Ravenfell Chronicles: Origins

by Brand J. Alexander

  The lady had sown her seeds in preparation, and the creatures’ threat spurred them to grow. With every snared victim, the wall of vine expanded outward, weaving a living wall of lashing tendrils around those gathered near the Ravenwood.

  As the beasts were overtaken and smothered by the vines, the spirits that drove them were absorbed by the budding Soul Gourds. The pulsing orange fruit ripened quickly with monstrous visages, snapping and snarling back at the offending forces. Her vines had grown their own teeth.

  The wall wasn’t impervious, however. The undead creatures feared nothing and felt no pain. Matted fur and desiccated skin peeled off in profusion as they forced their way through. Katerina’s vine servants, Goliath and Thresher, moved quickly to dispatch those that succeeded.

  As marvelous as the lady’s servants were, Beaumont doubted they would be enough. The more he interacted with the forces of death, and the closer the two worlds drew, the stronger his senses and unbidden knowledge developed. He could sense something awakening beneath the earth, a force of death unrivaled by the warring factions on the surface.

  The mole creatures’ tunnel had tapped a deeper well of bones and death, far below the tender ministrations of the gravedigger and the wakening touch of the witchdoctors. A growing chorus of mindless hunger emanated from the opening as the dead stirred and climbed their way free from the depths.

  Beaumont knew by the echoing cries that Katerina’s seeds would not be enough to hold back the coming horde for long. And the Guardians' dark presences were nearly upon them.

  They needed the tree to break the Guardians’ hold on the veil, but they were running out of time for it to grow. Despite his earlier insistence, he risked disturbing the Mad Witchdoctors.

  “We are running out of time. How much longer?”

  “Your family’s spirits are resilient against the summons of death. They resist. But they cannot refuse the call of your blood,” the Spirit Weaver answered.

  “We may not be able to refuse the summons, but we don’t have to make it easy,” a male voice offered from nearby. A glowing blue spiritual form marked the speaker’s presence. “I see Hildegard finally completed your education about the forces of death. But what could the Ravenfell Curse and our fallen patron want from me.”

  “Your great uncle, Barastir,” the raven offered from Beaumont’s shoulder with a hint of contempt. “Don’t mind his rudeness. He used his lineage to convince an entire people that he was a god of death until my fall. He blames me and apparently you for his ruse falling through. And his subsequent death, of course.”

  “That doesn’t give me hope of convincing him to help us,” Beaumont warned.

  “Help you? Hah! Hardly,” the specter laughed.

  “You don’t have to ask,” the raven declared. “You carry his blood. You can command him to submit the same way Dorga took his father.”

  This time Beaumont laughed. “I don’t have to command anything,” Beaumont replied for the benefit of his great uncle. A small part of him still begrudged his distant family for the blame they placed on him for things he had no control over. “As long as Death’s Drummer plays, he is bound to this place. Either he helps the Ravenwood grow, or he is consumed by the Guardians when they succeed. The other Ravenfells were willing to shun me for my part in their fall. Now they have a chance to share in that blame.”

  The raven chuckled. “You have a cruel streak like your ancestor.”

  “We owe everything to Hildegard and her sisters, Barastir,” another hazy blue form declared. This one sounded female. “If not for Hildegard and her sisters, the Ravenfells would have never existed. The Ravenwood is of her making, and clearly her wish now. All I need to know is how to help?”

  “Grant your essence to the Soul Gourd and be reborn,” Katerina explained as she unstoppered the Soul Gourd bottle for them.

  The female spirit vanished into the bottle, followed by several more who never spoke a word as they granted their aid. Each reappeared as shimmering black seeds in the lady’s hand and were planted in the soil around the Ravenwood’s trunk. Three more buds sprouted from the limbs as the branches spread a little further across the veil, but still, no leaves unfurled.

  “Yes. Gather the Ravenfells,” the Guardians taunted. “Prepare our feast. For you have thinned the veil, and soon we will be close enough to touch you.”

