• • Raydorn: The War in the Black
• October 20, 2024

Raydorn: The War in the Black (Chapter 66)

“Fathers are fickle things who’ve convinced the world that they’re anything but.”

Lady Diana Starshield, 429 A.C.A.

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Of the many ways of which the Black Legion set out to find their missing friend, one of  them had to pick the path that was most boring.

This was Jack.

Stuck in his father’s desk, sorting through calendars and journals galore, Jack was stuck in place, and he knew it. 

With his head resting in his hand, his mind both raced and moved at a crawl. He was having thoughts of nothing after he overstimulated his mind with words that were useless, confusing, or both. The worst part was, that if he saw something he should take notice of, his mind wasn’t able to comprehend it as it should.

I’m wasting time reading, and Andy could be being dissected as we speak, or worse.

The old butler of Starshield’s ancestral home entered as he knocked, bringing some much needed conversation to Jack’s mind.

“Have you learned anything?” 

“That my father was every bit as sexist and gross as I thought. I don’t think I’ve read the words ‘fairy’ and ‘bitch’ more times in my life.”

Jack huffed as he needed to rub his eyes. He could have dumbed down his answer to one word, but it would hardly translate the feelings swirling around inside him. What he did say barely got it right.

“Ah yes, your father…” Faust could have said a million things, but only one thing was accurate, “well, he’s dead.” 

Jack kicked himself. “Sorry, you must have cared for him.” 

Faust arched his brow and rested his hand over his chest in disgust of the very idea. “You’re father was a bastard, the only part of him I cared about was the money he provided for all of us.”

“Oh, well fuck him then.” 

“I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.” 

“Ah, good one,” Jack hummed, as he turned back towards the books, “gross, but a good one.”

As Faust watched Jack struggled to read by crystal light, he came around to add some light from his own. On the desk, Jack had several journals open, with a calendar in the middle. It appeared he was trying to match dates to meetings, going through all mention of Amidala, but for some reason this wasn’t turning up anything good.

“I was made privy to many things in this household,” Faust said, “but rarely, if ever, can I recall mention of the warlock.”

“It doesn’t seem like he did much for her. The calendar talks about shipments, but father rarely wrote down more than a record of the supplies. A business man through and through…” Jack shoved one of the journals off the desk in frustration, as if that would hurt it. 

All this thinking was giving him a headache, so much so that found himself gripping his pulsating temple in both hands.

Thinking… was not for me.

“Walk me through it,” Faust asked of him, trying spur him to focus.

Jack looked down at the confusing mess of papers and sighed. “From what I could tell, he just fed the witch, a duty assigned to him by the crown. Not much to walk through.”

Faust flitted with his hand as he started to think. “Well, there’s not going to be anything in his journals about shipping food and nonsense, did he ever make a trip to the Tower himself.”

“Not since I was born,” Jack snorted.

“And before?” 

Jack looked at Faust sideways. “Amidala can’t be much older than me, her schemes can’t go that far back.”

Faust’s scowl had Jack confused. “What?”

“The warlock is much older than she looks, she’s far closer in age to me than you.”

The urge to smack himself grew strong in Jack.

Jack made a rush to grab and bring his father’s older calendar records to the desk, where Faust stood, tapping his foot, quietly judging his charge. 

Jack waved him off.

It didn’t take long to find a time when his father visited Amidala himself. It was when this  assignment first started. “I think I found what we’re looking for…” Jack muttered to himself.

“Then use that date from the calendar and go through your father’s other journals.” 

“Huh, I never would have thought to find anything like that, all because of one little factoid.” He looked up at his positively stoic butler. “Thank you, Faust.” 

Faust righted his bowtie. “I live to serve. 

“In all seriousness, however, If there was one good thing about your father outside of his wallet, it’s that he wrote everything down. All the time he spent in this room writing is half the reason your mother ever stayed sane.” 

Thoughts of his mother haunting the house when she was alive flitted through Jack’s head. The idea that she and his father paid enough attention to each other to have four children seemed insane to him. 

She could never stand him, always threatening to run off to one of her many siblings and cousins he had never met. 

Hopefully, Hemel was kinder to her mind than Hedone will be to father’s.

“I found the entry,” Jack said as he stumbled upon a chapter in his father’s life that was more detailed than the others. Whether that boded ill or well for Jack, he wasn’t yet sure.

“Read what he said,” Faust instructed, which made Jack purse his brow, but he shrugged and started reading quietly. 

Faust shook his head as he clarified, “I meant out loud if you don’t mind me hearing.” 

“Oh, sorry, didn’t realize.” 

“It’s alright, young prince, no one expects you to be smarter on so little sleep.”

*****

Faraday Starshield III wrote his entry about the warlock differently. Jack found previous reports clinical, and his memoirs arrogant, so much so that Jack found himself arguing in his head with a ghost. 

But when considering the trip to the warlock, his father less a man and more a boy without a mask.

