[P] r.i.p. to my youth;

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

She was not the one who crumbled Denocte. Those words rattle through the cave and Denocte crumbles a little more as rocks skitter from the rough-hewn walls.
 
Raum does not deny those words. In one thing Acton is right. “No.” He agrees with a voice as ragged as those rattling rocks. “Denocte was crippled long before Isra came to the throne.” Those blue eyes flare, a spark, a droplet falling in the darkness. “But she is soft. She makes our home a fantasy.” And it is no compliment. Even as the word soft falls from his tongue, he counts all the ways that she is not. All the blood that still drips from his torso, the way his skin is ragged and broken by her sharp, sharp magic.
 
But as such thoughts fill his mind, a rage like vipers twisting and riled, tangles in his gut. It turns his blood to electricity, his skin to the blackest of night. Gone is the silver of him, black are the shadows that crawl across his skin.
 
Oh his ire is pitch, is it coal ready to burn with flames bright and hungry. Heretic adds to his list of sins and inside, somewhere, in that pious heart of his something flinches. It cuts and it bleeds and it heals, not with clotted blood and fresh laid skin. No, it heals with steel and claws and teeth.
 
His eye close, for a beat too long, a moment more that betrays his hurt. Inside, somewhere, a nerve still flares and feels, raw and ragged. But when those eyes open…
 
Oh.
 
It is a terrible thing. The blue is gone, for there is light in that. His eyes are nothingness. They are a void and they fix empty and wide upon Acton. More echoes of words stalk about them like ghosts of the dead. But Raum is no longer wracked with grief (if he ever was).
 
In silence, wearing the meaning of Acton’s final words like a shroud, he sets those swallowing eyes upon his friends twisted smile.
 
And then he moves.
 
A wing flares from his side, ill-formed and ragged. It is a mockery of the Crow who bears it – it is his soul – wrongly made, bitty and tatty. But it is well formed in the claw upon its tip. That wing reaches to press upon his brother’s throat, its claw to hook about the tender skin of his throat. He pushes forward, for in this cave of theirs, there are many places to corral one’s prey.
 
Raum is close, close close to that gunpower smile. He does not need to lower those abyss eyes to know how it curls, how it hides the toss of his brother’s head and the rapid beat of his heart.
 
“Is this it then, brother?” Raum breathes as soft as death, and gentle as a feather. It is familiar to be here, so close, so intimate with his friend. That tattered wing presses tighter yet as something slips loose, a monster, a fire, a chaos raging within the dark silence of the Ghost’s body. “You put her before your brother. I warned you against Bexley Briar. Your feathers have been shedding for some time. Your last has just fallen, Acton.”
 
And then Raum smiles.

---

@Acton