Post by Arrowbid on Aug 22, 2007 18:24:46 GMT -5
Nevermore
Wynd flew high above the earth, looking down on the world as he streaked past. The land whizzed by in a blur, but with his dragon eyes he could make out the landscape. The lush greenery of the forest and its light soon became more and more dispersed and a fog rolled over the land. Though the trees didn’t disappear altogether they were instead replaced with tall pines. As the fog and mist rolled in it made the landscape harder to make out, so he tilted the crest of his wings forward and descended closer to the land. Wynd’s shadow grew larger upon the ground; and closer, the earth appeared to jump into life. He let his legs dangle to slow his cut through the wind, and tears stopped streaming from his eyes. Slowing above the ground he hovered, flapped his wings and blinked.
The temperature is getting colder, he thought. Wynd shook himself and craned his neck against the bracing wind; and looked up to a dazzling light as he saw the sun set in the distance. As it went down over the rim of the planet, it cast a fiery array of reds, oranges and yellows. The colors glowed softly on the fog, and against the red sky the scattered pines appeared jet black. Wynd marveled at the scenery but still wondering why he hadn’t heard or seen a single living thing. So he dove past the tree tops and into the fog.
The land below its shield of mist was devoid of life, and the tree tops vanished in the haze. All that was visible of the skinny pines were their trunks that dotted the flat prairie. Wynd twisted around, avoiding the trunks and flowed low and swiftly over the scarred earth. As he looked around another crow darted past him and disappeared as it flew up out of the barrier. He ignored the bird and flew on. Wynd sailed the air silently for another couple minutes or so, looking around himself and sniffing the air in search of food. As he carried on he noticed one smell in particular seemed to be growing slowly stronger. The winds were with him and it was coming from behind. Wynd sniffed the air a few more times, and his head followed his nose. He turned his neck against the forceful wind and opened his mouth to let the scent flow in. It was the smell of carrion… of death and it was growing. Pumping his wings harder he moved faster across the flat land avoiding the trees as he went. Until a great thunder of cawing and flapping wings began to roar in his ears. Black clouds of crows and ravens materialized out of the mist. The cloud shifted and spiked as the scavengers flapped their dirty wings. They crowed and screeched at Wynd, chasing him tirelessly. He tried to rise out of the fog but was stopped as he flew straight into a small coppice of pines. The wind suddenly jolted and shifted throwing him back and slowing him, giving the birds a chance to catch up. They weaved and careened around the pines as they swiftly convened, growing closer and closer. One dashed forward and pecked its sharp beak at his eyes. Wynd slit the foul thing open with a lash of teeth. Then they were all upon him, pecking clawing and screeching in his face. Wynd snarled and bellowed, he burst fire but the birds merely scattered and then regrouped when the flame faded. Turning and spinning leaving streaks of fog behind them wherever they flew. Wynd dashed back and forth, side to side, avoiding the trunks of the trees trying to protect his wings. But those too were soon under siege as his whole body was shrouded in the black bodies. The fog weighed heavily on his shoulders whereas the birds sifted through it with ease. Wynd looked about himself for options, seeing none he lashed out and flared his sharp canines. He caught one, then two more in his huge jaw and ripped them to shreds. The remains of the bodies fell behind them and disappeared into the fog. But the sheer number of the birds was incomprehensible, and no matter how many he tore at there were thousands more waiting.
As Wynd swatted and singed the black pests he noticed their attacks were becoming more and more infrequent. He decapitated a few more of them and the rest slowed up. “Good, now maybe we’re getting somewhere” Wynd smirked, feeling a sense of completion and blasted fire into the air to warn them off. But instead they followed closely behind and darted around his onslaughts of conflagration. In the cool mist the fire danced but burnt out quickly fading into wisps and curls of blue smoking tendrils, thus doing little to worry the birds. Wynd snarled and surged forward leaving the ravens and crows far behind and wished through the fog. When he could no longer hear anything, save for the rush of the wind in his ears, he looked behind himself. He wondered if the birds were still pursuing him and glanced back one last time, he spotted the birds far in the distance. They were flapping slowly against the breeze. Suddenly they all panicked screaming and turned straight up, rising out of the fog until he could no longer see them. He looked up through the wall of mist, following the giant crow’s flight with his ears. Their caws echoed ahead slowly turning to screeching until the sounds of the birds suddenly ceased not twenty feet away. He turned his head forward cutting through the wind once more and looked above himself in horror, black feathers and blood were pouring down far ahead seemingly out of nowhere. Wynd couldn’t turn around at the speed he was going less he break his neck, so he threw his great wings down in a fury launching him straight into the sky. He pumped as hard as he could; trying to stop his cut forward, but his zenith was far out of reach. With the sudden change of angle he stalled, and fell. His body flipped over in the air with his tail trailing and his legs and wings scraped against something sharp.
