Page 28 of Blood Red Woes

The black bird sits on the house across the street, staring at me still. He followed me from house to house, only this time, he brought some friends with him. And by friends, I mean there’s at least fifty crows watching me from the house across the way. Some sit on the roof’s stone slats, while others had gathered in the house’s wide-open, glassless windows. All have bright red eyes, and all of them are watching me.

“Uh…” I hear a squawk behind me, and I whirl around to see that the house I just walked out of is also lined with crows. Normally, I’d say they don’t scare me. They’re just silly birds, the size of my hands put together, so not even that large.

But there’s a lot of them, and they’re all watching me like they want to peck away at my skin and pull me apart. Definitely afflicted.

“I would either find shelter or prepare for a fight,” Rune advises.

Moving away from the house, I step to the center of the dirt road. “I’m not running from birds,” I mutter with a frown. “Even if there are a lot of them.” I twirl around and shout to the birds, “Well? Aren’t you going to attack me now? Come on! Give me your best shot.”

“Rey, I don’t think antagonizing them is good idea.”

“What do you know? You’re just a tattoo.”

At my insult, he sighs heavily into my mind, but he quiets. Good. At least he’s starting to realize he can’t persuade me to run if I don’t want to run. If I want to fight, by God, I’m going to fucking fight.

None of the birds move. A cloud passes over me, but I ignore it, too focused on the birds. “Hello?” I ask as my hands clench into fists. “If you’re hungry, why don’t you come at me already?” There might be a lot of them, but I can handle them. I’m pretty good at this magic stuff, so I think I can handle a flock of maniacal birds.

The same cloud passes over me again—and that’s when I realize it’s not a cloud. It’s another bird. And this one is much, much larger than the crows surrounding me. I look up and squint to see the bird circling me in the air. It lets out an otherworldly squawk before diving down. I have to jump back to avoid it.

It lands on the dirt with a thud, right where I was standing a few seconds ago. It shakes its feathers and flaps its wings twice before tucking them in and looking at me.

The only thing I can say when I see it is “Holy fuck.”

It’s another crow, but it’s five feet tall. Its talons are bigger than my fingers, and its beak is stained with red, sharp enough that it could tear me limb from limb and peck out my insideswith little effort on its part. Its eyes are focused on me, a cloudy, blood red hue.

The only thing, other than the eyes and the size, that is off about the bird is that the scaly skin that makes up its feet is full of scabbed-over wounds, old sores that never truly healed.

Did the plague make this crow huge, or was it already huge before? Do I even want to know the answer? Because if a crow can be gigantic, so can a dog. Or a wolf. Or a bear. God, the last thing I need to stumble across is a bear the size of a wooly mammoth.

Suddenly I’m not so gung-ho about fighting, and I take a step back. It watches me, cocking its head at me. Maybe it’ll let me go.

A wistful thought, and a wrong one, because right as I think it, it spreads its wings and lets out the worst shriek I’ve ever heard. It rings through the air at such a high pitch that my eardrums hurt.

And it riles up the other birds, of course.

The birds around me scatter. They fill the air, all squawking and frenzied. The air around me turns into a crazed cacophony of noise and feathers, and some of them swoop for me. Rune throws up a defensive shield reflexively, and the smaller birds ping right off it like raindrops on a newly-waxed car.

The giant bird in front of me flaps its wings and lifts itself in the air to join the fray.

I can see the birds through the sizzling golden shield, and I summon a small ball of magic and throw it in the air. It doesn’t hit anything, so I do it again with the same result. Balls and bolts aren’t going to do much here—and I realize now that single-strike magic was the only kind of magic that I practiced on my way here, besides my magical surfboard.

Shit.

The birds swarm me, and the large one swoops down. Its claws dig into the shield, and I can see its power waning. Itphases in and out of reality, and Rune grunts out, “Rey, now would be the time to act!”

So I do. I try more balls of glowing magic, only to no avail. The large crow shrieks and pulls back, flying high in the sky while the smaller birds continue to swarm me. I’m not worried about the shield giving in for the smaller ones. Another attack from big mamma, and I might be shit out of luck.

“I can’t hit any of them,” I mutter with a grunt.

“Then perhaps you need to go about this another way.”

“Another way? How—” It’s as I’m asking that I look at the shield around me. An idea occurs, due in no small part to the shield itself. “I have an idea.” I lift a hand and set it on the shield’s inner curve, feeling the magic crackle under my touch.

Rune says, “Whatever you’re going to do, you best do it fast.”

I look up and see the large crow angling itself in the air, about to divebomb me again. Magic is magic. There’s no limit to what you can do, right?

Right. Now is not the time to get in my head about it. Now is the time for action.

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