Old Shit: Wolf, Legacy of a Werewolf

Author's Note: This is reposted verbatim, with no editing. This includes the rather obvious misappropriation of the senses at the end of the first part. Enjoy.


Wolf
Legacy of a Werewolf
--Zack Gilpin
Originally posted: August 11th, 2004

Part 1- Wolve’s Bane
[-HUNT-]

The night was full, the rain heavy. Thunder shook the earth with a deafening boom. Light emanated from the various homes along the streets, lamps mostly burnt out. The towering structures called skyscrapers loomed in the distance, contrasting the clouds with their ever luminescent high lights. Power was out in half the city, my half. This world is a strange one for me, but I live here anyway, defending those who are weak. I have my reasons. I came to this place to find a cure for my disease, and I received something else, something far better and far worse in equally as many ways. A reason. My disease is one that will only kill if you let it control you, if you let it go too far. I came here to end my lineage and erase its horrible deeds from the history of the world so I could go back to my home in the middle of the forest and live my life they way I had for nearly sixty years preceding; alone. I came here reluctantly, hoping the rumor was true. I meant to enter this city and leave within the sake of two, maybe three days. I planned on getting the cure and getting out, never looking back afterwards. Ironically, that was over one hundred years ago. I came here for my own sake, but I immediately saw the chaos and disorder of the world around me. Death was the name of so many, and those who were not plagued or poor were rich beyond imagination. To put it frankly, you were either rich or dead. Crime was rampant. The point is, I came here to end my disease, to end the most horrible chapter of my life.

When I came here, I called it a disease. Now, I call it a gift. I’ve been with this city through all its best and worst times. Had I not been here to protect it, this place would’ve fallen long ago. I am one that watches over this city like an angel, ending that which should never have started. At least, that is what many would say about me, if I allowed myself to be seen by innocent eyes. I came here bearing the weight of terrible sin, young though I was. I came to this city and saw its need for a savior, and I took up the mantle. It began because of one man who died because of me, one who trusted me. I protect this city now and forever because too many lives have fallen before my eyes, too many souls sent to heaven because of my search for the cure. Because when I came here, I started a chain of events that caused the city to be sent into this hell. I do this because of the simple rule of honor; finish what you start.

The night was full, the rain heavy. Thunder shook the earth with a deafening boom. Light emanated from the heart of New York City like a candle at the pit of the earth. The sound of glass shattering followed by the loud buzzing of a store alarm rang through the air from miles away so subtly that only my eyes could hear it. I stood from my perch on a four story building and unsheathed my sword, a katana, taking in a deep breath of the damp air. My sword glinted in the light of the city, reflecting that which is essentially the heart of the metropolis. Three words written in Japanese kanji shown eve brighter from their place near the hilt of the blade.

Fight.
Kill.
Repent.

I jumped from my perch and moved in for the kill, like a wolf on the hunt.

[-ORIGIN-]

My name is Jacob Wulfinger. My disease, my curse, my gift, my advantage, is something very simple and something so very complicated. Quite simply, I am a werewolf, a man who turns into a sort of man-wolf cross over by the light of the full moon, only there’s more to it than that. So much more.

First, there is more than one way to become a werewolf. Three ways, in fact. The lowest, easiest and least respected form of lycanthropy is no-blood. A man who kills a wolf, skins it, wears the fur as a coat. He takes many rare (and often deadly in the wrong dosage) herbs and makes them into a strange substance that he rubs all over his skin, then he makes a fire and dances around it, uttering a demonic chant. When this has gone on for two or three hours, he stops and offers up his soul to Satan in exchange for the gift of lycanthropy. As time goes on, the transformation becomes less and less complete. Eventually, the lycanthropy completely fades into a state of subtle insanity. The second way is half-blood. Basically, when one is bitten by another werewolf. This form is not only the most common, but the most hard to explain. Half-blood transformations rely on other werewolves, so the question is...who was the first? Many people believe that it was a full-blood that created the first half-blood, but the strange part is, the halves predate the fulls. As you’ve probably figured by now, the third is that of full-blood. These are the most rare, for they are werewolves born as werewolves. Born into a lineage of other full-bloods. If two halves have a child, the child is born a half. A full is created by only an insane man whose life is about to end. He pledges his soul to the devil for eternal life and becomes a sort of no-blood, except that it never fades and he never goes insane because he already is insane. His children, though, are granted full-blood lycanthropy and a very strange gift that is very hard to ignore; immortality. There are only three known families of full-blood werewolves, and two of them have been wiped out.

