Oh, it was the Ebon Wings, in the Runwater Flats, in the east wilderness of Crow’s Foot before the fires cleared ‘em…

Oh, it was the Ebon Wings, in the Runwater Flats, in the east wilderness of Crow’s Foot before the fires cleared ‘em…

Oh, it was the Ebon Wings, in the Runwater Flats, in the east wilderness of Crow’s Foot before the fires cleared ‘em out. They were these tough leg-breakers, a gang working for the Crows, but they were all into that freaky Forgotten Gods worship and they were drinking from some spirit well down in the filth.

They fought ghosts, and ghosts rode them, and they threw ghosts like weapons; it was a crazy pack, generally hopped up on drugs and plasmics, and the Crows used them for terror tactics. The boss was Bloodletta, this crimson-haired fury. Back in the day, the word was she could “scream ghosts,” whatever that means.

Her kid grew up practically living in the spirit well, and her nannies were freaky cultists. Before she could talk she was drawing Hadrathi symbols on people with charcoal, and she was tattooing everybody who would hold still by the time she was ten, and by the time puberty hit she was a force of nature on both sides of the Mirror. So Bloodletta’s kid was called Inkletta, a joke that stuck. Far as I know she’s the last of the Ebon Wings, and that’s just because she got out before they crossed the Ferals and perished.

From Growler’s entry in “Crow’s Foot Ephemerals, a Collection of Oral Histories,” by Crayla Hurantis