding in the shadows, and he stopped and looked at them as a weak smile appeared, if only in his heart.

“Hallman,” he said, his voice gravelly and soft, “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

Grek went into Danica’s room and sat on her old, sagging mattress. The two red dots watched him. Grek looked around the room, old memories trying and failing to beat out the familiar as focus of his thoughts. He had once spent many nights in a room not unlike this one. He saw that the drawers had been gone through, and realized the familiar had been in the room. He saw one drawer hanging wider than the others, near to him, and he stood and went over to it.

“This must be where her clothes came from, right Hallman?” The red dots stared and did not respond. “Those old rags...” Grek looked through the drawer, touching the clothes inside, his eyes far away. The red dots came slowly over to float behind his head, seeming to carry the shadows with them as they moved. They looked over Grek’s shoulder, down into the drawer.

Who was she? came an old, soft voice from somewhere within the floating darkness. She was beautiful.

Grek came back from his dreams. He turned and looked into the shadow’s eyes.

“Yes, she was, wasn’t she?” He went back to the bed and sat down. He could almost feel the familiar’s presence. She had probably sat right where he was now. “I think I loved her, Hallman.”
Did you? Like you loved the Hated One?

“No, not like that,” Grek sighed. “That wasn’t love. I only wanted her body, nothing more. My friend, I named her Grek. She was different.” Grek slumped in his seat, resting his head in his hands. His nails scratched at his wrinkled, leathery face, but he hardly noticed. “I never knew what love was, Hallman, and maybe I still don’t, but if I had to give a name to what I felt for her, love would be that name.”

Why did you ride out to her? Did you want to love her again?

Grek almost laughed. The shadow was surprisingly innocent, despite its ghastly appearance.

“Not like that, Hallman, not like that. I wanted to take back her body and bury it, give her a proper service, but then she took the form of a bird and flew away. I tried to go after her, but the world outside is...” Just then Grek felt a sharp pain in his left hand.

“Aagh, damn, I forgot my wounds!” He looked at his hand to see the damage. He expected the skin to be peeling off, dying as it fell to the floor. Instead he saw no wound, no new injury, only a tiny spider crawling along his palm. He nearly crushed it, but then stopped, and thought.

“Spiders... on her legs. Could that be why they survived the magick?” As if to answer his question, a small circle of brown flesh was beginning to appear in the center of his hand. The spider’s bite had replaced a small amount of magick power, and his flesh was beginning to grow strong again.

“What incredible luck she had,” Grek smiled. “Wearing the pants must have agitated them enough to attack. They didn’t kill the flesh they bit, but kept it living long enough to escape the magick’s burn. She was blessed. There’s no other way to look at it.”

Those are my friends, the spider family, Hallman said. They like to sit in the drawers.

Grek looked at his hand with growing amazement. Slowly, an idea was beginning to form in his mind.

“Hallman, do you know anything about birds?”

Not particularly, the shadow replied. I know about very little, and not anything about birds at all. What are birds?

“It doesn’t matter. Tell me about these spiders.”

They have lived inside these drawers since as long back as I can remember. They do not talk very much, but they are fun to watch. They stay off the walls, and I let them be inside their drawers. They do not bite me, and I do not eat them. We have a decent arrangement that way.

“I see, I see. Are they naturally violent?”

Yes, though it was not always so. I had thought them to be rather peaceful until yesterday. These must be troubling times for the spiders.

“They must attack anyone who touches these clothes. How long can they survive?”

It is hard to tell them apart from each other, for there are so very many. I can remember back in the long ago times, when I first began to sit on the walls, there were not so many back then. Many of them died one day. They burned into ash, green smoke and charred crispy meat. A few lived though, some little ones that had stayed on their mother’s back. Back then I could tell them apart. More came as the days passed, but I knew one, a tiny one I called Hallman - he lived for ten months.

Ten months, Grek thought. Not long enough. I’d need at least a few years.

“Thank you, Hallman. I must go now, but you’ve helped me quite a lot. If you want anything I can get it for you.”

No thank you. I like to sit on the wall, and also in the hall.

