Young Writers Society

Meg winced, "Call me that one more time and I'll rip Kirux's throat out," she growled. If she attacked him, he could just possess her again, if she attacked Kirux, she could actually do some damage. Physical damage to Kirux, mental damage to Skull. If he were in a more...fleshy body, Megara could make his life a living hell, and have fun while doing it. But he wasn't, so Kirux it was. she would feel bad about it, but she was a little too pissed right now to consider exactly how she felt about hurting him in particular.

Jacob looked at her in alarm and whimpered, curling in closer to Fidel as he continued to cry.

The air became so cold that I could see Kirux's shaky, uneasy breaths in it.

"Don't bring him into this," I said. "It's not his fault that you can't handle a nickname."

The needle slipped in her hands and pierced her finger. She stared down at the drop of blood as it began to form at the tip of her index finger.

"Can't handle a nickname," she echoed, disbelieving. "Perhaps, for a moment, you should consider that what I really 'can't handle', is the reminder of the longest weeks of my life. Did you know that it takes roughly eleven days of starvation and sleep depravation to begin hallucinating? After that, it's a rather unpleasant downward spiral, would you like me to describe it to you?" She stared him down, wishing that his body was made of flesh that she could tear into, "Because I happen to relate that nickname to those memories, I have asked you not to call me that. Are you really so petty as to deny me that request?"

Jacob was so deep in his sobbing despair that it was doubtful that he heard anything that was happening around him, Fidel, however, was gaping. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, unable to find words.

I didn't offer any witty remarks in response to what she said.

I said nothing for the first few moments after she spoke, Jacob's sobs being the only constant noise in the otherwise silent room.

"I do, actually," I quietly said. "Not as much with the sleep deprivation, but with the starvation - that's something I understand better than you'd ever guess."

Starvation, a little bit of sleep deprivation, and a cold my body couldn't fight off - that had been what killed me more than a century ago. I hadn't died in a blaze of glory like the second time; I had just gone quietly in an alleyway that no one cared about, with no one to notice that I was no longer walking the streets.

I looked away from Megara.

"You should stop crying," I said to Jacob, but my voice sounded...weaker. Like I might have cared about the conversation, but just didn't care about it enough to act like everything was fine. "She was threatening me, not you."

Jacob couldn't only force his crying down to the hiccuping whimper that he'd had earlier.

"I have to go back. The schedule must be completed."

Megara turned her murderous glare to him, "How about this," she snapped, "You take us to your prince so that these moral idiots can feel better about making an attempt to keep you alive. Personally, I'd like to give you what you're asking for, but the others don't seem so keen to allow me that pleasure."

"I'm not a moral idiot," I protested. "I just know a thing or two about dying, and know that Jacob over here is making a major mistake with how he's acting."

Jacob got angry again, but this time he just sat there and seethed, trembling pathetically in Fidel's arms and glaring at Skull as she muttered something about the schedule.

Megara stood, laying her project carefully down on the bed before walking over to be face to face with Skull, though just out of his reach. She didn't want him taking over her body out of spite if he felt so inclined.

"Look, I have a little sister back home. A little sister who is going to get herself killed if I don't get back there fast enough to stop her from doing something incredibly stupid, so excuse me if the suicidal rando whom you so helpfully decided to drag along with us isn't a priority to me. I say we just kill him and get out of here before those guards find us and we have to fight our way out."

"No," I said. Megara was right - Jacob was nothing but a nuisance, and one who could very easily get us caught again. And I had places to be, too. I doubted they missed me too much, but I needed to get back to Asmira and Natty boy.

Still, here I was, trying to prove why Jacob needed to get his life in check.

"I need to get back to my world, too," I continued. "But even if he hates me for saying it, Jacob needs help."

I paused, a very, very stupid idea coming over me as I turned back in Jacob's direction. He was giving me a good glare, but I didn't bother to return it.

"You'll probably think I'm crazy after I say this," I said. "You probably already do. But I'm not like this normally. I'm made of flesh and blood, just like everyone else in this room. And that's not even the part I was talking about. I've died, Jacob. Technically once, but really twice - passing on is a lot like death. They have the same finality. And while I didn't leave anyone behind the first time around, the second time I made the mistake of thinking that it was best to just let go instead of stay with the one person who actually liked me."

Here I paused - grateful, for once, that my voice sounded so monotone. I didn't want to betray how badly I wanted to cry.

