#ic!au

The thought made his steps stutter, breaking the monotony of his boots thudding the bare concrete floor. On a base where the commander could read minds, such thoughts were dangerous indeed.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to worry about that at the moment. The General was to be gone for three days.

In the days before the General’s departure, the veteran guards split up their shifts and passed off most of their hours to the younger greenhorns in favor of spending their days in the mess hall and common rooms playing cards. The fewer rookies a ward had, the more that fell to them, and the more hours they would spend on shift apiece. Some of them loved it, raking in a modest extra pay bonus and gaining more experience on their assigned blocks. Others hated the extra load and would fake sick or push the more enthusiastic men to take on their share as well.

Torin...was not so fond of the situation. He was the only rookie on the High Risk Ward, and thus had no wiggle room to negotiate. Granted, there were only about a dozen and a half men assigned as permanent in the High Risk rotation, and only one prisoner to boot, but it was still three days of twelve hour shifts. The Captain was the only thing stopping the rest of the section from forcing Torin to work the night shift as well. Lucky bastards only had to walk the halls for two hours each and had the rest of the three days off.

So there he was, just two hours into his first shift of the three. Making endless loops of a quiet hall to guard a single prisoner. All alone. And already becoming bored out of his mind.

The youth slowed as he approached the elf’s door, a thought occurring to him that refocused his wayward mind.

The General had spent the night interrogating her again, dumping the woman in her cell a mere hour before he departed and Torin began his rounds. As always, she was unconscious, unresponsive to the world around her. Which opened

Torin stopped at the door, fiddling with the keys on his belt.

His anxiety and his curiosity were waging war in his mind. He had only ever seen the woman at a distance or through the barred window into her darkened cell. Sure, Himel had said she was an elf, and some of the other guards said she was too, but it wouldn’t be the first time they had lied about a prisoner to haze him. Hell, the first couple weeks he was on duty they had convinced him that there was a serial killer that frequently escaped in one of the cells that was boarded up. It took a month before the Captain told him it was simply boarded because there was a crack in the wall that no one wanted to fix. Just saying the woman was an elf had to be confirmed with his own eyes before he would believe it.

Torin’s hands twitched. Curiosity won.

The cell door glided inward, light from the corridor spilling across the concrete floor. Torin took one last look around to double check that the hall was clear before he cautiously stepped into the darkened room.

The first thing he noticed was that the woman was sprawled not far from the back wall, one arm folded awkwardly under her body. It looked as if the General had literally thrown her into the cell.

Torin waited, feeling tingles of unease fizzle in his ribs as he watched the prisoner. He was sure she would be unconscious, but now that he was inside with her, his exit blocked until he could fumble his keys out and get them in the lock, a voice in his mind told him to tread carefully. A chained, injured wolf was still a wolf, and all the more likely to lash out in any way possible.

He took another step inside and clicked the light at his shoulder on at the lowest intensity. She didn’t stir, still out cold from the treatment she received earlier.

More sure of his safety now, Torin crept to the woman’s side. His father, before everything happened, had told him stories about elves and Riders. To actually see one in real life was an experience he never even dreamed of. Growing up it seemed that everyone else viewed the Fair Folk as monsters and terrorists that should be exterminated, but to Torin and his sister….

No. Even with the General gone from the base, Torin didn’t dare follow that train of thought.

Torin knelt and, as gently as he could, reached out with two fingers to move aside the wild shock of hair that had loosened from the woman’s braid.

And he froze, heart juddering into the next beat. He didn’t know how– or when –she had moved, but there was no mistaking it as pain radiated up his arm.

A tawny hand was clamped, vicelike, on his wrist. From between fallen strands of dark hair, caught alight by the beam of his torch and blazing with molten malice, a dark emerald eye glowered out at him.

Once, as a young child, Torin had blundered upon a mountain lion. He had emerged from the thick woods not two meters from the creature, and in the split second that he had to realize just what he was witnessing, both lion and boy had locked eyes.

