Page 45 of A Thousand Burning Ravens

“That was also pointless,” Rhyland interjects with a shiver.

“So,” Callum resumes, “Bryar just turns around—that is when he got bit—and this . . . this explosion erupts from every inch of him, blasting the wolves into the sky.”

“Yeah,” Rhyland speaks again sarcastically, “and our feet out from underneath us.”

He begrudgingly rubs his hips, to which Bryar retorts, “But you are alive.”

In unison, Callum and Rhyland blurt: “Barely.”

Myla smiles slightly, despite the anxiety building in her chest as the details of the journey become more and more grim. Callum goes on to explain the force of the blast split their corner of the mountain completely off. At first, it seemed as though Bryar had only created a deep crevasse. But as the seconds passed, the mountain moaned beneath the weight of its shifting side, and the earth began swallowing the rubble, caving the side of the mountain in deeper, an ‘avalanche into the abyss’, as Rhyland dramatically described it.

Myla feels a shiver of awe as Callum leans closer to her, his eyes alight in amazement. “I swear to the gods, there is no human explanation for what happened, Myla. He was not just emitting fire—he was fire. And the blast he loosed, it was God-like.”

Myla looks to Bryar who seems completely disassociated from the conversation, his eyes fixed on the untouched meal before him.

Callum speaks, his words whispered now as though what he says next is a dark secret that should not be revealed. “There was this unbearably hot wave rushing off of him as he . . . stopped the avalanche. He stopped it. With fire. It melted the rocks and evaporated the snow. The entire side of that mountain is a slab of granite now.”

Myla’s eyes widen, wondering how that much power could come from one man.

Bryar stands suddenly, walking away. Myla moves to follow, but Rhyland stops her.

“Something about this has him out of sorts.” Both men look to each other, nodding in agreement. “He has not said a word all day. We have tried telling him that it was legendary. But he thinks it was a monstrosity.”

Callum interjects. “The only monstrous part was hiking out of that fucking gash in the side of the mountain. It took six hours to get out of it. He broke the Gods-damned mountain, and we had to claw our way out.”

Rhyland shakes his head, fiercely agreeing. “We were so deep inside the mountain at that point, I could not see the sun. And the heat—”

“Fuck the heat,” Callum interrupts, nearly spitting the words. “I never want to be warm again. Take me somewhere eternally freezing and leave me there. I will die a cheerful icicle.”

Myla sits dazed, looking over her shoulder to where Bryar stands. He looks out the window, absently chewing his thumb. His demeanor entirely rigid and numb. Myla presumes he must be in a state of shock. Deciding to give him a moment with his thoughts, she turns back to where her exhausted friends sit.

“What of the Seer? What did she say?”

Both men look defeated now, each exchanging wary gazes.

“We did not see her,” Callum confesses, smiling gratefully at Ethstan, who refills his tumbler. “And quite frankly, I do not think he did either.”

Myla is about to demand an explanation as hopeless sickening forms in her belly, but Rhyland speaks before she has any time for questions.

“We hiked four days up the side of that horrible mountain, only for Bryar to turn a dark corner and pop his head back around and tell us he saw her and it was time to go.” He holds up his hand, five fingers splayed. “Five seconds, Myla. I lost sight of that fucker for five seconds, and he had the audacity to tell me he saw the Seer already. Thing is . . . I turned the corner after him, and it was a dead end. No Seer. No where else to go.”

Myla’s brows turn in, forming a confused frown. “So, neither of you saw the Seer?” They both shake their heads and Callum shrugs, speaking with a mouthful of food. “He swears he did though.” They both turn to their meals, devouring the remainder of their plates in silence.

Thinking back to the day before, when she summoned the Spirit Mother, Myla recalls how the earth shook and the way smoke drifted from the back side of the mountain. Myla wonders if Bryar’s destruction of the mountain was the rumble she felt when she accidentally summoned the Goddess, not the Goddess arriving herself.

Myla has no sense of time at this point. It feels like hours since she woke from her horrific dream to find Bryar had returned, but as she looks past Bryar’s rigid shoulders, she sees it is still an inky black outside.

The bite marks gouging deep into Bryar’s shoulder are red and gnarled. His body tenses with each dab of the cloth, but he is silent, and for some reason, Myla is not sure what to say. She had envisioned an uncomfortable hike to the Seer and an uneventful gait back down the mountain. This is nothing like anything she could have ever fathomed, and it clearly weighs heavily on him.

Gentle strokes of the warm cloth begin to rub away the layers of blood and ash coating him from the neck up. The steaming water in the basin turns dark quickly, and a tinge of guilt probes at her, wondering how she could have been angry at him when he knew what was in store for them, and he chose to leave her behind and risk her wrath instead.

Wordlessly, Myla coats the wounds in a balm of crushed comfrey and calendula with beeswax before re-bandaging his shoulder in fresh linens. Once he is mended and dressed in fresh clothes, he turns to Myla, his tone stoic, bearing no hints of distress, a pretense Myla sees through.

“I am afraid I do not have clear answers from the Seer,” he confesses, sitting next to her, fidgeting with a belt he has yet to put on. “She said everything you need to overcome this is already within you, but that we will see ‘a thousand burning ravens’ as you defeat him.”

Myla tilts her head, wondering if she heard him right and she can not help but wonder what kind of nonsense ‘a thousand burning ravens’ is.

“The Spirit Mother came to see me,” Myla says, much to Bryar’s shock. He looks directly at her now, his face set firmly.