• • Raydorn: The War in the Black
• May 26, 2024

Raydorn: The War in the Black (Chapter 58)

“They always say ‘find another way,’ but they never come up with that ‘other way’ themselves.”

Princess Aolanda, of the Kronish Empire, 447 A.C.A.

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There were many animals that were protective of their young. Many would search for their scent and follow their trail for hours on end, just to find their young’s corpse, and their killer’s future corpse. 

Malum grew up around the tigers that roamed the forests near his home village. There was always one or another stalking around the town that would need to be chased off now and then. Tigers found the village’s slim people to be easy pickings until they brought fire around. The assassin had seen a few from the window in his mother’s little home and saw how the mothers changed around their young.

Malum took his inspiration from them as he stalked through the shadows of the cave. The remnants of Amidala’s forces remained in the isles, and five found themselves tied to chairs at his mercy. 

He flapped his wings, making snapping sounds that made them search out for him in the darkness, but the sounds fluttered throughout the cave. They all looked in different directions as he bolted back and forth, faster than they could see.

Synth! 

Slick!

He moved before their eyes and they could not measure his dark form. They could only measure the danger by the blood spraying out of their friend, and the sight of his veins blackening. 

“He was the first,” he warned them, “which of you will be the last?”

At that point, they all began hyperventilating, screaming, and crying. One even shat his pants.

“The witch left you all for dead, you owe her nothing, but tell me where she has taken her captive, and you will not suffer as your friend did.

“I will make your death quick.”

They were silent in the face of his threat. A quick death was not an offer that would convince them to give in. They still believed that they could live to see the end of the day.

Slick!

“Gaahhh!!”

They were fools.

*****

Quintus did not grow up around big cats like tigers. In the deserts of Northern Seca, most beasts were reptilian monsters or little things that hide underneath the sands. There were some, but not many creatures that were known for being protective. Just about everything had to hunt and eat others to survive, sometimes even their own young.

Spiders were the exception. They were ferocious little beasts that protected the young in their body, willing to give their life to protect their sac until it was time to die. The desert variety, these large hairy monstrosities, would lose their minds upon seeing another predator near their web, even another spider. Mates often fought each other believing they were threats to the young.

They wrap others and each other up in their web and then sink their fangs in repeatedly until the threat is dead. It didn’t matter how much their victim’s hard shell might hurt their fangs, not when they had hurt their young.

Spiders are what Quintus was most familiar with as he walked through the camp.

He had heard that the tribes and Legionnaires had managed to capture and round up several of the men who had set sail from Raydorn. He stalked his way there to find a crowd screaming and throwing rotten food and shit at the bound soldiers. 

The once calm and collected people of the Icy Pearl Isles had turned feral at the sight of those who invaded their home. The ‘civilized’ worlds would never claim it to be true, but the sight before Quintus was one that could be found around the world. 

When you push someone face-first into shit, they’ll stoop low enough to fling their own at you in the name of vengeance, were justified in doing so. 

They were loud to say the least, screaming at the top of their lungs, up until they had to break away for Quintus.

Their kind, gentle giant wore a face of stone that betrayed nothing. He cast such a tall shadow that it consumed their captives and even those who surrounded them. Many backed away to be out of the darkness, to be out of his line of sight. 

Even when under the shadows cast by the moon, Quintus’s eyes glowed, and there was this faint tint that was too faint to be real.

“<What have they told you about Andy?>” Quintus asked Sharda in Uzuri, one of the few who would stand close to him, but not that close.

“<Nothing, they refuse to speak.>” 

Quintus nodded and took a step closer to one of the men with shit on his lip. He wouldn’t look up, even as he began to grow cold in such a tall man’s shadow. He didn’t know to make a sound until after Quintus’s hands had found themselves around his head.

He got out only a few words, “What are you- what are you-”

Quintus’s fingers appeared to sink into the man’s eyes like fangs, but truly, they pulverized them, making the man scream so loud that the mob became little more than silent children, and the other soldiers crying babes.

