🔥🔥🔥
"Hey, looks like there's still a child in this stupid dump," announced the burly man proudly, snorting as he half-dragged the boy towards their camp — which happened to be the church he so wanted to see.
The young thief bent his head and lowered his gaze in submission. It was always better to act as if you respected them, Asagai could proudly say that from experience. Otherwise they'd beat you black and blue like the dog you were.
"Twelve, thirteen, fourteen..." Another man counted the children lined up in a bored expression, bloodshot and tired eyes glaring enviously at the other rooks groping a few young ladies and lifting up their skirts with the sheath of their swords. Others squirmed but said nothing, while a certain woman scowled and swatted the man's weapon away with her bare hand.
It didn't end well, however, and Asagai had to look elsewhere to avoid the perverse way the other rooks taught her a lesson.
"Fifteen if you include this one," the man added, shoving Asagai so harshly he nearly fell flat on his face. "Too bad that man with him was a fast runner, bet we could've used him for dragging the carts."
Fast runner. Asagai almost laughed bitterly. Emberchase had left him, and he only ran and ran to save his own skin. The boy was right, after all.
Selfish. Stupid, selfish Emberchase.
His small hands curled themselves up into balls so tightly, and his nails almost dug another tear through the bandages Emberchase had wrapped around his palms.
Selfish. Emberchase was selfish!
"Hmm... betrayal is indeed a bitter, sour thing that consumes the heart and fills it with all those shitty emotions like pain, right?" a catlike voice purred in front of the boy, followed by something metallic swishing back and forth, cutting sharply into the air.
Emberchase called the man 'Foxface,' Asagai recalled, but then he shook his head violently, all in order to disperse the thoughts about the man. ‘Quit thinking about that selfish scumbag, Asagai! He's gone, the fork-tongued liar!’
"Well, there's nothing we can do about Emberchase for now," Foxface recited the words as if he had said them every time some vagrant escaped their grasp. However, that little hint of a sneer didn't go unnoticed by the boy.
"Though I'd bet your fat, ugly head that Lord Hyl would be extremely pleased if we brought his shitty little fire-dancer back." The knife-thrower thrust his dagger towards the boorish man's chest lightly, making sure that at least no wound came into the flesh.
"Watch those insults, Reisyce. I'm tolerating your attitude just because your Lord Hyl's right-hand man," retorted the man, slapping away the knife from Reisyce's hand. The latter only chuckled darkly, with no hint of bemusement on his tone.
"Get on with it then, Snapjaw!" yelled Reisyce so loudly that it made the burly Snapjaw and Asagai jump.
"Have the rest of the watchers spread out and hunt that Emberchase!" His voice was so cutting and urgent that the rest of the men lazing around stood up and hastily gripped their weapons. They got out the church, their heavy boots stomping loudly against the muddy marbled floor.
Soon after, the rest of the ruined church returned to its original slumber, with the only occasional sounds of the sobbing children silenced by a redheaded rook's rhythmic foot taps.
The statues of the angels of God, most townsfolk call them Illya, watched upon the ruthless happenings with their blank, chipped faces. The young lad's insides squirmed. Those stony irises seemed to be watching his every move. An empty, dust-covered altar rested on the northern quarters of the building, with those winged, hollow definitions of angels reaching out like ghostly monsters. Their halos seemed broken, and the carved dresses that had reached the ground were worn and lacked the smooth surface it possessed before.
A few pieces of gnarly mold reached out for the ornaments made out of bamboo, which had been set to the side, along with most of the chairs, probably by the other rooks.
"Can't believe he still slipped out, that shitty, slimy, lily-livered eel..." Foxface was still muttering about his failure to capture the fire-dancer when Asagai caught his attention once more. The knife-thrower bent down and placed his knife under the thief's chin. He smiled tauntingly as the boy's charcoal irises stared in a defiant manner. The lad did his best to look as if he could defend himself and knew his way around, but none of that succeeded. He was only a child, and now he was in the grasp of a knife-thrower.
"Do you know how to play with knives, young one?" questioned Foxface, his sharp, narrow eyes scrutinizing Asagai's lithe form. When the boy shook his head and said nothing, the man snickered.
"Well, instead of romping around entertaining shitty people like the players scattered all over Woodsworth, you can learn the art of killing. Lord Hyl picked me up when I was even younger than you." Something white caught Asagai's attention, and that's when he noticed the little rabbit's paw Reisyce had worn around his neck like a charm.
"You sure love your voice, Rei." It was the bored man counting the sobbing children, now watching them. The tints of red on his ginger head made him look like he had been dappled in fire.
"Shut up, I'm trying to see if this one's of some use." Reisyce ran a hand through his unruly, distressed blond hair. It was the dark kind of blond, darker than Emberchase's fair hair — Asagai dug his nails into his palm so hard the bandages tore even more. He said he would forget about that thrice-accursed fire-dancer!
A piece of damp cloth pressed itself onto the boy's throat, and when he snapped out of his own pit of frustration, he saw Foxface's hand over the object. His face was still contorted into that foxy smile, the teeth on both sides of his mouth unusually longer than the norm, as if he indeed possessed the canine teeth of a predatory mammal.
The wound stung, and it burned Asagai's skin like fire, though the cold, crushing sensation on his chest had remained stronger. The boy stepped backwards, but Foxface held him tightly, the grip on his elbow harsh and rough.
"Antiseptic alcohol," murmured Reisyce, eyes looking out the lightly painted, crystalline windows. The sunlight shone against it and revealed the picture of some ancient people eating bread and wine in vibrant colours.
