This is what I'm referring too every time you see me doing 22 push-ups, squats, dips, whatever. Nobody should be struggling or fighting their demons alone. @Yooper_Viking @MiyagiVibe @Visionary2222 @MegaRem3d @x_WitchyMama_x @RTTheDeafGuy @PotW3ll97 @GhostxLabs @ThatFknGuy4420 @ZendigoPlayz @blackfox87fps @KooterBomb @DonovanJFlygare @Bexxy__19 @Toxicsnipes23 September is the month everyone supposedly talks about this. But I've not seen many if any at all and thats not okay. #WolfWithin# #22ADay#

THE PATH UNTO THE KING - PART II WHAT THE CROWS REMEMBER There are memories which fade. There are memories which haunt. And there are memories so grievous that Time itself seems unwilling to touch them. For more than a thousand years... I had prayed this one would die with me. It did not. The fire stood between us. Bexxy watched beneath the crooked crown Gerald had fashioned for her. Kitten remained beside her, still clutching that ridiculous walnut as though creation itself depended upon its survival. Above us... the Murder waited. Hundreds of black shapes clung silently to the trees. Some of those eyes... I remembered when they were human. I looked toward Gerald. “Attend the King.” He descended into Bexxy's open palm. “Dante.” Tap. “Attend the Keeper.” Kitten frowned. “The what?” “You will understand.” “I don't particularly like the way you said that.” “I'd be worried if you did.” Dante settled gently into her hand. I knelt beside the fire. “You asked why Gerald is afraid.” Bexxy nodded. “Then do not look at me.” I looked toward my oldest friends. “Look at them.” Gerald met Bexxy's eyes. Dante met Kitten's. And I began speaking words I had not uttered aloud in centuries. Harsh old syllables fashioned by men accustomed to salt, iron, winter, and gods mankind has long since abandoned. Another voice joined mine. Then another. Then dozens. Men dead a thousand years began chanting around us. Other voices followed. Older voices belonging to the people of this land. Different tongues. Different gods. Different worlds. Slowly... the two chants became one. The fire twisted. The forest grew shorter. And memory became flesh. Sunlight. Woodsmoke. Children laughing beside a river. A continent before its familiar names. Before roads wounded the earth and wires scarred the heavens. Beyond the settlement stood strangers. Men carrying iron. Men who had crossed an ocean which should have killed them. Bexxy noticed one first. Broad-shouldered. Bearded. Laughing. Someone called to him. The man turned. Hmmm. Bexxy stopped breathing. “Gerald...?” Human. Beside him stood another. Quiet. Watching. Remembering. Dante. Then they saw me. Kitten whispered: “Oh...” Looking precisely as I did beside the fire. A thousand years had passed. Though my face wouldn't show it. Then came the screaming. Warriors descended upon the settlement. Whatever grievance brought them there has mercifully been swallowed by history. We strangers had no place in their war. Then one of my brothers saw a child in danger. He moved. Gerald followed. Dante drew iron. And I followed them. Perhaps everything began with that single, profoundly human decision: “Not my people” was insufficient reason to let a child die. Three peoples bled beneath the same indifferent sun. Then one of ours fell. His blood touched the earth. And the world became silent. Wind. River. Birdsong. Gone. Blood crawled sideways through the soil... toward the forest. An elder saw it and screamed. Then the earth inhaled. Once. Twice. Three times. Something beneath us had awakened. What emerged from those woods I cannot describe. Bexxy remembered impossible height. Kitten remembered vastness beneath the earth. Gerald remembered another shape. Dante another. The memory itself refused to agree upon what it had witnessed. Men who had been killing one another moments earlier lowered their weapons. No treaty was signed. No forgiveness offered. They simply looked upon something infinitely worse than one another... and understood. Whatever we had been before that moment, we were human now. And humanity was losing. The Old Keepers uncovered a stone buried beneath the settlement. Time had gnawed its edges smooth, yet two figures remained with dreadful clarity. The Key. And beneath it... a man bearing wings which no man was born to possess. The figure knelt. His back opened beneath those terrible wings. My brother stared at it. Not brother by blood. Brother by that older bond forged between men who repeatedly survive things which should have killed them. “Jager.” “No.” His fingers traced the carving. “I know that shape.” I knew it too. Gods save me. I knew it. Behind us, men screamed. Children fled. The Thing drew closer. My brother seized my arm. “Ask me.” “I will not.” “Brother.” “No.” He pressed his forehead against mine. His eyes were wet. Yet... he smiled. “Ask me.” My voice broke. “You understand what this requires?” “Yes.” “You will die.” “I know.” He looked