• • Raydorn: The War in the Black
• January 25, 2025

Raydorn: The War in the Black (Chapter 71)

“Do not apologize for something that is not your fault, or someone will make it your fault.”

Malum Chun, 448 A.C.A.

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While the others had been dead set on finding Andy and saving her from a fate worse than death, Malum led their people across the desert of Northern Seca. They had beached and anchored their ship before Quintus and Jack had walked their way to Artis, and were deep into the desert by the time they set foot on their continents of origin.

Blindly, those of the Icy Pearl Isles who sought safety and security followed Malum over the sands. Men, women, and children alike followed on the belief that he knew somewhere safe. As the rays of the sun bore down on them for a second day of walking, their only solace was that they were not running low on water. 

They would live long enough to starve.

Malum was free from criticism for one reason and one reason only. He had the Pennies and their panthers trailing behind him. The cats kept people away, and the Pennies ribbed him better than anyone else there.

Penelope Tweed, with her light skin of Rayne descent, and rail thin keeping, was threatening to burn to ash underneath the sun. If she did not have a blanket around her, she would have succumbed to sun poisoning hours ago, forcing Penance Prim to carry her.

Penance’s melanin served her much better. She was darker than most Susannans. While the people of Susanna were not experienced with the desert, her life in the Raze did help somewhat. She muscled through their trek with Hana sleeping on her back.

It didn’t matter where Sigma was from, because she was cooking like roast beef under her black cloaks, much like Malum and the other shadows. She alone of her master’s students hid the strain of the heat well. The others found themselves drinking more water and requiring more help than any other. 

With each extra sip of water they were given by those they guarded, the worse the looks they gave Malum.

“Are we there yet?” Penny Tweed groaned, stomping her way through the sands between Penny Prim and Sigma like she were Hana’s age. 

“Does it look like we’re there yet?” Penny Prim growled back.

“Light fuse, I see.”

“Try carrying a kid on your back through a desert all day.”

Sigma offered her own strength to Penance. “I can carry her if you require rest.”

“No, I’m not tired, I just making a point.”

Penelope chimed, “She just wants to shut me up.”

“Basically, yeah.”

“But if I shut up, who would talk to mister growly face over there?” Penelope gestured to Malum who kept walking, utterly silent. Even his footsteps across the sand didn’t make a sound.

When Malum didn’t respond, Penelope muttered, though rather loudly, “Here we have a man with nothing behind his eyes.”

“Penelope…” Sigma attempted to growl, but with how dry her mouth was, the sound was more like a whine.

“What? I’m sure it’s not his fault his brain is deader than a filleted fish. Watch the way he trots, certainly not like he’s leading us all to our deaths.”

“Are we gonna die?”

That’s when they realized Hana had woken back up. They could only see her face under the thin blanket laid over her head.

Penance and Sigma both turned to glare at Penelope between them. Even the panthers seemed to huff at her. 

Malum spoke up for the first time in a while, just as they descended yet another sand dune. “We will all die eventually, but that day is not today.”

Hana looked around, unsure of who answered her, but with the heat getting to her head, her attention span did not last long enough for it to become an issue.

The Pennies both let out tired sighs as their skin began to peal from their faces. Penelope tried to take a piece off of Penance’s nose, making the other jump and snap at her. In their fighting Hana could not get back to sleep, and the way her eyes fluttered was more than concerning.

Sigma took notice, and snapped at the Pennies, “Enough, act like old men and I will beat you like one!”

Malum chuckled to himself, If only that’s how we actually treated old men… I guess that would include me, wouldn’t it?

Sigma quickly raised her water to Hana’s lips, beckoning the girl to drink. After only a few sips, the child immediately regained most of her focus. 

“Thank you,” she said, without a bit of mumbling.

“Do not wait to ask for more,” Sigma told her. 

Hana nodded her head in agreement, and continued to stare at the big black cloak that didn’t seem to bother the right-hand of Malum one bit.

“Aren’t you hot?” she asked Sigma. 

“Hmm?” 

While Sigma may have maintained a rough demeanor in the face of the sun, she could not in the face of a small child asking her questions with a squeaky voice.

“It’s all black, aren’t you really really really hot?”

