If there had been anyone still living in the ruins of the small town in the west of Ontario, they would have noticed the sun becoming obscured behind a living shadow. They would have noticed the dark, seething cloud falling closer to the ground. They would’ve been deafened by an unintelligible wall of vocal utterances coming forth from the sombre spectre. They would have watch the mass stretch forth tendrils and columns down to parts of the town, most notably the few buildings still standing and the few trees still alive.

And then, just then, if they hadn’t run screaming by then, they would have seen the void explode into thousands of birds.

Sparrows, swifts, grackles, robins, waxwings, warblers, and ravens streamed down the the sky, covering the land like a rain of death. Feathers fell heedlessly everywhere as the avians perched on various surfaces across the town. A dusting of rainbow colors soon accented the streets, buildings, and vehicle skeletons, whether from the birds or their sheddings. And yet, despite the hundreds of birds that had already landed, if one had still remained after all that time, they would have heard silence crush the land.

For only the priming wave of birds had invaded. Up above, like a heavenly host of the fallen, the main force levitated. A swarming, milling horde of crows of all shapes and sizes waited. Large crows. Small crows. Iridescent crows. Black crows. Old crows. Young crows. Sick crows. Healthy crows. Well-fed crows. Obedient crows. Intelligent crows. Soldier crows. Hungry crows. All waiting, in as close to perfect silence possible with the only sounds being that of four-thousand, seven hundred, and twenty-six pairs of wings beating in the effort to stay aloft.

And then at some unseen signal, they dove.

Opening their beaks with their legendary battle cries, the skies shook with the force of the cawing of the crows. They fell upon the ruins like the spilled ink of the gods, blanketing the land in a shimmering belt of feathers and beaks. The lesser birds joined with the crows once more as they all set about to do one thing: eat.

There is one, absolutely beautiful thing about crows: they are blessed with an omnivorous capacity to eat anything, from nuts and seeds to live prey and carrion. And there was so much of that. You see, this was a farming town, one of the many that graced this part of Ontario. And like many, it had been abandoned for one reason or another. Signs of a hasty exodus from the place were evident in the lack of cars and the way there were no signs of life, or lack thereof.

Which was perfect for the birds.

That meant that even though something had driven the humans off, it wasn’t contamination. There were still beautiful fields of crops, waiting to be harvested. And no scarecrows in sight. And it felt like harvestime for the birds.

They ransacked the town. Thousands of hungry birds managed to break into most houses and stores, pilfering their perishables and perished edibles alike. They scoured the fields and farms, snapping up seeds and nuts galore. Pests and other insects throughout the entire city suffered a sudden holocaust and near extinction. The stray dogs and cats fed hundreds. The mice and rats fed even more.

And the whole thing was watched by a single figure on the roof of the bank, the shadowy, mysterious crow known only as Prime, and that was known only to itself. It looked no different from any other crow. It wasn’t the biggest or strongest; in fact it was rather average. But it had one thing that no other crow did, something none of the five thousand, four hundred, and sixty-seven birds of the horde had.

It held the entire consciousness of a twenty-year old mutant girl, whose body had been murdered in an attack on her home.

It had been another day in a foreign life, that fateful evening at Xavier’s mansion. Elizabeth Sundance had been in her room, reading an excellent book. The hours had bled away unnoticed as she became lost in the literature. That was probably why she never felt it coming.

Across the world, animals have shown time and time again a nearly supernatural ability to know when things were going wrong. Cattle and elephants fled to the hills before the tsunami hit India. Pets usually know when someone is sick. Birds are silent when a predator is about.

And the animals around Xavier’s School for Gifted Children displayed their ability again. Silently they evacuated the premises, blanketing the area with a nearly tangible field of fear that only one person could’ve--should’ve--detected and warned people about.

But Liz’ nose had been stuck in a book. And so she failed to alert anybody at the mansion that something was up. The explosion at the main gates shocked her just like everyone else. Nico screeched in terror. Liz threw up her barriers only to realize that there were no emotions there. All the animals had left. And that scared her more than anything.

Suddenly shaking in terror, Liz stayed on her bed, allowing the book to drop from her hands. Screams began piercing the air and shouts of fury and calls for help began wailing. She could hear the pounding of feet downstairs, as if everyone were running to the front to look.

And that’s when she began hearing the sounds of battle.