  It was the dangerous part of their plan. Once a spirit crossed the veil, it couldn’t reach across and harm the living. But by thinning the veil between worlds, Beaumont weakened those protections and left them all vulnerable to the Guardians’ touch.

  He had hoped to cross over before the breach was discovered, but the advantage of surprise was lost. Their only hope now was to survive long enough for the Ravenwood to grow and bridge the worlds. But even that was not a guarantee. The Guardians had grown powerful in the years since banishing the Raven King and the family bound to him.

  Even if they broke the curse, it didn’t assure they would win. They could succeed in their plan, only for the spirits to snuff them out an instant after. There was no way of knowing the spirits’ full power until they faced them. But this was his best option.

  “Do you hear your fate coming, Barastir?” the raven mocked. “Your stubbornness will strengthen those who inflicted the Ravenfell Curse upon you. Isn’t it time you placed the blame where it belongs?”

  The spirit flared an angrier blue, then wisped through the air into the bottle with a growl. A half dozen indistinct specters followed. The Ravenwood grew. More buds appeared. But still, the veil resisted.

  “It’s not enough,” Beaumont declared as he raised a wall of Hellfire to dispatch a band of skeletons rising from the pit. “Where are these spirits?”

  “They’re here. I can feel them. But they are just watching from the shadows to see who triumphs,” the raven declared loudly. “Apparently, I granted the gift of my fel to cowards.”

  “If these Guardians built their veil from the spirits of magical creatures, then perhaps they can help the Ravenwood break through. I might be able to use them to counter that part of the veil.” Katerina offered hastily. She clearly sensed the urgency and was willing to do anything to help.

  “Call upon the spirits of those who have fallen this night,” the small gourd creature named Morty suggested. “Many beings gave their lives beneath the battle cry of Terror, but they would give even more for you, dark mistress.”

  “I must send messengers immediately,” Katerina declared.

  “No need, mistress. The fallen have gathered to greet your conquest this night. They will offer themselves to see it so. All you need to do is ask.”

  “Do what you can to strengthen the Ravenwood,” Beaumont told her. “But we still need the Ravenfells. They are the key to bridging the two worlds.”

  “You can still force them, warlock,” the raven reminded him.

  “I know. And I will if it comes to that. I will not die for their pride. But I must do this correctly. When the veil was created, they forced the other spirits to submit to the new order. Now, look where we are. If they are to make this sacrifice to help us retake the veil, I don’t want their desire for vengeance to come back to haunt us.”

  “You show wisdom, Ravenfell. Curse or not,” a new voice called. “And you bear the support of the Raven King. I will offer my aid.” Another spirit leading a small faction appeared. The Ravenwood grew. But the Guardians’ side of the veil resisted.

  “Fools. The only way a Ravenfell spirit may cross is if they sacrifice themselves to us. Grant yourself to the veil and aid in its unmaking, and you may enter. We will devour everyone when it falls, either way.”

  “These spirits stole your blood right. They have unseated the spiritual guardian of the Ravenfell lineage. And they work to remake both worlds for themselves,” Beaumont called into the darkness. “How far are you willing to fall. Continue to resist, and either way, you will be compelled to submit, either by the Guardians or me. Or you can fight back. Grant yourselves wi
llingly to this cause and retake the power that the Raven King bequeathed to our family.”

  “You cannot win,” the Guardians hissed. They were more than just an oppressive darkness now. The veil had thinned, and they had narrowed in on the location of those hidden by their masks. They were dark shadowy specters, a hairsbreadth away from touching the living realm. A swarm of glimmering spirits swirled around them, awaiting the assault.

  “I have bound this spell to the Ravenfell line. When completed, this land will become a permanent gateway between worlds. With your sacrifice, I will ensure that we are never barred from the power the Raven King gifted to us. I swear it with my sacrifice of blood.”

  Beaumont felt his family’s powerful presence build as they amassed at the edges of battle. Over the centuries since its founding, the Ravenfell line had grown quite expansive, and a large portion of them was gathered by the Mad Drummer’s song. Hundreds of Ravenfell spirits that had been lingering in the shadows converged with Beaumont’s final words, granting their essence to the Ravenwood.

