Nathaniel's Revelation

"Hello worthless! Miss me?"

At first Nathaniel found that his mind had staggered, and he froze, blank and confused, but he had heard her clearly enough. The words seemed to echo with a sickening reverberation as he stared back at the queen's unpleasant sneer, which in this sharp, hyper-detailed, and dark world her sneer took on a depth that was utterly frightful, for until this very second he had not seen her outside of an Andalasian atmosphere.

Worthless? His mind finally gathered back wits enough to form words without speech, but he still sat as frozen and blank as a rather pathetic gargoyle save for his wide blinking stare.

Only just moments before, after having witnessed several people using these little black boxes called phones, a voice from inside the vehicle had prompted him to press the numbers on the phone available to him in order to get professional relationship assistance, but it had not been quite as helpful as he had hoped it would be. The voice now inside the phone could still be heard inquiring about where Nathaniel had gone.

"Hello?" asked the female voice. "Hello? Mr. N?"

Yes, worthless... thought Nathaniel sluggishly. Completely and utterly so.

Narissa smiled and serpentine eyes shifted lazily to the phone which to promptly plucked from Nathaniel's hand with no effort, for Nathaniel had zero strength in any of his limbs even had he the will to keep it.

The relief he felt when her eyes had shifted, made Nathaniel confused all over again, but he closed his eyes and as if to refresh himself and watched as Narissa spoke in a sarcastic tone. "Mr. N is a little busy right now. You'll have to finish your little chat later, 'kay?"

Putting the phone down, she placed once again her full attention upon Nathaniel.

"Come on, don't just sit there," she told him, in an exceptionally good mood considering he had caused her to come to this horrible world by being such a miserable and, yes, worthless fool in trying to accomplish her orders despite what he thought to be the extremity of them.

Almost playfully, she had the grace to open the door for him instead of making him open it himself, but somehow it did not make him feel better about it. It made him feel only all the more worthless. It felt somehow as if she was telling him that he was too worthless even to open a door.

Swallowing hard on his dry throat, he stepped out onto the walkway he felt just a bit as though he had been enchanted into jam, as if he would collapse beneath that mighty presence of his beloved Queen Narissa into a big pile of fruity slop. Yet though his legs were shaking he found them stronger than he had supposed as followed after Narissa like a bad dog with its tail between its legs.

He stumbled clumsily along before stopping before a magnificent fountain, sharp and almost eerie looking in the glow of the queer lights and flashing mirrors to other places all around them. It looked queer even before Narissa stirred up the water with her magic to find out the location of Giselle, the girl that they so desperately wanted to get rid of.

His eyes widened as he stared, for though he had seen her perform magic many times over, for the first time he felt the dark aura emanating from Narissa's person as she caught sight of the girl looking behind her shoulder as though she felt that dark aura herself somehow of Narissa watching her in her magic circle.

He had never noticed before. It may have been a strange thought, but Nathaniel had already considered that in this world the more one observed the more there was to be observed, but he did not like the thought combined with watching her. Her gleeful, almost maniacal hatred oozed with such apparent force in her flashing eyes gleaming, and he felt suddenly chilled, almost naked.