At first he thought that the scummy doctor was behind him and had been waiting till he was far enough to drag him back but the boy's eyes followed a long black feathery claw like hand quite a height upwards.
An avian creature thrice his height stared at him with orange pupilless eyes nestled behind a broken birch mask. A long narrow beak erupted from the mask and swayed towards the boy.
It was a beggar...a Dremin beggar. It had smelled the boy's rampant emotions and tightened its grip around the boy's shoulder. The unnerving orange eyes danced in their empty sockets while following their source of food.
"Spare some." The Dremin spoke in a butchered version of High Locai in high pitched voice. The boy barely made out the jargon of words and would've obliged on a better day, gods know he had ample of emotions to spare, but he had to leave before anyone caught up to him.
'At least they find me delicious...or maybe that's worse...' The boy mused as he tugged his shoulder away but the Dremin didn't budge, vexing the boy.
"Let go!" The boy shouted but the creature almost obsessively drew closer. "Let go!" The boy shouted again drawing a crowd which spurred two constables to come over and check the commotion.
One was a half-sylvan, the other a human. They strode over in iron and leather armor marked with bright yellow and black—the colors of the Free States of Mercia. Their colors which contrasted with the bleak shades of rust and soot of the undercity usually were enough to break up most gathering.
In fact, the crowd quickly dispersed but the Dremin was too hungry to recognize the smiling constables who approached slowly.
"Is the demon bothering you kid?" The human of the two spoke with a raspy voice. A smug smile and yellow teeth matching his fabric.
"No…The Dremin and I were just talking…Nothing to see here." The boy spoke up with a stutter. Talking was hard...talking was bad...especially when it was people.
"Focus Randall…can't you see the boy is all hurt and the fowl is taking advantage of him. He's probably too afraid to speak up." The half-sylph stood a foot taller and had those pointy human ears and shaved wooden stumps on the top of his head. He pushed the boy towards his partner and approached the Dremin with a sadistic glare.
"Watch kid…that's how they learn." The human constable made the boy look as his partner grabbed the revolver from his waist. It was a standard-issue Mercian Ironwing, a six-shot revolver with brass plating. The barrel was engraved with a hawk's symbol, now stained with grime from years of use. A simple, reliable weapon more often used to keep the undercity's denizens in check than to stop any real threats.
He whipped the weapon by the blunt side and hit the creature with it again and again. The Dremin whimpered but didn't speak up. It was better it didn't. Whatever it said would only end up aggravating the constables more.
The boy watched as the black feathers trembled with each strike, the worn-out mask cracking bit by bit until bluish blood splattered onto the constable, driving his hand with disgusted anger.
"Trouble follows you wherever you go...how more useless can you get." Regret broke the boy's trance with something he couldn't refute. He caused this and he had to fix it somehow. The boy pushed the hand that held him and grabbed the other guard by the leg.
"Kid don't make this more complicated…we're just teaching the thing a lesson."
"He didn't do anything wrong!" The boy shouted back. He knew what he did was useless, heck if it was any other day he would have watched by the side and scoffed at the stupidity of this fiasco, but his mind was in chaos. He needed to quell the guilt and…
The guard hit him across the face. "Randall…I think the boy ran away without paying his medical bills." The guard winked at his partner who held the boy down. Just as he was going for another swing a warm voice interrupted the two.
"He's my charge constables." The two guards followed the familiar voice to a mask wearing woman. They scuffled to stand upright and moved to the side.
"Your-your witchness…he-he was getting in the way."
"Well, I'll apologize on his behalf and assume this matter is settled." This was the last thing the boy heard before everything faded to black again or at least he wished it did because regret always had to have the last word.
----------
It was spring once more. A lucid pastel spring of ghostly white lilies, stretching endlessly as far as the eye could see. The air, thick with a sickly sweetness, clung to the skin, and the sky above swirled in muted grey, streaked with veins of black sunlight that fractured the illusion of reality.
On the crest of a lonely hill sat the boy, an ink-black silhouette against the dying serenity. Far enough to be excluded, but close enough that the sweet scent felt suffocating. He sat beneath the only tree that spring had forgot.
A red, leather-bound book rested beside him, its surface embellished with different flowers and black pages. It was his only companion in the peaceful silence that lasted till they showed up. Four figures, pale as the moon, appeared from the depths of the lilies, drifting toward him. They wore black masks, each one an exaggerated expression of twisted emotion—childish fear, prideful regret, whimsical longing, and guilty despair.
Theirs hands intertwined and they began to circle around the boy and the tree in a silent dance that prompted the black clouds to circle above the hilltop. With each step, the masks began to leak—a viscous, golden liquid, dripping from the hollow eyes, pooling beneath their feet into a golden cascade that flowed across the black ground.
Golden lightening interrupted the horror as it struck tree which trembled, its charred bark splitting with each violent crack till it bled out the same golden blood. The boy flinched as the book seemed to shudder at his side, its pages fluttering with greedy anticipation. Slowly, it began to float, rising from the ground as the golden blood poured into it, fueling its merge with the tree.
