Ravenfell Chronicles: Origins

by Brand J. Alexander

  That was another gift Dorga’s father gave him. He taught him the effect beliefs could have on the minds of people who trusted you. And in this gift, he far surpassed his father. It wasn’t because he was better than his father in this sort of manipulation. It was simply that Dorga was the only one who understood the knowledge should be used. When the old man lectured him about the duty of those who held the secrets of death and the power their words have upon the people they serve, he meant it as a warning to his son. A0t the age of eighteen, young Dorga could only see the kind of power such knowledge could grant.

  After that, Dorga’s respect for his great shaman father faded quickly. He wasn’t great. How could he be? He had the key to power, and he refused to use it. The people of the village were always cruel to Dorga growing up. He was weird. He was the son of the man who played with the dead. Dorga always accepted it as his place in the world and his lot in life. Then, his father revealed to him the power they had to wield yet refused.

  The image of his father was broken. They didn’t have to live like this. The only reason they did was that his father was weak. The villagers needed the shaman to send their spirits across. They should be worshipping us, Dorga thought. It was one more way in which he didn’t fit the man his father wanted him to be. The disappointment in his father’s eyes when he suggested they use this secret to rule was the final break between them.

  Dorga only made it another season apprenticing under his father because of that revelation. He could hardly look at him after that. He told his father it was because he feared the face of death too much. But, in truth, he feared to become weak and enslaved to the villagers like the supposedly great shaman. He wanted to wield his heritage for power. His father suspected those ambitions in him. After Dorga’s slip, his father never delved as deeply into the forbidden secrets during their lessons. Their relationship was forever broken. The only reason he’d returned now was to take up the mantle and power his father denied him so long ago.

  The portent of his certain death made his father more understanding, more willing to overlook the past. So, when Dorga returned, he was ready to play the part of a regretful son and learn every secret left to be learned. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time left. The old man was finally dead. Dorga was the shaman now. And the power he was promised was near at hand. He just had to convince these simpletons to believe in him.

  This goal, however, was turning out to be much easier than he’d hoped. The raven provided Dorga with the ultimate outlet for the people’s fury. Better yet, it provided him with an excuse as to why he couldn’t perform the miracles his father always could.

  The raven was the reason. The raven was the enemy. That was always the best go-to excuse for any charlatan unable to produce the results of the true mystics. In the years since leaving his home, Dorga went on a journey to study their ways. He learned how to maintain power when the magic you wield is merely a façade. And now, when faced with the same frequent problems most witchly conmen encounter, Dorga merely turned to the most foolproof option available, scapegoating.

  The stones flew. The anger of the villagers swelled in crescendo, their protests against the foul bird echoing across the rough patchwork of mud huts and lean-tos. The failure of Dorga was forgotten as a new subject was unveiled for them to lay the blame for their many complaints and frustrations.

  However, giving simpletons something to blame was the easy part. The hardest and most important matter was to get those you stirred to anger to appoint you their chosen leader against the new enemy. And the best way to get that was to provide a miracle.

  Dorga understood the dangers he faced today. When he received his father’s summons this morning, he expected to arrive to a sickly old man near his last breath. He thought he’d have time to prepare or decide to flee. Instead, his father’s preparedness trapped him into this encounter, as the villagers saw everything in place as a sign that the ritual was about to begin.

  Dorga was still not altogether certain whether that was the intent of it or not. His father certainly understood what would be resting on Dorga’s shoulders once he passed. Failure in front of these savages could end with Dorga ripped apart or burned alive if he didn’t prove himself worthy. Was that what his father intended all along? Was his notice of death merely a trap? There was such a void between the two, Dorga truly had no way of knowing for sure. He learned through his life to expect the worst of people.

  None of it mattered, however. The old shaman was dead, and Dorga came prepared for any contingency. The raven was a convenient target, with a timely appearance, but a conman doesn’t leave things to happenstance. Dorga made sure to plot a few tricks while he was performing the ritual.

  In place of some of the herbs, normally spread upon the body to cover the first hints of decay, Dorga scattered a mix of powders he obtained from a wise old trickster, long since dead. It was a clever concoction, perfect for recreating miracles. He wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to utilize it when he first began, but now that the raven had provided him the last ingredient required for his scheme, his mind was tying all his preparations together into one stunning display.

  The village mob was closing in on the tree with the raven, the ferocity of their voices fueled by their growing religious fervor. The bird, for its part, didn’t exhibit any show of distress. Dorga was thankful for that. The longer the wretched beast stayed, the longer his new sycophants would fear it held ill intent towards them and their fallen shaman. But he hadn’t expected how wondrously fortuitous the bird’s actions would, in the end, be for Dorga’s manipulation.

  When the crowd, at last, gathered around the large old tree, they began to hack away at it with blades and hatchets. A few prepared fires to burn the entire thing down. Those who didn’t help jeered the creature with scorn and made useless symbols with their fingers to defend from evil.

  The raven gave a nightmarish caw at last. Its voice carried with it the hollow mournful sigh of spirits long departed. The villagers froze in terror. Dorga paused, unsure what to do now that he realized the truth of the bird before him. It was a spirit creature, surely. Perhaps, it was even his father come back to prevent him from defiling his memory. It didn’t matter, either way. The power was Dorga’s now, and no bird or dead old man was going to stop him.

