• • Raydorn: The War in the Black
• September 21, 2024

Raydorn: The War in the Black (Chapter 65)

“Is a man who acts like a beast scarier, or is a beast that walks like a man the most terrifying thing in the world?”

Quintus Lato Equitus, 448 A.C.A.

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Lato was quick to embrace Quintus as father would a son returning from war. In Lato’s mind, it was not such a different experience. For Quintus, he couldn’t help but force himself to embrace his old master.

Lato looked little different from how he did when Quintus last saw him over half a decade ago. That was when he first set out for adventure months after receiving his freedom.

Lato’s face did not betray his age, and even with his chin so clean shaven, there wasn’t a laugh line to be seen. He seemed like a smooth porcelain doll if a doll could have such texture. The only thing that betrayed his age was the color of his hair and his brow, which were more white than brunet.

What else was a sorcerer to do but do his best to stave off death?

Quintus’s old master released him from his awkward hug that Quintus had to bend down for. Upon his release he could see the looks of confusion on the two guards watching them. It was common when Quintus was still a boy. A boy of his color appeared to them like a man, and being so intimately embraced by a shorter man tended to draw side eyes. 

“Come, son, come,” Lato beckoned them on as he led them towards the cliff. Quintus expected a long climb up, but Lato passed that pathway to a new one, that barely went up a story. “Let us talk in my lab where there’s no one who will bother us. I’d like to hear the many tales you should have collected in your time abroad.”

“Yes, of course, master,” Quintus said, speaking on instinct.

“*Tsk*tsk*,” Lato clicked, “I am not your master, not anymore.”

“Apologies, patronus,” Quintus corrected. 

“Duly accepted.”

As they reached a new door, the two guards raced to open it for them, but Lato bent at the hip and presented it as if he himself was holding it open for Quintus. 

Quintus found himself in a hallway lit by torches, but made into a perfect square. He couldn’t help but be amazed by where he was. Someone had made their way into the mountain underneath the cliff, and had done so with precision that couldn’t be understated.

What else couldn’t be understated was the way it funneled sound through the corridor. 

Clink! Clink! CLINK!

Aaahhhh!! 

Muuaaahhh!

Arrgghhh!!

The sounds of pickaxes striking against stone — and living things striking against their own souls — rang through Quintus’s ears. 

Yet, he followed close behind his old master who acted as if he did not even notice the noise.

At the end of the hall was an elevator that could bring them deeper. The idea of an elevator shaft being drilled so low should have astounded Quintus, but the noises were only growing louder. It wasn’t deafening, but it was something few could ignore. Many could pretend to.

When the elevator doors opened to a wooden box with windows, Quintus could see how deep the Kronish Empire had colonized the dirt.

The first thing that struck him, was how quiet the caverns were. Before, he heard wails and screams of pain, but upon entering the room, there was no such thing. There was only the slow methodical pickaxes, and the low humming sound of rocks burning. 

When Quintus had last been here, serving as assistant to the sorcerer of Krone, the mines were caves that couldn’t see the light, and the fewer slaves it took to mine them made every sound they could. They couldn’t help the sounds the human body made when forced to work.

What Quintus looked over in the present was so far from what he knew, that it might as well have been a dream.

The cliff had been excavated, with tunnels forming a network of caves throughout. It wasn’t something they discovered under the mountain. No surface remained that was in the shape of some jagged rock, save for the parts being actively mined for minerals. The walls, the ceiling, and many of the floors had the smooth and sanded texture of a new wooden table. 

How did they do this so fast? Quintus wondered, but it only took a focus on the people that everything made sense.

The silence, oh the silence made sense.

The slaves that mined this place where not only many, but they were no longer men. They were beastmen, not beastmasters who could change their shape at will, but beastmen. They were imperfect mutants who were trapped in their horrid, ugly existence, with some parts of them still human, and most of them halfway to another animal.

In these caves, nearly of them, save for the doctore, were mixed with insects.

Ants.

They had grotesque exoskeletons growing over parts of their skin, some had antennas growing out of their heads, and some had skin that bulged from an exoskelton trying to escape their prison. The only thing they all had in common was their silence, and how they didn’t tire with each swing of the pickaxe, or the tools their mutations gave them.

That, and the way they hesitated at the crack of the doctore’s whip, and the doctore’s lionous snarl.

Quintus nearly gave himself away when Lato snuck up on him. “You know, I’ve kept myself appraised of your exploits since you abandoned me.”