toward the fleeing children. Then back at me. “Ask me.” And so... I did. “Do you give yourself willingly?” His eyes never left mine. “I do.” Then he squeezed my shoulder. “Remember me.” I wish he had asked anything else. A young woman stepped forward from among the Old Keepers. Blood ran from her brow. Around her neck hung a single feather. We shared no language. No gods. No history. She touched the feather. Then the symbol carved upon the stone. The Key. Her hand moved toward my brother. Toward those dreadful wings. Then... toward me. I understood. She knew how to close the door. I knew the terrible shape required to close it. Neither people possessed the whole answer. Together, we did. Our voices rose. Hers in the tongue of this land. Mine in the language of men from across the sea. At first the chants fought one another. Then somehow... they found the same rhythm. My brother knelt. And I began. I will not burden another soul with every detail of what my hands were required to do. It is enough to say that when I finished... my brother wore the wings carved upon the stone. His opened ribs formed their dreadful span. His lungs rested across them like the crimson wings of some profane angel. And I... his brother... had put them there. I remember the blood upon my hands. I remember Gerald turning away. I remember begging forgiveness long after my brother could no longer grant it. Dante never looked away. Of course he didn't. The Archivist remembers. The Old Keepers cried their ancient words. My brothers answered. The young Keeper seized my trembling hand. The feather rested between our palms. Together... we turned a Key possessing no lock. And creation screamed. The Thing did not die. It went... away. Into some impossible direction beneath the world for which mankind possesses no word. The wound closed. The Blood was accepted. The Key endured. And morning came. Among the dead, former enemies tended one another. A Norseman carried water to an Indigenous elder. A warrior bound the wounds of a man he had arrived intending to kill. A child slept safely among strangers. Humanity had remembered something. If only for a day. The young Keeper placed her hand against my chest. Then hers. Then gestured toward the sealed earth. No parchment. No signatures. No common tongue. Yet the promise was unmistakable. When the darkness returns, we stand together. The Old Agreement. But prisons require guards. Gerald stepped forward. Dante followed. Then the others. Every surviving brother who had crossed that damned ocean beside me. “No.” Gerald smiled. “You have given enough.” He shook his head. Then placed his hand upon my chest. “You remember.” The Old Keepers began chanting. And I understood. “Gerald...” My friend looked at me for the final time as a man. His eyes were wet. So were mine. He tilted his head. Hmmm. Despite everything... I laughed. “That is your final wisdom?” Gerald shrugged. Then the rite took them. Men became shadows. Shadows became feathers. Human voices rose into the morning... and returned as the cries of crows. I called their names. Every one. I remember every one. When it ended, Gerald stood before me. Small. Black. Impossible. I fell to my knees. He climbed into my hand and pressed his feathered head against my chest. Hmmm. Something inside me broke. Dante landed upon my shoulder. Tap. The first. Somehow... I understood. Remember. Then they flew away. For one dreadful moment... I thought that was their goodbye. Gerald returned. A twig rested in his beak. He dropped it at my feet. Dante came next. Another twig. Then another crow. And another. Leaves. Grass. Vine. One miserable dead leaf. And there, beneath a morning sky which had witnessed the end of one world, men who had possessed hands only moments before attempted to weave using beak and talon. It collapsed. They began again. Again. Again. That was when I wept. Not when Gerald surrendered his human face. Not when Dante's voice became the tapping of a beak. But watching my brothers, deprived even of hands... trying desperately to make me a crown. Eventually Gerald stepped backward. Before him rested a crude circlet of crooked branches and dying leaves. I laughed through my tears. “It is hideous.” Hmmm. “Yes. I know you tried.” Gerald took the Crown within his beak. He rose... and placed it upon my head. Then he bowed. Dante followed. One by one, the others lowered themselves until the earth before me had become black with crows. There had been no Crown upon the stone. No prophecy had demanded one. No Old Keeper had spoken of a King. Gerald had. The Crown never meant dominion. It meant duty. Memory. The one condemned to remain when everyone else was gone. And beneath a sky blackened by the wings of men I had once called brothers... the First King was made. Years became decades. The first Keeper became my friend. She aged. I did not. Eventually, I sat beside an old woman whom I still remembered standing