Blackfeather Woods AHHH! It's demons! Run Jim! Ruuuuun! Ruuuuun!

Dark were the days spent in seclusion for the prince of Blackfeather Woods; dark and cold, but never silent.

There were voices haunting him, voices that, at first, Damien had thought were in his head. But they weren't, how could they? Sometimes he even felt the faint warmth of their breath as the whispered things in his ears, wicked things, twisted messages that, had he been as adept as his sister in the old tongue perhaps he could have understood. These voices were real, they were with him and they knew things that Damien had always wanted to know. Perhaps they belonged to the gods? Surely the mad prince was having fun with him... Or perhaps it was Vaermina whose wicked magic plagued his thoughts...

No.

Had it been Vaermina he would have seen it coming, she would have told him what was to come, the disgrace that his wolrd was about to fall into.

It hadn't taken long for the scent to reach his chamber. A scent that crept up his nose and sparked an intrigue for the outer world that he had not felt past many moons... But... It was hard to tell what it was... Was it death? There was surely blood... Or perhaps it was Potema doing a sacrifice? A ritual? There were many herbal odors mingled too...

Like a shadow Damien found himself creeping closer to his vault's opening, dragging himself over the walls, careful not to make a sound. A curious sniff confirmed that he had not imagined what his senses were telling him, not this time. The voices warned him to stay, to remain in the shadows, in the safety of his hall, but he wasn't going to be fooled, not this time, and so he dragged himself out of the hole, keeping his head low as he traced the curious scent through the tunnels down to what he believed to be the glen.

And what he found there...

"Wh... What is the meaning of this?" rang his voice in utter confusion as he stared down, eyes wide, at the pile of twisted bodies in the middle of the chamber. Old words surrounded them, old voices cursing, shouting warnings and screaming in despair. Little monsters they were, demon-spawn brought to seal the curse upon Blackfeather Woods for Damien's own sins.

"Are they yours?" he managed to pick from within a swarm of questions and concerns. When? How? Who? What now? He felt the urge to savage them, put them out of missery if you may... Do anything but stand there, petrified, as the prestige of his family crumbled down to nothing with the birth of such creatures.

The gods were indeed having a good laugh with Damien this day.