Askatla tried to jerk away from the spindly spectre skittering out of the shadows, gangly arms unfurling from behind his back like the wings of an emaciated raven. The entire room around her tilted, and she pitched lamely back onto the stiff rubber mattress of the operating room, her limbs leaden and clumsy. Brilliant white lights seared her retinas, leaving her vision spotty around the ghastly visage that closed in on her.

“Come!” crowed the avian beak and angular features, his raucously nasal tenor impossibly loud in her face. “Let me look at you!”

She tried to scramble away as…