• • Raydorn: The War in the Black
• June 8, 2024

Raydorn: The War in the Black (Chapter 59)

“The shadows are fickle and always fleeting… but the sun’s judging rays always remain.”

Henry Lockley, the Bard of the Song, 445 A.C.A.

---

Malum left the cave with nothing of worth. In the burning light of the morning, he looked less like a black mass to fear and more like a tumbling piece of charcoal… especially on that beach. 

When he walked past the ship they sailed back on, its captain was nowhere to be found. Lucy had her fill long before Malum, and now it was up to him to gather them together. 

First, he stumbled upon Quintus when he reached up to the top of the plateau. It was easy to spot him standing tall above the rest. They had taken down many of the tents to take stock of what needed replacing and it meant there was very little to block anyone’s view of their resident strongman.

It also didn’t help that many had grown to fear being in his presence after the night before. It was a behavior Malum took note of, especially as it was the same behavior they began to show to him.

As expected, the moment we show we’re anything less than perfect… the assassin thought himself.

Quintus had been moving large black masses, but Malum couldn’t make out what they were from a distance. Operating under no sleep meant that his vision was little better than a mortal man’s. When Malum came upon Quintus, he realized that the black color came from the blankets, and the mass was from the bodies in them. 

Quintus had been clothing and lining up their dead so they could be identified later… if they could be.

Malum stood on a rock that was just a bit taller than Quintus. It served as a rather imperfect perch to look upon Quintus as he tended to a monument of their failures.

Malum spared Quintus a greeting. “How many are ours?”

Quintus stopped halfway through his walk, puffing out his chest as he tried to hold the woman in his arms still. Malum couldn’t tell what kind of person was in the blanket, but Quintus had to know before he wrapped her in it. 

He was the only one who would, knowing that the diseases of the dead would not affect him. Even so… 

… it was the loneliest job in the world that day.

“One would have been too much…” Quintus said, speaking to Malum but not looking up at him. “And we lost more…” 

Malum turned away from the sight. “It could have been worse.” 

Quintus let out a little scoff that had no semblance of amusement in it. The words that followed were dry and full of biting grit. “How did you become the optimist?” 

“I’m not an optimist or a pessimist, I’m a-” 

“Realist, I know.” 

Quintus went back to finish his errand and rested the woman alongside the dozens of others he lined up next to each other. He righted her under the blanket and looked onto the two blankets left for the dead.

Malum’s feet touch the ground behind Quintus with a soft scratch that couldn’t have been silenced. 

The assassin’s hand fell on Quintus’s shoulder and was followed by words better left to someone other than one of his profession.

“We’ll get Andy back, and we’ll make Amidala pay.” 

Quintus rested his hand atop Malum’s, and asked, “And how will we do that?” 

It was another puzzle, a challenge even, and the previous night Malum had made little in the way of progress towards overcoming that challenge. Even still, he spoke with conviction. “By cutting any path we need to…” 

… we will have to.

Rather than let Malum show him this small token of affection, Quintus pushed Malum’s hand away and stood up to his feet to tower over the assassin as he often did. With his long stare, looking at a ground that could have been miles away, Quintus muttered, “I didn’t know you cared for her.” 

And why would you?

“Andelyn Stella is a drunken whore-monger, with no self-control to speak of unless it’s to make a quick crown. She can never be trusted to wake up on time, to not overreact, or to take things seriously without a screaming match first, and she-she…” 

… could have left me for dead, who knows how many times. She’s given me almost as many bruises as anyone else, and has been the brains behind my brawn even when I thought I knew better. She traveled across her world to save one of my underlings, someone she didn’t even know. Her character is… rather impeccable yet also absolutely deplorable.

Malum’s thoughts went on, but when it came to speak, what Malum said was, “… she’s healed enough of my wounds to have my loyalty and my trust. She deserves at least half as much.” 

“Malum,” Quintus called his name, and their eyes meet for the first time that day. “We’ll give her more than half.”