When Quintus snapped towards Lato, his older master misunderstood the look of concern on his face. Lato thought, “I only kid, I know you had to see the world for yourself, it is a requirement of any man seeking to be worldly.”

Quintus took a gander of the elevator he had found himself in, and just how high up they were. While the elevator was not the shining sophistication that Andy and Malum had grown accustomed to in Susanna, the way they were lowered in a wooden box that did not shake was enough to astound most. If there was not a damning silence below, Quintus would have been astounded.

To his dismay, he was stuck between the horror he was descending towards, and the egoism he had known all his life.

Despite knowing how it may look to Lato, Quintus’s eyes strayed towards the horror, and Lato smirked to himself with pride. “You appreciate my handiwork.”

I knew that from the moment I saw it, and yet it feels distinctly sobering to hear from his mouth.

The sorcerer’s job was to improve the beastman mutation for the empire. Over the generations, the mutation was used to create their Beastmasters, their prized warriors, the nation’s champions. Then, they expanded what animals and monsters could be spliced into humanity’s own blood. Eventually, the sorcerers were able to figure out how to give Beastmasters the ability to shift and change back. 

Now, Lato has discovered how to mutate the poor and malnourished without killing them during the process. He’s effectively created a new slave race to plunder Gronina for the Kronish Empire.

Together, Lato and Quintus looked over at his work, the horror and pain, and together they both knew, that Lato had done his work well.

Quintus did little to hide the deep emptiness in his voice, “It is a great power you retain, master,” but you could never tell from how Lato heard it. 

The old man scoffed, and ribbed his old servant. “Quintus, how many times must I tell you? I am your master no longer, you are my equal, are we not both free men of Krone, son?” 

Quintus fought the urge to dig his hands into the waist-high siding of the elevator. “I fear… that few are your equal… and even fewer your greater, save for the Emperor.” 

Both knowing their place, they together said, “Zenoha.” 

“That is all the more reason I must have you do away with ‘master,’ there are few who will ever have the chance,” Lato told him as he rested his hands delicately upon the elevator siding, standing shoulder to shoulder with Quintus, as if he could ever be so tall. 

Lato’s voice hung low as he looked out over the horror he had created, and saw a kingdom for himself and himself alone. 

When they reached the bottom in silence, they were a story below those who slaved away. 

Quintus was slow to move off the elevator after the siding slowly collapsed down into a ramp. Lato looked to his old protege and called him, “Son? Are you alright?”

The word pulled Quintus from his stupor.

“Oh, yes, my apologies, patronus,” he said as he made to lead the way, and Lato made to follow while there was still only one way for Quintus to go.

Lato rested his hand on Quintus’s shoulder, appearing to dote on him like Quintus imagined a father would. He had seen others behave similarly. 

“You seem to be having a hard time concentrating, which is very unlike you,” Lato said, because he would know, “I can see that for whatever reason you have come to me has left you unnerved.” 

On reflex, Quintus answered, “Yes, dominus-” 

And on reflex, Lato snapped, making Quintus flinch. “I have not been your dominus for many years, Quintus,” but upon snapping, he took a deep breath and used his public voice, “you are a freeman, remember? You have no dominus.” 

Quintus fought the urge to have thoughts as Lato spoke. Thoughts would displease them both. “I could never forget, patronus,” Quintus said, and thoughts he wanted to restrict won out as he muttered under his breath, “but old habits die hard.” 

How human I forget I am.

“Yes,” Lato agreed in a rather monotone voice, “they do don’t they?” 

There was a bit of silence as they walked, with only the thrumming strikes of pickaxes above them. 

It was somehow both an inescapable cling, and a deafening slam.

Then there was this hissing. What was that noise? Quintus wondered. It reminded him so much of fire, yet there could not be enough fuel for such tools.

Lato’s voice stole his attention from these thoughts. On instinct, Quintus’s mind sought to pay attention to Lato’s every word after failing to pay attention moments ago.

“Even after all of these years,” Lato soliloquied, his eyes never falling on Quintus as he walked ahead of him, “I have thought often of you, Quintus, wondering what you have been doing with your freedom. I would look up at the stars across Nylean’s sky, and I would wonder. I was surprised to hear that you found yourself with the Black Legion, a terrible thing that happened to them, but not all that surprising. I was so glad to learn that you survived unscathed.” 

“I wouldn’t say unscathed,” Quintus added, as if Lato needed any additions. 

The sorcerer stroked his own cheek with the curve of his finger, nodding his head away from his old servant. “Yes, they must have been your friends, and emotional scars take much longer to mend.” 

