• • Raydorn: The War in the Black
• December 15, 2024

Raydorn: The War in the Black (Chapter 68)

“The past is the past, and when there’s nothing to learn from it, it’s best it stays that way.”

Lato Macedon Tritus, 423 A.C.A.

---

A year ago, Andelyn Stella would have made a rather crude joke about her situation.

Bound in chains by a tall brunette with legs for days and a smile that should make me weak in the knees… it should be the dream.

‘Dreams should aim higher.’

Even when tomorrow feels untenable? 

‘You don’t believe?’

My faith is so lacking, that I’m not going to ask what you expect me to believe in.

Andy’s arms were bound by a metal that appeared both real and not. They formed after the warlock spoke an unheard word, and then solid lightning wrapped around her arms and down to her wrists where they connected. She couldn’t even flex without feeling like her limbs were going to be crushed.

Her legs weren’t much better, given just enough slack to move unabated in whichever direction the warlock wanted.

But she didn’t even allow her that. 

The chains forced Andy’s legs along out of her prison cell. Despite all the charm Amidala tried to lay on the night before, she showed no illusion of freedom today. All that was left to Andy was her mouth and her eyes when there was nothing she wanted to say, and nothing she wanted to see.

Death loomed over her, and Osera, the Mistress of the Hedone was beckoning her to the end.

“Don’t look so glum,” Amidala told her as she looked down at her with her glowing scepter, “it won’t take long, though I supposed ‘long’ is subjective.” 

Normally she wouldn’t tower over Andy so blatantly, but Andy’s chains forced the gait of a hunchback on her.

Typically, the portal was rather calm. It had a slow flow to it, where the surface slowly swirled around the middle. 

When Amidala retrieved a stone from somewhere on her person, the portal began to act out. It’s light had shined something it was not meant to see, and it’s soft blues and greens turned into a blinding white. It was as if Andy was gazing into a blizzard she was not in. 

As Amidala held it closer, the flow speed up, and what looked like water began to spin until droplets were being flung around the room. 

When the stone touched the portal, there was the sound of a door screeching open, and the white surface turned red against the stone. After a full rotation, a red circled was drawn over the portal, turning the gateway from blue to red.

Even after she took it back, the rock still glowed white without any sign of dimming, but the warlock didn’t notice. Amidala turned back to Andy, waiting for some sort of praise that wasn’t going to come.

Andy’s lack of delight turned out to be the sort of praise she was looking for, if the bright look on her face was anything to go by. 

She beckoned Andy forward, “Chop, chop, we don’t want your death to last all day, now do we?”

“Me? Walk?” Andy questioned facetiously. “Walk me yourself, I ain’t doing any work for you, not even walking.”

Why not being annoying to the end at least?

Amidala was amused, however. In fact, she seemed to agree.

“You’re so right, walking you like a dog was the least I could do,” and with a glap of her hands, a leash made from the same stuff as Andy’s bindings formed in Amidala’s hand. She didn’t even have to clip it to anything, one end reached through the air to Andy’s neck, and formed a tight collar around it.

“Now let’s go.”

Amidala walked through the portal, and dragged Andy by the neck. She was moving as fast her magically bound legs would force her. She was always just far enough behind the warlock to make her choke on the leash.

The portal didn’t sting like Andy expected it to as she walked through it, but it was as blinding.

The teleportation was instantaneous, as was the change in the air. The change in lighting wasn’t processed as fast as Andy would have liked.

She knew where she was because of the brisk, dewey smell around her, and the thinness of the air. 

Best bet, the Soday Mountains, they separate Raydorn’s western border from Susanna.

When Andy’s eyes adjusted, she thought she was looking into a black hole, but it was just a shadow darkened by one woman’s black soul.

The wall ahead of her was painted with this dried red substance that would have been mistaken for black, to the unitiated. Andy recognized the blood immediately.

‘A coffin fit for thee.’

The blood that painted the wall reached higher than a story, and reached far enough in both directions that there was a half of circle of the disgusting stuff.

