Lepidopterophobia

Chapter 8

Tyrael's eyes widened slightly.
No, no, no. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. He was just seeing the dead again, just another trick his mind was playing on him. It had happened before, it was only reasonable for it to happen again. To be completely honest, it probably wouldn't stop happening. He had to be asleep, and this had to be some weird dream.
The elf nodded a bit to himself, staring at the ground before him. He'd had worse dreams than this. This was probably just one of those again. Hey, he'd just woken up from one of the bad dreams in question, who was to say this wasn't one of those weird things where you wake up in a dream and find yourself in another dream?
He clenched his eyes shut, praying to whichever god was listening that when he opened them he'd wake up, lying in bed, ready to eat the flavorless mush that was almost definitely going to be served for breakfast any minute now.
"Wait, wait, don't go yet. I think he's gonna cry."
"Pfft, really? I'm not gonna miss that! You, uh, whatever your name is. Get the family."
Tyrael opened his eyes again. Not a dream, apparently. Couldn't he get a break already? A nearby maid scurried away to get 'the family', whatever that meant.
"Wait, wait, but you're-"
"Dead?" Swallowtail asked, suddenly way too close to Tyrael's face. "Yeah, got real boring real fast, so I came back home. Hey Cara, didn't his face look different?"
"You live in the Valley?"
"Oh, no. They don't really like our sort, it wouldn't really work out."
'Wait, her sort like... pixies? But they were fine with her when we went to Ghoulcrest to investigate.'
A group of people walked into the room. Well, not quite walked. A dozen or so pixies flew into the room, most of their wings matching Swallowtail's perfectly.
"Plus, out here in the middle of nowhere, no one tends to hear the screams."
Tyrael's eyes widened a bit more.
What did that mean. What was that supposed to mean. Why were there screams in the first place.
"Darl, a bit too much." Another pixie, this one with a bit of a weird accent Tyrael hadn't heard before, chimed in from behind his obnoxiously large beard and moustache. Good, that means that hopefully there weren't any mysterious screams. Meaning hopefully he wouldn't be the source of any mysterious screams either. Or at the very least, there'd be mildly less of a chance for him to be the source of said screams.
Hopefully.
In response to this, Swallowtail groaned loudly, throwing her head back to face the bearded pixie upside-down. "Ugh, fine." She turned back to Tyrael, who was starting to not get a good feeling about this. "We live in the middle of nowhere cause my broke dad's too cheap to build a house around other people and pay taxes and all that."
The elf held back a chuckle at that, the only thing letting him do so being the terror clawing desperately at his throat. Instead, he just continued staring forward, trying desperately to tell himself that he didn't look as confused and scared as he felt. But if were to be honest with himself, a thing that he was doing more and more often recently, he was genuinely just more confused than anything else.
He was probably being held captive, or something along those lines. But then, why wasn't he being held captive? He was free to do whatever he wanted, apparently, with the only restraints being his surveillance and the fact that he was locked in a closed room, without windows.
So, do anything but stargaze, apparently.
There was also the fact that they'd taken his coat away, but he felt like that much was more personal than anything else. And finally, there was the question. Why was he kidnapped? If Carawin and Swallowtail wanted to get back at him so badly, why not kill him? Or attack him when he was alone other than Felamir?
Which meant that even considering how scared he was, he was still a dozen times more confused.
"Oh come on, at least a tear? A sniff?"
Tyrael looked awkwardly to the side. He was sweating. He shouldn't be sweating! It was cold! And he hadn't had water in, what, a week? A month? Excluding rain, at least. But according to Felamir, that 'didn't count' and he was 'severely dehydrated'.
If he got out of this, he really needed to apologize to them.
The assorted pixies started talking, but Swallowtail wouldn't stop looking back at him, glaring, poking her tongue out, then continuing the apparently serious conversation that was almost definitely about him.
He, as was apparently his new habit, looked around the room. Less in an attempt to escape, more boredom. The walls and floors were made of cold concrete that looked darker than usual, but it might've just been Tyrael's imagination. Especially since the only light in the room came from the doorway in front of him, but there were people blocking it. So, that wasn't exactly the most useful light.
There were also a lot of scratches on the walls, and a dark liquid that he was starting to get way too used to seeing. There were spiderwebs all over the place, and the spiders accompanying them were big. 'Almost as big as the spiders back home, heh.' He tried to ignore the fact that they were in fact much, much bigger than the spiders he'd seen before.
