Philosophical

三

Warning: contains swear words. Feiya has a secret devil's tongue :)

    "Oh, curses," Feiya muttered, running around the kitchen, gathering ingredients furiously. She glanced at the impatient adeptus leaning by the doorway and grimaced at his enraged glare. Why? Why did she accept Verr's request? What idiocy had taken her over?

She scanned all the items she had prepared. The kitchen ran out of soy milk. Hopefully, plain milk would suffice. Almonds, naturally. Sugar... where's the almond extract? Feiya rummaged through the cupboards, head cloudy and heavy.

She paused, blinking slowly. 'Oh, shoot, what was I looking for again?'

'Almond extract, obviously! Keep going!'

"Almond extract, almond extract..." She moved on to the shelves of boxes.

"Oh, shut up, won't you? Your mumbling is incredibly annoying!" The adeptus growled and stamped his foot.

"How about you shut up instead? Archons!" Feiya frowned at him in frustration, eyes starting to water. She cursed at herself for talking back. He definitely wasn't letting it slide. Just by the tense atmosphere alone, anyone could tell he was on the brink of snapping.

Feiya shoved a bin back into the racks and looked through another, her lungs and heart aching, as if somebody had dropped a boulder on her chest and left it sitting there. Gosh, she really thought the day couldn't get worse. She really thought! Her hands managed to grasp a small, cylindrical container of almond extract, and she sighed with relief.

The adeptus suddenly jumped in front of her and gripped her collar with cold infuriation. Feiya yelped as the container slipped from her hands and crashed onto the ground. Broken glass littered the floor.

"For God's sake," he muttered. "Look at me." Feiya huffed in a whirl of annoyance, hatred, and weariness. The adeptus clenched his fists tighter when Feiya continued staring at the ground.

"Listen, you filthy human. I've been tirelessly working and fighting for this place for longer than you could ever imagine with that goddamned peanut brain of yours! And what do I get in return? Oh, some random fool sleeping away while I'm on the brink of collapsing," he laughed with malicious fury swirling in his amber eyes.

Feiya only gave him a look of disgust and horrid fear. "You... you're such a fucking baby," she mumbled, her heart beating wildly at the extreme gamble of words.

The adeptus growled in rage and knocked her back into the shelves. Feiya winced as she heard multiple items fall. She looked up and saw the boy taking slow steps towards her, his spear in hand.

He kneeled down and sneered at her with an angry smile. "Hey, brat," he whispered. "I could end you right now. And I think I will."

In a swift motion, the blade of his spear drew beads of blood from Feiya's neck. She squeezed her eyes shut at the stinging, and her heart pounded in her ears. Everything was dizzy and shifting and spinning and

she felt like throwing up and her head hurt in waves of suffocating pain and

her feet were unbearably sore and her throat felt dry and burnt and

and her body felt slow and mucky with sweat and this adeptus was being incredibly unfair and

she felt helpless

and small

And all she could do was sit there.

Rather than more despair, rage began to overflow her veins. Furious thoughts crashed into one another like rapid waves in a thunderstorm. And just like that, she was filled to the brim with hatred. Not just towards the mad adeptus, but also the stupid inn full of happy people, and all the sleepless nights, and all the soreness in her body. Hatred towards everything, towards life in general, because did she deserve all of this? No. (This could very well be a lie in her opinion, but that is what she willed herself to believe at the moment.)