Chapter 40: The Black Sand

Water pooled in the sand by Ronan’s feet as he held the Hellblade outward. The bright pink sun glimmered on the clear ocean, making the sludge creeping onto shore appear all the murkier and more disgusting.

Ronan expected his sword to pulse in his hand, and for his veins to go black, but nothing happened. He stood for a moment confused and with his sword drawn. A brief breeze nipped at him between his legs, reminding him of his nakedness.

Scindo and Illia broke out into a fit of laughter.

“Easy there, Black Serpent!” Scindo called out. “Observe that black sand a bit closer, won’t you?”

Illia wiped a tear from her amber eye and said, “I think he’s been a little too busy observing The Black Butterfly.”

Ronan had jumped from the spring while he and Maritza were enjoying each other’s close quarters company, and he was very much displaying his passion for Maritza outright. Maritza blushed and slid deeper into the water, hiding everything but her eyes, ears, and curly blonde hair.

She threw Ronan a towel to cover himself with, but the wind blew again and drifted the towel out from his grasp. Still, the towel had landed between his thighs in such a way that it remained upright and hung, like a cloak on a coat rack. While the Seahorses cracked up with laughter from their hot spring, Ronan quickly tied the towel around his waist.

At the very least, their laughter confirmed that there was no threat present from the black sand.

Ronan joined in on the laughter, and shortly after his friends did too.

Ronan jabbed a toe towards the dark sludgy sand and asked, “What is this? And is it safe to touch?”

Scindo came down from a fit of laughter and replied, “That’s a new invention from the Temple of the Falcon on the other edge of the sea. In that state and while wet, it’ll do you no harm, outside of clouding our beautiful water and killing the fish who gulp it down.”

Ronan knelt and scooped a handful of the black sand into his palm. It was gritty like the finely chopped pieces of parsley that were sprinkled onto his scrambled eggs at The Temple of the Butterfly.

“They call it Pepper Powder,” Illia said, far more seriously than Scindo. “In the gardens where the Falcon Nightblades reside, there are these black peppers that grow naturally, and in wild abundance. The Falcons grind the peppers into that powder there.”

“And one of their merchant ships must’ve gone down!” Scindo exclaimed. “Look, there’s a barrel of the stuff now!”

An aged oak barrel washed onto shore. Scindo got out from the hot spring, rum bottle in hand, and didn’t bother to cover himself.

He pried open the top of the barrel, held it towards Ronan and said, “Take a pinch of the Pepper Powder, Black Serpent, toss it in the air, and launch a bit of your fire at it.”

Ronan looked at him hesitantly, but soon the Seahorses began to clatter their metal mugs together and cheer Ronan on. Even Illia, who seemed to be taking the matter as less of a jest, was encouraging Ronan to do so.

He reached inside, pinched a bit of powder between his index finger and thumb, then went to throw it towards Scindo.

The Seahorses all shouted and dove underneath the water of the hot springs.

Scindo pushed Ronan’s hand away and shouted through a chuckle, “Away from me! Unless you want me to be roasted like a wild hog!”

Ronan tossed the powder into the air over the clapping waves, then snapped his fingers and created a spark of flame near the powder. Like Habbot’s Baker Bomb with the alcohol and flour, and Pepper Powder ignited instantly and created a loud series of orange and red fiery explosions.

Fabrics of Ronan’s towel caught on fire, and he quickly patted them out.

Clove and Ike looked on at the explosions with wide, romantic eyes.

“See?” Scindo said. “Quite the powerful bit of magic they’ve made from those little peppers.”

Illia sat herself on the edge of the springs.

“Now imagine,” she said, that the Falcons put that powder inside a small, spiked lead container then load the container into a device smaller than a hand crossbow.”

Ronan shook his head. “I can’t even imagine such a thing.”

Scindo took Ronan’s hand, then shaped two fingers outwards, closed Ronan’s ring and pinky towards his palm, and raised his thumb up.

“They call the device ‘a gun,’” Scindo said. He patted Ronan’s hand. “And it’s shaped like that to fire this spiked metal at a rate that a dozen crossbows could be reloaded, and with a velocity that puts the crossbow to shame.”

Illia nodded, then twisted to show the side of her abdomen. A long pink scar covered the edge of her stomach to the beginning of her back.

