• • Raydorn: The War in the Black
• March 24, 2024

Raydorn: The War in the Black (Chapter 56)

“Fight me then, if you’re ready to die.”

Kion Smoulder, the Aurora Knight of King Mightus, 448 A.C.A.

---

The trip back to the Icy Pearl Isles should been days at best, but when you have a Stormguard of the Wind powering your sales, you can reduce days to hours. 

Hours were still too long. 

Astrid had flown ahead of them, Malum too, but that didn’t do much to quell Andy’s nerves. She had never been one for nail biting but without alcohol on hand, and the scratching touch of smoke in the back of her throat, there was little else to do.

Jack put all he had from his Iligsia into the sails, but it still wasn’t fast enough for them. They sailed into fire and smoke, that stretched on for miles. In a few hours, the smoke would reach the southern coasts of Susanna and Raydorn northeast of the Isles. For half a decade, the citizens would not know why they would need to wear masks to protect each and every breath.

The Winds that came from Jack would bounce off the sails of the S.S. Thassus, sending it sailing at speeds beyond what any other frigate could accomplish. The sails were strong though, and rather than break, they reflected the excess winds out and towards the burning isles they were passing through. 

Jack put out several infernos in his determination to return to the Black Legion and didn’t bat an eye.

As they came upon the main Isle in the center of all the burning plateaus, Jack did let up. The sounds of others calling for him to stop could not be heard over the roar of his Wind, and the need to reach home.

The S.S. Thassus ran up the beach, its hull letting out a screech and crackle as the wood cracked against the sand dunes and the rock underneath. Pirates on deck were thrown to the ground, and several overboard, but there was nothing to be done about it now. 

Jack was the only one left standing on the ship, but not for long. 

With his sword in hand and the Wind under his feet, he ran towards the ship’s bow and leaped. He soared several stories into the air and several yards across right onto the center of the Icy Pearl Isles.

Goddamnit, Jack.

Andy would have spoken out loud but her head had met the floor, leaving her rather concussed. She struggled to push herself up along with many others on the boat. She felt the burn as she tried to push her body past its limits, the imagination of screams and her people burning spurning her to her feet.

If only she was going to be given the chance to stand.

Warp.

There was this strange sound and a flash of blue light that was immediately followed by the clicking of heels on the deck. 

Andy turned as the blue mirror seemed to collapse in on itself, and a woman in blue and gold robes stood with a scepter in her hand.

It took a moment for Andelyn’s mind to register the face of the woman with the presence of her head screaming for her to run.

Amidala greeted her as if they were old friends, “Well, hello Andelyn, it’s been too long.”

Then with a twirl of her scepter, she spoke a spell, “Ignis,” and then the ship exploded.

BOOM!

The sound was deafening, so much so that Andy could barely hear the presence in her head trying to speak to her. 

The explosion cratered the ship, sending people flying out into the water with cracked bones if they were lucky. They were sent into the sand with broken bodies if they weren’t. Those who died on impact with the remains of the ship were somewhere in between; they died quickly, but death is death.

The Light she ran from so much seemed to coalesce around Andy, shielding her as best it could with the power she held within. Her back stood firm as it slammed into the railing of the ship, and her body remained intact as it collided with the surface of the water below. 

When her back hit the sand a few feet below the shallow waters, her rib cage cracked in several places. As bad as that was, the Light made sure it wasn’t much worse, and even then…

The Light couldn’t stop her from drowning.

She had to do that herself.

It’s an uncanny experience. She couldn’t take a breath because there was no air to breathe, but her lungs still sought it. The search for air] caused her a sharp pain as her lungs added pressure to the cracks in her ribs.

Reaching up to swim nearly caused her to lose consciousness from the pain, and swelling throughout her chest area nearly did her in.

It was the aurora light that formed around her body that gave her the lift she needed to swim up.

Thank you, she told the presence in her head and received none of the warmth she expected. 

As she surfaced, and took a breath, feeling her ribs being stabbed into her sides, they told her, ‘This is not us.’

Andy floated on her back and used slow paddles to get to the beach. As she treaded water she was glad that she had made the choice not to don armor after changing out of her formal wear.

