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The Dawn of the Raven: Episode 17 © 2014 J.L. Blackthorne.  All rights reserved.  No part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or otherwise disseminated in any form without the author’s permission.
    This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual persons, alive or dead, events, or places is completely coincidental.
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    This serial is for adults only.  Some episodes contain adult content, including adult language, explicit sex, and graphic violence.

    The Dawn of the Raven
    Episode 17:
    Carnage
                 
                 
                  He gazed at the beams of early morning sunlight as they pierced through what was left of the forest canopy.  Here at the edge the flames hadn’t taken all of the leaves.  His eyes struggled with the bright morning light.  He wondered for a moment about his ancestors.  Their eyes would have welcomed the beams of light, the beacon of a coming day.  But his eyes burned from them.  They watered in the corners and he grimaced as they were so painfully slow to adjust.  After a few more moments, his massive dark pupils had narrowed enough for him to see clearly again.  One of his warriors addressed him, and General Krex turned to listen.
    “Sir, there was no sign of any magical beings.  However, one of the search parties that headed southeast hasn’t returned.”
                  The Gekken General looked at his men.  All night they’d waited patiently for the fire to run its course.  The humans’ trick had been effective, but it had only bought them a little more time.  But this dark magic that turned his own men against each other, cutting one another through with no warning . . . this worried him.  They had to try and find the source.  He hated to send good men off now, now that the time for the true battle was upon them, but this was a mission of grave importance.  He turned to one of his top soldiers.
    “ Wrathe, take your two best men and head southeast. You must find the source of the dark magic that has plagued us through this night and cut their life from them.”
                  Wrathe nodded, and left with his men.  General Krex turned his focus back to the rest of his warriors.  Their hands shook with excitement.  Some of them were drooling.  The sweet taste of flesh, the craving that they desired at all times but could only satisfy on the battlefield, lay just moments away from them.  The history of the Gekken was a dark, tragic one.  Terrible, cruel misfortune had shaped them into what they were today.  They had not always been like this.  It was not their fault that they had been forced to live off of the flesh of their own people for centuries.  Forced to eat their own weak and dead to survive.  But over the course of hundreds of years they had gained a great appetite and taste for it.  This was a delicacy forbidden to them now, the taste of the flesh of those who walk on two legs.  Humans, when defeated on the battlefield, were the only exception.  They felt their bellies begin to growl, and their grip on their blades begin to tighten.  But more important than any physical hunger, what truly drove them was the chance to finally right the wrong of a thousand years.  The cruel betrayal that had led them on such a dark path, and had led them to becoming that which they were today.  When the humans were finally annihilated, only then could the Gekken retake their place amongst those who dwelt in the sunlight.  How long would it be before their eyes would no longer sting so much in the light?  How long till their skin gained back pigment?  How many generations?
                  General Krex looked over his