➵ 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐉𝐄𝐂𝐓: 𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐒 [𝐊.𝐓𝐇]

"It's lonely in here."

You realize I can answer all of your questions if you would just let me OUT, darling.

You contemplated this for a moment. Could you let him out? What happened before... it seemed all you had to do was swing the sword, and he would appear. But did you want him to?

A vision of him casually flicking his wrist and letting a decapitated head of a harpy roll over to rest at your feet entered your mind, and you flinched involuntarily. After he had effortlessly killed the first harpy, the rest had all met their ends, drowning in shrieks and fruitless flaps of jagged, ugly wings and black, thick, oily blood in less than ten seconds. Buuuut you hadn't been paying much attention, because you were too busy screaming.

The thing was, in most of the stories, the escaped spirit would yell something along the lines of 'I'M FREE' or 'FEEL MY WRATH, MORTALS HAHAA' or in rare cases 'TREMBLE, MORTAL, BEFORE THE SLAVE OF THE LAMP' etc. Except the godly, red-haired man hadn't done any of that. All he did was raise and eyebrow and smirk at you while you, on the other hand, were still backing up as fast as you possibly could, all worry about getting in trouble with Ms. Adra for losing the prized sword gone.

It only took the strange warrior with red hair who was dressed in strange linen clothes that were so wasted away they looked like the seams would snap at any minute, the clothes doing literally nothing to hide his toned muscles about a second to catch up to you as he titled his head at you and smirked that alluring, dangerous smirk. His long fingers wrapped themselves around your clothed wrist and he smirked wider.

"Babygirl," he'd purred, pulling you closer, "don't run."

Okay so you had been terrified at the moment, but what DEFINITELY didn't help matters was that this weird person who'd just killed like fifteen harpies (you hadn't quite realized what they had been then, but now, as you sat on the couch, you remembered from you lessons with Adra that they were monsters from Greek myths, which didn't help your sanity WHATSOEVER) was 1) SERIOUSLY HOT and 2) making a move on you.

You brain was literally roasted, toasted, chopped into tiny pieces and then pureed on top of it all.

Thank goodness for the fact that at that very moment, his hand had traveled down your hoodie sleeve and brushed against the skin of your hand.

He had stiffened, like you'd shocked him with some of your old friend playground static electricity, although you didn't feel anything. You had pulled your arm away, narrowing your eyes in confusion when he didn't react.

And that was when you realized that he was dissolving into a shimmery, red dust again, the trail leading right to the tip of the bronze sword in his hand, now suddenly glowing crimson once more.

Red was such a pretty color. It was the color of roses, of life, of valentines day cards, and crackling flames. It was the color of the warmest socks you had in your closet, the fluffy ones you loved wearing on winter nights. It was the color of the lipstick you smeared across your lips when you were hunting for boys.

It's also the color of his hair.

It was a color you couldn't even try to get out of your mind at this point, the memory of red dust still swirling around in your mind. You head hurt like hell as you shivered, holding helpless tears back and trying your hardest to understand what had happened to you over the course of the past half hour (although it most definitely felt like a whole lot longer). Chewing on your bottom lips so hard you could taste metallic blood in your mouth, you turned your attention to the sword again.

After the strange man had mysteriously been sucked back into the sword (with no lack of yells and cries mostly consisting of 'ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?' that you would have found amusing had your mind not been so screwed up at that moment), you had essentially just fell to the ground, not even caring that the desiccated corpses of harpies were all around you, not even caring that their oily blood was soaking your clothes and staining your skin, not even caring that you had been this close to death.