Second, werewolves aren’t the emotionally tormented wrecks you see in the movies. There are plenty of things to get emotional about, and there is one or two truths to the movie werewolves. Yes, we do become wolf-men at the light of the full moon, but there’s an extrapolation on that; there are three full moons in a month. The night labeled ‘full moon’ on the calender is actually the second night in three night cycle. The night before the full moon is the night of the rising moon, the next is the night of the reigning moon, the following night the falling moon. Yes, life as a werewolf can be hell, but it can also become far more exciting than any mortal life ever could. As you grow older, you grow stronger, faster, much like vampires (and they, too, are as real as the sky is blue). From the moment you ‘become’, you already have enhanced strength, speed, sight, smell, taste. All the senses are heightened greatly.

Probably the most important detail is this: when we become wolven, we have no control over ourselves. It’s like a dream, we remember it all very vaguely, but we never forget it.

[-ORIGIN, PART 2-]

I was born on April 9th, 1908. I was born into the name ‘Wulfinger’, my parents had named me Jacob after my father’s great grand father, one who had fought in the Civil War. I was raised in a mansion of twenty three rooms, bathrooms, dining rooms, and various storage closets not included. The house was huge, as you can imagine, and looked as though any person would imagine a Victorian mansion from that day and age. I still, to this very day, so not know where the mansion was. I know it was deep in a forest, hidden from all humanity. I’m sure by now its been discovered, but that has no bearing on the current tale.
Like I said before, the mansion was hidden deep within a forest. This was because my father had something he wanted to keep secret. I never suspected anything like it. To me, the house, my parents and the various servants were the entire universe, nothing beyond the forest but plague, famine, and poverty. Though we were, by the standards of the day, very rich, money had no bearing on my life. The servants were not slaves, but people who also wanted to escape from humanity. My father provided them rooms in the mansion, gave them food for dinner, did everything that was necessary to keep them around. Not much was required of course. With the simple lie that my father had killed the former owners of the building, the servants believed that we were dirt poor, so they accepted a very small pay. Perhaps by luck of the draw, perhaps by divine intervention, all the servants were nice, thoughtful people, each willing to do his or her own share of work. Yes, there were women servants, too. Unlike the sexist, racist, war-mongering world outside, our home was a pace of acceptance. I don’t think either of my parents liked it, too many of the other sex that one could ‘play’ with, but I believe they did this to set a good example for me. To keep me from becoming like the normal people outside, to help me stand out and make something of myself if I ever wanted to leave.
And they knew I would want to see the outside world eventually. It was inevitable, so instead of filling me full of stories about how horrid the outside world was, they told me of the immense wonders nature had to offer. This always excited me, hearing of these amazing wonders. When I first heard of the ocean as a young boy, I almost died laughing!
“An endless mass of water!” I would shout, “Madness! If there’s so much water out there then why are we out of water here? Couldn’t you just take it bucket full by bucket full, if it truly is endless?”
And to this, my mother would reply, “Because, the water is filled with salt. You wouldn’t want to drink salty water all the time, would you?”
“Salty? Someone must have been massively bored to put that much salt into the ocean!”

There was a small pond by our house, inside a natural clearing of trees. The pond, only twenty to thirty feet all around, was massive to me. Sometimes I would swim in this small pond, thinking that there was more water in that pond than in anything else. Naturally, when I first learned of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, I did not believe it. The largest body of water I’d ever seen in life was the pond, so the thought of a lake (and I was ignorant of the terms at the time, calling it a lake and not the ocean) so large, you couldn’t see land on the other side... Impossible! But inside, I knew it to be true, and dreamed of seeing both the oceans at least once before I died.
My parents also told me of the Indians, savage people who lived off the land and practiced a polytheistic religion. They told me of the Grand Canyon west of us, the Mississippi river east. It amazed me that these could exist, and that someday, I would get to see them.
I was told these things so that I would want to go into the outside world, but I was also given many warnings. I was told of how vicious people outside could be, killing you for your mere money, murdering you for fun. This was more than enough to keep me from running away on my own. Like I always had before, I patiently waited, knowing that, someday soon, I would move into the outside world and see these natural wonders. I would see them and love them more than anyone else could, because I was the only one who knew and truly understood their significance. It showed that nature had a plan for us all, whether it be becoming the President of the U.S., exploring the south, or embarking on the journey I was about to take. No matter how hard we tried to keep hold of the reigns, nature would always jerk them from our hands until we either gave up, or grabbed hold again, stronger for what you’d endured.

It was then on the week before my fifteenth birthday that I stumbled upon something. For a birthday gift, m parents and a few of the servants were going to go to the Pacific ocean, no matter what it took. This excited me more and more as I thought about it, and I suddenly found myself on the eve of my birthday, waiting ever so intently for my father to give me the news. It was the greatest day of my life. An irony, it seems to me now, that my last night of mortality would be the best. I don’t know why, but it almost makes me laugh whenever I think about it.

Because that would be the night when al my dreams were shattered, and a destiny beyond my comprehension was written. It was the night I ceased to be Jacob Wulfinger. From the night forward, for the rest of my life, I would be known simply as ‘Wolf’.


This was a story I worked very hard on, and unlike a lot of the things I'll probably end up posting, I remember most of the details.