Tyrael's mind drifted to Kahlien and Tulip. Were they missing him? Or did this happen often? Kahlien did seem nice, and Tulip was funny. But they'd probably have heaps of cellmates in the future, ones that weren't irritating little kids pretending to be adventurers and didn't burst out into tears every flap of a bird's wing. To be honest, they'd probably be better off without him.
Or maybe not. They both seemed to not hate him at the very least. Did they miss him? The elf tried to imagine Kahlien sad. Sure he probably felt sad at some point in his life, but that didn't stop Tyrael from finding it exceedingly difficult to imagine him looking sad. How would he act sad?
Wait, was that rude? To think of how someone would react to a bad situation? Probably. He was often rude, why would this time be any different? Anyways, um. Thoughts. What were they. How could someone think them.
Felamir! They were cool, they were nice, they were all that cool stuff. Tyrael had always been told that when you were in a bad situation or sad or whatever you had to think of nice things. And sure they probably meant kittens, or ferret kits, or other types of baby animals, why couldn't they just think of friend?
Actually, it would work better than some random baby animal! The whole appeal of them was supposedly their adorableness, right? But Felamir was also pretty! Plus they had the obvious added bonus of Tyrael actually knowing them! Meaning that they won over some random cat any day!
He did like ferrets though, so Mira was probably on the same level as them. No offense or anything, he just really liked ferrets.
Who wouldn't?
Tyrael frowned. Actually no a heap of people didn't like ferrets. Hells, he didn't like ferrets for most of his life. But then he'd met Louis! If only the whole world could meet him, then surely they'd all love ferrets too! The elf grinned internally, thinking of his childhood pet. He had such smooth fur, and made this adorable little chicken sounding noise when he was happy, and was overall just really cool.
It was sad that he was gone but at least he'd had a good life. Maybe there was a special area of the Beyond dedicated to ferrets or something.
"I've gotta say, Pipsqueak."
The now shivering elf opened his eyes. He wasn't shivering before! And when did he...? Carawin was strutting towards him, and Tyrael noted he was now wearing a suit when he'd previously been wearing just a boring old tunic. Its colors looked horrible together, and the fabric looked itchier than a head of fleas, but it looked expensive. Probably why he bought it in the first place.
The firbolg's still oversized nose now had a few bruises littered around it, and a sinister glowing grin sat below it. He crouched, meeting Tyrael's eye level vaguely. The elf in question adjusted his position from how he'd woken up to sit cross-legged. It was minutely less awkward, which he appreciated. Like everyone had always told him, it really was the little things.
"You're takin your damn time to react to this, arentcha?"
Tyrael wasn't sure of what to do, so he just nodded.
"What? Not scary enough for you? What, would the dark be scarier? Maybe if we get some snakes? Spiders?" Carawin brought his face forward, closer to Tyrael's. His breath smelt of a dreadful mix of ale and smoke, and it made the elf feel like he was going to be sick.
Starting to get uncomfortable.
The elf flinched, bringing his head back as far as it could go without him falling over.
A sharp pain erupted in his nose. Carawin pulled his fist away.
"Did I say you could move?"
"...I wasn't aware that needed your approval."
One of the pixies burst into laughter, but was quickly kicked in the leg. He fell to the ground, holding his leg and probably trying not to cry out in pain. The others, Swallowtail and the weird sounding bearded pixie included, laughed quietly among themselves. Most of them left on this note, leaving only one or two spectators.
"Anything we could do to make this visit more comfortable? Maybe a five course meal? A window looking over a waterfall, perhaps?" the firbolg mocked.
He shook his head.
"Ok, then how about fears? Any of those lying around that big old empty head of yours?"
'He'd laugh, for sure.'
Tyrael glanced back at the pixies behind Carawin. They'd laugh too. Sure, humiliation wouldn't exactly be much in the long run, but it was still humiliation! He wasn't going to just do it to himself for no reason!
Honestly, he had no idea why Carawin asked that in the first place. What would be a valid reason for answering? Could Tyrael say he was afraid of scrolls and at least get something to pass the time? Why would anyone ever tell an enemy their fears? To Tyrael, that was stupider than finding an assassin and saying 'Oh no, that knife isn't sharp enough, use this one to kill me instead.'
