Neverwinter Forest on a black throne reigns upright

Paging @Rian ♥ Sorry! This kind of got away from me.

Cypress realized, a little fearfully, that he was going to visit Alya again.

It had all come about quite innocuously — he’d been patrolling just south of Thornwall, but instead of sweeping northeast to make his usual circuit, his paws had continued moving south. He’d gotten about halfway through Firefly Glen before noticing how far off course he was; his errant musculature had picked up momentum at an alarming rate, as if it was his body’s goal to outrun his better judgment.

It’d nearly worked, too.

Grumbling to himself, he’d stomped back through the glen and back into the territory — and here he sat, irresolute and unhappy, in front of the bog that dotted the eastern edge of Neverwinter. The leftmost corner of his mouth was quirked downward into its usual grimace, but this time the right side matched it; his lantern-yellow eyes flickered moodily over the rime-slick murk. Why shouldn’t he visit Alya? As long as he didn’t love her, she wouldn’t end up cursed, and he didn’t love her. He just liked her. A little. Kind of.

Getting to all fours, “Don’t try that again,” he muttered beneath his breath at his wayward feet. He began to wander the morass with practiced nonchalance, wondering whether the same thing would happen if he tried to go back on autopilot — “Did that really happen by accident, or did I know I was going to do that? Was I actually in control the whole time?” — but he knew these kinds of experiments never worked.

Nowadays it felt increasingly like his corporeal self was at war with his mind. The moment he dropped like a stone at the end of the day, bone-weary and exhausted, his limbs aching and his steps shambling, his mind began whipping wildly through a kaleidoscopic slide show: the dead, staring eyes of his parents; the blood congealed upon their noses; the blueness of their gums; the fleeing form of Rannoch; the tangle of blood-dappled black and white fur that was all he had left of Allure. “Stay awake!” his subconscious screamed, leaving him little choice in the matter. Then there was the matter of his body: when his mind was calm and quiet, a rush of hellfire blossomed in his chest and spread outward through his bloodstream into the tips of his toes. It made him suddenly, violently angry — the kind of fury that was purely physical, a jolt of adrenaline with no discernible source or cure. He couldn’t remember what peace felt like anymore.

He thought maybe Alya knew.

Skrrrish!

Beneath his forepaw the thin layer of ice cracked and puddled into slush. Absurdly, the orphaned raven attempted to fill it in with more snow to cover up his error — but then he paused, eyes narrowing speculatively. Cypress cautiously settled his weight on his hindquarters and reared back, freezing in place for a moment and looking furtively over his shoulder as if he feared rebuke. Deliberately this time, he crunched both forepaws through the icy surface. The resulting crunch and ensuing squelch were far more amusing than he’d expected, so he threw his efforts into destroying Skaði’s work. He was in no danger of drowning, as the quagmire was mostly mud on a good day. When the ice sliced a thin furrow upon one foreleg, he licked at it distractedly, but went almost immediately back to his task: smashing all the ice he could, gripping the skeletal remains of foliage between his molars, and trying to rip them clear out of their earthen home.

Noch would have loved this, Cy thought, and a pesky sob clawed its way up through his throat as he continued his methodical path of destruction. I don’t even deserve to miss him.