Young Writers Society

Suddenly, Queenie's insistence on getting to the hotel room made sense.

He didn't have the same set of senses that one of Taber's friends apparently had; he just had to rely on how people were acting to tell if they were hiding an injury. Queenie had done a good job of acting. But Ryder was beginning to see how she was trying to hide some sort of injury, and he knew it was important for them to get somewhere she could get treated.

Kirux abruptly pushed past him to get closer to Queenie.

He looked her over with a worried look to his eyes, then glanced in the direction of the road. He pulled his mask down and bit his lip, looking nervously between Taber, Queenie and the road. Ryder wished he knew why Kirux looked so desperate.

Kirux then took a step back so everyone could see him.

He drew a little stick figure in the air - Ryder guessed that was supposed to be the other person. He pointed at Queenie, then did a thumbs up.

"The person hiding can help Queenie?" Ryder asked.

Kirux nodded, then thought for another before gesturing in the direction that Taber's other friend had gone running off into. He pointed at himself, then back in the direction of the road.

"...You can get Taber's friend," Ryder replied.

Another nod.

He mimed lifting something, holding an imaginary object in his hand and curling his lower arm up and down - almost like he was weightlifting. That one took a little longer for Ryder to get, but the message finally got across.

"You want us to wait for you?"

Kirux shook his head.

Ryder thought for a moment, briefly crossing his arms. "...We have to wait to get him?"

Kirux grinned and nodded, then gestured in the direction that they had all come from earlier. Ryder glanced over at Queenie. She hadn't truly moved since she had started leaning up against the wall - Ryder was beginning to doubt that she could.

So he did the first, probably stupid thing that came to mind: he walked over to her and casually picked her up bridal-style. It was easy carrying her. Both of them had been heavier, especially when they were loaded down with various devices and things they had found.

"I'll carry you there," he said, looking down at Queenie. "You're not fit to walk. I'll let you down when we finally get there."

Queenie made a sound of protest and surprise, "What the hell?! Put me down! I'm fine, I-" she was cut off by a dizzy spell. She pressed her fingers to her temples with a hiss and glared at Ryder, "I hate you."

"We sure like ya too," Kendrik said, watching as Ryder started to carry Queenie. Not exactly with her permission, which he didn't like, but she appeared to be in a lot of pain. Not that he knew what to say about it. "Cars," he mumbled, staring at the wagons on the street. "What kinda name is that?"



As Kirux finished discussing his plan and people started to move away, the wolf approached him again. "Can I help you?" Taber said. "Lunis can, uh, be a little stubborn, and fast, and strong."

He switched to signing. "Will our friend be okay?"

Queenie shot that same glare at Kendrik, then turned her attention back to Ryder, "Put me down," she said, deathly calm, "Please, put me down." The little bit of desperation in her voice was well-masked in chilly calm.

Her hands, meanwhile, clutched at the wound, which still hadn't soaked through her shirt due to the flexible armor that she had put on over the wound to mask it. It had worked, well enough, as a bandage as well for a while. Apparently not well enough.

Meryl felt very, very helpless here. She wished she had taken a course on first aid, or something like that in her year at college.

"I'll cut a path for you all," she called out as she ducked into the still-crowded street. People scattered left and right, hurling glares at her as she shoved through. Cars honked her again and again.

Ryder shook his head.

"I'm not putting you down," he said. "You might not have bled through your clothes yet, but I can see you holding your injury. If it's that bad, you pushing yourself by walking isn't going to help."

He looked up from her and turned his attention back to Taber and Kirux, hoping that it wouldn't take long for the latter to lead them to his mysterious friend with Meryl clearing the way.


Kirux shook his head in response to the first question.

"I can grab him," he signed. He didn't elaborate further - he was too busy thinking about the second question. It made him look down at the ground until he nearly walked into a light; he was really scared about having to break his trust.

"...I don't think so." He looked over at Taber, still trying to keep track of the street they were. They were only a little bit away from it now. "He's going to be really scared-" He put emphasis on the 'really' as he signed. "but she's really hurt. He can heal her."

He suddenly skid to a half. The boy carrying the girl stopped right beside him. Kirux glanced back at the rest of the group before pointing at the tall, ominous building in front of them. It still kind of creeped him out, but he had to be brave for his friend.

...Even if that involved keeping the lights off.

"He's really, really shy," he signed, hoping that the Taber or the girl would translate. He raised his hands up and briefly covered his eyes. "So we have to keep our eyes covered when we go in, except for me."

Taber stared up at the building. Well, it made sense why Grim would want to hide there, especially if Grim wasn't in his human form; chills ran up Taber's back as he craned his head back to get a complete view of the tallest building he'd ever seen.

He took a deep breath. Queenie was in danger, Lunis had run off somewhere, and Kirux needed a translator.

"Thanks, Meryl!" the wolf said, turning around to the others. "Yeah, Kirux said our friend is in there, but he's shy, so we all need to close our eyes when we head on in, except for Kirux."

Kendrik, who'd been standing close to Queenie and had been glancing at her nervously, scowled at Taber. "An' why just him?" he said. "Also, what if Lunis shows up? He ain't good with directions."

"Because he's the one who made the promise," Taber said. "And Kirux said he could handle Lunis." The wolf wasn't quite sure how - Kirux had almost run into a light on his way to the building - but Kirux was a pretty honest and reliable person. If Kirux said he could do it, Taber knew he could.

Queenie gave Ryder one last glare before closing her eyes, secretly glad for an excuse to block out one of her senses. She shifted slightly, wondering, briefly if the lead-bullet signature of the particular gang she was going after when she'd been shot applied to the more minor members. Then she cringed at the reminder that she'd been shot by a minor member of a mid-level gang in Kroy.

