Young Writers Society

Evie raised an eyebrow. It was an expression she had mostly picked up from Viktor at this point.

"What about when we try to get you down?" she asked. "You're not going to be able to stay up there for long, and your concussion probably doesn't help."

“You know,” James said. “You keep saying that, but I can’t help but think you don’t really mean it. Why should me having a concussion matter to you? You clearly don’t care about my well being if you’re just going to throw me over to the authorities for money. And you don’t even know what they’ll do to me afterward - but me? Oh, I’ve got a pretty good idea. A really good idea actually.”

James repositioned his feet a little, using the rope tying his hands together to actually improve his hold by looping it around a branch securely. In hindsight, he hadn’t realized how he’d somehow managed to climb with essentially three limbs and not four, but adrenaline was still pumping through him. He wasn’t going to overthink it.

That said, his wrists were starting to hurt like hell. The rope had definitely burned some of the skin off because of the rough friction he’d just subjected it to.

“What’s a group of mages like you - or uh, waffle flowers or whatever Felix called it - doing bounty hunting anyway? Don’t you think that’s more risl than it’s worth? And why help the kingdom catching their criminals for them? They want you dead.”

...Waffle flowers? Weren't waffles a food from Fontaine? Evie hadn't ever had it before, but she had heard of it. She didn't realize they involved flowers-

Her eyes widened.

She glanced back at Felix, who Viktor was currently letting stay cuddled against his side. Felix had said what he was. The smart thing was to avoid saying something like that, but she suddenly realized they had never told him that. He hadn't even listened when they told him not to use cryo, too, so why would he suddenly listen to being told to pretend to be human?

"Viktor," she said, "you need to talk with Felix about not telling people's he's a whopperflower."

Viktor sighed and looked down at the whopperflower in question, but Felix was blissfully unaware of the whole exchange. "You know Felix learning that is just as likely as Val not sneaking into church again."

That was a good point. Evie let out a sigh of her own. Then she turned back to the one that she was supposed to be capturing, watching as he used the rope around his wrists to keep himself steady. It was really impressive, when Evie thought about it. She'd have to take notes.

"You're wanted for a reason," Evie said. "I don't know why you're wanted for treason, but whatever you did must have been bad enough. They want a lot of money for you."

She paused, studying Tiberius again.

"I'm surprised," she said, hands tucked behind her back as she leaned forward and tilted her head ever so slightly to the side. "You know Felix can use magic, but you didn't lash out at him. It could have been because he was too dangerous, but..."

She straightened.

"It almost seems you're more bothered about us being bounty hunters than you are about us potentially being mages."

"Yeah, well if you'd taken more than three seconds to make a judgment on my character before getting to know me, then maybe you'd already have known I have no problems with mages or magic," James said, still stubbornly secure in his perch in the tree.

"I just have problems with people trying to kill me or hunt me down. Which - wow, imagine that? Who wants to be hunted down by bounty hunters? Couldn't be me."

Viktor, who was watching the exchange from afar, knew exactly what Evie was doing right now. She had a way of reading people that others didn't always. She had talked to him like that, back when they first really met. Viktor knew she was testing the waters to see if her judgment of his character was right. Maybe his lack of hatred towards mages was why she was acting the way she was, or maybe it was because Felix hadn't acted Tiberius like he had others who had hurt Viktor.

Maybe Viktor should have been protesting the change in tune, but he wanted to see if she was right.

"Maybe you shouldn't have committed treason against the kingdom, then," Evie commented.

"Maybe I had a good reason," James snapped back. "But that's none of your damned business."

Evie mulled his response over.

"Well," she said, "you are trying to get us to let you go. You brought up how the kingdom wants mages dead, but we already know that. And you're bringing up how frustrated you are with being caught, but you're not the first person we've caught for a bounty that's said that, either."

They admittedly specialized in taking down automatons so Evie could salvage their parts. Said automatons also didn't speak, but Tiberius didn't need to know that.

"So if you want to win us over," Evie said, "you're going to have to give us a little more to work with."

"How about you work with this," James said slowly, mentally preparing himself for the fall. "Leave me alone."

As he said that, he pulled himself up a little, loosened his hands and the ropes from the branch he was holding, and started to leap down the tree. His goal was to be fast and catch branches, hopping on the way down. His strategy worked for the first two branches he hopped to, but with his hands bound, he knew the fall was inevitable.

