As the Crow Falls | ✔

Chapter Thirty-Three

It was no wonder that in all the decades since the Catastrophe, no person in the Ring of Thirty had ever found Dinah. Niccola followed her silently as they moved deeper and deeper into the Talakova: farther, Niccola was sure, than any person alive today had ever ventured. The sky dimmed as the canopy thickened, rising ever higher over land that sloped down into the great bowl that swallowed all waterways in the Ring of Thirty. The Talakova was deeper than its outside dimensions would suggest. A crow could fly across the top of it in the span of half a moon, but as far as the best minds in the realms could tell, one that dropped from a tree in the middle would be lost to a time distortion that made the forest's depths as good as infinite, and would never be seen again.

Dinah murmured incantations while she walked. Niccola both did and did not want to know what those were for.

With the closing of the canopy, all sense of time's passing disappeared. Dinah procured a lantern from somewhere and lit it, casting a fragile sphere of light about them as the darkness thickened. Things with tendrils like vegetative spiderweb replaced plants on the forest floor. The crunch of leaves underfoot was gone. So too were the bird songs, frog calls, and insect trills that enlivened those brighter areas, but the silence here was no less alive. It was a breathing kind of silence, shifting and full of unseen things, unheard sounds, and presences that seemed to brush against Niccola's skin without ever touching her. The heavy smell of damp, moss, and rotting wood hung in the air.

And it was cold. Far colder than the forest's edge, and only growing more so the deeper they went. With the air so damp, Niccola was soon beset by a bone-deep chill, which gripped her with teeth that neither clothing nor the warmth of exertion seemed able to fend off. She gathered her skirts about her. Cutting their swish was only half the purpose. Frills of dark fungi now lurked around logs or trees, and she did not want to brush against them.

Niccola had no sense of how long they had been walking when Dinah finally lowered the lantern. They stepped out into a clearing that seemed to have materialized only when they reached it, and Niccola's whole world disappeared as a shriek rang out from its other side.

A familiar figure leaped up at the base of a tree. "Niccola!"

"Phoebe!"

Dinah did not intervene as Niccola nearly tripped herself running to her sister. Phoebe fell into her arms, sobbing hysterically.

"Are you hurt?" demanded Niccola. "Did she hurt you?"

Phoebe shook her head, incoherent. She was bound to the tree behind her, cuffed at the ankle and tethered by a length of chain. And she was not alone. Closer now, Niccola realized the forest behind her sister was dotted with other people, similarly chained. A rekindled hatred began to heat the cold that had permeated Niccola's body.

"How long have these people been here?" she murmured to her sister.

"She keeps taking them away."

"How often?"

"Every five days, I think? Sometimes sooner, if she's asking for other favors from the Talaks."

A six-to-one distortion. Five days would be every Crow Moon, confirming that Dinah's magic now required a death's worth of blood each moon. That aligned perfectly with how little she had aged when compared to how long she had been missing. It also meant Phoebe had been here for more than a moon, even in deep-forest time.

"I tried to escape," said Phoebe, with a hiccup that turned back into tears as she spoke. "But she talks to the Talaks, and they don't let me leave. She's..." Her breath shuddered. "She's sacrificed everyone else, except me. And then she finds more people, and sacrifices them, too. Niccola, you have to stop her."