TW: Violence, fire, injury
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[Sabre's POV]
The forest is calm and quiet as we make our way back to the cave. I'm excited to be home.
The village was very kind to us, even as we left. Despite most of the villagers being busy from cleaning up all of the mess from the party, they still greeted us and wished us well on our journey home. The Leaders said they hoped we could come back very soon.
Green already split from the group to head back to his house a while ago. Rainbow and Dark have been cracking jokes to each other during the walk, with Time and I occasionally adding a bit. My paralysis can't stop me from smiling as all of us laugh and enjoy ourselves.
"Hey, hey, you guys ever think about how assassins are guys who take murder suggestions?" Dark smiles, continuing a similar joke from a few minutes ago.
"Excuse you, they take commissions." I say, knowing I have to join in on that one.
Rainbow almost doubles over laughing, then runs a bit ahead of the group, turning around and making a goofy face.
"Ooooh, why can't you kill this guy for the ExPoSuRe? Whatever, you suck at killing anyway." He says in an exaggerated, mocking tone.
"Very funny Rainbow, but watch out for that log behind you." Time says, warning Rainbow of an old, hollow tree trunk that's sat on the ground covered in moss and mushrooms.
Rainbow quickly turns around and jumps over it, falling back to the rest of us as we continue joking around.
It's... so nice, getting to just live for once. Of course, we still have our goals in mind, but... a break is good. Besides, none of us have really gotten to focus on something other than survival for a very long time; Rainbow was so occupied with collecting the Crystals and being the Hero before, he told me that he never really had time for himself anymore. I had the same issue, being pushed to be the Catalyst and all, and once everything with the Rainbow Kingdom started... I was basically cast aside and had to fight just to go on another day.
Before being part of the Vengeful, Time had never really known a day without war in his life. First, it was the Darkness and Void. He and Elemental were created soon before everything started to go so wrong, so everything he had experienced for the first time in his life were all things related to the war against Darkness. I remember that around when he first joined us, he didn't know what overworking meant. He was so used to pushing himself for people he believed needed him more, he used to go nights without sleeping sometimes apparently. It's so sad that the bleak reality of warfare was all he'd ever known before... well, I guess that's still true now, given what's going on between the Chromatics and the Darkness again...
And Dark... he was so wired for survival that Rainbow and I had to teach him how relaxing worked. At first, he was so high-strung and jumpy with everything that he almost acted like a scared rabbit. He almost expected danger around every corner. We know it's because of how harshly treated he was by Nightmare; he hasn't told us much, but from the little he's shared and what me and Rainbow discovered from eavesdropping a few times and a lab journal we found while helping the Yellow Leader fix everything around the castle that Nightmare wrecked, it was... really bad. In fact, it was a punch to the gut when Dark saw the leftover healing potions that Green gave us and said that he didn't know that there were potions that weren't made to hurt people.
And after an incident where Dark freaked out when we told him that we had eavesdropped on him and Nightmare before... I made Rainbow promise not to tell Dark that we found the lab journal. The stuff in there was seriously messed up, and... he probably doesn't want us to know about it in the first place.
But... we don't have to worry about that now. It's all over, and we have a new home and a place that accepts us as we are. We're free. Free from our pasts, free from the expectations weighted on us from our beginnings, free of the false images people see instead of us.
...
I can tell that we're almost home now. The familiar odd flowers covering the area surround us, and the loose stones of the hidden path we made before make soft clacking sounds under our feet. Time checks a pocket watch he has in his coat pocket while Rainbow and Dark continue to play. I'm happy just watching the scenery.
It's the same peaceful forest we've always known in our new lives.
Until a collection of woodland animals dart through the trees and foliage in front of us, avoiding us and running in the opposite direction of where they came from.
All of us freeze in place as we wait for the animals to pass. Birds fly overhead, while deer, squirrels, rabbits, and even a few lesser seen animals like hedgehogs and foxes rush by. A large birds almost hits Rainbow as it swoops over him. Their various cries send shivers down my spine, sounding like a chorus of screams. And just as quick as they appeared, they're gone.
