Tearha: The Number 139

Chapter Seven: Time Bandit

Kathleen sat still within the carriage, her hands on her knees, legs pulled back defensively. Her fingers pinched at her white frilled skirt, her head downcast as she counted the buttons on her maroon shirt. A strand of her long blonde hair had gotten itself stuck on her lips, but she dared not to even blow it away, instead choosing to suck on the yellow.

The bandit sat opposite, eyeing her in all the inappropriate places. Even through the scarf that covered his mouth and with the light from outside blocked by the curtains of the carriage, even when she wasn't looking at him directly, she could tell he was grinning.

"Just sit tight, ma' Lae," his voice croaked, a frog trapped in his throat. The melanist man reached over and touched her lap. She jumped in her seat, body shivering as she started a silent panic, screaming in her head. "Don't worry though, I can keep you company all day long."

She wanted to scream. To shout. But her jaws were clenched so tight that she could taste blood. The man had a knife. She had seen knives before, but for some reason, that one looked unusually long and sharp, as if the edge was refined to a point of solitude.

"Don't worry. I'll be gentle." He moved closer.

A small whimper escaped her. "Help."

A new voice immediately asked, "Did someone say, 'help'?"

It was the bandit's turn to be shocked. His knife instinctively slashed backwards towards the once empty seat to the right of him but was stopped by the calm and steady hand of the man in the grey coat with a longsword on his back. The man smiled, an action that made the faded scars of his face stretch and disappear. His onyx-brown bed hair were as carefree as his movements. He closed his hand around the fist of the stunned bandit and slowly pushed the weapon back to him.

The new man turned to Kathleen, "Hi! I'm The Watcher. Nice to meet you." He extended his hand.

Moving without her permission, her body reached out to shake the outstretched hand. She realized she was no longer trembling. "Hi," she greeted back, all the fear that had taken her the moments before vanished as instantaneously as the man's appearance. The world seemed to have gotten insurmountably safer in the seconds since his arrival. "I'm Kathleen Ambershey." She did not know why she used her full name when The Watcher only used a title. It just felt appropriate somehow.

"Nice to meet you, Kathleen Ambershey." He sat back and smiled, and she could not help but smile back. His relaxed and happy personality felt addictive.

The bandit seemingly regained his composure. Sitting straight up, he readied his knife at them. "What? Do ya' two gearheads think tis' some joke?"

The carriage door opened behind him, and he once again swung the knife in reflex. And once again, it was stopped, this time, by a calm wrist, for the hand held a dagger of its own. The dark elf casually disarmed the knife with his free hand and stepped into the carriage.

The bandit's eyes grew wide as he realized who he faced. "The Wanderer!"

"Hi," Nadier greeted. He looked over to The Watcher, "Your 'no killing' rule is troublesome, to say the least."

"But you did it?"

"Of course. They are all tied up and ready for the patrol to carry them off."

"Good. Great. Fantastic! Now..." He put one arm over the shoulders of the now defenceless bandit. "What are we to do with you?"

Nadier sheathed his main-hand dagger, pulled out his off-hand weapon, and ejected the empty vial from the latter. From his belt, he took a new one and loaded it in. "I ran out of anaesthetics. Now, this one is extracted mixture diluted from multiple snake venoms and will paralyse you temporarily. But it will hurt a lot more, so you might want to choose wisely." He waved his dagger to the bandit.