Young Writers Society

Raiden leaned up to whisper in Codix's ear.
"I hope you choke on a sausage, you infidel."
And with that, he flopped back down, too lazy to do anything else.

Some blissfully imbecilic part of me had hoped that perhaps, if I went to sleep in the dream, I might wake up at home. Yet not only was I trapped within a dream within a dream, but they blurred together, there were bears in both of them, my head disagreed with the concept of living, I could scarcely hear a thing over loud, dull, reverberating drones, my eyes burned with accursed light, and worst of all, the bear was still there. Why was the bear still there.

I pulled myself to my feet, unsheathed my dagger, and pointed it at the bear.

"Alright, get away from Raiden, you son of a-" my threat was interrupted by the urge to heave my intestinal contents upon the floor. I clutched my stomach with my free hand, and fought it, not lowering my blade hand.

"Hurk... Christ Almighty."

Any time was a bad time to fight a bear, but hungover, I really did feel less inclined.
One sliver of sensibility that I could still feel feared for its life, and the lives around me, but the rest of me was tired, and nauseous, and dehydrated.

"Bo, tell me you've still at least one firearm on you, you picked up enough for a small army, for Christ's sake." I snapped.

Oh, there was a bear. Why was there a bear? Some game of Kartiel's? Either way, it couldn't be allowed so close to anyone in the group. Aegeas lunged forward.

He fell on the ground a couple feet away, snoring. The scimitar dropped out of his hands and clattered on the floor.

Codix screamed in alarm when both Boris and Aegeas decided to attack him instead of question why a bear would be in the middle of Atlantis, but the scream, like everything else he had tried saying, came out as a very panicked roar. He immediately made a beeline right for Nadira. She was in the middle of dying from laughter near the console. He gave her the biggest and harshest glare that he could muster, and said her name again, but it still managed to come out as a roar - albeit a little quieter than his previous one.

Maahes peeked around the corner of the bookcase.

"Is that...?" he questioned, book in one hand.

"Yup," Nadira managed to get out through her laughter.

Maahes looked from Codix to Boris. "Shouldn't you tell Boris, then?"

"Nope," Nadira said, an absolutely evil look on her face. Codix growled in response. "He dug his own grave."

"It was a joke!" Codix protested, throwing his fur-covered arms up in the air in exasperation. "He's not supposed to try killing me over it, Nad!"

"Yeah, but he is," she said, once again devolving into a snickering mess.

He gave her a light shove with his paw. It was a little harder than he had intended for it to be, but she quickly regained her balance and pushed him right back. "Wait," he said, eyes widening in surprise, "you can understand me!"

"She is a robot," Maahes helpfully suggested, having stepped out from behind the bookcase to rejoin the rest of the group.

Now he was the center of Codix's incredulous stare; he should have anticipated that Nadira would be able to understand a bear's roars, but Maahes could too? "H-How?" he managed to get out, the words transforming into a very confused roar by the time they left his mouth.

Maahes sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. "I can, uh, understand animals...It's a really useless skill most of the time, since they don't really 'talk'."

Bo watched the chaos unfold with the most fascinated of smiles. Of course, when Boris leapt onto him, only to fall on the floor and create a dog pile, Bo was quick to get up and off of the unfortunate Kartiel beside him. Apologetically, he sat Kartiel up - either awake or still out cold, he could not tell - and looked around just in time to hear both Boris's question - or uh, demand.

Unable to hide his amused grin, he calmly walked over to Boris and set a hand on his shoulder.

"The bear is Codix, Boris. Codix can shapeshift, remember? I'm not going to shoot him. I'm sorry his little prank scared you, bud."

As the words left his mouth, Aegeas seemed to collapse onto the floor after his brief stint of walking around. With the same calmness, he walked over and picked the sleeping otter up, along with his scimitar, and plopped the two of them back on the couch.

The beast loped over to Nadira, and roared menacingly at her. The poor girl, she was talking back to it, as some kind of fevered coping mechanism, surely.
I was distressed to find that Maahes wasn't bothered at all- what was wrong with him? Why wouldn't he protect her? I had to save the girl, had to-

Slowly. Approach slowly.

I had to approach slowly, hold my form, keep calm, keep focuse-

Something touched me. Something touched me, I shuddered, I turned, what was it, what was it, good Go-

Oh. It had only been Bo. I exhaled, and listened to his kind explanation. I nodded. I smiled, and nodded. Then I sheathed my knife, and strolled up to Codix.

