Under Black Plumes

“Why does it seem, no matter how many centuries pass, you’re always the same. These fools have disturbed my crypt and awoken me after some thousand years, and yet there you are, unchanged, the picture of yourself when they first laid me here. Look at me, decayed and worm-eaten. You, your black plume’s as glossy as ever. What are you? With what devils or gods have you consorted?”

But the raven gives no answer to the fiend, its beady eye ever watchful of the animate corpse. The silent secrets, hidden under those black feathers, will be whispered ah never—nevermore.