A Still More Glorious Dawn

Licking his dry lips, a dark-haired man in a gothic suit draws a ceremonial dagger from its scabbard. The trees all around loom, their branches dark lightning against the pale sky just before dawn. Before the mage, a simple effigy of clay and feathers in the shape of a crow sits lifelessly. Squatting in front of it, the man raises his dagger to correct that. With a flinch and a gentle draw of the blade over his finger, the amateur practitioner conjures his first familiar.

The first drop of blood dribbles onto the false corvid’s beak, and a soft glow like red fireflies dances up from the circle etched into the dirt around them. First comes the feeling of thrill at his ritual working. Then, a curious numbness in his finger. It takes the man’s mind whole seconds to register the waterfall of blood now gushing down from the appendage and spiraling into the open beak of the bird. Joy is replaced with panic, he drops the knife and tries to step back, but the world spins. There’s already a rapid depletion of blood in his body, and his rapid ascent drains it down from his skull- with a little assistance from the helpful hands of gravity.

If it is any consolation, his last moments are a dazed high of blood loss before he drifts into peaceful slumber.

Stretching its wings, the unfamiliar familiar accustoms itself to the flex of the clay. Every movement is strenuous and sluggish, as if all the blood in the poor summoner’s body were but a drop in the tiny vessel. Rationing just enough mana to fill his wings, the crow leaps and flaps his way to the branches above. He looks to the horizon.

Blue, pink and yellow paint a gorgeous landscape. At the center, a golden circle crests the horizon, announcing a new dawn. Raim smiles, the crow’s face twisted unnaturally into the expression. Closing his eyes, he gathers nearly the sum of his mana at his core. There is a shuddering potential energy gathering in the air all around, his summoning the catalyst for another. And with a triumphant caw, he seizes it with an outstretched talon.

Metaphorically, of course. The talon is a command, a challenge to the world and to God in the highest: “By authority of Raim in Hell, what is yours’ is mine! Demon Thief of Treasures!”

And Raim feels in his bosom the promise of a still more glorious dawn.




There is a time and a place, in another world, in which the Bernwood Forest is a shriveled, shrunken thing. Its ancient bounty plundered by humanity’s excessive grasp. Not so in this one. Long have practitioners of the dark arts existed at the fringes of society, and as humanity expands the fringes of its society become smaller and smaller. But some of the wild places are so old and so haunted that human superstition holds them at bay.

Fear of the Bernwood is no superstition. Many lives its labyrinthine halls have taken, campers who got lost and never made it home. Or maybe they were not lost. Maybe, instead, they were found.

It is quiet here. The atmosphere has a certain pleasing naturalness. Yet also, something is amiss. Absent. Black wings flex and catch the cold evening air, drawing what faltering lift they can to glide in wide lazy circles. Black eyes trace the treetops, searching. Searching for a witch. How hard is it to find a witch in a witch wood?
As hard as the witch wishes it to be.

The absence of witches is not what troubles the crow. It is the absence of life. Oh, the forest thrums with a pulse of its own. Animals going about the little programs tucked into their little brains, and plants spreading their root systems below. There is beauty there, but the beauty in these things is shallow. No depth to the colors. What they possess is an intelligence absent the taste of the apple. Something the demon will need to correct, once he has the means.

There it is. On the cusp off the no-man’s land. A line drawn in the sand where that mysterious, invisible barbed wire holds human progress at bay. They know it as a treeline. On the other side, the road. And on that road, a man. Walking to a place of men, with flesh of brick and bones of mortar. More lifeless than the trees, yet full of life. A rich inner world of inner worlds colliding and melting into one another, even as they are stamped down by the relentless still-hovering boot of industrial revolution.
It is a man, like any other. Dressed as a man, too, but a man of another age. In homemade fabrics and ornate, yet wild finery. And to a demon’s eye more than a man. A witch. Maybe not what the world would call a Witch, but certainly what the demon would call a witch.

Great is the hungry hollow inside, and Raim has caught a whiff of food. Like a hawk, he descends, talons out and ready.

[Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_q57nJwt4A ]

Leaves rustle and turn the young man’s eyes skywards, where the black bird perches on a sturdy branch, silhouetted by the sun. Though concealed from the common observer by a layer of Mystery, Raim raises his head imperiously to display the beautiful red gems that sprout from his breast and sides, marking him as no ordinary crow. “Good eve,” he greets politely, “Young manwitch.”

