Young Writers Society

"Broadsword?" she asked, clearly not satisfied with the lack of detail. She took a phone out of her pocket and pulled up a picture of a wall of weapons that had clearly been set up as practical, not display, "Like this one here?" she pointed to one toward the edge of the photo. The tip of the sword looked to be pointing at a white towel, marked with a mysterious red stain.

Seeing the red stain - which looked suspiciously like blood - made Ryder reevaluate his initial views on Briar. She didn't seem particularly bad in conversation, but there was something ominous about seeing a red stain near a neatly arranged group of weapons.

"Something like that," he confirmed.

Of course, there was a little problem - the sword was his cover, but he could only used it sparingly. He doubted she could pull a sword out of thin air, but he couldn't let himself jump to assumptions.

She nodded and put the phone away, "Then you may want to sharpen the sides. A broadsword gains much of its damage from slashing motions."

She gestured to their surroundings, "We should move. There's someone else here." She didn't sound worried about it, or even passively concerned. Her voice was resolutely monotone.

Lasan didn't know what to make of Briar; her blase attitude about swords, using a dead man's bones, and violence unsettled him. She did seem to know what she was talking about, though, and he guessed that her advice would come in handy. Especially given her last comment.

"Who?" Lasan said, glancing around. He sniffed, then wrinkled his snout. "I can't smell anything but all this metal."

She took note of the fact that Lasan seemed to have a heightened sense of smell as she considered her answer. The truth was, she didn't know for sure. There had been movement, something too big to be a rat or other pest of the underground, and something like a voice, but she hadn't seen anything directly. If she was honest, she would say that it could easily be her sister, lurking about for no reason save to get a reaction from Briar. But such a scenario was still dangerous for the others. The Queen of Kroy, as she was called by the majority the of crime syndicates in Kroy, had a very itchy trigger finger.

"I'm not sure," she said honestly, "but it's not small."

It took all of his focus to bite back his indignation. He knew what a sword was like - he was likely far older than she was, and certainly had more experience.

(Though swords, as he had always said, were definitely his weak spot.)

And while he was fairly good at improvisation, there were only so many things he could say without revealing the truth. He had intended to use the board as a blunt object, rather than a cutting blade - he knew that it could never compare to an actual one.

But part of being a leader involved not taking the bait, so he tried to act like he was unfazed.

"It's probably another person," Ryder suggested, swinging about his makeshift weapon a few feet away from Lasan, his boyfriend and Briar. "It wouldn't make sense just to bring three of us here."

Briar was giving him a bad feeling, but he couldn't let himself get too paranoid.

"We should go up and see who it is," he said, slipping his wood into his belt in lieu of a sword and sheath.


The crates - and their contents - had been devoured as he listened to the howling wind outside. The only things that remained of them were broken pieces of wood. He knew she'd be upset with him for eating too much, and eating something that wasn't natural, but he was scared.

"Want sister," he muttered, rocking himself as he sat in front of the fire. And then, as an afterthought, he added, "Hungry."

He eyed a piece of wood out of the corner of his eye. The wood didn't taste as good as the strange food inside of the crates, but he licked his lips regardless. Food made things better. Food made the wind be forgotten, made his missing sister seem not as missing, and make the brief conversation he heard when some food had accidentally been flung to the staircase be not as worrying.

She said not to go out like this. That it was just for when they were at home, or with Roy, or with Jean, because they knew what he was like. They didn't know know - no one was ever supposed to - but they were okay with his sweaters and shorts and fuzzy socks.

He sucked his pointer finger.

"Still hungry," he muttered, his voice a low, pitiful noise. "Want food. Want her."

He eyed the wood again, and then the staircase that it lay at the foot of.

Slowly and nervously approaching the plank, he grabbed onto it and devoured it in a single gulp.

He looked up at the stairs, and at the door that lay beyond them.

If he wanted comfort - food, her - he would have to leave for whatever lay beyond.

He lumbered up the staircase and opened the hatch, stepping out into the snowy world beyond - an excited, childish noise leaving his quickly smiling lips as he grabbed snow by the handful.

"Snow," he said, a cheerful hum filling the air as he ate handful after handful. The hum faltered; the snow, though a little filling, tasted wrong. It tasted like when he ate the wood and ash in their fireplace.

