Hendrix had been whistling a happy tune since the battle with the beetle. He’d even snapped his fingers and hopped rhythmically every few steps. He’d talked about his charming spell before and how excited he’d been to learn it. I hadn’t seen its use, but after having it save my life in the beetle battle, I almost hummed along with the bard.

The Raventaur town built almost entirely of dry grass continued for miles. The deeper we got into it, the more buildings we found until we reached a point where there wasn’t two feet between structures. The walkways had become crowded, and hundreds of calm raventaur faces stared us down wherever we went.

“Seems like a good place to start.” Hendrix pointed to a massive structure made from the same dry grass material as everything else. The building stood about two floors high without a single window. The raventaur seemed to prefer sharp angles, and the roof had a massive overhang with loose grass coming off the sides like icicles.

“King’s house?”

“Probably,” Hendrix said. “Well. The raventaur don’t have a king. Their leader is called Sun-Touched.”

“That’s his name?”

“His title,” the bard said. “Instead of saying King Hendrix, you’d say Sun-Touched Hendrix.”

“Strange.” I’d grown used to the unconventional by now, so I barely gave it a second thought. What was stranger anyway, the fact that these people's ruler was called Sun-Touched, or the fact that these people were purple raven-human hybrids, each a head taller than Hendrix?

“I think the story goes that long ago—wait a second.” The bard swung the loot off his back and began to strum. “Long ago, the raventaur of this land were in a century-long stalemate of a war against gnolls.” He spoke in a poetic cadence on the brink of song. “Both races were strong, intelligent, and fighting for control of Darktalon Woods—though that wasn’t the name at the time. The Alpha gnoll had killed Their chief. He was a nasty creature whose name eludes me, but he was referred to as the gnoll who could not be killed.

“Well, that changed when a young raventaur warrior, fed up after losing his entire family to the endless war, snuck into the gnoll camp in broad daylight when no one would have expected it, bear-hugged the alpha, and flapped his wings like he’d never flapped them before. They flew higher and higher until no one on the ground below could see them. Everything was silent until the alpha came plummeting down to the earth. He splattered there before the on-looking warriors of both sides, and that moment ended the war. Without their alpha, the gnolls were just a wild pack of mindless killers, easily corralled without leadership to keep them organized.

“The young raventaur hero returned from the skies, but not unharmed. His right leg, the weird woody bird part of it beneath the knee, was charred black. The priests theorized that he’d flown up as far as the sun to make sure the drop killed he who could not be killed, but I think it’s more likely that the gnoll had a torch or knew some type of fire spell or something. But the sun version of the story lived on in Dark Talon. It’s how they named themselves and their forest. Every leader had gotten his right leg burnt ceremoniously and has been referred to as Sun-Touched from then on.”

“Amazing,” I said. “Couldn’t find stories like that in Goldmill.”

Hendrix put his lute away, and we headed for the looming building of hay.

No guards stood around the large building, but many citizens loitered around in conversation. I didn’t know much about the raventaur, but they seemed to be trusting people. The door to their grandest, and likely, most important building, was wide open. Any wrongdoer in the area would have nothing more to do than walk in. The ease of entry oddly made me more apprehensive about entering.

The scene inside sent a chill up my spine. The room was vast with lots of open space, with only the sunlight from the open door to ward off the darkness. The hulking raventaur, barely visible at the end of the room, was intimidating enough. Still, the dozens of others, perched on random, disorganized wooden poles, each of a different height around the room was worse. Each was male with mighty black beaks. They eyed us with emotionless faces as we walked in, some flaring their wings before settling into the same calm posture as the others.

I froze. Hendrix continued straight down the center of the room as if he’d been there countless times before. I followed reluctantly. The bard regarded the perched raventaur around him as casually as I would have watched actual crows. I lagged behind him with sweaty palms, barely able to keep my eyes off the hay at my feet.

“Halt.” The raventaur at the end of the room spoke. I stopped before the sound of his booming voice had been entirely swallowed by the hay walls. Hendrix continued a few more steps. The behemoth at the end of the room was twice the size of the others. His cold eyes darted back and forth between the bard and me countless times before he spoke again. “Leave us.” He was still looking at us, but his companions shifted as if the words had been directed toward them.