At the foot of the half-circle of blood, laid a human hole, from which someone was to be laid in with their arms splayed out like a gutted chicken.

A coffin made for me.

They weren’t too far away from it. Andy could make out the syringes that had slid up and into the stone. She could surmise that they would pop out and stab her. It gave off the look of a torture device so why not assume the worst?

What Andy certainly didn’t miss was the Aurora Knight with his blade stabbed into the ground behind him. He didn’t turn around as he fixed what Andy could assume was one of the syringes on the wall.

Andy didn’t even get the chance to turn around, and see behind her before Amidala’s leash tightened around her neck.

The warlock forced Andy forwarded, dragging her along like an abused dog. 

Amidala then threw her hands up towards the blue sky, asking her captive, “Come now, Andy, you can’t say this isn’t a magnificent place to die?”

Amidala looked to her captive again expectedly, and despite growing used to it, Andy still felt the urge to scoff and gag in the warlock’s direction.

“You know, every time you try to sound dramatic, it’s obvious how much you crave attention.”

Amidala mocked a fake groan as she complained,  “Everyone’s a critic, is it so bad that I wanna show a little pizzazz?!” She shook her fists at Andy, as if her captive was matching her energy. In a way, she was. “Don’t be such a bland bitch, Andy…” 

It seemed to Andy that Amidala intended to continue, but something drew this confused expression on her face. It was like something had been happening, but she only just realized it.

Amidala raised the still glowing rock as if to inspect it, but her eyes did not roam the stone. Her eyes just stared as she sighed. “Huh.” 

This was new.

The warlock never seemed so normally confused before now.

“What?” 

Amidala pursed her lip. “Nothing… quite so strange. It’s just that usually… usually the transportal stone stops glowing by now.” 

*****

Quintus waited alone in the dimly lit laboratory as his master sought what the freeman came for. 

As he waited, he couldn’t help but think on time’s long past 

His first day in Lato’s new home, to be exact. It was when he couldn’t have been older than eight or nine. Or maybe I was younger, or older… why can I never remember that, but I remember the frills the master wore at every edge of his shirt.

When he stepped out of the cart with Lato’s help, Quintus nearly stumbled. The closed-toed sandals of a Kronish dominus befit him in his summer home, but it did not befit Quintus. He was used to feeling the soft sands beneath his feet.

He remembered how his younger self shuddered, the child reminiscing of how his own mother berated him for not wearing his leather shoes. He could remember how he would think about her inane anger, but he couldn’t quite remember the woman herself. Not even how she fell.

Was that even her? She could have died before then, or after. Was she even the woman who held my hand as we were shipped across the sea? I… I can’t even remember.

The sun that bore down on him then didn’t burn as hot as it did where he was born, deep within the Secan continent, but it made him sweat in a way he hadn’t before. The difference heavy cotton makes on a boy who had never worn it before.

Not even the shade of the sorcerer’s grand mansion cooled him down. It was supposed to be the coolest in the Empire, fit for a man known for his experiments, and in need of a place with an easily accessibly ice box.

Quintus remembered struggling to make out its shape, it’s dark shadow making it appear more like an monster waiting to open its jaws. It had no eyes to open, only a mouth to consume anything that came close enough. Under the light, many things appear in their darkest form.

As the heat and the thoughts of his mother wore him down, Quintus struggled to concentrate. Once he lost focus, and if memory served him well enough, this was true in his childhood as well. The adults, servants from Seca just like him, shook him, asking him if he was alright, and what was his name.

Quintus answered, but he couldn’t remember what he said. He hadn’t said ‘Quintus.’ He hadn’t received that name yet. What was the name he was born with? Why couldn’t he remember what his mother called him?

What Quintus remembered loud and clear, was Lato correcting him. “It’s Quintus now, the past is the past, and when there’s nothing to learn from it, it’s best it stays that way, son.”

Son.

A tainted word if there ever was one, and today, it kept tickling the insides of Quintus’s ear.

“Son,” he heard again, but in real time rather than in the recesses of his wallowing mind.