bloodied beside me at the end of the world. She removed the feather from around her neck. Placed it into my hand. I shook my head. “No.” She smiled. “Until another.” Her fingers closed mine around it. “Until another, King.” Before morning... she died. Gerald remained. Dante remained. And I... remained. The vision shattered. Fire. Forest. Night. Bexxy gasped. Kitten fell to her knees. Gerald remained in Bexxy's trembling hand. Dante sat silently within Kitten's. Bexxy stared at Gerald. Tears ran freely down her face. “That was you.” Hmmm. She laughed through the tears. “You've always done that?” Hmmm. Then she pulled him against her chest. Gerald let her. Kitten stared at Dante. “You remembered all of it?” Tap. “All this time?” Tap. She gently closed her hands around him. For perhaps the first time in a thousand years... the Archivist was permitted to stop watching. Only for a moment. Bexxy touched the crooked Crown upon her head. “Gerald...” He looked up. “You remembered.” Hmmm. I looked at the sticks. The leaves. The terrible craftsmanship. “He made yours better.” Bexxy looked at me. “What?” “Mine had a dead leaf.” She reached upward... and pulled a dead leaf from hers. Silence. Gerald looked at me. I looked at Gerald. A thousand years... and some things apparently refused to change. Kitten noticed the necklace around my throat. “The feather?” I removed it. Placed it into her palm beside the walnut. “The walnut was never the Key.” Her head snapped toward Gerald. “YOU THREATENED MY TOE OVER A WALNUT?!” Gerald: Hmmm. “The walnut was the test.” I closed Kitten's fingers around the feather. “This is the promise.” “What bird?” “Passenger pigeon.” “There were once billions.” Kitten frowned. “Once?” I nodded. “Mankind has always possessed a peculiar talent, Keeper.” “For what?” “Mistaking abundance for permanence.” Bexxy looked toward Gerald. “You made me King.” Hmmm. “Why me?” I expected Gerald to look toward the Crown. He didn't. He looked toward her home. My blood went cold. “Gerald?” Nothing. Then I understood. “You chose her before the Crown.” Hmmm. “Before the Candle.” Hmmm. I stood. “You weren't watching her.” Gerald lowered his head. Dante did the same. “What did you find?” Bexxy's expression hardened. “What are you talking about?” Words spoken by the first Keeper near the end of her life returned to me. Words I had carried for centuries without understanding. I looked at Bexxy. “King...do you have a child?” Everything about her changed. “Why?” I knew immediately what she feared. “No.” My answer came sharply enough that even Gerald looked toward me. “Whatever thought just entered your mind, bury it.” I stepped closer. “The child owes us nothing. No blood. No Crown. No sacrifice.” Bexxy said nothing. “The Old Keepers spoke of one who would come when the Crown returned without blood.” And finally... I remembered. Born of the world that forgot, yet known by those condemned to remember. No debt shall bind the child. No blood shall purchase the child. For what was sealed by sacrifice...may yet be ended by innocence. Bexxy stared at me. “What happens to the child?” “Nothing.” Immediately. “Nothing happens to the child.” I looked toward the ancient earth. “The child is not another sacrifice.” Then toward her. “The child may be the reason there never needs to be another.” Silence. And suddenly... the spoon. The walnuts. The watching. The Crown. The dungeon. The Candle. Every absurd step of Gerald's campaign assembled itself into one terrible whole. I looked at him. “You knew.” Gerald watched me. “From the beginning?” Slowly... he nodded. Gerald had not stumbled upon Bexxy. He had found her. After a thousand years of searching, he had sensed something around that house the darkness could not quite touch. So he watched. He tested. And somewhere along the way discovered something he had perhaps not expected. The mother. A woman who befriended crows. Who protected those she loved. Who, when presented with the ancient arithmetic of sacrificing the few to preserve the many... refused. Find another way. Gerald had not merely found the Child. He had found a King willing to end the cycle which had created us. For a thousand years, I believed the Old Agreement demanded sacrifice. My brother's life. Gerald's humanity. Dante's voice. The Keeper's mortality. My eternity. But perhaps... we had misunderstood. The sacrifice had never been the Agreement. The Agreement was what came afterward. Enemies tending one another. Strangers protecting children. People with different languages, histories, and gods deciding that none of those differences mattered more than keeping one another alive. I looked toward the new King. The new Keeper. My oldest friends. And somewhere beyond us... a child who owed ancient monsters absolutely nothing. Bexxy placed the Crown upon her head. Kitten closed her hand around the feather. Gerald flew to his King's shoulder. Dante settled beside the Keeper. And