“Oh, um, no, shadows do not get-”

“It’s hot as balls,” Malum interrupted, “but we deal with it.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Hana said.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he told her, turning around so she knew for sure he was the one talking to her, “do not apologize for something that is not your fault, or someone will make it your fault.”

“Sir?” Sigma questioned.

 “Why lie?” he told his right-hand. “Why do we feel so strongly that we have to lie about something so mundane as being hot? We were taught… I taught us to be stubborn and abrasive about a thing that doesn’t even matter. It’s ridiculous, and those that made us this way… the thing… he keeps getting away with it too. 

“It’s all madness, ludicrous, and all I have to fight it is a sword. What a useless thing a sword is…”

The three listening were rather taken aback by his words. It was as if they blinked and miss an entire conversation, understandably unaware of all the thoughts going through Malum’s head. 

He was leading these people to a place he had never been before, on the word of a man he didn’t trust, but had to follow. He should have been second-guessing himself, but just because he was right to second-guess himself, didn’t mean he sounded any less insane.

Though Hana thought it made sense.

“That sounds rough.”

“It is rough kid, it really is.”

Sigma looked between her master and the child who seemed to understand his complete insanity. She reached out to him, “Master are you-” but the world would not allow them a moment of connection.

A few miles ahead of them, a green wall of light shot from the ground and towards the sky. It didn’t make a sound, so much as it stole all the ambient noise from the area ahead of them. It was a deafening sensation that wasn’t quite complete, but completely unfamiliar to all who approached… but one.

“Please don’t tell me that’s where we’re headed,” Penelope muttered.

“It’s not where we’re headed,” Malum told her, drawing in stares.

“Truly?” Sigma asked, because all logic dictates that the green light was likely coming from the underground city they were looking for.

“No, I’m lying, clearly,” he said as he shucked his cloak off his shoulders. “I’ll go on ahead, make sure it’s safe while you lead them ahead.”

“What if it’s not safe?” Penance asked. 

“I’ll make it safe.”

“How do you plan to get there?” Sigma asked.

Malum responded by letting his wings sprout out of his back with a flex of the muscle. 

And to answer Sigma’s question, “By not caring anymore.”

Then he took off. In a matter of seconds and a few beats of his wings, he was nearly a speck above their heads, speeding towards the bright green light in the sky. 

Hana’s jaw hung low before and after she asked, “Can I get wings?”

*****

The world might as well be made of ashes if you asked Astrid. So close to the end, and all I have to do is get up, she thought, but there wasn’t ground to stand on. 

She climbed up onto all fours easy enough, but when she put her foot flat on the ground, she felt as if she was stepping through a cloud. 

By the second time her face met the hard earth, she cursed it and it’s mother. 

Fuck this place, and fuck its useless mother, Astrid cursed to herself.

‘I’m not sure that my father has a mother, he was one of the first generation of gods,’ Lapis told her.

No, you shut the fuck up. This is not the time for jokes or clever commentary or comebacks of any kind. I need to get up, I need to fight, and I need to kill her.

‘Surely, you’ve heard the endless lessons and myths about why revenge is bad.’

Have you ever considered that there’s a legend and myth fortelling the perils of revenge for every day of the year? Have you considered all the naysaying, reasonable rebuttals, and considerable examples of revenge going bad? Have you considered that everyone has heard them to death?

And still goes after revenge? 

Why do you think that is? I know.

Because sometimes there’s someone out there who deserves the beating their going to get.

‘Are you sure they’re going to get it?’

Astrid did not dignify that comment with a response. Rather, Astrid set her eyes upon the witch just as she was standing up on her knees. 

Astrid watched as the witch looked over her own skin with its blotches of melanin and octopus blubbery. 

Amidala’s hands shook as they slowly raised to her face to feel how it had changed. She couldn’t see it yet as Astrid could, but she could feelt the blotches of skin that weren’t hers, the blubber that was not of her form, and the melanin of someone who lived in a place across the sea that she’s never seen. 

She pressed her fingers into her cheeks, and dug in. Her nails tried to dig so deep that one even made her bleed just beneath her eye — a once brown eye that not had a bit of unsettling lime.

It was the perfect time. Astrid could attack while she was rock bottom, and topple the warlock into the grave she dug for them. 

Even when her legs refused to operate as they should, Astrid tried to push herself up again.