Quintus looked up to see his patron hovering over him in his cot, returned with a glowing stone in his hand.

Lato placed his hand on Quintus’s shoulder, just barely looking down at Quintus as he sat up. “Are you alright? You’ve cultivated a sweat in your sleep.”

“It appears that rest is not for me,” Quintus said as he rubbed his eyes. He first considered that something was wrong with his eyes, considering the stone was glowing and stones — as many know — did not do that. “Is this what you were struggling to look for last night?”

“Yes, um, it’s a transportal stone,” Lato began to explain, “it’s a way for me to communicate and travel to Kain. It’s how we magical leaders talk to each behind the backs of our oh-so wise regents.

“We typically use it to spy on each other, but it grew rather worthless once Kain locked me out, so I threw it in a fit of rage and lost it.”

“Seems difficult to lose considering it’s glowing,” Quintus pointed out.

That’s when Lato set it down on the table closest to them, lit by crystal light.

As his patron began scratching under his chin, Quintus began to realize that Lato was holding something back.

“Here’s the thing, son, it’s not supposed to glow unless it’s being used, yet…”

“Do you think she’s-”

Quintus was cut off the stone changing colors from a dim white hue, to a bright and fluorescent green, one that was familiar to Quintus.

The same color that always seemed to stalk Andy. 

The stone’s surface even turned into a milky white that resembled the hair of Quintus’s stolen friend. It didn’t take a genius to realize that it was no coincidence.

Lato quickly placed it into Quintus’s hands. He made the man he called son cup the stone like he were passing on some holy gem.

“You need to start concentrating on your friend, as I explain what’s happening,” Lato told Quintus. 

He placed his hands behind Quintus’s, and pressed his fingers hard against the stone. Quintus could feel how the magic rumbled within and how it fizzled on the stone’s surface. In a matter of seconds, the fizzling had become something more akin to tiny little hands trying to poke and caress Quintus’s palms.

Oooohhh…. I don’t like this.

“I was struggling to find the stone, you see,” Lato informed Quintus as he searched for something in his pockets. “I only found it because it started glowing, which could only mean the worst.”

“That something was coming?” Quintus guessed as his patron pulled out a piece of paper and began to flatten in on the table..

“That Amidala wanted to talk to me,” Lato answered, stopping to shutter at the thought. “My worst fears were diverted when no message came, but the consistent glow only became more nerve-wracking, because of what could she be doing?”

“Nothing good.”

“Correct, son, nothing good. That only became clearer to me the longer it continued to glow. You see, these transportal stones are connected, but the connection has to travel over distances, and it’s common for the connection to come in pieces. That means-”

“That it grows stronger the more it’s used,” Quintus finished.

Lato grew this pained smirk, and his first word was grunted more than spoken. “Yes, *ahem*, yes, it does, and it’s been on so long that means the connection is pretty strong.

“Yet, she hasn’t contacted or called us yet. That’s risky.”

Quintus couldn’t help but nod his head, and Lato’s smile seemed rather genuine seeing his old servant’s confusion. 

“You see, son, if she leaves it open long enough, it’ll be easy for me or the arch-asshole of Susanna to teleport something to her, like soldiers, a monster, or a bomb, whatever tickles our fancy.”

Quintus interrupted his patron’s train of thought to think out loud. “The fact that she’s left it open means she’s doing something with it, so important that it’s worth the risk.”

“Um, yes, correct, very good guess,” Lato complimented Quintus rather dryly, before holding up the paper he had clearly crumbled up years ago. “Do you know what’s on that paper?”

Quintus looked at it before Lato tried to hide it away. “A record of what the different colors mean for the stone.”

“Yes… are… are you concentrating on your friend?”

Quintus twitched as he realized he had not been, and tried to focus rather hard on Andelyn and her strikingly white hair. “I’m concentrating on her.”

Quintus tried to picture everything he could remember. Before the Eilean Senso Tribus, she always smelled like a mix of alcohol, but since they landed on the Icy Pearl Isles, there was a salty scent to her alcoholic stench. 

