Darkness between the Stars: Ironclad Heart
A Fan Fiction by iamnobird94
"This Witch had been crafted from the darkness between the stars"
~ Sarah. J. Maas
Prologue:
Manon Blackbeak lifted her head to face her attacker, and with a wicked grin etched across her porcelain pale face, she lifted her hands and leapt with her fingers outstretched and itching for the bloody aftermath. The storm clouds bellowed loudly above her, and she thought for one brief moment how fitting it was - the rain tracing its way down her bare arms, making her skin glisten under the watchful eye of the moon. Bursts of lightning illuminated her terrifying and beautiful figure, and accentuating her sharp iron nails as they splattered red droplets and torn flesh to the ships wooden, wet floor. The foolish creature stared into her golden eyes as she hoisted him to his feet and slammed him against a door, so hard it shattered, she almost grimaced as he let out a loud cry. His face contorted into a pitiful knowing expression. This creature was to die; he'd picked the wrong battle, and he was to pay the price. How utterly tragic, how sad and lonely it must feel to know that his life on this world would end with a swift flick of her wrist, at that thought she grinned wider.
"I won't waste more of my time boy," her voice echoed, and entangled with the screaming sounds of the storm. "Where is the girl?" Manon Blackbeak knelt, and stared so far into the creatures' eyes, she saw his pathetic, fearful soul as she said, bloody, and wild "Where is Elide?".
Chapter One:
Songs the Ocean sang
~ Manon Blackbeak ~
There was something in the cold night air that disturbed Manon as she lay her hand on the ships front deck and began tapping her fingers; Abraxos was almost invisible if not for his glowing eyes watching nothing and everything. Her search led her near and far, and between dodging other Clans of witches and her unyielding distaste in her 'companions', she was irritable and, and something else. Something uncharacteristically foreign, something that made her stomach churn and her black heart tear. With each new lead, she left a new body on the ground, given each one had no useful news as to the whereabouts of Elide. That human wretch! She banged her fist roughly against the wooden frame and it creaked in protest.
When she finds her, and she will, she'd kill the girl for her inconvenient disappearance, and then she would kill whoever had her in their clutches. The thought of someone mistreating the girl sent angry shock waves throughout her body, they shook her so violently that she glared into the relentless ocean. It offered her no more answers than the corpses she left behind here there and everywhere. It seemed to almost reach out to her, its blackened watery arms slick with need, a thirst to devour. At least there was something she liked about the ocean after all, it was relentless, powerful and it took whatever it wanted. Those were qualities a cruel and immortal woman admired, and similarly, Manon Blackbeak was most comfortable with a blade in someone's stomach.
She had taken so many lives she'd lost count, she took and she took, and she'd be damned if she cared even a drop. She cared no more about the lives she'd taken than the angry beast she was at the mercy of and rode on its back throughout the days and nights. Whoever thought of crafting wooden death traps to sail into the mercy of a merciless, immortal beast, well she thought that perhaps they were either ingenious or utterly without their brains. Either way, the crashing of the ocean and how its glittering surface reflected the moons and stars, unnerved her. The air was salty, fresh, damp and dangerous. She sensed something was brewing, or perhaps she was simply restless and wished something would happen. Time would tell, and history would either deem it worthy of retelling, immortalising it in prose and song or unworthy and flush it away with the dead and the fools.
Abraxox let out a tired sigh and lay his great head down on his front legs. She heard footsteps behind her, and instinctively braced herself, her back straightening. "You almost look innocent" the voice whispered. "Manon Blackbeak, with the ocean in her eyes and the moon cast down, longing" she almost smiled.
"It isn't wise to sneak behind me" she didn't bother to look at him, instead her focus remained on the waves, in and out, loud and terrible.
"We both know you heard me coming before I stepped foot on the deck" Dorian Havilliard stepped carefully to her side, placing both elbows on the frame and leaning on them as though he hadn't a care in this world or any other. "What are we doing out at this time? Contemplating who we might interrogate next?" she felt his gaze on her, drinking her form in as though he longed to be drunk on it, but there was a sadness surrounding him, it remained like an ever present armour.
"You didn't have to accompany me on this errand" she plainly said, she was well aware that her hair rode freely as the wind tore through it, it almost felt like flying.
"Ah, the errand" he mused, she rolled her eyes defiantly. "Weeks we search, by sea, by air, by land and you haven't told me what, or who we search for" she glared at him, and he glared right back, it was enough to make her want to slit his throat and tear those beautifully sad eyes from their sockets.
"I told you what you need to know, nothing more and nothing less. You didn't have to follow me around like a lap dog" in truth, she admired Dorian, as much as Manon Blackbeak could. He carried his sorrow and regret like badges on a uniform, hidden beneath his humour and smiles lay a truly broken soul, and still he tried. He fought. He laughed. It was as though the man threw his arms up at the stars and told them he would accept the fate they bestowed upon him, however cruel, but not before fighting until every last breath escaped his chapped lips. Yes, Dorian Havilliard was beaten, broken, and enslaved by his past, his loss, his pain, and yet he sailed onward, carrying the whole ocean in his beautifully broken and lonely heart. There was a misguided, disgusting comfort in that utter defiance to live.
"Rather you than Aelin, you at least don't look at me with pity in your eyes, and if you do pity me, you treat me no different" he threw something far into the waves, and it landed with a plop, and the ocean took it greedily.
"You don't fool me Dorian Haviliard," she faced him, and he smiled and leant into her ever so slightly. "You may be a useless fool, a fool who let himself be so vulnerable as to care for another living creature to the point that losing her made you a pitiful shadow of a once fearsome man." He winced, but she continued "I may not understand such chosen foolery, but I do believe I understand a loss, a…sense of missing. Something that is unreachable, as this water beneath us, there, yet slipping away to the touch". She might be the fierce Manon Blackbeak, leader of the fearsome Thirteen, Iron Witch, Heir to the Iron Witches. But she had also felt loss, or as much as she could allow; the loss her Cousin felt, losing her Thirteen – however brief, and in some ways – how she fought harder than the moon shifting the ocean at admitting - losing Elide. Stupid, human-witch, pathetic, idiotic, strong and beautiful Elide. Her insides began to churn and her face seemed to twinge.
"You truly believe you are so above falling completely in love, as I have, that when it happens to you Manon Blackbeak, the stars will laugh and the ocean will still. I hope I see it, and I pray that love is never ripped from you as it was so unrelentingly from me." and with that, Dorian Havilliard stalked away, stone faced, furious and sorrowful and as she watched his figure sink away into the ship, she glanced up at the stars, blinking and knowing. What stories they must see, what terrors – many she had a part to play –what pain, joy and love they bare witness. The true historians are those that simply watch, and so they watch and wait, for what, Manon was unsure, but she was certain her part would be critical. Whether Dorian's statement was impossible or not, she had a sense that those stars would document and tell her story with the uttermost honesty, a brutality befitting such a woman as Manon Blackbeak. She walked restlessly to Abraxos and curled up under his outstretched wing. Listening to the waves and the fast patter of her heart, singing harmoniously with the ocean, and wondering where Elide might be resting her head, and whether she could hear the songs too.