"I am fine. I don't need wings were I am going."
He murmured the words sleepily, his eyes unable to focus on exactly what Otulissa held in her talons. He was vaguely aware of the others, the dear members of the Chaw of Chaws, weeping and pleading with him to stay. He found it hard to form the next words, but he knew they were urgent, and they had to know… to know what he had seen gazing into the Ember in the last moments he held it… By instinct, Soren stooped even closer, and caught the king's dying whisper, "We…stopped the hagsfiends… but something else…something worse… is coming."
In the fiery light of the volcanoes, the owls remained around Coryn's crumpled body, interrupted in their grief by a messenger.
"The king is dead!" Soren replied lowly, blinking back tears and trying to hide his confusion.
The earth shuddered and bucked as the owls flew to the Hot Gates. Soren was silent, the wind stinging his eyes, but even through his tearful haze, he could see Otulissa watching him closely, her eyes questioning him. He landed on a ledge away from the others, followed moments later by Otulissa.
Her brows knitted together, her deep amber eyes filled with sorrow over the loss of her one-time pupil. "What did he say to you?" she finally asked.
Soren shook his head sadly, and replied, "That we didn't stop everything. Something… something even worse is still going to come into the world." Just saying out loud made his gizzard flinch, and he shuddered as an unnatural chill settled in his bones, despite the heated air around him.
The owls remained silent, even when the earth shook and the five volcanoes exploded all at once with an ear-bursting roar. As the sky turned to fire and owls fled through the gates in a rush of wings and panicked cries, the Chaw of Chaws remained perched on the Hot Gates.
"Tell no one," Otulissa whispered in his ear slit, "when it comes to it, we will do as we have to. As Coryn would have us do." Her eyes, though glistening with tears, seemed deadly in the moonlight. We've won the war, but another one looms, Soren thought, gazing out at the mist gathering on the horizon.
As a new constellation rose, he couldn't help but wonder what kind of evil could possibly be worse.