The basic beginning to the story was not dissimilar to that of The Wolf, with Jacob Wulfinger being raised in a house in the middle of nowhere, isolated from the world, until he comes of age and painfully becomes a werewolf.

(It's worth noting that Adrian Quist was named Jacob in the original draft of The Wolf)

However, unlike The Wolf, here Jacob is found by his father, who subsequently tried to kill him. Jacob ended up shifting and killing everyone there -one of many holes in the story- and running off to live in the wilderness. He does this for upwards of sixty years, until he goes to a place to get supplies and is told, serendipitously and nonsensically, that there is someone in New York City who has a cure for lycanthropy. He goes, and finds the person who has the cure. He also makes a human friend, who he eventually is forced to kill for the cure. The friend becomes a werewolf and subsequently the main villain for the rest of the series. At the end of this first book, Jacob destroys the cure rather than taking it, so no one can ever use it against him.

The rest of the story is a blur to me, because it was very long, very epic, and little of it was ever actually written (something which is endemic to my writing history). Basically, Jacob went on to save NYC for years and years, fighting off his old friend. At one point he goes to Mexico and befriends a vampire, who he is subsequently forced to kill when he kills all the vampires (see a trend?). He then meets the last full-blood family of werewolves, and kills them too (or at least is the reason they are killed. Same guilt trip either way). At some point there is also a prophecy thrown about which says that Jacob will cause the end of the world, and part of the motivation for his travels is to prevent that from happening. He ends up, of course, causing it directly. The second half of the story occurs after the end of the world, dealing with... a lot of really ridiculous things, very little of which make sense.

There are shades of this story existing in a lot of my current works. I still gravitate towards the concept of the three day full moon, although I have omitted it in some cases as it adds unnecessary complexity to a relatively simple concept. I've obviously recycled the basic concept, although in its current form it is a character drama rather than an Underworld ripoff. This story is an excellent demonstration of my state of mind at the time: no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, you will always hurt or disappoint the ones you love, and even if you devote your life to preventing the one thing you don't want to happen, in the end you will probably just end up causing it.