She hit the beach with a thump, and her chest only began to hurt more and more. She struggled from her back, to her side, and then up onto her arms and knees. While her injuries were not so severe, she felt that her chest would collapse on all of her organs at any moment. She had never felt such pain in her life.

Warp.

Then the blue light flashed in front of her again.

Andy raised her head to look in front of her, dripping strands of blisteringly white hair loomed over her enflamed eyes.

There were few things that could push someone through the most uncomfortable pain they had ever experienced before. 

One of them was rage.

Andy suddenly found herself standing up to her feet to stand before the warlock of Raydorn, Amidala Kain.

Andelyn stood with the beach at her back, as Amidala stood before raging flames, and cast a long shadow that consumed Andy’s own.

Yet, her eyes shined gold – the telltale sign of having magic at the ready – and smirked at Andy. 

“You really should have kept up with your hair dye,” the warlock told her, “it looks better and it doesn’t give you away at dinner parties.” 

Then the warlock raised her scepter.

*****

The Wind is not known for its terrifying power and the ferocity, despite having toppled towns and castles. When a monsoon washes over a coastal port, the waves of Thassia earn the people’s fear. Trees are torn in two during a hurricane and the lightning that never struck gets the credit. 

It is the Wind that breaks the tides against the rock, it is the Wind that drowns homes in debris… and it is the Wind with which Jackson Starshield split men in two.

He couldn’t run, not with his leg, but with the Wind, he floated, hovered, and glided over the ground and through the camps. His Iligsia shined in his chest and his eyes shined gold because he knew.

He’s here.

His Wind blew out flames as he flew past them, the turbulent force smothering out the flames into whisps before they could be smoke. The moonlight blinded those around him who had grown used to the ferocity of the fire, and they coughed out their lungs as clean air replaced smoke.

Those who wore the colors of the Black Legion, without the wear and tear that came with exile, found out too late how easy they were to discern from their enemy. 

They heard the turbine behind the ex-Stormguard and saw only a blur as the Wind carried him faster than the eye could follow. Then when he would swing, the turbine would follow his swing, and then there would be no man amongst the remains. 

It would be dishonest to say that the invaders fell one by one to his blade. In truth, there were times when they went two or three at a time. They could not stop him, nothing could stop him from getting to his destination.

Nothing would keep Jackson Starshield from reaching the aurora lights that flashed against the flames ahead of him. Death and blood would only stall him.

As he ran, the Wind wiped away Jack’s tears. His thoughts ran afoul of fantasy, beliefs, and ideas that, He’s come; he’s come to save us; come back to me.

The bodies of his allies that lay across the ground, cleaved into pieces by a serrated weapon only one man could yield would not pierce the veil Jack wore over his eyes.

Even as the heat of an axe he knew all too well radiated against his skin, making him sweat, his fantasy did not relent. He ran with a grin of fanaticism, and as he reached the crater in which his love fought his friends, reality refused to grant him any mercy.

Clang!

All the strength that allowed him to cross miles in minutes had drained from him.

Clang!

As fiery axe met the blade of light, Jack lost his strength to hold his sword. 

Clang!

The blade fell to the ground between the falling sparks before him.

Clang!

And his knees buckled with it.

Clang! Clang! CLANG!

Jack watched on from the edge of the crater, the back of his arms laid against his thighs, unable to conjure the strength to do anything other than watch.

And watch he did, as Astrid swung and twirled and dashed at the Aurora Knight with her axe. Even with the black color of his armor, the smoking red spots betrayed to Jack just how many blows Astrid had already landed.

The pain that Kion must be feeling, Jack thought, but nothing of the bleeding wounds on Astrid’s skin that betrayed a far different truth.

As fast as she was, the armor did not slow her opponent, and he did not tire as men did. He swung, blocked, and chopped with his sword with as much finesse, risk, and deadliness as his rival. Enough so that he drew the blades of another.

The Aurora Knight made to bring his sword down on Astrid, who could only raise her axe with one hand to defend herself. 

He smacked her to the ground and raised his sword behind his head to split her skull. 

Clink!

It never swung as the chin of his helm just barely dodged Lucy’s saber.

The knight stepped back as the pirate moved between him and the axewoman, only to tighten his form against the smashing of a club against his arm.

