Traveling through Denocte felt a bit like walking into Narnia - not because it seemed particularly magical, or because he expected to run into any biblical allegories along the way, but because the farther he walked the more he expected to find old moth-eaten clothing and boxes of forgotten junk lining some interdimensional closet walls. The land itself seemed dormant; the red stallion's progress was marked by curious eyes not because he was an interloper, but because he was there at all.
Still, his swift and purposeful steps were enough to carry him into the heart of the kingdom unmolested. He was a political liaison, perhaps, or a merchant out to settle some boring economical dispute, and the faceless few he passed along the way likely remembered the blazing red of his coat rather than the unassuming presence of the blade at his heels. One such resident, with whom he had shared words long enough only to point him in the right direction, would remember him as most charming for a foreigner.
Now that he was here, his eyes darkened at what he saw. It had all the seeming of an echo, cavernous and fading away under the creeping corrosion of disuse. The pathways that seemed fit for many catered to few, and if a court should be a living thing then this one barely rattled out sickly gasps.
It looked like the half-empty shell of s mall just waiting for the clock to run out.
The tableau gave him pause, and for a moment he did not know quite where to go next.
Raymond. "he's an outlaw loose and runnin'," came the whisper from each lip
"and he's here to do some business with the big iron on his hip."
It took a season for Isra to gather up the courage to return to the night court. It took a month of dreams that were full of something other than fire and dragon shadows for her to think that maybe she might be able to walk between those raven gates. It took a million feather thin breathes of panic to find courage enough climb the mountains covered in embers and ash.
Some of the trees still smolder and cast strange shadows over charred mountain goat bones.
Isra blinks to cover up the tears, the sorrow for the creatures that kept her company as the memories came and went like dread tides in the summer. She doesn't look at any of the guards as she walks past the open gates. Her hooves cling to the shadows and she's thin and weary enough that she thinks they might see only a shifting shadow that lengthens as the sun starts to move across the sky.
Ever has she been a ghost here in Night. She thinks that perhaps she might as well be a corpse buried under the soot and sand of the dying embers.
Still she carries on, down the mountains. Idly she appreciates how different they look with no hate blazing, no frantic animals stampeding down the rocks. On she goes until the trees turn to stone and deer paths to cobbled roads.
It's a hollow sort of comfort to come again in the daylight with her belly full enough of grass that she feels no hunger. She wonders if she met the monsters that talked of dragons, gates and fires if they would skate their vision over her like rocks upon the sea again.
Would they remember? Would they know the girl that burned with all the innocents, trapped like fodder with no choice but to run, run, run?
These empty streets are a comfort to her, a sign that perhaps she is not the only ghost left to roam Night in sadness in solitude. And for a moment she feels free enough to breath deep, to let her body linger in light instead of shadow.
But the moment passes the moment she sees the red stallion ahead. Her heart flutters when she notices the weapon half-hidden in his lion tail. All her muscles shiver and she can only snort in fear as she slides sideways into the shadows. There is no greeting to break the silence left by her as she waits barely breathing against the wall.
She can only hope that he was distracted enough to ignore the sound of hooves at his back, the smell of wildness that cannot be anything else but horse. Isra hopes that like the rest of Night he will forget his eyes rested upon a dark unicorn full only of brine and salted, violent fear.
Raymond did not miss the flash of movement fleeing into shadows, or the patter of uncertain hoofsteps.
He had not survived this long under his own power except by being on constant alert, nearly as keen as the razor-edge of his tail blade, and the stars would burn out in the sky before he'd let himself be caught unawares in what the whispers and glances of the other courts suggested might well be enemy territory. Certainly the court proper was ripe with opportunities for ambush - the furtive nature of one of its inhabitants only served to wind him up like a bowstring, that he might leap like a locust at the first sign of foul play.
But while his primal instinct was to ready himself for the throng of bloodthirsty guardsmen alerted by one frightened resident, the part of him that played the odds urged cautious compassion instead.
Softening the hard angles of his warforged bearing, Raymond turned and stepped slowly toward the shadows into which Isra had sought to hide, head held in a loose and reassuring arch. "I'm sorry," he called out with the specter of an unrealized smile on his tongue, and his voice was as friendly and confident as he could ever have made it. Certainly he had no choice but to carry a blade, but perhaps his greatest weapon had always been his almost ruthlessly infectious charm. "I was looking for...."
The red stallion straightened briefly. Somebody was pretty much all he could say at this point, with how silent the streets had become and how heavy the pall that shrouded the landscape had become. What had happened during the kingdom's isolation for someone to jump at shadows and see an enemy in the silhouette of a visitor?
"...Where is everyone? What happened here?"
Raymond. and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
“Do you not know?” She's startled enough by his questions to leave the shadows despite that tail resting lazily at his back. There's a fear in that voice, a worry that perhaps the rest of the world doesn't know what horrors hide behind the now open gate. Isra doesn't even realize that she's only repeated his question back at him, doesn't realize that she's done anything as reckless as lunge toward him.