“Yes, I know. You do that. Good bye, Hallman.” With that, Grek left the room and went away. The shadow watched him leave, then disappeared back into the corner. Grek went first to his infirmary and covered his wounds in bandages. The linen was old and weak, but it protected his arms from further injury. He left his face unclothed. He then went to his library, and spent many hours after that searching his books. He needed a spell, a very specific ritual of summoning, and he hoped he could find it there. A plan had formed in his mind, one that would get him safely outside into the natural world. He would not be alone anymore. He had known true companionship, known love, and he would have it back. He would find the familiar, and he would have her back as well.

---

If the familiar could have felt pain, she would have been screaming. Thirty-three little minds, but cunning minds, swelled with fresh energy around what had once been her legs. They were eating them, that was all too clear, but what of it? What did her legs matter to her at all anymore? They were dead as was the rest of her body, and she probably would be as well soon. The sun beat down upon her bones, cooking the meat and making it extra delicious for the birds, who she had learned from their thoughts were known as ravens. It was only a matter of time before the ravens found the lump of flesh that held her life inside it. Soon they would eat her away, and that would be that.

The familiar was not in her right mind. She had not yet come to realize the possibility of putting herself inside one of the birds and killing it, then doing the same to the rest. She cared little anyway to remain living. Death would come as a relief to the drudgery of forever dreaming. She had had her moment of joy when for awhile the beauty of a queen was her’s to control. Peaking at only a few minutes old - it was not to be tested in its delicious simplicity.

It was only when the birds scattered away suddenly did the familiar wake from her delusions. Open as she was to the thoughts of the birds, the hundreds of mindless Grek clones exploded into her thoughts like a thunderclap when the skeleton ran by. Again she felt the evil nature of Grek’s desires, the violent greed and the lustful passion. She looked around, fearful that Grek was close by, ready to defile her very bones. She found him far off across the magick field. He was charging towards her atop some horrid mockery of a horse, one thought only in his screaming mind: Reach her.

Damn damn damn, she cried. He comes for me again! He’ll take me back to his castle and imprison me in this waste of skin! I must escape him! But how!

Now that her mind was working, the solution came quickly to her. A raven. She could take it and use it to fly away forever. It would be just like her dream, she realized. Peaceful flight, the castle Modern its end, and a new queen to take over and live in again. Without hesitation the familiar reached out and took the mind of one of the ravens. It immediately died.

Blast! Stupid thing!

The sudden force of the vastly superior consciousness bursting into the raven’s head was too much for the simple mind to take. The knowledge of three individuals, the memory of hundreds more, and the incredible feelings of emotion! It had two options, insanity or death, but it did not get to choose. The birds brain overloaded and the raven died inside it, but the body stayed alive with the familiar taking it over. She quickly discovered a problem: the brain was too small! She could hardly fit inside it, plus, try as she might, she could not fully separate herself from the lump of flesh. It was her anchor after all. She awkwardly moved the bird over to her skull and had it reach its head in through the eye socket. Its beak pressed against what had been her brain, and was now her prison. Not for long, she thought. Biting with a beak was entirely different, but eventually she was able to force it open and clamp down on a large squishy piece of the lump. She tore it away, but couldn’t for the life of her figure out how to swallow. Wait, she brilliantly realized under pressure, if I eat it, it will quickly be gone. Instead she held the small piece of meat in the bird’s beak carefully, then tried to put the rest of herself into it. She almost fit. It seemed the size of the brain was not all used. The tiny strip torn off was not enough, though, and the familiar emotionlessly left the memories she had stolen from the illusion beast inside the lump. She no longer needed them. Now she was in her new body, though she was dangerously held inside it by only a weak mind and a torn piece of meat. It was enough, though. She could use it to escape.

She tried to fly, but had no idea how. The bird’s original mind was completely dead and inaccessible. She dared not reach out to look for Grek lest she be unable to squeeze back inside herself, but she knew he must be getting close. Desperately she grabbed up above her for another bird, and finding one, took everything it had to offer her. Suddenly she knew exactly how to fly, and she did so, soaring off away into the sky. Instincts were her new master, and she took up her place within the conspiracy without a second thought. Soon, however, her will took hold over the new knowledge, and she parted ways with the birds and instead flew straight across the green, rolling hills, away from Warlorn and away, as far away as possible, from Grek.