Quintus’s club shattered into a million pieces as the Aurora Knight’s body shook like a drum in his armor. It was enough time for Qunitus to pull back, to get out of the knight’s range before he could counter.

The knight did not bother, seeing the two women already coming up on him. The pirate came at him first. 

He let the energy within him well up into his blade, and with a slash, aurora light burst from it and smacked her aside. 

Then came the axewoman, and her invisible axehead. 

Kion made a bet on how large the blade was and swung for her head.

Astrid ducked, his blade chipping her shoulder, tearing off the fabric of her shirt, revealing the bulging muscles now being hidden by her flowing blood.

In retaliation, she barreled through the pain, letting out a warcry that was far too common to souls of the battlefield, and unlike what others would hear about in legends. 

With a slash, Astrid showed the Aurora Knight that he had made the wrong bet, and made a clean cut through his armor, and across his abdomen. 

Blood streaked Kan Bujian, then turned into bloody vapor against its invisible burning steel.

Astrid gritted her teeth into a grin at the blow she had landed.

With a follow-up slash of aurora light, Kion wiped the smirk off her face and sent it into the dirt.

Curgle.

The sound of Lucy’s shifting tentacles gve her away. The knight managed to avoid her sweep of the legs with a jump only to be left perfectly open for a fireball.

Astrid could be heard chanting, “Hah hah!” as the knight went flying straight for the tallest man on the island, and the biggest stick he could find.

The Aurora Knight tried to use his own energies to shift himself in the air so his blade could shred Quintus’s stick, but a lone tentacle had other plans. It shot itself up into the knight’s guts. The blow was middling but stunned him enough that he could do little other than look as Quintus brought another stick down on his head.

Crack!

“Kion…” Jack could do little more than gasp. To interfere could mean the death of any of them there, deaths he could not have on his conscience, but to stand by… was the life of a love-stricken coward any better?

The Aurora Knight wasted little time shaking off his ringing skull before his blade cut Quintus deep from hip to shoulder.

Slick!

“Quintus!” Lucy shrieked as her desired’s blood sprayed across the face of their enemy.

But the behemoth was not deterred. He raised his arms over his head to bring them down upon the knight. With a mighty slam, the ground quaked…

Boom!

… but it was not Quintus’s doing. 

Aurora light sprayed from the knight’s armor sending Quintus up and down in a blinding flash. He hit the ground on his back with a thud and did not shift from there. 

Lucy could not see Quintus’s chest rise as he lay there on the ground. Whether it did or did not, did not matter. As she couldn’t see it, she could assume what anyone else would. 

The worst.

And when she assumed the worst, she looked up to the sky and howled. In her howl, she proved herself a true Beastmaster of Krone. The tentacles that sprung from her head reached down her back in place of her hair. The ones on her back extended as far and as long as her concentrated arms, and her arms thickened in their hide. 

And they all went for Kion. If only they were faster.

Despite all they threw at him, the damage they dealt, and the stamina they could combine, the Aurora Knight always seemed to have more. He leaped over one massive tentacle with the flip of a gymnast, and he sprinted along its slimy surface like a cross-country runner. 

Tentacles swirled and flailed all around the knight, only for him to flick the handle of the blade as if it weighed less than a baton, and dice tentacle after tentacle to ribbons. 

He never lost his footing, even where the most balanced of tightrope walkers would fall on the slime, he did not. 

And cut all Lucilla had to ribbons. 

With his hand holding his blade, his arm was a blur as no bit of octopus meat remained uncut. It was hard to say what was louder, her pain-filled cries or the sound of wet, bleeding octopus meat hitting the ground. 

He jumped and flipped from severed tentacle flesh to soon-to-be severed tentacle flesh. As he did, he looked towards Lucy and watched as the gap in her defense opened to reveal her body, one more beast than woman. 

With a bend of his knees, he launched himself like a rocket that would not be made for a thousand more years. 

Lucy closed the gap with what remained of tentacles, but it was not enough. The aurora light blasted through the open holes of his armor and sent him into a tailspin.

Blukkkk!

He blasted through her tentacles like a drill, and when he exited, he was just before her face in a plume of her blue octopus blood. His sword was pulled back and raised over his head, ready to cut her down the middle. 