Good Morning Magpie, Part 1: The Dove and the Magpie, 2

9.
They traveled a far more considerable distance now that they had taken to the air, and after their first cautious flight they had come to understand one thing.
They were alone in the sky.
Though they could see flocks of living birds dotting the farthest edge of the horizon, they could see nothing else for miles. For whatever reason, even the creatures who had once been possessed of flight were now incapable of it. But they still had to rest, more frequently now, and because they were traveling Eastward they grew more and more wary of the creatures. They had to search for the abandoned homes of other animals, for it seemed the creatures had no interest in nesting. They pushed Eastward, following in the path of the animals. They were, it seemed, the messengers of the coming end, spreading its influence and speeding its progress.
After several stops, they decided to stay for the night in a knot in a tree that had been hollowed out years before.
They landed on the nearest branch and Swan removed herself from the harness.
“It's actually rather obvious,” Crow said. “We've been hiding in dens and foxholes, but we've yet to hold up in a tree. I'm not so sure we make very accomplished birds.”
Swan continued past him through the knot, and gave an awestruck sigh.
“Crow, come look at this.”
He stepped up beside her and poked his head inside.
The hole did not go back just a few feet, as they had expected. Instead they were met with a great chamber with carved walls and stairs spiraling in both directions, tiny holes in the side of the tree to let streams of light in.
“We have stumbled upon quit the mansion, haven't we?”
Crow walked into the tree and looked around. Carvings ran across all the walls, and Swan examined the pictographs with interest.
“Whoever lived here was very important,” she said. “There are stories here older than the both of us.”
Crow shrugged. “I'm going to see if they left any food.”
He wandered downwards, following the slope and hoping for the best. As he searched, Swan read the stories on the walls.
And as she came to the end of them, where it seemed they all converged, she found a symbol that made her gasp.
“Crow!” she shouted. “Whoever lived here was a Watcher!”
He spun around and called back, “What?!”
There came a deep roaring sound which shook the whole tree, and from above them the sound formed into words.
“Who goes there!” it shouted.
Crow met back up with Swan, and the two looked up timidly.
Swan made to sneak out of the tree, but Crow said, “Just a pair of small birds,” and Swan swapped him across the head.
There came no reply at first, but then, in a softer voice, “Come upstairs and let me see you.”
Swan gave Crow a vindictive look, then lead him up towards the source of the voice.
There they came across a bloated old owl. It sat next to a window that looked out above the forest.
Crow remarked silently to Swan, “I don't know how we didn't see that.”
She shushed him.
“I take it you two are seeking refuge from the end of the world,” he said.
Swan nodded. “Only for the night. We're fleeing East, with the rest of animalkind.”
The old owl looked between the two of them.
“If I may ask,” Swan said, “why are you still here?”
He eyed her. “These aged wings could no more carry me than a housefly.” Without moving his body, he turned his head towards the window. “A dove and a magpie. How is it that you came together?”
“I found Crow right after-” Swan began.
“We met the way meetings happen at the end of the world; fortuitous, accidental, and entirely without note.”
The owl stretched out its wing, blocking the light from the window, showing off the immensity of its wingspan. He examined the bones in this limb with an odd sense of nostalgia.
“Your wings are broken, magpie. Have you been carrying him all this way, little dove?”
“I help as much as I can,” Crow said.
Dove said, “We're going Eastward but the ground is overrun by creatures. May we stay here the night?”
“That is a question,” the owl said, “but not the one you want to ask.”
He looked straight at her and did not blink. She struggled to maintain eye contact.
“The symbol on the wall downstairs-”
“Yes?” the owl said expectantly.
“Are you a Watcher?” she asked.
He looked back at the window and folded up his wing.
“Tell me, so-called-Crow, why even here at the end of the world you would lie.”
Crow said, “What are you-”
“And to a complete stranger, no less.” He shook his head. “Some creatures are irredeemable.”
“You haven't answered my question,” Swan said.
The owl sighed. “The dove seeks to answer every question,” he said as though to himself, “the magpie seeks to hide every answer. It's quite the confusing couple, theirs. What then is an owl for, if questions are answers and answers are lies?”
Swan and Crow looked at each other.
“Perhaps we'll find another tree,” Crow said.
“There are no other trees,” the owl said, glancing back at them.
They looked out the window, seeing an entire forest of trees still surrounding them.
“It's a shame your caretaker left you here in your delirium, sir,” Crow said, “but we aren't hospice and we're having a hard enough time of keeping ourselves alive. Shall we leave, Swan?”
She ignored him. “What is an owl for, then?” she asked.
He said in a somber tone, “The owl is the thought behind the truth behind the lie behind the answer behind the question.”
“I think this old man is off his perch, Swan.”
“Shut up, Crow,” she said.
“You may not stay the night. You have much to do in so short a time. I would fear for your safety, if I were you.”
Crow blinked. “Was that supposed to be a threat?”
“There is no threat in destiny, little magpie,” the owl said. “You will see that for yourself soon enough.”
Swan said, “But sir, we're very tired-”
“Be damned of our company then, geriatric old fool.”
“Don't be rude, Crow!”
“There's an entire forest of trees out there, Swan, and we're begging lodge with this codger?”
The owl said, “The forest is gone, magpie. As the rest of the world soon will be.”
Crow shouted, “Then you're blind as well as mad, and we're not taking another word of this manure.”
“I'd have have broken your legs for that, once,” the owl said. “You're lucky that age has cooled my temper.”
The two fell silent.
The owl composed himself and turned back towards them. “I am not blind, and I am not mad. Though many lived here with me before the end, I have been alone among them for a long time. But that is past, and we are here. And you have jobs to do.”
Crow sighed. “Is that so?”
Swan whacked him again, and he went silent.
“The darkness feeds on the strength of life. Soon it will reach the Northern lakes, and once it does it will spread more quickly in all directions. It will slow once it reaches the frozen lands past the lakes, but it will reach far past the Eastern glens before then.”
“How can you know this?” Swan asked.
“Because I was a Watcher when the plan was made. I am an old owl, little dove. Older than you could ever know. But we haven't time to reminisce.”
“You had plenty of time to wax paradoxical before,” Crow said.
Swan shushed him again. “If you were a Watcher, then you must know why all this is happening!”
“If you understand what the purpose of the Watchers is, then the why of the end should be readily apparent.”
Swan looked deflated. “Oh. I had just hoped-”
“You must travel to the East and warn the glen-dwellers of the approaching end,” he interrupted. “It matters little whether they come or stay; they simply must be presented with the choice. Then you must travel into the wastes, and find the home of the Watchers.”
“I'm sorry,” Crow said, “but we only met you five minutes ago. What incentive do we have to do anything you say?”
“Do you enjoy being alive?” the owl asked.
“Sometimes,” he said.
“Then perhaps you can convince the Watchers to turn this end around.”
Swan perked up. “Is that possible?”
“I haven't the faintest clue. But what better a pastime is there at the end of the world?” he said with a laugh.
The two looked at each other doubtfully.
Swan said, “I apologize, elder owl, but this is all very sudden and... rather miraculous. If you're a Watcher, shouldn't you want the end to come?”
He sighed. “I was a Watcher, dove. I left because I, unlike my kin, believe in the ability of life to do good things.”
“Why us?” Crow said. “We're hard the most effectual messengers.”
The owl turned towards them fully, extending his other wing to a small wooden charm hung on the wall in the shape of a circle.
“I was given that by a blind raven, many years ago. He told me that when the end came, I would be visited by two wayward souls, and that I would give them direction. And that my doing this would prove the difference between an end, and a new beginning.”
They were silent for a few moments.
Crow said, “And you haven't been visited by any other wayward birds then, yeah? We're not just the next in a long line of couples you've told this to out of -if you'll excuse the pun- blind coherence to prophecy?”
“I've told no one before now,” he said.
Crow nodded.
“Well then,” he said, “We'll accept the mission gratefully.”
“Very well,” said the owl. “Take as much food as you must, and be on your way.”
“Oh, we will,” Crow said. “Thank you very much for this chance, wise sir, we would have lost ourselves to the winds of helplessness had we not come across this place.
Swan eyed him curiously as they bid their farewell to the old bird and backed out of the chamber.
As they headed towards where the food was stored, Swan said, “That was easy of you.”
“Easy conversation is the quickest to quit,” he said.
She sighed. “So you weren't being serious, then?”
“Goodness, no. I don't think I've heard such tripe since my great grandfather fell from a tree and henceforth thought himself a woman.”
“And what's so hard to believe about what he said?” Swan asked. “The darkness is spreading, and if anyone should know why it would be a Watcher.”
“But he didn't know why,” Crow said.
“He never said that!”
“Not in so many words. His rounding about of your question showed plainly that he didn't.”
Swan said, “Even so, no one would lie about being a Watcher. No one would risk-”
“Swan,” Crow said, stopping them in their tracks, “you have been out in the same world as I, yes? It's the end of the world out there. What better a time to make fools of the naive than when death is a promise?”
“And what else do we have, Crow? As you said, the world is ending. If we have even the slightest chance of changing that, shouldn't we at least try?”
“In case you've forgotten,” he said, “I have very little in the way of faith, in myself or in people. I cannot see myself as changing what has happened, and even if I could I seriously doubt anyone else would care enough to give me a hand.”
Swan shook her head. “The depths of your pessimism astound me at every turn.”
“Look at it this way, Swan,” he said. “It's where were going anyway. East is East, yes? Who knows what could happen when we get there.”