  The raven dove from the treetop straight for the newly appointed shaman, confirming Dorga’s suspicion that it was his father returned for revenge. He fled from the fiend, searching for the precious oil he’d set aside for his grand show. The raven didn’t assault him as he feared. It settled down quite purposefully upon the head of the old dead shaman, and with a contemptuous stab of its beak, it wrenched an eyeball out of its socket then flew away.

  Dorga knew he couldn’t pass this chance up. He doused the corpse with oil in a frenzy and threw one of the smoking braziers upon the entire thing. Corpse, clothes, and belongings all went up with an explosive whoosh. The flames burned green and furious thanks to Dorga’s powdered additive, and he could hear the villagers gasp in fright as they fell to their knees in righteous worship of the miracle before them. Dorga didn’t let the moment slip by unexploited.

  “Begone foul beast. You cannot have my father’s soul. I will send him across through the flames so that you might not steal it.” The raven didn’t respond. It disappeared into the shadows of the surrounding forest.

  The enemy was vanquished. The performance was complete. And the question of whether or not Dorga’s father had plotted to undo him, at this moment, no longer mattered. For Dorga had won. As death’s feathered messenger fled into the twilight, the people who once ridiculed and judged him turned to him in praise. Their hearts were won, for now. They would pay, of course, for the torments they inflicted on him throughout his life. They would pay for their lack of belief in him. But let them worship him first. Let them learn to love him before he taught them to fear and respect him. The power was his now, and their souls were his to tend as he saw fit.

  Chapter 2:r />
  The Secret of a Bargain

  The Raven King didn’t flee the puny humans with their hurled stones, although he was mildly perturbed that it might’ve appeared that way to the shaman’s wretched son. He was a spirit creature now and didn’t need to fear the weapons of mortals, even though his body remained mostly that of a peculiar raven. In reality, the Raven King was furious. For he now believed he’d been tricked.

  Like he was taught, as part of the bargain made with Dorga’s deceased father, the Raven King forged a path between the worlds of the living and dead. The twilight, which Dorga watched the raven flee into, wasn’t, in fact, a twilight cast by the slowly vanishing sun, but that of a passage opened between worlds; the swirling shadowy haze created not by an absence of light, but an absence of life.

  “Show yourself, wretched, conniving, dead thing,” the Raven King cried in the language of death as he alit upon a post, within the center of a rather decrepit looking crossroads. He clasped the shaman’s severed eye in his claw and began to tear at it with his beak in between words. “Your bargain is tainted by your lies! I come to break the pact and refuse the payment of your price.”

  At first, there was no answer within the oppressive darkness of the Netherworld. Spirits had little care for time and thus didn’t hasten to answer a summons, especially a rudely demanded one. However, this particular spirit had a certain interest in making sure the pact, made not long ago, was kept. And so, though it took a while to coalesce, the form of the dead shaman appeared at last, within the dark hollow of the crossroads, to face the accusations of an angry spirit-touched bird. The eye was completely devoured by that time, however.

  “We are bound, Raven King,” the shaman’s words carried through the air like the howl of wind on a cold, blustery autumn evening. “You’ve accepted the power and knowledge I promised. These gifts have made you the Raven King. Your required payment for that is bound within your soul by our bargain.”

  “Our bargain was tainted by your lies and trickery, dead thing,” the Raven King challenged. “You gave me an impossible task, in hopes of binding me to your eternal service.”

  “The task wasn’t impossible. It was actually rather simple,” the shaman lectured the bird. “Attempt to teach my son. And until one of my blood comes to be able to tend my peoples’ spirits, you and your kind will tend their spirits for me. Whether that failure of mine, Dorga, was murdered by the people or not, should have little effect on the pact we made. You’re still Raven King, thanks to my gift. What matter if, now, you’re bound to tend the souls of a small village as payment for this?”

  “That is a foul offense indeed, to trick my ravens and me into serving you forever if your son dies.” The Raven King preened himself aggressively between statements, furious he hadn’t yet considered that consequence of the bargain. “But, yours is a crueler plot still,” the gruff bird continued. “The son lives but is a fool, unable to fully tend the dead. I could never teach him. And you knew that, didn’t you?” The bird glared at the old man’s spirit, weighing the truth. “Did you know he is also a conman? Did you foresee that he could convince your precious village that ravens are the enemy? Did you understand the futility of the task you set me? We cannot tend the dead if we must face stones and fire to do so, shaman.”

  The spirit’s glow shimmered fiercely as if in response to a stirring of emotions. It was clear the old shaman had plotted all along to ensnare the Raven King to do his bidding, more than what was initially revealed when the pact was struck. But something about this turn of events upset the old man’s ghost greatly. And even a peculiar raven takes stock when a spirit appears afraid.

  “Dorga is not dead?” the shaman asked with ominous dread, echoed by the swirling spirits gathering around the crossroads to watch the encounter. “He wasn’t torn apart by the angry villagers for failing to send my spirit across?”