Malum absorbed his words and confirmed them with a nod.

“Let’s go find the others.”

Quintus agreed. “Yes, let’s, we have much to talk about. I know where we can find Jack.”

The assassin followed close behind the strongman, and their journey was quick through the Isles as people made way. 

They found Jack using the Wind to clear the debris at the bottom of the cliffside. One of the walkways they had built had been burned in the attack, and fell on more than a few. The Wind was apt for removing debris while leaving the bodies intact.

As he laid a few bodies down for the grieving families behind him, he saw them on the cliff. He looked at them out of the corner of his eye and managed to hide his look of disgust. 

The people he could help were unearthed. Now, he would just be in the way. 

He limped away from the civilians before he summoned the Wind to levitate. 

His Iligsia had been carrying him far, dulling the pain of the rather clean break from his fight with Malum. It held it together against the Aurora Knight too. Even now, it was working to keep it set, but he still needed to brute force his way around with his powers while they finally got the chance to recuperate.

Not that they were doing much of that.

Words weren’t traded between the three men beyond Quintus telling them that he knew where the two women of their number were.

They made for Quintus’s paramour first, who kept to herself in her tent. Quintus entered alone and squishy sounds made them Malum and Jack trade looks.

They could hear Lucy curse, followed by more sounds of the pirate growing upset and exasperated.

They could hear Quintus try to say, “I can help-” but she came storming out before she got the chance. She tore the bandages off her arm, and the ones that were hanging from her neck flew off. 

They didn’t reveal open wounds, but rather pitch-black skin. More than just her arm was miscolored now. There were spots on her neck and her other arm, and a few blemishes on her forehead and cheek. 

From a distance, they might have appeared like bruises, but up close, the smoothness of her skin and the seer blackness of their color would tell anyone that they were the mark of something different.

The black marks were also something that was not to be discussed. When Quintus followed her out, he didn’t have to say a word or nod towards Jack or Malum about it.

Lucy didn’t try to hide it, not that she could, but that didn’t stop her from eyeing her arm as if it were something she’d rather gnaw away. The touch of her paramour’s hands on her shoulders quelled the heart beating her chest somewhat. Holding his hand gave her something to squeeze rather than uncomfortable limbs in the middle of a maddening healing process.

If Jack had things to say about the couple in front of him, he kept them to himself as they led him to the last of their numbers. 

Malum’s mind thought nothing of it.

He thought only of another, Love… what a terrible thing to miss…

The cult had no true spot in the Icy Pearl Isles, at least not to these four. Lucy’s band of pirates camped close to the docks and the ships. Some slept below deck even when they were home, more comfortable on its wooden floors than the pillows and blankets made for a tent.

Malum’s shadows were trained to sleep anywhere. They slept in the caves and against the few trees so they could maintain their watch. Even when they were not shadows, they were amongst the tribes and legionnaires who had been living on the isles for years. They pretended to be fearful citizens and made their way into each other’s tents and more. They mocked the image of citizens so well that other citizens were whispering notions of affection in their ears… and they were whispering them back.

Those with the Iligsia camped away from the Hotun and Icee tribes, afraid of what their elemental spirits would do in their sleep. They wandered and walked in their sleep away from the mainland, where they could not hurt anyone but each other, other people who could certainly take it.

Quintus led everyone and no one.

None could say where Astrid’s cult laid their head. One night might be spent in the caves, another amongst the tribes, and another absolutely nowhere in sight.

They were in sight after the battle though. They had taken up where Jack gave his lessons, and they were praying, and waiting with baited breath for their speaker.

The four of them were crossing the bridge as the cultists – including the children of the Raze – were chanting in unison, or attempting to. 

They surrounded a bit of steam. From the outside, it have looked like they were trying to surround a sauna, but this is not Malum’s first dealing with divine sense, nor Lucy’s, nor Jack’s, nor Quintus’s. They recognized the mist for what it was.