So, as any mildly sane person would do, Tyrael met Carawin's eyes again and shook his head. "No, I don't really have any fears." Honestly what else did he expect the poor elf to say? Again, it would be exceedingly idiotic to say literally anything else.
The firbolg took a step back, bringing out a spear from seemingly nowhere.
"So, little criminal, how much do you know about your earring?" He said mockingly, poking it with the tip of the spear.
Tyrael flinched, but managed to get out a worried "Um. Not much, sorry. Why?"
Carawin grinned, wider than any smile that could be slightly genuine.
"Did you know, if you try to get the earring off, you'll get a cut? People say its from some old god, the guy who made the earrings in the first place. He cuts you with his sword in some random place. Wanna test out that theory?"
He suddenly yanked on the earring, making Tyrael yelp in pain. Four cuts suddenly appeared, cutting through his already ruined clothes.
An all too familiar sight flew right in front of his face.
'Not now, you bloody demon.'
"Ooh, nice. So it's true." A horribly fake grin appeared on his face, similar to the other ones he had seen him wear in that it wasn't actually happy nor a grin at all.
Tyrael stared at the ground. He didn't actually know anything about the earring, now that he thought of it. Honestly, he'd kind of thought of it as just some weird thing to remind him of what he'd done. Not really important, per se, just an object.
Maybe he could ask Felamir about it? Yeah, he'd do that. Felamir knew a heap of things. And sure that was to be expected, they'd mentioned they were super old, but still. It was cool.
The firbolg pulled on the earring again and again, each time now only producing one cut at a time. He seemed to be dissatisfied with this.
Carawin sighed and walked out of the room, bringing Swallowtail and the other two pixies with him. The door was closed, and the elf was left mostly alone.
Pleasant.
Tyrael glanced to his side at the butterfly he'd seen a moment ago.
Its yellow wings danced in front of him, almost inviting him to something. Something that the elf knew from experience lurked just in the corner of his eye.
...Maybe he could deal with that later.
He clenched his eyes shut, trying to think of anything else, but nothing worked.
He couldn't dwell on Felamir for more than a second or so, not before crying again. He felt so bad for leaving them like that. Did he even say goodbye? He probably didn't. He had a habit of leaving people behind.
Like these two. Sure, they were dreadful to be around, but he shouldn't have just left them for dead like that! Being boiled alive? That was practically the worst way to die. Even worse than freezing, or starving, or probably anything else. It was slow, and painful, and even if you survive you'd still be in pain for ages after.
Tyrael only had himself to blame. It was all his fault.
As always.
He tried not to let in the little thoughts he'd seen coming ages ago, but they still hit him harder than expected.
As always.
His throat coiled up like there was a snake squeezing it that wouldn't let go. He could feel blood running down from his nose, but did nothing to wipe it away. He felt his hands come up and grab his hair. He registered that it hurt, but did nothing to stop it. Warm tears were flowing down his cheeks, he knew that much.
Everything was so loud.
It was silent, and Tyrael wasn't sure if he was breathing. He couldn't care less.
It was all so loud.
He was such an idiot. He'd left everyone who cared about him.
So. L̴̞̳͉̳͔̏́̎̐̎͋ŏ̴̟͝u̶̩͈̲̞̗͆͜d̸̲̃͗́͂̌̽̚͝.̵̤̲͔͚̳͙̇́
The butterfly that he'd honestly forgotten the existence of flapped irritatingly near his eye, making Tyrael open his eyes hesitantly, even if just to glare at it.
It, seemingly content, flew a tiny bit away from the curled up elf. It also flew a bit to the left, obviously wanting to join the thing behind him.
Tyrael frowned, turning to the right. "I'm not going to follow you." He muttered, mostly to himself. Hells, he was talking to himself anyway, why bother lying.
The butterfly ignored him, and flew behind him anyways.
'Wow, even my own mind's ignoring me. How pleasant.'
He brought a finger up to his nose. He didn't have any handkerchiefs on hand, obviously, so Tyrael just brought up the edge of his far-too-small shirt to wipe away some of the blood. For the tears, he just wiped them away with his wrists.
Apparently Felamir was right, birds really didn't like the smell of blood. The room was silent except for his breathing.
Tyrael sighed. He knew what he had to try and do, even if it would be difficult.
He had to try and escape. He had no idea whatsoever how to do so, sure, but the first person to cast a spell probably would've been even more confused than him, so he told himself that he couldn't complain. Escaping some sort of crime family wouldn't be that hard, right?