"Then I got another chance," I said. "A new start on a brand new world. A world without that person. And being so far away from her after considering her to be a major part of my life - even when she started to ignore me - hurt like you wouldn't believe. It still does. I've been able to catch glimpses of how she's doing now - it seems like she's okay, but then I see her look longingly at my old haunts, and hear her occasionally bring me up in mostly unrelated conversations."

I paused again, shifted a little, and continued on.

"So, Jacob, when I say you're making a mistake, it's not because I like judging people. That's not to say that I don't - I do love doing that," I said. "But what I just don't want another person to make the same mistake that I did."

Jacob was still crying, but softly now. He turned so he was crying into Fidel's shoulder, giving no reply.

Megara rolled her eyes, "You're a whole lot more sentimental than I would have guessed you to be," she commented. She then grabbed her project and looked it over, shrugged, and unfastened the front of the corset. She sighed as the pressure on her ribs was relieved and took a second to revel in it.

She left the corset on the floor as she put on her replacement. The dress just by itself didn't fit correctly without the support and shaping. It sagged and clung all wrong around her unaltered form. She solved this with a stiffened sort of imitation of the corset, made entirely of cloth with a stiffening layer between the top and lining layers so it would keep its shape.

As she slipped her creation over the dress, she said, "Whatever your opinion on what we should do with the idiot, we really need to get out of here. So can we focus on where, exactly, we should aim to be in the next half hour, that would be wonderful, thank you."

I mulled over Megara's point.

"We should see the prince," I decided. "Then I can convince Jacob not to waste his life, and we can find out a little more about why we were caught."

I paused, thought some more, and then added, "And, while we're at it, we might even be able to find out why the king's a jerk! I'm sure his son hates him as much as we already do."

Kirux, who had been nodding the entirety of the time I was speaking, stopped mid-nod when he heard that last comment.

Megara gave Skull a look, the meaning in it being shrouded by a few too many emotions.

"That's an awfully large assumption," she said finally.

Jacob, who until now had been huddling into Fidel's chest and weeping, seemed to have tuned back into the conversation. He jumped up, nearly knocking Fidel over in the process, and marched over to Skull. He planted a finger of his mechanical arm in Skull's chest hard enough to dent it and gave him a scathing look to rival the heat of the sun.

"You. Will. Not. See. The. Prince."

I looked down at the dent.

There was a brief moment of fear when I realized I had no idea how that would translate over to my normal self when this was all over, but I hoped it would just be a bruise.

"I'm not going to hurt him," I promised. "I won't let Megara, either. We just need to talk to him - you haven't been the most helpful, after all."

Jacob didn't relent, "You will not see the prince. I will not take you."

Megara rolled her eyes, "Oh please, what makes you think we need you to take us?"

He whirled on her, his face morphing into an expression of fear.

"This is a castle," Megara said, "Meaning it's structured like a castle. Now, I've been trained to find the most important people in places like this, usually to kill them, so why would we need you? You would just slow us down. Get us caught. Now, I don't know about the others, but I don't think you're worth the effort."

I turned and stared at her.

"You're an assassin?" I managed to get out. It made a lot of sense, in retrospect, but it wasn't like I ran into assassins on a daily basis.

(Though, now that I thought about it, Asmira did have an assassin vibe to her...)

Kirux's lips quivered when he heard my conclusion, and his eyes unsurprisingly began to water. There was definitely something off about him, but I couldn't my finger on what it was.

She rolled her eyes, "I'm sorry, was I being subtle?"

Fidel starred at her, his expression more puzzled than afraid, "...the armband...the hounds...you...you're the reaper." His eyes went wide with his realization and he scampered away from her.

She blinked at him, "While I appreciate the compliment, no, I'm really not."

"Don't lie," he said, his voice quivering, "I found you just after the princess's death was reported!"

Megara's expression became dangerous, "Look, nitwit, I'm not the bloody reaper. That particular know-it-all just happened to be working with me on that particular job. In reality, little miss perfect is more than capable of gutting me and making my death look tragically accidental, so I avoid her when possible. M'kay, doctor boy?"

She let out an exasperated sigh and turned to the others, crossing her arms, "Well, I don't know about you, but I would really like to stab someone about now, and we've pretty thoroughly established that Jacob here is useless, so may I?" she gestured to the trembling mass of skin, bones, and metal that was Jacob.