"You little wretch," I said, not bothering to keep the shaking edge from my voice.
"You absolute wretch. Aegeas- poor Aegeas nearly fell on his sword. I nearly- I was so close, to having the death of a child on my hands. Christ, child, you think my conscience can handle that?!

We've fought for our lives too many times today, and you cannot grant a suffering comrade just a moment's peace? For shame."

I had to stop for a moment, and hold a hand up to my smiling face, to hold it all in.

"I almost- Sweet God. I was so close. I really was."

"But forgive me if I'd frightened you, I was under the impression that Nadira was about to be mauled by a bear! You irresponsible, impudent, brazen little-"

I was interrupted by my own stomach, heaving its contents upon Codix's front paws.

I had originally intended for this chastisement to go on for a little longer, but Codix had received punishment enough, and now that I was feeling nauseous again, I did not care to continue.

I coughed. "Now, if you'll excuse me, my eardrums have an appointment with several tropical thunderstorms."

And with that, I left for the far end of the couch, drank some water, and took a moment to lay down, and wait for my protesting organs to settle.

Codix immediately tried to shake the barf off of his hands, but it was nearly impossible when said hands were paws covered in fur. He shifted back into his actual form and frantically tried to wipe his hands clean. When a little bit remained, he turned to Nadira - who, though she had stopped snickering, had an entertained look on her face - and wasted no time in rubbing it off on her shirt.

She turned and stared at him.

"What?" he innocently asked, gaining him an incredibly annoyed look in response. He felt no remorse for getting some of it on her clothes, though he did feel guilty about pranking Boris and indirectly Aegeas. He hadn't expected them to not realize that a bear shouldn't have been in the lost city of Atlantis.

Meanwhile, a hungover Kartiel had gotten to his feet a short distance away and begun to head towards the door, hoping that the chaos of the prank would provide a suitable distraction.

As Bo scanned the room to observe the chaos and make sure all of the drunkards were accounted for, he easily spotted Kartiel trying to sneak away. On light feet, he followed behind Kartiel and tapped him on the shoulder lightly.

"Hey man," he spoke softly, probably more gentle than their captor deserved, but kind nonetheless. "You're still pretty drunk, I don't want you wandering off. As the resident sober adult I've gotta keep an eye on you, bud. So come on," he put one hand on Kartiel's shoulder and gestured back over to the others. "You're sticking with us."

Kartiel tried to jerk his arm free, but Bo's grasp - even though he was just putting a single hand on his arm - made it difficult to do so. "I'm not as drunk as you think I am," he said. His words stubbornly decided to prove him wrong by adding a slur in. He frowned. Come on! He was better than this. He was more than ten thousand years old, and had drunken far more alcohol before.

(Though that was in his actual body, and not this horrible thing.)

He needed to get out of this room. He wasn't entirely intoxicated, like he had just claimed. But he was intoxicated enough that revealing his secrets seemed all the more likely, and he was certain that he had already started talking about Ria of all people right before passing out in Bo's arms.

"I can't stay in here," he said, immediately regretting it afterwards. He scrambled to come up with a decent excuse as to why, finally settling on saying with a somewhat-evil look on his face, "It would put the validity of my experiment in jeopardy."

Bo raised his brows slightly as Kartiel slurred off excuses. A tiny grin crept onto is face and he gave Kartiel a pat on the head, still keeping a hand firmly on Kartiel's shoulder.

"I won't tell the others you have a heart. For all they know, you're still a big bad baddie. A big drunken baddie but still a baddie. When you wake up with a hangover you can just use the excuse I always used: 'I'm sorry I was drunk, I didn't know what I was saying.' 'Cause uh, hell, I've made up a lot of bizarre stories back in the day. Soon as you put that mask back on it'll be easy to buy that you were just pullin' our leg to get sympathy. Easiest way to catch your prey off guard is to humanize yourself, ya feel." He stared down at Kartiel with a smile, only for it to falter slightly.

Should he be smiling? That wasn't really something to smile at.

"Anyways, I'm not letting you out of my sight. If not for drunk reasons, then definitely because you're a still the big baddie who brought us here," he said with a wink, before tightening his grip on Kartiel's shoulder just enough to let him know he was actually pretty serious.

