Chapter 2- Purity of white thread

The scent of elaborate and mouth-watering food waft over the table and onto the next rooms over as the members of the crew start to eat. Odd faces and appearances fill the seats of the table but every single one of them eat with elegance comparable to royalty as they pick up their food and eat it at their own paces, some eating faster than others and vice versa with the procession lasting upwards of an hour. Horus stands up from the table and leaves after seeing a crow at the windowsill of the dining hall. Its shadow casts over the table with its beak casting onto Horus and its stretched-out wings on to Cessil. Not a single dish was left untouched and with the crew thoroughly full, one by one they stand up and go back to their rooms to check their tasks for the day. Commissions, bounties, and paperwork are placed on top of every crewmate's bed with a black feather resting beside them; a sign of urgency implying that any task with one is of utmost priority and must be finished on time and done perfectly. Their expressions change, from faces of blissful ignorance to faces of serious and focused expressions. The Quillion array read through their tasks, absorbing every piece of information from each piece of paper that was given to them. Each line is clear and concise, written with legible writing in a special ink that fades after a few hours after it is written. Nothing is wrong and no one is ill-prepared. This is a war between the Boros faction and the Quillion array who intend to end it before the opposition can even realize their position in it.

Horus goes outside, walking towards a garden of Lavender and white Heathers where a single crow rests on the hand of a woman with long white hair and eyes, her pale skin glow in the morning light as her beautiful porcelain face is painted with a lonely somber expression, her hands holding on to the satisfied crow that shows a smile while the woman gently pats its head with a single finger. The soft light passes through the leaves and foliage, making the woman glow a beautiful entrancing light; the light bounces off her long white hair that rests over the edge of the seating in the shaded gazebo. Noticing Horus, the woman takes the piece of paper tied to the Crows foot; a sigil with a blank center and intricate inscriptions all around it. Horus sits down beside the woman only sharing a single glance as he waits and reads a book with no title from a cabinet above the seats. The woman closes her eyes as she continues to coddle the crow in her hand who seems to have fallen asleep. The morning is silent with only the sound of the breeze and birds decorating the garden, the scattered footsteps of people echo through the halls of the mansion as the flowers bloom in the sunlight and the occasional sound of pages being flipped. At 9 am in the morning the preparations start to be set.

The longest mission was given to a man named Anton who paces through the harbor with his long brown hair flowing through the sea breeze as he adjusts his thick, rounded glasses while he holds a leather briefcase with a gilded crest of a crow. His open trench coat flies through the wind as he walks past Galleons and fishing boats alike 'till he reaches a sailing boat with tattered sails and aged wood held together by frayed rope and rusted nails.

"Errant island, East dock." Anton requests as he sits down in the back of the boat while the old captain of the ship unties it from the dock. His sturdy hands untie the heavy rope with ease and his eyes remain straight as he tells Anton the price for the ferry and pushes the boat off the dock, opening the sails and leaving the harbor. Errant island is one of the Boros faction's main bases of operation. Before the faction mysteriously grew in notoriety, Errant Island was the home for the small band of pirates.

Once the captain left the harbor, he starts to pick up speed moving faster and faster as the waves start to split behind them; the flying droplets of water refracting the white light of the sun making a rainbow below the turquoise sky. Anton is unfazed by the sudden spike in speed as he calmly sits still. Holding on to his bag as he looks behind him, the harshening winds fly through his hair growing stronger and stronger until he hears a sonic boom that only gets him to blink. A few moments later, the boat slows down considerably as they reach Errant's east harbor. Anton places 30 gold pieces on the seat of the ship walking off to a big building in the middle of the city, branded with a crest of a sword and spear, with the sun making the greenery around the building glow a lively array of colors as Anton walks into the building with a quick pace. This, is the police station of Errant. Opening his bag Anton places a yellow folder and tells the men behind the counter "Some information on some of your cases." Crimes and missing cases that have happened all around Errant in the past few months, featuring amazing detail of how the crimes were done. Hidden evidence, dead bodies, murder weapons, and traitors among the police force. Information that was so intricately organized it didn't feel like a simple tip reading through it. It felt like reading a history book, and the perpetrator for over half of these cases; The Boros faction.

"What in the world?"