"Is- Is everyone okay-?" Time asks, looking around at the other three of us.
"I'm okay, just startled..." I answer.
"What was that about?" Rainbow wonders aloud, looking up at the sky for any other dive-bombing birds.
"No idea. Maybe they got spooked by a predatory animal?" Time says. "Like a bear?"
"Or a hunter came by..." I say, glancing around cautiously.
I then notice Dark is just standing there, shaking hands grasping each other and pulled close to his chest. His blank stare ahead into the forest beyond is... fearful.
"Dark? Are you okay?"
That brings the other two's attention to Dark, who didn't respond. He's just... staring. Rainbow walks up to him with me following close behind, as Time does the same and places a hand on his shoulder.
"Dark...?" Time says a little quietly, being careful not to startle him.
He's taking slow, deep breaths as he begins to answer, his gaze still fixed on the horizon.
"G-Guys, I..." Dark says, his voice shaking. "I-I'm getting a bad feeling about... whatever j-just happened. I-I don't know- What or why, but- something..."
He tenses as his expression changes from worry to fully-fledged fear.
"S-Something is wrong. Very, very wrong."
"What is it? Can you tell what it is?" Rainbow asks.
"N-No, I-"
Even I jump when a sudden thud is heard to our left. We turn our heads to see something small writhing in the grass, desperately trying to escape from something latched onto it.
Something black creeps over the struggling creature more and more, with each passing second.
Rainbow walks over and kneels down, picking up a small songbird. Its terrified chirps almost seem to echo in the strangely silent forest. I can see why it's so panicked, we all can;
It's covered in Darkness.
Rainbow quickly stands up, and a soft, colorful glow emits from his hands. The Darkness covering the bird suddenly lightens, then crumbles and dissipates into nothing. The bird, after a few seconds of calming down and getting itself upright, spreads its wings and takes off into the same direction the rest of the animals went.
Rainbow turns back to us, clearly scared, but before he can say anything we all notice a familiar, pungent, haunting smell.
Smoke.
Fire.
Rainbow quickly grabs my arm, and the four of us run towards the cave. The odor of ashes gets stronger the closer we get, and I'm soon able to hear the crackles and roaring of a billowing inferno.
We get closer, and we hear the shrieks and hisses of an all too familiar foe.
Darkness soldiers.
And the manic cackling of Shadow.
He's laughing as he orders his inky minions to burn down our home, gripping a singed and crumpled piece of paper in one hand. Darkness beings holding torches set the surrounding trees ablaze, the one with Dark's treehouse already reduced to charred remains. Fire billows out of the cave opening, the piece of wood we used as a door broken into splintered pieces and tossed aside. The rope we once used to swing over the river has been cut off its branch, halfway slipping into the rushing water.
Shadow sees us out of the corner of his eye, as we stand there in shock on the other side of the river. Ashes of the forest and drips of Darkness cover him. He turns to us, smiling.
I want to strike that smug look off his face and feed him his own teeth.
"Well, look at that. Eye for an eye, hm?" Shadow grins. His army stops where they are and faces us as our home burns. "Except instead of a shining pillar of morality, I'm tearing down this... dump. Seriously, a hole in a cliff was the best you could do? At least try to impress me."
The crystal spikes are already jutting out of my wrists before I realize it. Rainbow is starting to float off the ground. Dark's hands have turned into claws surrounded by a fog-like gloom, as his eyes go ebony black. Time's eyes are glowing, but not the usual bright yellow. They're a blood red.
Shadow holds up the piece of paper he has, letting it unfold. It's the drawing Rainbow and I made when we were first creating the emblem of the Vengeful.
"I mean, seriously. What are you? A ragtag club?"
A spark lights his hand ablaze in a deep blue flame, and the paper is nothing but cinders in seconds. He shakes the remains off his hand, and gives us a glaring, arrogant smile.