Brushing his hair aside, the man regards the crow. And with equal politeness he replies, “Good eve to thee, crowe. Thou art sent by sister mine to chide my leaving and recall me to home?”

“Tis not thus, I console. To bind and detain is not my role,” speaking lyrically, the bird hops along the branch as if dancing, then cocks his head to spear his prey with the other eye. “Far be it indeed. An offer I bring, to thee and thy kin. If thou wouldst deign in turn, lend aid to a mighty need?”

Perplexed lips purse and skew, the witch’s step a sway towards threshold where road and forest meet. Curiosity overcomes caution, however. Shielded in hand, his eyes look again to Raim. “A most indefinite thing thy offer,” he speaks slowly, waving his hand like a conductor’s baton, with uncertain lyric in his tongue in turn. “Would you avail me more clarity, before I… open my coffer?” The time perhaps was spent, not plotting an escape route, but plotting a rhyme. Raim’s eyes twinkle, because Raim is plotting too.

Flapping his wings, the demon descends. To branch more eye level, and so becoming more familiar the familiar, as they meet face-to-face. “I like you,” a non-sequitur for a moment breaks the rhythm, then with a step between two twigs Raim resumes the dance. “Recent was my summons, the herald of a War. Yet without a supply of mana, I soon shall be no more.” Spreading one wing as if waving his hand before a crowd for emphasis, the demon expounds, “At the end of the War, a wish- if not more. Alone it shan’t be won, not by mineself, when the Fates have spun, and I propose we defy them therefore. Wouldst thou honor me, as my Master?”

“Master?” turning aside, the man takes a few steps away, then turns on his heel as if pacing to the boundary of a Shakespearean stage. His face is plain writ with thought, eyes tracing pages past. “This war thou meanst, a Grail War? What- or whom- brings… this… to England’s shore?” In halting words, he inquires. Oxford is not terribly near a shore, but on the scale of the world all of England may as well be a shore, and so the demon will allow it.

Eyes aglitter with pride, Raim shamelessly avows, “Me.” A strut along the branch, until it tips at its tip. “Twas I who sung this Grail to the world, and so I who tempt the magi to the swirl.” The idea of tempting those sorcerous seekers to their dance of death fills him with glee. “Since all who are called to Serve shall come in my wake, first dibs be thine to take.”

Face sheepish, the young man raises a hand. “Dibs?”

“To lay claim, my friend,” the demon explains affectionately. “Of me. The first Servant, a demon most fervent, and time thy foes to deny. I ask again, willst thou be my Master?” Ever patient, Raim lends some of that precious time for the youth to weigh his options. He can see all to plainly the ambition that tempts at him, bright gold and gleaming as macca but no less deadly than sin. Golden intention has paved Hell’s path many a time before this.

“I…” the man hesitates. A name given hovers behind his lips, at the tip of his tongue, as he measures the wisdom of offering it up to a demon. “Griffith le Fay, do accept thy plea, Servant. Take my hand, if thy… cause be urgent.”

Words are enough for Raim to latch onto. A shudder runs through Griffith- a man of most well-bred stock, and the demon thanks his unholy blessings- as black calligraphy crawls onto his left hand. Yet Raim is not one to deny the request. Stepping from the branch, his growing form forces Griffith to take two steps back. Peeled back is the crow, like the shell of a nut, then folds into the inner cavity of something larger. From the point of vanishing emerges the shape of a man, black clothing dotted like the night sky glittering like anachronism in the light of day. Raim takes the proffered hand. “So it is written,” he gently turns the youth’s hand over to examine the singular seal, wild and thorny and beautiful. “So shall it be done.”

Taking a step down the road, Raim releases the hand, turning to stroll confidently into the world behind. Starry robes curl around him, forming a less dated, fine pant suit. “Now,” the song and dance concluded, Raim adopts a tone no less musical, but a tad less lyrical, and far less archaic. “We must shape you up. You cannot be seen walking the streets of Oxford like a wild man from the forest, nor be heard speaking like a theatre troupe.” His turn now to turn on his heel at the edge of the stage, but now to walk off. “Let me be your guide to the world of Man.”

Off towards the city. On the east sky behind them looms the glorious dawn.

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Pub: 06 Dec 2024 00:15 UTC

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