10.
At Crow's insistence, they did not leave as the owl had instructed them. After they had packed away some food in the harness, they flew until they found another tree with suitable cover.
Immediately upon setting down there, the branch leaned and then cracked, and Swan only barely managed to carry Crow back to the ground, as he had already been half out of the harness when the limb began to fall.
So it was with all the trees, they found; as the darkness had rid the gulls of their solidity, so too had it stolen the rigidity of the trees. Finally it came that they were forced to sleep on the ground, with one keeping watch while the other rested. Though it seemed there were no creatures here, they had come too close already to risk it.
So, as Crow slept, Swan gazed across the fire and into the deepening eve.
She remembered sunsets on the sea, how every color reflected across the angles of the clouds. Here it seemed darkness only grew darker. It made her yearn for a brighter place, and brighter company.
The possibility offered them by the owl wouldn't leave her mind. Despite Crow's insistence that it was a fool's errand, she felt as though it were her destiny.
She thought about it for a long time, until the fire had died down for the third time. She gathered some twigs, fed it, and awoke Crow. They switched places, and Swan quickly fell into sleep.

11.
Groggy, they progressed slowly over the next few days. The farther outward they flew, the more wary they became of the creatures. Neither of them slept enough and, as they came across more examples of the horror being unleashed on the world, what little sleep they did get was fraught with nightmares.
They found many examples of creatures whose limbs had crumbled and were left limping -or wriggling, depending on their nature- Eastward. They should have been dead, but the darkness kept them alive. Though they had been on the front lines of the destruction, the absolute reality of what was happening only dawned on them as they witnessed the spread of the darkness like a plague across the land.
But as they quickened their pace, the horizon brightened. Color began to dawn on the world once more, and they grew hopeful once more.
The dreary veil of the darkness seemed to lift up as they passed over the last of the creatures. And soon they reached the edge of the forest, and the landscape became hilly and sparse.
Despite Crow's reluctance and his pain, Swan pushed them as hard as she could, the owl's words still ringing through her mind.