We prepare our weapons.
Shadow notices and stretches his arms outward, leaving himself open to an attack. As if to say 'Hit me with your best shot'. Like a fool.
"Go on." He sneers.
"Let's see how your little Crystal can save you now."
Rainbow, keeping a steady grip on me so I'm not left behind, glides over the river at a terrifying speed and lands us in the center of the fight, right in front of Shadow. Time and Dark vault themselves over, already striking down a few of the Darkness grunts.
Time quickly slices through the air using his sword, separating heads and limbs from abyssal bodies and stabbing through their viscous flesh, almost like a furious dance. One after the other, Darkness falls to the ground and dissipates, yet Time keeps going. Step by step. Strike by strike. Death by death.
Dark tears through the Darkness in an animalistic manner with his claws, only occasionally using his bow to shoot arrows through their throats. He nearly copies their haunting shrieks and screeches, those sounds burned into all of our minds from how many times we've heard them, but his are harrowingly bone-chilling. It's almost as if his tortured voice is sending ice through their body, like thorns growing rapidly inside them, from how they freeze if they get too close while he shrieked.
Rainbow and I attack Shadow, who's materialized his own twin blades from the Darkness, as he continues to laugh like a madman. I drown out my copy's words as I follow the movements of what Rainbow does, our Crystal connection making me copy him as he uses a pair of daggers he had just gotten at the festival. I make sure my weapons are aimed correctly and move when I can, trying to catch Shadow off guard as he blocks our tandem attacks and tries to swing at us. We only get slight nicks on each other, just mere scratches, because both sides are equally matched. We dodge his attacks, making our fight a pattern of swing, dodge. Swing, dodge.
Swing, dodge.
Swing, dodge.
Swing, dodge.
Swing.
Dodge.
But all patterns must break eventually.
Rainbow and I attack at the same time, making Shadow stumble as he almost misses the chance to parry our slashes. His hands fumble his swords, just for a moment, but a moment is all we need. Facing us, he loses his grin for a moment as he realizes we're both attacking again.
Shadow suddenly drops his weapons and flies upward, making Rainbow hit his covered eye and me get a good-sized slash on his right arm as he tries to escape from our blades' sharp edges. He screeches as he holds his uninjured arm up to his eye, the now cut blindfold falling off his face and onto the ground, as a black liquid begins to pour from his wounds.
Rainbow quickly creates a crystalline shape resembling a hand, using it to grab Shadow and bring him crashing back down to the earth. Shadow gets the wind knocked out of him as he collides with the ground, taking a minute to get up as Rainbow and I point our weapons at him, waiting for him to attack. I've gotten rid of the spikes and have drawn my sword, Rainbow doing the same with his daggers. He's just switched them out for his own sword when Shadow finally stands up again.
He glares at us, his injured eye admittedly shocking me. Instead of a deep red iris and normal sclera, like the other, it's entirely pitch black, save for a pupil-like white dot that twitches and moves erratically. Darkness gushes from that eye, similar to his injuries.
The seconds we stand there, not saying or doing anything, feel like hours. We only stare each other down as the carnage and inferno around us continues.
Finally, Shadow speaks.
"You do know this is only delaying what's inevitable, right?" He says, his grimace turning into a crooked grin as he starts to laugh again, this time it sounding distorted and wheezing. "You can't escape the Darkness. It's gotten a hold on you before, it's only a matter of time before it reclaims you."
His piercing, manic expression makes him look insane as he continues to laugh.
"There is no way out of this war other than surrender! Not even in death will you escape it!"
Rainbow and I's glare stay fixed on him, unfazed as we step forward and bring the tips of our weapons closer to him.
"We've come back from the dead before." Rainbow says.
"And we will do it again if you try to take us down." I continue. "Don't you remember this same song and dance, Shadow? Isn't it familiar?"
Shadow's face falls as he realizes. He remembers now.
