[AW] thy kingdom come. [meeting]

[Raum]

 
They move away from the storm, the chaos, the burning.
 
He keeps his electric eyes on the sight of gold scales and mahogany feathers. Beside effervescent Acton, the volcano erupting, Raum is the quiet of pyroclastic flow. His presence bleeds out like mercury, poisonous, choking.
 
They move together, two Crows winging their way through the throngs of bodies that run, this way and that. Always Raum keeps one ear on the pass, succumbed to destruction, and the other upon the meeting ahead. But his eyes, his eyes are never still. They scan the crowd, the reflection of the turmoil within. His body, the silver of his skin, is a picture of calm yet simmering violence. Within, Raum is ragged and tatters. He is an explosion ripping through the delicate parts of himself. Anxiety renders him numb, he should never have left his bed this night, when the pass was lit and the gates slammed shut. Where were Rhoswen and Sabine now? He looks for them always, but he need look no more.
 
Rhoswen is a flame that glows when Raum and his brother Crow arrive. He sees her pushing forward through the crowd, her eyes blazing bright like the sun. His Solterran girl, trapped within the confines of Denocte. Their daughter clings to her hip, eyes wide like a frightened bird. Remember your blade, Little Bird. He thinks into the part of his heart Sabine has made her own.
 
But it is to his sun-girl that his eyes return and he waits, as a dark smile slowly crawls across his lips. She does not disappoint him. Words, arrow-sharp and lit with vitriol, pour from her lips. There are no walls that can contain her, they have trapped a lioness of Solterra’s sands and she will fight. Dread and delight mingle like oil in his abdomen. There is no way she will stay now, and it is the Ghost’s time to choose: His family or his Crows – He would carry Calligo’s darkness whichever he chose.
 
Rhoswen leaves, her scathing words hissing their reminders long after she is gone. Raum might have turned to follow her then, had others not stepped up to speak. Isorath retaliates, sleek and smooth and wrong. But in silence the Crow listens. Still the cry of the dying full his ears like cacophonous song. Acton is building to erupt and Raum does nothing to stop him. The eruption is fast and violent, full of savagery and wicked intent.
 
Silver and deadly, Raum listens in silence, his skull twisting, corvine and fierce. He drowns the stormsinger in blue and then the kirin beside her. Many more have their say, furious and savage and suddenly there is a pause of silence. Just a moment, just a split second and it is his silence.
 
Raum steps into it, menacing and dark. Calligo’s shadows cling to his skin and he relishes her after so long beneath an unrelenting Solterran sun. “My allegiance is with Calligo and my brother, the King of Crows. There are no others I am loyal to, beyond that of my daughter and her mother, Reichenbach’s sister.” He steps forward from the crowd. He is that cloud of volcanic gas, hungry and destructive, loosed at last from the mountain’s side. “You say he will be here, but where is he?” He looks pointedly through the crowd but there are no black curls, no chink of golden coins. His brother is absent, for the first time and the most critical time. Suspicion builds hot and sinister. It twists like serpents in his gut. “It is no surprise there is revolt when only half the Regime are committing such a final and grandiose act and the supreme power is not here. It inspires suspicion. Many of us align ourselves with him and him alone, forgive our suspicions when a dragon is breathing fire on our people. It almost taste like a coup – whether it is or not.” He moves slowly, his blades glinting like violent promise in the firelight. “For a regime do carry out such an act in the absence of our Sovereign and after only recently being appointed, is of course going to strip trust from the court. We are a wild people, you cannot contain us and expect us to bow down. That is not the way of our king, that is not the way of us.” The Crow’s attention turns to Aislinn – she should know better, as a fellow gypsy. But when his gaze turns to Isorath, it lingers, for this man was new, the scent of Terrastella a ghost upon him and the shadow of a Regent’s crown atop his skull. How much could a newcomer know about the ways of the Dencote people?
 
“You say we do not have to follow you blindly, yet you have left us with no other choice. Not only that, you are attacking your own people with fire. They are the actions of a dictatorship. What trust will remain after you have robbed your people of their free will? You say we can leave now or choose to remain. What choice is that?” It is then that Denocte’s Ghost’s anger rises like a phantom from the depths of him. It is an alien thing to see branching across his skin like electricity, rising like a behemoth with its fury a scythe in his hand.
 
“You are splitting apart families and friends by closing those gates. To give people the choice to stay or leave now is no choice at all.”
 
“The wrong deeds have been committed by so few,” The Ghost’s own name was written in blood upon such a list. “Yet you seek to punish the whole of Denocte’s people in the name of peace? This is not the actions of a peaceful Court.” His blue eyes consumed the light like the deepest depths of the ocean. “Do I need to remind you that I went to spy on Solterra at the orders of the old Regime and its Sovereign? Now, a new one wishes to punish the whole of Denocte for it? If you seek to punish us for our deeds, two of your sinners are here.” He looks to Acton, wild, explosive Acton before turning his eyes, liquid, smothering, back to the Regent and her Emissary. “Punish us now, but remember it was your King, my brother - who is still absent-, that sent me to spy in the first place.”
 
“Denocte may have worked as an isolationist state in the past, but what worked in the past is not guaranteed to work in the future.” His eyes look to Jezanna, to Acton, to Rostislav, then ultimately back to the quiet reason of Jezanna.
 
“She is right.” The Crow turns his gaze to the solitary figures of Aislinn and Isorath,  “All your people speak in unison. You are wrong and to further pursue this will likely lead to civil unrest and you will only have yourselves to blame.”
 
He turns from them, as dismissively as Isorath had turned from his lover’s sister. “Until you respect your people-,” Liquid smooth and deadly, Raum turns back to the fallen gypsy and the draconic creature beside her, but his eyes settle ultimately on the kirin, “including the family of your own lover, Isorath, then do not expect my trust or allegiance. If you and the king are lovers like you claim, then that makes us family, you would do well to respect the family of your lover.”