[P] We are just dust and bones

[Raum]

 
The call of the gods was a powerful one. It dragged sinners from their sickbeds and had them dirtying their knees before altars.
 
In silence he weaves between the penitent and faithful, rubbing his shoulders against the blasphemers and non-believers. They had all gathered here, in might, in curiosity. Shadows crawl like ants along the bare stone of the high temple gates. They were closed, not open yet, it reminds him of Denocte, though there is less fire now.
 
With Caligo’s darkness upon his wings, the Crow weaves his way through the masses. He draws short as a flash of orange captures his gaze. Acton is a spark, a tongue of flame licking against the dark of passing bodies.
 
In silence Raum begins the pursuit. With electric eyes set upon volcanic skin, he hunts the Magician. It is as he watches, as he studies the way his brother moves, that he catches the glances.
 
There is a flash of gold, not that of the Crow King’s old lover, but a glimmer of Solterran light. The Ghost knows that colour, that fire. It is where his brother’s bright gaze is fixed.
 
Raum’s gaze is stone, it does not twitch or flicker at such revealing behavior. Not even at how it feels so familiar deep within him. He is not the only Crow to be ensnared by the fire of a Solterran girl (even one born under Caligo’s watchful eye).
 
The Ghost appears beside the Magician, eyes set upon the gold of Bexley. “Be careful brother,” he murmurs like sin in the black of a temple. “A girl like that will burn you to the ground.” A knife glints malevolent and bright between the Crows. “But I think you already knew that.”
 
And it is the ash of their souls that Raum can smell, acrid and strong, upon the air.


@Acton @Reichenbach

 

[Acton]

Acton had no more care for the gods than the last time he’d climbed up Veneror Peak – maybe less, since this time his left knee creaked like an ancient oak. Maybe it was a little funny, all the ways he’d been un- and re-made since he’d last met with Raum for something unholy, but he credited none of it to Caligo. He had always preferred mortals to thank, and mortals to blame.

He had lost track of Raum somewhere in the turmoil of the messenger-bird’s arrival. And after that had come a more personal chaos: a letter from a girl all flash and fire. That was all the motivation he’d needed to climb the mountain, though every step he took his bum leg reminded him what a gods-damned fool he probably was.

Well, was anything really worthwhile if it started out as a good idea?

And he was not the least bit sorry when his gaze found her, when that familiar anticipation erased his pain, filling him instead with that familiar burning –

Be careful brother.

Acton huffed a breath, only just keeping himself from nipping at the Ghost’s jaw as he turned toward the silver Crow. He didn’t bother denying a thing; Raum was more perceptive than anyone he knew, and besides, if he wasn’t on a stage the buckskin didn’t bother much with hiding. “Well, Raum, you just made it look so gods-damned fun, I had to give it a try.” Though his tone was low, he still wore a smile – but it faded when he cast his gaze back over those gathered.

Dawn, Day, Dusk – but there was nothing of the court he’d served, the king he’d loved as a brother, as a father, as a friend. When Acton spoke again, it sounded almost penitent. “Have you seen him?”

MOUTH IS MADE OF METAL
POCKET FULL OF YELLOW

@Raum

[Raum]

 

Acton always was the chaotic brother. All charm and smiles; a bachelor never to be tamed. Until now.
 
Silently the Ghost turns his eye upon the Magician’s paramour. He studies her gold and remembers how they buried it beneath stone. She would be better there, still beneath the rubble. Acton would be more focused then, less of a free radical.
 
Silent, like pouring mercury, Raum turns, leading the perilous yellow of his friend, but all the time watching the Solterran girl. He studies her as though she were any other of his victims. He looks for a weakness within her. A way to end the gold that so enchants his brother.
 
If his intent is obvious, Raum makes no move to change it, to spare his brother. Was that not what an assassin did? Did he not always look for the best way to divest himself of anyone and everyone.
 
He hears the huff, and moves, as if to keep from Acton’s teeth. Through smiling lips the Magician reminds Raum of his own Solterran girl. “Glutton.” He murmurs back to Acton, blue eyes setting, electric bright, upon Acton. They are the sparks, bright and dangerous – electricity and fire. Together they are lethal, together they can bring the world crashing to their knees – if their desire was so, of course.
 
