Work Text:
Crow’s Empire
Once I ambled through the battleground, the theatre of war, laid eyes on two crows with feathers midnight-like.Grating cawing, their beady eyes followed every move I made, inquired one of me:
“Brother mine, where will you lead us today?
See the soldier lying in the trench, underneath the barbed wire with crashed skull staring into the sky.
His blood is cloaking the soil in crimson, in the dust it is equal to the fiend’s, tell me, will they not all become dust?
Brother mine, this the feast of the Crow’s Empire, tell, what does the Coal Emperor wail into the wind?”
I watched the sun paint shadows on the ground, felt the feather wrap me gentle in the darkness’ hold, the crows’ wheezing cackling following my core here and there.
Once I wandered through the battlefield, surveyed the bloodbath and counted all my fallen brothers.
Day by day we marched with our rifles held high, left and right I saw my brothers die.
They had told us as they had told our ancestors, who leaves for the Crow’s Empire will never find his way back and we only had laughed. So young and naïve, so full of misguided pride, thought we could storm into the Coal Emperor’s empire, slay the shadow swallowing the land and return in glory. These days I know why their eyes were full of pity whilst they watched us leaving, already sending notices of our deaths to our beloveds at home.
The crow’s empire was so desolated and waste the first time we laid our gaze on it, dead trees towering like skeletons above us with barren branches stretching into the always misty air. And the crows, they shrouded the sky in blackness which not even a few of the pitiful rays of sunshine could puncture. But what frightened us the most was the wailing coming from the obsidian tower in the middle of the desert, all of the birds were flying toward it, their mighty wings creating howling winds in the sky.
‘Welcome to the Crow’s Empire’, they whispered in our ears, ‘were just the cursed ones linger’
Once I flew over a battlefield, took in the lifeless corpses littering the ground and listened to the crows’ song. He was holding me in a tight grip, his coal wings cutting through the air and I could hear him muttering, telling me about the past, the present and the future, his all-seeing eyes so knowing.
His words haunt me, turning louder and louder, a wail in the storm of dark wings.
We were running when he came to me the first time, the first time outside one of my dreams, filled with darkness and dread. Just a heartbeat long could I make out his coal-coloured silhouette, reaching I tried to grasp onto the image, wanted to burn it into my mind to never forget it and to listen, to listen to the song he sung, the melody so melancholic, so hopeless, wanted to comfort him. The Colonel gripped me, shook me and yelled into my ears, abruptly the longing to be with him passed and then all I heard was the eerie screeching of him, the emperor who nearly enchanted me.
‘Don’t listen to his song’, the Colonel had said, ‘this is how the crows are born, they followed his song and now they are lost, whatever you do, don’t follow him’
Once I dreamed a battlefield, overheard the crows’ singing, watched their leaders grotesque smile on his feathered face, saw him waiting, beckoning me to his embrace, softly singing with his unearthly voice. And I was lost, wandered over my brothers’ corpses, felt the blood stain me crimson and still I felt the longing to belong to him.
Crow feathers sprouted from me and just like that I was flying hidden over the desert, felt his laugh resonate in the air and then his voice, so soft, so gentle, whispering in my ear.
‘Bequeath you my crow feather, pledge to me your love and remember of it when you hold it in your hand, dearest son of mine’
There were always muttered assumptions about what happened to the soldiers before us. The most likely solution was the one nearly everyone believed, that they got lost in this never ending war, lost themselves to the Coal Emperor and became his nightmarish children.
‘He gives them his token, you know’, one brother told us, ‘just a feather, nothing more’
‘But there are so many crows, a feather can come from any of the beasts’, another had laughed.
‘No,’, the Colonel had told us in a silent voice, ‘no crow ever loses a feather, the only way to get one is to be gifted with one’
And I had been so dull, so slow, had not hidden the silken feather from the sight.
‘Crow brother’, they had called, ‘demon you’
‘Brother mine,’ they had called, ‘flee now, he waits for you’
My newly sprouted wings had taken me faster than the wind to him, my beloved father.
‘Welcome, dearest son of mine’
Once I had ambled trough the battleground, had laid eyes on two crows with feathers midnight-like. Grating cawing, their beady eyes had followed every move I had made, had inquired one of me:
“Brother mine, where will you lead us today?”
Slowly twisting, feather sprouting could they see my shadow stretching, gentlest darkness enfolding us, hoping that you will listen, hearken our song, for you will come to us.
Let’s tear open the hero’s chest,
Death is just a lust for us,
Uncover the bare bones,
And witness how from our song arose,
The soldiers’ meaning and purpose