The bearer of grim news, the declarer of war, the crow who definitely had something weird and mysterious going on about him, waited patiently outside an opening in the ground.
He was just a few miles away from the sunflower field, standing on a rocky surface and waiting for the sun to set.
The nocturnals followed a strict pattern in their movements; they were not to appear in the field in broad daylight. Queen Golden had explicitly forbidden it after some of them had started raiding the territories of the bees.
They were creatures of the night, and they followed a ruthless king, a giant serpentine named Salazar.
Soon, through the opening, an unusual creature walked out; it was a bat covered in deep mud with white eyes. It kept its snout to the ground and reached the crow; then, it grabbed onto his feathers and clingily climbed up to his ears.
"King Salazar welcomes the envoy of the bees. To what does he owe the nicety?" It hissed in the crow's ear.
"I am to ask King Salazar on behalf of Queen Golden that he let the bees access the gateway temporarily. The rest I will inform him personally. Get off and lead me to him," the crow shrugged, throwing the clingy ground bat on the ground.
"Very well," it said.
Then, it led the crow deep into the underground through a deep and wide tunnel; it looked extremely like a hollowed-out snake.
A few other bats that looked very aged and clingy joined the crow. The crow walked with confidence and authority; today, he was not the fool he had always been. Today, some old part of consciousness had clawed its way back into his mind.
Today he would do his job properly.
'Perhaps Golden recognized me, thus giving me such an important task, but that would be impossible,' he thought to himself.
The bats then led him to a small hall with a sinister-looking snake head with its mouth opened, protruding from the earth. It was of deep red color with with two sinister looking horns that bent backwards.
"The master calls you to Sehra; he will not attend you here," said a bat from the guards.
The crow jumped up and entered the sinister looking snake's maw, and it hissed then snapped around him, But he remained calm and still uncharacteristically. He fell through the familiar white backdrop of nothingness.
************
'Maybe Golden saw the strings; whatever the case, I must convince Salazar to let us use the gateway for the girls.' He fell through at an amazing and kept himself unusally calm.
And then landed.
He found himself standing on a rocky pathway that was encased by a tall bending mountain on its left side; the top bent outwards, upon closer inspection, the top looked like a giant body of serpentine that coiled around the whole mountain completely covering the entire pathway in its shadows. And on its right was a steep drop. He was already above the clouds; they danced at his feet.
Upon this, he remembered a certain someone and sighed and started walking. As he ascended, the pathway coiled around the mountain, ending in a circular opening at its top, and there an enormous bright red serpentine lay with yellow glowing eyes.
The crow hesitated a bit and then bowed down.
"King Sala-" He said.
"War... Hmm. Pity that Golden has lost her mind," King Salazar spoke with a voice mixed with deep resounding hiss that instilled fear and dread deep in one's soul.
"I see that you have gotten the news. The Queen would like to disagree with you. She has called upon the debt you owe her to be repaid. We must use your gateway to bring two human girls out of Sehra and back to the earth," the crow spoke, his delivery uncharacteristically charming.
Something snapped in his mind making him twitch furiously but held on.
'I don't have much time remaining; I must finish this quickly.' he thought to himself
"I owe her NOTHING!" Salazar said, and the mountain shook beneath him in a quake.
"Then you make an enemy of her. When she is done with the sovereigns, which she will be, she will come after you." The crow turned around and walked.
He had decided to bet on haste because his consciousness was slipping away.
"Wait, crow!"
And miraculously it worked.
The crow stopped a few meters away and turned around.