Enter The Champion

4. Calamity in Flesh

[Author's note: After holding out on you for the past three opening chapters about Jeremiah's looks, other than she's small and stuff, here is the face reveal for Jeremiah Hale. I will later include the model in the casting list when I get it made up for all of the characters as a whole list. Until then, feel free to message me and tell me who she is. I had her name written and down and then forgot it about ten seconds later.
Enjoy. (: ]

Jeremiah heard the startled scream-squawk of the Raven before it's still moving body hit the ground, several feet from where she lay, stomach first on a blanket in the grass of the training yard behind her father's estate. It filtered above the clashing of swords and laboured grunts of Lenore's men at work, shook her from the passage of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and struck her straight to the core. She bolted upright, folding her legs behind herself and glancing about in an attempt to find who had shot the animal down from its rightful place in the sky. The answer came in the swirling of a red velvet cloak and boots all too familiar to her.
Her father's captain had shot the innocent creature of wind down from it's domain, and had not killed it with the shot he placed. An innocent thing, brought to the slaughter for none other than whatever amusement lit up those glacial eyes. He strode her past her as if she'd somehow became inexistent, as if he wasn't aware that Jeremiah had always been partial to the birds of night and sky. She discarded her book, something between rage and mercy welling in her chest like a flood ravine.
"Lenore."
She stopped beside him, staring down at the Raven in horror once she'd observed what he'd done. He'd shot it right through it's left wing, cleaving clear through it. The aim he'd took had brought the arrow in a downward arc, so that when it brought the night hued creature crashing to the earth, it speared it in place by embedding in the grass and dirt. The Raven was still very much alive, but undoubtedly broken beyond its visible injury, and repair. It struggled against the wooden shaft piercing its wings, making hideous sounds in which she imagined the death of night itself truly sounded like. Its eyes were wide, golden and frightened despite its strength and majesty. It knew death was near. All animals, Jeremiah knew, sensed death long before humans. She shuddered, whirling on Lenore with a rage that had steadily built as she'd watched the bird struggle and cry. A sound had mingled with its cries, a sound so cruel and absolutely volatile she whirled on its source like the very wind changing direction.
"Are you laughing?"
Lenore continued laughing as the Raven suffered, bent over at the waist with peals of uncontrolled and wild laughter. His laughter was like the wild hills and woods beyond her father's estate, like the unleashed crash of thunder in a storm left brewing amoung the clouds for days on end. It was brutal, filling, shocking to hear. He kept on with it, as if he truly were enjoying the bird's sounds and struggle. Finally, disgusted beyond words with her father's captain, Jeremiah turned her attention back to the animal. Its death crept closer in its eyes, in its moving, in its dying cries for help or ending. She could not watch this creature of sky and black and feathers die so horribly, so uselessly. Kneeling, she worked the shaft of the arrow out of its wing, snaking one hand around to work off the iron tip of the arrow as to not cause the bird more pain in pulling it through. It let out a loud squawking cry of protest as the shaft slid free, too weak to bother struggling to its feet and attempting flight. Jeremiah's hand came back slicked with warm blood, specks of dirt riddling it like marble left to the elements.
She made a decision then, that the white leather pants she wore could be cleaned, and that this innocent creature would die with love around it. She cupped both hands under its body, immediately able to feel the bones broken by its unexpected and devastating crash to earth, and set it in her lap. It made a terrible noise, a whisper of the mighty sound it once could've made at will, and turned its head to gaze up at her. Pain, death, they danced in its eyes and she knew it was time. She made moves to stroke its beak, give it some comfort on its way out, but was met with a hand reaching out for the still barely alive Raven.
"Lenore, its dying, leave it be!"
She leapt to her feet immediately when he took it in his hands, fearful he planned to break its neck and toss it aside.
"My lady, it's just a bird," the reply was ice cold.
She could hear the rage still inside of him, it burnt cold in his eyes and turned his lips up into a smirk she craved to knock off his face with her own hands.
"It's an innocent creature! Let it die on its own!", she shot back.
She could sense the guards training around them had stopped their body breaking routines to watch this exchange. She could feel their eyes on her, darting between her tiny frame and Lenore's much larger presence. His hands went up, bracing on the twitching creature's neck, and Jeremiah made a sound much more angry than she'd ever found herself making in her life.
"Did you not do enough by shooting it to the ground? From its rightful place?", she sneered.
Something flickered in the captain's eyes, something heated and cruel and so horrible Jeremiah took a conscious step back. She expected him to snap its neck, but instead he tossed it to the ground and raised his boot over its skull. There was life still in its eyes, it flailed on the ground with what energy it had left in it.
"Lenore, its dying on its own, leave it alone!"
Those icy eyes swept up from the dying Raven to her face, tears threatening to spill out over the mask of anger she'd built unconsciously. Then, gaze locked with hers, he brought the heel of his boot down on the bird's skull. It barely got the chance to make a sound before its skull had exploded under the impact, and blood splattered her boots and the grass around the bird's now-corpse.
Jeremiah burst into tears.
And then, darkness came in the form of a boy in black velvet.

The captain and her champion rolled in the grass, snarling and one cursing at the other in a language Jeremiah realized she didn't understand. The champion's inhuman face was twisted in a snarl she'd only consider animalistic, sharp canines glittering behind pulled back lips. The two of them grappled, ripped at each other, threw blows fit to destroy the other. Nobody dared get in the middle, to risk their possible death in breaking up the two of them. Both of them suddenly lurched to their feet, sneering and shuddering with rage. Hot, boiling anger roiled off of Parvati like something tangible. It seemed he was boiling from the inside out.
"Pathetic, vile, little wretched human boy."
That voice was sharp, dual toned, not the same voice Parvati had greeted Jeremiah with the day before. It was crackling, overlapping, the absolutely most terrifying thing she'd ever heard. Instead of smartly backing down, Lenore leveled and smirked, just a little upturn of his lips.
It triggered Parvati, and he exploded in a burst of black velvet and grey, not towards Lenore but away from him. He couldn't seem to move fast enough, to get himself out of sight of the heiress and her guards. One of them made move to follow him around the corner of the soldier's barracks, but Jeremiah stopped him.
"Whatever has just happened to him, do not follow him. That flight was not one of fear, but of someone fleeing the impossible urge to slaughter. Stay away, all of you."
As she made her way towards the back of her father's estate, a scream like something being tortured slowly, endlessly, horribly, rattled the sky itself. It was dual toned, crackling in its nature, living and a piece all its own. It was not the scream she'd heard the night before, when Parvati had locked himself in his room and managed to cage whatever beast had later destroyed that same room beyond repair. This was agonized, ancient, and it shook her bones in their sockets. Then dead silence came, before the scream turned into nothing and the trees settled back into their branches.
That night, Parvati did not show up to dinner.
He did not make his presence known that entire day.
Nobody dared look for him, and Jeremiah didn't dare invade his room to confirm he was present there.

Hours later, a Raven much like the one whose blood still littered the training yard flickered in through his bedroom window, and silently shifted into the form of a beast, and then of a boy with Gold for eyes.