  The spirits of Beaumont’s ancestors and the magical creatures lost in battle that night flowed into Katerina’s gourd bottle. The flood of glowing essence swirled in a near vortex as the witch channeled their essence into small black seeds, then she sowed them into the earth and bound them to the Ravenwood.

  The struggling sapling flourished into the tree of legends before Beaumont’s eyes. Like Hildegard before her, Katerina fed the spirits into the Ravenwood with delicate precision. A profusion of black glossy buds swelled from the expanding canopy of branches, forcing back the veil as they reached across the slim divide.

  The Guardians paused in their advance as the tree’s power surged. Beaumont assumed they were attempting to prevent it. But as the first bud split and a leaf unfurled, the Guardians broke into menacing laughter.

  “You have torn the veil. Nothing can protect you from our clutches now.” The Guardian spirits howled as they advanced.

  The dark haze that cloaked them from their hunters fell away likes wisps of spider silk. The Guardians were no longer just distant indistinct shadows closing in. Their spirits were like liquid midnight with gleaming red eyes burning from a dark well of hatred at their core.

  The Guardians and their swarm of smaller spirits surged through the breach in a wave, but something unexpectedly stopped them.

  “You have stolen much from me,” the raven croaked from Beaumont’s shoulder. “But I still control the veil. You may have blocked me from your world, but I will deny you this one.”

  “Do you feel how meager your influence is, pathetic bird?” the spirits mocked. “You barely hold this small area. You are the Raven King no longer.”

  Beaumont felt the force exerted against the last vestige of the raven’s veil as if they were assaulting his own soul. He knew, at any moment, the entire barrier could collapse, and they would be swarmed.

  “The gateway is almost complete,” Beaumont urged the bird as he looked at the unfurling canopy of the Ravenwood. “Just hold them back for a little more.”

  “The path may be opening, but the spirits stand in our way, Ravenfell. And I can’t hold them back much longer.” There was a strain in the raven’s voice that Beaumont had never heard before.

  “Extreme danger with no plan. I thought that was how you liked it?” Beaumont joked.

  “We stand at the precipice, and you make light?” the raven commented. “We are about to die.”

  “A Ravenfell never really dies, do they?” Beaumont replied.

  “If we lose here, the line of Ravenfell will learn the reality of death and perhaps that there is something worse,” the raven warned.

  “You will lose, raven. You think yourself clever,” the Guardians hissed. “But there are others who can cross the veil without hindrance. Fitting that they shall be the ones to end your reign at last.” The Guardians’ haunting laughter echoed over the clash of battling undead and howling spirits. But a new sound grew amidst the others in a threatening chorus.

  Shadows parted with a raucous caw as a flock of ravens poured through the rift.

  “My flock,” the raven declared ominously. “Betrayers, all of them.”

  “Destroy the tree. Devour the souls within and return their essence to the new veil where they belong,” the spirits commanded. The ravens cried gleefully in answer.

  “Can’t you control them?” Beaumont insisted. “You are the Raven King.”

  “Our union does not work like that,” the raven replied gravely. “I hold no control, though I shared my power with them.

  “Then you neglected them,” the Guardians hissed. “You chose humans over your own kind and created the opening for our triumph.”

  “I chose no one,” the raven fiercely countered. “I granted my flock the gift of my fel in hopes that they could be better but left them to do with it as they chose. And I granted the Ravenfells my gift because it was the only way to undo the horrible mistake I made with Dorga. But I never chose or dedicated myself to either raven or human. Another mistake it is perhaps time for me to remedy.”

  “It is too late for you, Raven King. They have undone you with the same bargains you taught them,” the Guardians taunted.

  “Then perhaps it is time we make a new bargain, Ravenfell.”

  “What sort of bargain?” Beaumont inquired.

  The raven leaped from Beaumont’s arm, transforming in midair between the flaps of his midnight wings. By the time his feet touched the ground, he had become something else entirely.