Yeah, yeah.
It'd be simple.
Like walking.
He silently prayed to, again, whichever god was listening. It wasn't like he didn't deserve any of this, but maybe one of the gods was in a nice mood.
For a split second, Tyrael's mind drifted to Felamir, and what he knew of doppelgangers.
On second thought, the gods probably weren't very miracle-y.
Tyrael stood up, again wiping the irritatingly persistent moisture of his eyes, to walk over to the door. As he did so, he wobbled much but didn't fall. He knocked, before hissing and grabbing his hand as a wave of pain rushed through to his fingers. Apparently those were also deciding to be annoying and broken as well. Pleasant.
"What do you want."
'Why in the hells is Carawin waiting outside the door.'
"Can I please have some water?"
"No."
"Ok. Um, thank you I guess."
Tyrael walked back to the wall opposite of the door, hands out in front of him so he didn't trip over what were probably skulls littered on the floor.
Even more pleasant.
He wasn't tired, not in the slightest. So he didn't lie down or anything, he just sat.
It'd be simple.
Right?

~~~

Tyrael was questioning whether the gods actually cared about mortals. Like, at all.
He was stuck in the ceiling.
Not ideal.
The panicking elf thought back to his plan that was, looking back, stupid. Idiotic. Every other word imaginable. Maybe even add a few more.
So, he'd wait for the door to be open, with as few guards as possible. That much wasn't that bad. Because there'd be fewer guards, Tyrael could try to fight them. It was a win-win. If he lost, there'd most likely be some sort of commotion in reaction to a prisoner trying to escape. Letting him escape. If he won, well, he'd hopefully end up with the same result.
He'd actually gotten the absolute perfect opportunity. Carawin, Swallowtail and two guards had appeared at his door, then Carawin had dismissed all of them. The elf had fought him and not won, as such, but snuck away regardless.
What he hadn't done was think any of this through.
The first part of his plan was good, sure, but it was also the only part of his plan.
As soon as he was out of the room, he realized he didn't actually know where he was. He hadn't been here before. Plus, his eyes naturally adjusted to dark places. Dark. This place was many things, and dark was not one of them. His vision was overwhelmed by the brightness of the place, only catching the things that lay in the shadows. Little drawings of blue butterflies were scribbled all over the walls, and vines grew everywhere. It was like the whole building was some kind of big garden. Weird. Tyrael had stuck to the left wall, remembering something he'd been told about finding your way out of caves when he was younger.
Voices came from just around the corner he was about to turn. Pleasant. The still panicking elf's eyes hadn't quite adjusted to the light yet, since he'd been in complete darkness just a moment or two ago. There was something attached to the wall, though. After further investigation, Tyrael figured out it was a ladder. Good. He climbed the ladder and found himself in some weird ceiling closet thing.
Now, back to the current events.
So there he was. Stuck in the ceiling, with no idea what to do. Thankfully, wherever he was had a bit less light, so he could finally see. He, noticing that there was enough room, quickly pulled the ladder up into his little area.
The voices continued, in some language Tyrael didn't know. He wasn't sure what they were saying but, then again, did he really want to know?
Tyrael felt a shiver go down his spine as the people below him walked past. His breathing was shallow, and his heart was beating faster than a bee's wings. Hopefully pixies didn't have good hearing or anything.
He frowned a bit to himself. What was with that butterfly earlier? Tyrael didn't recall seeing any since, what, the dragon thing? Why did they leave and then suddenly come back? He was sure by now that they were just his stupid imagination doing stupid things like it used to when he was a stupid little kid. So why have such a weird schedule? Did hallucinations even have schedules? If so, how could he change his.
Or maybe it wasn't his imagination, and it was instead a manifestation of his guilt, or something like that. He'd heard stories of a chicken farmer who lived just outside his village who kept seeing floating chickens in the corner of their eyes. Maybe it was something like that?
As he was thinking, he noted silence. Which meant that the guards had left the area by now. That was pretty good. Well, not good, but not bad.
Time for pros and cons of going out.
Pros, he could escape. That'd be pretty good.
Cons, he could not. That'd be less good.
Well, no.
He was lying to himself again.
If he got caught, it probably wouldn't just be as simple as 'oh no, I got caught, better luck next time'. It would probably be like 'oh gods I got caught'.