Liz jerked her head around to Nico’s cage. The poor bird was terrified out of its mind. Immediately Liz washed him with soothing feelings, even as a vague plan formed in her mind. She reached for his cage and opened its door. She grabbed Nico’s legs and lifted him out, staring into his eyes. A tear rolled down her cheek as she tried not to think about what she was going to do.

“Nico,” she whispered, “something’s happening to the mansion. We have to go for help.” Even without knowing what was going on, Liz knew things would not turn out alright. The animals were gone. That only happened before disaster struck. And there had been that explosion and the sounds of battle on the lawn. Even with all of the mutants on campus battling whatever was out there, most of them were just kids. And many were helpless.

But not Liz. She couldn’t be helpless. Not again. She had to do something. Even if she could only run away and find help.

With Nico on one hand, Liz walked to her window and opened it with the other.As she cast her arm back in preparation to hurl the bird out the opening, a faint whistle filled her ears a moment before a burst of pain erupted from her shoulder. Flecks of something wet struck the bird and covered part of her face. The hand on the window fell limp, its shoulder useless in the inferno of pain blossoming in it.

Uncomprehendingly, Liz blinked. But the simple thought of throwing Nico stuck in her mind. Throw Nico. Throw Nico. Throw Nico. Nico. Nico. Nico. She threw him.

And just as the last of his tail feathers were brushing against her outstretched fingers, Liz felt another river of lava erupt in her chest and suddenly the entire world vanished.

A moment that stretched into eternity passed. Then Elizabeth’s mind made contact with Nico’s, instantly assuming control over the parrot’s actions. Bleeding distress and fear into the air, she pushed Nico’s wings against the air and flapped as hard as possible in order to escape the grounds. The familiar motions helped numb her to the chaos going on below. It gave her a focus: fly up. Fly high. Fly away. Find help. If help exists.

But another whistle through the air distracted her. The crack of splintered wood caught up to her new ears. She rolled over in mid-air for the the briefest of moments in order to look behind her.

It was a terrible mistake.

In that tiny flicker of time, she saw the world dim. She saw a partially shattered window frame, the evidence of the devastation of bullets upon edifices. She saw a similar sight below the window, where a small crater had been blazed into the side of the mansion. And she saw a small trickle of crimson stream down the side of the building.

Her body hung half-out the window. Mindless. Lifeless. Most of her luxurious blonde hair fell past her face, gratefully protecting Liz from seeing her own expression. Some strands still adhered to her back, stained red and glued to the ugly wound displayed between her shoulders. More liquid of life ran down her left shoulder, grotesquely complementing the black and white stripes of her blouse.

And then the moment was over as Elizabeth returned to flying in order to prevent her new body from suffering the same fate. Another whistle skewered the air near her left wing, altogether way too close for comfort. She banked right in an effort to dodge whatever foul cretin would think about trying to shoot a harmless parrot. It was just in time, too. Something passed through her tail feathers, right where her chest had been a moment ago. Normal flying wasn’t enough to get out of this alive. She needed more fancily floating butterfly, less stinging beeline. Liz pitched right again and dove for a few feet before reversing directions and rocketing upwards. She flared her wings and angled around toward the wall of the mansion. She had to get away.

But as she passed over the battlefield below, her heart shattered.

Friends and strangers who were practically family to her were vastly outnumbered. A swarm of humans had invaded the premises, armed with various of spontaneous weapons. She glimpsed Miguel belching a man’s face off before having his head smashed in with a metal pipe. Black and white flashes of light attracted her gaze to the final stand of the energy-blasting Stirling sisters. A concussive wave and crack of thunder alerted her to Damien teleporting a young man sixty feet up in the air.

She swerved by the suddenly screaming skydiver. Even as she strained to fly as fast away from the school as possible, Liz forced herself to watch the rest of the events unfold. In the back of her mind, she could see the end to this. From her position, she saw hundreds of people--humans, normal, flatscan humans--flooding into the school. Even with the might of the mutants of the first line of defense, there could be no victory for the Mansionites. Liz knew this, even as she knew her mission was futile. There could be no help. There could be no survivors unless a miracle happened. So she forced herself to watch, to record these valiant heroes and they laid themselves down to protect their fellow mutants.

A pink-haired swordsman led a retreat back into the mansion. A rear guard remained, fighting till the last moment. And that moment arrived too soon. A scream filled her mind as Jasmine was beaten down. The abrupt silence was nearly as deafening. But by then Liz had passed over the ruined walls of the school’s grounds and was swiftly distancing herself from the massacre.