In her panic she's lost control of her hooves. They only remember how to run, run, run as the red stallion reminds her of what horrors she's returned to. The too tight skin across her back feels raw again as if the embers and falling trees are lashing once more at her back telling her that she's not fast enough to survive.
Did the rest of the world not know that they burned? Did they not see the smoke and wonder that perhaps it was a signal that innocent things are dying, trees that lived to see the creation of this world erased in no more than a blink of an eye?
Or did they just not care that wildlife was turned to dust when they lay comfortable with festivals and opiates in their futures?
“A dragon burned the pass and turned anything there to ash and they closed the gates so that nothing might come or go.” She blinks and her words feel coarse as if her lungs still burn with soot and smoke. This is a story she doesn't want to tell (to remember) and she swings her head towards her shoulder to hide the gathering tears.
Isra cannot look at him now, her surprise is replaced by sorrow and she already leans back into the shadows. “I was there with the wildlife in the pass when it started to burn. Barely did I make it down the mountains. I ran myself raw to warn the others, to tell them that we all must run.” Still she whispers even as she body seems to melt in the darkness, as if she is nothing more than a ghost who has used up all the magic just to say a few simple worlds.
“You shouldn't be here with freedom a scent upon your skin.” Her horn flashes in the light, a useless weapon. It glimmers as if to promise that there is nothing to be done against dragon fire, dragon hate. That horn is a warning too, that his sword will find him no freedom here, no hope.
“When I found the rest of the court they all just stood like stone, as if the fire was expected. I could have been a breeze in their mist for all they cared that things were dying up there in the mountains. They said it was for the best, for protection.” Isra feels as if she's dying again. It feels like the sea is drowning her all over again. There is no joy in this story, only a nightmare of words that turn vicious for the life she gives them with her story-teller whispers.
This story is a demon and it consumes her.
“And then they left, turned back to their castle while the mountains smoldered.” There is nothing left to her now, nothing but hollow bones that hoped once to find salvation here where the air smelled like jasmine and spice. Once she thought the moon and stars over the night market the loveliest thing she had ever seen.
Once she loved her freedom, loved the way her skin was so light without chain and shackles.
Now it feels only like a death sentence. And as she turns back towards this stallion and lets him see that fear and hopeless in her gaze she promises that nothing else will suffer as she did. Perhaps, she hopes, her story might save him from going deeper into this devil's den. It is the only salvation she has to offer.
“Come. Let me show you a way out. There is nothing for you here but ghosts and devils.” The words come out as nothing more than a broken sigh. Eagerly she starts to turn.
And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying,
'Come and see.' and I saw.
***
There is a dragon here.
Calliope's words ricocheted against the walls of Raymond's mind as the strange mare recounted her tale, near-hysterical with fright and despair. It was a scene that had been burned into his memory once before; he had hoped never to see its like again. The reassuring smile on his face evaporated more and more as her story progressed, until all that remained was red stone and the flame smoldering behind his eyes.
What does one do with a weapon, once it is firmly in their grasp? The answer to such a question changes wildly with the motives of the wielder, but power is corrosive. Power deludes, and it infects, and it twists, and once it takes root the insidious stain can rarely be purged. If one fancies more power, a great weapon might make of one a fearsome conqueror, but Novus was not an easy place to conquer. But to turn that weapon upon one's own people, to lock them inside with the nightmare you inflicted upon them, to abandon them to their fear and their desperation....
There is a dragon here.
No wonder this place was silent as a grave.
Raymond's lip twitched as though to remind him - and Isra - that he was still alive. She could not have been lying: he'd seen the waste of the pass by the gates, could smell the palpable fear-stench sweating through her quivering flesh. The arch of his tail had tightened instinctively as she spoke, and the fire in his eyes rivaled the flashes of panic in her own. Even as she urged him to follow her to safety, to leave, he recognized a girl from his now-distant past along a fateful, winding river. She had suffered as Isra had suffered. Her fear had faces, her torment a cause.
All dead now. All gone. Dismantled, dissolved, sustenance for the perpetuation of worthier organisms.
He had his answer now whether the dragon was the enemy, and one better he finally understood what would inspire the lady of lions to charge headlong into a swarm of them. But he had no intention of slaying any dragons today, and he had no intention of letting this frantic girl lead him away from danger either.
How smug the trio had looked, waltzing late into the summit. How self-important. Was there anything left of them to be reasoned with, or were they too blinded by their own mental masturbation to care for the suffering of their countrymen? There were sickly, strangling roots here, and innocents had paid the price of a guilty man's folly. Raymond could not simply walk away - not if he ever wanted to face Calliope again, or himself.
"I am the devil," Raymond replied coldly. In those bitter words lay the weight of a thousand devoured sins.
Declining the frightened mare's offer with a shake of his head, he continued, "Not quite yet," and grew still...then flashed another smile - this one forged of solid steel. "Would you be so kind as to show me to your kingdom's dovecote or rookery instead? I need to send someone a letter."
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
They say unicorns do not know what regret feels like as it settles into the bones. They say that unicorns are beasts of certainty and bravery built with such great weapons between their eyes. Unicorns are to be mighty things and perhaps a unicorn might have looked at this stallion turned sword with only approval.
