/n/jackal-among-snakes-1520/c-674
chapter-673

“You should know, beforehand…” Raven began to caution Argrave. “I’m intimately familiar with this process.”

“A battle of souls?” Argrave stared up at him as he laid down on the table, waiting for the stamp to land on his passport and send him to the dream world.

“Indeed.” Raven looked at the implement in his hand. “When I was the Smiling Raven, every time I subsumed a living thing, I had a battle.” He turned his inhuman gray eyes toward Argrave. “And still I stand before you. Lorena has clarified that it is because I have an undying soul that I was able to potentiate so many living beings. She is… knowledgeable. Despite how she acts.” He could sense a vague hint of annoyance on Raven’s noseless face—then again, annoyance was his default state of being.

“Is that so?” Argrave took a deep breath. “That’s neat. I’m glad she can help you.”

“Indeed. Her kind can potentiate just as I can, but never before was a dragon of her kind born with an undying soul. Their souls would die, or fracture, when they bit off more than they could chew. Mine, however, would not perish so easily. It could bear the burden of being Smiling Raven.”

Argrave felt it was some revelation, but didn’t know if the information would help him. He started jokingly, “Well, you’ve never gone up against an undying—”

“On the contrary,” Raven interrupted. “I have gone up against one like you. The result stands before you.”

“Okay…” Argrave closed his eyes, digesting that. “I’m starting to see why you think this is a fitting test, then. Let’s—”

Raven slammed the implement against Argrave’s chest, and Argrave’s vision blurred as he drifted away.

Argrave opened his eyes with a gasp, and felt familiar ground touching against his face. He rose, quickly, coming to terms with this process of leaving the body. At the beginning of departing his body, Argrave always appeared in the same location—a reflection of his inner self. Durran had said that he appeared in the Burnt Desert in his battle against Garm, while the High Wizard himself had appeared in a field of black roses.

Argrave’s inner mind was Blackgard, but not as it was at present—rather, it was how he hoped it could be many years in the future. A blend of both the fantastic world that he found himself within, and the modern world he’d come from. His Blackgard of the mind had both elves and supermarkets, both electricity and magic, and both wyverns and planes. It tended to go off the rails pretty quick as the world fought against him, twisting his imagination to its own ends.

Standing in opposition, however, was a nightmarish scene vaguely familiar to Argrave. A black bird as large as the skyscrapers on Argrave’s city stood opposed to him. On its chest was a face—Raven’s face when he had been human, wreathed in the black feathers of the bird. The Smiling Raven didn’t have that haunting smile Argrave remembered, nor did it hold the orb that contained Hause. Countless stakes had been driven into its body, chains attached to the end of each. Statues embedded in the abyssal landscape around held the chains tightly. These statues were brilliant, golden, heroic—almost angelic. Argrave recognized most of the statues—he was one of them. His statue held the largest chain, its gargantuan stake embedded directly into the bird’s face.

Argrave stared the face down, until…

“Here we are,” the face spoke. “Your enemies will not allow you to gawk as I have. I am nothing if not generous. Remember that, in the pain to come.”

Argrave realized it, then. In Raven’s mind, he was still the Smiling Raven. This was how he viewed himself. He believed he had merely been chained down by Argrave and others, not fully changed. The statues were the only things inside his head that resembled something heroic, something decent. And they all depicted people that were not him.

“There’s something we should talk about, before we begin.” Argrave held out his hand. “Here, the Heralds won’t hear us speak. We’ll communicate soul-to-soul. Best encryption I can ask for.”

“I suspected you wished to convey something. That is why I waited.” Raven’s chains rattled as she shifted. “Speak.”

“Buckle up.” Argrave took a breath. “Anneliese and I are in a little deep…”