It clashed with the freshness Lucy gave off from spending so much time in the cleansing sea, and Astrid’s subdued but smoky stench. 

Then there was the way the ends of Andy’s hair split, with the dye still in the tips of her long locks, causing her hair strands to dry out. It was easy to spot, making her appear almost as tired as she truly was.

Lato helped by telling Quintus about his hypothesis for Andy. “Based on what you’ve told me about your friend, her white hair, her glowing green eyes, these strange-introspective abilities, and the hint of pointy ears… well, if she is what I think she is, she will give Amidala the godly power she’s always desired, or she will see what that kind of power can do.” 

Quintus’s squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to focus on focusing, not knowing how little difference it made in telling the portal where to go, and barely managed to quiet him, as was the goal of his focus. 

“I think my friend needed me yesterday,” Quintus grunted, “can you use that to send me to her, so I can help her?” 

Lato rested Quintus’s weapon in his lap so he wouldn’t forget, but as he released the fearsome cleaver, he had so few words, “Quintus, I…”

‘… I’d rather not.

‘It’s dangerous.

‘I may never see you again.

‘You may die.’

Quintus ran through the potential lines his would-be father wanted to say, proving how little he knew.

“Patronus,” Quintus asked him, as he creaked open his eyes, “can you do it?” 

Lato’s lip twisted, which confirmed enough for Quintus. 

Lato’s next words were those of warning rather than help. “I can’t know where I would be sending you. It could be anywhere from that witch’s bathroom to the bowls of Hedone.” 

“If I find myself in the underworld, I’ll find my way out.” 

Lato’s smirk was one that could be connected to pride. “Yes, yes you will, son.”

“Thank you,” Quintus said.

Then Lato flicked the stone, and the light escaped from it. The portal appeared right below Quintus’s feet, and he slipped and fell off the cot through the portal.

The surprise of the act was so great that Quintus did not think about how easily Lato had triggered the transportal stone and opened the portal. He did not think of the minutes of inaction that Lato committed to before allowing his son to go. 

Rather, he thought about the words, he heard echoing through the white, blistering void as he traveled a great distance in mere seconds.

“Godspeed, son.”

If only Quintus was more familiar with the feeling of betrayal, then he would recognize the pain of a knife in the back.

*****

For hours on end, Jack had foregone sleep to test his might against the transportal stone. 

For Quintus, this meant trusting in his master to be honest with him and guide him through their situation. For Jack… this meant staring and re-reading the same gibberish he’s been reading for hours on end.

Jack threw up his hands and stretched in his father’s old office chair. “Yup, I give up, I have not a single idea as to how it works.” 

The family butler, Faust, rests a new soothing brew of coffee on the table for the young Starshield. “Forgive my Torkkic, prince,” Faust told him as he bent down and stared him straight in the eye, “but all you’ve done is fuck about with it.” 

“Yeah, well… you ever heard, ‘you fuck around and you find out?” 

“I did two seconds ago.” 

Jack’s eyes narrowed on his quick-witted butler. 

“Well, I didn’t find out shit,” Jack said, fighting the urge to cross his arms, and pout.

“Ah, it seems your sayings are worthless.”

Being here, in this mansion, waited on by a butler, really forces me to devolve.

It was second nature for Jack to threaten to regress into something he didn’t want to be because he was in a place that treated him as if there were no expectations. There were expectations galore, but they waited behind closed doors and were only whispered between hushed lips.

I wonder if Isla has the same problem. Ivanrest never grew up, and Diana was born an adult, so they don’t really count. But Isla… I wonder how she’s doing. 

I haven’t thought of my younger sister in a while. How terrible of me. She’s just out of the newlywed phase and I haven’t visited her, not even a letter. I should fix that, make sure she isn’t walking over Andy’s brother too much. 

Jack’s thoughts grounded him, and the tea was both his ally and his friend. It was served to him, yet, what man-child enjoyed tea?  

That did beg the question…

“Aren’t you supposed to be supporting me?” Jack questioned Faust. 

