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Chapter 2

Raven's eyelids felt heavy.

He slowly blinked them open, and the world faded into view with a kaleidoscopic canvas of every soft shade of green. It seemed to be swaying slightly, warm rays of light glowing through what he could now identify as a leafy canopy. The faint smell of flowers lingered in ethereal zephyrs that carried a spiral of lazily drifting leaves and birds chirped in their lively, falsetto voices as the sun cast its warm glow over the earth, from the soft, lush grass he was lying on to the smooth, ivory trunks of the trees around him. With every soothing wave of a branch and every ribbon of peace that seemed to shimmer through the fresh scents of the efflorescent spring, he felt a thin blanket of tranquility settle on his mind. It was as if nature itself was breathing - he could feel every slow inhale, every gentle exhale. The placid lull of its harmony defended the onslaught of a harsh reality which rendered him lost.

"Good afternoon."

Immediately sitting up, Raven's eyes widened. A firm hand pushed him down.

"Calm down, you're not in danger", came the voice again.

It was clear and melodic; a voice he had never heard before, yet it sounded strangely familiar. Painfully familiar.

He lifted his head and felt a jolt of excruciating pain, momentarily paralysing him with its intensity. Gritting his teeth, Raven pushed himself up with one arm and almost roared in agony as he felt another burning sensation surge through his whole body.

A face swam into view; a pretty face with bright, green eyes and a very concerned expression.

"That's why I tried to stop you from sitting up, you really ought to rest a bit more."

That voice.

Seris...?

He was hit with a wave of searing pain yet once again.

"Are you alright? That arm is doing something to you, isn't it?" Seris asked, placing a hand behind his back in order to steady him.

Raven responded with a groan.

A series of images suddenly flashed before his eyes; fiery explosions, corpses sprawled on the gore-stained ground, Seris' face twisted with horror. Terrified, Raven smashed the foreign limb into the ground again and again, almost as if he was expecting it to snap off and reveal his arm, but the only progress he made was an angry cut that burst all the way up his shoulder and exploded with fresh blood.

"No...NO!" he screamed, holding up his left arm and staring at it in disbelief.

It consisted of stiff cords entwined together and encased with metal segments, starting from an armoured shoulder guard and ending at a sharp, claw-like structure in place of his hand. Not a single inch of human flesh was visible.

"I have no idea what happened before I found you, but that artificial limb is clearly new", Seris pointed out, seemingly unphased by his sudden outburst as she carefully applied more ointment to an oozing laceration on his shoulder.

Raven stared at her, gazing deep into the emerald eyes that he knew so well and loved so very much. She blinked several times and stared right back at him, raising an eyebrow.

"What? Am I wrong?"

The confused man grabbed her hand in his right one, leaning in and gazing at her face in a mixture of fear and wonder. "Is it...is it really you, Seris?"

She slipped her hand out of the man's grasp. "My name is Rena, not Seris. I heard you mutter that name a few times in your sleep though."

Looking her up and down, Raven realised that this woman was indeed not Seris. Her hair was straighter and tinted green rather than blonde, her face was more mature and beautiful rather than delicate, her eyes seemed to shine in a different light and she seemed to be...well, more endorsed in certain areas.

"I thought you were someone else."

Rena smiled at him warmly. "That's alright~ I'm guessing that she looks a lot like me?"

Raven turned his head away.

She gently patted his shoulder and stood up, gathering the array of ointments and bandages into a small, leather satchel. "You'll be fully healed in no time, you're holding up quite well."

"You're holding up quite well", Alex laughed, "I thought you'd have gone mad by now."

Raven snarled and beat his head against the unrelenting bars of his jail cell. "What did you do?"

His skull hit them again with a metallic thud.

"Why did you do this to me?"

His knuckles were clenched now, as if his body was preparing itself to strike Alex in a fit of rage. Yet he wouldn't give him that satisfaction of seeing his anger and helplessness. The traitor stood a few feet away, too far for Raven to reach through the sides of his cage, but close enough for him to smell the putrid stench of betrayal lingering on his former friend.

"Some...precautionary measures", the white-haired man chuckled darkly at his own joke, "Can't have a commoner commanding the Black Crows now, can we?."

"We were comrades!"

"Blood is thicker than water," he sneered, slamming the heavy, iron doors behind him.

"Get away from me!"

Raven scrambled away from Rena in terror as his eyes began glowing an unnatural shade of gold. His hair stood up on end like that of a threatened beast and a low, guttural sound escaped his throat.

"Calm down. The more agitated you get, the harder it is for you to control the arm," Rena hushed soothingly, holding her hands in front of her while slowly taking several steps back. The tortured man gripped his head with his claw, the acute pain in his mind far too intense for him to notice the mucilaginous droplets of dark blood trickling down his face. Raven could feel himself losing control over his body, losing control of his sanity, losing control of his own identity.

Trembling, he held his arm out and screwed his eyes shut as white-hot flames burst from his palm, disintegrating the nearby trees into clouds of ash in less than a second. He roared in agony and charged into a tree trunk, repeatedly slamming his head against the cracked bark. The trunk stained with dark smudges from his desperate attempts to obliterate the sinister being beginning to overtake his already waning lucidity.

"Stop! Please, stop!" yelled Rena.

He turned to her, unearthly eyes glaring at her with pure abhorrence.

"Alex. You took everything from me", the man snarled, baring his elongated fangs.

"Alex? Who-"

"I trusted you like a brother."

Rena desperately tried to find a sign of anything remotely human about him, but he was entirely consumed by the effect the cursed limb had on his being.

"Because of what you did to me, Seris died", he growled, clenching his claw into a dangerously sawtoothed fist.

Seris...that name again.