Quintus nodded in agreement, even as Lato wasn’t looking. “Very true, patronus, I know all too well. In fact, I wish to ask you for help to save one of the few who survived.” 

“Oooh,” Lato cooed, stopping on the ramp that lead up to a door made of smoky wood and blackened steel. “I hope I can help you, but when it comes to saving fugitives, my hands may be tied.” 

Fugitives? Yes, that is what the Black Legion has become, an army of fugitives. 

Quintus’s head looked toward the ground with his hands behind his back, as Lato looked down from a small incline that made all the difference in the world. 

“You have protected me so far,” Quintus said in a hush voice.

Lato held his hands behind his back in a way far different from Quintus. “It’s easy to say that my old servant was my spy in the Black Legion. It’s not as if I didn’t say so before the massacre some odd months ago. But to save another…” 

Ah, he assumes this is about politics. 

Gross.

After having his first humanly thought, Quintus opened his mouth to speak the real reason he came. “Well, it isn’t to save them in that kind of sense. It’s less your political power, patronus, and more your… magic.” 

“Hmm?” Lato’s brow arched at the word… ‘magic.’ “Well, I can’t say I’m not intrigued now. It wouldn’t happen to be the Beastman among you? I heard that one of the Endican prize houses gave us an octopus Beastman. Can you believe it? An octopus! That was certainly a choice.” 

He’s going to veer off topic.

“Yes… yeah, that’s Lucy for you…” 

“Oh you know her!” 

Quintus cringed at Lato’s simple choice of words.

“Yes, dominus, but-” 

“Does she manifest an octopus’s bulbous head or just the tentacles? I’m not sure which would make me more squeamish.” 

Quintus’s hands clenched as his patron lost himself to his own thoughts.

“Just tentacles so far…” Quintus muttered, the only words that drew Lato’s waiting attention back to him, “and a regenerative ability.” 

“Ah,” Lato brought the crux of his hand to his chin, “a passive trait, those are uncommon, rare even. She must be a force under the water.” 

Quintus pushed on towards the door as he muttered, “And above it too…”

Then he tuned Lato out, as his old master began to spew a hundred words a minute just wondering about the implications of Lucy’s abilities as a rather perfect and evolved Beastman, unlike those behind him.

He opened the door for him and Lato both, with Lato talking his own ear off as Quintus let him, nary a thanks. 

It was when they found themselves facing Lato’s scaly guest that the sorcerer fell silent, and Quintus had to… look up.

Quintus had not had to look up to meet anyone in the eye since his growth spurt as an adolescence. He had not felt so small since he was a child, half Lato’s height. Now, under the Dragonheart’s eye, he became reacquainted with the feelings of his younger years.

Since the first sorcerer succeeded in splicing the blood of an animal with the blood of a man, there had been a Dragonheart. The dragon was the nation’s animal, a beast who represented Krone like no other.

Dragons dominated the ground, the air, and sea. They soared through the skies, descended upon all manner of prey, and took whatever they wanted when they wanted. Beasts who claimed to be apex predators, learn the truth when faced with a fire-breathing dragon. 

With each campaign, Krones sought to fight in their image. It’s only natural that once beastmen became a possibility, that the first would be paired with a dragon, and that the blood of dragons would be the most studied combination with man. 

There must always be a Dragonheart to lead the Beastmasters of Krone, just as there is an Aurora Knight of Raydorn. 

The current Dragonheart stood nearly a story tall, but he was hunched over, and his long neck curled down to still hang over the heads of mortal men. If he were able to stand straight up, he’d be two stories tall.

Despite being part beast, he stood on two legs, with his hands and their opposable thumbs locked behind his back. But they couldn’t be seen underneath his wings which folded in, the top edges lining his shoulders, appearing and flowing like a cape.

The Dragonheart walked like a man of nobility, begging the question, Is a man who acts like a beast scarier, or is a beast that walks like a man the most terrifying thing in the world?

Though his scales are black, and the room was not well lit, the shine of his scales made the dark lab brightly lit. 

The Dragonheart’s eyes settled on Quintus, and Quintus was appalled by how human and inhuman they were. His pupils were the slits of a reptile, but the way his brow slumped in apathy was distinctly human, especially behind his reading glasses.

Dragons were far-sighted animals, and glasses helped seeing things that were up close.

At the moment though, they made Quintus feel uneasy, as if he were looking into something that wasn’t real. I’ve seen Lucy change a hundred times, but she was always a person under there. With the Dragonheart, the beast seems trapped inside the thin shell of a man.

