War Has Come While Night Hath Fallen over Our Faire Kingdom

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Chapter 10: Warriors; Muddied Messes and the Toiling Triumphant

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Jason is headed to Bludech (Bludhaven) as we'll call it and Black mask is profiting off of the fact that someone is helping him to nearly enslave the city to make his products that are polluting the air. Can Jason get to the bottom of how, and in this we will see Artemis and Kor'anna will return in a bit. Richard finds out that he's more along in his cycle than he once feared. He has a mental breakdown and the rest is Tim. Who is now an outlaw looking for his father by himself since no one else will. I had this planned right away because writing medieval fantasy is way too easy! Sort of? On with the story!!

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Rocking, roused gears of the iron gods ground bones to dust, even to the bat god's name did Jason stare and watch with eyes lit. The fires of Hin and Hella were vast, yet why were the clouds greyer than his home had ever become?

"This place, brimstone buried it, long ago…. a child of fire. Wit, passion." Jason turned to the sound of a croaking demise, a person in tatters that had lost its sight. Its matted hair was grey and flaking off. The nose was quite big, yet those eyes were orbs if oral as Jason somehow believed the mad beggar and his tale of lost kingdoms and empires. He too knew of one he could not let die into its history.

"Pray tell, sir. What do you know of the billowing clouds and the city of Bludech, here."

"BLUD." The dry lipped squatter spoke. "The king, the prince of her halls is not here; that there are only thieves of lives that we toil. I knew of it; a king called the Night of Mid -Day. (MIDNIGHTER.) Just as he was broken winged to the death of all of our past, Blud was left. Each means home. No home is ever left dripping in blood, sire."

"Your tale makes me think of my very own predicament, with my family. Faraway." Jason nodded, searching those eyes before looking to the spires that crafted a dangerous cloud of acid and dis – ease. "Tell me, where are folk such as yourself where I may learn more of these "thieves." He asked. "I'd very much like to know who rules this faire city, even in its darkest days."

The hobbit of a grandfather chuckled and with a dirtier, tooth smile, he ushered Jason to follow him down the back ways and into the next path away from the drifting smog of whatever was being produced by mortal hands inside these walls.

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He spotted not only a door to a tavern just feet ahead, yet wondered if this was a place to settle not only disputes but to plan, a revolution.

He'd make note why Kor'anna refused to come here. She had claimed it impassioned to all manner of good versus the wrong doing. She believed it devoid of such things because a great power held sway over the people. Now, Jason realized she had hidden her true answer. There was a battle within those walls, yet all could not be so blind to his desired outcome being ad their own. He'd needed a special trinket and to find a soul in this city to help him from long ago. A face and her fate, like his, they both shared a great strife in their earlier days as youths. Jason was not a blood born child of Wayne, only the youngest heir that was hidden from Slade was in fact worthy of such a rite. Richard however, would they find a solution to whatever Slade had done?

"Through here, please kind traveler."

Jason's ears perked, and if he had been a dog, they would have stayed that way. "I never told you what I wasn't."

"You didn' ave to." From the door as it swung back idly, a red-haired Vixen with a fresh set if gums had had selflessly allowed them entry by blocking the path back through and into the smog ridden roads if Blud.

She carried her gall in her arms and torso, a sword fighter maybe. He gulped, having only seen Lady Barbenthel within the same bounds of strength as this, miss in his way to the tavern. "He's come to help us, Artem." (Artemis) "This man has the face of royalty; I see it always! Yell as loudly as you must not, for the shadows…. creak."

Jason rubbed his neck as chuckling, Art herself had to laugh. "Old crow you are, Bobbins!" She smirked and jerk her arm away to allow finally the place to calm and for Jason to see past the face…. he'd barely gotten to know.

Yet she as this tavern of rebel rousers would soon face a great deal of torment. Had he known this now, Jason would have looked to the cities of Stelt and Dakonta for help. (Steel and Dakota city.)

"Eh, yes and by any chance I'd like to ask about a queen from –

The faces of many, gazed back, as the room grew silent.

Clattering ale mugs and the sounds of celebratory drunkenness were naught, as Jason figured to himself that her name or even the mere utterance of it, might spell trouble. He was in the right place for sure, as Art let her arm up to calm her fellow kin. Jason was here, he'd ask for it. The very item that would channel the bat god and save them all from the barbarian king's alliance with darker forces, incomprehensible.

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Richard was left to his room with a lack of shut eye and years still phantom veins down his cheeks. He rose and ached for the very first time, rising to see as of so late just why. A large mirror was there as he went to strip, being sure none could poke fun at his –

The teenager's eyes of blue, widened in horror as he saw not the mark and nothing less against a taught stomach, but a bulge. Apparent and still, growing. He lost his senses, his breath. Dark circles lived upon his gaze as he viewed what was left- should the god of Night to his culture them call him a heretic for fornication with those under other deity? Should he….

To his knees, he sobbed and pleated in a sniffling sodden way. The king wanted him, him for…. for this thing he was to birth….no, no…. he wasn't-

"THERE is my lovely pet…."

He froze as footsteps over his heart racing had never dawned. "You've grown a bit in a year; and it will soon be spring." The king circled his mother and soon to be born heir. "You'll be happy to know, that we may know exactly where to search next for your missing brother."

It was days when Richard's brother Timothy had convinced Wallace to let him go. Through a secret way that only the children of the exiled king knew about. Richard swallowed as large hands came to clasp his shoulders while tilting over to gaze at them both in the tall standing mirror.

"Lovely sight, isn't it? How life can be so forthcoming to you, yet its brilliance shines just beyond all of those rumors that the castle speaks of us. You belong to me. And our child –

Our child.