“You have had your try.” Raum says, with eyes that drop to gun-powder knees, once broken and forever scarred. “And now?” Corvid, his skull tilts as he regards his brother with scrutinizing eyes that leave no part of him uncovered.
 
The Ghost thinks of his tightening scarf, wrapped about Rhoswen’s throat. Solterran girls were dangerous things, forever and always. Something akin to a shudder slips down his spine. It is cold and dank, close to a death rattle. It resents Raum’s actions and condemns his thoughts. Oh life would be easy without his sun-hewn girl, but he would never be rid of her, no matter his threats to the contrary. No matter how hard he tried to break her and she, him.
 
Him. Reichenbach. He knows of whom Acton speaks. “No, but I hear he is gone, with the other Crows.” Acton takes a breath and it is so full of divinity here, upon Verenor’s blessed peak. “We are the only Crows and the gods are back, they say. I plan to honour Caligo in the only way I know how: with beaks and claws and feathers. Will you still turn from Night, brother?”

@Acton Just Raum, casually working out how to kill off Bexley, for good - should he need to xDD

 

[Acton]

Acton had ever been a man of simple pleasures.

He was a bachelor because it didn’t seem very interesting to be anything else; what fun could there be, in the same thing day after day? Love was nothing more than a fetter and the kind of neck-nuzzling affection Reichenbach so often displayed with his paramours made Acton gag like a preteen boy.

But this was different (of course it was different; love always was). There was nothing boring about Bexley Briar. In fact, the magician didn’t think he’d ever encountered anything so difficult, so fist-clenchingly obstinate, so likely to drive him to madness or violence.

It was wonderful the way a car crash was, all glisten and noise.

Raum was not wrong (when was he?): she unfocused the hell out of the buckskin.

So caught up was he by the same glitter-and-gold that he did not notice quite the interest with which the Ghost was studying her, and that was probably for the best. She always made his bloodiest emotions rise red to the surface, and not even his brother would be safe from his wrath if Acton had interpreted the glint in those ice-blue eyes.

As it was, he licked his teeth as Raum’s gaze dropped to his silver-scarred knee, but he lifted his dark chin, too, and his eyes burned like a tire fire. “That was just the buildup, brother. Now comes the payoff.”

He noted the shudder, but Acton misinterpreted its source. Oh, they were a murder of Crows with blood on their hands, but their violence could not be more different. Acton had all the discretion of a Molotov cocktail; he was spark to explosion in thirty seconds. Raum…

Well, there was a reason premeditated crimes carried a heavier sentence. But not even the buckskin could guess how dark twisted the thoughts of the silver stallion.

But with a word Raum drives all thoughts of women and gods from Acton’s head.

Gone. The stallion’s eyes fasten on the silver man’s, hot with fire and wide with surprise. “Gone?” He felt like he’d been pushed from the hilltop; if he were walking he would stagger. Suddenly he could not have named where his insides lay; everything in him was just a black hole.

Reichenbach had been Acton’s gravity. Without that –

He shook his head, their holy surroundings swimming back. What a joke divinity was, what a laugh life was all together.

There is Raum, silver as a knife, shifting like deadly mercury. The kind of man you could not hold for long without poisoning yourself – and Acton’s closest brother.

But gone --

He blew out a breath. He narrowed his eyes. He felt a yawning, directionless anger, familiar as any of his friends – the Crows who’d fled the nest they’d built.

“I told you, Raum. I worship no god.” Almost he looked away, cast his glance back over the milling regimes and the crowds that hung around them, hungry for scraps of attention like a flock of starlings. He pulled in a long breath, and did not look for a flash of gold amid the dusty chaos. “But I will go back with you, to see what remains.”

But oh, Acton was not the kind of boy made for building – not when everything in him wanted only to burn.

MOUTH IS MADE OF METAL
POCKET FULL OF YELLOW

@Raum  BOY SAY WHAT

[Raum]

 


He follows the tongue that licks the teeth, then turns his gaze back for one last look upon the girl of gilded gold and wicked fire.
 