But I've always remembered his words.
"You cannot escape, Shadow. Like you said; We are connected. I will always be here to fight you until the day one of us dies... and judging by recent events, it's not gonna be me."
"And I was made to destroy the Darkness." Rainbow says, still glaring at Shadow. "Even if you somehow avoid Sabre's wrath, you will never avoid mine."
Rainbow moves our blades closer to Shadow.
"Never until the end of days will I stop hunting you down."
The rest of the Darkness is gone, Time standing by watching with golden-glowing eyes, waiting for Shadow to do something, while Dark stabs at the motionless body of a grunt over and over again. He's still screaming.
Shadow's eyes dart between all of us, as he takes slow, small steps away from the tips of our weapons.
Lightning suddenly strikes down around him, startling us, and just like that... he's gone again.
Rainbow, Time, and I quickly put away our weapons. Rainbow turns around and uses his power to lift some of the river water from the bank and shower the burning area of the forest with it. It put out most of the fire. Time raises a hand and focuses, reversing some of the damage from the flames. The cave is no longer alight, but it's clear that they couldn't fix all of it. Dark's treehouse is now a charred, broken mess.
Speaking of Dark...
I glance over at him, and he's now just knelt over the body of the Darkness, his claws still embedded in its head. He's catching his breath, crying, glowering as he grits his teeth. His eyes are still pitch black, but I see a small hint of red in them.
The other two notice.
Rainbow helps me walk with them as he and Time make their way over to Dark. We stop in front of him as he starts to break down, tears flowing down his face and onto the lifeless body below him. Time reaches out and tries to talk to him.
"Dark-"
"AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGHHHH!"
Dark suddenly yells again, his voice hoarse and distorted, his claws clenching into fists as the goopy, disfigured flesh squishes and pops between his fingers. The hint of red in his eyes is slightly more visible. The three of us give him space.
"Why?! Why does everyone always have to try to ruin everything we have?!" He yells. "We were free! Free of their war and their control! We were finally happy! We- We finally got to LIVE. Live like actual people instead of some tyrant's war pawns!"
Dark starts repeatedly stabbing his claws into the Darkness, punctuating every few words with another strike.
"Of course someone had to ruin it! Of course someone came to take everything we've worked so hard for! Of course it never mattered how much we tried, how much we gave, how much we sacrificed! It was all going to be taken away from us no matter what we did!"
The ebony liquid made splashes on his face and up his arms as the Darkness began to dissolve. He stops, once again just sitting there with his hands embedded in the black flesh. Tears still cascade down his face.
His arms start to shake as Dark suddenly slouches, hanging his head as he cried. The pitch black with deep red began to disappear from his eyes, starting to gradient back to the orange and yellow we know and love.
"I... I-I..." He stutters. He starts to sob.
Time carefully grasps Dark's arm and pulls him up, bringing him into a hug from all three of us. The Darkness that splattered onto him dissipates from the power of the Crystal. We stand there for a while, all of us starting to cry.
We just lost our home.
"...I just... want to live..." Dark says quietly between cries.
"I know, buddy... we know..." I console him. "...We all do."
"You're not alone anymore, remember. You're with us." Rainbow says.
"And we're going to stay with you." Time adds, wiping away a few tears with his sleeve.
We let go, and turn to the cave. We can all see from here that most of our things are scorched. A few things are okay, thankfully, but... nothing we can really use to rebuild or make a new home. Only small, yet still valuable items remain.
I see Time walk over to the entrance and kneel down to pick up a small, half-charred photo from the ground. It must have been blown out of the cave during the chaos. Looking closer, I see it's a photo of Galaxy that I remember he had on him when he was created... or, what's left of it. Half of the photo is gone, making it so Galaxy's face is burnt away.
Time quickly pockets the remains of the photo, before turning back to us.
"C-C'mon, guys." He says. "Let's see what we can still salvage."
"Okay, but... where do we go now?" Dark asks, wiping his face. "Our home is gone."