He'd punched Carawin in the face. Not very hard, Tyrael was about as strong as a daisy, but punching someone was still punching someone. And he and Swallowtail weren't the type to forgive someone for looking at them the wrong way, let alone punching them. So it would be expected for them to lash out.
And while the majority of the time he would be absolutely fine with dying alone and out in the middle of nowhere, he had Felamir now. He didn't want to leave them alone any longer so dying was absolutely out of the question, thank you very much.
Why not.
The elf jumped down, landing on his feet but regretting doing so immediately. A sharp pain erupted from his legs, but he'd have to deal with that later. He needed a weapon. He would have preferred to get Felamir's sword back from the guards back at the prison, but that would have to wait for now. He wasn't exactly in prison at the moment.
Tyrael continued walking through the bright building, eyes more adjusted now than earlier. He, as before, walked along the left wall. His legs didn't stop hurting, but he continued walking anyways. They wouldn't exactly get better if he died, and that would be exactly what would happen if he didn't get a move on already. So, he continued wandering through the obnoxiously bright building.
Why was the building so bright, anyways? Was it half prison, half house or something? There were far too many plants for it to just be a prison. Maybe the owners were gardeners or something else of the like. Gardening was nice, and it was supposed to be simple and calming and other things like that. Maybe running a prison was too stressful for the owners.
Oh wait, that probably wasn't it. Swallowtail was one of the supposed owners of the place, wasn't she? Or at least she'd said her father was.
The sound of yelling and loud footsteps approached. Rapidly. The shouts were in seemingly the same language Tyrael had heard the guards speaking earlier, meaning they were probably also fairies.
Tyrael's mind drifted to a type of plant he'd often been told about. He didn't recall the name, but he did remember quite clearly what it did. It was shaped a bit like a bowl, and used a sweet scent to lure insects in, then they'd slip into the bowl and get eaten alive by the plant, whatever it was called.
Maybe that was the reason for the brightness and the plants.
For some weird reason he wouldn't be able to identify if asked, Tyrael found himself not running but instead simply walking away. What if he got a sight of them? Would they see him as well? Probably, but there was a slight chance they wouldn't, wasn't there?
Barely ten seconds after the elf had first heard them, the three or four people chasing him came around the corner. They were in fact not fairies, but extremely tall firbolgs, much taller than twice Tyrael's height. They were additionally extremely fast due to the aforementioned tallness, therefore when one of them tried to stab Tyrael with the tip of his spear he was painfully successful.
Yep. Time to run now.
Tyrael ran faster than he ever had before, one hand holding the back of his head to help stop the bleeding. It was practically worthless, though. He'd be surprised if at the end of the day his hair wasn't still stained with blood. Tulip had said something about him dying his hair, maybe this wasn't too different?
Either way he sincerely doubted he would ever get the chance to dye his hair, whether it be because he died right here or maybe he did actually get out and just couldn't afford it. That would probably be the case. This would probably be the closest he'd get.
He passed one or two bedrooms, another room seemingly for prisoners, and many that were apparently empty. Obviously, none of those would have anything useful to him.
Another doorway.
The elf stumbled into it, no hope at all. It was mostly empty, apart from a few bows and swords mounted on the walls, along with an open window. Nothing useful... Wait.
That was literally only useful things!
Tyrael, now mildly less pessimistic, speedwalked over to the window. It was open, and there weren't any bars or anything. Plus, even though it was relatively small, so was he, so he could probably fit through it, albeit a bit uncomfortably. Looking out, he saw a city he didn't recognize far in the distance. But still, it was a city. Couldn't go wrong with that. Plus, the window was only three or four times his height above the ground. Tyrael could survive that.
The short elf quickly grabbed a sword and, not even daring to look back, jumped out the window.

a/n
4405 words

sorry this chapter was a bit short! i am still working on these even after i publish them to here, I'll publish the actually finished ones when im fully finished the whole book I think.

question 9: what was Tyrael's childhood friend's name? i know that it's technically more trivia than a question but im still curious to see if anyone remembered lol. at one point i was writing another character, one you'll meet next chapter, and i accidentally used the friends name for ages! I did change it, though, don't worry

again apologies, this chapter still doesn't sit quite right with me. i kept rereading it and feeling it felt wrong then changing it, and at one point I think I forgot to end a sentence but I haven't been able to find it yet. (please tell me if you find it!)

see you next time!