I... the last remnant of the first Agreement... stood before the new one. For more than a thousand years, I had carried the memory because someone had to. I had crossed kingdoms. Watched nations rise from wilderness and return to dust. Buried friends. Buried enemies. Buried every Keeper who came after the first. And waited. For Gerald. For the Crown. For her. At last... my journey was finished. I looked at Bexxy. “The Old Agreement began with strangers choosing to stand together.” She regarded me quietly. “And now?” I smiled. For once, there was nothing left for me to teach. Nothing left for Gerald to test. Nothing left for Dante to reveal. The Crown had returned. The Keeper carried the Promise. And somewhere nearby existed something none of us ancient fools had possessed when this nightmare began: a future unburdened by our past. I bowed my head. Not deeply. Just enough. The First King... to the next. “Now, King?” Gerald became still. Dante lowered his head. The Murder waited. I looked into her eyes. “Now you decide what happens next.” And with that... The Path Unto the King, a journey I have made and described so many a countless times; now possibly will be my last. #CrowLady#

THE PATH UNTO THE KING - PART I: THROUGH WOODS THAT REMEMBER Dante came for me shortly before dusk. No stone. No feather. No dreadful little relic dredged from whatever forgotten archive Gerald had entrusted to him. He merely waited upon the branch outside my window. Watching. I already knew. “So.” I fastened my coat. “The King has been tested.” Tap. I stopped. There are moments when a single sound may bear the weight of centuries. This was one. “And?” Dante said nothing. Of course. “Insufferable little bastard.” He flew. I followed. The woods received us reluctantly. There are forests which welcome the traveler beneath green boughs and birdsong. This was not such a place. The deeper Dante led me, the more the trees seemed to gather inward, their ancient limbs entwining overhead like the crooked fingers of drowned men reaching toward one another through black water. The evening light withered. Roots rose from the earth like petrified veins. And beneath my boots... the soil felt warm. I remembered when it had done that before. I wished I didn't. Dante moved from branch to branch. Never far ahead. Never looking back. He knew I would follow. That irritated me. “Your General remains an arrogant prick.” Tap. “Yes, I know he can hear me.” Somewhere impossibly far away, or perhaps terribly near; Hmmm. I stopped. Dante did not. “Fuck you too, Gerald.” The forest swallowed my words. We continued. Night descended without ceremony. Eventually we reached a clearing where a single dead tree stood against the heavens. Upon its branches hung strips of black cloth. They moved despite the absence of wind. I stopped. Dante landed above me. “No.” Tap. “I remember this place.” Two taps. My stomach tightened. “No, Dante.” Three. The bark bore markings. Most had been softened by centuries of rain. Some... had not. I touched one. A Crown. Crooked. Primitive. Familiar. And beneath it, names. Dozens of them. Some I remembered. Some I had tried very hard to forget. Kings. Not all had worn the Crown well. The newest carving remained unfinished. I withdrew my hand. “So Gerald brought her here.” Tap. Of course he had. Then I noticed the candle. Unlit. Waiting beneath the tree. And suddenly I understood what trial our dear General had chosen. “The Crow and the Candle.” Dante lowered his head. For the first time that evening... I laughed. Not from amusement. From disbelief. “That miserable old story?” Tap. “He always did enjoy theatrics.” Tap. Then Dante became still. His head turned toward the darkness. Far away, something moved beneath the earth. THUMP. The trees shivered. Another. THUMP. Then, THUMP. Three. Always fucking three. The candle ignited. And upon the earth before me, my shadow stretched toward the east. Toward the King. Dante's feathers rose. Then came something worse. A voice. Ancient. Starving. Too distant for words. Yet I knew the cadence. I had heard that voice when mountains wore different names. When maps still ended in monsters. When men crossed oceans believing the gods watched from above... and discovered too late that something older had been watching from below. I closed my eyes. “You've awakened.” The earth answered. THUMP. “Unfortunate.” Dante suddenly struck the branch. Tap. Tap. Tap. I looked up. “What?” Another sequence followed. Fast. Urgent. Crow Law. Words I had not heard spoken with such haste in centuries. THE KING HAS ANSWERED. My amusement vanished. “How?” Dante tapped again. I listened. And slowly... I understood. Gerald had presented the old arithmetic. One life. For many. The King had refused. I stared at Dante. “She would choose none?” Tap. “She challenged the lesson?” Tap. “And when Gerald pressed her?” Dante struck once. Yes. I looked toward the east. Something old stirred