“I was only nicked by the Falcon’s sorcery,” she said. “They’re referring to these spiked pieces of metal as ‘bullets.’”

Scindo frowned and remarked, “Imagine if she’d taken a full shot from such a bullet.”

Scindo was solemn for a second and he muttered, “The Falcons have fired on us with their guns before. We’ve lost good men and women because of it.”

“Wait,” Ronan exclaimed, “Nightblades shouldn’t be killing each other. Why aren’t they using the guns to destroy the Black Blades?”

Illia slid back into the springs and scoffed, “Who do you think gave them the blueprints to create such advanced weaponry?”

Ronan huffed like he’d been kicked between the legs.

He said, “I can’t imagine why a group of Nightblades would want to work with those evil conquerors.”

At the same exact moment and in the same dull, distant tone, Scindo and Illia both said, “Because they’re afraid.”

Their synchronized timing made Ronan and his friends shudder.

“Well,” Scindo said, returning beside Illia, filling up her mug with rum, and then putting his arm around her shoulder, “as of right now, the Falcons are far enough away that they’re about as much of a threat as the Black Blades.”

Ronan was catching on to the Seahorse ways, so he said, “Meaning we have plenty of time to prepare against them, and repurpose their powder for our own uses.”

Scindo smirked at Ronan’s positivity, and Ronan added, “But for tonight, we don’t worry about such thoughts. Tonight is a night for celebration!”

Ike and Clove joined the Seahorses in their cheering, and even Maritza surfaced from beneath the spring water to join in the festive applause and drinking.

And while Ronan had meant what he said about celebrating, his mind was still racing. The thought of killing a fellow Nightblade sickened him, but he looked around at the group of warriors in the hot springs, and his friends and Maritza, smiling with the most joy he’d ever seen them express.

Nothing would stop him from keeping them safe.

Far off in the distance and well on the other side of the ocean, he thought he saw a small red light flicker. For the first time all night, his markings burned, and the veins on his arm turned a faint black.

Something was out there, and whatever it was, The Shroud was telling him it needed to be destroyed, just as it had warned him of the Hellsworn nest near the Norovir.

He shaped his fingers like a gun in the same way Scindo had done so before.

Ronan scooped a big handful of Pepper Powder from the barrel, then threw it into the sky over the shore in a wide spread.

With his hand shaped like a Falcon’s gun, he fired quick, controlled bursts of fire from the fingertips of his index and middle finger.

“This is even more precise than firing flames from my palm,” Ronan thought with a grin.

The Pepper Powder exploded in a large line over the rushing waves of the ocean, and embers floated down onto the water. They died out with a soft sizzle, and Ronan embraced the Seahorses and his friends calling out his name, and encouraging him to put on a good show.

Again, Ronan threw out powder and set it ablaze by firing flames from his fingers.

Clove, Ike, and the Seahorses could enjoy the theatrics, but Maritza recognized that something else was at play.

He was training, and trying to master a new ability that he’d discovered.

She watched with a smile as Ronan continued to blast the powder and create bombastic explosions that made the ocean water ripple. But eventually, she rose from the hot spring and dragged him back inside with her.

They both watched as progress filled in the bar beneath his Mark of the Serpent.

“I wasn’t finished,” Maritza said to Ronan.

He raised a brow her way. “Finished? With what?”

Maritza moved closer to him, settled on his lap, and leaned in for another kiss.

“I wasn’t finished celebrating,” she whispered in his ear.

And the two kissed once more, then talked through the day, well into the afternoon when the Seahorses, plenty drunk from a night’s partying, dragged their feet to their bedrooms and collapsed onto their beds.

But as Maritza and Ronan walked hand in hand to the quarters gifted to them by Scindo and Illia, Maritza twitched from a throb on her shoulder. She played it off as if it were nothing, and closed the door to the temple’s beachside room, where she and Ronan had a perfect view of the water from a large window that sat only a few feet above the sandy shores.

The twitch had come from The Shroud, and from the sense that something out in the waters was lurking.

Maybe it was on the seafloor, or maybe it was across the sea, waiting for her on the other island where The Temple of the Falcon was.

Whatever dark evil was out there, Maritza knew she and Ronan would need to train to defeat it.

And at the very back of her mind, despite her usual feelings of strength when around Ronan, she thought that even with their powers combined, they might not be enough to bring whatever it was down.