Placing down 1000 gold coins on the wooden countertop as well as a business card and a copy of a certificate to run for a detective agency called "Raven's agreement" Anton requests the police force to reinvestigate the closed and ongoing investigations with the evidence he had gave, making a serious expression as he tilts his head downwards looking up to the two at the desk. Thanking the men at the front desk, Anton leaves the police station and heads towards the road leading to Errant's Plaza.

"Mortal's bleed, no matter the status or position." Anton says as he scatters papers in the streets of Errant walks towards an ivory platform surrounded by giant runes made of bedrock. Stepping on the platform, it starts to shine a beacon of light after Throwing 5 gold coins to the center along with a paper with the image of another country's flag which burns into a blue flame as Anton fades into the beacon of light and into the center of a similar platform. The same flag from the paper Anton burned flows through the wind standing atop a tall pole next to the platform as the streets are filled with hustle and bustle from merchants and tourists. Anton repeats the same routine over and over again in almost every country where the Boros faction had a name for itself.

Anton's gift is an indispensable power to find any and all information on a person or group of his choosing from his briefcase. Anton gets to choose what information he gets out of his target. At first this was incredibly difficult for Anton to control making it almost completely useless before he met Horus. Horus taught and trained Anton along with every member of the Quillion array by ______________and after ___ years Anton was able to control his powers so well that he could bring down an entire nation on his own by leaking crucial information to the country's rivals or scandals from the country's hierarchy, destroying them from the inside. The Quillion array's Feathered quill, Anton.

Cessil stands near the shore of Aramus in the form of navy death surrounded by a thick unyielding fog as he shares the senses and thoughts of millions of monsters out at sea. Searching the area of the Boros faction's battle with the Quillion array. Cessil covered the entire area in a thick fog that puts anyone who enters it in a deep sleep to avoid any interruptions during his search, pushing any boat that enter the fog back to shore.

As Cessil continues to search, a school of grotesque monsters similar to barracuda find a floating body along with an ivory chest with the Boros faction crest on it. Cessil notices the find and sends a giant disgusting monster from under the sea to retrieve the items.

A giant silhouette of a sperm whale swims to the surface of the sea, moving towards the chest and the body at a fast pace, jumping out the water beneath the body and hiding it in its large mouth. Its eye sockets are empty and its rotting guts are spilling out into the sea, its bones protrude from its body while its fins and tail decay and wither. The whale retrieves the objects and brings it back to shore for Cessil to check.

The search continued for three more hours before concluding. The only items of value that were found was the Ivory box and the floating corpse which Cessil hides in a crate that he prepared before heading out. At 12 o' clock Cessil heads back, dissipating the fog around him

At 11 o'clock in the morning Gabriel, Michael, and Lucas head back to the headquarters with a thick fog surrounding them. Michael clears the way by turning the fog around them into dust, making a sizeable radius around them visible while Gabriel lights the way using a glowing stone attached to a stick. Reaching the Mansion, the three go to the kitchen to grab something small to eat before they go to their quarters to see their mission.

Inside their room they don't find a letter on their beds but are met with a white crow holding onto a scroll of paper in its silver talons. If a black feather meant the task has urgency, a white crow means the task must be finished with skill surpassing perfection and must be done in the earliest time possible. Or else a devastating blow to the faction's stability may trigger. Glancing at each other the three nods in unison as Lucas pulls out a white string and tightens his grip on it. Revealing more white string wrapped around Michael and Gabriel which gets tighter as they turn into light and travel through the string like a jolt of electricity. Suddenly, in a short blinding flash of light, the three appear at the ship a few meters above the ground with some momentum behind them which the three use to dash towards opposite ends of the ship with Lucas being left in the middle of the ship.

Michael shoots the ship out of the dock with a giant gust of dust, cushioning the fall with a big clump of sand on the opposite side of the boat while Lucas starts to reveal thousands of still threads in the center of the ship. Thousands of white strings rush through the air spiraling towards Lucas under the crow's nest which gets enveloped by emerald green stones that rise and grow from the pole, leaving only the basket of the crow's nest untouched as Lucas uses the rushing threads to swing onto the basket of the crow's nest where he surrounds himself in the white threads, creating a ball that keep growing as sand and dust wrap around the emerald tower which rises above the clouds while also reinforcing the base of the emerald tower by creating a pool of overflowing sand in the deck of the ship that holds down the tower by grabbing it by the base while the overflowing sand become solid pillars like melted candle wax which prevents the ship from sinking from the weight or tipping.

