High above the broken spires of a ruined fortress, an eagle soared. His wings, black against the cerulean of a cloudless sky, cast a swift-moving shadow on the glittering snowfield below.
A snowshoe hare instinctively flattened itself to the frigid ground as the shadow glided across its path. A little fox, robed in her fur coat of winter-white, trotted along from bush to boulder, stalking the hare, keenly aware of her rival floating overhead. She paused in the shadow of an outcrop, nose twitching, and licked her lips.
The eagle had spotted the fox but had already dismissed her as inconsequential. Long before she got within striking distance of the hare, he would swoop down, snatch the prey with his razor-sharp talons and take to the skies again, leaving the fox with nothing but frustration and an empty belly.
As he prepared to strike, the eagle felt a cold tendril of energy tickle the edge of his mind. Before he could process the meaning of this strange sensation, the tendril lashed out and seized his consciousness.
With brutal efficiency, the tendril ripped away the eagle’s awareness, and as the magnificent bird plummeted, lifeless, to the ground, an ancient entity flooded the vacated skull with its own rapacious mind.
Freshly re-animated by the will of the Nameless One, the eagle broke its fall, pulling out of its death dive to rise steeply into the air once again.
The fox, sensing her rival had backed off, closed in on the prey, pounced, and with a snap of her jaws, broke the hare’s neck. She lifted her head and yipped in triumph, then scooped up her prize and trotted off toward the safety and warmth of her den. She and her children would sleep with full bellies tonight.
With a flap of his wings, the eagle banked sharply and sped southwest. Three days later, his withered carcass dropped from the sky and a raven rose to take his place. Two days and nights of flying brought the raven to the walls of a great castle standing guard over a thriving city. It, too, died before reaching the goal, but many more ravens called the castle grounds home.
Another bird leapt into the air and circled the castle precincts, searching the ground with sharp eyes until it spotted the thing its master needed. The raven landed at the edge of a great expanse of gravel and scooped a small shiny black stone into its beak.
This should do , thought the Nameless One. He sent his small slave winging back to the rooftops to wait for the one it had been sent to find.
It did not have long to wait.