Instead of dwelling on that, she busied her mind counting her weapons. She figured Ryder could feel the knife strapped to her thigh under her jeans (accessible by a hidden zipper in the seam), but there was also a set of throwing knives around each of her ankles, hidden between the layers of her boots so the small lips that allowed her to pull them out were nearly imperceptible visually. Then there was the handgun pressing into her back, her go-to if things started to go where she didn't want it to.

She considered pulling it out now. It would definitely make her feel better to put a bullet in Ryder for daring to toucher her, to pick her up, without her permission. Unfortunately, she wouldn't know which of him to aim at.

The building was quite terrifying, its walls darkened, with few windows and even fewer lights. Something that might hold angry ghosts, Meryl mused, and that did not help things. She hadn't gotten a good look earlier.

Meryl said, a little nervously, "I guess closing our eyes shouldn't be much of a problem as long as we don't run into walls."

Anyway, even if there were ghosts, she wouldn't be able to see them unless they chose to materialize. She wandered closer to the building and noticed a door, barely perceptible but there nevertheless.

"All right then..." She turned back to Ryder and the others. "Ready?"

Ryder gave one last look at the group gathered before nodding and closing his eyes. He didn't like the idea of blindly trusting a stranger, but he didn’t have any other options.

"Ready," he softly said.

Kirux opened the door.

A creaking noise rang out as he ushered them inside; the boy apparently had a nice set of muscles underneath his black coat, and he easily pulled them through the doorway. When the last of them was supposedly through, the door shut with a loud thud behind them.

He heard footsteps.

Something about them didn’t sound right. He couldn't describe it - the sound was just off. He listened as the feet's owner came to a stop a short distance before them, and as they said, "Kirux?"

The person's voice was young and masculine, with a strange, unfamiliar touch to it - he couldn’t quite define it.

"You-You brought people," the person suddenly got out. It took all of Ryder's concentration not to look; he had to respect his wishes. There was a pause (presumably for when Kirux signed a reply) before he said something else. "I can heal her."

The person moved. Queenie's weight shifted - the stranger was holding her ever so slightly, only to let go a few moments later. "I just need to remember the right spell."

Ryder gave in.

Seizing an opportunity and taking a major risk, he peeked an eye open for the shortest of seconds. He took in everything he could - his eyes had always been one of his greatest features.

Kirux's magical friend was a tall, mysterious figure clad in a ratty black cloak that covered the majority of his body, but the little Ryder saw of his face before screwing his eye shut again confirmed a suspicion he had since he heard the man approach.

Kirux's friend was a skeleton.

A very, very big one.

Queenie almost pulled her gun out the moment she felt herself being passed to someone else like some helpless child, but she didn't. Partly because she couldn't reach her arm around to her back fast enough, and partly because she really, really didn't want to be dropped right this second.

She did, however, go stiff (involuntarily, but she wouldn't dream of admitting that). Her eyes begged to open, but exhaustion and (off the record) fear squeezed them tighter. She, again, would never admit it, but she might have been shaking as well. She blamed the 73-no-74 now, sleepless hours she'd spent carrying out her father's orders.

Kirux's friend began to softly utter words underneath his breath as he stood beside Ryder and Queenie. Queenie suddenly felt warm in Ryder's arms - he had never experienced anything like this before, but Queenie felt better by the time that he finished. He couldn't really put an explanation to the feeling; her weight just felt like it was distributed differently in his arms.

"You should feel better now," the friend said.

There was movement. Ryder peeked an eye open again, knowing that Kirux wasn't paying attention to him and that his friend was looking away. "Where are they going now?" the friend whispered.

Kirux gave him a very confused and nervous stare, replying with a scared shrug after a few more moments passed. He signed something, and the skeleton started to stare back in their direction. Ryder quickly closed his eye again.

"They can't stay here," the friend whispered. There was a pause; Kirux was probably signing a reply. "The spell ran out - I can't use it for awhile. The only thing I have is illusions, and-"

Ryder, who had been peeking again, realized that his reflexes weren't half as good as he thought they were.

Ryder had opened his eyes just as Kirux's friend looked over at the group.

...And now they were staring at each other.

Ryder gently set Queenie down on the ground, knowing that her injury had been the only thing preventing her from standing on her own. He wasn't sure what was going to happen next. The friend didn't seem like he was going to attack him for looking, but he didn't know him well enough.

Walking, talking skeletons were something he had learned wasn't common on every world - including this one, apparently - but Ryder was used to seeing them move. He tried to convey that. He gave a thumbs up and a reassuring smile, but the skeleton looked far from convinced.

Wait.

Black cloak, big skeleton? Either this person needed new clothes, or he was looking at the grim reaper.

...Well then.

Queenie's exhaustion melted away and her pain was just...gone. Suddenly, she was on her feet again and her hands twitched for her weapons. Oh, how wonderful it would be to draw one of them, to put a bullet in Ryder for his uncalled for actions. To stab him. But she didn't. Maybe she still wasn't thinking clearly from the blood loss, or maybe she was thinking more clearly than ever. All she knew was that whoever had fixed her up could most likely do the same in reverse.

That idea wasn't something she liked to consider. She took a risk. She looked, just barely, through her eyelashes as she tuned in to the conversation. There was a sudden pause and she watched as Ryder and the creature who looked VERY much like the grim reaper (and now she was thinking of Briar again, good gods) stared at each other. It seemed she wasn't the only curious one in the group.