Ravenfell Chronicles: Origins

by Brand J. Alexander

  “I would teach my flock to be as regal as they think themselves to be,” the Peculiar Raven responded. He truly didn’t have much grander dreams than that at this moment. He was still a bird, after all, if a peculiar one. “I would make us more than just filthy scavengers who feed off death. If you will give me these powers over death as you claim, I would teach them to truly rule death and be greater than what they are.”

  “Well, to know what regal is, one must have a king, don’t you think? Someone to show them what to aspire to be?” The shaman had a cunning smile on his spectral face. “Would you be this king? Would you claim it as your name among raven kind?”

  “The Raven King?” the Peculiar Raven croaked the title testing it.

  “I will teach you to not only feed on the dead as you do now but hold sway over the very force of death itself. I will gift this to you. But only for a price.”

  “It would have to be a great price, indeed.”

  “Not as great as you would think, for my need is also great.” the spirit answered, his gaze growing distant and regretful for a moment. “This dark energy of death is called fel magic, little bird. I would bequeath its secret to you as the Raven King and send you back to the world of the living.”

  “Back? With a Raven King’s Fel?” the Peculiar Raven chimed eagerly.

  “With a Raven’s Fel.” The shaman’s spirit countered. “For I will teach you so that you might teach these secrets to others. For a price, of course. A bargain if you will.”

  The Peculiar Raven considered the greatness he could achieve for his kind if he could bring back these gifts and this strange concept of bargains to his flock. How could he consider refusing? He only wondered for a moment, however. For he quickly remembered that there is another side to a bargain than what is offered. There was the price you must pay.

  “I doubt this knowledge will cost as little as a short walk,” the raven finally managed to reply. He hungered for the gifts, but he dreaded the cost. As if he really had a choice, though, he considered. He needed to agree to the bargain if he wanted any chance of getting home.

  “My son failed to learn the secrets I had to teach,” the ghost began. “To build a path between the worlds for a spirit, one must know the start and the destination. To do this service, you must first peer beyond the veil into the underworld as you have done. Only unlike me, my son fears death. He fears to glimpse into the darkness of the unknown. And so, he can never build a path to this side. Until he grows past his fear, my peoples’ spirits will be left without guidance. I would ask that you try at least to pass on the secrets to my son if there is a way for you to do so. But until such time as one of my line can, could you and your flock help to tend the spirits of my people and use what I teach you to guide them over?”

  It seemed a simple request to the raven, one with numerous advantages for him and his flock. And it came with a title, the Raven King. Perhaps, if he was more familiar with humans and their flattery and manipulation, the Peculiar Raven would have seen how his emotions were being played. But it didn’t matter any longer. Even if he did realize this, the promised gifts were too great to refuse. His little bird mind was already plotting new ways they could be used to a raven’s advantage.

  They struck the bargain there at the crossroads of the Netherworld. As the shaman granted knowledge only held in its entirety by spirits already crossed over, the Peculiar Raven slowly became more. He became more than a raven, even a peculiar one. He became more than the spirit creature as originally promised, although he still hadn’t tested whether he could eat ghosts yet or not. That time was sure to come. As the mysteries of the worlds of life and death and their interconnectedness were revealed, the Peculiar Raven became exactly what the old dead spirit shaman offered; he became the Raven King.

  When he flew his own forged spectral path back across the boundary to the world of the living, he brought with him the secret of the Raven’s Fel, and he bequeathed it to the ravens of his flock. They did as the shaman asked and tended the spirits of his village. But the Raven King was an ambitious one, and soon the ravens everywhere waited with watchful eye for the death of humans. For now, they sought more than just food, but a bargain.

  Spirits lost and unable to find their way were vulnerable prey for the hunger of these new regal ravens, for they knew the secrets and the way across to the other side. They will show the way if a spirit is lost, for a price, a bargain if you will.

  The Raven King continued becoming more always, for with the secrets of death revealed, he found new secrets and new shadows to seek out to sate his mind’s ravenous curiosity. He did keep his bargain, however, and made sure to tend the spirits of the old shaman’s tribe. He also returned and attempted to teach the shaman’s son the secrets he promised to reveal. It was the least he could do for the greatness he was given.

  But keeping the shaman’s deal would lead to the greatest bargain of all for the newly risen avian monarch. The task to teach the son would form an unimaginable bond through the Raven’s Fel, between the shaman’s descendants and the Raven King returned. The pairing so cataclysmic, it would resound through the centuries after. But then, that is another story.

  The Raven's Fel

  Chapter 1:

  An Act of Death

  Failure. It’s the only word Dorga could find to describe himself in that most pivotal moment. All he’d learned, all he’d been driven to become in his life, was being weighed in an unexpected instant. And true to form, there he stood, completely unprepared to perform the sacred duties to prove worthy of his birthright. He was undeniably a failure. He could almost hear the word whispered in taunts even now. Yet the victory he’d craved for so long was close at hand if he could just get through this inconvenient trial.

