• • Raydorn: The War in the Black
• January 12, 2025

Raydorn: The War in the Black (Chapter 70)

“The horror never has to end.”

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

---

Oh, when in doubt, “Fuck it!”

Lucy made a beeline for Andy where she hung from the wall, bound by her arms. 

The pirate heard the raging fires behind her as Astrid and Amidala clashed. Fire had proven to be rather deafening to the wyvern as of late. When she heard Amidala’s booming voice over the flames, she found something else to be terrified of.

“Kion, the bitch!”

Lucy didn’t need to check to know the witch’s target was her, nor did she have the mental power to take offense at the insult. 

She only pulled out her sword expecting to find the Aurora Knight in her face. 

Instead, she heard the sound of clanging and turned to find her paramour tackling the knight to the ground.

Quintus’s weight alone was not enough to tumble with the Aurora Knight, but with the strength of Jack’s Iligsia propelling him, he could for a moment. 

Quintus was going to yell out, “Go!” to Lucy, but the Aurora Knight had already elbowed him in the jaw. 

Lucy had stopped, and nearly turned around to help him, but Jack was faster. He had already started running into aerial roll, which brought the Wind straight down on Quintus, and in turn came down on the Aurora Knight. 

Lucy held her saber before her eyes as the Wind came down like a waterfall, and Quintus’s hand continued to shove the knight’s helm, deep into the ground. 

Quintus began to roar as the veins in his arms began to bulge in a way most grotesque. They looked ready to burst as his body withstood both a push from above and resistance from below. 

Get him, Lucy thought to herself, almost like a prayer.

‘Care for what you ask for, worm,’ the voice of God came, and spawned from a burst of flames. The fire reached higher and grew wider in Lucy’s eyes than anyone else’s, the nightmare of Krera was unmistakable.

Before, she did not understand that Quintus was trying to tell her to run with the sounds of Jack’s Wind. 

The fire sent her running.

‘All you do is run, coward.’

Lucy ran into the wall before she remembered where she was going. She was drenched in sweat despite being rather cold and having done very little. Even barring her old bruises and scars, she was by most metrics a healthy woman, and yet her heart thudded in her chest. 

Lucy slowly used the wall as support to drag herself to Andy as she tried to stop the pain in her chest and gasp for air. Even her grip suffered as her fingers couldn’t help but tremble. 

The others were all fighting for their lives, and for Andy’s, but all Lucy could do was fall to her knees before the one they sought to save.

The voice of fire itself roared in her ear,‘On your knees as you always should have been, but now it’s too late.’

“Lucy,” Andy whispered her name, “Lucy look at me.” 

Lucy’s eyes slowly rose to witness Andy in her grand hell. Her hands were trapped beneath the mountain service, with the lime green light forming constructs that appeared to pierce into her skin.

Yet, there was no blood. Rather, her veins were slowly turning a sickening green. The limelight drained her of her blood where it punctured her skin.

Her skin itself had grown paler than usual, and had begun to grow translucent. 

What is that witch taking from you? Lucy thought to herself.

“I know you’re dealing with some deep shit right now…” Andy told Lucy, her voice hoarse, and devoid of life. Her eyes threatened to glaze over, and while you would expect to see sweat dripping off her, she was bone dry. 

“It’s okay, I can see in your face…” 

She’s in hell, and she’s comforting-

“But I need you to get your shit together,” Andy snapped at her, causing Lucy to focus in confusion, “because whatever shit you got going on, it ain’t worst than my deep shit. I am learning what death feels like, first hand, and I need you to get me out of here!”

“Uuhh,” Lucy mumbled, as she started looking for a way to get Andy out.

Andy didn’t know it, but she drove off the visions of a mad god with little more than exasperated aggravation.

If only focus was all Lucy needed.

The pirate took a step back to see just how out of her depth she was. She couldn’t find where Andy would be, or how to get her out beyond amputating all of her limbs. There was no telling what would happen if Lucy took hold and started pulling.

I could do some serious damage to her, Lucy considered, but hopefully nothing worse than death.

When in doubt, fuck it.

Lucy took hold Andy’s shoulders but wrapped her fingers around her shoulders. She felt her mistake before she could even start pulling Andy out.

Her fingers touched the limelight, and then they were stuck. She would wiggle her fingers while inside, convincing herself that she was simply caught on something. When she leaned forward to worm her way out, her whole hands went in the limelight where they could move freely, but the moment she went to pull, what had went in, wouldn’t come out.

“Oh fuck,” Lucy gasped.

It was only a second later before the matter grew worse for the pirate as she began to feel something drain away, not her mass or her energy but… herself, her soul, the purest form of her existence. 

The limelight around her, had begun to turn the pale blue-gray of an octopus’s blubbery skin.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK! HELP!” Lucy started to scream as she felt what was happening to Andy, happen to her. 

