Wayward

[Damion]

There was a castle. It sat under a dark, brooding sky of indistinct clouds. He stood stop one of the great crenelated towers that loomed over the outer walls. The stone beneath his feet was hard, solid, unyielding. Grass could be seen in the courtyards, stringy yellow stuff, the kind that survives every hardship imaginable, but what flowers stood were slumped and dejected, unable to present faces to the sky. Dust motes and burning sparks floated in the air, dancing in the breeze.

The Raven was there.

He stood atop another tower, enormous black wings outstretched as though to engulf the sky. His eyes were dark and hard, and they shone in the half-light like polished iron nuggets. He smiled. He always smiled.

He looked across the castle, his good eye a mote of burning green. He spoke one word, though his voice imbued it with a tide of meaning, hate and fear and sorrow and disgust.

"No."

"A cute trick, I will admit," Was the reply, as the smile turned sardonic, "But you cannot keep me here forever. You know it. I know it. Better to just give up and have done with."

There was never a question as to why each could hear the other, though the distance between them was too great for sound to carry easily. This was a strange place at times.

"You will stay here until I can be rid of you."

One eyebrow ascended as the smile grew. "You can be rid of me now."

"Safely."

The smile turned into a sarcastic chuckle. "I take better care of you than you do. Look at the grass! Two years ago this place could have been a meadow."

He shook his head, his mouth twisting in a grimace. It was true. The grass had once been green, the flowers in the courtyard plentiful. Then again, there had also been a time when this place did not exist. Needs took precedence over wants. Over everything, usually.

"You...cannot be trusted." It was an understatement, and one of the highest order.

The smile flickered, just barely, and then it was back. A cajoling note entered his voice. "Let me out. Be done with this. It is needless, pointless. We could be great together!"

He turned away. He had never sought greatness. His eye narrowed. Winged shapes swarmed outside the castle, hundreds, thousands of them, chanting in unison.

"Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!"

He whirled back to the castle, to The Raven on the opposite tower. "You cannot think that will work."

He smiled and lowered himself on crossed legs. His wings swept along the stone as they folded across his back. "Perhaps."

He turned back, looking out on the horde outside the walls. The first black-winged shape reached up and, smiling, started to climb the castle walls. As if in afterthought, the voice floated over his shoulder:

"Since we are going to be here awhile..."

[Tobias]

"I think i'll be fine," Tobias said. He straightened out and walked a couple more steps, wincing whenever his left leg came down. He laughed and turned to Azurel.

"So, any idea who that guy was that hat thing was chasing?"

Tobias looked out towards the forest - it loomed in the distance, its foliage bristling in the wind in the distance. Tobias felt a cold tingle go up his spine and for moment, he saw a face in front of him - a face much like his own, but with hollow eyes.

He shook his head and squatted down. His left leg throbbed with pain.

[Dantrel Rayne]

Rayne now ignored Tobias' struggle. He looked into the woods, Damion had not come out yet. He was unsure what had happened to him; he was too weak for the shadows' words to make any sense. Otherwise, he would know everything going on in the forest before him.

"I do not know if you have met him. He frequented Miniopia. His name is Damion."

That was all Rayne cared to reveal about the boy. He kept walking towards the woods. It was all he had to do with the monster gone. Hopefully, Tobias could keep up.

[Tobias]

Tobias took a deep breath and stood. As he walked, the pain slowly subsided to a dull nagging in his knee. He pondered who Damion was - his face was familiar to someone he had met: someone he remembered. But it wasn't enough for him to make any connections. He saw him for a moment, the long silver thing stretching out from his grasp and taking on different shapes and sizes.

Tobias and Rayne were now at the edge of the forest. The shadows loomed over them, and the setting sun made the woods black and ominous. It looked like a maw of darkness.

"Well...I guess I get to meet your friend soon."

[Dantrel Rayne]

Rayne tried to sift through the shadows again. He opened his mind to the darkness, which quickly consumed his mentality, realizing no light would ever touch it there. In his mind, Rayne was alone in a room of darkness. He was normally able to command the shadows to answer him, but they did not recognize him as their master; he was withered and weak. He even tried to plea with the shadows.

In exchange for the escape into my mind, tell me where the boy who entered the forest is.

There was silence and infinite, tarred darkness. Now he was reminded just how dangerous the shadows were. Memories of him nearly falling to the shadows squeezed through the mental void.

He stood in place, Tobias able to watch his motionless struggle for his mind.

He ran through the blackness in his mind, seemingly moving, but it was impossible to tell if he was. In his panicked state, however, he had one desperate thought: Azurel.

