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Sebastien tossed and turned all night. Every time he was about to drift off, the sound of something screeching outside woke him. And if it wasn't a shrieking animal or the walls rattling, it was the sight of Clementine's lifeless face that kept him up.
He rolled over onto his right side and looked at Caleb, who was sleeping on the floor wrapped in several blankets. His eyes shifted to the books they'd both been reading before deciding it was time to sleep and then he stared out of the window. All he had to do was feed that phantom and he'd get the answers he needed for Lord Caedis. He looked at Caleb again. The part of him that was trying to be a better person told him to wait until the morning and grab a prisoner, but the part of him that was hung up on who he used to be urged him to drag the kid down into the crypt and use him as a sacrifice.
That was all it would take. The kid was right there.
No. He wasn't that guy anymore. It wasn't right to manipulate, use, and kill anyone he pleased. Clementine taught him that there were people out there who deserved to die, but Caleb wasn't one of them. All Caleb wanted to do was find a way to save his mother from the disease something out here was spreading. Sebastien wasn't going to kill him. Caleb deserved better than that.
He rolled onto his back and glared up at the ceiling. Just one more day. He could survive one more day without Clementine....
Right?
Sebastien closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
But a voice crept in through the cracks in the walls.
"Sebastien..." it called.
He frowned in response; he was sure that it was the phantom getting impatient, but when he glanced at the window, the creature wasn't hovering out there and staring in at him.
"Sebastien..." it called again.
With an aggravated frown, he sat up and shuffled closer to the window.
And there it was. There he was.
The hitchhiker.
He stood at the edge of the murky forest bordering the estate, appearing as a normal human man...but as a flash of lightning cut through the fog, the man was suddenly a rotting corpse.
Lightning shimmered again, and he was a crooked skeleton on the ground.
And when it struck a final time, the hitchhiker was gone.
Sebastien's frown thickened. Why did he see that again? First on his way into Alderon, and just now.... What did it mean? Why did the mere thought of a hitchhiker put him on edge?
He stared out of the window, waiting to see if he'd show up again. But he sat there until the sun started rising, and he didn't see so much as a fox.
Despite how many hours he'd had to think, he couldn't work out why he was seeing that hitchhiker. Was he even real, or was he a figment of his imagination? But how could he be? Caleb was talking about a hitchhiker not too long ago—a hitchhiker who was currently waiting to be hanged for murdering the people who picked him up.
Could the guy have been telling the truth when he said he was possessed?
Sebastien shook his head. Why was he even thinking about it? This hitchhiker had nothing to do with what he was doing here. He had to feed the phantom, find Henry to confirm his death, and then find the creature responsible for the sickness. Nowhere in there was there any mention of a hitchhiker.
He moved away from the window and got back into bed.
"Oh, you're up?" came Caleb's voice.
With a quiet sigh, Sebastien dragged his hand over his face. Had he really been awake that long? "Yeah," he mumbled.
"You sleep okay?"
"Sure did," he lied, rolling his eyes.
Caleb sat up. "You know, I'm kinda surprised."
Sebastien glanced at him and tried his best to sound interested, "Oh?"
"With the like...phantom and all the dead things, I was kinda expecting this place to be...well...horrifying at night. I was worried we might have to fight off ghosts."
"Trust me, if there were ghosts here, they wouldn't be trying to hurt us. Ghosts are probably the calmest of all astral Caeleste."
"Astral Caeleste?"
"Yeah. Ghosts, phantoms, spectres. All those guys. They're called astral Caeleste."
"So...ghosts and spirits and stuff are all different."
"Yes," he muttered, closing his eyes as his irritancy grew harder to contain. But now that the kid was awake, they could head into town and fetch a prisoner. "You ready to go?" he asked, sitting up.
Caleb frowned. "Like...right now? Can't I wash up and have breakfast?"
Sebastien got out of bed and pulled his coat on. "Does it look like you're gonna find a shower around here? Or a sink or any running water, actually."
The human looked around. "But...your boss' guy was staying here before us, right? Surely, he had to get water and...got to the bathroom?"
With a deep, stressful sigh, Sebastien shook his head and rubbed his temple. "Look, dude. I just wanna get out of here, grab the prisoner, and get back here so I can feed the phantom. Is it really too much to ask that you wait to have your shower until we're done with that?" he exclaimed calmly.
Caleb started looking a little flustered.
Sebastien frowned at him. "What?"
He shuffled around uncomfortably. "I...need the toilet."
"Oh, my God," Sebastien exclaimed. "Just piss outside."
"I...don't need to pee."
Sebastien grimaced and slipped his shoes on. "You know what? Fine. Go find a bathroom. There's probably a million in this house."