"I... don't know." Rainbow sighs.
I think for a moment.
"...I might have an idea." I say.
The other three Vengeful look at me, a small glimmer of hope in their eyes.
"The only place that accepts us as we are. The village."
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Later that evening, we're back in the house the Village Leaders let us stay in.
They were horrified when we told them what happened. They immediately offered to let us stay in their village as long as we needed, and with sort of no other choice... we accepted. They're all so kind... but I can't think of a way to thank them right now. That can be something for another day.
The four of us are just sitting in the living room. We set up the few things we were able to save in the areas they belonged, mostly just little trinkets for our rooms. It actually... hurt. Made us realize just how much we lost in the fire.
I glance around the room. Rainbow is currently slumped against me on the couch, just staring at the wall with a defeated look. Dried tears and soot cover his face, but he doesn't care.
Time is sitting on the ground in front of the coffee table in the center of the room, making a list of things we need to get so we can manage to live in this house, like new kitchen utensils and food supply. It's... a very long list. He's now halfway through the third page, counting how many we'll need of some item for it to last the week.
Dark fell asleep on the other couch, probably worn out from his earlier... episode. I don't blame him for getting that angry. I probably would've done the same, if it weren't for how often this same situation has happened to me. I'm... used to it by now.
The silence is abruptly interrupted by someone knocking on the front door. Rainbow gets up and walks to the door, slowly opening it.
There's a bit of silence before the sound of the door opening a little more quickly, followed by Rainbow's voice.
"Green? What are you doing here, what happened?" He asks. "Why are you crying?"
Time looks up from his list, and hurries to get up and greet Green as well.
"Oh my goodness- Here, come in." I hear Time say, followed by footsteps coming this way and the door closing. "You can tell us everything."
Green enters the living room with Rainbow and Time, and now that he's in view, I can see him crying. One hand clutches his scarf while the other grips a strap of a backpack he's wearing.
Time leads him to the single-person seat in the living room while Rainbow sits back down next to me. Time then goes back to his spot on the floor, as Green sits down and wipes away a few tears.
"Now, what happened, Green?" Time asks gently. "It's okay if you don't want to share all of it."
Green hesitates for a moment.
"I-I... Darkness came to my house with weapons and torches while I was away, a-and..." He says, sniffling. "They burned my house to the g-ground. I-I didn't have any weapons on me, s-s-so all I could do was wait for them to go away. It took hours, b-but eventually they left."
Green motions to his backpack.
"I-I saved as much as I could, but it's not much..." He continues. "I d-didn't have anywhere else to g-go, so I came here... and t-the Village Leaders t-told me it h-happened to you guys t-too."
"Yeah, that... that happened." Rainbow sighs. "We lost pretty much everything, same as you. I'm just glad we met this village just in time... I have no idea what we would've done if it weren't for everyone here. They're so nice..."
"They really are..." Green says with a bittersweet smile.
"So... I guess this is home for all of us now." I say. "All of the Vengeful... right here in this little village."
"Yeah... guess so." Green says. "Funny coincidence, right?"
"It's more of a miracle to me. We're all still okay." Time says. "And now I have to redo this whole list..."
"Don't worry about it, Time. You've done more than enough today."
"Yeah, maybe it'd be better if you just take a break from that for the night and rest." Rainbow adds.
"To be honest, I think we all need some rest." Time says, rubbing an eye. "This... let's just figure this out tomorrow."
"Yeah. All of us... need a moment to process this." Green says, getting up. "I'm going to unpack in my room... goodnight, guys."
We all say goodnight to Green, then get ready to head upstairs ourselves. Rainbow picks up Dark while Time heads upstairs, and we both follow while Rainbow carries Dark.
Once he's in he and Time's room, properly in bed, Rainbow and I head to our rooms. We don't really say anything, just a half-hearted 'goodnight' to each other. We're all tired... and hurt...
...I can only hope that tomorrow is a better day.