United (Magics AU - Part 1)

Chapter 4 - Gabriel

Gabriel knew that he was close friends with Ruby and she'd told him that he could be honest with her, he didn't want to show her how impatient and frustrated he was getting with her - because he was afraid he would snap at her and make her feel worse than she already did. First, it was random citizens going missing under mysterious circumstances. For a long time, Ruby and Falte had been working together to try to figure out what all of the missing people had in common and how to stop the abductions, but they had come up with nothing in a full month. They had sent out search parties, which was reasonable, but somehow every single one of them had come back empty-handed, not even with any clues. Just the kidnappings were enough to sent Gabriel into an annoyed frenzy, when he would bang around in the work-room at the lower levels of the castle and sometimes accidentally break projects. 

But now it was killings. After just a month of people going missing, now the abductor had given themselves another title - a murderer. Whatever this person wanted, they definitely weren't getting it by taking and killing people. If they had something against Ruby, they weren't making it clear what it was. They were only threatening Ruby by doing this to her people, but because they left no clues or notes, Ruby could do nothing to stop it. 

Gabriel's frustration wasn't just pinned on Ruby - because she was doing the best she could, though she could hardly do much - it was like a dead-weight on the murderer's shoulders. Though Gabriel hadn't gotten the chance to show the killer how infuriated he was with them, he was certain that they would know when they were brought into custody. 

When he found out about the dead guards, his anger took a wild turn and directed itself toward him. He was angry at himself for not being able to make their armor good enough, even though he'd done everything he thought was necessary. When a guard had arrived at his work-room's door and told him what had happened, the most shocking part was the fact that the killer had broken straight through the dead guard's armor. 

Which was made of the strongest metal in the whole kingdom of Ariel. 

And the evidence showed that killer didn't have any difficulty shattering the metal. 

"Gabriel, you're making that face again."

Gabriel snapped back to attention, blinking away his thoughts and lifting his head toward the voice. Rachel, his assistant and girlfriend, was standing across the work table with her hands on her hips. Because she was three inches taller and he was hunched over slightly, she peered down at him with an arched eyebrow, her mahogany hair pulled into a bun on the top of her head and her brown eyes locked on him. She was wearing grease-smudged overalls, the brown faded slightly because of the hard work it had been through. Underneath her overalls was a plain shirt that used to be white, but after her three years of working with him, it had faded into a patchy grey. Her mouth was pinched in a small frown and her eyebrows raised expectantly at him.

"Which one?" Gabriel asked bluntly, angling his pencil away from the paper with a sigh. He had been working on the rough draft for more enhanced armor, but he wasn't sure how it would help because it would only be made of the same breakable metal. 

"What do you mean, which one?" Rachel said teasingly, cocking one hip smartly. "You only have two settings - frowning or blank. Right now, you're frowning. Your face is going to get stuck that way if you keep it up." 

"I do not only have two settings!" Gabriel protested, straightening and stuffing the pencil into one of the dozens of pockets on his own overalls. He turned away from her, reaching up and snatching his unused work goggles off his head. He dropped them on the work table and crossed the room, where a few samples of armor were set up for him to study.