Was I dead? No, I was in way too much pain to be dead, and that would be too cruel of a joke, to wake up with the same injuries in the afterlife, wouldn't it? I blinked. The last thing I remembered was that pigeon talking.

  As my vision cleared a little bit, I looked around. I was in the same dilapidated park. I looked down at my stomach; it was still covered in rivers of blood. A puddle of it had formed around me. Oh, okay. So, I'm still on my way to dying. It was just taking longer than I thought. Then I heard the clicking of little feet and I rolled my head to one side. There was the pigeon again, the size of a chicken, with a golden tint in its feathers and a fierce expression on its face. It pecked noncommittally at the weeds rising up in the cracks in the paving, its little head bobbing as it circled me. In my haze of blood loss and pain, I was sure it was giving me an appraising look, but that was probably the bloodloss talking.

  "Ah, so you live, mortal. Fascinating," the pigeon said. Its little beak clapped open and closed in sync with the words, but there was no way a pigeon was talking to me.

  "Tell me, little mageling, are you a practitioner of the Craft?”

  I opened my mouth and a groan escaped.

  "What?" I said.

  "Do you practice the Craft, mortal?" the pigeon said, clearly irritated with having to repeat itself.

  "Are you talking?" I mumbled.

  "Oh dear, it seems I found myself a particularly dull human. Yes, mortal, I speak. I fly, on occasion I've even been known to dance. Now answer my question: are you a practitioner of the Craft?”

  Well, this wasn't happening, I thought to myself. This must be some sort of weird hallucination, and I couldn't help but think that I'd rather have just died peacefully than to have to go through this odd, blood-starved fantasy. Also, how lame was my imagination that in my dying moments all that my brain could come up with was a talking pigeon?

  "These Runes, what are they?" the pigeon said, pecking at my gloves.

  I tried to draw my hand away, but I could barely feel my body at this point. The pigeon hopped onto my thigh. He was surprisingly weighty, and then he looked at me again with curiosity.

  "Come now, little mageling. Your time on this mortal coil is short, and I would have answers of you. Did you create those Runes?”

  "Yes," I croaked, giving in to the madness.

  "Fascinating," the pigeon said. It flapped its wings a couple of times and hopped off me, circling again. "But yet, I don't get even a whiff of talent about you. Tell me, whose apprenticeship are you under?”

  "I work for Mark," I mumbled back.

  "Mark? Who is this Mark you speak of?”

  "He owns the florists."

  The pigeon stopped in its circling and cocked its head at me again.

  "Your master is a florist?”

  "I wouldn't call him my master; I'd say he was more of my boss. But yeah, he's alright.”

  The pigeon thought about this for a moment.

  "You mean he is your employer?”

  "Yes, that's right," I croaked.

  "No, boy, I mean who has taught you the Craft?" the pigeon said, sounding bored with me already.

  "Oh, do you mean magic?" I said.

  My mouth had gone completely dry now. My throat was raspy. I tried to swallow and it felt like I had a mouthful of glass shards.

  "Yes, boy, that is what you mortals refer to the Craft as," he said the word with dry sarcasm.

  "I found a book,” I mumbled, my eyes struggling to stay open.

  The pigeon didn't have eyebrows, but if it did, it would have raised them at this moment. Its golden eyes widened. It flapped its wings a couple more times and landed on my shoe.

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  "You found a book?"

  "Yeah… I learned some Runes from there… I made this gear.”

  “You learned some Runes?” the Pigeon King said skeptically. “So you are a self taught magi?”

  I nodded my head slowly.

  “How curious.” The pigeon continued to walk around me. "And what do you do with this gear?"

  "I fight bad guys," I mumbled.

  While it wasn't completely true, it was close to the truth. I mean, after all, I'd fought four bad guys and now I was gonna die because of it.

  "You fight bad guys? How wonderful," the pigeon said, again sounding remarkably sarcastic for a creature that didn't even have lips. "And is this how you come to find yourself bleeding out on my statue?"

  I gave a slow nod of my head, the woozy feeling washing over me again and my eyes felt heavy. The pigeon clacked its beak impatiently.

  "Come now, boy, stay with me. I will yet have answers of you before you die. Why did you fight these bad guys?" the pigeon asked, as if talking to a particularly slow child.