What she couldn’t notice was the life flushing back into Andy’s face. She was too busy screaming as Andy took loud, harsh breaths, reclaiming the air that was rightfully hers. She was too busy panicking and hoping for her paramour to risk life and limb to save her, that she didn’t notice the warlock screaming.

And oh, did the warlock scream.

*****

“What have you done?!” It wasn’t a scream of pain, or fear, but pure contempt and frustration. As her own power flowed from her, it came in a wave and pushed Astrid back. She clutched her face and let out a scream, “AAAAHHHH!!”

Astrid held her ax firm against the rushing wave of magic, her ax growing brighter and brighter to fight back. While the light blinded the others, Amidala most of all, Astrid saw perfectly through the light.

She saw how the limelight was trying and failing to correct itself. The energy that had now clearly been from Andy was being mixed in with whatever was a part of Lucy’s soul. Together they were breaking down the wall of light. 

Souls are not meant to mix, least of all theirs, and that poisonous mixture was causing the limelight to dull and lose its form. Astrid was the only one who could see it.

But to say that she could, did not mean that she did. She was busy looking at something else. She was watching the warlock’s shouts and screams to understand what was distressing.

When everyone else was blinded, the warlock included, Amidala’s hands ripped away from her face, and took her cloak of magical energy with it, flashing Astrid her true face.

“Heh, heh heh, haha, haha, HAHA!”

Suffer, bitch, suffer… 

Astrid couldn’t help but laugh at the spots of blubber growing over Amidala’s face. 

“Oh for shame!” Astrid yelled at her, and while the warlock could barely make out the shadow of her form, let alone her face, she knew that the brute had seen.

Through everything that tried to stand in their way, they locked eyes. It should have been impossible, but hate overcame the impossible just as any great love. 

Hate bound them, Astrid in her glee at Amidala’s suffering, and Amidala in her desire to see the mad woman lose her head.

Hate was ever blinding, and in their blindness, they failed to notice how their compatriots grew weak, how the light began to take from Quintus, and Jack, and Kion. They failed to realize that too many souls to the mix.

It wasn’t until they raised their weapons towards each other that they realized that mistakes were made. 

It was as they raised their weapons that Astrid’s light was smothered out and Amidala’s magic was extinguished, that the world turned changed it’s particular shade of desperation.

The light had spread out, no longer a limelight beam, but a blanket of fluid that bore down on all of them. The world had taken on a shade of gray, and forced them all to their knees. 

Even the Aurora Knight with his mighty sword, could not stand to his feet. Andy and Lucy were forced out to their backs, forced to look upon the world and nothing. 

The magic that witch had been polluting the world with was out of control, and poisoning their vision. 

The magic only consumed their mountaintop, but that was the world to each and every one of them. Their minds were overcome with their singular sight through the looking glass. 

There was something on the other side of all of Amidala’s work. She thought she was summoning nothing but power through her portal, but in reality, she had set up a one-way mirror, and the power she craved was the light passing through.

Worse than that, was what looked back.

The corpse of god.

It can’t be, Astrid thought to herself as she gazed upon a glass casket larger than life. She was an insect next to it, and in it was a god with hair so gray, it would appear to have never been alive. His skin was translucent, tight and taunt as they stretched against his bones. His very exterior threatened to collapse with but only a poke.  

That’s not you.

‘Me and him are two different things, things not meant for you to understand.’

Yes, yes, that’s right, it’s just something I don’t understand.

‘No, you’re not meant to understand, but we know that you do.’

No, you’re a fool, a fool who flew too close to the sun.

‘What happens to those who fly too close to the sun?”

They fall.

‘Close. They die.’

Astrid reached out with her hand. She didn’t feel it move, she didn’t feel the air between her fingers, she felt only the suffocating pressure that wasn’t allowing her to breath. Yet, she saw her hand reach out towards the casket of God, and it would not let her feel the glass.

The vision dissipated as Astrid took too long to breath. 

The unnatural magic not meant for the lungs of humans dissipated enough that it was not suffocating them in the valley that was also not really the valley. 

But wherever they were, the fog had cleared enough away that they could see what remained. They could see each other waking form their stupor, all but one.

Andy had already been on her feet. 

The unnatural magic that was not meant for the lungs of humans had raised her back to her feet. It allowed her to stand and look at the wall she had been locked in as it’s surface began to peel away.

The surface that had first appeared to look like rocks had begun to peel away like the skin of a molting reptile, and reveal something more grotesque underneath.

Corpses.

Corpses stuck between life and death. Their skin was taunt, translucent even, but it didn’t decay. Their skin remained even when their eyes did not. Their expressions were stuck in forms of pain and horror as they were cramped and stuffed together. In this small space they formed the altar to which Andelyn was to be sacrificed.

They were a people with a variety of pointed ears, and different shades of white and graying hair. 

They were Andy’s people, they were farmed for their life force, and then their corpses were used to hold the next victim, doomed to share their fate.