A herald of the future, Malum knew, a herald of the doom to come.

When they came upon the center and the source of the steam, they knew exactly who they would find as always, but knowing never prepared them before and it wouldn’t now. 

The steam had emanated from her skin in multiple different ways before. When they were deciding where to go, the mist slowly came from her like a funnel. It wasn’t it until Quintus had tried to touch her that it had exploded. And then it was at points on her skin that one could point to.

Now, the steam flooded from her like a reverse waterfall that fell towards the sky. Where it didn’t cloud her face before, it surely did now. Much of it seemed to come from her back, leaving her face exposed to the world. All could see her eyes rolled back into her head as her mouth moved and muttered words she didn’t speak. 

If it weren’t for the grayish color of the vapor, it would seem like she were on fire, preparing to bring a fiery death upon them.

She still could really.

As their group made their way to the inner edge around her, Malum noticed something more concerning.

Astrid’s shirt was sleeveless, and her shirt was damp and clinging to her. Malum had never given it much thought, but Astrid was always rather covered up. Not in armor, just in thick layers of clothes. The most anyone would see of her were her forearms after she rolled her sleeves back for a battle. 

If his realization hadn’t dawned on him, he’d be even more impressed and frightened by how muscular this woman was underneath it all. Her arms made Andy’s look small, but alas, he was distracted by a more obvious fact.

Astrid prepared ahead of time for this vision, and dressed down to save her clothes and her skin from the intense heat. 

Since when could she have visions on command?

When Quintus seemed ready to lead them past the edge of the inner circle, they were stopped by a number of those considered cultists. 

He looked down on them with an arched brow. “Have you forgotten what happened the last time you stood in my way?”

“We do, you were nearly hurt, and the fumes are much worse than before. We suggest you stand back for your own safety.”

Quintus rolled his eyes, and he alone walked ahead.

He pushed past the cultists. He was calling Astrid’s name as it happened. He walked half a dozen feet closer than the others when the steam came flying at him.

Quintus planted his feet, ready to take a blast of heated vapor. Instead, he was hit by a bull.

The mist slammed in his entire frame, its gaseous form hitting him with the force of a solid object, but made contact like a gas. He was lifted up and over the heads of the crowd towards the higher cliffs were several of the children from the Raze were sitting.

“Quint!” Lucy yelled as she started making her way where he would land.

The kids had gotten out of the way by the time he landed on the rock with a thud. The thin layer of grass and dirt did little to cushion his fall. He was hardly hurt, the mist was not the Aurora Knight, but it was also clearly a warning shot. 

The children of the Raze started to move towards him, but the panthers, Efi and Uni leaped between them. They recognized how hot Quintus’s skin still was. Steam was still stemming from him now.

The Pennies came to stand and look over the panthers, with Hana sitting on Penance Primrose’s muscular shoulders. 

“Mr. Quint, are you okay?” the little girl asked.

“You really got yer ass handed to you by some smoke,” Penelope Tweed said, trying to hold in her cackles.

“Can… can you even hear us?” Penance Prim asked.

Quintus raised his hand with his thumb up. “I’m just sore and thoroughly cowed.”

“Wanna wait with us?” Hana asked him.

“Yes,” Quintus said, “I think that would be for the best.”

Quintus was sitting up by the time Lucy had climbed up to him, and by then the panthers had let the children take their spots back around them. Malum and Jack remained at the edge, where they could watch along with the others.

From where Quintus sat, it was little more than a vapor show, and even up close, Jack saw little more.

But through the stem, Malum could see visions of his own. The hands of a god were at play in Astrid’s mind, and Malum could see it. It made the wings twitch and threatened to sprout against his will.

First, came the flapping of demonic wings, flickering in shape as if they were reliant on the light of a fire. Then came the shadows of circular heads, wielding blades with subtle curves, in styles unrecognized by any he had seen before.

