Paint it Another Colour

Chapter 56

Emil hadn't moved from where he was when Egil had run out of the room. He'd sat in exactly the same place, poking the broken shards of the mirror mournfully and whispering under his breath. Lukas had taught him some spells. He could perform some of those spells - the only reason Arthur and Vladimir had let him into their group - but he knew that none of them would be useful now.

"Matthias?" he asked the glass. "Are you there?" He picked up a spider-webbed shard and stirred one of the small pools of blood with it daintily as though mixing sugar into a full teacup. "Are you? Please, don't you leave me too. There's only Berwald left now."

The mess didn't reply, just stayed at blood stained, shattered glass, which had once been a mirror, and their only way of making sure no one was killed.

Great plan that had turned out to be.

"You're still here?" Emil turned to the door where Egil stood, leaning against the frame, frowning in what could be confusion. "I would've thought you'd have left long ago."

Emil didn't answer, just slowly stood up, dropping the shard he'd been using before into the pile beneath him.

Egil's frown deepened. "What? I'm just saying, I mean, it's just a bit weird for you to be still sat here over a broken mirror."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand" Emil hissed. "What are you doing here anyway? You didn't just come back to make sure I'd left, did you?"

"Of course not" Egil laughed. "I knew you'd still be here anyway. You're all soppy you lot are. Someone dies, and you sit for hours, days, weeks thinking about it. They're dead. They're gone. There's no use beating about the bush. Just forget it already. They're not coming back."

"And you didn't come back to give me a life lesson either" Emil snapped.

"Of course not" Egil smirked. "I came to introduce you to my family. They've been looking forwards to meeting you." He stepped back from the door a little and gestured for whoever was outside.

Emil paled.

***

"Thirty minutes, thirty minutes..." Kyung Soo haltered in his frantic muttering and turned to glare at Leon. "Why did you only set it to thirty minutes?"

"I don't know?" Leon huffed, shrugging. "It seemed like a long time when I was setting it. It only seems like a short period now that you keep on mentioning it."

"Anyway, we'll be out before then" Yong Soo grinned. "We'll save everyone, and it'll all be fine."

"Right" Kyung Soo said, glancing around. "And what if we get found by some counterparts and have to fight? What then?"

"We run" Leon shrugged. "I'm assuming it never occurred to people that you could run before fighting counterparts, because no one seems to be doing anything like it. But it's what we'll do if we by chance run into anyone. We just need to make sure that everyone we know of is out as soon as possible."

"How many do we have to pull out?" Kyung Soo asked as they reached a turn in the corridors.

"I think about twenty-five of us went in" Leon said, peering around the corner both ways, and then moving forwards again.

"Great" Kyung Soo sighed. "We just have to round up, save and get twenty-two nations out of here, alive, in thirty minutes."

"You said alive" Yong Soo said, raising an eyebrow. "What other state would they be for us to bring them out? No offence to the dead, but we may as well leave them here. Leave them in their final resting place, and make sure that more of us get out than stay. If some are dead, that is."