"Jarleth, no!"
Branwen's scream shot through the pain that was wracking Lonan's body as he doubled over to clutch his broken rib.
"We were just talking, nothing happened."
Jarleth ignored his wife, continuing to beat on the fallen man with his feet. "Assault my wife will you? Harm my child? Take what is mine?" Another kick sent Lonan's face into some sharp rocks, opening up a multitude of cuts. "Take what is mine?"
"I was just feeding the baby and we were talking," Branwen shouted again, forcing her way between her husband and Lonan. "He didn't do anything. Damn it, Jarleth, he saved our lives."
"No," Jarleth grabbed Branwen's wrist, pointed his finger at her and looked deep into her eyes. "No, he was trying to rape you. He ripped open your blouse, was taking the baby from you and-"
"No." Branwen slapped her husband as she said this, stopping Jarleth's Knack in its tracks. "Don't do that to me again. Haven't you ruined enough lives with that evil talent?"
Jarleth looked at Branwen with brief shock before punching her directly in the face. There was a wet crunch and Branwen fell. The baby dropped onto the rocks, emitting a shrill scream that died as it rolled into the water.
Branwen's horror was voiced in an uncannily low wail that bubbled from her throat as the blood from her nose threatened to flow down it. She slipped her way across the wet boulders to throw herself into the running river. Lonan attempted to pick himself up from the ground to help but the pain in his chest forced him to the ground again. Jarleth stood and watched his wife frantically make her way downstream, his face white. For the first time, Lonan saw Jarleth as something other than a demon who had haunted his life for the last ten years. This lost face belonged to the sickly boy who had hidden behind his mother’s skirts when the other children played their rough and tumble games.
With a primal cry of success Branwen plucked a bundle of rags up from the water. A good bit downstream now, she stumbled from the river back to the leafy forest floor, and then stopped to spare a glance at Lonan lying vulnerable in front of the blacksmith.
"Go," Lonan shouted as loud as he could. "Get her help."
Like a distant rag doll, the figure that was Branwen nodded and ran into the forest.
There was a horrible pause in which Jarleth continued to stare at the river. Lonan painfully shifted himself up so he was leaning on his right elbow. The blacksmith turned to look at him, and Lonan's blood ran cold. Jarleth's eyes were red, with twin streams running down his pale face from them, joining the line of wet snot running from his nose to his mouth. He was breathing heavily, his face damp with sweat.
"Look what you made me do," he whispered.
Calm down Jarleth, was what Lonan should have said.
"Is that what you tell Branwen before you beat her at night?" was his actual retort.
"Look what you made me do." It was a scream this time, a bellow from the lungs of a lost soul.
Lonan should have been scared. He should have realised how desperate someone like Jarleth would be when he came close to losing everything. Instead, he was giddy with pain and euphoric fulfilment at seeing the man who had poisoned every aspect of his life finally being brought low.
"Don't give me any credit. You did your best to murder that baby all by yourself."
Jarleth bent down to pick up a large rock. He hefted it high above his head. It took all of the blacksmith's strength to do so, and Lonan realised that he himself would not have been able to attempt to lift something that heavy.
"Now, even you aren't that stupid," he attempted to convince the bastard, only now becoming aware to his danger. "The baby was a mistake. You don't want to deliberately kill anyone, do you?"
Jarleth smashed the rock down onto Lonan. In the last seconds, Lonan rolled and raised his arm to ward off the blow. The pain of the impact was unbearable. It felt as though his arm had just been shoved into his father's forge. The boulder dropped with a splintering thud, and Lonan cried out in pain. This was overshadowed, however, by the maddened, incomprehensible cry coming from Jarleth. The cry continued as the blacksmith bent to pick up the stone again. Lonan's arm was limp and useless now. He scrambled to get to his feet and move away, but the loss of use of his limb and the pain from his chest made this a pointless task.
Through the haze of pain Lonan saw Jarleth, still shouting nonsense, raising the rock again.