12.
They had long since left the darkness behind them, and soon they came across other animals. It was some time before they really comprehended active life again. It wasn't until a blue jay flew next to them and gave them a cockeyed, disapproving glance before diving back to the ground that they knew they had reached civilization.
“Something about this seems wrong,” Swan said.
“What, that not an animal in sight is fleeing for their lives from the brink of existence' collapse?”
She was silent for a few moments before saying, “Exactly.”
Crow blinked. “I'm sorry?”
“They're staying put. What reason could they possibly have to think that they're safe?”
Crow sighed. “Maybe they've just stopped for the night. Or perhaps they appreciate the karmic balance here better than their previous residence. Lord knows I wouldn't mind a decent rest and a quick spiritual cleansing after our endeavors. My wings feel as splinters.”
“That's because they are,” Swan said. She moved on. “I don't understand. Don't they realize the darkness is still coming?”
Crow didn't answer. He found little in the conversation of interest.
They alighted to the ground and worked their way through the crowds of animals, asking why they had stopped moving. The answers given were not heartening.
It seemed that some animals stopped, because some other animals stopped. And when a majority had stopped, rumors spread that the end had stopped as well. The mass had become something of a hive mind, and after lifetimes of security, they jumped very quickly to unsafe conclusions.
But it also seemed there was something of a beginning to the encampment, as a wounded field mouse explained to them that a rodent called Adam had stepped up as a leader among the animals, and spread the idea of staying. When they asked where to find him, the mouse only shrugged.
As they trekked through the fields of makeshift dens and nests, they became more and more certain that Adam was a myth. Each animal seemed to believe that he was a member of their race, that he had ascended or descended from the very bosom of the sky or core of the earth to unite all creatures in the post-apocalypse utopia. Some said he planned on taking them back West once he had visited every animal personally; others said he was going to magically grant them greater resilience to the cold and take them North to live among the penguins. Many held variously worded contentions that he was the second coming of Asthur, that he would lead them to the golden halls of Asthuria once they had all been tested. It seemed no two stories were exactly alike, and were it not for the name of their glorious leader they couldn't compare the stories from one species to another and find two similar elements.
They hadn't quite known the damage done by the sphere of darkness. They had expected animals numbering in the hundreds, but it seemed as though the entire West had fled. Thousands upon thousands of animals were together, in a trainwreck of an ecosystem where naturally occurring extra-species tensions grew even more intense. The tales of Adam the saviour, it seemed, were what everyone had latched onto in lieu of actual resolve.
When Crow brought up that no one had any really concrete reason to believe that the end had ended, he was greeted with spite so pure it turned to physical violence. None of these animals seemed willing to believe that they had stopped for nothing, that it was anything more than group delirium brought on by group hysteria.
When they set down in a relatively secluded area, Crow voiced his confusion. “I don't understand this. So many animals all talking about Adam. How could anyone have pulled something like that off in just five days?”
Swan couldn't give an answer, and the two rested, mounted, and took back off.
So the two birds made their way forwards, asking for Adam and finding little in the way of answers, until they came across a lone, rather nervous falcon sitting atop a tree trunk.
He saw them coming and turned away, but as they continued he started cleaning his wings -an unspoken signal that he wasn't interested in communication.
Crow said, “Are you about this Adamic dogma as well?”
The falcon looked at them, confused. “What?”
“Everyone around here seems to have a different theory on Adam except that he's an absolute blueberry of a leader. You look to be about the most intelligent animal we've come across in a while, what's your say on the matter?”
He looked from side to side nervously. “I don't really have an opinion.”
Swan said, “Why is that?”
He shrugged. “I met him.”
Crow and Swan both became far more interested. “Oh?” said Crow, “and what was he?”
“A hawk,” he said. “A hawk with a missing eye.”
They looked at each other. “And how does a half-blind bird of prey come to lead the animals that would otherwise be his dinner?”
“You'd have to ask him that,” he said.
“Why are you so nervous?” Swan asked.
He tried to shrug. When they didn't relent on the question, he said, “He has some ideas I don't exactly agree with and he...well, him and his posse threatened me. A lot.”
“I see,” Crow said. “Well that's certainly something, isn't it? Do you think we'd be able to talk to him, then?”
“You could try, but I don't think his goons would let you close enough. He's lodged in the lone tree North-East of here.”
They bid the falcon best of luck and took off. They had grown accustomed to the strange looks they got every time they did this, although Crow was focused more on ignoring the pain that racked him every time.
As they skimmed the horizon, the tree became apparent in the distance. And, it seemed, several yards of uncovered grassland around it. The hawk, and whoever his goons were, did not let anyone near.
The nearby animals thought they were just a bunch of punks. There were no birds in the area.
When the two flew into range of the tree, almost immediately there came a loud screech.
“Swan?” Crow shouted, “We need to land!”
Before she could yell back at him, they were jolted out of the air. Crow shouted for Swan to adjust, but it seemed she couldn't, and they hit the ground with a thud.
Crow moaned and tried to stand, then felt a pair of talons push his head to the ground and wrap around his neck.
A group of birds landed in front of them, lead by one with a scar across one empty eye socket.
“You must be Adam,” Crow said.
The hawk walked up to him, his followers in step. They were all hawks, it seemed.
“You know the rules,” Adam said. “No bird comes uninvited into my circle.”
“So you built that tree, then?” Crow said. “It's very nice work. And this grass, it's really very expertly done.”
The grip around his neck closed off his wind pipe. He struggled to breathe.
“I don't appreciate poor humor,” he said. He nodded, and the grip around Crow's throat gave up. He coughed.
Swan said, “We've only just arrived. We were following a tip that you would be here.”
Adam spat. “Impossible. There haven't been any birds out of the forest in two weeks.”
The dove and the magpie looked at each other, confused. Crow looked back at Adam and said, “But, the end only started five days ago.”
Adam looked at him closely, then nodded towards the bird on top of Crow. He removed his foot from the magpie's neck, and he stood up.
“What is that thing around you?” he asked.