Richard breathed through his nose; arms wrenched from his collarbone as he twisted round in his night wears; barely kempt, to glare at his possessive lordship. "Our child, or any child after will be wounded by your callous remarks unto me. A mother, you call her?" He scoffed. "Will this child be an immortal like you, sire? Did my father not show us both that what blood may burn, it can be just as cruel in the end…."

"That child, may not need its mother, you are saying then."

Richard shook his head, panic in what the king was suggesting. "Never! That babe must have arms to hold it that brought it to this plane. I would never rest until the sin carved into my wounds was scorched through. That your new heir might in fact live to know that…like us…" Richard's eyes flew back unto a time where the king was busy. So busy, that he had felt abandoned even in his youth.

"As your father did to you, you believe that the same is fated for that child you are carrying, my pet?"

"Not a pet, have I not proven this to you??" The boy hissed and backed towards the mirror. "I had a family, you-

"I did no such." The king grumbled a bit louder than Richard would have preferred. "How could one outside of the world of sin understand? For you, here to these lands, what I have done is a crime. Yet to my kingdoms apart, this is a natural process. For you to be, mine. Wayne would never understand." The man purred. "His women never break from their chores; never have they lifted a sword unless they had the power and status of your own Barbenthel upon their own births. I do not deny that you were given a task that none may see a –

"It is demonic!!" The boy bled out his fears, a hand to his gut and one to his scalp as he tugged his own locks to know he was still alive. Thrashing and crying, Richard John Wayne still existed. (John Wayne, huh.)

"It is how we are, how you WILL become if you ever desire your direction set in stone. As not a pet. But, a queen beside your king."

"I tried that and, you shunned me. The babe will get ill, or worse! Your son is a farce of a lord, your other –

Slade moved with the grace of a crashing wave as his great palm slammed Richard's skull to the solid reflection without leaving a single crack in the boy's mirror piece.

"My children are my own. Your brother, should he be found and tried for treason. Should you allow this wallowing to escalate, my dear…. I will have him to hang for it." The king hissed, watching as Richard's shivering back made him want to desecrate it. To mark it as a canvas to any artist that would define joy in torturing those you help close.

"Of course, even if you were to convince him to return without conflict, who in their right mind would trust a whore to do it –

"Slade!!" Richard ground his teeth and pushed against the glass as he was let go, the boy's anger far too much like a tantrum to the king as he'd sensed a disease of motherhood finding its way into the teenager's delicate psyche. "Paam spoke to me, and we agree that you must rest."

"I'll rest when I damn well feel willing to!" Richard seethed out. "At this stage of my cycle of life and death, sire, you have little control over how I've become…that too is what Lady Paam meant. It was why you were bidden to leave when I showed how much I truly despised YOUR REFLECTION !!" The boy kicked and finally, with a shatter of glass and ailing eyes, the boy's mighty fire was out.

Many sharps showed how he'd become another side of himself that he too feared for. That the scare of a child crying nonstop would delude the reason of any rescue or escape. Richard wept to his knees, surrounded by large sharp shards of broken glass. All showing him, his distress, his rage, his apathy for the child he carried.

"You'll stay then, as we'll have it. I will, have a staff here to help. With the glass, shortly." Slade moved along swiftly, not looking back as Richard's tears did not sway. He was not a woman, nor an equal in any way as the crying boy was left to his fate to see dozes of his personalities all meld together as pieces of broken shards.

"No…. father…you…. you…must not come here…." He hiccupped and hugged his knees to his chest. And cried.

"Don't ever… ever see, what I am… please…"

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The woods ended by the caves outside of the walls of their faire lands. Timothy let leaves of the last season crunch underfoot as he searched for a way to see while the sun had dared not to rise overhead.

"Brother is not amusing at all; he's let us become laughingstock..." The grain of gold was there in the fields beyond his little hollow and dare he name it, there was something off about this plain.

It was a farmer's crop, yet not then at all. There, beyond the meadow stood atop a plank, a scare crow doll. A creature of ill magic that was an omen that there would mean misfortune in the ways of Timothy's country folk. "I must hide –

A sound of screeching and storming gusts blew him into a whirl, right before the strange crow – man as his golden flax and straw hair hid not his green eyes from the tired child. "Stay away! I shan't harm you –

~ Harm comes to all that do not seek it, in absolution, they trust no one. You have need of guidance. ~ Spake then the scare – being as Tim too lifted his troubled lids to the ill omen upon a stake ~ Thou must travel south. To this, westward. There, it is a holy place where rain cannot fall and where gods dwell. ~

"By God s …. are you then a messenger sent to help us?? What then is the power the warlord has over our father?? Can you not tell me?"

~ Go to the south, west…. find the gods of new and of your last…. hope…. ~

There was a blaze as the scare being was sent up- fire burned it to a riled crisp as it did not scream, yet Tim had no way to save the strange creature. (CRANE, SCARECROW. SO MUCH BETTER BEING CRYPTIC.)

However, as he let the first day approach while he sat and slept outside the abandoned barn of the scare crow person's last creator, a red breastfed bird bounded about gleefully in the air. Its Robin's breast was too a sign. He had to take the two omens as more than this, yet of the liberation they so desperately craved. "For father." Tim then gasped. "Stefania and Cassandra!" He threw a palm to his face and recalled. "My dear siblings are still not where they should be as well. We may then perhaps join hands, to triumph!"

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See what is happening here? Tim, Jason and Steph with Cass are going to end up bringing together those willing to oppose Slade so that Bruce may again be called to reclaim his title. However, will it be far too late for amends to be granted if Richard is already losing his hope hour by hour? Find out!