‘I remember the trek,’ Faraday wrote, ‘I had only made it once before with my father. He called it the Dreaded Tower, all the men we traveled with did. I didn’t understand at first, this thing of magic astounded me. 

‘Now, I understand,’ he said, but Faraday didn’t even understand that he did not understand. 

An arrogant twit from the start, Jack thought. 

‘There is no such thing as the ‘magic’ in stories,’ Faraday wrote, ‘such things belong to Almulan, and yet this Tower did have her light, or so we’ve been told. Now, I’m not so sure. 

‘The old man wizard stroked his long beard when I met him as a boy, and the woman there now stroked her ego instead. She ordered my servants around like they were her slaves… if I hadn’t known what she could do to me, I’d have slapped her for pretending herself capable of ordering my charges. I never felt small like that before… knowing a power greater than my own. 

‘The King is a fool and has been for decades, but this woman… it’s power that makes true men bite their tongues. And a dark power at that. 

‘Worse, I had to shake hands with the witch.’ It was in handwriting, but the deep darkness of the ink told Jack just how hard his father had pressed the pen when he wrote down the insult. 

‘I would not have come if I did not have to bring her a package she made clear could only be trusted in the hands of a great lord. She called me a great lord in her letter, and then treated me like her dog in her home. What I would have given to be able to break her neck. 

‘I gave her the package, and for the first time since I was a boy, the sweat on my face was from fear. 

‘Amidala Kain threw a fit when I told her one of the stones were missing. You’d had thought that the Tower shook with her rage, but it grew rather still. As she grew angry, muttering curses to herself in frustration, things seemed to slow rather than shake. I found my muscles unable to move, and the lights being drained from the room. 

‘The light was being sucked into her eyes, for they were holes in the world from which nothing could escape. 

‘When she composed herself and we were allowed to stand on her will, she muttered something about a godly power lost to her. To think, a rock could be something so important. 

‘She specifically mentioned the gateway to immortality, calling me a bloody fool, questioning if I had the slightest idea what I had lost. She went on and on how having only one voided the whole point until she had the other. 

‘She yelled so much that I thought she would start hurling lightning and make everyone stand in place again, but eventually she turned back deeper into the Dreaded Tower, where I could not follow, cursing her way around. 

‘I did not wait to see if she would come back. I was back down the elevator, one I considering avoiding the darkness by jumping the height, but my fraying sanity keep me alive. I made a made dash to my horse as soon as I touched the ground, and left the peasants to find their own way home. 

‘As soon as I returned, I hid the stone where it would never be found. I could not let that witch have whatever power it contained, lest she use it to destroy Raydorn, and my house. No one will ever find it, not even the children as they walk past it every day.’

Jack had found what he had been looking for, but those were not his father’s final words. He wanted to pull away, to embroil in the mystery of the stone and where it may lay, but how could he not know one of his father’s truest words? He was reading words that marked possibly the one and only time Faraday had ever communicated honestly with his son beyond numbers and gold.

‘I said before that I thought there was no light in the Dreaded Tower, but maybe there was. Maybe there was a bit of Almulan there, but what laid of the All-mother in that tower, was not light gifted, but stolen. It was a place I would never return to, All-mother willing.’

*****

“Where do you supposed he hid it?” Jack asked Faust.

“Does it matter? Surely if the warlock wants it, it’s better to remain hidden.”

Jack instinctively wanted to agree, but there was this warm feeling on his shoulder, and the even warmer feeling of lips speaking into his ear. There was nothing to hear, but there was something to doubt.

My father was right to be caution of the stone, he told himself, but that does not mean he wasn’t a fool. This stone… there’s little reason to believe it’s anything beyond what was described based on the raving so of a drunken narcissist.

“Please don’t tell me you wish to find this… stone,” Faust’s voice fell into a hiss. He may have spoken ill of his old master, but he still valued his words.

“You know I do.”

“If your father feared it would give the witch more power, maybe even that of a god, isn’t it better to keep it hidden?” the butler posited to the young lord. 

Faust’s logic was sound, at least to the surface of Jack’s mind, but there was a feeling he had grown familiar with. A presence loomed over his shoulder reminiscent of a specter, but few specters carried such warmth, and whispered in such a way that nothings turned into somethings.

The stone is not magically dangerous because my father said so.

“The stone’s purpose is to bring someone somewhere,” Jack said as if he had reason to know beyond a strong feeling and presence’s hand on his shoulder, beckoning him forth. “And I need to go where my father would not, where Amidala cannot.” 

Now I came upon the problem. 

“If only I can think of where he hid it. What kind of place would his children look at but never notice… everyday?” 

Faust closed his eyes, knowing rather immediately. “Your tree, he must have buried it under the tree.” 

“What? But that’s the most obvious place.” 

Faust arched his brow and nocked his head at Jack. The look alone made the butler’s point. “You’re overestimating your father. Just because he thinks no one would ever think of it, doesn’t make it true.” 