Then came the shadow of a man with a boulder over his head. Spiders seemed to crawl up his legs and his torso but he remained in place, unmoving, unbroken, frozen like stone. He stood as a colossus, and from the top of the boulder ants rained down arrows upon the spiders.

From the top of the boulder, shined a bright light that only shined brighter and brighter until it had consumed Malum’s vision.

In a moment, Malum had lost his vision and found himself standing alone atop red sand. He was without his cloak, his sword, or his knickers, but he had his wings, and they would not go back into his back. He was left to suffer the rays of the sun as the light burned brown feathers black. 

He raised his hand to beg mercy from the Goddess of Light, but mercy was not something she ever gave. The light twinkled with green, giving him small reprieves, but it was too late. He collapsed to his face and he burned.

Malum burned in the light that should have been his ally and was protected by flickers of green that should have been his enemy.

Pfft!

It was with a solid elbow to his ribs that he came too.

Malum was back among the crowd, but he quickly fell from the pressure the vision placed on him. He couldn’t grasp what was happening around him. His vision blurred, and the voices around him were little more than garbled sounds. 

Someone was there to catch him, and slowly allow him to fall to his knees. He could feel her wrestling her arms around his shoulders and her breath on his ear. 

“Mas…” 

He heard her whisper words that sounded familiar but he couldn’t get a grip on them. 

“Mast…”

He should have recoiled from her, but a part of him knew who she was, who he could trust… 

Pop.

“Master Malum,” Sigma muttered to him, his hearing coming back with a gross and painful popping of his ears. It would have been less gross if it felt like wax had fallen out of his ears, but he knew from experience that it was more like blood.

“Malum, Starshield has noticed your… ailment.”

The assassin flexed his back muscles, but his wings were still hidden. She must have meant me being done in by a vision.

Thinking of the vision, Malum could feel his chest tighten. There was little that he understood, but the thing he did understand, was the first thing he saw. His visage would fly over the heads of most, but never Malum, and if not his visage, his presence was enough to make the assassin sweat.

“I’m fine, is she almost done?” Malum asked his shadow. 

Sigma still attempted to hold him up even after he was back on his feet. 

She is loyal… she is a good friend.

He took her hand in his and slowly moved them down, letting his mask look straight into hers. “Thank you, Sigma, I’m fine, I promise.”

“Well… good, Astrid’s vision appears to be over.”

Malum’s neck snapped to his comrade as the steam ceased funneling out of her. He saw her cultists begin to start fanning her, but what she had to say was not something he could wait for. 

He moved quickly, snatching a canteen of water from one of the cultists, and moving ahead of them as a blur. 

Flap! Snap!

In front of the crowd, his wings unfolded from his back, garnering a few silent and not-so-silent screams.

His wings pushed with two flaps back and forth blowing away the steam, hitting Astrid with a strong cool breeze. The ax woman stretched out her arms to bask in the coolness of it.

Just as quickly as Malum shocked civilians around him, none more so than his own shadows, he put his wings back in their hiding place. He didn’t think twice about it, not even as he kneeled down before the panting woman before him.

He already had the water canteen unscrewed when he handed it to her, needing her to drink and start talking as soon as possible, but he should have known better.

Before she took a much-needed sip, she chuckled and teased him, “Not hiding anymore?”

“We have more important things to care about.”

“Heh,” she chuckled as she gulped down the water, giving their other allies and a portion of the crowd to start inching closer. 

Jack had reached them as Astrid let out an, “Ahhhh.”

“What did you see?” Malum asked.

Astrid took a gander at the people around her, all within earshot of words not meant for them. She gave Malum a quiet glare in response. “I see what I always see, and something a bit more. I saw Jia, as I always have, but more of it, a door in the mountains, just like I’ve always thought.” 

“Is that all you saw?” 

Astrid shook her head. “I saw what will be, that blood will run through the door.” 

Malum took Astrid by the shoulders to shake her and get the information they needed- that he needed.

“But did you see Andy?” 

“It was her blood.”