White vines erupted to coat the black bark and swirl around the branches. Roses—deep, blood-red roses followed in suit from the tree's branches, their petals blackened at the edges. The vines caught into the masked figures one by one. They writhed and squirmed as the vines wrapped around their necks and dragged them above the ground till they all hanged limp from the rose tree.
Another brief silence interrupted by the shallow breath the boy let out, having had enough.
He ran. He ran without looking back, his heart hammering in his chest as the red corruption spread from the tree faster than his legs could carry him. The spring of whites, blacks and greys was slowly becoming undone with the encroach of a red tide that corrupted the bleak hues.
The white lilies began to wilt, their petals turning crimson. The sky, once streaked with light, bled purple veins, and the ground beneath him groaned with ancient scars, giving way down to a tunnel of brick that stretched into a long corridor. An iron door covered with rusted chains tried to impede the boy, but the vines wore it down allowing the boy to enter.
White vines decorated with roses followed him underground, but the boy made it to the end of the corridor where he found a door to close behind him. However, when he turned around, he was not alone. Chained to a wall was another black figure. He hung limp and bloody barely able to lift his head to stare back at the boy.
The figured muttered a single word as the vines breached the door and grabbed onto the boy dragging him back into its embrace.
"Remember..."
-------
With a gasp that echoed fear and frustration, he woke up from the nightmare that had haunted his sleep for as far as he could remember. He tried to recall the events of the nightmare, but his mind refused, no it begged him to stop his pursuit of memories. Relenting to the whims of his subconscious he turned around to examine his surroundings.
He was in the same bed he had escaped from not too long ago, but everything was tidy again, even the vase with new lilies which made the boy gulp for more reasons than one.
"You must be hungry." Clara spoke from the side, tossing the boy an apple. She didn't ask anything nor rebuke him. Her tone suggested that she was relieved to find the boy awake.
The boy wanted to refuse the gesture, but his stomach grumbled at the sight of the apple. He hadn't eaten a ripe one in a long time. So, he munched on in silence till even the apple's core disappeared in his mouth all while she watched with a warm gaze.
She would leave and return two more times to bring the boy food. This continued for a week then two. All the while she nursed his bandages and wounds. She spoke firmly but warmly and each time she brought him news and stories of the world beyond his room. Most were grim, that was the trend of the current era.
Some of the highlights included gossip of misery Dremin abducting children. A cover by the Freedom Paper narrating another rebellion in the Drazian empire but this time by some mercenary band. The usual relegious scuffle between Grishin Blighters and Drazian Abolishers over an artifact excavated near the borders of the two nations. The most grim piece of news was the start of the new semester at Egrafelt. The sole Canite academy would soon be hunting for students again.
He took all this information with a grain of salt and a deaf ear. To be precise the boy tried his best to ignore her kindness. He would not fall it. It was a ruse of some kind, and he was smarter than he'd been before. However, it was hard to ignore the warmth. It was intoxicating.
This routine continued until a moonless night greeted the boy with his favorite past time...insomnia. It probably the anxiety that kept him awake...it always leeched off whatever comfort he got muster.
In the dullness of the evening, he watched the perpetual cloudy sky. Even though the clouds never left it, the smoke of factories and chimneys was somehow making it darker. It almost entirely blocked what few rays of the red moon that dared grace the world with its presence.
With a sigh he turned to the flower at his bedside. The white scatter lilies were beautiful. He wondered if they grew lonely without the moonlight but then again Clara watered them religiously every day. Without her, they'd have withered away much like him.
"What was ours taken...what safety we had now void." Regret spoke to him with her haughty attitude again. She was not wrong. He was now at under the roof of people he barely knew. It was only a matter of time before the warmth turned cold and the kindness gave way to demands but...
"Don't! DON'T EVEN DARE!" Fear screamed so loudly almost becoming corporeal, making the boy lash out back.
"WHY NOT! Somebody has to make sense! They have to." The boy shouted and broke down in tears. He didn't want to admit how right fear was but he couldn't take the silence anymore. The walls he'd painstakingly built were becoming too surreal and he needn't someone…anyone to talk to other than himself.
As if on cue Clara walked into the room holding the dinner tray to find the boy crying. She set the tray aside and inched closer, reaching out to him. The boy flinched, curling up further away.
"It's…fine…everything is fine." She spoke softly, the mask barely a barrier between the two by now.
He could feel the affection she carried in her voice. It had to be real, or he'd be making a terrible mistake.
"Asher!" The boy murmured between the tears.
"Did you…Did you say something?" Clara asked in confusion. It was her first time hearing the boy speak.
"My name! My name is Asher." He spoke with frustration as he wiped away the tears. The moment he uttered his name both fear and regret disappeared leaving a buzz of silence that was almost nauseating.
"Well, Asher it's nice to finally make your acquaintance." Clara laughed at the boy who seemed lost at what to say next. A proper conversation was something he hadn't experienced in a long time. With gritted teeth, he followed what came to his head.
"Nice to meet you too!"