She couldn’t bring herself to look back one more time.

She flew. Over trees and buildings. Over riots and mobs. Over neighborhoods and districts. Over stores and shops. Over innocents and villains. Over the sounds of shattering glass and screams for aid. Over crowds of people running to vehicles or otherwise trying to flee. Over vile murders. Over good people lending aid to others. Over barking dogs and prowling cats. Over abandoned cars and bikes. On and on and on she flew.

Elizabeth pushed Nico’s body to its limit. Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap. Don’t stop. Don’t land. Ignore the fire in your wings. Ignore the pained squawks of the parrot’s mind. stay focused. Stay on track. Keep flying. And most of all, don’t think.

Don’t think about the friends left behind. Don’t think about your failure to save lives. Don’t think about your escape when others could not. Don’t think about the darkness that you now know exists within humanity’s potential. Don’t think about the ruthlessness in which innocent mutants were slaughtered. Don’t think about the vengeance of the mutants. Don’t think about the screams and cries of pain and agony. And don’t think about watching your body nearly fall out of a window, knowing without a shadow of doubt that you will ever return to it again.

Don’t think.

The girl and her bird flew on until their wings finally gave out. How long had they gone? They didn’t know. Had it been dark when they started flying? They couldn’t recall. They didn’t want to. They just knew it was dark. Somewhere. They didn’t know their location. They just knew that they were falling....falling....falling....

They landed in leaf litter. Fortunately. They’d half-expected to hear bones snap. But God was smiling on them. Unlike the rest of the Mansionites. The girl almost wished she had received a broken wing, if only to suffer a portion of what the others had. But that would mean crippling Nico, her only friend that she had anymore. She couldn’t bear to have anything happen to him. And she had already hurt him so much, by forcing him to fly so much further than he could. His glorious wings were strained and it was now too dark to fly anyways.

Liz pushed their body back against a tree. They had landed amongst a small bunch of trees in some alien park. Doubting their ability to fly, she burrowed underneath the fallen leaves, seeking refuge under the cover. Birds on the ground, exposed, did not live for very long. And that was all she had left, now.

The bird fell asleep quickly and she could feel its mental activity lessening, but the girl remained awake. She could not sleep. She was scared. Scared of what she might see. She did not want to remember what had happened and dreams seemed like ominous reminders of the past. She resigned herself to staying awake.

When the sun rose once more, Liz greeted it ruefully. How could such a bright, positive force still exist when such terrible things could happen? But alas, it did allow for travel. And so they would. Liz shuffled out from under the debris and tried shaking off as much dirt and leaf litter as possible. She stretched their wings painfully, their muscles crying out as fire lanced through them. The possessor halted their screams from reaching their minds. They could not remain.

Again, they flew on.

Time was meaningless. It merely served to remind Elizabeth and Nico about the biological necessities of life, such as food, water, and waste expulsion. Night shifted into day and back into night, constantly recycling the process, as it had done for the entire history of Earth. Strange storms surged and scampered across the skies of Armageddon. Native creatures of the cities vanished, either from starvation or predation. As did the native humans.

Days and weeks passed by as Nicobeth watched manifested nightmares roam the streets they passed over. Mobs flared up and quickly died out. People attempting to flee the cities were run down and murdered, just to take their supplies. The worst of humanity displayed itself in a most dazzling manner, providing enough material to stave off sleep for lifetimes. Sickened and disgusted by the state of civilization, Liz and Nico had flown towards the wildernesses.

For weeks they flew, stopping only to eat, sleep, and otherwise rest. Signs of humanity slowly passed away. Urban sprawls of ruins vanished. Human stragglers grew in infrequency. Fumes of running vehicles soon faded away. The duo had soon turned their backs on humans, baselines and mutants alike. They set out to live as far away from people as they could, or at least travel to places that had escaped whatever foul terror it was that besieged New York City.

But in their dozens and hundreds of miles covered, not a trace of such a nirvana could be found. The farther one went, the worse things seemed to be. Yes, there were less mobs and vile villains and thieves and murderers, but there were less people in general. And less life.

It was not rare to see a dead forest or a blighted meadow. She frequently saw corpses of small and large animals alike near such places of devastation. And those of humans. Nicobeth tried staying away from those places as much as possible. But over time, she began noticing that such areas grew more and more frequent the further West one flew. But East was not an option for her.