inside me. Not fear. Not yet. Hope was considerably more dangerous. “What did she tell him?” Dante hesitated. Then scratched three words into the damp earth. ANOTHER. FUCKING. WAY. I stared. Then laughed. Actually laughed. “Of course she did.” Dante watched me. But there remained one question. One that mattered more than all the others. My voice became quiet. “When she refused... did Gerald remain?” One tap. I closed my eyes. For a moment I saw neither crow nor forest. I saw a man. An old friend standing beneath a sun that belonged to another age. Gerald had remained. Then the King had passed. Whatever Gerald had sought... he had found it. “Very well.” I resumed walking. Dante followed. Hours passed strangely thereafter. The forest became increasingly unfamiliar. Not because I had never seen it. Because I had. Long ago. Trees stood where trees should not. A creek crossed our path three times despite flowing in only one direction. Once, I glimpsed figures walking parallel to us through the woods. Men. Bearded. Bloodied. Carrying iron. I did not look again. The dead become terribly needy when acknowledged. Eventually Dante landed upon my shoulder. Ahead... firelight. Faint. Flickering between the trees. Voices. Two women. And crows. Hundreds of them. I stopped. For longer than I care to admit. A thousand years I had waited for this moment. A thousand years carrying an Agreement whose words had outlived kingdoms, gods, languages, and every man who had first sworn it. Somewhere ahead stood the one Gerald had chosen. The new King. I should have felt relief. Instead... I was afraid. Dante tapped softly beside my ear. Once. I nodded. “I know.” We walked toward the fire. Then Gerald appeared. A black shape descending from the trees. He landed upon a branch between us. For the first time in centuries... we regarded one another beneath the same moon. Neither of us moved. Gerald tilted his head. Older than nations. Older than every grave containing men who once knew his true name. I smiled. “Hello, old friend.” Gerald's feathers shifted. Hmmm. Behind him, two figures turned toward the sound. Bexxy. Kitten. I could not yet see their faces clearly. But I saw the Crown. That ridiculous collection of crooked sticks silhouetted against the fire. And something inside me went terribly still. Gerald lowered his head. Not submission. Recognition. Dante flew from my shoulder and landed beside him. General and Archivist. Together again. I stepped into the dim reach of the firelight. Bexxy stared. Kitten stared. I looked first toward the scarred crows gathered among the branches. Survivors. Some I recognized. God help me. Some recognized me. Then I looked at Gerald. Finally... the King. “So.” Bexxy's hand drifted toward her crown. “Who the fuck are you?” I ignored the question. My eyes remained upon Gerald. “This is the one?” Hmmm. “The one who refused the Candle?” Gerald nodded. I looked at Bexxy again. A stranger. A King. Perhaps... an ending. And despite every instinct accumulated across a millennium telling me otherwise; I smiled. “Good.” Silence. Kitten looked between Gerald and me. “Oh, fuck this.” Reasonable. Bexxy stepped forward. “You know my General?” I looked at Gerald. For the briefest instant, beneath those sable feathers, I remembered the face of the man he had once been. “Yes.” “How?” There are questions whose answers belong to conversation. Others belong to confession. This one belonged to neither. I looked toward the fire. Then at the King. Then at the walnut clenched in the hand of the woman beside her. The Keeper. Gerald had truly done it. After all these centuries... he had found them both. I breathed deeply. “Gerald.” Hmmm. “Attend your King.” His feathers rose. Bexxy frowned. I turned toward Dante. “And you, old friend...” Tap. “Attend the Keeper.” Kitten looked at the walnut. Then at Dante. Then at me. “The fucking what?” I walked toward the fire. There would be time for questions. There would be time for fear. And soon enough... there would be time for truth. But some stories are too old to be told. Some horrors become lies the moment mankind attempts to contain them within words. And what happened beneath these lands a thousand years ago deserved something considerably more terrible than explanation. It deserved remembrance. I knelt beside the flames. “Come, then.” The crows descended. “Let me show you why Gerald is afraid.” #CrowLady#

