Chapter Twenty-Four

“... and we can’t find Lili-Bon, Ragoth. Or Korrin…. Those sweet, sweet girls.”

Ragoth knew better than to open his eyes while Lord White poured his emotions- his truths- into the quickly fading darkness. This had become a near-nightly occurrence and he had learned long ago not to stir or open his eyes if he did happen to wake during White’s tangents. It was the only time he heard his name come from the man without malice or disgust behind it. He always listened intently.

“Ragoth. I-” Lord White took a deep breath and cleared his throat, quietly. “Ragoth, my boy, I know that I can be… harsh, cruel even- but I do love you- all of you. All of my children, blood or not. My friends…. All of Noctra- yes even those who despise me, which I know is most these days- even they… I love.” He sighed, dejected, and laid a soft, naked hand on Ragoth’s stubble pocked cheek. “Still. I’ve done terrible things in the name of that love, least of all to you and dear Hele- Heria - I know…. and will undoubtedly do even worse in the days to come… but the ones who remain must be ready for the coming storm. I simply... Want you to remain.” Silence sat upon them as White leaned over and pressed his forehead to Ragoth’s.

Lord White talked about this coming storm more often than not during these ‘midnight monologues’ of his but Ragoth had no idea what he meant. He’d been able to piece a vague picture together over the years but all he’d surmounted was someone else was going to do something even worse than what White had already. Not something Ragoth really wanted to stick around for, though he did appreciate the sentiment more than he cared to admit.

Ragoth felt a warm drop splash just on his upper lip and struggled not to wipe away the salty bead. White may have been testing him to see if he was awake. One could never know.

After a moment Lord White rose from Ragoth’s bedside, wiped the solitary tear from his cheek, and turned back to the window, facing the start of a new day.

“I just wanted to let you know about Korrin and Lili-Bon. Let you know that I do care… that I- I only broke you to make you stronger. So we could stop him together…. And now… now that smug bastard is back at it- I’d bet the estate he never even stopped trying to tear everything I’ve built down. Foolish boy. Foolish…”

Ragoth tried desperately not to revisit the time he spent with Lord White in the wreckage of Stroma Lab’s basement... but his terror was much stronger than his will. Suddenly, he was there. His bed was gone, replaced by a cold hair chair beneath him that held a young Ragoth’s hands down with a simple chain. The sixteen-year-old was whimpering, bleeding about his wrists around the chains with a gash on his head, likely from debris in the explosion. Lord White was there as well, pacing before him. Unscathed The same enigmatic, powerful man he had always been. There was one difference between the White in Ragoth’s room and the White of his memories and that was that the latter didn’t have gold trim adorning his cape.

There had been no conversation. No explanation of any sort, not so much an utterance from Lord White for hours in that cold, crumbling room. Only the sound of Ragoth’s cries and screams. White’s hands never even touched the boy…no, he did all his ‘work’ with essence. To his credit, he was entirely precise, indeed, methodical as he guided his essence into Ragoth’s own.

Ragoth’s body jerked, became excruciatingly inflamed one muscle at a time as Lord White took control. He’d guided his essence along Ragoth’s veins like they were roadways. It skipped across every last struggling ligament, taught joint, snapping tendon… and burrowed into his terrified marrow. Ragoth had felt every single particle move inside his body. The sensation burned like a lump of hot coal but left him frozen in its wake. Once White had paralyzed Ragoth’s body he moved to the boy’s mind. It was there that White finally spoke, inside the shared space of his sweating, bloody, foggy head.

Mezir. You are Mezir. You are. Or you are nothing. Dead. Just like Helena. Now say it.

Ragoth had broken almost instantly. He screamed the name Mezir, branded it into his mind, and for a short while, he had believed it was true. That he was Mezir De Blancana. He had to. Tragedy’s shock has a way of wearing off, however, when one is faced with it so often. Once it had inevitably done so, Ragoth had merely accepted that he was stuck. For her sake.

He was back in his bed- sweating, breathing far too quickly. Soaked.

So long as I didn’t piss. Ragoth went to check his crotch to ensure it wasn’t the origin of any of the bed’s wet but stopped dead when he saw a tall figure in his doorway. Lord White.

“Ragoth… I love you, son.” With that, Lord White was gone.

The moment the door kissed the threshold Ragoth broke down into a wretched, silent sob. He heaved so hard for air between bursts of tears that he fell to the side of his bed. There he curled and screamed. And screamed. After about ten minutes of this miserable display, a second figure that had been in the shadows near the window slowly made its way to the door and left. Ragoth stayed there sobbing for a moment, just in case they came back in. Lest they discover his ruse.

When he was sure it was safe Ragoth rose from the floor, grabbed a quill and paper from beneath his bed, and wrote down everything Lord White had talked about. How he had stood when he said it. Who he was actually addressing. It was a horribly hard puzzle but Ragoth’s mind had sharpened over the years pretending to be Mezir and he wrote, scratched, circled, and sighed for another hour before he finally stopped and observed his handy work. It looked like the scribblings of a mad man- and perhaps it was- nonetheless, Ragoth found meaning in the ramblings.

At the bottom of the page, he underlined three words that made his heart swell with hope.

“... that smug bastard…”

***

Amberosin was sprinting with ‘Silent One-has-a-real-name-but-I-don’t-know-it-yet’ on her back, only a few paces ahead of Patri, a few paces behind Mezir who held his own passenger, and right beside a limping woman named Korrin. Despite keeping what she considered a modest pace for someone carrying a second body, Amberosin was aware that she was close to overdoing it. Whatever Mezir had done he’d saved her life, for that she was grateful, but…. It wasn’t quite like when Silent One had healed her. She wasn’t rejuvenated. The incision was closed and she could breathe easier, not perfect, but easier- and was she ever sore… and exhausted. In pain. Her legs were nearly jelly when she woke and by the time Mezir ran back in with a new friend in his arms, Amberosin had only just been able to stand without wavering.