The ground beneath her was green and hilly, a sharp contrast to Warlorn’s field. It was warm up in the sky, and the air beneath her wings felt intended, like it was right to be there. She was comfortable, peaceful. Her wings seemed to do all the work by themselves instinctively, and she didn’t have to think about flying very hard at all. She was mildly concerned about the frantic pace of her heartbeat, but there was little she could do about it. Mainly she focused on keeping the strip of meat safe. The idea of dropping it and having part of her up in the air with the rest falling away to the ground made her shudder. She preferred not to think of what would happen if her mind was pulled apart.

The familiar could see small life amongst the grass: insects and rodents, snakes and worms. She felt safe now with all these small vessels that could hold her inside them if the bird were to give out. The tiny strip of brain she held in her mouth could be picked up and carried by a mouse, or rabbit. She wanted bigger game than the tiny creatures below her, however. A stag was something Lucenda recalled as being large and formidable. The familiar thought a stag would make a perfect host. An ostrich was another giant that Lucenda had only heard about in books, but it seemed to hold a special place in her imaginative childhood years. The familiar wondered if she might be able to find an ostrich.

At times she had to land and rest, for flying was tiring work. She would land on the ground and let her body cool, occasionally dropping the strip of brain to catch a worm that crossed her path. She always kept a careful eye on it, not so much literally since the raven’s eyes were strange to her and hard to use for looking at things up close. She used her own idea of position to keep the strip protected. She wondered why the recalled instincts of the bird she had killed felt so nervous sitting in the tall grass. Maybe it was something to do with walking instead of flying? The familiar didn’t know. She needed to rest. The bird must have rested in its life. The familiar was confused, but not too concerned. In time, she figured, she could find a tree or something to perch on.

She had been searching through Lucenda’s mind, looking for any memories regarding Warlorn’s surroundings, but could find very little. The queen hadn’t left the castle much, apparently. The familiar wished she had been able to keep the illusion’s stolen memories, for surely Warlorn’s army had rode across the very land she now flew over, and their pasts could be tapped to help her find the best course. There was just not enough space for it all in the tiny bird’s brain. It was up to her to find the right way to go. She was really, truly free now, and she could go anywhere in the world, she just needed to know where she was.

So she flew and flew, and the strip of brain began to hang heavy in her mouth. He beating heart got too fast for her liking and the soft, dewy grass below looked ever so much better than the tiring air. She landed again, letting herself rest. She placed the brain on the dirt and looked around for something to eat. Once more the dead bird’s stolen instincts began to act up, but by then she was used to them and ignored their warning. Ironically enough, this proved advantageous. Her mind was spread out, searching for a sign of life, something small to gobble up. What it found was much bigger, much scarier. Just as she sensed its presence, it pounced. A large, orange cat, hungry for raven flesh. Its claws landed on the bird and dug in deep. Intense pain scraped across her breast as it tried to tear her up. Flashes of orange fur and yellow eyes were all she could make out.

Don’t you dare kill me yet, you stupid monster! the familiar screamed. I’m not done living!

It was a lucky thing that the host bird was technically dead, for had it been alive, its fear of dying would have clouded the familiar’s own thoughts, distracting her. Instead, she had only to struggle against the pain. Reaching out inside the cat was not so easy as with the bird. Not only was her current body being torn to pieces, but the cat’s brain was much more complex than the bird’s and harder to explore. Still, she was able to get inside it and distract it away from the bird by screaming into its thoughts. The cat leaped back away from the bird, but it landed in a crouch, ready to strike in a matter of seconds.

Stupid thing, where is your control? the familiar wondered. She pulled herself out of the bird, for it was useless to her now, and put what had been inside it into the cat. There was still room for more, though not much. She grabbed for the strip of torn off brain and took what was there out, adding it back into the mass of herself. The cat’s brain was crowded then. It leapt again at the bird and sank its teeth into its head. There was slight surprise, mild disappointment when it found it to no longer be alive. The familiar felt the cat’s confusion and found it amusing. No more fun in that one, cat. I did it in already.

