He awoke from his vision in a cold sweat. Well, to say “awoke” was to imply that he slept during these moments of encrypted clairvoyance. It wasn’t a sleep, so much as it was a trance. He could not control them, nor could he stop them when they came. He tried to interpret the vision before reporting in. Sitting up at his desk, he replayed it in his head.

  She was there, her brown hair, silky and thick, blew in the wind. She stood above the castle at the peak, laughing down at bodies and lakes of blood below her. He could see that blood caked her mouth and ran down her breasts. She laughed, cold and hard. There was no mercy in the lines of her menacing face. His master lay far below her feet. Body was sprawled in the mud, broken and desecrated. The beasts tore their men apart. She did this; she brought this upon them.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  She sniffed the putrid air, thick with death, and smiled as she took the torch in her hand. With a swish of her bone-white wrist, she set the castle ablaze. He struggled against the shackles that held him in the stockades below, but she had already chosen his fate. The last thing he saw before the fires engulfed him were her wings overhead. Her sickening laughter rang in his ears.

  He rapped on the door of his master’s room and straightened his cloak. His master’s booming voice beckoned him inside. “My Lord, we have a problem.”