Oblivious to any pain but her own, Amidala raved to herself, spitting and sputtering as she cried over her misfortune. “I was this close… this close to the end… there’s always more, always another task, always something else to do… 

“And now this?” she looked to the skin as tears ran down her cheek. One tear even fell through the blood from her cut, and streaking a touch of blood down her face.

“Why can’t this all be over? Why can’t I have what I want?!” she shouted, when she knew that no gods were listening to her, but one mad woman was.

Despite a lack of strength in her legs, Astrid’s arms found power beyond recognition. She threw all of her weight and sent herself flying at Amidala axe in hand. 

She roared at the warlock, “You don’t deserve what you want!” 

Her roar would cost her everything.

If Amidala did not know of Astrid’s attack before, she did now, and turned as she snapped her fingers. Even through the fog they were all fighting through, her weapon came to her faster than any others.

When Astrid brought Kan Bujian down on the staff of Amidala’s scepter, the ground beneath gave way under the pressure. The rock beneath them crumbled and they rolled alongside rubble a good two dozen feet before they were on the same level as everyone else.

The fall knocked them about, leaving the warlock bloody and bruised like she had never been before. Twice now this woman with an axe had humbled her, and now they would determine if there was a chance for a third.

Amidala was quick to push herself up to her feet with her scepter, and take a gander of the area around them. Her attackers were spread out, barely conscious as they sought to recover. Amidala’s eyes were on Andy in particular as she hung half out of her prison with one hand free and hanging down in front of her. 

Behind her was a vision only for Amidala’s eyes, but she did not get the chance to truly see it.

It was stated before that Astrid’s legs needed a good fall to put them back in place. Well… she did fall.

Amidala turned just in time for Astrid to bring her axe down on her. 

“Fuck,” Amidala gasped as she mindlessly lifted her scepter, only to be caught by Astrid’s fake out.

Astrid didn’t swing for Amidala’s head, so much as hook her scepter under the crook of the axe’s blade. Throwing the weapon away from Amidala was child’s play from there.

Before Amidala could summon it back, Astrid blasted her with a flash of light from her axe. Then she shrunk Kan Bujian’s axehead.

‘Do not hesitate,’ she was warned.

I do not hesitate, she thought as she ignored the warning.

Then with the metal rod alone, she beat smacked Amidala in the face.

WHACK!

Astrid heard the warlock’s jaw crack under the first blow, and quickly followed up with a forehand swing that sent the woman’s teeth flying out of her mouth.

‘Kill her while you have the chance.’

She will suffer first, Astrid thought, rejecting the voice in her mind. She forced it back as she raised her burning rod and brought it down Amidala’s shoulder, making it crumble while it was in it’s socket.

Astrid raised it again faster than any cat had been able to pull back its claws. She was so eager and thirsty for blood, that she always missed the twitch of the warlock’s hand. 

Clang! 

Astrid batted the warlock’s scepter away when it came flying it, and then swung up with the staff of Kan Bujian to clock Amidala in the chin. With that blow, the witch’s jaw was dislocated, and the magical energy that was holding down Astrid’s allies began to subside.

Amidala fell face first into the dirt, blood from her mouth quickly pooling around her. As soon as her side of the magical circuit was undone, the portal that seemed all but calm and steady a moment ago began to strike out like lightning. 

The beam into the sky was no longer smooth nor straight. It vibrated and swayed like a violent flame. 

While her friends were finally able to regain their complete consciousness and get to their feet, Astrid ignored it all. 

She ignored the image that was meant solely for her. She ignored the corpse she sought for so much of her life. 

Instead, Astrid gave in, raised her weapon, and brought it down on the beaten warlock’s corpse.

Astrid was lost in a sea of red, repeatedly raising and lowering her rod with ferocity fueled by hate. She could not see the god she so claimed to champion. She did not see the light and green of a city long dead.

She missed the fires of Indica and the sands below the Vile Line. 

She could not see her enemies, nor her friends.

She heard the short flap of wings, but not even that could pull her back.

Astrid raised her rod again, ignoring the sounds of her friends calling her name. She basked in the feel of the witch’s blood on her face and the cool globs of the liquid falling into her hair from her rod. 

She went to bring her rod down one more time, but one thing caught her eye.

Astrid saw a shadow forming behind her, and turned around only see steel that shouldn’t have made it so close.

SLITH.