Just before the Aurora Knight could swing, a blinding light shone in his eye. He swung too late.

Creche!!

  Kan Bujian sank into the right side of Kion’s back, plunging through the armor, deeper to hit the back of his rib cage to set his nerves on fire. 

Kion’s grip on his sword loosened but didn’t break as Astrid took him down to the ground.

Her foot found its place on his sword hand, and Lucy threw herself on his other arm as Astrid raised her shining axe over her head. She growled, showing teeth discolored by the crimson blood in her mouth, and swung.

Swirl!

Astrid swung but was lifted into the air as she did so. She narrowly scrapes the knight’s armor as she and Lucy were blown off of him.

Lucy hit the ground first with a sort of splat that kept her from rolling much farther. Quickly, her body began to drop the excess octopus weight, and let it turn into a sickening black sludge. 

And in the middle of the crater stood Jack with his fist thrust out, straight for where Astrid and Lucy were atop Kion, one move away from ending the nightmare.

But everything Jack wanted was in the nightmare, so he could not allow it to end.

When Astrid hit the ground, she landed on her bum and her left shoulder. There was no crack, but she still screamed and clutched her arm anyway. She held it as she squirmed on the ground, trying to contain her cries of pain.

She would cry alright though, but not in pain.

She cried out and cursed Jack’s name, “God damn you fucking Starshield!”

With but a few words, Jack’s form was falling, faltering even. Barely a word would break this man’s will to live, but that’s what happens when you betray your allies for a lover who has already betrayed you.

A lover who was finally beginning to meet your eyes.

Kion stood up without much care for the wound in his back. Blood flowed, enough that he should be dead already, but the fluid that should be red started to run black and didn’t seem to bother him at all.

The presence of Jack Starshield had a strong pull on the Aurora Knight’s eyes, and it made the knight tighten his grip.

The sound of leather gripping steel made Jack stand straighter. “Kion?”

Synth.

Whikkkp.

The quiet flap of magnificently large wings nearly went unnoticed… nearly.

Clang! Creeerrr!

The Aurora Knight raised his blade in time to block the assassin’s blow from above. He shifted his weight to the man with wings sliding down his blade, just enough for him to whip it out and send the assassin back.

Malum flipped backward, away from the knight, his wings extended and propelling him back, far out of the knight’s reach. Already, the assassin was prepared..

The sight of a man with wings made the knight tilt his head, but the momentary thought gave way to speed. 

The knight shocked the assassin by closing the distance twice as fast as he should have been able to, but the assassin was able to raise his blade to block the first strike, and the second, but barely dodged the third.

Malum had to wield Siwang with both hands to keep the Aurora Knight from breaking his stance. He bobbed and weaved from side to side to give power behind his defense. He could push the knight’s slashes away like he would a novice. 

He was being forced to fight on the knight’s level, and the knight was unrelenting.

So the assassin had to be something the knight couldn’t swipe at. 

If another man had jumped, they would have been caught without any footing or grounding to give weight behind their strike. Few men could jump high enough to avoid a clash that would reach their shoulders. 

Fewer men had wings, so how could any knight prepare for a man to fly over his head?

Kion had been caught in the trick. Despite seeing the wings, despite Malum’s grand entrance… Kion did not believe a man could fly, least of all over him, just over the wound on his back.

Siwang was a legendary blade that was used for several hundred years. Its blade cut down hundreds, maybe even thousands of people with its poison. It was rather ineffective against armored foes, but thanks to Astrid, not all of Kion was armored.

Malum swung his sword to catch the knight on the back. If he were to cut that flesh, the man would die in seconds, maybe minutes if his resistance was high enough for a chance to say goodbye.

But no resistance could keep a man from death.

Malum swung for the wound, and he should have landed the strike.

Whoosh!

The pull of the Wind yanked Malum back like he was tied to a rope around the waist. Malum landed atop his wings and crumbled over, but he was cursing before he even saw who did it.

“You fucking shit, Jack!” Malum cursed up a storm, flinging more expletives Jack’s way.