Still about 15 feet above the ground, his feet slipped, and his body flipped. His back slammed into a branch and there was a loud crack - but he didn't know if it was his spine or the branch. Either way, it hurt like hell, and he spun around, hitting another branch, and then another, getting snagged and scraped as he helplessly reached for a branch to hold to catch his fall, but to no avail. He knew each hit was technically good: it meant it was breaking his fall, little by little, but still.

The ground was coming.

James desperately shut his eyes and tried to turn in his fall so he landed on his back and not his face. Was either one better? At this point, no.

He landed on his side, hard, and he didn't even roll at all. He let out a long and pained groan, knowing it wasn't worth it to move at this point.

Okay. This was his stupidest idea so far.

"Oh Barbatos," Evie managed to get out as Tiberius went plummeting to the ground below. She rushed down the staircase, but he had already hit the ground by the time she reached the bottom. Viktor and Felix, who had come over as soon as Tiberius slammed into the ground.

"Why would you do that?" Viktor asked. As soon as Felix moved apart from him, Viktor went over and pulled Tiberius to his feet. It had to hurt no matter how he grabbed Tiberius. A fall like that would even hurt Evie, and she was made different than everyone else here. "Were you trying to get another concussion?"

James's whole world was spinning, and gods above, getting grabbed and yanked upright only made it worse, on top of his whole body hurting and falling apart.

Still, he wasn't having it.

He violently pushed the man away - and he honest to gods couldn't make out who it was because he was seeing double, or triple, or he didn't know. Too many, that was for sure. Spinning around, he stumbled, but stayed on his feet, swaying.

"I told you to leave me alone," he said firmly, or at least he thought it was firm, but when it came out he sounded more like he was on the verge of fainting, or just doubling over in pain. Both sounded good and bad at the same time.

He cursed under his breath and started walking away, each step a little less confident than the first as he held his head with his still-bound hands.

Felix straightened and raised a hand out right after Tiberius pushed Viktor away.

"Felix," Viktor said. He had stumbled back after the initial push, but had regained his balance a moment later. "No."

Felix lowered his hand. "He hurt you again."

"I can protect myself," Viktor said. With how badly he had been hit by Evie earlier and how hard that fall from the tree must have been, Viktor honestly doubted that Tiberius was a serious threat to his safety right now. He couldn't even easily run away.

Felix looked unconvinced.

Ignoring how he had already been pushed away once, Viktor walked over to Tiberius and grabbed him again—this time by the shoulder he hadn't landed on. It hopefully wouldn't hurt as much.

"Even if you weren't the one we were taking in for a bounty, I wouldn't let you leave like that," Viktor said, lacking all of Evie's nonchalance. "You're being stupid."

"Yeah, well," James said, ripping his shoulder away, this time with a glare, flashing contempt, and anger. "It wasn't like I was going to get away from a bunch of mages anyway."

"If you hadn't fallen out of a tree," Viktor said, giving James a look, "you might have been able to do it."

He dug around in the messenger bag at his side. Tiberius likely only had bruises from the impact, but Viktor wanted to check to be on the safe side. After a moment of digging, he found his glass bottle of water, a spare cloth, and a roll of small bandages.

"If you sit down," Viktor said, "I can look you over to make sure you didn't get any cuts from that fall. You can try running again, but you're about to pass out. You won't be getting far."

"I'm not going to pass out," James corrected sharply, starting to walk away again. This time, the world was a little less doubled, but still, his body hurt a lot. Not like he was going to say that out loud.

"Trip, maybe, or lose balance, but I'm not going to lose consciousness from just walking."

He may have forgotten he was also severely concussed. Now that he thought about it, passing out - or rather, just losing consciousness - seemed all the more of a possibility. Still, he wasn't going to say that out loud.

"If you really want to catch me again, you're going to have to come and get me," James said, before starting to run.

Well, jog. Or the closest thing to jogging that he could manage.

His back hurt. Oh gods, it hurt. And his legs. And his head. But he pushed forward.

Viktor raised an eyebrow at Tiberius's insistence that he wouldn't pass out. Viktor had dealt with his fair share of concussions and being slammed against the ground or a wall. Even if Tiberius was human and he wasn't, he was bound to pass out soon.

Then he started jogging (speedwalking?) away from them, and all that Viktor could do was watch. He should have been stopping him, but he felt oddly spiteful and knew Tiberius would be passing out any moment now.

And then Felix shifted and disappeared into the ground underneath their feet, and Viktor could barely get out a "Felix!" before the whopperflower showed up in his flower form right in front of Tiberius.

"You wanted to stop him," Felix said in Viktor's voice.

"I did," Viktor said, "but not like that."