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Moniker: @obrian-of-the-surface-world

Book Title: Excavatia: From Dust Arise (Book 1 of the Excavatia Series)
Audio Link: Chapter 8 – The Hill of Skulls – Scene 6 (Watchers in the Woods)
Duration: 3 minutes 43 seconds

Text: Words: (399)

Large, yellow-rimmed eyes watched, almost unblinkingly from the cover of the trees surrounding the property belonging to Begglar.  A light breeze brushed through the mane of the tall, dense foliage, but failed to comb out the tangled and twisted, heart beating beneath a feathered half-human breast.  It’s face was a dappled greyish-pink, fixed into a scowl, scored with the lapping shorelines of ages of waiting.  Her large black talons dug vise-like into the lacerated branch that held her weight.  Her shanks were covered in hammered metal collars that bore a wickedly sharp barb, arched downward, so that it would not cut her when she nested.  The metal bands, however, bore a red-dust, that made her powerful, thick claws appear bloodied, though they were presently dried.  The creature was quite pleased with the effect.

A susurration of wind stirred and sway the treetops covering her low warbling chirrups, as she both hummed and cackled at the oblivious gathering of the people below.  She craned her ruffled neck, spotting her sister perched three trees away to the south.

“They’ve come together, at last,” she observed. “From shore to sea.  The keeper of the Inn appears to be with them. Where to? Where to? Next things.  Always next things.”

The shadowy feathered sister’s head bobbed in agreement, answering.  “Girls going east, they are. But the company lingers.  Wagon’s being loaded. Me thinks, they proceed to The Sacred Hill.  Shall we fly to the stone-halled king?”

“Wait and see,” the first one bid her, “Wait and see.”

Her aquiline nose sniffed the breeze blowing to the clap of thousands of tiny leafed-cymbals.  She could smell the salty brine of the sea upon its drafts, coming from the eastern horizon, and sense the degree of chill beginning to bite, and the air pressure drop in a slow but steady decline.  A storm was coming.  The girls were riding away into a sea-borne storm. And the others, unwittingly into a storm of steel and blades.  The Xarmnians were coming for them.  An hour, maybe more and they would ride abreast through the hamlet of Crowe, and seize this party of interlopers and end whatever hope and intentions that had brought them here.  She couldn’t help but chuckle a little.  Such gullible simpletons, these full-men had become.  She was amazed that she had ever entertained the deep desires to become like them once again.