Now, years later, the same mix of surprise and terrified awe he felt in that moment reared its head again.

For a long moment, Torin just stared at the woman. The determination and venom in her glance rooted him in place. Buried deep inside his mind, something told him that staying still was the best course of action. Let her size him up, determine if he was worth the trouble of breaking his arm or not. He did his best to look as nonthreatening as possible beyond the involuntary shaking of his limbs, saucer wide eyes and the frantic pace of his pulse she no doubt could feel at his wrist.

The woman’s grip tightened.

Panic surged into Torin’s throat. While the woman’s strength had been bruising before, now it felt as though the ward’s heavy doors were closing on his arm and slowly crushing his bones. As the force increased, he realized in a state of blind fear that he couldn’t stay silent any longer.

“WAIT! Wait, please I-I’m not here to hurt you!” The youth stumbled on his words, trying desperately to explain himself as he realized what she likely assumed of his intent. “I’m not trying to hurt you, I just want– I wanted to see if– I-I’m not even into women, I just– I’m just on patrol and I wanted to know if you were really–”

He was almost crying now, shaking like mad. When he tried to speak again, tried to tell her that he only wanted to see if she was an elf, if the stories were true, something else tumbled out of his mouth.

“I’m sorry. I don’t even want to be here.”

The deathgrip on his wrist did not loosen. But it did stop the grim increase in pressure.

Torin’s chest shuddered and heaved as the woman pushed herself up onto her elbow, never once taking her smoldering eyes off him. She seemed to be reading him, right down to his core.

Then she shoved him. Hard.

The young man let out a grunt of pain as he landed and slid on his rear two meters back from the elf. And she was an elf. He was certain now, what with the disturbing strength and the pointed tips of her ears that the act of pushing him had revealed. Torin cradled the wrist she had grabbed, trying to make sure nothing was broken before snapping his head up to ensure he wasn’t about to be kicked in the face.

The elf was still glaring at him, but otherwise hadn’t moved.

Torin swallowed. The pain in his forearm and hand was fading from sharp needles of interrupted blood flow to the throbbing ache of deep bruises. Ignoring all common sense and training he had received on the ward about disengaging with aggressive prisoners, he gave the woman a shaky nod of gratitude and a tiny hopeful smile as he gestured with his injured limb. “Th-thanks. It’s not broken.”

The elf let out a soft ‘tch’ of what could have been annoyed anger at her failure to crush his bones or a snarky reminder that if she had wanted it broken then it would be. There was a tightness to her jawline as she gave him one last once over...before stiffly turning onto her opposite side and laying down with her back to him in obvious dismissal.

Torin suppressed a sigh of relief. He made to stand, shifting his weight. The sound of his boot scraping the floor made the woman twitch, drawing his attention again.

That’s when he noticed the black that seeped through the dark grey of the elf’s prison uniform. Her sides gave minute shivers that were only perceptible when she breathed in, as if struggling to hide them. He could just barely see marks on the back of her neck before they disappeared beneath her shirt, dark and splotched with the ragged texture of cracked clay.

Torin’s wary grin faded. He reached for his shoulder light and ticked the intensity up a notch. As he ran its beam down the woman’s back and then over the cell floor, walls and tiny wall mounted bunk, a mass of abject horror crept up his throat.

Everything was splashed with blood.

There were rust colored stains and smeared palm prints streaked across the cinderblocks where the elf had tried to steady herself. Shoulder-shaped swathes edged with passive lines that ended with hardened droplets where she had rested in the corner, leaned against a wall. Long stilled droplets that trailed down the sides of the hard metal bunk and hovered above dusky pools of near black.

The evidence of brutality made Torin’s stomach knot. This was…

He turned back from his survey of the room at the sound of a soft scuff and hiss in the elf’s direction just in time to see her jerk her knees up towards her chest, curling up on reflex. The youth shined his light down towards the pinpointed source of the noise– a wobbling prison issue shoe, haphazardly discarded on its side –and suddenly jerked back, face twisted in sympathetic pain.

