], and of course since then I've taken the suggestions I've gotten to heart and the story is going alone just fine. I decided I would make a prologue to introduce an important side character and flesh out the story a little bit, as well as it hopefully being a narrative hook. Well, anyway, here it is. Enjoy it as much as a person can enjoy reading a 16 year old writer's work. (Cringe)
PS: Sorry for not posting on here more than I do. School and sports and Molten Core, y'know...
Through the remaining hours of daylight flew the crow, wheeling through the sky madly towards his destination. Scarred and weather-beaten, he flapped his wings furiously against the wind and dived in and out of the great forest, barely a shadow against the vibrant life of the landscape. The sun was low in the sky, and it cast a blazing orange light everywhere under its gaze, hovering there stoically.
As he flew deeper into the forest, wings beating ever harder, the sun sank lower and the air became stiller, becoming claustrophobic and charged. The animals retreated into their burrows and dens, and the day came to a close. The sun fell in the sky, and with it fell the vibrant light and life of day, carrying it away to be replaced by the grim face of the night. The crescent moon rose high into the air, curved like a murderous blade and shining with the blood of the sun, now dead and away. Floating there, it glared upon the earth, watching intently. The creatures of the night rallied to it, coming out to feast in the glory of this almighty sign of blackness and of the hunt. Across the land murderous beasts emerged from their caves, and screams of prey echoed far into the sky.
Still, the crow flew through this exiled and cursed land, a place not dwelled upon by humanity. Glancing upon the earth with his glowing red eyes, the crow immersed himself in thought, in worry and barely contained panic. A bullet through the black night, he was almost undetectable, diving out of the paths of owls and bats that shared the sky. He wheeled and turned around the dense trees, flying with a single-minded purpose.
Hasten, hasten!! He told himself.
His eyes glared in hideous red and the faint moonlight shone upon the deep scars and incisions brutally carven into his flesh, shining with infected and pitted wounds. They screamed with pain as he flew on, but still he beat his wings defiantly, pulling with all his might towards his destination. Squawking quietly in pain, he zoned out of time and space, mind receding into a terrible half-state of being, just simply sending the commands to the torn wings to keep on beating. He needed to reach his destination, to assess the validity of his nightmares and to see with his own eyes the place he had never dared to tread for all the long years of hiding. The pilgrimage he had run from for so long must come, and with it would probably come the knowledge that the planet was doomed to fiery inferno and rank decay.
But still, he flew.
Long into the night, he finally saw, barely perceivable, a break in the forest. Speeding towards the point rapidly, he slowly decided that indeed, the forest was breaking, and he was almost there, back to the place of his humiliation, his torture, his failure.
Slowing the pace of his wings, he glided up to a branch on the last tree before the forest broke and perched there, his aching and bleeding wings settling back on his scarred body. He gazed out at the land, eyes glowing.
Beneath the wide panorama of the sky lay a great and barren plain, encircled by thick forest. The ground was hard and apparently lifeless, only the small brown blades of grass trying to push up through the dirt betrayed that any life could survive there. They reached out desperately, clenching the air struggling to return life to the cursed land.
They are fools.
The red eyes of the glow gleamed fearfully, and he remained absolutely still, torn feathers lumped upon his body haphazardly and deep scars shining with black-red tissue in the moonlight. The very land was cursed; it called out silently in pain. It had seen dark and terrible things, monstrosities that still left huge impressions on the life (or lack of it) of the land. The crow knew all too well the horrors that had transpired, and how their effects had scarred and beaten him. The horrors symbolized by the great towers that lay alone on the plain, lording over the sky and the earth with might and terror.
Under the moon and stars, in the center of the barren plain, rose two monolithically huge towers, reaching up higher than any human creation. They boldly cleaved the sky, one with sharp lines and dark stone stabbing through the light of the moon and its twin, to the southeast, rising mournfully with pale moonlight shining off the gothic parapets and windows. They had sat there upon the plain for ages, beautiful and terrifying monuments to the two great spirits who wandered the stars, wrought by the lesser spirits of the earth to appease the powerful twins.
The crow mused. How long had they sat empty there, mournfully standing watch over the plain? It seemed to the crow not a day ago that their struggle had begun under these very stars. Vividly he could remember the flash of the drawn blades, the flames of war and strife. Only too well could he remember the pain of that gruesome conflict.