Kartiel groaned immediately after Bo finished speaking. He didn't get it at al! It wasn't them that he was worried about. It was Sirun. He never could tell when Sirun was checking in on him, and never could tell who Sirun would talk to after his little projects were over with. While he did doubt that Sirun would be paying attention to the test run - he had only mentioned it in passing, rather than giving a full report like he did with his other endeavors - there was still the risk that one of the people currently present would say something to someone, and that the secrets he had been so carefully keeping would be revealed to Sirun by a very long and torturous game of telephone.

He tried to tug his arm free one last time, but he stood no chance of getting out of Bo's grasp. He had to settle with giving Bo an angry glare instead.

Bo sighed, but stayed as he was, still holding Katiel in place.

“Look, dude. All I’m saying is i know you’re lying. I don’t know what’s all going on under surface, and I know you’re probably worried about me knowing the tiniest fraction of whatever it is you’re covering up. I don’t like sharing other people’s secrets, but that probably doesn’t mean much.”

He shrugged a little, sighing again as he glanced back at the others.

“I don’t like the idea of you wandering off by yourself because the last time that happened, we had a close call with wraiths, and everything was generally a mess. I’m pretty sure wraiths were never a part of the plan, but yeah. I don’t know if you gotta go do something for this weird science project and all the evil stuff but man, I’m just hoping we get back home before we die in these clone bodies. So if you could make that happen, that’d be great. Of course, ain’t takin’ your word for much ‘til you’re sober, and even by then, I figure your mask’ll be back on so. I dunno. It was nice knowing ya while it lasted I guess.”

He finally loosed his grip but couldn’t bring himself to pull his hand away. Something in his gut twisted, as if he would regret it either way if he forced Kartiel to stay or let him go.

“I mean, what’s done is done,” he said. “You got yourself drunk and said stuff and you can’t take it outta the air. Sucks real bad but you gotta live with it. That’s just how it is.”

With a stiff, robotic movement, he finally pulled his hand away, and watched, as if Kartiel could dash at any moment, and he’d have to be ready to pounce.

“So don’t look at me like that. It may not seem like it but I’m genuinely just concerned about you doin’ some stupid drunk stuff and hurting someone or youself or whatever else.”

He normally was fairly decent at keeping his composure, but he balled his hands into tight fists at hearing what Bo said. He knew that this was a rare opportunity for him to monitor the people involved in his projects; most of the time he had to be content watching from a distance, and then...and then things like the first Aeyis happened. Too far away to do anything, and too late to save what was left of the party by the time he finally arrived.

(When he had seen that thing watching him from the shadows, it had taken all of his self-control not to attack right then and there. It might have been powerful, but he was a god.)

But he had an image to maintain, and he wasn't sure he could keep it up if he stuck around. He was starting to get close. The first Aeyis group had gotten close to him, too, but that had been under the guise of Keith Quinn. He had been able to convince himself that they only just knew a role.

And these people here only knew a role as well, but he was starting to lose the character. He could see it in the way that Bo looked at him. He knew that he was evil, but he had said enough to create sympathy that he was never supposed to receive. If he got too close, Sirun would find out. Everything he had worked so hard for - thousands upon thousands of years of waiting and preparing and acting - would be for nothing.

Ria came first.

That was final.

He didn't bolt for the door. That would only make Bo all the more likely to jump at him. Instead, he coolly walked over to it was a raised head and squared shoulders. It was a shame that he wasn't wearing a cape right now. A dramatic flick of it over his shoulders would have perfectly fit the image he was trying to go for.

Bo had to be honest. He hadn't expected Kartiel to just walk away like that.

Of course, he should've, but he hadn't. He'd really been hoping Kartiel would want to stay, and with a small sigh, he looked down to the floor. Kartiel was gone, and though he wondered if the others would be mad for letting him out of their sight, he hoped those who would have stronger opinions were too drunk to notice and voice them.

What a bummer. He turned back around, straightening up as he returned his attention to the rest of the group, looking for any minor bouts of chaos that he might need to help with.

As far as he could tell, all that had happened was Boris barfing on Codix.

Aegeas began to snore, fidgeting his way under a chair. If the grimace on his face was a clue, he almost seemed to recognize that Kartiel had left the room. It was obvious, however, that he wasn't going to wake up anytime soon.