Knight of Blue-Winged Sleep

In sleep, Eislyn sees herself standing in the north already. The governor's palace appears to her as a vast aviary, in which she wanders, unable to find her way. The people — half-person, half-bird, in a fashion that's unremarkable to her, as is the way of dreams — strut and sing and ignore her.
Finally she comes on a room where there is a playing-board, where a bird and tree sit opposite one another, deep in a game. Dozens of fallen pieces lay around the sides of the board already, in tiny pools of blood. She tries to look closer, but a frantic twittering alarm-call wrenches her attention away, to where another bird flutters brokenly, attempting to hop away.
She steps forward, reaching out to calm, and finds herself staring into a dark cavern in the bird-person's heaving breast, where their heart is missing.

Eislyn, paladin of the Monarch of the Blue-Winged Land of sleep, adventures no more. Her youthful zeal ended in lung-sickness and loss; she travels now only sedately, alone, and addresses the quieter woes of the world.

An evil stirs in the north, however, and she turns her steps toward it, both out of duty and because she suspects it knows her name....

First posted on Cohost; this simply collects the original episodic presentation into a single downloadable edition. ~14k words in total.