"Stop it. You can't let it take control of you so easily!" she demanded, trying hard not to let her voice crack.

Seris' body lay limp in the distance, a gory wound carved into her abdomen, exposed skin tattooed with crusts of blood. In the empty space between them, there was nothing but the echoes of his own thoughts ringing through his eardrums.

Don't you see? You were too good, too incorruptible, but your need for revenge killed her. Really...you only have yourself to blame.

Vengeful laughter cut the distance between them, the sight of her corpse replaced by the thought of a man with long, white hair twisted into a neat, flawless braid tied in place with a scarlet ribbon, back turned to him. Right that moment, this very man would be proudly stepping onto a podium in his silken military robes, making a speech that would inaugurate a new era in Velder.

His visions were ridden with chaos, flames engulfing his subconscious. His arm grasped at something, anything that would make this horrific nightmare end. He tried many times, grasping at thin air while the high-pitched whirring of machinery echoed throughout the sterilised room. The metal tips of his claw caught on a thin metal panel of some sort but his momentary victory was quenched as a blade twisted its tip into the tender sinew just below his shoulder. Raven heard only a reverberating buzz as his vision slowly faded to darkness.

Upon waking, Raven found himself sprawled on some kind of leafy bed with moonlight shining softly on his face. Grunting, he propped himself up so that he was leaning against the wall, a single bead of sweat rolling down his neck, soaking into his already drenched shirt. A movement in his peripheral view caught his attention and he glanced outside where the silhouette of a lone figure sat calmly on a nearby branch. Even though their head was turned away towards the night sky, he could tell it was her. Silently, he watched as she brought her knees to her chest, pressing her chin to her arms which she wrapped around her legs.

He remembered, with a bitter sort of ache in his chest, another girl who would sit by a window, staring into the distance dreamily, not really seeing what was before her eyes.

Rena began to rock herself gently, seemingly unaffected by that fact that she might fall off the branch at any moment. Her arm caught the soft glow of the moonlight and Raven was affronted with the view of angry scratch marks criss-crossing up her forearm. From where he was, he could make out that the skin around it had turned a nasty shade of mauve and that she also had a considerable amount of shallow but inflamed cuts on her cheek. Though it took him a few moments, his body seemed to act on its own accord once realisation dawned upon his thoughts, choosing to endure the pain in order to walk over and join her. As he reached the doorway of what seemed to be a shelter nestled in the bough of an enormous tree, it became apparent to Raven that he could not get across to where she was sitting unless he wanted to plummet to the forest floor which seemed a little too far away for his liking. However, his presence seemed to have distracted her from her thoughts, for she looked up, her detached expression morphing into a guarded cheerfulness almost instantly. It was her eyes that gave away the worry and something, maybe sympathy, that she intended to keep from him.

"Hello to you too. It's good to see that you're up, I was starting to think you wouldn't wake for a few more days," she greeted.

"What happened?"

"Hmm? You went unconscious again."

"No, to your arms and your face."

Rena sighed, knowing from his tone that it wasn't a question, but a demand for an explanation as to why she had not heeded his initial attempts to distance herself from him. As much as she wished to, she knew it wouldn't be right to lie to him.

"You snapped and went a bit wild", she answered evenly.

"So why didn't you run away?"

Her brow furrowed slightly. "Why would I?"

"I'm a deranged monster and I've killed an innumerable amount of Velder citizens. I might snap any minute and attack you again, and I'll possibly end up killing you this time."

"You're not a monster."

The man narrowed his eyes.

Rena crossed her arms in front of her and stared him down. He looked away awkwardly.

"What?" he grumbled.

"You're not a monster", she stated firmly.

He scoffed and returned into the shelter, Rena nimbly leaping onto the roofed wooden platform to follow him.

"What's your name?"

"Raven."

The green-haired lady held out her hand and smiled warmly, "Nice to meet you, Raven."

He nodded and shook her hand firmly with his calloused one. "Nice to meet you too, Rena."

They caught each other's eyes for a second before Raven awkwardly took a step back and pointed at the mattress of leaves he had been lying on when he woke up. It was the only item on the floor of mismatched wooden planks tied together staunchly by ropes, and the only item in the whole makeshift shelter aside from Rena's small leather satchel of supplies.

"This is the only bed right?" he asked while looking away.
"Yeah, I built this quaint little shelter for myself not too long ago. It's a good hideout and the forest patrol squads will never find it", Rena beamed, patting the wall proudly. "Wasn't really expecting any visitors though."

Raven edged to the small opening that served as a window and peered over the sill cautiously. "You're not worried about falling down?"

"Nope. Us elves are born and raised in the forest," Rena replied.

He raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly, having heard enough stories about the long-eared fey to be able to believe that. "Alright. Well, you take the bed, the floor is fine for me."
"You haven't even fully recovered yet, you need to sleep comfortably," the woman suggested in concern.

"No, I'll take the floor thanks."
"It's okay, you should take the bed."

"Floor please."

"Bed." Rena challenged him with a stern glare.

"...Okay, seems like I have no other choice," Raven submitted, the hint of danger in the lady's tone suggesting that he shouldn't dare think of doing otherwise.

She winked, "Good. I'll be taking first watch tonight, I'll wake you up in a few hours!" she announced brightly.

Raven sighed in defeat as he watched her nimbly bound from the door to the lookout branch she was sitting on before. He noticed the ease at which she moved through the tree limbs and how she was completely unphased by their height above ground, clearly making her claim to have lived in the forest for her entire life credible.

Having completed her shift of the night watch, Rena mentally bade the moon farewell like an old friend and entered the shelter to wake Raven for his turn. The first thing she noticed was that his bed was empty.

The next thing she noticed was a lump with shaggy black hair muttering and snoring away on the floor in the corner of her room.