The man’s screaming lasted only a few seconds before his skull cracked and exploded like an egg between Quintus’s hands. 

The blood sprayed over his chest and coated his palm as he held the corpse up by what remained of his head and brain. He looked over at the soldiers who were left and told them once. 

“Tell me where the witch rests her head, and you can rest yours at the bottom of the sea… rather than in my hands.”

*****

Lucilla grew up around dragons, and they were not protective creatures. They mourned in silence and choked down pain with more pain. They did not cry out at the loss of their young, they did not seek out other beasts to avenge their friends, and they did not mourn the mortals who rode on their backs.

Rather, they shoved their pain deep down into the bellies that made their fire, and from their throats, they let out all of their pain and suffering onto something else. 

Lucilla may have been called a wyvern, a “false” dragon, but like a wyvern, she played the part so well that non-dragons would never tell the difference.

Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

She beat the man in the chair with her bare fists, her fists being her fire. She beat him as he sat tied to a chair, unable to fight back, unable to protect himself, and unable to be heard by anyone other than those who were next. 

First, Lucy failed to defeat the Aurora Knight, even with the help of her allies. Then she failed to keep her ally from being taken. An ally that she should have hardly been able to call a friend, but an ally who had stuck by her, fed her, and healed her without much question.

Andelyn did the jobs Lucy didn’t have to. It felt like an unspoken agreement that she was to watch her back in turn, but since when was Lucy good at watching anyone’s back?

So she beat the man instead.

Pfft! 

Crick. Crick. Crick.

The man’s tooth hit the ground before he did, and once he was laying against the wood, he was given a slight reprieve from the slaughter. He was able to look up from the inside of the shipwreck, towards the moon. 

Amidala had destroyed Lucy’s ship, and now it would be a tomb for the men she left behind. 

The broken ship deck was still filled with sand and slowly taking on more and more water as the tide went in and out. Lucy got down on the ground and slammed her fist – backed by the strength of a beast – into the side of the man’s head again.

This time as she hit the side of his skull rather than the front, the skull cracked. His face went from being a purple pulp to resembling an open fruit. 

She stopped to look at her mess. Even as she stood up and took out a handkerchief to clean the blood off her hands, she never looked away. 

It seemed redundant to wash hands that would get dirty again, especially as splatters of the nameless man’s blood covered her white-collared shirt. No amount of water and soft-patting was going to get the stains out of her soul.

“He didn’t know anything,” one of the captives said or rather sobbed quietly under his breath. “We… we don’t know anything.”

Lucy slowly turned her head towards them, and her eyes were black like those of the sea beast running through her veins. 

Despite their blackness, her eyes still glowed and betrayed her nature.

“I know,” she told them, and the man’s… or rather boy’s sobs only became louder. “Amidala’s like never tell you small men anything. You’re inconsequential to the plan, you’re inconsequential to winning, and you’re inconsequential to me.

“But beating you will make me feel better, and that’s all I care about.”

The sobs became cries as she took steps closer, and her skin began to change into a gray hue. 

Like any wyvern, her fire would be unleashed.

*****

The world was assured that anyone watching would see the pattern here. The leaders of the Black Legion were devolving into their worst selves, or at least some of them were. 

Being betrayed by the world hurt, but it wasn’t by faces they knew for the majority of them. Even more, they lost numbers, not personalities. Yes, Malum knew each of his shadows, Quintus made friends with the dredges in the shield wall, and Lucy knew her crew well… but they were cogs in a machine.

Cogs were never, and would never be, equal to the machine’s wielder.

Andelyn wielded the machine, well enough for all of their respect. To have her taken was a loss they couldn’t explain, and filled them with rage and guilt that their pride couldn’t process.

But there was one who already knew what it meant to be betrayed, to lose someone dear… 

Failing to save Andy felt like par for the course of his life. Which should make one consider the question…

What kind of animal did Jack Starshield grow up with?

Sure, he knew how to ride a horse, and had met a cow or two. At the same time, he was born a noble and one of the richest noble houses the world had ever seen in fact. What animal could he possibly learn from to color his response to failure and betrayal?