  Dorga’s father was the wise shaman of his people, tender of the village’s dead. For the past several months, the old man spent his time training his son, hoping to pass on all he knew before it was lost to the touch of death and the inevitable march of time. But Dorga wasn’t the attentive, dedicated pupil his father needed. The mysteries of death, which the great shaman tried to reveal, terrified the younger man. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t withstand the true face of death as he was required in order to follow in his father’s footsteps and teachings. He was a coward, and because of that, he proved himself a failure from the very beginning.

  His father was dead now. The secrets the old man held were lost to the world Dorga feared so much to peer into. The shaman’s body was lain out upon a blanket in the center of several smoking braziers, as if in wait for the son’s arrival. In all likelihood, that’s exactly why it was done. With his father’s death, Dorga would now be expected to take his place as the next shaman of the village. His father, likely, foresaw the exact moment of his death and prepared himself to be the first subject of Dorga’s new duties as the tender of the village’s dead. Except, Dorga hadn’t yet mastered the final secret in time to know what he was supposed to do, here and now.

  Years ago, when his father first attempted to teach him the ways of death, in his late teens, Dorga resisted. Something he saw, when he attempted to peer beyond the veil, horrified him more than any other secret revealed to him. One attempt was all it took for the pupil to foreswear ever looking beyond the grave again. His father, being a patient and enlightened fellow, allowed the time to pass, believing his son would return to those studies when it was time. Dorga never did return to the training as his father hoped. Their relationship began to crumble after that, until the son fled home, father, and life, one night after a heated argument. Dorga had been gone for almost a lifetime, until recently. It was only a father’s final plea that drew him back to the village now.

  It took his father’s portent of impending death to drag the son back to the home he fled so long ago. Yet, although he tried desperately to obtain those powerful secrets in the final months of his father’s life, Dorga couldn’t force himself to glare into the face of death and confront it. Death, as represe
nted by bodies and lives lost, affected him little. He’d seen plenty of death in his time and inflicted a bit as well. As long as it wasn’t a person who owed him something or a human tool he counted on, the death of any single human meant very little to him. It was death as the abstract, yet sentient force beyond the shadows, which terrified him. It was the faces that tormented his sleep from that brief glimpse beyond the veil so many years ago.

  His father’s death, however, affected him greatly. It would be branded as his life’s failure if he couldn’t think of something soon. Everyone in the village expected Dorga to take over his father’s duties and tend their souls in passing. They feared what would happen if there was no one to guide their spirits to the other side, even if it meant looking to the old shaman’s worthless son. They didn’t trust him. They had little faith he would be able to provide the same services as the father. Despite those misgivings, the outcome of today’s performance held the balance of their immortal souls. So, although they doubted Dorga could do it, they silently prayed to themselves he could.

  Those concerns were spreading rapidly as more villagers took notice of the shaman’s death and preparation. Word spread quickly, and soon, most of the populace was standing around, muttering nervously and scrutinizing the son, seeking some assurance that the replacement would be capable and finding none.

  The villagers never held Dorga in high esteem. They were ungrateful peasants who didn’t offer half the thanks they should for the salvation of their eternal souls. They didn’t deserve to stand in this position of judgment over him. However, Dorga understood that submitting himself to this chance of utter failure also came with the promise of a possible reward. Only, first, he must convince those around him he was worthy.

  The body of his father would be the first and likely most uncomfortable of the tests before Dorga. Yet, Dorga doubted he could manage the rituals properly with his father’s slack face and empty eyes watching his every move. Without that stern man’s soul behind them, unspoken judgment somehow remained in those glazed orbs for the unsavory secrets the deceased knew about the son, who came to take his place.

  Dorga wanted to flee from the feelings of inadequacy that his father’s dead stare awoke in him. But there was a gift the old man owed him, from many years ago, which Dorga was determined to claim at last. To get it, he just had to play his part. However, he’d expected to have more time to plan for said part. Unfortunately, the growing murmur of the audience made it abundantly clear that he needed to do something and quickly.

  It wasn’t so much that Dorga was unable to learn what his father had to teach him. There were many things he was fully capable of performing marginally well. He could heal with herbs a little. And he knew many of the seasonal rituals for the village’s peculiar gods. He could even mimic all the actions his father used to make while communing with and sending the dead across the veil. But, that was as far as Dorga’s abilities reached. He could perform the entire display, but without having ever looked clearly into the face of death, none of his actions were meaningful enough. He couldn’t control the aspect of death until he understood it. And Dorga was too terrified even to try.

  Unfortunately, Dorga had to do something, if only to save himself from an angry mob. So, he did the only thing he knew how to do. He performed the actions over his father’s body, knowing it was merely a ruse to buy time.

  The murmurs of the villagers subsided into more somber mourning tones as he gave them some proof their fears might not be founded. It was, of course, a sham, but they didn’t know that. And Dorga was willing to keep playing along until he could figure some way out of this mess.