“It's a harness,” Swan answered.
Adam let out a shriek. She went silent.
“What she said,” Crow responded.
Adam scoffed. “A harness for what?”
“My wings are broken.”
He said, “Show me.”
Crow sighed and made to spread his wings. The effort was more painful than it had been before, as they were considerably more torn now that they had been in use for nearly a week.
Adam examined them closely. “How did this happen to you?” he asked with little sympathy.
“I fell,” Crow said. “When the end started.”
Swan tilted her head and looked at Crow.
“No,” Adam said. “You didn't. If you had, you would be dead by now.”
“And yet here I am,” Crow said. “Look, there's obviously some sort of disconnect between us, because I know for a fact that we're telling the truth. Maybe you're suffering from some sort of delirium? It has only been five days.”
He looked at the other hawks and saw the expressions on their faces.
“It has only been five days, yes?”
Swan said, “You can't have been out here for two weeks!”
“Two weeks?” Adam said. “It's been nearly five.”
The gawked.
“Over a month?” Swan said. “But how-”
“You're lying,” Crow said.
“What reason would I have to lie, little bird?” Adam said.
“Because you're a highfalutin prick, that's why! You've sucked up on power and now-”
One of the hawks pecked at his neck, causing him to bleed. He stumbled backwards and looked towards his attacker.
“You snide bundle of feathers and filth, I-”
“You'll do what? Your wings don't even work right!” the attacker said, laughing. The other hawks joined. Adam remained silent.
“I think we should leave, Crow,” Swan said.
“And why is that, dove?” Adam said. “Are we starting to scare your timid little heart?”
“Technically you don't scare the heart-” Crow said before he received another peck.
Swan shushed him. “I'm not afraid of you, or your men, but I can tell that we're not wanted here.”
“It's passed that point, dove. Every bird out here reports to me, and that counts you, too.”
“What do you mean, every bird?” Swan said. “Listen, we're only just stopping here for a little while before we continue on our way. We wanted to warn you that the darkness is still coming, and if you stay here you're going to die.”
The hawks looked nervously at Adam, who glared at Swan. He started to laugh, and the others joined up.
“I've been watching the darkness, bird,” he said. “Every day I fly up as high as I can go to see if it is coming. It hasn't moved in weeks.”
“But we've been fleeing from it for five days and it hasn't stopped moving!” Swan shouted.
Adam said, “Maybe your size has limited your capacity for thought, eh dove?”
Swan shook her head. “Why stop here? What if the darkness starts moving again?”
He shrugged. “If it does, we have enough lead on it to move on. But here, we've got food.”
“What's stopping you from traveling farther East?”
“It's a dead wasteland out there, dove,” he said. “Nothing but corpses and snakes.”
“You know what else is out there, don't you?” she pleaded. “The home of the Watchers!”
Adam eyed her curiously for a moment. “So, what, you think we can march out into the desert and walk up to the Watchers' doorstep, ask them if maybe they'd stop the end of the world?”
Swan seemed deflated. “It's worth a shot, isn't it?”
“Most of us would die out there. And even if we made it, assuming the Watchers were so moved by our display of stubborn hope as to forgo the apocalypse, what would we do then? March back across the wastes to reap the benefits? It's suicide no matter how you look at it.”
“What other option is there?” she screamed. “Here, you're just waiting for death!”
Adam spat again. “I don't know who you are, but this conversation tires me.” He looked towards the other hawks. “Have her disciplined in all the intricacies of our organization. As for the magpie,” Adam said, gesturing towards Crow, “get rid of him.”
One of the hawks moved towards Crow, and Swan put her wings around him. A hawk pushed her down and severed the harness with its beak. They kicked at Crow, their talons digging out pieces of skin and drawing blood, as Swan pushed against them as hard as she could.
Then there came a deep, otherworldly rumble that shook the earth itself. The hawks stopped in their task and turned their heads West.
The dome of blackness, before only a speck on the horizon, was now all that they could see. The edges of it had, in fact, already reached into the glens. The land grew black, the air thin, and suddenly the wind was filled with the screams of thousands of animals.
Adam turned towards Swan and walked towards her violently.
“You brought this!” he shouted. “You're the messengers of death the raven told us about!”
Crow mumbled absentmindedly, “You are absolutely imbecilic, aren't you?”
Adam turned to attack him, but Swan leaped at him. She dug her beak into the hawk's neck and twisted as hard as she could. A spurt of blood stained her face and chest, and she grabbed Crow and started pulling him away as Adam stumbled backwards, a beak-sized hole where his throat used to be. Most of the other hawks had scattered, and as Adam fell onto his side, the rest did the same.
The ground shook more violently now as the entire animal kingdom stampeded away from the darkness. Swan saw creatures erupting from the great dome, tackling the animals and ripping into their flesh as it encroached on the glens at a horrifying speed. Her confusion was outweighed by her need to survive, and she dragged Crow as best she could.
It didn't seem to amount to much, however, as they were quickly passed by other animals that pushed and shoved her away from the now-unconscious Crow. A break came in the stampede and she looked out to find a herd of elk coming her way that would surely trample them both. She jumped onto Crow and latched her claws into his legs and flew up as hard as she could. To her own surprise, the ground lifted up, and though the strain was immense, it was not dissimilar from the strain she had felt flying with Crow in the harness. She couldn't keep it up for long, she knew, so she pushed as hard as she could away from the darkness.
Almost immediately, they were struck by other birds fleeing from it, paying no mind to the slow dove with extra baggage. They nearly knocked Crow from her grip, so she flew higher. She seemed only to find flocks of larger and larger birds, so she went higher and higher, until finally the sky was clear, and she looked down.
An alarming number of the animals had been consumed, so that now only a very small portion remained It was obvious that its rate of expansion was greater than that of the speed of the animals, and Swan watched with growing despair as they were all swallowed up.
The dome was below them now, and pushing farther outwards. Her wings were starting to give out, and though she pushed as hard as she could, she couldn't hold the two of them up any longer.
Against her will, she let go of Crow. She watched him drop with horror, and immediately folded in her wings and dove after him. The darkness grew closer and closer, and when she reached him, she put him above her and folded her wings around him as best she could.
She assumed this was the end, and whispered a goodbye to Crow, hoping she would meet him in Asthuria.
After a sickeningly long time, there was a horrible squelch, and the world went black.