In the beam of his torch Torin could see the soles of the woman’s feet had been stripped of anything resembling healthy skin and now revealed spongy white and angry red flesh. Sour bile threatened to overwhelm the back of his throat at the rough char marks scattered among the burns, spotted blisters and shiny exposed dermis encircling the worst of the damage.

Torin felt his body moving back of its own accord, numb to the world as his mind raced in a stream of shock. If this was the extent of the wounds he could see, what did the rest of her injuries look like? The entire back of her issued shirt was blotched and thick with blood, hinting just enough for the boy’s mind to imagine it in sickening detail. Gods above, how was she still moving? How was she still conscious, never mind not endlessly screaming in agony.

He simply couldn’t comprehend it. How could anyone do that to another creature? Inhumane didn’t come remotely close to the word he was looking for, nor did egregious, monstrous or abhorrent. Even sadistic felt a stretch too short. The General was a Shade, that was true, but never had Torin imagined the brutality the man could inflict.

With that thought came a surge of indignation at the elf’s treatment. Not just by the General, but by the other guards. The human guards.

Torin shoved himself to his feet, the usual tingle of trepidation in his hands turned to hot needles of anger as he dug his nails into his palms. How could they stand by like that? How could they just shrug their shoulders each time they brought the elf back to her cell and ignore the state she was in? How could some of them brag about joining in on beating this woman senseless day after day, after the General had already hurt her this badly? Even enemies did not deserve to be treated this way, same race or not! He would confront them, tell them that they were wrong and that what they were letting happen and doing was horrific and they should be disgusted and feel shame to call themselves living creatures to stand by and watch and–

And....

Torin shook, feeling his breathing quickened with rage and the scrunched discomfort of his shoulders hunched up around his ears. The piling of his emotions had hit all wall, a leagues high wall of the reality of the situation that nothing could surpass. It all drained away, the righteous fury and horrified clarity replaced by a welling of hopelessness and emotional exhaustion.

What could he, Torin Aldsson, rookie guard pressed into service to repay the Broddring Empire’s costs of raising him, not yet twenty years old and prone to anxious breakdowns, do? Leave the elf’s cell door open? Start a riot and attempt a heroic rescue with no exit plan or place to go? Get branded a traitor to the Crown, tortured to death and have what was left of his body hung at the base gates as a reminder to any other foolish, idealist boys who came here?

His shoulders slumped, hands falling numb and open at his sides. He couldn’t do anything. He would have to do exactly as the others did. Stand by, silent and unfeeling, and watch as another being was mercilessly tortured for not just the path she had chosen but for what she was as well.

Torin switched his shoulder light down to low again with trembling fingers. That was it then. There was...there was nothing he could do.

He turned back to the door slowly. Every fiber of his being was screaming for him to apologize to the elf for the treatment she was receiving, to do his best to dress her wounds as he learned in his secondary school nursing track and comfort her. To treat her with dignity, respect, compassion, treat her like any other sentient being as his mother and father had taught him to.

The youth swallowed hard. Each step to the door felt like a betrayal to his true self, to the ideals and tenants his family had instilled in him and the only things that he had left of his kin.

And then Torin’s eyes snagged on the tray tucked against the wall by the door.

“...I’m coming up behind you. I’m not going to do anything, I promise.” The elf tensed at Torin’s words, muscles coiling up their remaining strength to lash out. The youth kept well to the side and leaned far over, trusting his sense of balance to keep upright as he tentatively set the tray down. “Figured you wouldn’t be able to get to it over there. Here.”

He slid the tray into place beside the elf with a fingertip and yanked his arm back when she raised her head. She looked down at the tray then back up to Torin’s face, expressionless save for the fire that the boy had seen in her eyes before.

The look he had was nervous, the same unsure posture and uneasy twitching at his hands as when he had entered her cell.

There was something different this time, though. Torin couldn’t see it, but the elf could. Not that she would let on. Silent but satisfied he meant no harm, she lowered her head back down to the floor and resumed staring at the wall, refusing to acknowledge the youth’s presence any further.