Their silence was not long, despite Quintus’s thoughts making it appear so.

“Hmph.” Fire flared from the Dragonheart’s nostrils with a snort, making even the largest man most would ever know shudder and take a step back.

Lato was quick to step in front of his young charge. Despite being several yards away, it would take only a puff of the Dragonheart’s nostrils set Quintus aflame from where he stood.

For that reason, Lato assured the Beastmaster above all others, “There is no need for threats, he can be trusted, Quintus here is the closest I have ever had to a son.” 

The snort was that of a beast, but the snide chuckle that came from the Beastmaster’s throat as all man. “Son,” he repeated, “a son? Hah!” His deep voice hollowed out as if he had smoked cigars and cigarettes every day of his life since youth. With fire in his throat, he wasn’t far off. 

Despite being as vulnerable to death as Quintus, Lato had a stronger form of protection from the Dragonheart, and held no fear in jesting with the man in the body of a monster. “Remember, Kurt, I am older than I look, or else you’ll make me blush.” 

The mere attempt to flirt, even as a joke, compelled the Beastmaster known as Kurt to stop laughing. Or maybe it was the fact that his name is Kurt. A rather unintimidating name for a dragon. Quintus found himself looking at the Dragonheart as his arm moved to touch his face, and revealed the sharp sales at the ends of his fingers. Lucky him, he can take it.

“My intention is not that you blush,” Kurt told Lato, “your intention must be to amuse for that shiner beside you looks as if he was born a man from his mother’s womb.” 

Lato was the second most powerful man in Krone, second-only to the Emperor, and with that privilege he could speak to the Dragonheart however he wanted. Quintus, in his everflowing wisdom, let that veil of protection and power waft in front of him at the first word of insult.

“I simply grew,” Quintus snarked to the dragon, his own fear breaking way for the sheer power that comes with being quietly slighted. He missed the sideeye Lato sent his way.

Kurt stood as tall as he could without hitting the ceiling, as if to add distance between himself and the proverbial talking cattle before him. “You speak?” 

“I told you, he was my ward from a young age, how could I not have him taught?” 

Kurt turned his cheek to them, but not his eye. “Surely, you could have afforded other laborers. Many a noble son would want to work with you.” 

Lato smirked, as if he had heard the comment a million times before. “And how many of them had a backbone to do any work beyond swinging a sword?” 

That’s when Kurt turned his eye away from his own maker. “There have been less truthful words…” 

“Now, tell me what you are here for?” 

Kurt ignored Lato to look over his tables, many of which were containers with glass tops, windows into chambers Quintus couldn’t see. 

There was one next to him, covered by a cloth, and Quintus’s dreadful curiosity convinced him to peer under it. 

After peaking underneath, he had to hold in a gag.

“You are experimenting with fire ants?” the Dragonheart asked as he surely inspected a corpse similar to the one Quintus quickly placed under the cloth.

“I was,” Lato answered, as if it were no different from changing the color of his pen, “eventually, I found a different animal that produced the flames I wanted. You might have seen the fruits of my labor walking in.”

The buzzing I couldn’t place…

“I thought adding some melting abilities to the slave stock would make the mining process a bit faster. Imagine my surprise when the fire part comes from how it feels to be bitten by one of the fuckers.” 

Kurt turned away from the corpse he was looking at, but his eye lingered a bit longer. “I’m sure you learned this first hand.” 

“Indeed,” Lato said, holding in a chuckle and rubbing the palm of his hands. When the sorcerer noticed how quiet the room was, he sought to fill it with noise. 

“Ah, my manners, Kurt,” and he turned around to present his charge to the dragon, “meet Quintus, he was once a servant in my house as you know, but now I am his patronus. Quintus, meet Kurtus Vernilius, the Dragonheart.” 

Quintus bit down urge to say, Clearly.

Kurt arched his scaly brow, before leaning all the way down, and extending his long neck more like a snake than a dragon. He stretched far, but did not pass over Lato’s shoulder. 

“In case it wasn’t mortally apparent, aren’t you supposed to be in the Black Legion?” 

Lato proved he was not slow, quickly assuring the Dragonheart, “He’s my spy among them, why else would he be here if he weren’t working for the good of the empire?” 

Kurt pulled back as he approached. Even despite having the word of Krone’s sorcerer, he circled Quintus like he would a deer. “Ah, a cliff climber we have here,” the Dragonheart muttered, “tell me, climber, what is the state of your mercenary band? We had heard of Raydorn’s attack, but we were unsure if they were truly finished off.” 

