ANNOUNCEMENT: Turns out the archive site actually had two captures of page 70, and I'd only seen one of them before. The other still doesn't display the full page, but at least it has two more story posts, which I'll post now.
Editor's note: This and the next one both take place before the last story post on page 26 of this topic. To my relief, we soon came to the edge of the dead forest--but that relief turned to dismay as I looked across the land before us. Where there had once been beautiful marshland, pools of black sludge bubbled between stretches of ash-gray ground and crumbling stone arches. What grass there was left had withered and turned a sickly pale orange. At the center of all this was the eagles' castle, looking faded and ominous through the rain. Just then, a bolt of lightning blazed across the dark sky, striking one of the castle's decorative wings and setting it ablaze despite the rain. "Nice touch," I heard Eris mutter. Pushing down the creature gnawing at my stomach, I weakly said, "We must be in the wrong timeline." Eris turned back to the dead forest, sadness in her voice: "No. This is the one we belong in." I blinked rain, and perhaps something else, from my eyes. What had Loradus done to our world? "Shall--shall we have a look inside?" I asked, though I had already made up my mind, and it seemed Eris had, too.
Hovering outside one of the castle's many windows, I hesitated before carefully placing my hand on the sill and peering in. Much like the previous eight times I had done this, the room beyond was pitch black, and nothing stood out in the darkness. Shaking rain out of my feathers, I glanced farther along the wall, where Eris was also looking into the windows: she was going about it far more swiftly than I. Letting out a shuddering breath, I flapped over to the next window and looked in to find a torch blazing in a wall brazier. It cast a warm glow over the books scattered across the floor--and a large table that had been turned on its side. Moving to one side of the window, I hissed, "Eris!" and waved a hand. She took notice soon enough, and began to make her way over. In the meanwhile, I waited before the window, looking at the torch and the table and wondering what they could mean. Then something moved behind the table.
My beak fell open as it poked its head up: an eagle. He shivered, eyes very wide and very yellow. "Has he come to claim us at last, then?" asked he. I blinked, and the action seemed to calm him ever so slightly. "Oh, you're not one of them, I see. How--how is that?" "Luck, I suppose," I muttered. "What happened here?" The eagle shivered again. "A few days ago, Loradus brought his Followers in here--" "Emilius!" Eris flew through the window, and Emilius the eagle stood and stepped out from behind the table to embrace her. "Eris," he said, stepping back; and in that moment I realized how tall and old he was. The many lines in his graying face crinkled into a smile. "I thought you'd been taken..." "I had," returned Eris. "Someone broke the spell holding me." Emilius turned to look at me. "By 'someone', you can't mean this raven here?" "Well... I think so..." She looked to me as well. I simply nodded, not wanting to bring up Ewar and the part he had played in it all. "Ah, well, pleased to meet you," said Emilius, and I stepped into the room through the window so that he could shake my hand. (I could not help thinking that, had he shaken a raven's hand before, he wouldn't have offered his again so freely.) "Rizzo," said Eris belatedly, "this is Emilius--our head librarian." "That's right," said Emilius, refusing to release my hand even after I had released his. "The library's in sad shape now, though...why anyone would want to rip the place up is beyond me." He shook his head sadly. At last I managed to free my hand. "Can you tell us about that?" I asked. Emilius glanced from me to Eris and back. "Oh?..." "He means," said Eris, "about the...um..." "L-Lh-Loradus' Followers," I said rather impatiently, massaging the back of my hand. "What did they do?"