  Beaumont knew his family history and recognized the form. This was how the Raven King once walked among the Ravenfells before his fall. The regal body was almost human but blended between spirit, raven, and man in a perpetually shifting blend of features. He swirled like a murmur of starlings as he walked towards the sprouting Ravenwood.

  “I avoided accepting the bonds forced upon me by the old shaman and then again by the need to stop Dorga. I have neglected the duties entrusted to me, and because of that, everything has nearly come undone. Again. I must stop running from the bondage of responsibility. I must accept new stronger bindings to fix what has been broken. Beaumont Ravenfell, I swear to bind the entire essence of the Raven’s Fel to you and this place. All who bear my gift will be yours to command. All I ask is that you use this bargain to bring down these false Guardians and help to maintain the veil between worlds.”

  “Agreed, Raven King,” Beaumont replied. How could he not? He designed this entire spell with the intent of taking back control of the veil. That control would have to go somewhere. Why not him?

  The entire Ravenfell family history was founded on the struggle between the two worlds since the moment they were split. If the chronicles of Ravenfell history could be trusted, his lineage went all the way back to the first shamans who agreed to create the veil, perhaps even the Mad Witchdoctors as well. His birth and everything that came after was the culmination of all their machinations. It made sense that the entire struggle would end with him. At least that is what his ego insisted.

  “Then bind this pact in blood to the Ravenwood,” Beaumont commanded. “Seal yourself to this land, and to me.”

  The flock of ravens had met resistance from Katerina’s vines, but as spirit creatures, they were more cunning adversaries than the reanimated corpses. A few had already set upon the branches of the Ravenwood, tearing at the gnarled black bark and ebony leaves with their beaks. The blue light of the spirit essence bled in glowing vapors from the wounds, and the birds devoured the ethereal sap ravenously.

  The Raven King held out his skeletal hand over the roots of the Ravenwood. He appeared to bleed with only a thought, for no knife touched his flesh as the beads of darkness trickled free across the same ground that Beaumont imbued with his essence earlier.

  Beaumont felt the binding of the pact with a resounding force deep in his soul. The connection he held to the Ravenwood and the spirits, woven into it through his blood, awoke within him in stark clarity as
if some final piece of a puzzle were at last in place. He could feel the Raven King through that connection, as well as every Ravenfell spirit within the tree, and the angry flapping ravens that assaulted it.

  “Only one who holds the spirit of a Ravenfell may contain the Raven’s Fel from now on,” Beaumont declared with demonic infused authority. His voice rolled out across the swarm of ravens, pausing many of them in mid-assault. “All who carry the Raven King’s gift must submit to the Ravenwood.”

  The leaves of the tree came alive at his summons. Hungering foliage consumed the attacking birds in great rustling gulps. Some resisted, but after a short struggle, the bodies reemerged reborn from the tree and bearing a spirit of a Ravenfell. One by one, the attacking ravens were remade until those that remained finally comprehended their danger and attempted to flee. But it was too late. The Ravenwood had grown too strong.

  At Beaumont’s silent command, the Ravenfell spirits rose from the leaves in a glowing swarm, enveloping the remaining ravens as they transformed them into proper vessels of the Raven’s Fel.

  “Fitting end for traitors,” the Raven King commented approvingly.

  “Your sacrifice is endearing, but it has weakened you,” the Guardians raged. They forced against the barrier restraining them, but it could no longer withstand their might. The spirits poured through the breach in howling fury, driven by the shadowy Guardians and their gleaming red eyes.

  Everything seemed to slow for Beaumont as he took in the chaos raging around him. Only he could stop it. But to do so, he had to face the substance of his creation, the essence of the fragment at his heart.

  The newly blessed ravens met the first wave of spirits in a swirl of midnight feathers and spectral luminescence above. As spirit creatures, they could savage even ghosts with their beaks and claws, and as Ravenfells, they had a score to settle. The clash was brutal and violent for both sides.