His knife rested next to his belt, and the boy marveled at the intricacies carved within it. The pommel, round and small, had been paired together with a beautiful, equally round amethyst. Even its edges seemed to be lined with the purple hue of the rare stone, and the thief's hands itched to grab and snatch and hoard.
"You... you know Emberchase?" he had barely managed to spit the words out. The slimy snake around his heart squeezed, and the boy nearly cried. Would he be considered a weak person if he cried? After all, no man ever cried.
Reisyce snorted after handing him the damp cloth with alcohol. "His shitty face is so fucking unmistakable with those scars! Who the hell wouldn't recognize him?"
His vicelike grip on the boy loosened, and he placed a hand on his dagger, stroking it tenderly as if it was his lover. His eyes, peculiarly unusual for a normal person, shone like a cat's irises with a light brown hue, the blacks in them nothing but mere slits. Asagai turned to face the children when he heard someone sobbing loudly.
A little girl, perhaps no more than seven summers, buried her face in her older brother's shoulder. The boy himself looked almost starved to death, and his ragged clothes were much too large for him, showcasing his thin limbs and collarbones. His cheeks were painfully hollow, but he still struggled to coax his sister to pipe down. It almost hurt Asagai seeing them like this, for he had experienced those times himself. What were they gonna do to them?
"Take them to the crypts, Laoin. We'll set off for Dead Spot tomorrow," Reisyce commanded, fishing his knife and throwing it up in the air as if he'd die without using it for a few seconds. Asagai half expected the redhead named Laoin to drag him off just like the others, but he just left him there along with Foxface.
"A pupil wounded by the own teacher when it is still a black sheep is bad luck," Reisyce began, his cat eyes raking the boy's entire body as if the belief he had believed in would come true any moment. His gaze punctured his skin like countless prickly needles, and the boy involuntarily closed his eyes shut.
Where had he heard that little superstitious belief? Oh, right. Xaddercrux had a lot of them.
"Speaking of which, where'd you meet my good friend Emberchase?" he questioned, his attention solely focused on Asagai. He could tell as much, even if he could see nothing but the eigengrau shade beneath his lids.
"That scarred fellow's not particularly fond of companionship." Reisyce then laughed, realizing his mistake. "Oh, right! He didn't want you following him like a dog after all, since the bastard left you here under my care."
'Shut up, I don't care about what you say,' Asagai recited the sentence over and over inside his head. Emberchase had indeed left him, and it was proof enough of his gullibility. He couldn't tell anything from the man's expression, yet he had trusted him all the same.
The snake of regret coiled itself tighter around his little heart, slowly constricting it with the poisonous thoughts of the things he should've done before. A dull shade of red crossed his blank vision, and he saw the scarf his old hag often wore when the air became much too chilly for her. Asagai bit his bottom lip. What had happened to her now? Was old Trafloi still taking care of her?
The church's double doors opened with a loud bang, and Asagai suddenly opened his eyes, realizing that he was no more in the comfort of his home. Reisyce had been leaning on one of the worn-out marble pillars when the other rooks with half-masks returned, their entire body drenched and slick with sweat. Asagai crinkled his nose. They reeked.
"He's not here anymore," huffed the man called Snapjaw, his oversized form panting and gasping for air as he leaned exhaustedly on the washed out green walls.
"We set the dogs on him too, and the others scouted the surrounding forest. The fire-dancer's really disappeared on us." He signalled a few men behind him to enter, while the others pulled on their hound's leashes and forced them inside the abode.
One of the rooks dropped Emberchase's juggling torches so harshly on the floor that one of them broke their beautiful, red-spiralled stems.
A part of Asagai wanted to rush to their aid and pick them up with enthusiasm like what he had usually done just a few days ago, but another part of him recoiled, the chills settling inside his stomach. Hadn't he sworn to himself that he wouldn't think about the fire-dancer? Asagai wanted to wring his own neck for that.
Foxface, however, ran a hand through his blade in exasperation, as if he had grown particularly tired of chasing a woman he had fancied for far too long. A purple hue suddenly sliced through the air, and Asagai stared with wide eyes at the amethyst-encrusted dagger, now buried deep on the wall, a hair's width beside Snapjaw's left ear.
"I'm too fucking tired of this," purred the fox-faced man, licking his lips tentatively and smacking them together like a predator. For a moment, Asagai thought he saw Fier. Was the wretched vixen still asleep in Emberchase's rucksack? Why was he even worried for an animal that had kept hissing at his face?
"He's been running around waiting for us to chase his shit trail for too long already." He used his cat eyes to glare at his men, who were as still as if the Grim had touched and rendered their movements useless.
"Such a shame I only have one knife, no? It would've been a hundred times better if I had more." Seemingly annoyed by the silence, Reisyce strutted nonchalantly towards the frozen Snapjaw and pulled off his knife. "I guess I'll try hunting him down myself. Of course he'd erase his tracks, of course he would..."
Asagai lowered his head submissively when the knife-thrower spared a fleeting glance at him. His legs rattled uncontrollably.
The thoughts of Reisyce's unique dagger stabbing through the young one's back had invaded his thoughts and corrupted his mind with fear, extinguishing even his deep, growing hatred for Emberchase.
------------------------------------------------------
Hello there, dear readers! Thank you for checking this chapter out! Sorry if I couldn't update last time. School's killing me already.
Reisyce the knife-thrower: Shut up! You're just making that shitty excuse because you didn't edit anything! You should've published my beautiful character sooner!
Author: *promptly ignores*
Question: What do you think is going on in that traitor Emberchase's head?
If you liked this chapter and crave to read what will happen to the young thief, please press that little star over there, and we'll see each other soon!
Reisyce: You freak! Talk to me!
See you next week!
awesomeSTG
Reisyce: Why's she giving me the silent treatment like that?