A Darkening World And A Sleepy Protagonist

Chapter 8 (Unedited)

"Ugh!" Sudden pain spread up from his leg in one quick, strong jolt. 

Being woken up in such a matter was not pleasant in the slightest way for Neal. Even worse, as he opened his eyes various faces staring down at him fills his vision. The bright ray of sunlight currently hitting his eyes makes it difficult to make out their facial features. The light could not mask the pungent smell in the air, one that made Neal's stomach turn.

"Finally awake, sleepy head?" A rough voice fills his ears as one of the faces came closer. He furrows his eyebrows, full of confusion at this mysterious man.

"Quite a good looker ain't ya?" Deep brown eyes took in the unusually beautiful face.  Absolutely no way someone this good looking could be human. 

The mans eyes glance to the giant jeweled egg in Neal's arms, greed filling them at the sight of something that looks so expensive. 

Considering the faint rope markings that still remained on the boys wrists, the man figures Neal was a runaway slave of some kind who stole something on his way out. 

"Girl, I suggest you give us that jewel of yours. If you do I promise we won't call in the authorities to take you back where you came from" He decides to offer Neal a deal, to make taking the egg easier. However, he had no intention of keeping his word in the way Neal may think it meant, freedom. After all, why let someone so good looking go free? Instead he felt it would be great to take this girl in as a slave to them, to serve him and all the others in his group. 

A group of traveling bandits, Neal's luck seems to be getting worse and worse these days.

"What..what are you talking about? I'm not giving this to you.." Neal had no idea what they were going on about, but he did not want to leave the life of whatever creature this was in such mans hands. They look like the type who would not treat it good at all, besides this egg was the one good thing of coming into this strange place. He is very unwilling to just give it up. 

Now the bandits would have taken it from him by force as soon as they had saw him, however it seems their was some kind of magic on the egg which made it impossible for them to touch it. An example of the one who first tried would be the bandit sitting a fair distance away cradling a shaking hand which had the flesh of its palm melted off, almost down to the bone. 

Neal, of course, was unaware of this as he had been asleep when this occurred. Having slept through those screams was impressive in its own way. 

"Well..that makes things very difficult. You see I don't plan on accepting any, lack of cooperation, here girly. If you refuse to hand over that egg then..." the man reaches over, tucking a strand of Neal's light colored hair behind his ear before trailing his fat and dirty fingers down his neck to his shirt collar. A small cut forming from the sharp edge of his dirt caked nail cutting into Neal's soft, defenceless, skin. Giving an ugly smirk as he roughly pulled the material, causing it to rip and expose his collar bone. 

"We will have to take much...rougher measures to get you to obey." Neal's eyes widen, unable to stop himself from trembling as he registers what the man meant. Gripping the egg tighter to himself as a form of comfort to his raising panic. 

"I..I am a guy you know" They seem to have mistaken his gender, so he hopes this may help him some how. At least get out of where this was leading to.

The man just gave a small shrug, as if he did not care. 

"Nice try, like that is gonna change my mind. Even if you are, that is no matter. With such a pretty face.." Neal felt shivers go down his spine, panic rising in his heart once again as he tries to think of a way to get out of this.