  “I do not understand your living tongue enough to know for certain. But I believe he’s convinced them I stole your spirit as I should have done the day I met you.”

  “He is not dead?” The ghost clearly didn’t take the threat of the raven seriously. At the very least, he was too concerned to respond to it, as he began to pace and mutter to himself with dire inflection. “I should’ve done it myself. I thought…” He stopped and stared off at the amassing presence of specters around them. “I thought wrong. I thought their hatred for him would override his trickery.” His words seemed spoken directly to the spirits gathered, as if facing their judgment. “But you cannot blame me surely. I didn’t understand the full truth, the full danger, until I was already gone from the world of the living.”

  “What madness do you speak?” the Raven King interrupted at last with a flurry of caws and feathers. “Speak now, dead thing, or the bargain is off.”

  The spirit of the shaman spun in a swirling haze of spectral shadow, the form rippling like disturbed fog as it crossed the space between them in seconds. “You are bound by soul, Raven King. You serve the pact, or you face the void.” The shaman’s voice carried an added authority, an echoing strength which emanated not just from his own form but the combined forces of the haunting swarm. The spirit settled as if sensing the threat of its demeanor. “My son was to have died. I planned for it thus. It’s why I needed you to tend the spirits of my people, for there would be no one left who could.”

  “So you admit that the bargain was a trick to trap me into your service for eternity,” the Raven King screamed. The fury of his cry sent the gathering hordes retreating. He was, after all, a spirit creature now, and his beak could inflict damage, even to the dead.

  “I admit it, little bird,” the shaman confessed. “I saw you as my only chance to see to my peoples’ souls, once I realized the futility of counting on my son. I had to do it. Yet none of that matters if he isn’t dead. He must be destroyed.”

  “Destroyed? Why? So you can enslave my ravens and me to your bargain? I defy your trickery, dead thing. Your son lives. I’ll teach him to peer into death if I must force his face through the veil with my own talons. The bargain will be complete. But I will not serve you. I’m no longer a little bird. Remember, shaman. I am the Raven King.”

  “No!” the very shadows of the underworld erupted with a vehement cry. “He must not glimpse the secrets of death. Your world will pay in blood.”

  “Better them than me,” the Raven King answered, as he rose from the crossroads on ebony wings. “Prepare for a reunion, dead thing. I go to invite your son for a visit.”

  “Wait. Stop. You mustn’t. I always suspected. But since crossing over, I’ve learned why my son could never be allowed to peer into the face of death. The ancient spirits who guard this world forbid it. They’ve seen what he might become. They cast his eyes away because the future, if he has that knowledge, is too frightening to conceive.”

  The spirits tried to impede him. Their gathered forces attempted to block the forming of the Raven King’s path back, but he used the gifts taught him, the power granted to those who are spirit-blessed, and shredded their barriers with beak and claw. They howled in defeat, pleading for him not to go, but the Raven King wouldn’t be enslaved. And he swore revenge upon all the spirits for working to entrap him so.

  “Your trickery is undone, foul dead things!” the Raven King called back. “For Dorga comes.” The cackling words faded with muted haste as the veil closed around the spirit bird’s point of exit. The Netherworld raged in torment, for the events unleashed this day were certain to cast despair across both worlds, living and dead.

  Chapter 3:

  A Plan for Greatness

  Tales throughout history tell of ravens driving mortal men to insanity. Oftentimes, it is an allusion to the fear of death and how such things affect the psyche. But this isn’t one such tale. When the Raven King returned to the world of the living, he returned with the full vengeful intent of driving the shaman’s son, Dorga, mad. If fear is what kept his eyes from piercing the veil, then he’d drive the man to such insanity
that even fear couldn’t dictate his actions or turn his gaze away. Facing death would be a relief from what Dorga was about to have brought down upon him because of his father’s clever scheming.

  Dorga didn’t yet realize the supernatural contest being waged around his fate. He had more important duties now that he’d assumed his father’s place as shaman. His dream of obtaining such power was his at last. But this dream was never just a distant hope. Dorga worked to be here. He trained to be ready for this moment. And in the years he spent away from his home, Dorga built a following of allies who supported his future goals and worked to help him achieve them. Gaining this win was a huge success for certain, but he was ambitious. Assuming the mantle of shaman was only the beginning. It was time to call his supporters from the shadows, to share in the rewards. His days of failure were over.

  The villagers, for their part, were suddenly more accepting of the man they ridiculed for so many years. Their fear of being cast adrift to face death, without someone to tend their souls, was averted. Dorga, despite his failings, managed to come through. They revered him, for now. Greater than that, they feared the spirit-raven. And that fear could be used, should their support begin to waver. He couldn’t help but applaud his genius at such a clever ruse. That failsafe, alone, would buy him time until the others arrived. Once his true people stepped out from the shadows, no one would question Dorga’s words again. From now on, they would be as law.

  They came in small groups, filtering in from the surrounding countryside. Dorga counseled them to come slowly, only a few at a time. It made it seem more genuine that way. The first pair set the tone of what was to come. It was, after all, a performance. It was one of the lessons Dorga discovered on his many-year search for answers. You didn’t need real magic, as long as you had a good story and could fake it.