Caleb stood up and frowned nervously. "You're...not gonna come with me?"
"Uh...no?"
"What if something gets me?!"
He wanted to snap at him and tell him to stop being a wuss, but he had a point. What if an undead raccoon or something else came out of the woodwork and attacked Caleb? He already decided that he didn't want to let this kid die, so he wasn't going to risk letting an undead animal make a meal out of him.
"Fine," he said with a sigh. "Get ready to go first. We're leaving for Alderon right after you're done."
Caleb nodded as he started frantically pulling the rest of his clothes on. Then, once he was ready, he hurried out of the room, and Sebastien followed.
They rushed to the end of the hall, turned left, and found a bathroom at the very back of the corridor. When Caleb went inside, Sebastien waited outside—but not too close to the door—and kept a lookout for anything odd or undead.
But the only foul stench around here was coming from the bathroom.
Sebastien grunted and took a few steps away from the door. He waited...and waited...and finally, the door opened, and Caleb stepped out.
"Uh...sorry that took a sec. I was kinda nervous."
"Whatever," Sebastien said as he started leading the way down the hall. "Let's just get the hell out of here."
Sebastien led them through the house and out to the courtyard. When he saw his car was covered in wolfsbane vines again, he got Caleb to help him pull them all off and then got into the car.
"This stuff grows faster than anything I've seen," Caleb mumbled, wiping his hands on his trousers. "Oh, crap...that's what we forgot to do."
"What?" Sebastien mumbled, starting the engine.
"We forgot to grind the wolfsbane up."
Sebastien sighed irritably. "And I forgot to call my fucking roommates," he muttered.
"Oh, you live with people?"
As Sebastien drove out the gates and followed the murky forest road, he shrugged and watched the trees pass by. "Yeah. Mavis and Mathew."
"What are they like?"
"I don't know. One of them talks a lot; she rhymes all the time. I think it's a fae thing—she's fae."
"I've never met a fae before."
"The other guy—Mathew—is a berserker. He's a bit creepy if I'm being honest. Kinda just lingers around and doesn't say much. Speaks real slow, too."
Caleb smiled amusedly. "They sound fun. I had this roommate in high school. Yeah, he was, uh...something. The kinda guy who skipped all his classes and begged for help with his homework because he knew I was the nerd."
Sebastien glanced at him. "Yeah, you do give off nerdy vibes."
He rolled his eyes. "I did hear what you said to that phantom last night."
"Speaking of," Sebastien said, looking over at him again. "You seem to be handling all of this pretty well for a human. Like, you guys know Caeleste exist, sure, but knowing and seeing are two different things."
Caleb shrugged. "Some stuff still shocks me, yeah...but I've seen my fair share of Caeleste stuff. I saw a wolf walker once. It just ran across our cottage yard chasing a deer."
"Cottage?"
"Oh, my mother and I used to have this little cottage out in Adenarough Forest before we moved to Ulrora Slope so she could train to be a nurse. Then we moved out to Alderon. There were a lot of practices that needed nurses, but she wanted to come here because she missed the countryside."
"Mm. I used to live around a lot of forest. Then I moved to Eimwood, and now I'm out here."
"Wait, Eimwood? You mean, Uzlia Eimwood?"
"Yeah. I don't know where everyone else who graduated Aldergrove Academy went to in the New World, but my roommates and I ended up there. Well, I say ended up, but I chose to settle there so I could find Lord Caedis. You know the rest," he explained as he turned right onto the road towards Alderon. "You only see wolf walkers out there?" he then asked. He didn't want to talk about himself anymore. Soon, he was sure that Caleb would try to get him to talk about Clementine, and that wasn't going to happen.
Caleb looked over at him. "Well, there was a pack out there. They owned the whole state. But it wasn't just them, though. I saw a couple arieto at one point—you know, the big deer things with cat tails—and then I even saw a unicorn once."
"Huh...those are one of the rarest—"
"—Caeleste beasts out there," Caleb said, finishing his sentence.
Sebastien nodded slowly, and as he saw the town through the fog ahead, he sat up straight. "All right, so direct me to this prison."
Caleb drawled, "Uh...yeah...um...it's just...turn...."
"Turn where?" Sebastien questioned. "I'm coming up on the fork here, I gotta—"
"Left, left!" he shouted.
Sebastien grunted and swerved left. Luckily, there were no other cars in front or behind him to honk and yell, but that didn't make him any less angry at Caleb. "Dude, what the fuck?"
"Sorry, sorry. I just...well...."
He looked over at him for a second and saw that he was twiddling his fingers together. "What? What did you just?"
"Well—"
"Caleb?!" he exclaimed impatiently.