Quintus couldn’t hesitate, it would basically be an admission of guilt, but decisions made under pressure had a chance to backfire. “They suffered heavy losses, but they continue to survive.” 

Was that a mistake? Should I have told him we were weak or would that draw in the Dragonheart to finish us off?

“But surely they have been dealt a mortal blow,” Kurt suggested, “one with which you strike to finish them off?” 

“If I could, would I not have already done so?” 

Quintus found Lato’s hand resting on his arm, a shield of protection from the Beastmaster’s fiery breath.

“Quintus, Kurt is not questioning the honor of Macedon, he’s just eager.” 

Kurt’s neck still hung low like a predator as he stopped before the door out of the lab, assuring that none could escape if he did not will it. 

“Yes, servant,” Kurt agreed with some bite, and maybe a smile if one could form on a dragon’s face, “I am only eager to see our enemies dead and gone, but, I am also eager to hear the stories of those from across the empire, even from those who leave it.” 

Kurt’s hand raised from under the dragonwings he wore like a cape, drew a picture in the air. “There is always more to an important story than what lies on the surface. The same is true with your story, and the slaughter of the Black Legion.” 

“What I would be interested in,” Lato was quick to interrupt, drawing the Dragonheart’s attention from Quintus, “is knowing why you have paid me a visit.” 

Kurt’s brow arched towards Lato, being forced to recognize the histrionic sorcerer. “Hmm, Pharah,” a name Quintus recognized but couldn’t place, “thought you should know… 

“The princess has been found.” 

Quintus snapped to Lato. “The princess was missing?” 

Lato smirked as he asked rhetorically, “You did not know? Well, that truly makes me feel better. If you did not know, what else do our enemies not know.” 

“Truly,” Kurt agreed, standing up and puffing out his chest as if he were holding back a laugh, “Raydorn and Susanna both will be caught off guard by the soon-to-be… Empress.”

Empress? What has been happening since I’ve been gone?

His shock must have been written all over his face.

“You did not know of the late Emperor’s passing?” Kurt asked, moreso as if to tease him than anything. “My freeman, your ignorance pleases me to no end.” 

Lato  stepped before Quintus, up closer to the Dragonheart, close enough that the Beastmaster could break him in two a with backhanded slap, and looked him in the eye as a gossiping equal. “Do you believe the princess will make a docile Empress?” 

Kurt proved to Quintus that dragon’s could smile with his long, sharp teeth, and it was not something he had ever wanted to see. “I expect her to be shivering and afraid after her kidnapping, and after a return trip across the empire… to think one lone knight…” 

The Dragonheart quieted, as if to whisper to the sorcerer and cut out the supposedly loyal servant in the room. 

But Quintus spoke as no so-called servant would. “Is that all who survived the trip?” 

Kurt eyes left Lato again for Quintus, and though Quintus missed it, it made the sorcerer flinch. “Of the group that found her… there was only one knight. Others made their own pilgrimages, but one named Salazar remains the only one to survive. I suppose it would do well to gift him some minor house.” 

Lato’s voice grew rather loud as he tried his hand at a joke. “Hopefully, he will not bed the princess on their return trip. It’s hard to make a pregnant woman scary. Even less so a young mother.” 

“Oh, if the machine can keep her father’s death a secret, it can do the same for a royal whelp if need be. Yes, yes, closing those holes would be easy enough, and speaking of…” Kurt paused, dangling more news on the end of a stick, waiting for Lato to bite. “That is all I came to tell you of.” 

Quintus had this urge to smirk that he did not understand.

As the Dragonheart quickly turned around, he warned the sorcerer, and Quintus with a glance, “Keep this to yourself, so that we might upturn the war effort yet.”

And with that, the greatest warrior among the Kronish Empire left the room. Before the door even closed, Quintus could hear his wings flapping in the distance.

Before the door even closed, Lato was stomping towards him.

Smack!

In terms of the body, the smack hurt Lato’s hand far more than it did Quintus’s face. To much of Lato’s apparent shock and chagrin, Quintus did not move his head with the slap. Lato held his reddening palm to himself, worsening the widespread stinging across his palm. It was as he looked up at Quintus that he realized that the man he called son with such assurance, could feast upon him as easily as the Dragonheart could feast upon anyone. 

As he hid his hand behind him, that the terms of the mind became far more unclear, and Lato added to the blow by yelling in Quintus’s face.