So she flew North.

Over the river and through the woods,
to Canada’s mouth we go!
This bird knows the way
the air currents sway,
To the land of Toronto.

As the months passed, Nicobeth began growing weaker and weaker. Perhaps it was because of the poor diet they consumed. There was certainly no pet stores out in the midst of Canadian forests. And proper, dietician-approved grains and such did not grow amongst the weeds and brush of the ground beneath the trees.

Or maybe it was the result of some type of contaminant. Being domesticated and kept indoors for most of his life, Nico had never really built up immunities to most diseases. And who knew what kinds of things were going around? Bird flu? West Nile virus? Rabies? Chicken pox? The black plague? In fact, maybe that’s why all the normal humans went crazy. Maybe there was an epidemic, but nobody realized it. Or they thought that slaughtering mutants would cure it.

But no matter what the cause of Nico’s failing health was, Liz could do nothing for him. She was no doctor, but now she was even more helpless than ever before. Bodiless, except for her ever-loyal parrot. Her only friend left.

So they continued their journey. They flitted from grove to grove, forest to forest, park to park. They avoided humans--the good, the bad, and the mutated--at all costs. They were occasionally harried by hawks and falcons. An owl had tried its luck as well. But so far, the seventeen-year-old consciousness and her faithful, feathered friend had managed to elude them. Except for that one hawk, who had ended up crumpled at the bottom of a tree. But hey, who knew trip wires were so easy to make out of old string left littering a forest floor?

But time finally came for their journey to stop.

Nico collapsed in the midst of a dying, golden field of grass. Many of his feathers had vanished long ago. His eyesight had diminished. It was hard for him to keep down what little edible food they’d found.

He was dying.

They lay in the field for nearly the entire night and part of the next day.

And that’s when another supernatural ability of the animal kingdom manifested itself. Crows flock to dead or dying creatures. That’s one reason a group is known as a “murder.”

And the crows descended. There were four of them, black as sin and bold with hunger and numbers. Liz tried fighting them off. She channeled every emotion she could possibly think of into those birds. Fear. Terror. Anger. Lust. Compassion. Wonder. Confusion. Serenity. Depression. Vengeful. Tranquility. Happiness. Ecstasy. Loss. Curiosity. Awe. Danger.

But Hunger seemed to be the most powerful feeling of all.

Dismayed at first, the birds danced around Nico, conflicted and waging inter battles. But slowly, their ravenous appetites overwhelmed everything Liz could throw at them. They advanced, stalking forward on coal-black feet, shoulders hunched and heads bent forward. They reminded Liz of a pack of raptors.

Oh Nico! I love you! she cried as she sought to wrap her mentality entirely around Nico. As the black birds set in, before he’d even stopped twitching, Elizabeth Sundance severed Nico’s connection with his body to the best of her ability. She blocked the pain receptors and quelled his fear. She reassured him with soothing words, ones he understood and ones he didn’t. she blanketed him with feelings of calm and peace. Liz knew his end was near, as well as Nico himself, and she wanted it to be as painless as possible. It was the least she could do.

But when she felt the last bits of his mind shutting down, she slipped into one of the crows. As it and the other three got ready to fly off after having sated themselves, Liz heard a faint squawk.

“...love...you...Lizz....”

And then the light in Nico’s eyes vanished.

Elizabeth rode along in the back of the crow’s mind. She refrained from engaging his senses or controlling him in any aspect. She did not assume total control, as she had always done before with animals. She was just a thought placed on the backburner. The crow quickly forgot she was there; she’d never done anything to announce her presence in its mind. She merely let it be.

But she did do one thing with its mind. She constantly called up the crow’s memory of Nico’s last moment. Doing so was easier than finding her own memory. Liz lurked in the crow’s mind, memorizing every detail of its memory of Nico. She never wanted to forget the bird, the only person who’d always been there for her. But--but....he was gone.

Depression soon set in, numbing the girl for days and days on end. She kept recycling that memory over and over and over again. I love you too, Nico! I love you too! she cried repeatedly. But of course, Nico would never hear her. Nico was dead.

And there was nothing she could do about it, except remember him. Him, and all the others who had fallen along the wayside or at the last stand at the school. Images of lost friends and dead family joined the cycle, each one casting their own share of the burden at Liz. For she had survived it all, so it fell upon her to remember them all.