The pressure in Torin’s chest eased. That she hadn’t tried to break his finger was all he needed to confirm that he was doing the right thing. He slipped out of the cell and locked the door behind him, a tiny thrill of warmth running through his mind.

Years ago, as a young child, Torin had blundered upon a young mountain lion.

It lay in a clearing deep in the woods, sides thin with starvation and the tawny fur of its leg matted with blood that oozed around the teeth of the hunter’s trap. Its eyes blazed with the icy fire of a defiant spirit contrary to its physical state. The large cat growled low as the boy had approached, but even though claws sliced parallel gouges across his shoulder Torin did not stop. He stayed, and after hours of work at the rusted mechanism and buffeting countless blows with only a discarded plank of wood for protection, the trap opened with a screeching clang.

Arm bloodied, body bruised, and knowing there would be hell to pay that spring for releasing a hunter’s catch, Torin had still smiled wide as could be as the mountain lion sprang to its feet. The creature’s burning eyes as it gave him one last glance before limping away into the gathering darkness were burned into his memory.

Torin was not someone that could stand by and do nothing. Not then, and not now. If he could not spring the elf from her prison, then he would help her in other ways.

Torin choked at that, the realization of just who this woman was bolting through his brain. He yanked his arm back through the bars when she motioned again towards him. A dull clunk reverberated through the cell door. 

“I will not speak to you through a grate. You may open the door.” Torin stared, dumbfounded, as the aged hinges slowly drifted the door inwards several inches. “You will not leave your cell. You will sit and answer my questions. Am I understood?” 

The man’s heart felt as though it would burst. 

“Yes Ma’am.”

This woman, this elf, the Queen of the Elven Nation, was giving him some modicum of freedom. As he carefully pulled the door open, fingertips barely gripping the edge of the barred window, Torin’s mind raced. He had spent the years in his cell watching and listening to the people of Gil’ead through the ground level window above his cot. His eyes became accustomed to seeing what people left unsaid, picking them out in an almost obsessive way to pass the time. The subtle movements of unspoken hierarchy, plots of betrayal and scrambles to the top, he saw every move in the twitch of a finger or the shift of weight from one foot to the other. The motivations and meanings behind them were all as simple as reading a nursery rhyme for him now. 

By unlocking the cell, she– no, it’s Queen Islanzadí– the Queen had executed several strategic moves at once. 

Her action displayed him a small kindness, but was not without its caveats. The removal of the physical barrier between them, with a display of magic no less, further enforced to Torin that the Queen had absolutely nothing to fear from him. His position of sitting on the ground while she occupied a chair reinforced the differences in their status, and put her physically above him. 

Torin repressed a shudder as he settled down cross legged a meter back from the open door.

Once again he was a field mouse, the protective stone above his burrow removed so that he now faced the elegant hawk at the end of an inescapable ravine.

“Now,” Torin looked up, waiting for the Queen’s words. His arms tingled with anxiety again, and he had to resist shaking them to dispel the sensation. “Tell me how you knew the elf imprisoned here.”

The man breathed deeply. “How...how much do you want to know?”

Islanzadí’s golden eyes narrowed. “Everything.”

Torin bobbed his head and looked down at his hands. Flexed his fingers before folding them in at the second joints. “I...I didn’t know her name. She never talked.” A small smile made its way through the nervousness as he toyed with his torn knuckles, half scarred and half healed. “Well...she swore a couple times. At the General and…” His throat went dry again. He dug his thumbnail into one knuckle unconsciously to lessen the itch a new surge of anxiety swarmed into his hands. “At...at the other guards.”

“Other?” The sharp sting of the word made Torin flinch. She knew now.  

The fresh gouge on his knuckle waited to fill with blood, white and empty with pressure as Torin clenched his free hand over the bent joints and hated himself for the words he spoke.

“I was one of them.” 