"It's not a normal prison!" he blurted.
Sebastien scowled and slammed on the break. "Excuse me?!" he questioned, glaring at him.
Caleb backed away as much as he could and looked down at the floor. "W-well...it is prison, just...not for humans."
"Just...not for humans?" he repeated angrily.
"Yeah. It's...for Caeleste," Caleb said nervously.
Sebastien scoffed and shook his head. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me. Why didn't you just tell me this in the first place?! I could have used a minute or two to get prepared beforehand!"
"Prepared for what?"
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe for breaking a prisoner out?!"
Caleb lifted his head and looked at him. "Wait, what? Breaking out?"
"Yes, Caleb! God!" Sebastien exclaimed, flailing his arms around. "What...what did you think was gonna happen? We were just gonna walk in there and be like, 'Oh, hi, we were wondering if we could borrow one of your lifers for a ritual sacrifice, please, thank you.' Dumbass!"
"You don't have to be so mean about it!"
"I wouldn't have to be if you weren't so damn stupid! Do you literally not think ahead at all?!"
The kid pouted sadly and hung his head in shame. "I'm sorry, I just thought...well...you're a demon, and I heard all these stories that demons are really good at talking their way into things. Some of them even have like...mind control."
"Oh, mind control?" he mocked, waving his hands around his head. "Do I look like I can mind control people, Caleb?"
Caleb glanced at him. "I don't kn—"
"The answer is no!"
"Sorry," he mumbled.
There were no words for Sebastien to explain how furious he felt right now. He wanted to scream. He wanted to grab something and smash something and kill some.... No. No killing. No smashing. He was going to be calm.
Calm.
He took a deep breath and placed his hands on the steering wheel. Caleb was helping him out...and although this human was a bit of an idiot, he did value him. If he scared him away, then getting things done might take longer than he wished.
"Just...tell me where thing place is," he grumbled as he started driving again.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you it was a Caeleste prison. Sometimes, I just do this thing where I forget details," Caleb mumbled sullenly.
"It's fine. Now, can you tell me where we're going before we get to the end of this road?" Sebastien asked, waving his arm at the deserted town road he was following.
Caleb nodded. "It's a right up here."
Sebastien turned right, and as Caleb gave him directions, he followed each one until they were at least a mile away from Alderon. And when he saw the gloomy compound he was approaching, he slowed down a little.
"Is this it?" he asked, glancing at Caleb.
"Uh...yeah."
Sebastien veered left and parked behind an old shed.
"Why are you stopping here?"
Was this guy really that clueless? He sighed and shut the engine off. "Because I'm not just going to go marching in the front door, am I? That's a Caeleste prison. There's gonna be guards and all kinds of security to keep Caeleste in there. I need to survey the area and come up with a way to get in there and grab someone."
"Oh...right, yeah. Makes sense. Uh...do you need my help?"
"No," he immediately denied. He was certain that this kid would only end up getting in the way. But then again, a distraction might help a lot. "Well," he said, eyeing the compound walls. "Can you drive?"
"Uh...yeah," he said with a nod.
Sebastien couldn't see any Caeleste or guards, but he could sense them. There were at least fifty separate life force auras on the other side of those walls, and some of them were much stronger than others. "Are all the Caeleste in there condemned to death?"
"As far as I'm aware, yeah."
"All right. Here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna sneak around and find a place to strike. You are going to wait exactly five minutes, and then you're going to start honking the horn and driving around like a maniac. That'll distract at least some of the guards for a few moments, and that's all I need to snatch someone. Understand?"
Caleb nodded. "Okay, I got it."
"Exactly five minutes," Sebastien repeated firmly. "Not a second before, not a second after."
"Five minutes on the dot. I got you," he assured him.
Sebastien opened his door. "Good."
"W-what about like...when you've grabbed the guy?"
"Drive back half a mile down the road and I'll meet you there."
"You're...gonna walk?"
"Tch, no," he said, getting out of the car. "I'll run."
Sebastien shut the door and then headed towards the nearby trees. He made sure he got deep enough into the woods so that Caleb couldn't see him, and then morphed into his kludde form. The last thing he needed right now was to scare Caleb with his true appearance. The kid said he'd seen a lot of Caeleste, but Sebastien was certain he'd not seen anything like him.
He pressed his black, wolfish paws into the soil and stretched his bat-like wings. It felt like a huge relief to finally unfold them. He shook his body, pricked his ears up, and focussed his eyes on the compound. In and out. That was how this was going to go. Easy. No problems. No side-tracking. Just a simple, quick snatch. He could do this.
With a deep exhale, he readied himself...and disappeared into the fog. Just a few more hours, and he'd have everything Lord Caedis wanted.
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