Demon!

He ran a few steps in a random direction.

Demon! Where are you!?

He decided to try transforming as if he was pushing Azurel to the forefront of his mind. Hopefully the demon would take over even though he couldn't see or hear him.

Rayne's still body bolted into movement, arching his back and extending his arms out. He let out a roar, though it was not the demon's voice. It was Rayne's, cracked and strained. His mind was thrust out of the darkness, and he had enough clout to close his mind to the shadows so they could not enter him again.

Then, he realized, that was a problem. It was his mind that had control, and not Azurel's. He could feel the energy course through him as if he had transformed. He could even had the phantom senses of wings and extra weight, though he was exactly as he had been before he made it to the forest.

Azurel, are you there?

Again, silence, though this time his mind was clear. Rayne searched his mind for Azurel, who was always present and always annoying. He found him sitting on the floor of their mind. He was no longer a solid figure, as if he really existed in their mind; he was faded and almost transparent. Even found, he said nothing.

"What is wrong with me!?"

Rayne paced around, angry at himself, and confused for the first time in a long time. He punched a nearby tree in frustration. The tree buckled and exploded as if a car had hit it. Rayne jumped away to avoid getting hit by the falling lumber. He stared at his fist as the tree crashed beside him. The force in that punch was not something he was normally able to muster.

The only thing he could think of was to revert from the demon. The energy and phantom appendages subsided, though nothing physical changed on him. He was at a loss for everything that just happened. Because of that, he realized there was nothing he could do at the moment.

He looked to Tobias. There wasn't a thing he could say at the moment to redeem any front of apathy.

"Let us find Damion."

He began into the forest, looking as far as he could through the trees for the boy.

[Damion]

The walls were cloaked in black, almost to the top. The Raven was everywhere. Black-winged shapes scrambled for height, attained the top...and were hurled back. He moved like lightning. Faster than lightning. Everywhere a head poked up over the crenelated wall, he was there, hammering down with fists or feet. This place bore only the vaguest semblance of reality, but for that, it was his place, and here, he was as close to god as a man could be. The ground thudded and threw up gouts of dust under dark-clothed bodies that vanished as soon as they touched down.

This was why he had scoffed at the beginning of this not-quite-battle. The Raven knew his habits and weaknesses, and was adept at exploiting them, just as he had learned to adapt to The Raven's favored strategies, and in the real, physical world, they two would have been evenly matched, like identical twin rams battling for domination of one mountain top. Here, however, he took the advantage by a wide margin. This...place, this mind scape, this dream, whatever it was, it was his. He had created it, and he owned it the way a child owns his own set of building blocks. Even as the thought occurred to him, the outer walls, still covered with a milling cacophony of wings and black shirts and scrabbling arms, sprang upward, stretching into the sky until they were taller than the castle, taller than the four great towers, taller than the clouds themselves. Silence descended on anxious wings. He wasn't even breathing hard.

There had to be a reason. It did not do to underestimate The Raven, not under any circumstances. He turned slowly, his eye seeing nothing in particular but watching everything. What was the purpose? Shadows seemed to dance along the mile-high walls in the eerie, flickering half light, rising and falling, chasing each other like children playing "catch the leader". The Raven had to have known his dream army could not win, which meant it had been nothing more than a ploy, a distraction, enabling a certain hell-bent psychopath to accomplish...what? Suddenly he froze, brows lowered. Shadows played along the walls. There had never been shadows here. The light had always seemed to come from everywhere all at once, with no real discernible source.

And just like that, it clicked. A thought skittered across the outside of his concentration as he whirled, as fluid and fast as he had ever been, seeming slow, far too slow to stop what he knew had to be coming.

"I will not sleep."
"I will not stop."
"I will come for you...

[Tobias]

Darkness stretched as far as the eye could see. Since sunset, the two wandered through the woods. If not for their own awareness and their own skill, they would have been lost.

What kept them from being lost though? Every direction Tobias turned, there was only darkness. He felt like he was in a hole since he saw the last vestiges of light escape underneath the tree-line. Clouds had formed and blocked out the moon and plunged everything into darkness.

Furthermore, Tobias didn't know where to look, or how to find this person. This man named Damion. He didn't know what he did, or where he lived, or from whence he came from. He didn't know if the man was waiting in the brush, ready to strike at any moment and take him and Rayne by surprise.

And Rayne confused him as well. He never saw such strength exerted by his human side. He knew that the shadows were his place, and this forest was full of them. Tobias wasn't one to be afraid, and he felt it. His heart thumped more than normal. He didn't question the man. He knew something was wrong - he didn't need to inquire why.