13.
Swan opened her eyes, surprised to find that she wasn't dead.
Tentatively, she surveyed her surroundings. Her jaw dropped.
The world had become a rough negative of its previous state, the sky being pitch black and the trees being a light grey. The farther West she looked, however, the more disheartening it became. Just black. Whatever the origin of this darkness, it was dissolving the natural world into itself.
She looked around her to find Crow laying on his back, taking shallow breaths. She ran to him and looked around. Other animals lay writhing on the ground, tendrils of darkness growing upwards from the ground and piercing their sides. Some creatures broke away from them, and struggled outwards from the dome, but most collapsed and began to expand. The blackness soon eked out from every orifice, soaking back up into the ground, until all that was left was a worn skeleton wrapped in skin and fur.
This spectacle repeated infinitely in all directions, it seemed. A full grown deer roared up on its hind legs over the corpse of one of its foals, and the tendrils pierced through his knees. He collapsed, screaming curses at the darkness which were silenced when the tendrils forced their way through his mouth. He struggled and shook violently in place for a few moments before ceasing altogether. When the black leaked out of his ears, Swan turned away. But everywhere she looked, there it was; the end of life itself.
She grabbed hold of Crow and started to drag him once more, holding onto the hope that they could still escape, knowing that they couldn't. She watched the growing tendrils and dodged around them as best she could, crying and screaming as she pulled Crow behind her at a painfully slow pace.
And then she felt a tug, and turned back to find one of the tendrils piercing through a wound on Crow's neck. She lunged at it, but before she reached it, something strange happened.
Instead of bulging, it shrunk. Withered, it fell out of Crow's side. Not thinking twice, she grabbed him once more and continued to pull him away.
A creature reared its head and galloped towards them viciously and Swan ran as hard as she could. When she looked in front of her, she found the wall of the darkness to be impossibly close. It had been miles away not moments ago!
As the creature made to pounce on her, Swan pushed forward through the darkness, and fell forward.

14.
She felt blinded. She shielded her eyes from the sun and looked around.
Desert.
The silence was horrible, the only sound coming from wind stinging the dunes. She checked Crow to find him still breathing, and lifted herself into the air cautiously.
On the Westward horizon, she saw the darkness eating up the glens. It was miles away, and she watched it with horrified fascination. As she looked around, she saw a wide circle of corpses leading off from where she and Crow had landed. She touched down and shook her head.
How-
Before she could finish her thought, there came a growl from behind her, and she turned to see the blackened dog clenching its teeth. As it did so, many of them crumbled and fell out of its mouth. It lunged for them once more, and Swan dove as it collapsed on the sand. It turned back towards them, foaming at the mouth, but with its leg bones jutting out of its rib cage, it couldn't move an inch. Dove watched it, terrified, until finally it stopped moving, and she fell over into a fit of tears. She was shaking, holding back vomit.
Finally, she took a breath and sighed.
Somewhere in the wastes lay the home of the Watchers. It was a slim chance, but the only one she saw. She picked back up with dragging Crow, as there were no materials to make another harness, and pushed further East.
Towards the place of her origin.