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"Nia! No!" exclaimed the boy. He pulled her up from her crouched position and held her wrists together.
"You do not slap people!" he told her. The man now fully awake and sitting upright in the snow, nodded in agreement which made him feel a bit icky so he added, "even if they are idiots" which produced a satisfying frown from the boy but a small, innocent smile from Nia which seemed like a twin to murderous danger.
The boy wondered what in Cervaux must have gone through her system to raise her hand. To act so rash. Nia never hit. She never had such impulses. When she was mad, she got cold, not hot.
She relaxed in his arms, and he let her down realizing that he had somehow found the energy to hold her up. The boy warily eyed her.
The stranger yawned and Nia took another step towards him, hands fisting. Luckily the boy had her restrained again right before she packed on another punch. He felt as if he were holding a stranger. This wasn't the Nia he knew. The change seemed small, reasonable after all they'd been through, understandable after how ruined their bodies were and jangled their minds were, but it didn't feel small. Time seemed changed. He didn't know when exactly it happened, but he knew it had.
"What were you doing here?" asked Skender, one of the oldest performers and the only man in the group with the ability to grow a beard and not three wispy hairs on the chin. When the stranger didn't reply, he said again in a gruffer voice, "Don't you know better than to sleep here, boy? Stealers above help me if I live to see another act of bastardly tomfoolery!" Skender had a beautiful vocabulary that the boy had come to cherish. Such... country, grandfatherly words that made him seem a more caring person than a rude one. The stranger didn't reply again, instead his gaze trailed across the landscape, examining the horizons and then it landed on the ivory body laying in the snow. Something like grief passed his face for a second and was quickly curtained with amused shock. The boy felt Nia imperceptibly tense again and he tightened his grip until she relaxed.
"What is wrong with you?" he whispered in her ear.
She whispered back in a harsh, commanding voice, "Shut up."
The boy shut up.
The stranger had in the meantime reached the corpse and was now cradling it in his arms, his head bowed far enough to hide his expression as he rocked back and forth whispering words in a language that didn't exist. Everyone averted their gaze giving the stranger privacy as the chanting got louder and louder until it abruptly stopped. Sounds of the rustle of clothing and belt buckles replaced it instead. Curious, everyone turned back their gazes to see the stranger pulling off the clothes from the remains, in a hurried almost animalistic manner. The boy had half a mind to yell at him to stop but he bit his tongue and watched as the stranger stripped the corpse down to its bare chest. The man was adorned with smooth ivory skin that had shades of blue swirling under it, like water beneath a frozen lake. His fingertips were blacker than the rest of his body from frostbite. Streaks of blood ran across his chest, getting darker and redder as they reached the wound from where a thin knife protruded right above his heart. Ana flinched and Nia went completely limp in his arms. The boy had seen enough corpses in his life to get used to the sight but still he forgot how to breathe everytime. His heart stopped beating like a weak impersonation of the body in front of him, and he had to remind himself that he was alive and awake to get it beating again. He forgot how cold he was or the fact that perhaps his own fingertips were blackening. The sight that prickled most was the symbol drawn on the body's abdomen. The symbol from the house. A symbol drawn in blood. A red circle with five lines intersecting it. The Kingdom's mark. Questions now as familiar as the back of his hand rose up again. What was the motive behind these murders? Was it the actual Kingdom assasinating or someone else hiding under the royal cover? Why were they public? What did the victims have in common? And what role did the Master play in all of this? rose up a new question remembering all the times he had Switched to look at murders marked by the same symbol.
Nia strained against his arms once again and he let her go. The stranger looked up from the body and standed, his gaze fixed on Nia.
"Where were you when he was killed?" the boy asked.
The stranger replied, "I was here. Asleep."
The boy saw Nia ball her fists but she said nothing. Instead she walked past them pulled by an impractical and unexplained surge to complete the journey, even if alone. The boy didn't follow her. She clearly was a ticking time-bomb that he needed to handle as carefully as possible to make sure it didn't explode. He wondered if she'd finally reached her breaking point. If this journey had finally pushed her off the edge he'd always known she'd been standing at the tip of. Since that day they'd been taken, the boy had seen her breaking, little by little, crack by crack, spider webbing across everything of her she'd so carefully kept together. She had a concrete face, an unbreakable spirit, but she was also a crack on fine glass, a reflection of perfection ruined. A hairline crack that would grow and grow until it all fell apart. He wished he could stop this breaking. He wished he could somehow make his heart a pin cushion and stick her shards in and grab on to them. He wished he could stop her from walking away and away, her hands clenched together.
"You can come with us if you like," piped Ana.
The stranger looked at her and a grin spread across his face. "Are you sure?"
"Sure," the boy replied for her. "When was picking up sleeping strangers from hell dangerous?" he muttered loudly.
"If I remember correctly, I was the Master," drawled a cold voice from behind.
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Author's Note: Okay, I'm not too proud of the image I found and its not too accurate but I put stuff together so there you go. Trust me I tried. I hope you like it anyways and come back for the next part! PLEASE VOTE AND COMMENT!<3
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unraveled
Fantasy"I've seen rats with better attention spans than you," she said onto his face. And then the boy was there pulling her onto her feet and off of him. "But have you seen them with such beautiful faces?" he asked, standing up, brushing off th...