And then he felt something in the back of his mind, more-off in his instinct as he gripped the sword on his back. He turned to whichever direction he though Rayne was in.

"I think something's nearby."

He heard paws skitter across the ground and muffled growls. In one motion, the sword came off of his back and whipped across, cleaving something and sending it to the ground.
A wolf lay in front of him, lifeless. Tobias put his sword on his back and looked for Rayne.

[Dantrel Rayne]

The shadows betrayed him, the demon is incapacitated, Rayne's only hope was to continue to practice with weaker spells, until he regained the skill and control he once had.

"I think something's nearby," he heard, followed by the sound of metal sliding through tissue and bone.

Light, Rayne thought, would help. And it would pay the shadows back for their treason. A simple spell, too, one he knew he couldn't mess up. A cylinder of light appeared before him, 2 feet in diameter and several feet long. There was seemingly no origin point to the light, it simply existed in the column before him. He grabbed the intangible area of light and moved it with him. He looked over to where the sounds were, illuminating Tobias, then the wolf.

There was always a pack, but he had his suspicions. The forest was relatively quiet, especially to Rayne. He decided not to worry about the pack too much. He and Tobias were well equipped to fight off any cur in the woods.

As he walked along, he realized the earth had not forsaken him as the shadows had. Every step for him was a question to the earth: "Does another man nearby exist on your surface," and every time, he was replied with "no." This troubled Rayne. He was either in the trees, planning who knows what kind of sneak attack, or worse yet, in the air. So, he devoted his cylinder of light to scanning the branches. Eventually, Rayne spotted a branch that was nearly thicker than the trunk itself. When he got closer, he could see the arms and legs draped over the side of the branch like vines. Damion was still.

[Damion]

Stars burst behind his eyes. It was like being hit by a hammer. A big hammer. He staggered backwards, nearly fell, caught himself with one hand on the hard stone and the other at the side of his face, which burned. The Raven stood over him, great wings outstretched, eyes alight with victory. Something dangled from one hand. Something long and slim and black, which dripped. He moved his hand to look. Blood. The sky burned red, silhouetting The Raven, whose teeth gleamed in a smile.

"I have been studying this place, while you have been away." The voice was a deep baritone, smooth and penetrating. "I've discovered certain...properties," a paused, as if to drive the point home, "of the environment."

His eye narrowed, shining green in the half light. His fist clenched, and he forced it to relax. The less an enemy knew of your mind, the better.

That smile leaned forward, closer. "I have never used poison before. I wonder what the death will-"

He struck fast, driving his hand into The Raven's middle, straight and hard, following up with a knee and a two-handed hammer to the face. The Raven fell, but he did not let up. A man who gave his enemy pause was a man who would soon be dead. Beneath the burning sky he fell to with a will, raining fists and feet upon the prostrate form like wrathful meteors. This was the last time. The last time. It circled through his head like an anthem. The last time. No more pain. No more killing. He did not smile, nor laugh. There was no joy in this. Just a job, a task that had to be completed. No more fear. No more running. His hands felt like lead weights, rose and fell like pistons. The last time. He would end it here. He would end it now. Never again.

Thud.

He hadn't known he was falling until his head hit the cold stone of the tower top. Was it over? He couldn't tell. Where The Raven should have been, there was only a dark, indistinct mound. Come to it, everything was becoming blurry, slowly fading into a background fog that seemed to suck at his mind, rendering thought scattered and clumsy. He tried to focus. The Raven. Had to stop him. Had to-

As his eyes closed, darkness fell, shrouding the castle, towers, and courtyards in deep, starless night.

[Tobias]

Tobias slung the limp body over his shoulder. As quickly as he had gone up, he was back down and sprawled the young man on the underbrush in the dim light.

"We need to get him somewhere. He doesn't look well."
Tobias shook his head and leaned back. The first thought was that maybe he overdid it - his leg was still throbbing, but not nearly as bad. Maybe he was bleeding internally, though the pain would have been much worse. Then he started to notice something
The faces.

He looked at the man on the ground, and then Rayne, only to see memories glistening in and out of focus. Tobias was awestruck for a moment, What the hell am I seeing? Something sat uneasy in him. He saw people standing behind Rayne; he saw people looking over his shoulder; he saw people huddled over Damion. They all looked familiar - he knew these people, yet the names still escaped him. They came to the tip of his tongue before he felt it slide back into his throat. It kept him from speaking out of turn.
He shook his head and looked to Rayne.

"Any way that you think we could wake him up?"