In his rage, Malum made the mistake of getting up to rush Kion again. The moment he took a step, razor wind came from Jack’s hand and cut a path before him, a line the assassin wasn’t to cross. 

Malum looked over at Jack with his hand raised toward Malum and the Aurora Knight.

“Have you lost your mind?!” the assassin snapped at him. “We’re getting slaughtered, I could have ended this in one blow, and you fucking stop me?!”

Jack’s eyes never leave his old love. “You can’t! Kion is still in there!” 

Malum was not one to lose his cool on the battlefield. When the work of death was to be done, he was there to do it and do it quietly. He made sure that one way or another, your secrets won’t hurt anyone but you. 

That day, he was still struggling to hang on. 

“Holy fucking shit,” he cursed at Jack, “you stupid fucking dolphin fucker, we’re trying not to die here!” 

“And he should?!” Jack snapped back. “He’s clearly being controlled! His blood is black. 

“That doesn’t mean he’s possessed you wingnut! And clearly?! How do you figure?! He never talked before anyway- Look out!” 

Jack turned around right into the pommel of the Aurora Blade. He’s knocked flat onto his back, but the knight reaches the assassin before Jack even hits the ground.

Kion’s blade clashed with Malum’s, and his strength immediately pushed Malum back, his feet drudging up dirt. As he forced Malum to stumble and bend, his helm loomed close to their locked blades. 

Even up so close, Malum could see nothing of the knight’s eyes through his helmet’s black slits. Until they glowed red.

“You were never worth the words,” the knight spit at the assassin.

The knight could see the assassin’s widening eyes behind his mask. 

Then he sent him to the dirt with a swift slash. The flat side of the Aurora Blade smacked Malum in the head. The knight could not behead him when their blades were locked and trapped against each other, as they were.

The Aurora Knight tried to pounce on the assassin, but Malum escaped, moving like a black shapeless mass even with his wings. Rather than try to close the great distance that Malum could keep putting between them, the knight slashed with his blade, sending a wave of aurora light and energy barreling at Malum.

Malum was not fast enough to evade the attack. Energy sliced through his chest and then when the wound was created, the aurora light exploded, making the attack several times worse.

Malum’s body skipped across the ground and stopped with a smoking thud. 

Watching Malum be cut down so easily did not spurn the Starshield to stand against his old flame again. It pushed him back into himself instead.

It was the footsteps of once-flame that nearly drew him out. 

Just as the Aurora Knight was turning his eyes towards Jack, the footsteps of another sprinting to the edges of their battleground drew them away.

He came to a running stop as he looked over the carnage, still hauling the curved slab of steel in his arms. 

“Sharda,” Jack muttered, seeing his old date appear with something still covered in browning bandages. 

Sharda quickly found Quintus on the battleground, clawing his way up from his knees to his feet. He saw the others either on the ground or trying to escape its cold embrace, but he nearly missed the dark knight who alone stood on his feet. 

When their eyes locked, Sharda began a desperate sprint for his life. 

“Sharda!” Jack screamed as his legs found energy now there before, but that energy would not get him there in time.

Kion still moved fasted, his greaves stabbing holes into the ground with his speedy lunges. 

Sharda was barely half down into the crater before the Aurora Knight leaped and slashed for his head. 

“NO!” Jack screamed, too slow, too far away to do anything but watch as the knight’s sword swung-

Wumpf!

-and missed.

Sharda slid down on his knees, preferring to skin them to the bone than let the knight take his head. 

Kion clearly did not expect Sharda to be anything more than a civilian, and nearly turned himself around with the force he threw into his swing. Sharda had enough time to get back to his feet before the knight was facing his back, ready to leap and stab him.

He tried…

Wush! 

Clang!

… but this time his old flame was there.

This time Jack was fast enough to get between the Aurora Knight and Sharda, and the Wind gave him enough strength to stand up to the knight.

Jack heard the annoyed grunt, and then the sound of leather churning as Kion gripped his sword.

Several times today, Kion was able to outmuscle and outmatch his opponents, tossing them aside like flies — nom lesser than that, like worms.

But when he went to whip his blade to the side and shove Jack away, he found his blade locked up, and the Wind rising all around him.

The ends of Jack’s unkempt hair began to float, and then blow, before rising up toward the dark night sky.