She wormed her way around inside the cat. It pawed at the dead bird, oblivious to her presence. Now that she was undistracted, she easily found the control center of the feline’s mind, and began to wrap around it. That was when the cat noticed her, and it suddenly started screaming. Loud, awful yowls blared out from its throat. It ran around the dead bird in circles, flipping onto its back and pawing at the air. It huffed and scratched at its eyes, trying to get whatever was inside it out. The familiar was shaken by this sudden burst of insanity, but not very. She took hold of the cat’s mind and turned it to her own, and the cat calmed down.

Hello kitty, the familiar said cooly. The cat was still present inside its own head, just not in command. The familiar didn’t want to kill it. Not yet, anyway. Did you think you would get to eat that good bird? I must apologize, but that bird belonged to me. And now you do too. The cat didn’t understand her, but she could tell it felt great fear at the sound of her words. It was a prisoner in its own mind. There was nothing it could do to escape. The familiar did not take any pleasure in terrifying the cat, for it was an unavoidable side effect of what she needed. Instinct was an animal’s best defense against the harsh world, and the familiar knew it. She took what she could from the cat’s living essence - its memories, its instincts, and its knowledge - then she quickly crushed it dead. The cat had only been hunting, nothing more. It did not deserve a punishing end.

And now she was a cat. What luck, she thought. A big brain and a natural killing machine, plus she could travel fast as well. Maybe not as fast as the raven, but fast enough. Plus, Grek had seen her take off as a raven, and if he was looking for her, he would not suspect a cat. Also, the cat was a predator, not prey. She had much better survivability in this body.

This is what she thought, until the first pangs of hunger started to ache her stomach. It was a surprising hunger, not the kind Lucenda or Grek remembered. This hunger racked across her entire body. It drove itself deep into every fiber of muscle and skin. It demanded attention immediately.

I’m hungry? she thought. Well, of course I am. The cat was hunting after all. Why shouldn’t it be hungry? No need to worry, I’ll just find something to eat.

Walking with the cat was a new challenge. Four legs were harder than wings, and the cat did not instinctively know how to move them. The familiar had to peer into its memories to find the solution to her problem, but she saw more there than she wanted.

I’m happy, the cat had thought, hours before. The provider is speaking soothingly to me. The familiar did not hear these thoughts as words, more like ideas in her mind, the most basic of fulfilled emotions, and occasionally a blurry picture of a frowning child’s face. I am warm in her arms. She will take me out to the grass and we will play. Contentment. The familiar watched curiously. The provider is putting me down in the grass, and I smell the scent of the grass. The familiar suddenly smelled an intense scent of grass, and of dirt and of fresh air. I love to run. I love to roll in the grass. Happiness.

The provider is walking away. I’ll follow her. She’s going back to the matriarch in the loud thing, there with the two horses on leashes. Are we going back to the home already? The provider is turning to look at me, she speaks to me... harshly! I’ll go up to her. She pushes me away! She’s running from me! Why won’t she play?! The cat started to howl, but the child ran even faster. She jumped into a carriage and her mother drove the horses forward. They are leaving. Sadness. They will come back, they always do. The cat followed after the carriage but it quickly disappeared out of sight. The cat sat in the grass and meowed.

The familiar kept watching the memory, watched as the cat began to explore the field it had been left in. It wandered around, looking for food, and the familiar stopped watching. That had all occurred several hours ago. The cat was now very hungry. Perhaps the raven was the first morsel of food it had found.

I’ll eat that bird, the familiar thought. Might as well eat that little piece of my brain, too. The familiar did just that, and her hunger was mildly relieved. But she needed more food, and she needed to keep moving. She checked the cat’s memories of the area around her. They were fuzzy, green blurs that told her little. The cat could not remember much other than scents, and these told the familiar very little. She knew that the cat’s owners had come in a carriage. It had probably left tracks in the ground. The familiar decided to find and follow them, wherever they may lead.