But Isra is no unicorn, no brave creature to rally to war for righteousness. Her soul is still broken, her insides still feel as if they belong to a slave. She feels, looking at him and all the frightening fire in his eyes, that she does not deserve the horn upon her head.
The sea should have let her burned for her soul feels a regret that a unicorn should not feel.
There is a war in his eyes, she can pick out the darkness of it as well as she might find a sunflower in a field of dead grass. Isra feels as if he too might be a dragon, a beast of destruction with wide gaping jaws that consumes the world and leaves something very different inside the wake of him. For a moment she watches him with the same fear she reserved for thinking of the things she finds in her nightmares.
She wonders if perhaps her stories are not an infection, another stain on her soul that her words that once made a god take her are the same that might lead mortals to their deaths and level worlds with hate. Every breath she takes before that fire gaze of his feels like a stolen moment as she watches a blaze reach out to offer her a final death.
It would be a gift to be free of that rage in his eyes, that fear she feels as she watches his tail tighten at his back like a noose.
“I believe you.” She whispers as she widens the space between them and shrinks as much as a horse might be able to. Happily would she pull herself down to the size of a speck of dust so that she might forever disappear in the air. Isra doesn't ask for his name, doesn't ask who he is. This is not a story she will ever tell, where she raised up a devil to burn with the power of her words and her sorrow.
Again she remembers she is no real unicorn, only a slave in a lie of flesh, bone and grace.
Still she bends to his request, afraid that he might tear apart her neck with that blade of his. Drowning was always a better option to her, rather than die by blood and pain and enough feeling to die with a scream.
And as she turns to lead him to where he might send a letter his gaze feels like a brand on her skin. Surely she will be condemned before the gods for standing so close to such a devil as this and bowing to his request instead of running far, far away from the dark promises in his gaze.
Raymond. and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
Isra was afraid of him. He could see it in her eyes, in the bend of her uncertain lip, but next to the fires of his displeasure consideration for her immediate feelings seemed small and irrelevant. What good would kindness do her now, when she jumped at shadows in her own home? How long had it been since she slept in the confidence that she was truly safe?
"Thank you." He fell somewhat into step with her, conscious at least of the courtesy of maintaining his distance.
They made the journey in silence, for silence was all the night court had to offer, and between them nothing passed but glances of uncertain calculation. The red stallion may as well have been walking with his blade to her throat, so stiffly obedient she was in her escort. He considered apologizing and didn't. She would not believe him just now.
When they arrived at the rookery - of course it was ravens, he thought - Raymond swept past Isra like a portentous wind and set to scribbling out hurried notes on a couple of spare bits of parchment. The script was cramped and messy with the ire vibrating through his blood, but it was legible and the messages succinct.
The first was long; the second, much shorter - and much more difficult to write.
He approached a well-rested pair of ravens, smiling as he murmured soft pet-talk to them, and fastened a note to the leg of each one. To the first he murmured a quiet destination and the beast ruffled itself importantly before taking wing. Delicately he stroked his muzzle along the feathered crown of the remaining bird and whispered something more. "This is very important to me," he finished, and with a guttural kraaak the final raven took flight, leaving Raymond alone with Isra and the rest of the watchful rookery.
Storm crows.
When he turned back to Isra, the fire in his eyes burned just as brightly, but his expression was quieter, softer.
"I'm sorry for frightening you. My name is Raymond." He nodded curtly in lieu of a proper introduction. "If someone asks if you've seen me, say what you have to say to keep yourself safe."
And with that he swept out of the rookery, a silent storm of blades.
Isra thinks of nothing as she leads him through the streets. There in only the echo of their hooves in her brain and it rattles like a nightmare and sets all her bones to rattling. He could be whispering stories to her, or begging forgiveness for claiming to be a devil. He could have been stone for all the notice she takes of him he leads.
Only when he sweeps past her like a rage of a wind, a torrent of needle thin rain, does she think.
She thinks that perhaps he writes in blood, a bright and deadly as that skin he wears. Perhaps all the whisper of ink over paper is nothing more than the drip, drip, drip of blood. She wonders, as she watches the raven's sweep out over her head if he has given them a plague to carry, a weapon of war.
Again she wonders what end she has brought.
When the last raven swoops low enough to press a cruel kiss of feathers across her back she turns away. Run, run, run. Her body has not forgotten that command and it sweeps over her like a tidal waves as she resurfaces from her dread thoughts enough to remember that he is still before.
He speaks and she hears not the words as she watches the way his lips move, the way he teeth could be fangs in the shadow of him. I am the devil. It's all she hears, as he speaks a litany of fear given a name that repeats over and over and over again through her mind.
Oh but then his words start to make sense as she turns away from him. She's tensed and ready to run and it feels like there is a tether to the mountains that reels her in. Her hooves are already following the demand of the dead that call her so.
“I will say nothing. I do not wish to remember you.” It's no more than a whisper, a flutter of her lungs but it's enough to know that Isra will speak nothing of this red man who might write in blood.
Only stories live on her lips and legends on her tongue.