THE CROW AT MY WINDOW - PART II: THE OLD AGREEMENT I did not sleep last night. Not because Dante returned. He did not. And somehow, his absence troubled me more than his presence ever had. For three nights that sable emissary had haunted my window, motionless beneath the sickly pallor of the moon; a black blemish upon the glass which seemed less a bird than some fragment of the outer darkness given feathers and purpose. But last night the branch stood empty. The woods beyond it were terribly still. Not peaceful. Expectant. It was precisely midnight when the first sound came. Tap. My eyes opened. Tap. I sat upright. Then, Tap. Three. Always fucking three. I looked toward the window. Nothing. Only my own pale reflection staring back from the glass. Then came another sound. THUMP. Beneath me. The floor trembled. THUMP. Something in the walls groaned. Then, THUMP. Silence returned. But it was no longer an empty silence. Something had filled it. There are moments when the human mind perceives a thing before reason permits us to understand it. Some ancestral faculty, older than language, whispers: Do not look. I did not look. I made coffee instead. Some horrors deserve caffeine. At 3:17, Dante returned. He appeared upon the sill without sound. Behind him, others had gathered. Three upon the roof. Two upon the fence. None moved. None cried. Their multitude of black eyes were fixed not upon me... but upon the earth. Dante carried something. I opened the window. “Bit fucking late for correspondence.” He released it into my palm. A stone. Small. Black. And horribly cold. Not the coldness of winter. This was the cold of deep places untouched by sunlight; of forgotten crypts and buried things upon whose graves mankind had unknowingly built its little cities. Upon it had been carved a crown. Crooked. Primitive. Bexxy's crown. My heart sank. “No.” Dante lowered his beak. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound awakened something within my memory. Something I had spent years starving. “I said no.” Again. Tap. Tap. Tap. I turned the stone. There were markings upon its reverse. At first they appeared meaningless; wretched little angles and crooked lines whose geometry seemed somehow offensive to the eye. Then I remembered how to read them. God forgive me. THE CROWN HAS RETURNED. For several moments I could only stare. The spoon. The walnuts. The watching murder. The dungeon. The coronation. Dear Bexxy believed herself the victim of an increasingly elaborate conspiracy orchestrated by one remarkably vindictive crow. She was wrong. Gerald had not been conspiring. Gerald had been preparing. “Goddammit, Gerald.” Dante bowed. Then, THUMP. Every crow outside lowered its head. My amusement vanished. The sound had not come merely from beneath the floor. It had come from somewhere beneath beneath; from some impossible depth for which distance ceased having useful meaning. And worse... something about it felt familiar. I looked toward Dante. “The Agreement?” Tap. Yes. A single strike. Cold recognition crawled through me. “Still binding?” Tap. Fuck. I looked again upon that crooked crown. “How long?” Dante did not answer. Instead, he turned east. Toward Bexxy. And understanding came upon me not as revelation, but remembrance. The old stories had never spoken of a King. They spoke of the return of one. Crowns rot. Kings die. Generals are replaced. But the office... the office remains. And beneath our houses, beneath our roads, beneath every comfortable little monument mankind erects to convince itself that the earth belongs to us; older things remember. I closed my hand around the stone. “Tell Gerald I'll honor the Agreement.” Tap. “But Dante...” He stopped. “If he's awakened what I think he has...” Something scratched beneath the floor. Slowly. Not like claws. Like something enormous dragging itself against the underside of the world. Then came three faint knocks. Tap. Tap. Tap. Dante recoiled. That frightened me more than anything. Because until that moment I had believed the tapping belonged to the crows. I had been wrong. Perhaps the crows had merely learned to answer it. I looked at Dante. He looked at me. Neither of us spoke. We did not need to. Gerald had crowned Bexxy. Kitten had received the walnut. The murder had gathered. And somewhere beneath my dear friend's home, something ancient had recognized its King. But now... something beneath mine had recognized me. Dante opened his wings. “Tell our dear King,” I whispered, “that Gerald's war did not begin beneath her house.” The crow paused. “No.” I looked down toward the darkness beneath my feet. “Tell her nothing.” Dante departed. The night swallowed him so completely that for one dreadful instant I wondered whether there had ever been a bird there at all. Then I noticed something upon the sill. Three words had been scratched into the wood. Not by Dante. The marks came from the inside. PHASE ONE COMPLETE. I stared at them for a very long time. Then somewhere beyond the trees, or beneath them, or perhaps from that immeasurable gulf of black earth separating mankind from whatever dreams below; came a sound. Low. Ancient. Familiar. Hmmm. I closed my eyes. “Gerald, you feathered son of a bitch.” So. Bexxy has her crown. Kitten has her walnut. Gerald has his army. And Dante? Dante has come to remind me of something I had prayed time itself might forget. The Old Agreement has been invoked. And somewhere in the dark... something has answered.

