Three chapters in three days. I'm on a roll, although this one's a bit shorter than its predecessors. Again, I'm in sore need of a beta, in case anyone out there has time they'd be willing to spare.

"These are useless," Diaval grunted, dragging at the worn leather boot he was trying to pull onto his fat, flat, hideous feet. What were these even feet good for? He couldn't even hold a stick with the first two toes, much less the entire appendage. How did humans get by with such idiotic things to walk on? It made no sense.

She made no comment. His new mistress stood off a ways, leaning against a tree and gazing off silently into the distance. Towards the castle, near as he could tell. He was fairly certain she'd heard him, judging by how loud he'd spoken and her occasional responses to other things he had said, but this was not something she deemed worthy to comment on. It left Diaval feeling a bit put out, to go through so much trouble and not receive as much as a thank you, but he couldn't very well say that out loud; it was bad enough that she'd asked––no ordered––that he bathe in one of the she-farmers' buckets of water, and then that she'd tossed the billowy black clothes at him with the expectation that he put them on, of all things, but this… these boots were simply ridiculous. Heavy and cumbersome, with no discernable value; he would have thought them to be some sort of cage for his feet, until he realized that human feet couldn't do anything anyway. In that light, his entire body was a cage of sorts; he was weighty and bulky, not at all nimble and not nearly as beautiful as he was supposed to be. And no wings! That was the worst of it.

"How do humans do it?" he asked, more to the air between them than to his mistress directly. "They can't even fly."

The chill on his back was instant, crawling under his skin as she lay her eyes on him. He looked up, and he was met with the same deep, unfeeling eyes. They unnerved him, those eyes; even the most stupid of beasts had open eyes. Eyes reflected what was inside, what one thought and wanted. Humans and Fair Folk spoke with words, but beasts had no words. Only eyes, which were almost like words, amongst each other. Humans and Fair Folk spoke with their eyes too. They were supposed to, at least. But her eyes were like stone, unchanged, even as she seemed to be attempting a glare. Her attempt didn't work. Her eyes remained empty, and it left Diaval uneasy to look at her and see nothing of what lay underneath. It was irritating.

Her not-quite-a-glare made him wonder if he had done something wrong, but he couldn't find it in himself to be truly afraid of her, not when her face was so hollow. And so he didn't look down or avert his eyes; if he had done something wrong, she would have to say it out loud. He held her gaze unflinchingly, cocking his head and waiting for an explanation.

None came. No reprimand, no acknowledgement that he had erred. An empty look, and then his mistress turned away.

"Your form is temporary," she said, settling back to stare at the castle again.

He perked up. "How temporary?"

"Enough to tell you what I need. You are of no use to me on the ground."

Diaval blinked. She had already told him what she needed. "You need me to be your wings."

She didn't even look back at him. "Put your shoes on." And that was the end of that.

Diaval returned to his infernal task in silence, and in time managed to wrestle the thing onto his foot. The second boot was vastly easier once he knew what to do, although the strings at the top remained a mystery to him. He pulled the strings tight and tied them to keep out of the way, then pulled on the grubby black traveling cloak they'd managed to filch from the scarecrow. It had belonged to one of the farmers who was much larger than Diaval, but the raven couldn't help but feel as if it was too small. Phantom feathers wanted to burst free of the sleeves, but it wasn't real; his mistress had taken his feathers away, and so he had to wait and endure the irritation and ugliness of a human shape until she decided otherwise.

He stood to signal to her that he was finished. Again, there was absolutely no change in her posture to suggest that she was even aware of it––even though she soon turned, without glancing at him, and began walking away from the farm.

Diaval followed, and it was when her back turned that he saw the blood.

Old, clotted straight into the back of her robe, the blood was black and crusted and stretched inside the cloth, which was itself slashed by two massive gaps over her shoulder blades. Under the gaps, Diaval caught the briefest glimpses of scabbed and cracking skin, enough to form two visible bumps under the material. That was also when Diaval noticed that when she walked, she walked in pain; she leaned heavily on her warped black staff, bent slightly forward, presumably to escape the pain of her back. Two slashes, made recently. And by the look of it, they were also burned.

His mistress turned and glanced at him over her shoulder, and her glare almost felt like a physical strike; it was suddenly not empty, not at all. The once-blank eyes were suddenly all fire and hot iron and aggression and hate, and he blinked in surprise. Where had those eyes come from?

He had been staring, he realized. Her eyes were commanding him to stop.

Diaval cast his gaze down obediently, although his curiosity now fluttered within him like a thousand aggravated moths. She returned to watching the path in front of them, and he hesitantly caught up to her shoulder, where he would not be tempted to stare at her back.

"Where are we going, Mistress?" the raven asked, trying not to sound intimidated.

"You are going to the castle." The way she said it made it clear he was going alone. "You are to find someone and report back to me."

"Who?"

"His name is…" She choked on nothing, then swallowed and took a breath. "St… Stef… an." She lowered her head and closed her eyes, grimacing with effort. "Stefan. You are looking for… Stefan."

Stefan. "What's he look like?"

"Brown hair. Blue eyes. Large hands." Her words seemed to leave her breathless.

"What do you want me to learn, Mistress?"

"Everything. Where he is. What he's doing. Why."

"For how long? When am I to return?"

"You are to take as long as needed. I want everything."

If he was a raven, he would have shuffled his feet. "And where will you be, Mistress? Where do I go when I'm done?"

"The ruins to the north, do you know them?"

"Where you were last night?"

She glanced at him, eyes now half-sparking was a dull, deadened curiosity. "You were that bird, then."

"Aye."

She gave the barest hint of a nod. "That is where I'll be. Now go."

She raised a hand, golden magic swirling at her fingertips.

Into a raven.

Constructive criticism is always appreciated. Also, quick note: I might be bending the canon a bit in the next chapter, since I hardly think Diaval could have possibly gotten all the information he needs in the ten seconds he spent watching the coronation before reporting back to Maleficent in the movie. I'll do my best to keep it from dragging out, since I don't imagine Diaval has ever spied before, but I'll be adding in some bits to make it a bit more than it was in-canon.