[P] a night so black that the blackness hummed.

[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.

 

There is blood upon his tongue – metal and sweet and full of rust and murder. He wonders if it tastes the same as his own, for Acton and he were brethren Crows after all... Fresh blood, Raum’s blood, pours idly down from the gash at his throat, bathing his silver skin red, red, red.
 
The moment that Raum rose, ascending from the blood and mud like some glorious god of death, was filled with wicked delight and the deepest, darkest regret. Something, oh something terrible within the last surviving Crow is weeping and its tears are Acton bright and Acton black.  The Ghost is a soul splitting, shattering like a star and his gaze is the black hole it leaves. Those fathomless eyes consume everything that chance a look his way.
 
The only ones, this night, who dare look to him, are the unseeing eyes of Acton. They are vacant already, brown marble succumbing to a glazing death. And Isra. Isra’s eyes posses, not the softness and light that rumours whisper of, but rather the flare of stars at night, draconic and wild. He might hear the stars scream if he looked at her a little closer, but Raum is a man without a care for the whims of far-flung constellations or fading queens.
 
The Ghost feels a ripple of magic, the smallest piece of Isra that fights the tide of his poison. The sea of that drug comes rising within her, relentless wave after relentless wave. It is a calm sea, the drug that Raum chose, yet it pulls and coaxes and lulls the queen with siren song deep, deep into the depths of nothingness. Though she fights, oh how she fights! The Night Court Queen is a girl drowning, her reaching fingers breaking that still, still surface of poison. Upon her, from those fighting fingers, magic blossoms and flowers bloom from where Acton’s blood lies bright against her skin.
 
Such flowers they are, beautiful and bright, as everything about Isra always is. Their pollen is as black as Raum’s sin. Their gilded petals are as bright as the sun of Solterra (that he despises so). But then, then emerges the twin flowers of barbs and blades. They are all sharp edges and violent promises. Raum’s blood falls upon them like tears, weeping from the wound Acton made – the last thing he ever did.
 
The Ghost knows the promise those flowers vow. He can feel their cuts along his skin. Isra’s flowers are fate as well as promise, and this is their decree: Raum will fall. But for now, yes, for now, Raum is the victor and the power and he will take that, until ash is his food and blood his water. Therefore, unmoved, as if a ghost was not haunting his heart with its Magician’s laugh, Raum turns to the boy beside him. “Abel. Help me take her.”
 
And between them they bear Denocte’s queen away, stepping through the pools of her melted magic that once formed her glorious maze. Isra hangs, limp and light, as they carry her away to the song of dragons and the shouting, lightless gaze of a Magician’s corpse that watches their every step.

---

@Isra @Acton