An Eternal Wintre

Chapter 22

Anai floats in darkness, ravens flying everywhere around her head and pecking at her exposed flesh. She's naked and pocked with wounds from sharp beaks. Flesh torn from her bones and blood oozing from the gashes. She stays afloat as it all happens.

Her perfect skin is maimed and bleeds. It's not supposed to bleed. I don't bleed. Somebody, help me. She can't speak or cry out as they continue eating her.

One very large Raven swoops in, killing the others and pins her body down against a wooden floor by its sharp claws. The claws dig into what's little left of her flesh. The large head bends towards her and a voice permeates her mind. Shall we take this one next? it asks, lowering its beak close to her right eye. She struggles and tears stream down her face.

No! Please, it's all I have left! But her pleads fall on deaf ears as the raven tears her last eye out. Anai cannot cry out without her voice. She cries harder.

The raven turns into a girl who's laughing. Anai can see yet she has no eyes. She watches the girl pull down the hood from her face. Black, depthless eyes look into Anai's soul. Without her eyes, she is blind forever. Why won't they heal like her skin? Anai starts hyperventilating.

The small girl smiles and licks Anai's blood from her lips. What else should we take? she asks. Perhaps the tongue? Or something else? An ear? 

Anai's blood freezes over, making her feel light and heavy all at once. The black pits where her eyes should be feel hot. She creates eyes from ice and the world focuses into clarity as she remembers the face of the girl who took her eyes. "Corax," she speaks aloud.

Corax stops smiling at Anai's voice. Anai feels the girl readying to escape but she's too quick. She dashes straight for the girl and smashes her into the ground, shattering it into spider webbed cracks, snow falling from them towards the black sky. Which way is truly up or down, Anai didn't know, but the spectacle didn't make her lose focus as she crushes the Raven's windpipe. "Corax," she says again in a dead voice. Her eyes just as dead. "Thank you," she whispers, crushing the girl's throat and shattering the bone through.

The blackness shatters and everything turns white as snow. Anai loses only one of her eyes, her left one. She falls downwards and splashes into a cold lake. The water freezes all around her, freezing her with it. She doesn't panic or splash around. She stays still as it consumes her.

She smiles.