As soon as those words left him, the wind came in sharp, snapping against their cloaks without managing to move either of them.
The man who had once been a raven glanced sideways, confusion flashing briefly across his face, but he kept silent. He waited, still as stone, for another command.
The other man lifted two fingers. At once, the air in front of him warped, like a distortion let loose by a small indecipherable action. It started with a faint bend in the darkness, like heat trembling above fire, but it quickly spread outward in a slow curve that moved with the rhythm of the tide behind them.
The space before them thinned and stretched, losing its solid shape until it resembled water suspended upright in the middle of the shore. One would imagine that the sea itself had risen from the ground and taken shape before them, held upright by something unseen, rather than gravity. It didn't look exactly like gravity, but something ever so mysterious.