THE CROW AT MY WINDOW - PART I: DANTE Three nights ago, a crow appeared outside my window. Those acquainted with the increasingly profane affairs of my dear friend Bexxy may understand why this disturbed me. Gerald. Of course, I thanked the old bastard. Perhaps that was my first mistake. Perhaps it was merely the first mistake you witnessed. For while Bexxy has spent her days negotiating with feathered brigands, receiving crowns of dead leaves and crooked twigs, appointing Generals, and discovering that Gerald apparently maintains a fucking dungeon beneath the earth... I have been watching. Not Gerald. The pattern. There are patterns one recognizes because they are familiar. Others cause some ancient, half-buried thing within the mind to stir some miserable remembrance entombed so deeply we mistook its silence for death. I knew this pattern. God help me. I knew it. The crow returned the following evening. Same window. Same branch. Same dreadful silence. He sat beneath the pallid moon, blacker than the darkness surrounding him, as though some small piece of the abyss had torn itself free and grown feathers. He did not caw. He did not hmmm. That particular obscenity belongs solely to Gerald. Instead, his beak touched the glass. Tap. Tap. Silence. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap. I froze. Then came another sequence. And another. Slow. Deliberate. Patient. For the first time since Gerald sent the little bastard to my window; I was afraid. Not because the crow was speaking. But because I understood him. There are languages learned from books. Others whispered by our mothers. And then there are those acquired only after wandering too far into places wiser men avoid... after agreeing to things; better left unagreed to. Crow Law belongs to the latter. I opened the window. The night entered first, smelling of wet earth and something strangely old. The crow repeated himself. Slower. Every strike awakened another fragment of something I had buried long ago. And when he stopped... I knew his name. “Dante.” The crow bowed his head. My stomach sank. Gerald had not merely sent a watcher. He had sent someone with a name. And under Crow Law... a name freely given is never an introduction. It is a summons. I looked beyond him into the starless dark. Somewhere beneath that same night, Bexxy believed she had stumbled into something new. A stolen spoon. A walnut. A crown. A General. A King. A dungeon. She had seen the pieces. She had not yet seen what they formed. Poor Bexxy. Dear Bexxy. Gerald hadn't begun anything. He had resumed it. Dante shifted upon the sill. “Tell our dear General I remember the old agreement.” Dante remained still. Then: Tap. Tap. Tap. I smiled. “No, old friend. Not yet.” His wings opened, swallowing the moonlight and casting across my room a shadow which bore no resemblance whatsoever to that of a bird. Then he was gone. Consumed by the night. I remained at the window, wondering how much Gerald had told his newly crowned King. Probably nothing. That would be like him. But if Gerald has crowned another King... then the old agreement still stands. Something buried has awakened. Something unfinished moves again. And God help us; the crows are riding once more. Then something sounded beyond the trees. Low. Distant. Almost mistaken for wind. Almost. I had heard it before. Long ago. And somewhere in that impossible darkness, the General remembered me too. "Hmmm." I heard it, fading softly into the wind as it crept deeper into the chambers of what once was a sane mind; now rot.