Wordcount: 719 words
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Summary: Omen explains what’s going on and it’s… not good.
NOTE: This is the first draft of a story, so it will most likely contain plot holes, retcons, and other inconsistencies. I’ll come back and fix things once the story (or arc) is complete!
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Meet the Enemy and He Is Us
“Bad feeling about this does not being to describe the feeling I am having.”
“If it makes you feel any better I feel the same way.”
“Not really, but thanks.”
“What is this thing we’re supposed to see?”
“Me.” And it walked from the shadows, picking its way down the hill is unnatural grace. Like the foxhawk it was a dual-natured beast, half cat half raven it hopped its way down to where they were sitting.
“You are the new thing?” May looked at it, you’re smaller than I expected.
“Not all of us were meant for war it countered. And I am not new, I am old, so very very old.”
“Then what’s the new thing.”
“You are.” It stopped before her, sitting and curling its tail nearly over inky black paws.
“No I am not,” she objected, “I am just a human.”
“You were.”
“”I -am-.”
Humans have futures, fates, probabilities.” It cocked its head to look at her with one red eye. “You have none of these. You have the future of a corpse Maybelle Smith, and yet you refuse to die.”
“I this is your idea of a joke, I am not laughing.”
“Neither am I,” it said mildly.
“She’s not dead,” Baron objected, but Omen said nothing. She turned to look at him.
“Say something, tell him he’s wrong, I am not dead, I am alive and I am just like everyone else, I am normal.”
“But you are not.” Omen said, looking down on the cat raven. “You’re alive, you’re human, but you’re not like everyone else. No one is. What he means is that you’re something more now, you have been something more ever since Baron gave you a choice you were not ever meant to have.”
“I don’t regret it!” snapped Baron
“I did not say you should.” Omen said mildly.
“So all of this, this whole war is because Baron saved my life. All these people, all these foxhawks, dead because you don’t like the fact that he cared enough to do something?” She was yelling down at the cat raven, who seemed unperturbed.
“Of course not.”
“Then why? What is all this for?”
“Because I am trying to end the worked and Omen is trying to save it.”
“That is not true,” Omen said mildly, “I am trying to keep things the way they are and he’s trying to change them. It’s not the end of the world, just the end of the status quo.”
“It sounds more dramatic my way.”
“Do you know each other?”
“We’ve known each other since this started, only I don’t get to go back to sleep between battles.” The crow raven frowned. “I am, here, awake, alive, living each day each hour and you just go back to sleep.”
Omen shrugged. “You chose the terms, I set the uses.”
“What are the terms?”
“We made things, both of us, and set those things loose on the world. Whoever prospers, wins. Only one society can dominate.”
“But I’ve never seen a fox raven before,” May objected, “how can you dominate anything?”
The cat raven laughed. “Oh no, no, I did not make this.” It flapped its wings. “I did not make this, silly creature, I made -you-.”
There was pause and May turned to Omen,
“What?”
“He made you and I made foxhawks. Things did not turn out quite the way we planned.”
Several thousand years of stalemate seems a bit more than ‘not quite’.
“So if we’re not fighting each other than who are we fighting?”
“You’re fighting me.” The cat raven had started to grow with each heartbeat getting slowly larger. The air around him began to crackle with tiny lightning that ran up and down his fur.
“But you’re on our side!” May objected
“Actually,” Omen interjected, “You’re not on anyone’s side. and we can’t have that.”
The golden was looking less and less fox light as he stood and moved to the cat ravens side. The two of them shifting slowly until they were of equal size and build. Two cat ravens starting across the cleaning at the small band.
“But you said you did not want time to die,” May objected.
“We do a love things we don’t want to do.”
And with that they attacked.
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