tomi.

Chapter Two : The Winters are Worse

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Still carrying my papers with me, I follow as the white-haired man leads me, a hand to my back, through corridors and archways.
I remain mute the whole way there. No sense in making conversation with him, I'm sure.

Eventually, we come to a stop on our fifth set of stairs upwards, facing a long narrow hallway that bears no more than five doors.
"This one is probably going to be yours." He points at the one at the very end of the corridor. Nothing about it makes it stick out - it's painted over in that same shade of mahogany everything around here seems to be covered with.

"The other three?" I ask, suddenly curious to know what will surround my - possible - dorm.

"Empty. But guards tend to use them for.. stuff."

I choose not to ask further questions. Something in the way he looks tells me that I do not wish to know what the guards get up to in those empty, barren rooms.

"Ah." I stare at the tip of my shoes, unable to find much else to say to that.

"Come on." He gestures to the first door on our right, pushing that hand - which still hadn't moved - into the little of my back.

He knocks in a rhythmic pattern on the door, then, "Azrael. It's me. Open the door. I brought a treat."

I have half a mind to ask him why he's talking to the guy like he's some kind of wolf-dog, but I stay quiet, lips sealed together tightly.

There's a sound on the other side of the door, a distinct groan from someone that's displeased to be disturbed, and then the door is opening.

Azrael and I freeze at once.

He's got that classically beautiful look to him - not like Nathaniel, who's all sharp and rough edges and muscles bigger than my head. Azrael, though still tall and well endowed with the meat on his bones, is slighter, well carved, like some kind of Olympic god. He looks fast, and ready to strike, like a serpent slowly approaching. If Nathaniel was a wolf, then Azrael was the serpent.

But his looks alone are not what I freeze for. No- it's the fact that behind him, the walls are covered in pages upon pages of art, faces and bodies and anatomy. A study on body horror - on skin and the stretch of it, of weapons, and the dissected versions of it all.
I take an unprocessed step back at the sight of it, and it makes Azrael smile, that I cower from the sight, his tongue flicks out to lick his lips.

"Nathaniel, you bloody bastard. You weren't joking." He says, and while I notice that he has an accent, I can't process where it might be from at the moment. "You did bring a treat with you."