To Kill A Killer

Chapter 5: Aftermath

The seams of Killer's jacket were digging into his underarms, magic was still thrumming frantically within his bones, and all he could think as he stared at the knife glinting in Horror's hand was, How did he know?

That was his knife. The kid's old knife. The one that was intended for gardening, but was sharp enough to cut through much more than just weeds. Of course, it was perfectly good for that too, as Killer knew well from his experiences with a certain flower. It was his favourite knife. One of the best he could get in the Underground, although it hadn't moved from its place in his inside pocket since he had arrived at the castle, as he hadn't had the chance to get more EXP yet and he didn't want to dull it on the training dummies.

Which begged the question of how the hell the broken-skulled creep had known where to find it.

It couldn't have been chance. Horror had gone for the inside pocket, even with several knives in far easier reach. It had been a deliberate choice. Had he gone rooting through Killer's jacket? Spied on him? Killer would have quite liked to take his knife back and use it to get some answers.

Unfortunately, he was still being held a meter or so above the ground by one of Nightmare's tentacles, so that course of action would have to be postponed until further notice.

His new boss's anger was strange. Nightmare didn't shout, he didn't scream or curse, he didn't stab anything. Instead, his voice was clipped and quiet, his expression stern. Ordinarily, Killer would have shrugged it off, maybe even joked around a bit, but despite his apparent composure, Nightmare seemed to radiate a dangerous sort of fury, frozen and sharp, like shards of ice pricking his exposed SOUL. Killer found himself oddly unnerved, and he decided that the wisest thing to do would be to stay silent.

"You are not to fight each other outside of training," Nightmare was telling them, his single eyelight glinting a hard, cold blue. "You are not to take each other's possessions without permission. You are not to intentionally provoke each other. Do you understand?"

He received a round of muttered agreements, and set them all back down on the ground. Killer tugged his jacket straight as the tentacle let go of his hood. His hand brushed against a frayed edge, and he made a mental note to check how bad the damage was later.

Cross placed the empty saltshaker down on the table and, with a quick glance at the rest of them, disappeared, the world folding in around him like purple-tinted pixels until he was gone.

Dust shuffled over to his fallen slippers, using the backrest of a chair for support as he shoved them onto his feet. His movements were shaky, and Killer recalled his lack of appetite during dinner. Come to think of it, he'd never seen Dust eat more than a few mouthfuls, although he drank unholy amounts of coffee.

Horror grabbed Dust's plate from the table and offered it to him. Dust shook his head, and Horror sighed, then stooped down a little to put an arm around Dust, supporting him. The two of them shortcut away in a flash of blood-red magic, taking the plate of food with them.

"Hey! What about my knife?" Killer demanded, glaring indignantly at the spot that Horror had just vanished from.

Nightmare sighed, tentacles flicking irritably behind him. "I will retrieve it for you. In the meantime, at least make an attempt to avoid future fights with the others. The wasting of food can be... triggering for Horror."

"How the hell was I supposed to know that?" asked Killer, rolling his eyes. "But yeah, whatever, I'll eat the clairvoyant cannibal's food."

"Horror is not a cannibal," Nightmare corrected. "He does not consume other monsters. Nor is he in any way clairvoyant."