“I… you make a good point.” 

Jack was quick and Faust were quick to make way to the tree, but Faust was quicker to try his hand again at persuading Jack away from his chosen course.

“Faraday Adrianus Starshield the Third was little more than a fat feral cat, and nowhere near as smart as he thought he was.” 

The butler could not have known how large a laugh Jack was holding in. “Hah, tell me how you really feel.” 

“Diana has made it mandatory that the staff does,” Faust told him as they made their way through the front door, and Jack without the laugh he held in. “I know you have every reason to be suspicious of her… but she means well for this house, this family, and the people of the Plateau.” 

There it was again, that family and duty was hung in front of Jack’s face, and once again, the world overestimated how enticing it truly wasn’t.

As they trudged through the mud, the sight of dark clouds formed overhead. They were dark even while in front of moonlight. 

A storm was threatening it’s presence, but Jack didn’t have the time.

“I… I believe you…” Jack said, in a way that wouldn’t convince a mouse, “I think my father wanted the same, but meaning well doesn’t mean you do well. And the hardships of leadership do not excuse the abuse of your loved ones. I have no desire to be to Diana what Uncle and Mother were to Father.” 

Faust pressed his hands before Jack, as if saying, “I understand, truly I do, just… consider giving her a chance. Speak to her with the honesty you demonstrate with me, and I think she will respond far better than you give her credit for. Definitely better than your father.” 

“That’s not saying much…” and much else, Jack did not say as they came upon the tree. 

Jack too a look at the tree beside the children’s jungle gym, with it’s swing set and it’s toys long forgotten and abandoned. 

Then he summoned forth the Wind to his hands.

Faust’s blood grew cold and tense, feeling the pull of the Iligsia so close. He could have sworn to be a man of faith like most others, but to be acquainted with a gift granted by the divine? He had lived at the Golden Plateau all of his life. He knew barely a thing of it.

The only magic he knew was that of memory and imagination.

“Are you sure this is what needs to be done?” he asked Jack, calling to him over the sound of winds growing in power. As they began to form a turbine around the tree, the butler couldn’t help but suggest to Jack, “There are a great many memories made between all the children of Starshield! Not just you and your siblings, but all who came before you! This is the only plant that remains from when House Starshield made its home atop the Golden Plateau!” 

Jack remembered his grandfather’s words when he repaired the swing for his grandchildren. “‘From the first stab of the pickaxe to the last, this tree will stand with roots made of gold.’” 

Faraday Adrianus Starshield II was before Faust’s time, and his words were not meant for a butler to hear. The butler did little more but balk hearing another man’s words coming out of Jack’s mouth.

“It’s the only coherent thing I remember grandfather saying,” Jack told him, and for moment, the Wind rested. “Good thing I never liked him that much, and I never gave much of a damn about this tree.” 

Then with a heave of his hands, the Winds of the Plateau ripped the tree out, root and stem. It sounded like a thousands bones breaking at once, and looked as if veins were being ripped out of someone’s skin. 

Jack’s Iligisa helped him sense exactly where the Winds blew and from where they held the tree that dwarfed him in size, but to Faust, it was as if the earth was levitating out of the ground. 

A root system that went into the caverns below, and began to fill with dirt looked like something that should be bleeding as it hovered over head. 

With a flick of his hands, something that no mere man could fell, was terrorized by a man who never touched it that way.

But he was not done.

The Winds began to flow through the dirt, drawing dirt, mud, and more closer to fill the hazardous spot where a centuries old tree had stood. As it filled the hole, the ground started to bubble as the winds bumped against something that did not yield to air.

With a flex of his hand, Jack lifted what laid below the tree.

A chest with a lock and no key.

Jack gestured for the Wind to carry it to him. 

Faust stepped aside him, watching this innanely ornate box with golden etchings and silver dipped carvings float his way. It appeared as if a gift from the gods of Gronina. He nearly made to reach for it.

CLANK! CRASH!

Jack’s sword was the key, but one that could only be used once as he split the lid of the chest.

At that point the butler was silent. Why set himself up for more disappointment.

Jack let the Wind fall away and the chest fall to the ground. He used the butt of his sword to clear away the wood and debris, and reveal the thing inside that did not shine, but stole even the moonlight.

This black… stone, laid in the box. 

“Huh,” was all Jack said as he rested his hands inside and lifted it from its prison.

“Do… do you know what this is?” 

Jack inspected the stone like he was an experience geologist, as if he had studied well in anything, but who needed knowledge when a presence can whisper presents into your ear? 

“I… I think so…” he said, but he did not know why, “it’s a transportal stone. I think it can be used to teleport to another transportal stone. You have to place them in specific places. It’s perfect for escaping back home where you keep a second one, but it’s pointless to carry them together.” 

Knowing what Jack had come there for, Faust asked, “Can it be used to teleport to Amidala?” “It can… by someone who’s not me.”