And so she did. As the crow flew about, Liz retreated from the world. Days and nights passed, marking no difference for her. Carrion feedings did not disturb her. Sudden storms or cold weather did not bother her. Hunting mice or bugs didn’t catch her attention. Nothing at all touched her.

Until one day, several weeks away.

Wasting away in a daze of nothing but her memories, Elizabeth mentally jumped at a sensation. And another. And another. And five more. Then fifteen. Then several dozen. Then much too many too count. And they had nothing to do with the past.

Joy washed through her, only slightly tempered with impatience and irritation. Heated anger flared up but became smothered under serenity. Craftiness warred with laziness and stoicism. Excitement poured through the girl for some unknown reason. Various other emotions chipped at her and streaked her emotional pool, slowly inspiring a single emotion in herself. Curiosity.

For the first time in nearly a month, Liz felt a desire to reconnect with reality. She deftly immersed herself in the crow’s mind and peeked out through its eyes. And dumbfounded she became.

In the dimming light of the evening sky, the mutant entity witnessed thousands and thousands of crows descending into a park. Complete disbelief nulled the various emotions overwhelming her. Never before in her life had Liz seen so many animals at all, much less just crows! Her crow flapped on toward the massive murder, obviously thrilled to be near so many of its kind. It’s happiness infected Liz as well, causing her defenses to drop even further.

Her depressed apathy was gone. Seventeen-thousand emotions killed it.

But that in itself was a problem. Liz couldn’t think. Her mind ran the scale of feelings, twisting her thoughts every single moment. She was furious and gleeful at the same time. Flying made her feel lonely and the center of attention. That building below wanted her to laugh and cry at the same time. That lovely tree annoyed her with its enthralling appearance. Everything was oging haywire. And she’d had enough. That is, once she was able to form a coherent thought.

“STOP!” she screamed in her mind, unintentionally making her host do so physically as well. An empathic wave of calmness swept forth from her, immediately calming close to nearly two thousand of the birds that were near her. And they all stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at the strange crow that said such things with such authority.

It had taken no time at all to ingratiate herself within the flock. With the crow’s innate cunning and Elizabeth’s empathic powers, the two managed to control any bird that got in their way. No crow that tried to fight her won. No bird managed to take her food. After all, it’s hard to try to pull a fast one when one is overwhelmed with sudden terrors. They soon had the best perch in the entire park. And the best bits of food.

It wasn’t long before the crows began following her around. Corvids are generally held to be the most intelligent of birds, possibly even more so than parrots. They are one of the few creatures that use tools. They are adept at problem-solving. They are capable of critical thinking.

But even then, they do not compare to humans.

However, they still pieced together information about the Elizacrow. It was able to quell anything. It gave off a sense of dominance, as evidenced by the two-yard radius of empty space around its preferred perch. It never had to fight for its food; crows just moved away as it approached. And it always found food, even when others crows had gleaned the last specks of everything from the grounds and trash cans. It was living the perfect life.

And they wanted it too.

So they began observing the crow, the one whose very presence commanded attention. They watched it carry rocks high into the air before diving down at buildings, releasing the rocks just moments before pulling up. They watched the Elizacrow fly through the suddenly-shattered windows. They watched it later return with a piece of fruit or a slice of meat or something in its beak.

And they began copying her. Houses and stores were no longer safe from the pillaging pirates. Hunger was a desperate force, and after having so many omnivores living in one place for so long, most of the easily available food was gone, having been scrounged long ago. But the Elizacrow, the average, normal, terrifying crow managed to open up entirely new possibilities for the crows.

With frequently full bellies, the feathered fiends began again to attend to the strange crow, observing it even more closely. It seemed to constantly come up with new ideas of acquiring food. They often watched it strain to lift small, shiny, colorful cylinders up into the air for as long as she could before dropping them. Astonished, the crows could only ever watch as that individual crow would begin pecking away at the deformed canister. Upon later examination of the thing (once the Elizacrow had departed, of course) they would find that the container had food in it. Soon, crows, either in pairs or as struggling individuals, would be seen lifting such cylinders of food up into the air before dropping them in order to access their contents.

The Elizacrow was teaching the conglomerate of crows how to survive in a human’s world.

The other crows had taken to her claws-on lessons rather well, even developing teamwork skills. Many refrigerators were empty, a direct result of Elizacrow gathering helpers and grabbing the handles with their talons, flying away in order to pry the doors open. The black birds caught on quick. Like they did when she taught them about shredding blankets and such found in houses in order to make comfortable and warm nests. Or how leaving shiny, metal bits and pieces in the sun all day long made such nests even warmer at night.