Acton was a showman and this was his showgirl. Together they are the violence and savagery of love. Oh they are a mirror to Raum and Rhoswen, but this mirror of theirs is warped and broken. There was nothing whole in the love of a Crow, it is broken beaks and cutting claws.
 
Slowly his gaze turns at the last from Bexley Briar. Her name is a carving upon his soul, it cuts upon the inside of him. She is gone this night, snuffed out like a flame. In the dark she leaves, Raum turns to watch Acton. In her wake, would he smoke, or glow like embers waiting to be breathed upon?
 
With silvered skin the Ghost leads the bright of his brother further into the trees. They pass solitary figures, other ghosts, here to haunt the forest in their vestments of blackest night. Raum does not watch them as he should, for he knows the truth of this forest: he and Acton are the worst things here.
 
Slowly he tips his chin up and, with electric eyes, drinks in the flare of Acton’s eye. “Beware the fetters of the payoff, Acton.” He does not deign stop his brother, for the Crows are condemned to want the girls of Solterra. Raum was the first, Acton would not be the last.
 
With corvid dispassion he watches Acton mourn their Crow King. He watches his brother wilt like a cursed flower in his lover’s desert. His temper is a short fuse and his teeth snap shut with the clang of clashing blades. “Do not grieve a man who abandoned us to leave with his lovers and their Crows. They have abandoned us and Caligo. I never thought our brother capable, until now.”
 
Ah he is too slow and Acton’s flippant rejection of his god too fast. It is a blow that has never hurt, but today it is a score across his cheek. It blooms with old blood, congealed and dark. These are old hurts, the differences, that on days like this, lie like a chasm between the brother Crows. Yet Raum knows how to breach this void, how to look beyond it. Deftly he stitches his wound and rolls his blue eyes, cold as ice.
 
“Then who will redeem your cursed soul? You must not rest easy in death, brother. Death is no rest for anyone.” But victory is a sweet, sweet thing. Even to an assassin of silver and blue. He turns from his friend, enough for the barest hint of a smile on charcoal lips to escape unseen. His joy is always secret thing – were Rhoswen and Sabine the last to see him truly smile? His daughter and lover have stolen the last of him that is soft and warm. All he has left for this world is cold and sharp and it cuts like a knife and chokes like a scarf.

@Acton <3

 

[Acton]

Acton was as subtle as a flipped bird and a blaring horn, a swearword in church. But he was a performer, too, and he could hold a secret close as a candle about to be blown out, and spot one held in kind –

And this time he did not miss the glance that Raum leveled on the Solterran girl, with gold on her hide and blue in her eyes and his scar on her face. He was not sure he liked what he saw. And he was just a little relieved (maybe something else, too, something like worry that wormed through his stomach like a bad drink) as he and Raum left that place of waiting, that place of prayers and curses.

He did not remember watching night fall, but Raum was right: aside from the gods, they were the true danger on this hallowed peak. Maybe it was time Acton remembered that, and stopped drowning himself in drink and slurring his barbed words.

At Raum’s warning he only shook his head, the dark fall of his hair hot across his neck. The Crows knew they were well past such kinds of caution.

It is the click of the Ghost’s teeth that draw his attention again, and his ears drew back even as his head lifted, his gaze burning into blue. Acton’s first impulse (always his first impulse) was to lash out, with words or with teeth, to punish Raum for his flippant dismissal –

But for once he did not. For once he listened, and considered, and let his own black guilt mix with the sour truth of the other man’s words. Seraphina’s words still echoed in his mind, kicked around like a sharp-edged can long empty, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe they hadn’t been doing the abandoning at all – not when Reichenbach had failed in his first responsibility, to his Crows and his Court.

“You were right to be worried of his reckless heart,” he said at last, and his voice was more black than the night that wound around them. “We just had the wrong lover at first. I never thought –”

He cut himself off, clicking his teeth neatly shut. What he never thought had plainly come true and he was sick to death of licking his wounds.

Those blue eyes flashed like the edge of a knife, like midwinter ice, in the dim of the summit. The air was cool and almost sweet with oak and pine and moss, as if they never had smelled of flowers and Dawn. Acton let himself smile at Raum’s words, and the grin felt familiar as a worn jacket.