There’s only one animal that nobles prided themselves on in Raydorn, at least in the years before the advent of the griffin. There was only one animal that filled arrogant noblemen and women alike with delight and pride. One that was loyal, useful, and welcome atop the lap of even the the most vain of noble ladies.

The dog.

And like the most loyal of dogs, when Jack was kicked he shuddered, got up, and begged with his eyes for more.

By the sea, with few legionnaires with him, he kept his captives. He thought of how afraid Andy must be, let his rage and loss attempt to consume him as it had been for the past few months, and summoned the Wind.

It came together, swirling around the first of his bound captives, and began to levitate him in the air. The man cried out for mercy, swearing that he knew nothing, but his words fell on deaf ears. 

The Wind had begun to turn and spin so violently that it began to appear before those who didn’t know what to look for. They could see how light bent against the power in Jack’s mind and body, a never before seen sight to them. 

As with the others, it was useless for Jack to torture cogs for information. Cogs didn’t learn about the plan. Cogs were sacrificed to it.

The captives, in the hands of Jackson Starshield, could be nothing more than the same catharsis his allies were looking for. 

And for that reason alone, he could not do it. 

The Wind lessened in its strength and potency. It settled, making more noise as it slowly lowered than when it lifted him up. 

Jack lowered his hand and raised it to his face to feel the palm of his hand against his skin. One had to wonder who he was now after the night before. A man of vengeance appeared not to be one of them, even if he so dearly wanted it to be.

“Good for you,” the ax woman said, as she patted him on the back, and took a step towards their captives. 

There were only so many captives to go around, and if any of her friends who would have any captives to spare, it was the one who could never devolve like the others. Jack had devolved as far as he was going to after his love betrayed him the first time, and that pain only carried him so far.

It all left for a much larger meal for her. 

Now, Astrid was different from the other leaders of the Legion. That must feel like an unnecessary understatement, but consider this. The rest of her compatriots grew up around people, in places with life both teeming and hidden below the surface.

Astrid grew up in the Raze, where smoke and fire filled her lungs day in and day out, scratching her throat even when she tried to sleep. There was only one animal that showed any sense of protectiveness in the Raze.

Humans.

And as Astrid knew all too well… 

Humans suck big fat donkey ass. I’ll be damned if I’m like them.

‘What about your friends?’

Small, human, and pathetic is what they have to be to get back up. That’s alright. It’s not the end of the world if only one of us is useful.

Astrid walked over to the gasping man, and lifted him up with one hand by the collar of his breastplate. He kept throwing his head around in a daze as she dragged him across the sand all the way to his brothers in arms, and sat him down next to them.

Then she sat down right next to them. 

“So, I’m curious,” she asked them as she rested her cheek on her hand, “did you guys think we were criminals before or after you invaded us?”

The one Jack almost killed was still disoriented and resting his head on the shoulder of his fellow captives. The other four looked on at her in confusion, silent in the face of her rather… unrelated question.

“Sorry, that may sound strange,” she admitted before she began to explain, “you see, I want to know if you guys were just following orders, or did you really think you were heroes. Because if you’re following orders, than you understand that Amidala left you behind and you more or less accepted that you were going to be sacrificed to the machine that is the war, and whatever else Amidala is planning.

“But if you truly believed we were criminals, you have to be wondering, how could she just leave you behind? You might think to yourself, ‘Well, she’ll come back,’ but you see, she teleported out of her with her war dog, and based on the lack of ships, she teleported you all here too.

“If she can teleport so many people… then why leave you?”

‘You play a cruel game,’ Lapis told her.

We live in a cruel world.

One soldier looked away, the wheels of his mind churning. It might feel anticlimatic to say that this was the point when she knew she had won, but one needs to understand, one does not win chess by surprise.

You see, first, she challenged their own morality, their own self-worth and their loyalty – but not to Raydorn – to their commander. Even if they already thought themselves to be little more than fodder, she then planted in their minds the idea that they didn’t have to be.