  There was one issue with Dorga’s gambit. When his father sent spirits across, there was always a moment when the people could see a glimmer of escaping light as the soul left its vessel. It was the sacred moment everyone waited for. And no matter how much Dorga waved his arms and danced, or whether he burned up every herb in the village as incense, nothing he did could produce such a display. Those who watched would expect it. But as usual, the only likely fate for Dorga this day was failure if he couldn’t come up with something soon.

  The act was already begun. There was no turning back now. Yet the nearly hour-long ritual wasn’t going to be long enough for Dorga to come up with a way to get out of this debacle he feared, not without being kicked out of the village as an impostor at the very least. When the light of his father’s spirit failed to coalesce, his charade would be over.

  Fortunately, there was one way in which Dorga was very much like his father. He was clever too. Although, where the great elder shaman used his skills in service to others, the son found those inherited skills were even better at serving himself.

  Manipulation and trickery were the talents with which Dorga got through life, having failed in his ancestral calling. He knew his hopes were slim this time, but he scanned everything and everyone in the vicinity, searching for a way out. He just needed a gimmick or scapegoat to distract the milling masses long enough to convince them they either missed seeing the soul’s appearance or find a way to trick them into thinking they actually had. And though Dorga was a failure in many things, fate, for some unimaginable reason, provided his salvation.

  It was the bird. It was the same black bird that interrupted him earlier when he first found his father’s body. Its raucous cawing and odd behavior earned Dorga’s ire immediately by drawing the attention of the first villagers. It trapped him into this trial before he had a chance to slip away. He’d waited anxiously for his father’s death, to take up the powerful mantle of shaman and pillage the few riches hidden away within the home. The only way he could succeed was to avoid this test. The damnable bird denied him that option.

  Dorga knew the stupid raven had nothing to do with his father’s death or his current predicament, but it didn’t change the position the caw placed him in. It was a filthy beast that fed off the dead, which is a defilement in itself. It deserved whatever hatred he had to give. And in that moment, he turned the anger at his own inadequacy, towards the bird, which was only doing what nature made it to do. But foul nature or not, the raven could prove useful. It had quite fortuitously returned at a perfect moment. Dorga smiled at the realization for his irrational anger could be forged into a weapon of clever craft.

  Dorga felt certain this was the same raven from before. There was just something peculiar about it, which made it stand out from any other. In fact, there was even more peculiarity to the black menace this time than before. He couldn’t meet its eyes this time. A chill ran down his spine at even the thought of attempting to peer into its nightmarish glare, like gazing into the face of death. It terrified him to consider, but at the same time, that dread stare only strengthened his position.

  Dorga froze unexpectedly, the fluid motions of the spirit dance halted by the bird’s sudden arrival. It landed in a nearby tree and sat there watching. The bird was judging him. He knew it. It was just like the people in the village, always looking at him and judging him. Everyone thought Dorga was a failure. Even he did. But the bird’s accusatory glare was more than he could bear. Such vile beasts didn’t deserve the right to judge him.

  The villagers were growing more distressed by the minute. His ritual was taking longer than usual, and still, they waited for the glimmer of light to prove the job was done, that the son was up to assuming his father’s place. And now, he’d stopped the entire procedure to stare up at a bird in a nearby tree like some mad man. It was just more proof of the horrible things they surely whispered behind his back. He was more than a failure. Dorga, he suspected they whispered, was insane.

  He knew if he didn’t do something soon, his entire act would be revealed for what it was. So he turned to the one thing he knew could stir the primitive people of his village. Dorga turned to fear and superstition.

  “Foul feathered fiend,” Dorga cried challengingly, his angry tone and volume eliciting an eruption of gasps from his audience. “Why do you try to steal my father’s soul? T
urn from his body now, or I will curse you for all eternity.”

  The peculiar raven, for his part, appeared as if he actually understood what Dorga yelled, because for a moment it peered back at him, head cocked sideways in clear judgment. Even the raven thought he was crazy. That thought enraged Dorga further. He swore to himself at that moment he would make all the foul creature’s kind pay for judging him.

  “Beware the ravens. They are the devourers of souls.” Dorga’s voice reached a higher, maddened pitch. Such actions were common among mystics and charlatans alike in these days, and common people, desperate to understand their world, almost instinctively responded to such performances with a predictable acceptance.

  Death was scary and hard to understand. No one could see death, even as it snuck up to take them. Yet Dorga had given death a face. He gave the people something to fear when death was the very force that had deprived them of their shaman. Their source for knowledge of the unknown was gone. They feared a world they would inevitably visit yet couldn’t see, without anyone to guide them. Dorga’s words hinted at a way to fight back against the forces of death they feared. If the raven was death’s servant, then they would drive it from their lands.

  It is likely that not even Dorga understood the fervor he would stir among the villagers. The raven cawed, and the sound set the crowd off. Two or three of the men picked up stones and cast them in the direction of the tree. They fell well short of the bird or the tree, but the actions were done more as a ward against the dark fiend than any actual assault. It wasn’t long, however, before religious symbolism rode frenzy and fear into violent intent. Angry cries rose up in a building roar until almost every hand held a stone of their own.