"You stupid bastard," was all Lonan had time to whisper before the boulder came down on his head.
The wind whispered to the Magpie King. Perched atop an emergent elm, Adahy sniffed the wind. It carried the smell of blood, death and fresh stool. It told him the Eyrie was still occupied, that his home required cleansing.
As the sun hung low in the sky, the Magpie King's ears picked out the noise of shuffling bodies, curled up together for warmth but beginning to grow restless at the threat of nightfall. He strained his newfound senses to hear more, doing his best to drown out the whimpering of his poisoned companion that he had left in a secluded cave. His father had warned him that his own bloodline had built up a resistance to the flower's poison - only time would tell how Maedoc’s mind and body would react to the poison without that protection.
There. A growl, deeper than the others. Commanding. She is still there, the den mother. The leader of the Wolves, the murderer of my father. If she falls the Wolves will break apart, leaderless and lost. This was the victory my father had hoped for all his life, to free the forest. I must succeed at this.
The Eyrie was a couple of miles away, the tree tops between his perch and his home illuminated by the dye of the setting sun. Adahy started to move towards his home, remaining above the trees. His movement was effortless, the iron coils within his legs propelling him across fields of green, his hands reaching instinctively for a safe branch that had not even been visible to him when he had started his jump. Within minutes, he stood upon the Eyrie roof, and quickly navigated his way across it to the rooftop above the throne room.
He peered down again into that dark pit and was met with the smell of rotting flesh. Half-eaten bodies lingering in the corners of the room now fed maggots instead of Wolves. None of those feral animals rested in this room, it was too exposed to the daylight that they hated. Of his father, only a splattered patch of red remained. The new Magpie King dropped down from the ceiling, his feet brushing against the floor as a falling leaf kisses the grass. The large double doors to the throne room were now shut, so he walked forward to open them and stepped into the blackness inside.
Although it was daytime, in their effort to make the Eyrie into their new den, the Wolves had extinguished or blocked up all potential sources of light. A day ago this would have meant that Adahy would have had to stumble along blind, tripping up over every loose stone and using his hands to feel his way. Now the corridors were as clear to his eyes as if sunlight streamed through them. Physically they were empty, but to the Magpie King they were occupied by sounds and smells that were all leading him in the same direction as the wet stains on the flagstones beneath his feet. At the bottom of the Eyrie, below his feet was a whole floor devoted to housing and homing the palace's servants. These rooms were considerably less windowed than those designed for the nobles. Perfect for avoiding the sun. He moved onwards, ignoring the restless sounds of the animals in the rooms all about him, moving towards the heart of the evil that occupied his home. It was only at the hint of a familiar, metallic scent that he stopped in his tracks.
The smell led him to a regular-sized doorway not far from the main corridor he had been walking down. He pushed the portal open. Five pairs of eyes greeted his arrival with a loud, purring growl. The Magpie King moved first. He ran inside, grabbing at the jaws of the closest Wolf as it opened them to howl in anger. The King helped the jaws to open, pulling them apart with his bare hands. The second Wolf did not even get fully up from its sleeping position on the floor before the Magpie King's foot caught its neck and pushed it down to the stone again with a crack. The other three had mor
e of a chance to react, with two of them rushing at him as the third slid around the walls to take him from behind. The Magpie King grabbed each of his attacker's heads and brought them both together with a wet crumple. The final monster, realising it had underestimated its prey, turned and ran for the exit, sprinting down the long corridors whilst alerting its brethren with its howls.
The Magpie King cursed under his breath, but was more concerned with the prize he had located. This room contained a number of human bodies that had been moved for the animals to gnaw on while they slept, and one of them wore familiar ceremonial garments. The thick feathered cloak was torn, many of the feathers shredded, but still when Adahy removed it from his father’s corpse and clasped it around his own neck, it seemed to take on a life of its own, shrouding its new owner in darkness. He pulled twin black sickles from the multitude of weapons that had been gathered in one of the corners of this room. Finally, the Magpie King rolled aside a nobleman’s corpse to reveal his father’s helm, battered but unbroken. The metal helm seemed unreasonably large, as if his head would feel completely unbalanced once it was fitted to him. Instead, it made him feel whole. Weapons held effortlessly in both hands he strode from the abattoir to avenge his people.
