Chapter Twenty Four: The Crow and the Steam
Talon felt the weight of rebellion like a millstone chained to his soul.
The vengeance he had wrought—the blood spilled, the lives ended, the fire kindled in his brother’s name—had not come without cost. Every heartbeat carried echoes of the screams. Every silence brought the gnawing pull of Cu Sith’s call, wild and bottomless. The old hound did not forget. Nor did it forgive.
It was not guilt that troubled him.
It was transformation.
A man who strikes back becomes a blade. But a blade, if held too long in fury, cuts everything—even its wielder.
He wandered into the upper pinewood, beyond the village, where mist draped the trees like woolen shawls. The path curled up to a cleft in the hill, half-swallowed by moss and time. An old shelter stood there, low and earthen—the O’Coyle steam hut, roofed with sod and woven pine limbs. The elders called it *“An Fhàsaich Dhè”—*the Womb of God’s Wild.
Outside, he knelt beside the stream that trickled from the basalt rock, so pure it sang like glass. He cupped the cold water to his lips, cleansing first his tongue, then washing his hands, arms, face—ritual, old as clan law.
Then he produced the ingredients.
From his pouch came a twist of birch bark, within it a dried cap of the Fàrdach mushroom, the Fungus of Courage, known only to the O’Coyle line. It grew in grave soil, where warriors had fallen and been laid beneath cairns, and its color had the ochre hue of old bone and iron blood. He crushed it between his fingers, crumbled it into a horn cup, and poured a few drops of stream water over it.
Just as he stood to enter the shelter, a crow burst from the canopy above—black as pitch, croaking sharp. It circled once, then twice, then a third time, wings cutting the air like runes.
Talon stilled.
“Three turns. A soul’s mark,” he whispered.
Then he ducked into the hut.
Inside, darkness embraced him. The only light came from the stone brazier, low to the ground, where ancient red stones hissed and pulsed with heat. Someone had kindled it earlier—perhaps a villager, perhaps fate itself. He sat cross-legged before it, placing the horn cup to his lips.
The brew was bitter—earthy, numbing. The taste of peat and death—but it steadied the heart.
He poured the rest of the stream water over the stones.
Tsssshhhhh—
The vapor rose in twisting ribbons, curling like smoke-serpents, ghost-grey and silver, dancing in the still air. They coiled around his head, thickening, warming, until his vision blurred and the hut began to fade.
The stones glowed brighter.
His breath slowed.
Then, like antlers splitting through bark, the trance took him.
The Vision
His body remained seated, but his mind burst into the skies.
He stood naked and green-painted, bare-chested atop the cairn where his brother lay. The land around him was aflame—not fire, but green light, rising in spires. In the shadows, shapes moved—great hounds, spectral and silent. They watched, unmoving, eyes like moons.
From the mist beyond came a shape of deeper shadow—the form of Cu Sith.
Massive. Primal. Its fur rippled like grass in windless silence. Its eyes burned not red, but green and gold, the color of his people. Its voice came without lips moving.
“You mourn the weight of death.”
Talon nodded.
“You fear what you’ve become.”
He nodded again, slower.
“Then remember: I am not death. I am the warning. I am the wild promise. I walk only where the unjust have trespassed. And now, so do you.”
The air shook. A storm with no sound.
“You are O’Coyle. You are the claw. You are the silence before vengeance.”
The hound stepped forward. Its massive snout touched his forehead.
“Take back the wild. Make them remember.”
The hound vanished like dust on the wind.
The Return
Talon awoke gasping, drenched in sweat.
The coals had cooled to ash. The vapor was gone. But the scent of hound fur and heather lingered.
He stepped from the hut into the early evening. The sky was darkening to plum and blue. The crow still sat in the pine above, watching him. This time, it did not cry.
He looked down at his own hands—steady. Sure.
He would descend the trail tonight.
No longer just a survivor. No longer just a man. He was Cu Sith’s laird. And now he remembered.
Entered by: 0xe9a1…78d3
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