Islanzadí was silent for a long, heavy moment. Torin did not dare to look up, already feeling the gathering thunderheads around the Elf Queen. Near black at the base, they towered over him, rumbling in discontent and contained fury across a windswept field. A tailwind to drive the hawk down upon her prey with vicious speed. 

And then, as if halted by an immovable wall, they stopped. The clouds retreated somewhat to await their commander’s call. 

Torin risked raising his eyes. Islanzadí was regarding him, eyes frigid and lips tight with restrained contempt as she drew herself up. 

“My question still stands, Aldsson.” Her voice was reminiscent of the distant promise of thunder. “Explain yourself. Tell me everything that you know.”

Torin’s shoulders slumped lightly in relief. He would live, for now. He had a chance to tell his story. 

“Yes Ma’am.” He wet his lips and again rain his fingers over his torn knuckles before he began. “I first saw her when I was being trained for High Risk Ward patrol…”

~

“What did she do?” 

Torin flinched when Himel’s initial response proved to be a rough slap to the head. “What do you mean, ‘what did she do,’ you idiot?” 

Torin shrugged apologetically, rubbing his now reddened ear. Himel was his guard partner, soon to be reassigned as the young man reached the year long mark at his post. After that, Torin would be free to patrol and work alone on any of the nearly empty wards of Gil’ead’s prison. 

Cuffs to the head and gruff demeanor aside, Torin admitted only to himself that he would miss his companionship. The halls were lonely, and the prisoners were not much for talking if they had the rather horrific honor of occupying this particular ward of the prison.

“I’m just wondering, you know?” The young man again peeked through the barred window of the cell, watching the bloodied, unconscious occupant where she lay slumped on the floor. “The General is always so...brutal. She had to have done something crazy to have him as her interrogator.”

Himel pinched the smashed bridge of his crooked nose. The man was over twice Torin’s age and had been a guard in the High Risk Ward for longer than the youth was alive. To say he had little patience for the boy’s curiosity would have been a severe understatement. “It’s not our business what she did. She pissed off the King. Not to mention if you had anything between your ears you’d already have noticed that thing isn’t human.”  

All the moisture in Torin’s mouth fled at those words. The fine sawdust of ingrained fear that coated his tongue was a familiar feeling. He always felt it when the General was near, every nerve telling him to run, or, better yet, find a deep dark crevice to cower in well out of his clawed reach. 

Torin moved back from the cell door, hands twitchy with anxiety. “So she’s like...She’s another Shade, then?” 

The youth’s partner snorted. “Course she ain’t.” Himel spat to the side, distaste coloring his features. “The General woulda killed any other competition if she were a Shade. That there’s an elf.”

“Are you serious?” At that Torin was back at the bars, straining to pick out any identifying features that would confirm Himel’s assertion. 

“Of course I’m feckin’ serious, idiot.” Torin let out a whuff of breath as the veteran clamped a hand down on his shoulder and pulled him back. “And you’ll be seeing plenty of her. She’s not going anywhere any time soon. ‘nless the King himself wants at crack at at breaking the General’s new toy himself, that is.

“Come on. It’s almost lunch break and I want to get a head start on the mess hall. Pick up the pace.”

“So, we are done with Mafia Town, the Dead Bird Studio is clear as well.. I believe there are a few left in Nyakuza. Do you want to do those Bow?” The brown haired girl asked with a colorful map in front of her on the soft carpet floor. It was drawn with chalk and obviously made by a child, but the girl was quite proud of her drawing skills. “Yep! Sounds good to me!” Bow kid smiled. She would be able to see the cats again and she couldn’t say no to that. “Okay, then.. I’m going to Alphine and Subcon to close a few Rifts. I missed a few apparently. I’ll be going to Subcon first because I don’t trust.. You know, anyone in that area with a Timepiece, even if they are broken or not.”

