Varian And The Seven Kingdoms (One Shots)

Playful Banter P.2

I'm was  going to win that bet. I'm scary when I want to be, I could definatly scare Hugo.  The problem was I had no idea of what Hugo was afraid of. He isn't the type to show sings of discomfort, or fear which is something that I wanted to test. 

If my theory was correct, the only thing that seemed to put him on edge was spiders and darkness. I had no idea where to get spiders so I would  have to go with the spooky darkness. 

How had I come up with this hypothesis you ask? 

When  everyone was asleep I had noticed that Hugo's always left  some sort of  light on. It seemed to be constanlty running by the chemical reacctions inside the core of each nucleus, almost like he had a pice of the sun in the jar. It was pretty incredible, then again I thought almost everything Hugo did was kind of incredible. 

My plan was to trap Hugo in compleate darkness, and see how he'd react, if I managed to scare him it means I  had won the bet and then I could strike some kind of truce.  I grabbed a map and searched for a nearby cave, there was one at our next stop, I would execute my plan tommorow night while we set camp, that way it would be extra dark. 

By the time I had finished marking the map my tent no longer was lit only by glow in the dark alchemy stick, dawn was seeping through the cloth. I rolled the map, tucked it in my back-pack and tried to get at least one hour of sleep. 

. 

.

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"Good morning Varian!" Yong said to me as I prepared our breakfast. 

"Morning Yong" I yawened back in response.

"Someone's tired, up all night scheming against me?" I turned to see Hugo wearing his usual 'know-it-all' smirk. 

"Pfft, y-you wish" I sttutered stupidly. 

He gave me a look and a small smile, mumbling something I couldn't catch, as he walked to gather the supplies for the day.

Soon after Nuru emerged from her tent with messy morning hair, a sleepy but determined face, and a big loud yawn. I had her breakfast ready to go.

"Thanks" she said, happily chewing on her cereal. 

"No problem Nuru"  

We finished packing everythig and continued our journey to our next stop with was called "Moaning Caves of The South", Hugo who was reading over my shoulder gave stiffled giggle. 

"What's so funny?" I asked him. 

"Nothing you're wholesome mind would understand" he said, ruffeling my hair. Which made my face heat up, I could hear the blood rushing to my ears and my heart fluttering inside my chest like a bird in a cage wanting to get out. Like the bird wanted to fly, my heart wanted to feel and express itself, but I couldn't  let it do that fearing that it would just be shoved into it's cage again.

"I am not as wholesome as you think" I said, reminding myself that I had almost destroyed my entire kingdom over a broken promise. 

My breathing became fast and short, memories of me hurting the ones I cared for, how I had betrayed them, how I had turned my back on them not the other way around. I wiped away a few tears, pressure built inside my head as if I had rocks in it. 

I relaxed as a hand rubbed circles around my back. 

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you so upset" Hugo said, even though it felt he was forcing himslef to say it, I still appriciated his effort.