The howls of the wakened Wolves now rang freely throughout the corridors. However, the confined space of the passageways coupled with the Magpie King's rediscovered sense of self meant doom for any attackers. Scores of Wolves were expertly cut down as the Magpie King moved closer to his prey. He could hear her below, frantically bellowing orders to her pack to intercept the intruder.
The Wolves continued to fall, batted to the side and sliced open in a single motion from the warrior, until finally he arrived at the servant's mess hall. A mound of meaty bodies told the Magpie King he had found his target. A wall of Wolves greeted him, but they did not press their attack from the shadows of the hall, and when he stepped forward and growled at them they visibly shrank back.
"Who will challenge me?" he yelled at the frightened murderers. "Who will challenge me?"
The wall of monsters parted to reveal the reluctant figure of the den mother, uncurling from her hiding position to reveal her true size and strength.
For the first time since his empowerment at the Lonely House, Adahy felt the sting of doubt. This creature was almost twice his size with years of experience of slaughter and combat. It had quickly dispatched his father before his eyes. What made Adahy think he had a chance against this monster?
Because I have to.
The den mother sneered at him, beckoning for him to make the first move. The Magpie King responded by leaping to his side towards some of the cowering onlookers, efficiently dispatching a score of them with some quick flashes of his sickles. A few of the horde moved to intercept him, but he dealt with these as well, all the while keeping his eyes on the mother.
"Is this how you protect them?" He leapt again at some more huddled monsters, ending their wretched lives without mercy. "Is this how you look after your babies?"
The horde of Wolves howled again, but this time it was not directed at the Magpie King. They were screaming at the den mother, urging her into action.
It took one more fatal leap from the Magpie King to goad the mother into an attack. She moved forward with death-like speed, taking him completely by surprise. Adahy only survived that first attack because of the thickness of his father's cloak, moving it to intercept the oncoming blow. Despite his protective garb and the speed of his own reflexes, her claws still bit deep, flaying skin and muscle. The pack of Wolves shrieked as Adahy cried out in pain, and they pushed in closer to the combat, sensing the kill. Their celebration turned to horror, however, when their leader fell to the floor, a jet-black blade embedded into the back of her skull. The Magpie King stepped forward to wrench his weapon free, using another flick of his wrist to remove her head completely from her body. He turned slowly to eye the multitude of onlookers.
"Scatter," he commanded.
The pack broke and fled. He did not grant them safe passage, but neither did he exert himself to hunt down every single monster that had occupied his home.
Hours later, after ensuring that the last of the creatures had fled from the palace, the Magpie King stood on the roof of his home in a spot he once saw his father occupy, surveying his kingdom. He could sense the animals moving through the forest, but no longer as a pack. As a people, they were broken now, the loss of the den mother removing any leadership from them. They continued to run, moving past the Corvae villages, towards the forest borders.
In his cave in the forest, miles away, Maedoc began to whimper. The Magpie King leapt down from his perch to reclaim his subject.
Morning was not far away, and he had a kingdom to rebuild.
A tale from the fireplaces of the Low Corvae.
This is a tale that takes place after the Great Theft, when Artemis was on the run from the Magpie Guard. Day and night they hounded him, fixed on finding their quarry and reclaiming the kingdom's lost treasure. At their head was the Magpie King himself, dark and unrelenting, filled with passion and fury at Artemis' crime. But Artemis was hidden from the Magpie King's unnatural senses - a pricey bargain that he had struck with the head priestess of the Snake people had ensured he was cloaked in her magic until his task was complete.