"Need more," he said, his right pointer finger returning to his mouth as he looked for another source of food. Fire-snow wasn't going to fill the hunger. Nothing ever did, but fire-snow barely made an impact.

Seeing the open hatch to another underground room, he wandered towards it and down the steps - there must have been other crates in there. If there was anyone else above the ground, he was far too distracted by the prospect of food to notice. He didn't even realize there were people in the room he had just entered until he reached the foot of the stairs.

He looked up at them, still sucking on his finger.

"Hungry," he said. "Need food."

Oh. Lasan wasn't sure who he'd been expecting, but it definitely wasn't the person standing in front of him.

"I mean, he is a little small," Lasan said, looking over at Briar. He then turned back to the stranger, who was a bit preoccupied with sucking his own finger. He seemed very harmless, though, and Lasan had to admit that he liked the stranger's sweater. "And we don't have any food here? At least, nothing I'd eat."

The stranger look around the room, continuing to suck on his finger up until his gaze landed on the pile of crates in the corner. Then he stopped sucking, turned back to the group before him, and asked while pointing with his other hand, "Can I eat it?"

Ryder wasn't really sure how he was supposed to respond to that.

Lasan had a feeling he would regret answering that question. "Sure?" he said. "I don't know if you'd like what's in those crates, but?"

He walked over to the crates, sucking on his pointer finger all the while. He started to open one of them, but stopped when he remembered people were present. There may have been food, but people were even more important. Food couldn't tell him where his sister was; people could.

"Want sister," he said. His hand dropped down to his side. "Seen her?"

Briar discreetly hid her gun away in the waistband of her jeans as she approached the strange man carefully, "I want my sister too," she lied, "Maybe they're together?" It was a trick out of Queenie's book, but her father had always told her to pick up on the deception side of things more thoroughly, she supposed this was her chance.

"What does your sister look like?" she asked, the curiosity in her otherwise flat voice making it seem almost gentle.

"Tall," he said. He thought for a moment - that wasn't a good description. Everyone was tall compared to him, save for his oldest brother. "Pretty. Short black hair, dark eyes..." He faltered as he tried to remember what she had been wearing last. "Wearing pretty black dress."

The boy with the mismatched eyes gave the girl a funny look. He, in turn, sniffed the air. The boy smelled strange. Some of the smells - blood, sweat, and grime - were familiar, but there was one smell he couldn't quite comprehend.

Lasan slowly shook his head. "I don't know anyone who looks like that," he said. Well, he knew one person who sort of matched that description, but they couldn't be related to him (and they certainly wouldn't have stayed hidden if they were in the area). "Maybe Briar knows? Since she said something else was here, and I'm not sure if she was talking about you."

Briar shook her head, "I've never seen her."

The description was vague, unhelpful if their goal was to find her. Briar thought about that for a second, their goal. She found that she didn't want to find the stranger's sister. In fact, him being here at all was a hindrance to her goal. Stay alive, get home.

She considered what her father would tell her to do, kill him, for a few moments before dismissing the thought. Something told her the others wouldn't react well to that, and their skills in combat had yet to be established.

She thought of what Queenie would do, play along. The Queen always played along, gathered as much information as there was to gather, and got rid of what she didn't need. Briar didn't think that would work here either, if only for her own lack of charisma.

She made a decision.

Without a word, she climbed a short stack of boxes and found a box of pencils and booklet that had been tucked away beneath a pile of cloth duffle bags. Retrieving these, she came back down next to the newest stranger so he could see the blank back cover of the booklet over which her pencil hovered.

"Can you describe her in more detail?" she asked.

The man gave Briar a look that clearly said he couldn't.

Ryder took the opportunity to approach the man. His abrupt arrival hadn't come with an introduction, and something told him he wasn't going to get one unless he drew the man's attention to the lack of names shared.

He rested his hand on the man's shoulder.

The man looked up at him, finger returning to his mouth.

He gave a little sniff and a slight tilt of the head, and Ryder got the strangest feeling that the man was smelling him.

"Hi," he said. "You never mentioned your name earlier. I'm Ryder. That's Lasan, and that's Briar." He gestured at them as he spoke with a free hand, and the man wisely nodded - his gaze traveled from one person to another, but it ended on Ryder.

"Call me Gareth," the man said matter-of-factly. "Solaris says to."