Then the Wind followed.

Jack Starshield was not pushed back, nor was he forced to hold his ground. It was the Aurora Knight who had to dig in his heels as the once-past Stormguard looked him dead in the eyes with a look of promise.

“I will not let you hurt another.”

Kion tilted his head upon hearing such words. There was a moment of shock before that shock hardened into something that had enjoyed the challenge.

“You will try.”

Jack could not believe his ears, pulling back only an inch at the shock of hearing a voice he did not know underneath the helm. 

Kion is mute, always has been, since I met him. He didn’t need words, he was above them. He had learned to listen because he had no voice, and learning to communicate without one taught him to speak truer than anyone else. But for him to speak now? 

Abomination.

He didn’t even speak after his throat was healed long ago by… 

It was a simple memory, a fact that Jack had always known that allowed him to piece it all together. The central event that allowed for this fight to be was one that lingered in his mind but never on the tip of his tongue.

I am a fool for never realizing, for not knowing.

Amidala’s had her claws in the Aurora Knight for years, and this was how he had to repay that debt. 

Clang!

Their swords separated and clashed against each other almost immediately. The magical powers inside both of them and their weapons fought for dominance, but when two powers such as theirs clashed, the ground beneath them suffered.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Between deflecting blows, parries, and failed strikes, they found themselves on equal footing. The Aurora Knight had been proving all night his skill as a swordsman, but Jack’s ability to match him slash for slash, and stab for stab, proved that his skill was his near-equal, if not more so.

When their blades collided the Wind beat swirled with the aurora lights coming from the knight’s blade. They molded together in unison as their wielders once did.

Jack tried to reach the knight as they fought, calling his name as if its owner still had some semblance of who he once was. “Kion! I know this isn’t you! I know the kind of person you are! You don’t want to do this! You need to fight that witch!” 

Jack swung for the fences with his words and his sword. As he begged for Kion to stop, he himself still swinging to remove the knight of his hands.

“Why?” the knight asked, his voice a dagger into the ex-Stormguard’s chest, “For you?” 

Through his clenched jaw and paralyzing anguish, Jack swung and screamed, “For yourself! You can let yourself believe this is you, but it’s not! I’ve seen your face, I’ve seen your soul laid bare, and this is not who you are!” 

I know you, Kion, I know who you are under the helm. It will not hide you from me.

The knight jumped and let loose the energy in his blade. The force of the blast was barely enough to make Jack’s form shudder, but without his feet on the ground, it propelled the knight away, getting him some much-needed distance from his opponent.

It was the perfect distance for a new breed of long-range attacks.

“But this is all you are, isn’t it?” Kion spat, his voice more venomous than a snake. “A leech who won’t let go of someone he selfishly loves, but doesn’t love him.” 

Jack couldn’t help but his Iligsia fuel itself with his anger. It could be seen through how every strand of hair on his head floated towards the sky. The rage that was fusing with the elemental spirit made itself known by the deafening sound of the Wind.

His Wind beat upon the eardrums like thunder.

Aurora light stemmed from the blade and moved over the knight like a film. It propelled his voice forward, over the wind turbine that would silence it.

“Am I reaching you, Jack? Does this not sound like me?” he asked. “Maybe so, maybe Amidala has changed me without my knowing, but that’s fine. I feel great, and I feel great without you. 

“Who wouldn’t?”

The Wind blew back the film covering the Aurora Knight, and Jack raised his sword over his head, the Wind funneled into the blow that sought to wipe his old flame off the face of the planet.

But what would that accomplish? 

Jack had been searching for this man all these months since the Black Legion was betrayed, and now, after a few words, he was considering putting this same man to death. 

That makes him right.

The Wind died down, and his sword calmed until it was barely a weapon worth looking at. 

And lowering my sword makes me weak.

“Don’t listen to him, Jack!” 

A booming voice Jack knew all too well was able to call to him over the fading wind. Jack looked to his left as the largest man he’s ever known stood at the edge of the crater, with the largest sword he’s ever seen in one hand. 

Quintus began to unwrap this slab of metal from his bandages as he told Jack, “The man we knew never spoke a word before, don’t trust a thing this man says now. Even what hurts, especially what hurts.” 