“Then it’s a lucky thing it has such a hard time finding us,” he said, and unlike his brother he does not hide his grin. He had always worn it for the world to see; what use was there in hiding a thing?

“When do you return? The Night Market has doubtless been quiet too long.”

MOUTH IS MADE OF METAL
POCKET FULL OF YELLOW

@Raum  

[Raum]

 



Acton was the spark, flaring bright, igniting in the eye of his beholder. He was a light to blind but Raum was the darkness that followed. He was the eerie dumbness of sound following a bomb. Harrowing, deep and silent.
 
In everything the Ghost was silent, save for the song of his dagger that cut deep, save for the whisper of his scarf as it tied tight about an enemy’s throat.
 
Together these brothers, bound, not by the blood in their bodies, but the blood they spilled together. Ah, every drop was theirs, a ruby in the crown of destruction they had forged. Theirs was a diadem of gold. It was edges as sharp as knives, a metal as bright as a torch, its perimeter tight like a noose. These Crows belonged upon the gallows with ebony feathers as the eternal bed upon which they would fall.
 
An ear twists to catch the clack of teeth and a silvered shoulder rolls dismissively, his skull tilting back, his chin up. Into the black he peered, searching for salvation, for a reason to renounce who he was. None would come and he gave up the search too soon.
 
He was a cursed soul; he chose to be nothing more.
 
“Neither did I.” Raum confesses and such words are diamonds upon his lips – rare and costly. It is a confession, a lack of foresight. Maybe that is why the Night King’s departure stung even more. Raum is gasoline for his grief, he is ready to burn hot and bright and oh so wild. Yet he tampers it down and his eyes roam. Chaos is like sugar upon his lips and he desires it so.
 
There is an anger building, it will split him open like a volcano. Lava will be his retribution, dealt out to all who have wronged him. Bexley is gone, but he still thinks of gold, of gypsy coins, of raven feathers left to blow like dust in the wind.
 
“Are you ready to shed your feather’s brother?” Had he not just called Acton to arms? Had he not just asked them to unite and rally the Crows once more? Ah! The idea is salt and ash, it is bitter and bruised. The Crows makes his heart ache and fury has him carving the pain out. It has him throwing loyalty to she sea as readily as she throws herself upon the cliffs.
 
“The Night Markets are too quiet, but they will never sing with the sound of Crows again.” He stops, liquid, silent, deadly as he surveys the darkened fringes of Denocte. “Meet me there, if you wish for something new, brother.”
 
The darkness steals him, turning moonlight into pitch, swallowing him in stars and shadows. The Crow is gone and will, forever, be so.  

@Acton eee fin at my end!

 

[Acton]

If Acton was the spark then Raum was the smoke, following after, silent and lovely and suffocating. Deadly in its beauty, each rising twist on the wind, a thing you couldn’t hold in your hand but that glinted silver in the light like a knife’s edge.

How could Acton have ever thought a fire like him could be snuffed out? Smoke was a resilient thing, could be coaxed from embers thought dead, and quicksilver changed to fill any shape you put it in but retained its killing properties.

Are you ready, the Ghost said, and the buckskin shifted in the darkness. He thought of the burning gold of Bexley, of all the fire and passion of the sun court; how was it that Raum could be as cold and distant as the moon, yet quicken his heart all the same with blackwater words?

Was he ready? Acton had never taken well to change – it was such a different animal than simple chaos. A plan for a crime, that was something different; the magician could play a thousand roles, take a hundred routes, to meet a goal. But a change such as this, the only family he’d known for years burned away then vanished in the space of a day –

But what else could he be? This was all he’d known, all he’d wanted, and here at the top of the world those two things seemed like the only things that hadn’t changed.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said, and it carried the sound of a swear, bright as new blood drawn by a silver knife.

For a long while, there in the cool darkness, he looked after the place where his brother had gone – and for once Acton wore no expression on his face at all.

MOUTH IS MADE OF METAL
POCKET FULL OF YELLOW

@Raum  a sucky closer