Augury is the art of divining the future from flocks of birds; a noble practice that has served humanity well throughout much of its history. A Priest will augur this year’s harvest; she might use a flock of crows to determine the health of a baby. The death of a wild raven be an ill omen — and two dead is even worse.
Indeed, augury is so important to humanity that Scripture holds three birds in highest regard — crows, magpies, and ravens — as birds carrying great power and meaning.
“…thus comes the crow, as man’s blunted sickle fails. To the maw go seeds and roots, like harvesters plucking the living from the earth.
– Book of Writ, chapter eight, verse twenty three
Why? Why does Scripture cite these three birds specifically?
Scholars, Scribes, laymen, clergy, soldiers, generals, commanders, Foxers, Zealots, Lightbringers, Paladins, Clerics, and Priests – people who have dedicated their very lives to the study of illuminated Scripture – still struggle to draw connections between the words in our most holy of texts and the existence of these birds, who are as common to us as harvesters are to Purgatory. Birds, who, for centuries, have meant little more then a lighter grain stock come autumn’s chill.
We plied our holy words with every divine relic we have in our vaults — even the Oracle studies Scripture tirelessly — and we are still no closer to understanding the true importance of these birds in our world.
Directly from The Book of Writ, where this text is found, is perhaps the most puzzling reference to these birds. The page’s true meaning still remains veiled to us, perhaps, because it is a deceptively simple line of prose — not verse, as much of Scripture is. The human mind complicates the benign; seeks to find what cannot be found, like looking for patterns in the waters of rivers.
“Magpie, the Portent. Crow, The Harbinger, breaker of dawn. Raven, the Dusk in Us.”
– Book of Writ, chapter ten, verses one, two, and three
What is troubling about this line is that all other appearances of these birds in Scripture pertain to random encounters with nature. The Book of Writ is the only place in Scripture where these birds are given more significance.
Another point of order: The Book of Writ is the only book in all of Scripture — and it is the final book in all of Scripture, might I add — to capitalize the words, “‘Harbinger’, ‘Portent’, ‘Dusk’, and ‘Us.’” Nowhere else in Scripture are these words referred to as proper nouns, nor are they capitalized. In fact, read this tome closer, and you’ll notice that “Us” appears frequently in The Book of Writ as a capitalized proper noun; referring to someone or something who is identified nowhere else in Scripture.
Who is “Us” in this context?
Even more confusing, however, is that the Book of Writ has no exact narrator, unlike many of the other books in Scripture. Writ is a book of prophecies and omens; it isn’t until the final pages of this tome does the narrator even address themselves in the singular first person, with the verse,
“They know not of their reckoning, asleep in the night. On the hour and the day none can know; man will know of me, for I am.”
– Book of Writ, chapter sixteen, verses eleven and ten
It remains the most esoteric of our holy books, and as such, is subject to the least amount of scrupulous study, as far as the Church is concerned. To the Church’s holiest of holy, the book’s abstract themes, lack of cohesive narrative, and lack of narrator (at least until the end) make it seemingly less worthy of their “most holy” interests. There is nothing in this book that I believe warrants any less study than any of our other relics.
I affirm, of all of mankind’s collective knowledge of all of our holy texts, and in our arrogant estimations of the world at large, there remains one small gap; a forgotten weakness left exposed:
This book.
How can we begin to understand the world — its beginning and our place in it — if we do not know its end?
The Book of Writ may yet have stories to tell us.
– C.