The massive raventaur raised his pillar of an arm, yanked on a hanging string, and a bell sounded outside. Wind howled into the building through the open door. Blinding light invaded from above as the roof parted to reveal an overcast sky and a bulbous bronze bell. Feathers, the color of a clear night’s sky, rained upon us as the perched raventaur flapped their wings in a nightmarish fury and took flight not long after. They flew through the open roof and scattered in multiple directions. Two wide panels that made up the ceiling rose slowly into sight and crashed together, dousing the hall in darkness. I lowered my eyes to escape from the flurry of hay and dust and looked around, trying to find out how they’d done that with the roof.

“I don’t know who you are or why you are here,” the raventaur said. A small crack remained in the roof, allowing a thin beam of light to lay a glimmer on the hulking creature’s golden perch. “Perhaps the other races of the kingdom are finally willing to accept us as equals. Perhaps you are simply looking for some sort of reward. Perhaps it is destiny.”

I stared at what must’ve been the Sun-Touched in wonder. It was too dark to tell if his right leg was any darker than the other, but his size and presence were confirmation enough. His commanding voice was musical in a way as if his throat were some kind of wooden instrument. Hendrix looked around nonchalantly, picking at his teeth.

“We raventaur are a proud people,” the Sun-Touched said. “But not too proud to ask for help when we need it. The Dark Lady did not forget about us here in Dark Talon, I’m afraid. We have three main settlements. Leafveil, where you find yourselves now, and there are Rootroost and Cragnest. Both are led and protected by my two brothers.” His grey eyes flashed amongst the darkness and lowered toward the ground. “Both have fallen.”

The room shook as he opened his wings. They nearly spanned from one wall to the other and seemed to eat what little light there was in the room. He leapt from his golden perch. I braced myself for a violent impact. Hendrix stood looking up at the leaping giant like it was no more than winter’s first snowfall. The Sun-Touched glided to the ground and landed as gingerly as the snow would have, just two feet before Hendrix. I swallowed hard and moved up to join them.

“My brother Covnek is the chief of Rootroost,” Sun-Touched said. “Our closest settlement to the ground, Rootroost, is home to a massive prison where we’ve kept the gnolls since the wars. Even though they were — and still are — our greatest enemies, complete elimination was never an option. It’s too barbaric. The raventaur who live there are the backbone of our nation. They are farmers, miners, and gatherers.” He spread his arms. “They are the ones who’ve gathered the materials to build everything you see around you. But the Dark Lady has come.”

He walked past us and moved closer to the door. The light revealed his body to be more chiseled than any statue I’d ever seen. It looked like my wrench would shatter upon striking him. The muscles ended at his knees, where the rest of his legs continued as bones and strong tendons, thick as tree trunks. His right leg was charred black.

Hendrix turned to face me and smiled. “This sounds intense, huh?”

I nodded. How could the bard react to all of this like it was no more than a play?

“Part of the Dark Lady’s plan,” Sun-Touch said, “was to hit Rootroost hard. What better way to defeat the kingdom of Atlaris than to neutralize their new avian allies? She freed the imprisoned gnolls and did Sun knows what to my brother Covnek. Now, gnolls roam the forest freely again as they once did, burning our villages and killing our people.”

He spread his wings and slammed them shut again, summoning a cyclone to twist through the room. It shot up dust and hay shards and crashed against the far wall. We sheltered behind raised hands until the air calmed.

“He had a son named Delrik.” Sun-Touched’s voice grew somber. “My scouts tell me they have a good idea where he might be. They say he was out in the field when the attack happened. He is the apprentice to a gatherer. We think he might be at the large collection hut on Fork Island. We can’t send any of our kind to investigate. Kaloriann has armed the gnolls, and they shoot us to the ground the moment any of us dip below the canopy. Perhaps you can go. You aren’t Dark Talon. You aren’t even Raventaur. Go to Fork Island, discover if my nephew is there or not, and report back to me. That is all I ask. Bring him to me if you find him. Even if you find him dead…”

“We would gladly do this for you, your… majesty…” I wasn’t sure how to properly address a Sun-Touched. Hendrix laughed.

“Be wary, adventurers,” Sun-Touched said. “The gnolls may have a specific hunger for raventaur blood, but their appetites are indiscriminate.”

“Gnolls bad,” Hendrix said as he started for the door. “Got it.”