Read Online They Mostly Come Out At Night by Benedict Patrick - Free Book Online

of the Wolves had emitted.
    Adahy found himself straining over the edge of the room to get a look at the scene below. The unnatural howl had caused panic among the few surviving nobles, and many of the guardsmen joined the craven lords in scrabbling at the window openings set in the stone walls, clearly too narrow for any human to feasibly fit through. Only Adahy's father stood firm in the centre, using his commanding voice to shout orders to the remaining soldiers at the door. However, even he took a step backwards when the creature that emitted that awful sound finally stepped into the room.
    It was a Wolf, clearly, but unlike any Adahy had seen so far. Such was its enormity, it entered through the throne room doorway on all fours, but rose to its full height once inside. The beast was twice as tall as any of the other Wolves, and eight distended teats hanging from its chest told Adahy this was a female. A mother. The remaining Wolves followed the mother, using the distraction of her monstrous appearance to quickly overpower the soldiers at the door, diving onto them and feeding in an orgy of blood and grizzle. With their way now clear, the horde began to move around the walls of the room, but with a grating growl the mother seemed to warn them to stop. Either she did not want to lose any more of her children to the Magpie King, or she wanted this fight for herself. She hunched down, back on all fours, and growled a challenge to Adahy's father.
    The Magpie King was first to strike. At her invitation he leapt forward, using his supernatural speed to dip under the Wolf mother's massive arms and cut a messy red line across her torso. However, he was unprepared for her survival of the attack, and the speed of her reprisal. She caught the Magpie King with a backhand blow, dislodging his mask from his head and sent the man tumbling into the throng of creatures that now surrounded the combat. Where he landed, a frenzy of activity sparked, the animals rushing forward to claim a piece of their most hated foe. The mother barked at her children to move away from her prey, and they grudgingly obeyed, but Adahy could already see the damage had been done. Through some miracle, his father remained standing, but his face was now a mess of blood, running from innumerable wounds on his head and into his eyes. Both sickles remained in his hands, but his right arm hung weakly at his side, reminding Adahy of how he felt when trying to heft one of those great weapons. The young prince wanted to scream, to do something to help his father, but no actions came to him, other than the salty tears that streamed down his face.
    The Wolf mother slowly approached, and when she was within reach, the Magpie King gave a desperate swipe of the sickle in his left hand. The monster easily caught the man's wrist, and with a flick of her own snapped the bones in his arm in two. The sickle dropped to the floor, the clang of iron meeting stone drowned out by the scream of pain from Adahy's father. The Wolf mother lifted her own head, accompanying the man's shouts with a victory howl of her own, and then snapped her jaws shut on the man's neck, severing skin, sinew and bone.
    The Magpie King was dead.

An extract from the teachings of the High Corvae.
     
    It was in the early days of the forest, long before the outsiders arrived. The world was still new, and would look strange to your eyes if you saw it now. Cat and mouse would walk together through the leaves, chatting about a joke a human had told them earlier that morning. Rabbits sneered rudely at passersby, concerned that everyone was after their patches of clover. Strange creatures that you cannot imagine shared these trees as their home, such as mammoths, bears and dragons.
    The Magpie King was young, and was still becoming accustomed to his power. He viewed every feature of his forest with wonder and delight, and found great joy in taking the opportunity to pass the time of day with every deer, leopard or