_One..._

_Two..._

_Three..._

Iollan counted the crows as they swirled overhead in the dusk's fading light. His heart pounded as if it would rip itself from his chest. His orders to retreat from the battle still shook him. With each step he led them, he had felt failure ever more fervently. A shadow flitted in the corner of his eye.

He held his fist up in the air, silently commanding his men to halt their movements. The birds cawed, the air chilled. "We must go no further this night." Iollan turned to his men, his voice was hurried and afraid. "We must make camp."

"_Here?"_ Tolagh, his first commander, asked incredulously. "Did you not see them?" The men, about forty in number, all muttered agreement.

“Aye. ’Tis not safe to be without camp this night.” He looked ahead. "There, a clearing," he led his men forward. The forest seemed to roar around them. Untold creatures lay hidden by the trees, and a suffocating fog was taking shape around them. The three crows crested on the breeze, and than dove down, disappearing into the forest.

They stepped into the clearing and it stretched before them. Iollan looked across, seeing the stones placed around it.

"Bloody hell." Tolagh cursed. "This place..."

Iollan swallowed thickly. The stones stood in a grand circle, stark and pale in the waning light. He could make out the etchings carved into them. This was an old place, long ago forgotten. Iollan wondered how he had gotten his men so lost as to have ended up here. They were supposed to be far from the slaughter behind them. Though he now questioned whether it was his retreat or flight of cowardice that had brought him to this place. He snapped his head to the right, as another shadow disappeared from view.

"Touch nothing but the earth," Iollan commanded his men. "Do not enter the circle." He himself began to skirt the outer edge of the ráth, making his way to the eastern side. It would be the first to receive the sunlight come day break. "Bring wood from the forest, we'll need fire."

The men gave a chorus of "aye" and went about their work. Iollan began digging pits to house the firewood. He heard the wings before he saw them, three crows perched on the inner-most stones. Their caws filled the cooling air.

_Once_...

_Twice_...

_Thrice_...

The birds took flight then.

Icy fear suffocated Iollan’s heart. He looked around the clearing, seeing it empty. A wail tore through the air._ No no, no._ 'Twas not his men who made that sound. Whirling around, he ran towards the trees. "Return!” He gasped in a breath. ”RETURN!” Sprinting through the trees, he called for his men.

The wail screeched again, echoing through the trees. Around him erupted chaos. His men scrambled about, some cowering beneath trees, others sprinting back towards the clearing. Harsh cries exploded from their bodies as they saw them. The black wraith-like shapes rising from the trees, _one, two, three._ They seemed to take shape: pale, beautiful, and foreboding. Three women with jet black hair that reminded Iollan of feathers stood before them. The air was still, and then they screamed. A call of death.

The cowering men scrambled to their feet in quick pursuit of their brethren.

"DO NOT ENTER THE RÁTH!” Iollan cried after them, but his words fell on frightened and deaf ears. The men ran ahead as fast as they could.

The figures descended and disappeared into the shadows. Iollan's legs regained their function and he too darted for the clearing, desperate to calm and bring sense to his men.

When he re-entered the clearing, he witnessed nothing but madness and pandemonium. His men had indeed entered the ráth and in that trespass had they lost themselves. Axes fell on familiar faces, and Iollan’s men roared in agony as they fell one by one. Iollan watched in horror as Tolagh, unseeing, brought his club down on Ardál’s skull. Mere meters away, Bain dashed Tagh’s head against one of the central stones within the ráth, his blood and grey matter dousing the stone in sickly rivulets.

Iollan charged forward, gripping men by their chest pieces and ripping them off one another. This had little avail as the men would rush for each other the moment they were apart. Their cries filled the clearing as they slaughtered their brethren. Iollan stepped back, lost at what to do. He fell to his knees as he cowered for a brief moment, and then, as the coward he was, he ran. He darted through the chaos, Tolagh swung at him with his club as he passed. Something unseen pulled at him as he ran through the clearing. Whispers crooned in his mind…_kill….kill…kill…_ Iollan sprinted faster into the forest desperate to drown out the voices. The further he went, the more he could feel himself once again. The sounds behind him faded, whether because of distance or that there were fewer victims, Iollan did not know. He just kept running.

Iollan did not stop until his feet crashed through water, jolting him back to himself. He looked down to find himself standing at the edge of a river. Hurriedly, he whipped his head in every direction, trying to discern where to go. _I should go back for them…._but were there any men to go back to? Those shadows….that forest…He stood frozen underneath the weight of his decisions. But looking out to the river once more, he saw them. The three, pale as the moon and ferocious as the night. Iollan felt himself be pulled towards them. The water of the river crested his knees.

The three women bowed over something, Iollan could not quite make out what. He took another step through the river, and he found he could hear them. They were crying. From their hands poured water from the river over the object they washed. It was stained red and brown, the colors bleeding as the waters doused over it. Iollan stepped closer still.

His head felt dizzy, misaligned. What were they washing? Iollan’s feet stumbled over the pebbles. _I just…need.._ But what did he need? Iollan looked down, now chest deep in the river. His chest plate red with blood and brown with dirt and grime. Whose blood? Questions, questions, questions, unrelentingly hounded him. He shook his head, trying to regain focus.

The women ceased their cries, and slowly turned to face him. Iollan gasped in a breath as they revealed to him his own armor. He desperately met their eyes, black and endless as a crow’s. His breath rushed from his body. Iollan understood then, men should not disturb the ráth. Over the rushing river, he could hear the village druid’s warning clearly now:

_In three, they come. _

_Macha, Nemain, Badb..._

_In three, as one, they stay. _

_The Phantom Queens to take their prey._

The women: sisters, queens, crows that they were, watched him solemnly as he fell beneath the flows, their work complete. The river claimed him in silence with only the crows to bear witness. When he was gone, they flew, vanishing into the night.