“You did rip out my favorite tree.” 

“You have a-?” Jack caught himself before he became distracted. “No, no, let’s focus.” He put down the tea to start and run his hands over the glowing stone again. “There has to be a way to trigger it.” 

“It’s glowing,” Faust offered, “you must have done something right.” 

“But its been glowing, and it hasn’t done a damn thing else. The glowing could just be because I freed it from its lightless prison.” 

“Have you tried applying your Iligsia to it?” 

Jack opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He slowly found his chin rested in the grip of his two fingers, mocking the pose of a deep thinker.

“Well… no actually,” Jack admitted, “that kind of felt too obvious.”

Faust stared at him rather blankely, his eyes failing to flutter. “Have you ever heard that the right answer is usually the simplest one?” 

To his butler’s platitudes, Jack threw back one of his own. “Nothing worth doing in life has ever been easy, Faust.” 

If only he weren’t sparring with a master. “No, but who said that ‘simple’ and ‘easy’ were one and the same, dear prince?” 

Jack’s eyes slowly narrowed upon the butler. “You…” he growled under his breath, “make an excellent point.” 

“That is what I do,” Faust said with a sweeping gesture to the space before him, “I care for the grounds and make excellent points.” 

Jack turned his eyes back to the stone, “You forgot to add sarcasm.”

“How so? Nothing I’ve said has been deceptive.” 

Jack looked to the ceiling, restraining the urge to roll his eyes.

What are we talking about? Why is this what’s distracting me right now?

Jack considered this, and yet he still continued the game Faust was playing. “Facetious then?” 

“That means the same thing.” 

“I don’t know then.” 

“Then why have you opened your mouth?” 

“Because I can…” 

Jack trailed off as he mentally kicked himself for wasting more time.

“Prince?” Faust asked, noticing how Jack didn’t finish his thought.

Jack shook his head, and let a rather sorrowful sigh. “You know I will leave here today, don’t you?”

Faust’s head did a little twitch.

I see you now.

“I know not, what you mean-”

“I’m not staying,” Jack told his butler honestly, breaking down the walls he was beginning to see had been built around them. They could not keep him trapped within any longer. 

“I’m never staying in this house again,” Jack assured the poor old man, “even if I can’t get this transportal stone to work, I’ll leave here. It’s better to spend a night under the pouring rain than to spend it here again.”

“You… you need not be so cruel with your words.” Faust looked away as he spoke, unable to quite accept what Jack was saying.

“I know you care for me, old friend, but this house… this place… it is everything I don’t want to be.” Jack reached out his hand to gently grip the butler’s wrist. “We all have to leave home sometime.”

“But to never return?” Faust asked.

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Ah, yes, because you can…” 

There was a moment when Jack was going to refute that point. The suggestion that he was leaving because he could felt insulting, but upon a second of further thought, the thought wasn’t so unappealing. He could leave, how many could say that? 

And the way to prove that he could leave, was to leave…

And never come back.

Maybe Diana really is jealous, Jack thought as he looked over at Faust, who couldn’t meet his eye. Maybe she’s not the only one.

“Are you going to attempt to trigger the stone now?” his butler asked him.

Jack looked to the stone he held in his hand. He felt how it hummed into his fingers, and as the power of his Iligsia began to flutter, the vibrations of the stone sought to enter his skin. It was reacting to him in a way it wasn’t before over something so integral, yet so simple to his nature. 

“Why not,” Jack said, and grabbed his sword from off the wall just in case.

He didn’t put a lot of the Wind into the stone to avoid making a mess for Faust to clean up. But, with just that little push, the stone turned into a bright humming white light, with a red iridescent glow. 

Jack figured, “Whelp, looks like you had it right-” 

Then the ground disappeared from under him, and he was cast into a dark abyss. He did not see the wide-eyed look on Faust’s face, nor how quickly it fell into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. 

Faust tried to be cheery for himself, “Clearly, the only thing you had was thin air, my prince…” but the enthusiasm died in his throat. 

“I crack myself up.”