She didn’t assert that they were abandoned, simply explained that they might have been. It was entirely possible that Andy had tired Amidala out too much for the warlock to save all of them for all Astrid knew, but that little seed was enough.

While it may seem logical to feel spoiled to know just what Astrid had done, it’s arguably more important to know what was about to happen to save yourself from missing the trap being sprung and the captive’s having their throats slit.

Metaphorically, of course. Her allies were busy being literal.

“I know what that’s like,” Astrid told them, looking up at the sky, and taking a heavy sigh, imitating the weight of mountains upon her shoulders. “My own leader set us up, not maliciously, not entirely like you guys, but he set us up for that massacre. He could have just taken the deal with Raydorn, let us fight for our home country, but no, he had to get greedy and you all had to attack us.

“I get that, it makes sense from a twisted military point of view, but I just wanted to fight, make some money.” She rubbed her fingers together, showing them the dearth of wealth in her hands. 

“But it wasn’t in the cards.”

The captives listened intently, they never took their eyes off of her, nor turned their ears another way, but as she spoke, their breathing frew quieter and quieter, and their eyes looked ahead straighter.

“I even knew what I was going to say… sorry.” She shook her head as she covered her eyes in one hand. When she got sand on her face from the beach. “Fucking sand.

“I wanted that money, needed that money, I was going to travel with it, go to the Soday Mountains, go on a pilgrimage, find Jia- do you have pilgrimages?” she asked them.

They looked at her rather incredulously. They even shook their heads, one even saying, “Not really.”

“Oh, that’s how I get close to God, feel his winds on my arms, but faith and the beloved isn’t for everyone.”

“Not in those mountains,” one of them scoffed.

“Yeah, only monsters up there, and I’m not even talking about the beasts from the Ragnar,” another added.

“Yeah, what kind of pilgrimage would I be on if there wasn’t any danger?” Astrid asked them honestly, prompting to quickly shake his head.

“What god would want you to be in danger? Under Almulan’s light, we are all loved, we should all be at home,” and as he spoke his words, the pious man hidden underneath armor that had never known hardship began to drop his head.

“Didn’t want to fight this war?” Astrid asked him.

“Who would?” another answered for him.

“I get that, I’m just trying to live my dream.”

Again, another shook his head and tried to tell her, “Better to live dreaming than to die for it.”

“Are the Soday really that bad?” she asked them.

“With everything the warlock bitch says ‘bout them, they better be,” said the one nearly killed by the Jack.

‘They have no idea what they told you…’ Lapis muttered, almost sounding annoyed. 

Astrid did her best to hide her smirk. “Does she talk about them alot? Sounds like she could have been doing better things.”

“Less talk, and more bitch, you’d think someone would enjoy being up there if they were going to talk about it so much,” another complained.

To that, all Astrid said was, “Interesting.”

One of the captives picked up his head, and with one-word, he realized what Astrid had been doing.

He locked eyes with Astrid as he looked through the one remaining slit in his crumpled helmet. 

Astrid just stared back at him a smile. 

With a clap of her hands to celebrate herself, Adstrid skyrocketed to her feet. 

She turned to Jack, and told him, “I think I know where Andy is, or will be.”

Jack look at her with just as great confusion as the men who had told her all they knew. 

She snapped her fingers at Jack, and told him, “Come on, they others might be waiting for us when we get there. They’ll want to know everything these stupid pricks told us.”

Then Astrid turned to the men kneeling down before her. First, she looked at them with humanity, and pity for their situation.

Then the mask feel, and she reached for the ax.

Jack was too slow, looking towards the cloud until her head the captives crying.

By then it was too late and there was a boom, following by a plume of fire.

Jack covered his face behind his forearm as he looked at Astrid’s back, flames threatening to consume her as she roasts a man black than a chief does any steak.

All that was left from the attack were the ashes of a few dead men.

“Why… why did you do that?” he muttered between his gasps.

“They were just following orders. Those who follow orders allow for the bad things to happen.