My first mistake came that same night, and the one to pay the price wouldn"t be me, but rather, the child who one day would be my Templar.As they prepare the camping around us, carrying water for the horses, cooking, talking and so on and on, we are left there in the middle for all to see, like part of the luggage.
So I"m not really surprised when one pair of eyes is still creepily staring at me.
I feel a chill run down my spine and, before I look back I already had a faint idea what my eyes would encounter, but even that did not prepare me for the sight, no child would be able to, to be under such intense gaze, a l.u.s.tful predatory glint that made me s.h.i.+ver and cower even more, the man unmoving, focused, only his hands were playing with a knife as his eyes did not even blink while staring me down.
My s.h.i.+vering self only fuels his hunger.
I did not understand, in such tender age, what the creepy man wanted from me, but I was sure that it would be something I was whiling to give, nor it would me do any good.
Nothing in this place would, and such an eager look in one of them; especially being the fancy man that the others feared; only makes everything worse.
I go back to ignoring him, ignoring it all, and as time pa.s.ses I"m not even aware of where he is anymore, closing myself in, eyes opening but not seeing, and with no way of escaping from inside my cage there was no point in looking around me.
There was nothing good to see anyway.
As time pa.s.ses I start to think, at first, that the men would leave us be as long as we were quiet and obedient, so I didn"t say nor tried anything, just kept still as if I could blend in with the ground.
When the "food" came, don"t talk about eating, it was impressive enough that I had kept my stomach intact until this moment and one look over the… soup gave me more than enough reasons to avoid it.
If one put water and soil it would get the same color and texture of that soup I"m sure.
Even more, after looking over and seeing that some kids did not touch the food, I grow bold enough as to simply ignore the bowl.
But I should have guessed that, by the mere fact that I was in a cage and in a cleaner place, that I wasn"t like the rest of them.
"Oi, the fairy is not eating." One of them says, calling them guards would be giving them too much credit, so just ugly bandit and stinky would do.
They came closer, complaining all the way, making me tremble on the side and try to get as small as possible, only for them to kick the cage and make me squeak before I could hold the little scream in.
But of course those predatory eyes would not have left me unattended for long, so with the sound the creepy fancy man came forth, making me dread even more what was about to come.
"What"s wrong?" He asks making so that both stinky and ugly fight for being the one to tell him, and somehow the creepy man makes do with the thrown words and understands the situation.
"This is indeed not good…We can"t have that, can we?"
"Yeah, yeah, do you want to starve yourself and make us lose money uh?!"
"Yeah, high merch has to eat!"
I simply did not have an appet.i.te, and if I knew they would react so badly I would have eaten in silence, but I don"t have enough time to amend the situation when the creepy man finds it amusing and joins in.
"That asks for punishment, doesn"t it?" The creepy man says, making my widen eyes immediately lower down to the whip on his waist.
That makes me tighten my hug on my legs and tremble, after all as a kid I did not know how to hide my feelings nor how bad would it be to display my emotions like that.
Naïve, just too naïve… but I could not hide behind that excuse for long could I?
"B-but Konrad-I-I mean boss!" Ugly says, changing the naming for boss after receiving a piercing cold gaze. "We can"t damage a high quality good like her!"
"Indeed… but there are ways of harming others without leaving visible scars…" The way he said it intoned that he had quite the experience in doing as such. "Demons are specialized in such methods after all…How about using a traditional one of my kin then?"
It is just a freaking soup guys! There is no need to overreact like this there is? Look, I can just eat it now can"t I? All will be fixed right? Right?!
All that seemed like a coherent line of thought, however the point was not what made then angry; or rather, they were not even angry, they just wanted an excuse to play around and abuse others.
And I had just given them that, even if with such a small matter like this.
At that I"m already preparing myself to receive my punishment, resenting my destiny, but he proves to me that demons and men can be quite crafty.
Because he doesn"t reach out towards me… but grabs the little boy who had helped me out earlier from the line.
His only reaction was to narrow his eyes and grab the hands holding his hair as he was dragged by the creepy man to kneel in front of my cage, giving me the perfect view of his body brighten up by the light of the fire.
I"m a little surprised to see that his skin was totally black, the color of obsidian, and the totally white eyes that my mumbled mind had not questioned beforehand were actually the natural color for his kind.
This position makes me stare him in the eye, and I could not blame him for the scowl on his face as he keeps his pa.s.sive-aggressive behavior, not whiling to look weak but not wanting to dig his grave deeper by reacting.
At that the creepy man reaches out for his side, skipping the leather whip and going for the knife, unsheathing it.
I could only watch in dreadful silence, feeling as if my throat was closing in as a scream wanted to leave my lungs, the tormenting pressure growing with each step, with each word, with each action, and my mind could only recite the same words over and over again in my mind.
Is my fault. It is my fault.
"Hold him." The fancy man said and the other two quickly did as told, a smile on their faces as the small fists of the boy could not prevent them from moving his head up.
My fault.
"Now open your mouth wide fifty elf." The creepy man says, pus.h.i.+ng his fingers on the sides and forcing his mouth to open as the other hand swung the blade in the air, waiting for his turn.
It wasn"t a clean cut. Nor a fast one.
All my fault.
I lose all control when blood gushes out and a tongue is thrown in front of me, screaming at the top of my lungs as all acc.u.mulated tears fall down at once, making me unable to see as I reach out for the boy, but laughing the other men simply thrown him back at his place and lock the chain around his neck, separating us for the entire night as he lay there, limp, bleeding his life away.
And all I could do was cry, but even that was denied from me when the creepy man kneels down beside my cage and puts a finger on his lips.
"There are more low merch we can play with, but you don"t want that do you?" I quickly nod a no, putting both hands in front of my mouth to prevent the screams and sobs from coming out, all tension swiping to my limbs, making my body tremble instead. "Good girl." He says, finally leaving me alone.
I want to puke.