“Are you a fool?!” Lato’s yell was less a booming thud through the room, and more a vicious hiss with far more emotion and less power for anyone else to hear.

Quintus’s hand fought the urge to tremble as he touched his cheek. “Master,” he said, struggling to keep his firm, to keep from falling apart, “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Lato looked up at Quintus, this monolith of character and strength, and saw a pitiful part of him, known only to him, and looked away.

He turned his back, covered up his mistake, and kept going. He kept yelling in a voice most could not hear. 

“Understand?! What’s there to understand?! That you clearly have a death wish?!” Lato just barely looked over his shoulder as Quintus’s arm fell to his side, and the darkness of the room cast a dark glare over his eyes. 

Lato then saw what many others saw in Quintus, and as threatening as it was, it was preferable to derived pity only moments before.

“That was the Dragonheart,” Lato reminded him, his voice sounding almost like a growl, “his soul is melded with a dragon, the most vicious, aggressive, and temperamental beast to ride the skies! And you thought he would want to trade words with an old servant?”

Quintus picked up his head, but the dim light did not brighten his face. His lone eye flashed red, just as he asked, “Am I not free?”

Lato’s instinct was to turn completely around, to stumble his over his feet to Quintus just as he struggled to find the words.  “I… you…” 

Lato found himself approaching a giant whose care was slowly waning. A dog can take a serious beating, but despite all belief, it will only take it for so long.

“Yes, yes you are, my son,” Lato assured him as he rested a brave hand on Quintus’s shoulder, “but just because it is law that you are a man, that does not mean someone as noble as him will see you as one. My name as your patron can protect you from many, most even, but only my body in front of yours can protect you from him.”

Quintus’s mind thought back to how the Dragonheart circled him as he spoke. He took notice what he didn’t before, such as he cut off any means of escape by blocking the door. All the while, he hid his hands, his deadliest weapons after his throat underneath his wings.

He was ready to pounce me like a lion would a gazelle from the moment I walked in.

“And now he knows me…”

“And now he knows you, and if I am not there, I may not be able to protect you if he remembers you as the servant who talked back.”

“I have no plans to meet him again,” Quintus said as if it were that simple.

Lato laughed, knowing the truth. “The gods laugh in the face of plans, you know this as well as I do… but still, better you should avoid him and the other Beastmasters if possible.”

As Lato began to stroke his chin in thought, Quintus asked him, “He will tell them of me?”

Lato chuckled again. “He’s an avid gossip, of course, he will.” 

Lost in thought of everything that’s transpired in the last half-hour alone, Lato ran his hands through his hair, losing control of his follicles like he did this day. 

“Hah, it has been a long night hasn’t it?” he said as he walked away from Quintus. “And you came here for help. Well, let’s have a drink and speak on it. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can get reacquainted.” 

Quintus hesitated to follow as his old master walked deeper into his lab, towards a library with carpets, soft candles, and chairs for men smaller than him. He’s followed Lato many places, and like many times before, which he could not explain, his feet were heavy and needed to be forced along.

But Lato didn’t notice. 

“It was something about helping your friend? With magic rather than politics?”

“Yes,” Quintus confirmed with a nod of his head, “or I supposed magical politics.”

“… what?”

“My friend has been taken by the warlock of Raydorn, Amidala Ka-”

“I know her, you needn’t speak her name…” Lato interrupted Quintus, speaking of the warlock like her name were curse, worse than taking the gods in vane as he proceeded to do. “By the gods…”

“Is… is something wrong?”

Lato took a chance to sit in a comfy chair before answering, letting it bear his weight as he spread out as far as he could. “Something’s always wrong when that woman is involved.” Lato raised his head to his face to rub the bridge of his nose, as if he were fighting the urge to think, but he was not so lucky. “You said she took your friend, do you know why?”

“From what other my friends have gathered, my friend’s appearance matches that of a group of people she has been hunting for sometime.”

The color drained from Lato’s face. 

The sorcerer sat up, and centered his eyes on Quintus. “My son, tell me, what does your friend look like?”

Quintus’s brow pursed, seeing the alarm on his master’s face. “A normal woman of Raydorn, save for her white hair, and occasionally… her green eyes.”

“Oh god.” Lato’s ensuing sigh would imply that all hope was lost, and Quintus had not known tht it had even truly begun. 

“Sir… patron? What is it?” “My dear boy, if your friend is what I think she is, then that witch having her hands on her…  may spell doom for us all.”