The struggle of the two great and powerful spirits, the twins of the sky, had torn the stars apart, setting worlds ablaze and suns howling into death, desecrating brotherhood, love, and the very essence of life. The memories rang clear in the crow’s mind. Only too well could he remember it, how the sky shook every night, even now he could see the tears that fell moaning to the earth, how the planet had shuddered so deeply in pain and revulsion. How blades had flashed across the sky, wicked steel falling through flesh and earth and love. Wheeling, slicing, burning, they had desecrated more planets than one. As destruction and sorrow spread, so did the twins’ rage for each other, and crimes so despicable that even now the crow refused to think on them had been committed.
The memories, the fear, the pain, it all came flooding back to him in a wave of remembrance and horror. A shudder tore through him, and his wings and body burned with pain. The red eyes glowed fearfully now, seeing clearly the painful end of that bloody strife, the final battle that had come far too late for any salvation for the world or for the combatants. An armistice is nothing but an end to further pain, doing nothing to alleviate the crimes already committed. A bloodthirsty and treacherous victory is far worse, and causes rage and sorrow to build up even further. The crow knew this.
In his mind, he clearly saw the end.
When the lesser twin crashed finally through the sky, tearing to the ground in miserable exile, the world had fallen deathly silent like a woman clasping a cloth to her mouth, sobs and tears gnashing inside with not a sound issuing forth. The jinn, the great builders of the Towers, abandoned the sky so torn with sadness, leaving humanity the heirs of the world. The great mournful masses, the cloaked ruling spirits of the planet, marched into their dark catacombs, never seen again.
Only a few of their kind had the jinn left to fend in the cruel and cursed land; the crow knew all too well one of them. Burning inside with hatred, he remembered the great doors of the catacombs closing, his brethren and loved ones fleeing into the earth, leaving him torn and broken upon the ground in front of the cave entrances.
Now, the towers sat lonely and empty on the barren plain, great mountains casting their shadows upon the dead grass. Not a sound had come forth from the great monoliths for eons, not even the faint flicker of a candle had shot from the windows to greet the air and open sky. But yet something unnerved the crow about the site, something was far different from when he had last visited, years ago.
His red eyes narrowed, and he shivered in the cold.
There was an unstated rage in the air, a tension that was thick and laced the night with violence. The towers looked exactly as they had always, but deep in the night, the crow could sense something moving ever so slowly and hesitantly in the upper apartments of the lesser tower, a shape rising from its failure. In his mind, the pain rang clear, and with it the sorrow, the memory, the pure rage. It all eminated from that tower, emotions that had built up over ages of captivity and mourning. These emotions, he knew, had been festering up there since the beginning, the end of the war. Like an infection, they had become diseased, warping the body and the mind of the sufferer. Twisted and black pus flowed through the veins of the lesser twin, and had condensed into the black blood of absolute, determined hate.
The crow came to a realization. There was nothing holding the the defeated lord of the sky back, there was nothing that he feared to lose. There was no hesitation, no fear coming from that tower. Only the reckless, certain, and undaunted desire to destroy. He would destroy absolutely everything, wipe out the planet and the universe, and then kill himself.
Now, he truly felt the pure fear that he had been holding back, and his red eyes flicked back and forth over the spires of the black tower, Bastion. He had always hoped things would never come to this, that the war between the twins was over and forgotten, a memory shared by only a few tortured souls. Now, though, the truth was all too clear to him. War would come again, the earth would burn and women and children would be slaughtered. The crosses would rise again, the black ships would sail across the sky. The world would die and be utterly destroyed by the rage and pain of eons past. Of this, the crow had no doubt. His denial was dead. The world was still oblivious, but he alone knew the truth.
The tension picked up. Something was about to happen; the tension was finally going to snap after so many years.
Around him, the wind picked up suddenly, a fell breeze that seemed to come out of nowhere. Quietly, the forest rustled, the trees swaying back and forth. The crow fidgeted, and drew itself in closer to the tree, backing up on its legs further down the branch. He was afraid, but knew what had to be done. If he was proven right, action would have to be taken, and quickly. The world had desecrated him, but he must find a way to save it.
A thought arched through his dark mind.
It comes.
In the black of eternal sorrow rose the tortured, legs moving with new found strength and eyes beginning to blaze with unyielding hate. Hands reached out, grasping in the darkness, moving for the first time in eons.
Through the darkness shot a light from the black tower, the faint and fearful flicker of a candle in one of the upper chambers. The world beheld it, and a silent cry went up from the soul of the planet. The forest went still, absolutely still, as the wind died down. Beneath the stars, the world seemed to stagger, stunned by this development. The whispers and the screams began to spread outward from the plain, and creation began to panic.
The time has come.
The crow squawked once, a mighty and terrible sound, and launched itself off the branch, wings flapping through the trees to the South.
In the heavens, Antares fell.