In the middle of a fogged over sea is a giant emerald tower that pierces the skies and enters the heavens while hectic spools of thread and rivers of sand spiral around the giant tower. Everything stops for but a moment. Someone's clapping hands could be heard as the fog gets pushed back by a burst of wind from the tower, revealing a beautiful emerald green surrounded by flowing sands and white threads that rush towards a glowing ball of string from all directions. After a few moments, the tower starts to change starting from the bottom. The emerald green turns into a jet-black stone that rush up the tower with the sand that encompass the entire tower sticking to the transformed stone as symbols and glyphs as soon as the emerald stones turn black. Reaching the top of the tower, four giant spikes burst out from the edges of the square tower. As soon as the transformation of the tower ends, the giant ball of white thread that formed at the basket of the crow's nest unwinds itself and passes through a hole in the center of the tower where it rushes towards the top like a raging river, gushing out the top of the tower where it's met with the view of an endless expanse of space that goes infinitely in every direction filling the sky with stars and celestial bodies revolving around a bright yellow sun. Passing through the four spikes the rushing river of threads turn into a peaceful ocean of string going in every direction, all around the globe. Invisible to anyone but the Quillion array. At 11:45 am, the trio of the Quillion array finishes their vital assignment.

Back at the garden, Horus finishes his book after sensing most of the faction have gotten back, most with calm expressions while others have hasted breathing from finishing their missions. All of them, without a scratch on their faces. A crow flies into the Gazebo and turns into a beautiful woman with black hair and red eyes. "12:15. Everything is set and ready. The insurance plan is going smoothly as well." The crow reports in front of Horus whose eyes glow in a warm red as he looks towards the crow.

"Good work, tell the maids to bring a bigger feast tonight." Horus requests with red eyes that give off a sense of safety as he walks towards the center of the garden picking up the crate Cessil brought back a few minutes earlier as he leaves the gazebo. Opening the crate in the middle of the garden Horus takes the Ivory box and tips the crate to get the dead body out. In the Ivory box is a tooth that oozes a deadly miasma that makes it hard to breath in the garden.

Horus uses the tooth to prick his finger to no avail, even going as far as to imbue it with intense magic that increased the potency of the miasma from the tooth making the flowers wither slightly. But still it failed to pierce Horus' flesh. Annoyed Horus destroys the tooth simply by casting it aside, the crow fills with awe as she witnesses the consumption of an object that left even her unable to breath, be consumed in a fog of black winds, never to be seen again. Failing to create a cut using the tooth Horus proceeds to use his own magic.

The open garden starts to grow dark as streams of a black substance flow out from the ground, making the flowers wither and the grass start to burn a black flame as a black needle forms above Horus's fingertip, growing stronger as more of the black substance flows into the end of the needle, spinning together turning into a giant spike made of ribbons of black magic that sucks the life out of everything in the garden except the crows who only feel the devastating pressure of Horus' spell and eyes that are filled with a terrifying crimson that gives the onlooking crows a cold chill. After a few more moments Horus plunges the giant spike of black magic into his own thumb creating a deafening sound as the light around the garden completely disappears and only the complete sense of dread is left in the hearts of the crows until the light returns to the sight of a Horus with only a small cut on his thumb, deep enough to make him bleed only a drop of blood which he uses to mark the paper the white crow gave her and placing it on the corpse of the Boros faction member making It glow and burn a blue flame, consuming the body leaving nothing behind.

12:10 pm at the giant tower detached from the sea. Lucas feels a sudden surge of power as his strings turn into a bright radiant gold that spreads all around the entire world. A sight only visible to members of the Quillion array but a sight that instills hope and notifies every member of the Array that an obstacle has been cleared from the path of Horus' wish. A wish that even though is unknown to them, they follow without questioning.

The tower collapses on to itself like a telescope with Lucas falling out of the crow's nest unconscious only to be caught by a wave of dust made by Michael. The Quillion array's victory has been cemented with not a single trace of the Boros faction left in the universe. Everything they may have ever done has been removed from history itself, being replaced only with bright days and silent evenings with only the Quillion array being the only people who will ever remember the name of the Boros faction. Aside from a scent of magic that lingers in the north, which Horus is notified about after the three returns after cleaning the ship.

In less than 6 hours, the Quillion array effortlessly eradicated a goliath from history itself. Painting the skies with a silent sun and tranquil seas while they prepare for their next skirmish.

Next chapter: Arrogance of a Minor god