And she was teaching them words. Not that she felt they would understand them. In fact, they probably didn’t understand anything she ever said. The masses of confusion felt when cawing out words made that quite evident. But she’d gotten to the point where they would mimic her if she actually said something. It was a start.

And strangely, after all that time, Elizabeth started to feel at home. Those birds, those intelligent, beautiful birds, were starting to feel like family. They depended on her to come up with new ways of doing things. Better ways. She’d shown them the secrets of the human cupboards, opened the gates to restaurants and delis. She’d made life more comfortable, less miserable. And they did the same for her.

Maybe it was a bad idea, getting too attached. But then again, even if several of the crows ever died, like her real family, there would still be thousands to love. She would never be lonely again.

And Elizacrow had become the de facto leader of the flocks. That had been evidence when, after realizing that they were running out of food, she had flown off one day, seeking new locations to explore and live in. And when nearly ten thousand birds had joined her.

From that day on, Liz gave up on her past. Her family, her friends, even her name. The crow gave up its own past and identity as well. Together they merged into a single being: Prime. The Crow Queen. The main bird. The Murder Mistress. Other titles they imagined and discarded. none of it really mattered. They were a crow. Prime was a crow. And crows had no use for names and such. Except, deep down inside, Prime always addressed herself as such.

For over two years, Prime had led her family from location to location, always looking out for her flock’s safety and health. Abandoned town after abandoned town fell before the ravenous might of the conglomerate entity. Only the tightest, most secure containers stood a chance of protection against the birds. They ransacked towns and villages. They scoured farms and gardens. They annihilated vermin and pests and occasionally pets. Any wandering humans fled in terror of the black crowd that nearly covered the sky.

They stayed in each new place for as long as food could be found. Birds died and some were born. Other types began joining up with the horde. Ravens and jaybirds were among the first outsiders to enlist. Then the songbirds from the fields joined in. For safety, curiosity, or for hunger, birds continued to join the horde everywhere they flew. But, under the watchful eyes of thousands of crows, they always adhered to whatever Prime did. If not, they soon became the snack of the nearest family member.

This town, the one currently being stripped, was only the latest in the long chain of ravenous devastation that Prime had swept across the Canadian countryside. Despite only being half the size of her initial horde, she still loved each and every member of her family, whether they be full-blooded crows, or adopted like the other kinds of birds. She mourned the deaths or absences of each one as she noticed her flock constantly grow smaller, smaller, smaller. Yes, some crows had just died of old age. Others, possibly due to weariness or fighting (although she attempted to dispel any such feelings that would lead to that act). Or maybe they just got sick. After all, as advanced as Prime was, she could not cure illness or disease.

As she remained perched on her throne on the bank’s roof, a pair of crows flapped down beside her, grasping a dead rat between them. She emitted a jolt of happiness and pleasure at them,causing them to fly away with their emotional rewards. Lately, she hadn’t even needed to find food herself. Several of her closest family members would take it upon themselves to bring food to her.

Prime tore into the meat, relishing the deliciousness of it and enjoying her privacy. The only downfall to commandeering a massive murder was the constant barrage of feelings and crows. But for the moment, she could enjoy her repast. And she did, savoring the slight crunch of stiffened muscles and the slight, metallic taste of the natural sauces. IT was the most delicious rat she’d eaten in weeks.

Once she’d finished her meal, she cawed loudly, attracting the attention of severla nearby crows. They rapidly flew to the remains of the rat and flew off with it, distributing it to the rest of the horde. Waste not, want not.

And then, while scanning around for potential danger/threats/targets/possible food storages, Prime saw something that struck her as odd.

A large billboard on the side of a building. A horned man gazed back from its surface, seemingly offering his hand out in welcome, a warm smile on his face. A speal of healing and other such things were listed. And its name. The Church of Sebastian. As if he were some god.

A tiny thought in the depths of Prime’s mind reared itself up. ”Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Beady yellow eyes glared at the billboard. That though was right. There would be no other gods. Prime could vaguely remember her God. But she clearly remembered that this was wrong. She would not tolerate this. “Blasphemer....” she crowed softly, so no other bird could catch it and repeat it.

Another glance at the billboard and she knew the next location for the horde. They were going to New York. She was going home. May God be with us....

[End]