The girls laughed and giggled. Since the battle against Mustache Girl, the two girls gained time to spend together. They were sisters after all, not officially but they didn’t care about that. They were just very close and nothing could change that fact. “Okay, I’ll be going to Nyakuza then! I’ll bring you some sushi when I come back! And coffee!” Bow Kid ran off to the bedroom, to return shortly after in her badass Nyakuza outfit with a bat on her shoulder. “Gotta fit in, right?” She giggled and smiled proud. After Hat Kid came back with that outfit, Bow wanted one herself too.. So she made one herself looking exactly like Hat’s. “You look amazing Bow.” Hat giggled and stood up, picking up the map and made it disappear in her hat. “If I’m not back in 12 hours, assume I got into trouble with either Snatch or the Queen, though I doubt He’ll send me back there.” She pulled a small device from her hat, basically just a metal box with a big red button with some weird signs above it. It said teleport, but not everyone could read that. “Okay! I’ll see you with dinner!” “Boop!”

---------

The power radiating from the shiny Hourglass was terrific. How were those aliens trusting a twelve years old child with something powerful like this?! The Snatcher couldn’t think of a reason, but aliens were a new recent thing for him. Maybe their way of thinking was quite different from his, he got defeated by that child four times at least anyway. That does say something, even though he didn’t want to admit it.

He couldn’t find anything in his books about these Hourglasses, it was a huge mystery. Her species was probably never seen before on his planet.. Why did she have to appear now and make his afterlife a living hell every time she visits? He DID sign a contract to be BFFs.. So it was probably his own fault, she should’ve signed first before he put his mark on it. Amateur mistake.

The spirit circled around in his tree house, staring at the Timepiece and figuring out how to use it. He saw the Mustached girl slamming them on the floor before the two girls started to fight, the whole area changed into this flashing arena. It hurt his eyes for a good thirty minutes, he was happy when it ended and he could go home peacefully.

It probably wasn’t going to be peaceful for long since he had this thing in his hands. “Snatcher! Give it back!” There it was, the hatted brat. The ghost turned around, glaring at the child. “Your business here was done kid. Get out. It’s mine now, it fell into my forest.” He snapped. No way he was going to give it back like that. Not without a fight.. Hmm.. “Snatcher, you have no idea what you got in your hand right now! One small crack could have major consequences!” She tried to explain and slowly came closer, her hands aiming for the timepiece. She couldn’t reach it in time, Snatched raised it above his head. “So? I’ve seen that red dressed girl use it. No consequences for her.. Besides, I am already dead.” He grinned proud. “What’s the worst that can happen to me?” “You could uhh, disappear?! It doesn’t have to affect you! It could also affect your minions, me, maybe Vaness-“ Snatcher twitched. “DON’T USE HER NAME.” He roared and put the timepiece on the highest furniture he had nearby and floated in front of it so he could stop the child if she attempted to get it. “S-Sorry. But you know what I mean.. It could affect everyone, maybe even past Subcon!” She crossed her arms and glared at the shade. “Why are you so stubborn!? Just give it back!! Not everything in this pecking forest is yours just because you ‘claimed’ it! That’s my Timepiece and I need it to get back home! You want me gone, right? Then give it back? Maybe??”

Snatcher rubbed his non-existent chin. “Hmm.. Good point. But no. Believe me, I want you gone. But I doubt you’ll leave for good.” He grabbed the Hourglass behind him. “You seem to return a lot just to say hi and basically annoy me while I am trying to do my job so.. I’ll get you out myself? You said I could disappear..?” His grin widened. “Meaning I could make you disappear as well.. It affects time right? What if.. I undo the day you were born?” He snickered, chuckled and began to laugh while he raised the Timepiece. “That sounds like a wonderful idea! Don’t you think kid!?” The child’s eyes widened. “Wait, Snatcher no! You have no idea what that cou-“ She was too late to stop him. The spirit threw the Timepiece on the ground. A bright light blinded them both for a while. Hat Kid knew to recover pretty quick. It wasn’t like this was the first time she experienced this. “YOU’RE an IDIOT!” She yelled and rubbed her eyes. Her vision was blurry and she couldn’t really make out anything except for the trees and soft grass. She didn’t see anything that had changed.. Maybe nothing happened but she doubted that.