After he undid enough of the bandages, his muscles surged and he let out this growl that was unrecognizable from his throat. The bandages were shredded under the pressure of his strength and the stabbed points of the blade’s sharp steel. 

He revealed to the world a gigantic cleaver, made for dicing men. It was serrated on both sides of its rectangular blade, one that was the length of a real sword and several times as wide.

Then with the whip of his arm, it snapped.

Snukt!

Before the blade loomed over Quintus’s fingers, but with the clicking noise, the bottom clip released, whipping the blade up until it fully extended. It was truly a cleaver made to hack at bigger things than men, and Quintus pointed it at the Aurora Knight.

“He’s trying to break his connection to you,” he told Jack, “it’ll make it easier for him to fall to Amidala, into the darkness, and we must not help him.” 

Kion let out a rather loud chuckle, before breaking into crystal-clear laughter. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Darkness?” His voice cracked under the strain, unable to take them seriously. “I’m the Aurora Knight, I am light’s warrior!” 

“And who is that light?” Quintus asked him. “Kain is a plague, and I will bleed her from you if I must.” 

BrrrrrRRRR!!!

The sound of a fire burst was followed by the smoking light of fire. Astrid climbed herself out of her little crater within the crater, with her flaming axe sitting on her shoulder, the fire less than a foot from her head. 

With a roll of her tongue, she got all of the blood in her mouth, and spit it on the ground. “We can burn it out if necessary.” 

Whomp.

The beating followed the rise of a black mass from its place in the dirt. With wings appearing attached to a ghostly form, Malum said, “You’re all fools,” as he took up his sword in turn. 

A tentacle found its way around Jack’s waist and pulled him away from the center of the crater he had been pushing the Aurora Knight towards.

When he was rested down, his eyes followed the tentacle back to the pirate lady, who had taken the time to block the Aurora Knight’s path to escape the way he came.

The ex-Stormguard looked around her, only to realize that they had effectively maneuvered themselves around the Aurora Knight, circling him, trapping him, gearing up to descend upon him like rats to a bit of cheese.

As Jack looked at Lucy, he was in shock. She was the last of those among them to stand and fight, seemingly with hope that was running from Jack.

“I know what you’re thinking, Starshield,” she sighed, before taking in a deep breath that let her stand up from one knee to her feet. “We once fought alongside each other, us and him.”

When the Aurora Knight turned his helm her way, she added, “Us and you. 

“We were one house, one of the same caste, weren’t we? I guess since we’ve survived this long… fought this hard… I’d be willing to give you one last chance to see reason, to see that you are not well, that you betrayed us…” 

She slowly raised both blades as more tentacles grew from her back, the slow change into a beast garnering a fierce groan, that ended as she raised her sabers once again.

“In fact, I’m willing to beat that reason into you one last time if need be.” 

“I second that notion,” Quintus roared as he beat his cleaver into the air. 

“Third!” Astrid called as she raised her shining axe higher.

Malum sighed, as his grip tightened around his sword. “You’re all so willing to get killed so Jack can have his lover back…” 

Lucy chuckled at the madness of it all, what they were trying to do, a thing few others would try to do. “We’ve been trying to convince Jack to give up, and he refuses. Having him help us knock him out is better than fighting a three-way battle at this point, and I would know as one of the people whose ass has gotten kicked the most today.” 

“Heh, fine…” 

Quintus arched his brow at the assassin. “Didn’t expect that from you.” 

“Why would you…?” the assassin said as he flexed his wings, and they got ready.

The Aurora Knight took a gander at the five warriors that surrounded him. All of them had taken their shot at him, the strongest warrior to walk among the Black Legion. Each of them tested their own particular set of skills against his sword, his armor, and the magic that fueled him.

And each of them fell. 

Yet, as they stood together, swords at the ready, weaker in body yet… something else in mind… 

Jack couldn’t tell what Kion was thinking. Was it fear? Trepidation? Maybe excitement. It was impossible to tell by the calm posture the knight maintained.

But it wouldn’t matter.

Kion looked at everyone who surrounded him, as tired as he should have been, and he readied his sword. 

“Fight me then…” he told them, “if you’re ready to die.”