Papa IV: Copia's Den

The Den of the Damned

You enter a land as if frozen in time, color drained from once lush green foliage. Frost clings to stems, ice hanging from overhead limbs, some looking as if slowly falling in a slow motion, time taking her time here. As you get deeper into these lands you don't remember how you got here but only how you miss your pride. Soon enough birds of black, the size of vultures, speckle the branches. Skulled face's examine your movements, screaming out a hellish scream before taking to the snow bitten sky, flying deeper into the forest. Once only two or three of these corvids covered these branches but now hundreds, some squabling about among themselves on places to fit in branches, once warry of your pawsteps now ignoring your mere presense before them. The very trees arch into a savage bow, as if the very trees craning their bark to see the lion before you. He was small for a lion, with a mangy black mane rolling down from the top of his neck, barely clinging to his neck and rolling down his shoulders. A skull laid atop an orange head as two colored eyes, neither like the other, stare into you. The pale of the white eye like snow on cold stone. He let out a low sigh, frost rolling from the warmth of his lips. He lips his thin frame from gray reeds reaching towards him as he makes his way towards you. The once white around his face stained red from blood, his yellow eye blazing like the sun, rosettes dancing across his boney frame. "Well... aren't you here early." He gave a chuckle, his voice soft but tired. "Head back stranger. I will see you again... if your karma strives out to me." His head lowered, the bone skull falling slightly on his face, using his paw to make sure it didn't fall. Suddenly in a flurry of feathers, beaks, and claws the ravens dive at you, swarming, pulling and tearing at your pelt and skin, chewing into your bones, pain overwhelming your body. No matter how savagely you claw the pests away more seem to appear before you snap from your sleep... back home with your family, the sun just raising.