“Time to go, gang. Someone grab T- uh…Sile- ah, the sleeping one, dammit! Let's go!” Mezir turned and shot back out the door of their short-lived ‘garbage barge’ without looking back.

Not a single one of them hesitated. Patri scooped up Mezir’s funny looking metal box and took off out the door after Mezir, completely ignorant now to the freezing globs of vomit that dripped down his clothes and covered his arms. Amberosin had whistled to Korrin, thrown her pack at the woman, and grabbed Silent One. They didn’t trust each other, of course. She barely trusted Patri. But they trusted Mezir. And that man was Mezir. There was no mistaking it. Amberosin still wanted an explanation, as they all must, but each one of them had fallen into his command without question.

That was Mezir De Blancana.

He was a force. Legend to all Legends. Mezir was the rightful heir to Lord White’s bloody empire and he was leading a ragtag group of vomit-covered, bandaged, crippled, wild people down one of the finest streets in Blancana’s port in the middle of the night holding a sleeping- obviously noble- woman in his arms. Honestly, she was proud to be a part of it, no matter how much like shit she felt…. she’d never really been a part of anything aside from the Nomads and it was nice to have a sense of belonging, no matter how trivial. It was nice- though she was pretty sure they were all going to die. Amberosin was quite the proficient gambler for such a young woman and she would never have bet on their little crew making it to morning without some miracle or another.

She was in pretty miraculous company, however.

Mezir stopped ahead of her and they all did the same. Patri bumped into Korrin, who bumped into Mezir and fell promptly backward onto her ass as if she’d hit a wall.

“Well Pat, I never took you for a woman beater! Ha!” Mezir laughed, not even winded, beaming at Patri. “Well help her up you heathen and then come here, quickly! It is nearly dawn now, old man.” A playful wink made Patri blush and kick into action.

He held out a hand to help Korrin up, who promptly declined the offer, stood, and insisted it was fine despite Patri's incessant apologizing. Amberosin gave Patri her own disapproving look that turned to a little smirk as he passed her. He grumbled something but looked back enough that she could see a smile.

“Alright, take this one- and I don’t want to see her end up on the ground, Pat.” Mezir grinned from ear to ear at an ever bashful Patri who sputtered out some silly nonsense and took the sleeping noblewoman from his arms. “Now, where is your guild house old friend?”

“Ah, Uhm, s- southern district. Ya shit.” Patri smiled ruefully, cheeks still aflame.

“Wow, really? Still?” A little tsk as he gave Patri a side-eye, “Thought you’d have moved out by now Patty. No worries though, that's entirely doable.”

Doable? We are in the northern district, further north than the port itself. Even if the guild house is in the outskirts southern district, it would be a few hours at a full sprint. Doable?!

One glance at Korrin’s incredulous look told Amberosin that she felt much the same about sprinting for hours down the wide-open roads where guards would surely be pouring out in droves, looking for them as they would have been for the past few days now. Patri didn’t seem quite as surprised by the prospect though; the cranky guild leader seemed a bit more terrified than anything.

“Ah no. Nope. I know that look. That is how you look when you are about to do one of those stupid, crazy, miraculous tricks that very nearly gets everyone killed but somehow still pans out in the end. No. None of those tricks Mezir. I’d rather run.”

“No, no Pat, give me some credit. Its been ten years now”

“Oh, thank the-”

“Yeah, no Pat. I’ve got all new tricks now.”

Mezir smiled wide once more as he spun and crouched low with his hands out to the sides.

“Everyone get close… and try to hold on to one another. It would be great if we all landed together.”

Landed? Funny choice of words. Landed implies-

Mezir spun up in the exact reverse motion of his initial crouching and clenched his fist. The ground lurched as Korrin and Patri clasped arms and drug Amberosin close, who threw the sleeping Silent One onto the ground by Mezir’s feet at the group's center. She grabbed onto Patri’s hand just in time. Tiles of marble and dirt ripped from the ground in the shapes of giant spinning cogs on a long beam that rotated and propelled them forward. Cogs on the bottom fell off after the need for their use was met and disintegrated before falling down. Far down. Amberosin tried to keep her eyes shut but she couldn’t resist.

They were so high above Blancana that clouds sat between them and the streets below. Even the desert's usual loud winds didn’t breach as high as they were on their crumbling stack of giant cogs. It was breathtaking. It also nearly caused her to lose her footing and tumble backward off of their small perch.

“Everyone hold!” Mezir’s muscle’s looked like they were going to snap but the big man still smiled and gave a laugh for good measure.

Suddenly their sky vessel rocketed forward, shedding cogs at a faster rate, using their departure as a way to propel itself even quicker. The whole group was shaking now with the gusts of Blancana. Amberosin closed her eyes once more. It felt like the air would cut clean through her skin if they went any faster against the current and sharp grains of sand were already burrowing into her dermis, leaving small specks of red behind them.

It's too much! I can’t hold on… it's too much. Say it, Amberosin, scream it!

“Its-”

It was over. One loud, resonating thud and they stopped. No one splattered on the ground and the road about them wasn’t splintered or cracked in the slightest. Their cog craft had melded into the ground and already looked like a native peace of road.

Mezir was laughing at a puking Patri outside of a building marked with a large golden ‘T”.

Amberosin smiled and patted Korrin on the back. He did it.

That crazy bastard.