Despite this arcane protection, crafty Artemis was still vulnerable to detection from the normal senses of sight and sound, and the Guard’s continued dogging of him from village to village was weighing greatly on the thief. Where once a sly smile was permanently etched, now the man sported a tight grimace. His clothing, normally the most extravagant nobleman's washing he could find, was hanging off him in ribbons as unchecked movement through bush and thorn took their toll. Anytime Artemis thought he had found solace in a lonely barn or vacant cave, the sounds of pursuit would strike up again and he would be forced to push on.
Finally, in his desperation, Artemis turned to the dark heart of the forest where even the Magpie King would think twice about entering. This was a part of the woodland that the sun refused to visit, and greenery was merely a rumour on the wind. The trees here were barren, twisted and searching, and the bile in Artemis' gut rose to his mouth as he felt true fear for the first time in his life.
Just as sly Artemis had decided to take his chances with the pursuers in more friendly surroundings, he heard her speak.
"I can smell you, little one," came a chiding voice from somewhere in the woods ahead of Artemis. It was a sound like the fresh crinkle of leaves, followed by the plunging of one's foot into mud and shit hidden below them. "I can smell you and shall soon find you. Lay still, little one, and make things easy on mother after such a long, dreary day."
Artemis froze, wide eyed, searching for the source of the voice.
He heard a tutting, this time closer still. "It shall be dark soon, dearie, and my little ones will need fed. Why not be a good boy and come and say hello to them?"
Artemis exhaled slightly and heard a rustling coming from somewhere before him. His eyes raised slowly to the tops of the trees.
"I am not as young as I used to be," the rustling voice continued, "and have not the patience nor the heart for such a chase. I shall find you eventually, you know. And then catch you, and then eat you. Why not save each other the distress of a chase and give yourself to me now?"
It was then that Artemis saw her. High in the tree canopy, suspended upside down was a grotesquely fat-bodied spider, her once-black abdomen littered with pox marks and boils. In contrast, her thin spindly legs worked themselves methodically through the treetops, taking it in turn to support their owner's weight whilst probing for the next suitable branch to grip to. From the spider's head grew a length of bushy grey hair that trailed towards the ground like a curtain of filth.
Artemis stood perfectly still as the creature moved directly overhead, twisting back and forwards in the canopy to seek out the prey she knew was nearby.
"Strange," the creature mused in frustrat
ion. "I could hear you tramp into my black forest, I can still smell the fear on your breath. But I cannot find you."
Artemis gave a silent offering of thanks to the serpent witch. Her magics that clouded the Magpie King's senses also worked on this foul creature. Then he prayed she did not choose that time to remove her spell from him.
They say that familiarity breeds confidence, and this truth works doubly quick for a mind as cunning as Artemis'. Not permitting himself to give in to fear, Artemis studied his would-be killer and began to learn from her. In the hours that she stalked him unsuccessfully, he learnt her weak spots, and found the courage to make small movements when the creature above was distracted. Eventually, he was able to move confidently about the forest floor again, and began to make plans for his escape.
"Now dearie," the voice came again, the creature's frustration causing her to end each word spoken with a snap of her jaws, "this is enough. I am tired, I am hungry, and you shall be in my belly before long. Show yourself to me now and I shall make your end painless. Force me to continue searching and you shall be begging me to consume your heart and end your suffering before I let you slip behind the veil."
Cunning Artemis found the courage to finally shout out to his pursuer. "Mother Web, are you not enjoying our dance? It has been far too many years since I have had such an able partner, and it would pain me to end our festivities so soon."
At the sound of the trickster's voice, the ancient creature dropped from the trees, scuttling like a wounded rabbit to the tree root that Artemis had been behind. Artemis was already gone from that spot, a sly grin on his face as he watched her vent her frustration from afar.
"Curse you, root dweller," Mother Web roared to the forest. "My babies are calling to me, and I shall fill my larder before they hatch. Fie on you who taunts me so."
Once again, Mother Web took to the treetops, clambering through them with an increased urgency. Artemis, now, was always two steps ahead of his dancing partner. She would fancy she heard some movement in the darkness below and would dive down to seek it out, and then Artemis would move on further.
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