(Advice from the Green Man:)

“The Shadowlords are insane. Never forget that.  Their Gift is handed down from person to person, and it carries with it all the memories of those who possessed it in the past.  All their prejudices and obsessions, their hatreds and fears and uncertainties, melded to the brain of one who was born and bred for such a process, and who has been told from childhood that he must submit to it…think what that would do to a man!” He looked up toward the mansion high above us.  “I’ve been told that some become lost in the process and that they wander places like this in a haze, unable to fix on a single identity, or even a single time frame.  Others appear to be more rational. But even with the latter, there’s still madness at the core of them.  Dozens of ancestral voices clamoring inside their heads every waking moment, each one derived from a Shadow who was himself insane.  Madness layered upon madness, all of it trapped within a soul that must walk the borderline between life and death, committed to neither…

“Never forget what they are,” he warned us.  “Never forget that no matter how human they may appear to be, they ceased to be that long ago.”

There was a pteradactyl sitting on my chest.

Not a big one.  Parrot-sized.  It had its head turned to one side so that its little black eye could stare at me, and there was no mistaking the profile.

A pteradactyl.

“Ah. You’re awake.”  A man’s voice filtered into my awareness.  I tried to turn my head toward him, but the motion hurt.  Everything hurt.

“Here”, he said, to someone other than me. “I saved one for you.”

A small fish came flying in my direction.  The  pteradactyl reached up and snapped it out of the air.   One gulp later it was gone.

“Harvested from a world where the great asteroid never hit.  They were popular pets among the elite for a while.  Then the aristos tired of them, like they tire of everything else.  Here.”  He knelt down by my side.  “This will help.”

My chest burned like fire as he helped me to a sitting position.  The  pteradactyl squawked as it was dislodged, and fluttered off to take up a post on a nearby chair.  My left leg, I saw, was swathed in bandages.  It smelled of herbs.  Every inch of my body was sore.

He lifted a bowl to my lips.

“What is it?” I asked hoarsely.

“Chicken soup.  A thousand worlds have failed to come up with anything better.  Drink.”