[img]http://jp22.r0tt.com/l_5305dc00-7156-11e5-93e3-f7dd4a200022.jpg[/img]
[sup]art: [url=http://kos1604.deviantart.com/art/Memento-mori-530790702]Memento Mori by kos1604[/url][/sup]

Name: Een

Abstract: A raven who knows the way

Detail: Een hatched as a simple raven, but was thereafter bound to a magician as her familiar, thus the raven gained the benefit of a shared intelligence and conscious thought. The magician was a lazy sort, who used her magic mostly to impress others and to make her own life easier. Een, in turn, adopted an apathetic lifestyle. He enjoyed visiting comfortable inns, helping in magic performances, watching children squeal with delight as he flipped and spun and snatched cherries from their outstretched hands, but in the end he wanted nothing more than to sleep by a cozy fire.

And then, while performing during their stay in a new town, guardians snatched up the magician and locked her into a stoneblock cell without explanation. Een escaped alone. He later found that after the witch had arrived in town, children had begun going missing. While the magician was being interrogated regarding their whereabouts, Een began his own investigation.

He found that the children were being lured into the marsh by a shining fox. It would take the children along hidden paths and narrow stones between sinkholes and mud lakes, sleeping monsters and shifting trees, over ground that would disintegrate under the weight of an adult but allowed the children easy passage, and the path would move and change behind them. He followed the shining fox to a cave, and within the cave was a gigantic beast with four rows of eyes and ten rows of teeth and a hunger for human flesh.

Upon first finding the fate of the children, Een distracted the beast with a flurry of wings and claws while the child ran away. He accompanied the child, but it took two days to find their way back, the path shifted and turned so frequently. When he returned with the child, the town was grateful to him -- but they did not release the magician.

Another child was taken, and Een followed, this time stacking stones as he went to mark the return passage. The beast made this rescue a bit harder than the last, but he returned soon enough with the child, who told stories to confirm what had happened. But still the witch was not released.

The adults marched into the forest with the intent of killing the beast, but could never find it. One died in the search, and others were trapped for hours in the mud. The only proof that there was a monster at all was in the children's stories, and there was no proof at all that this was not an illusion by the magician. Even if the magician were innocent, her raven was the only thing that could bring the children back -- and if the magician were released, she would leave, taking her raven with her.

So it is, and so it has been: the shining fox lures the children into the marsh, and the raven follows, almost every night. The marsh is now filled with stacked stones of varying intricacy and balance, marking the different paths to the cave and back, understandable only by the raven that built them.