Jeb nods, and the two travelers turn to follow the demon crow.
some mood music
The trio move across the landscape, which begins to resemble the world Charging Bear left behind less and less. The path he follows twists and forks often, and more than once he'd have been completely lost without the sight of the demon crow to guide him along the right path. The manitou leads him and his companion into shadow, and Charging Bear finds himself climbing endless narrow passages, ladders, vines, and pits. He feels himself sinking, heading down, ever down, eternally downward.
The trip lasts a long time. The Native Son is forced to hunt at least twice to come up with adequate food for himself and his companion, and they have to stop to rest often, though the giant moon never sets and the sun never seems to rise.
The first time, Charging Bear and Jeb find refuge in a stand of massive pine trees grown into a hushed and cavernous chamber, like a cathedral with a roof of boughs and a ground covered in brown pine needles. Little people tend to trees and flowers in the pine catherdral, and welcome The Native Son and the Dust Adder with open arms, though they shoo away the crow, who huffs angrily at the ill-treatment. When Charging Bear awakes, he finds himself feeling refreshed and rested, and Jeb's hands have recovered enough that he can grasp his knife without wincing.
The second rest was in the cold. Charging Bear had started a fire to roast a rabbit he had captured, but the sky grew dark as a massive cloud with the face of an old man covered the moon and drenched him with rainwater. The flame was instantly doused, and Charging Bear and his companions had to flee before Old Man Thunder's wrath until they found a small stand of rocks for shelter. The thundercloud's fury was not spent for several hours.
The path Charging Bear follows becomes twisted and warped. Brambles and thorns pull at his clothing and leave long, bloody scratches on his hands, arms, and legs. Occasionally he spots a gobbet of flesh dangling from the thorns around him, then skeletons, then much fresher corpses. Men, women, animals, little folk, and even stranger things are impaled on the thorny brambles around the path. Once, Charging Bear passes a wisp of cloudstuff dangling from a branch, the remains of a storm spirit like the one that had soaked him that morning. Another time he passes a garden of impaled arms and legs, bundled in a mass that still writhed.
There was no mistaking it. The Shrike's Larder was near. Ahead of him, Charging Bear sees an arch woven of thorns, with two human skeletons impaled through the chest flanking the entryway.
((OOC: All your wounds are healed. You may draw 2 random chips.))