  “Because…” I croaked, and again I didn't have an answer for the pigeon. I was still trying to figure out why I needed to have answers for a pigeon anyway. “Because… there are too many bad people,” I said. “And someone has to do something about it.”

  “I see. I've known humanity for thousands of years, and I have yet to meet a human who does something selfless, something truly altruistic, with no other purpose. Why do you lie to the Pigeon King, boy?" the pigeon said to me sharply.

  I looked at him, too tired to lie, my consciousness too fragile to obscure the truth even from myself.

  "Because they killed my Grandad." My words were beginning to slur now. “He saw a group of thugs robbing someone… he tried to stop them… he was a good man. They didn't care that he was old... They beat him, beat him so badly, and left him there to die. My Grandad was tough… he survived… for a few more weeks… then one day… he was gone… They killed my Grandad for being a good man.” I felt warm tears running down my cold cheeks.

  The pigeon cooed with satisfaction.

  "So it's vengeance that drives you. Tell me, boy, before you die: did you get your vengeance?"

  I shook my head slowly. "I don't know who they were. The police don't either. I just... I just wanted to stop it from happening… to other people.”

  "So the death of your grandfather has driven you to prevent such a fate befalling anyone else?"

  I tried to shrug my shoulders, but apparently, those sorts of fine motor skills were beyond me now, so I simply nodded my head again, slowly.

  "And what have you got for your good intentions? Gut-stabbed and bleeding out all alone. What would your parents say, child, if they could see you now?"

  "They're dead. I don't think they'd say much.” I croaked.

  "I see," the pigeon said again, as if I had told him something as mundane as my shoe size. "Well, you'll be joining them soon enough." The pigeon clacked its beak and then pecked at the ground again, seemingly growing bored with our conversation. "Of course, you don't have to die today," the pigeon said, as if the idea had just occurred to him.

  "I don't?" I croaked.

  "No, for you see, fate seems to be playing a game with you, child. It gives you the motivation to do something as silly as what you've done, and then it gives you the means. Then, when the consequences of your actions stab you in the stomach, you find yourself in the presence of the one creature that can save you.”

  "You?"

  "Me, for I am the Pigeon King." The pigeon spread its wings and puffed its chest up, looking somehow regal. "And I can snatch you from the cold jaws of death herself, at a price, of course.”

  "A price?" I repeated.

  "You see, I'm in need of followers, of sorts. Now, my followers generally are of the more feathered variety." He waved his wing at the surrounding trees, where I'd only just noticed that there were at least 30 or 40 pigeons sitting watching us in silence. "And while my feathered brethren are wonderful followers, they do have their limitations. I've been meaning to add a human to my court. And look how wonderful fate is: not only do I have a human stumble into my kingdom in dire need of the Pigeon King, but a mage on top of that! The possibilities are numerous and exciting, little Mageling.”

  "What do I have to do?" I asked.

  "Does it matter?" the pigeon replied. "Is there anything I could ask of you right now that you wouldn't accept in exchange for your life?”

  I thought about this for a moment, and then I turned away from the pigeon.

  "Yes," I said coldly, and I'm sure the pigeon smirked at me somehow.

  He flapped its wings so that he could get back in front of me again.

  "Come now, little Mageling, I would not ask you to do anything immoral, or at least objectionably immoral. I simply need some small favors from my followers, and all you have to do, boy, is become a feathered follower of the Pigeon King. In doing so, you give me the power to save you. For a one-time deal, now I'll save your life. Would you like to see the new dawn sun rise?"

  I swallowed, feeling tears burn at my numb eyes again. I was on the brink of death now; I knew it, the pigeon knew it, and maybe this all was just some bizarre, death-inspired hallucination. Either way, I was ready for it to be over.

  I closed my eyes and waited for death to come.

  “Or you can die and allow these bad men to continue with their wicked ways. I wonder who’s grandfather will be next?”

  My eyes shot open and I felt a blaze of fury ignite deep inside of me. The pigeon grinned at me.

  “I can teach you boy. I can teach you how to actually harness the Ancient Craft and I can show you how to stop these bad men.”

  I looked at the pigeon again and then I nodded.

  "If you can save me, I'll be your follower."

  "Wonderful," the pigeon cried, and suddenly the trees exploded with the cooing and squawking of the watching pigeons. I saw them all rise into the air, and then they descended upon me in a cloud of darkness, and my whole world went black again.

  Was I about to be eaten by a cloud of pigeons? Man, dying was a headache.