#sanks

AIIIII I am in tootbed rn QSO idoant hauve my sketchbook but here's my didgutal handwriting

Sanks pulled up his hood and headed towards the door. "Get yourself ready, I'll be back in an hour to fetch you and we'll get you back home."

"Please," Crin said, his head hung low and his knees pulled up to his chest. He sounded so desperate, for anything, any different path in his fate. "Is there no where else I can go? No other options for me?"

"There is pain in facing consequences, in taking responsibility. You may not want to go home but here is a secret for you: none of us ever want to."

"My apologies," Crinoran offered without being asked, "You look a lot younger than I expected. I thought you would be a lot older than me, you seem so experienced."

He was a lot older than Crinoran, but he wouldn't argue with him on that. The less he knew about Sanks the better. His face was young though, his eyelashes thick and dark around his dark gray eyes, and untarnished by crows feat or other wrinkles.

"Trust your instincts there. Most things don't age the same way as humans do."

Sanks raised an eyebrow. He had done what he could to convince the boy and thought that his performance the night before had helped but it couldn't have been enough to give Crinoran that much of a change of heart. Someone else must have influenced him. Perhaps that had been a part of why he'd run away from the castle, whatever his crime had been.

"I can't," Crinoran said, "Of course, I can attempt to but there is a great deal of policies and politics and there are a lot of people that are very high up that wouldn't listen to me. They'd want to keep going with what is already happening, keep themselves in positions of power. My father is not an old man either, he will have a great deal of time left to rule."

"I'm sure we can make his reign a little shorter," Sanks sighed, flashing his teeth.

Crinoran shivered but pulled a little closer, as if to see them more clearly. They were just flat normal teeth, for the moment.

"Is that a threat?" he asked.

There was a thump as Crinoran fell back, landing heavily on the bed. His arms were outstretched as he looked up at the ceiling. Sanks could smell the anxiety in him, the dampness of his skin. There was a static cling in the air, a moment away from full panic. He didn't blame Crinoran for that.

"Do you know what I am?" Sanks asked. "You shouldn't let your guard down around things like me."

"Things like you," Crinoran echoed, "My apologies but you aren't as frightening as you make yourself out to be. I know what you think you are."

Crinoran shrugged, "They're the enemy according to my father. He says their cannibals and monsters, trying to destroy the world. That's why he's waging this secret war against them, kill them all off before they kill us."

"That's what your father thinks, what about you?"

Crinoran sighed and looked at the ceiling with his eyes only. "I don't know, really. There are fiends on both sides. I'd say I don't believe in monsters if I hadn't seen them with my own two eyes."

That was promising. Crinoran was already halfway there.

"Why not abstain?" Sanks asked. He would lose his title and power if he did that but he would at least keep some of his fortune and prestige. He would be safe. "You have never met my father," Crinoran shuddered. He was afraid of the king, as if he wasn't as human as he appeared. He'd run to a town where he was surrounded by predators, creatures that his father had trained him to be afraid of and yet he was just as, if not more, afraid of the king. "He wallows in tradition. The bloodline is of utmost importance, it is where he thinks power stems from. If I were to break that tradition, to abstain, it would not be forgiven. I would find my neck on the line, quite literally, and my head elsewhere."