Wynd yelled and pulled his legs back, tucking them close to his body, and tried to open his wings. They wavered at first until the wind flooded into them and unfolded them like sails. With the wing membrane outstretched, he slowed his descent and grappled with whatever had scraped his legs earlier. Crescent talons sheered against rock as he saved his fall. Wynd grabbed onto a sharp rock and heaved himself upward out of the fog, only to find himself sitting on the ledge of a giant wall. The rock seemed sharpened by water and wind, an ancient sea perhaps had once flowed through the valley, carving out the barrier with its tides. It was a sheer cliff, raised straight out of the ground, its sides seemed sharp as glass as it had rocks jutting out everywhere about its surface. Even a bird could not make it over this thing, being hidden by the fog. One would fly straight into it and die before they ever knew what happened. This was proven with the mangled bodies of the otherworldly crows and red eyed birds that were now skewered on the cliff face. Still, some like himself made it, and even now were circling upward over the cliff. “What is going on with these stupid birds? Haven’t we always respected each other? Haven’t we sworn never to hunt the eagle or the raven? Even if I were starving I wouldn’t dare kill an eagle.” The birds were circling higher now and seemed as specks against the blue sky, and then one by one they passed over the cliff and disappeared from view, paying no mind to their fallen comrades. Wynd heaved himself off the ledge to follow after them, ignoring his bleeding hands and wings. He circled effortlessly up into the air, rising on the updrafts of morning, and glided over the golden cliff face.
On the other side of the rocks it was much warmer and had an air of desert about it. The birds were missing from view, save the smallest specks against the red and gold cloudless sky. With dawn came the warm morning updrafts, and Wynd needn’t circle in the sky to rise as the drafts carried him straight up the cliff, like a child that had freed their kite. With a few wing strokes he glided effortlessly, and his shadow rippled over the dunes of the plateau that now stretched out before him. The sheer cliff face created a boundary between completely different lands. It was a huge desert and when Wynd stared far off into the distance he could see that the wind only raised the dunes higher into the sky, and the sage and dried trees shriveled away. The heat swelled as he glided deeper into the desert, he carried on and swerved away from the dunes as they grew higher, sticking along the edge of the plateau. The sage and desert bush grew denser along the plateau edge, a few large black birds and red eyed creatures flew and darted far below him. When he flew over a small sand dune the bush parted, forming a path. Wynd let himself drop a little lower to the earth, and he flew over the path. Upon closer examination he saw two thin wheel strips placed in the sand. “What is a wagon road doing out in a desert?”
The sand path veered out of the small pocket of desert trees and rose up to the top of a dune. The path went straight on over the dune and as Wynd followed it the sand on the top blew away the trail and made the path lost in the desert, and the scent was brushed away as well. But not as much so that Wynd couldn’t see the footprints and the fresh wagon wheel trail, or smell the scent that rose on the warm dry air. “Horses...”
The shoed hoof prints looked clumsily set as the wind blew them away, camels were always better suited for the loose sand and desert breezes. Their feet worked like snowshoes on the sand and their humps stored fat for making water. Yet as he was so hungry Wynd didn’t question it and didn’t mind having something as odd as a wagon horse for a meal. So he glided up over the mountainous rippling mounds of sand and followed the areas that were displaced by the horse and wagon trail. Higher he rose with each passing breeze, so much so that the dunes opened up like a giant ocean of golden waves and his shadow miles below, danced and rippled over the desert. The trail mainly kept averse from the dunes sides and stayed on its crescent ridge. As Wynd sailed on he failed to notice the carcasses and skeletons that were strewn and hidden in the course desert bush or the feasting crows and dragons prints. Far mountain ranges swelled up like waves from the blue sea as the trail led further into the plateau. The ground grew more uneven as stone jutted from the ground, and Wynd flew into the mountain range.
The trail turned to stone and cut through the mountain like an army of dwarves had carved it out. Tunnels branched out connecting to the trail and Wynd could see shining stones and carts hanging out on their tracks. Gold and gems were flung here and there like a great uprising had caused the whole group of miners to turn heel and flee. The wagon trail ran into a tunnel at the base of a cliff and a great mountain rose up in front of Wynd.
“What in the world could cause something like a human to abandon all those gems? They’re the greediest things I’ve ever seen! Some dumb prince would give up his life to take a few coins from a dragon’s trove, what little they have. What price of greed could be worse then that?”
Wynd sailed over the mountain and evergreen pines, clear out of the highlands and desert. He rushed through streams of blue clouds, and a pungent smell hit him square in the face. Wynd licked his chops as the smell of blood hit him, and he dove out of the clouds and over the mountain.