Word Count: 1722

TW: attempted murder, thoughts of dying horribly, prejudice, blood

A/N: Written within a couple days, so later edits may be incoming. 

Virgil screamed and fought, but the men-- his neighbors, his fucking neighbors, and he'd always known they hated him but not like this-- were stronger. They didn't falter, not even when he sank his teeth into their flesh, and when they wrestled him down his kicks didn't faze them at all. They tied him to the post so tight his arms ached, rougher than they had to be, and stepped back, dour-faced and bleeding. 

Virgil bared his teeth at them, trying to keep the fear from his face, and one of the men actually flinched. The blacksmith who'd always spat at the ground when Virgil's mother walked past asked, "Do you have any last words?" 

 Virgil promised, glaring helplessly, "I'm going to haunt you for the rest of your lives."

"Use this time to reflect on your life," the blacksmith said, unfazed. "Perhaps then you'll die contented."

They left him without a backwards glance. 

The sun drifted below the trees, and night came with a creeping chill.  Somewhere in the distance, something howled. 

Sacrifice was a misnomer. The monsters in the forest took people and livestock every few months, even slinking into the village itself when they could get away with it; they were huge fanged beasts, wolves and deer mutated by magic into shambling abominations, and all of them had a taste for blood. 

The village elders said the sacrifice kept them at bay, but Virgil was pretty sure that was bullshit. The sacrifice was a way to get rid of undesirables, people the village didn't want to tolerate. Last year, it had been a girl who'd refused an arranged marriage. Four years ago, it had been Virgil's mother.

A former prostitute. A maid, an unmarried mother, an repentant sinner, but it didn't matter how polite and submissive she'd been because it had never been enough--

Virgil was surprised it had taken four years for the elders to toss him after her. 

He struggled, testing the bonds, but the elders had been tying people for slaughter for years. There wasn't a hint of give. "Fuck," Virgil hissed, and kept struggling anyway, contorting as much as possible and straining against the rope. He only stopped when blood started trickling down his arms. 

Virgil was going to die. He was going to die, and he'd never even get to leave the village, never get to tell that stupidly romantic royal messenger that-- that he--

His eyes prickled with tears. He sucked in a breath, determined not to cry, but he couldn't help it. Every rustle around him put him on edge. Every sound could be the monsters approaching, and he couldn't get loose, couldn't hope to fight them off, couldn't even hope to die fast. The monsters ate people alive. No way he'd bleed out fast enough not to know what was happening.

The night deepened as the last vestiges of sunlight disappeared. Virgil shivered, cold invading his bones, but when the rain started he almost felt relieved. He'd heard of people dying of exposure, getting too cold for their bodies to function. They lost consciousness before they died, and sometimes no matter what you couldn't wake them again. 

That wouldn't be a bad way to go, relatively speaking. Hell, it'd even fit Virgil's personality. He'd always been a gloomy bastard.

The rain soaked through his clothes, made his hair cling to his forehead, trickled down his back  so he couldn't remember what it felt like being warm. He shivered harder, gasping against the shock of it. Even though this was what he wanted, he couldn't force himself to sleep. His survival instinct, that hyper-vigilant viciousness that'd kept him off the streets all these years, refused to let him go. He closed his eyes and they flew open again, mind convincing him that he had to watch and stay awake despite all reason; he felt his chest go cold and struggled till exertion drove the worst of it away. His terror wouldn't let him die. 

A branch snapped at the edge of the clearing, just out of the moonlight. Dread froze him in place, still as a frightened deer; his eyes made out a rough, gigantic form, snuffling at the trunk of a tree. He saw tall, thorned antlers and swallowed a terrified whimper.

Stag. That meant trampling or impalement, hopefully before it started eating him so he'd be dead when it did. Mutated deer came into the village more often than the predators, though, driven by half-remembered cravings for crops and territory. The corpses they left were never pretty.

The great head swung towards him, dark eyes cold and cloudy, and Virgil swallowed a scream. The beast lurched toward him, dragging a leg behind it, ravaged mouth opening to reveal rows upon rows of jagged teeth, and Virgil couldn't get away, couldn't fight it, couldn't make himself breathe--

"Get away from him!" snarled a too-familiar voice, and before Virgil could scream a warning the beast was turning, groaning low in its throat, antlers lowering for a charge--

And Princey drove his sword between its eyes, straight through the brain, in a move so insane that Virgil couldn't process it for a moment. The royal messenger staggered back, clutching his side where the thing's antlers had grazed him, and the creature's body toppled to the ground with a massive thud. 

Virgil stared. Princey turned to him, bloodstained and trembling with exertion, and gasped, "Oh, thank God you're still alive." 

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Virgil demanded, despair rising up to replace his brief, idiotic hope. "Princey, you moron, there's gonna be more, it's a full moon-- look, you have to get to my village, just don't say you saw me and they'll shelter you--"

"Actually, I can guarantee they won't," Princey said with an unconvincing grin. He moved to the corpse and yanked out the sword in a spurt of blood and brain matter, then cut Virgil's bonds in two smooth flicks of the blade. "Partly because I stole this sword, but mostly because I stabbed someone with it. How long do we have before another one comes?"

Virgil fell to the ground, limbs numb and useless. Princey pulled him upright, and he managed, "Not long. They're attracted by blood, I-- how'd you know I was here? Why are you here?"

"I wasn't about to leave you," Princey said incredulously, like the thought of not risking his skin for a stranger he flirted with sometimes hadn't occurred to him. "And I was coming to tell you that my route had changed. Imagine my surprise when I arrived and no one would tell me where you were, much less what had happened to you-- if it weren't for that gossipy tavern wench, I'd never have found you at all!" He tugged Virgil's arm over his shoulder, taking some of his weight. "Also, your name is Virgil? I can't believe you never told me that."

"It's not like you ever told me your name," Virgil said, trying and failing to glower. He couldn't stop shivering. He couldn't even walk right, and every second they spent here was a second they could get surrounded, and Princey would die and it would be his fault-- 

"Roman," Princey said, pale as milk. "I'm Roman. Can you walk?"

"I-I think," Virgil said, and managed to stay on his feet. Roman's hair was soaked to his forehead. "Your name is Roman? Like Prince Roman?" 

"Yeah, like-- like him. Fine fellow." Roman hefted his sword, glancing anxiously at Virgil like he thought he was going to fall over. "I'll take you with me to my next town once we're out," he said determinedly. "We can find a place to hide till morning, and then we'll get you a job as a messenger, or a scholar, someplace where people don't throw their neighbors to the wolves. You can work in the palace, even."

For one shining moment, Virgil almost let himself believe him. Then something screeched, way too close for comfort, and reality reasserted itself. There was no way they were both getting out of this alive. 

Despair rose up and choked him. "Roman, there's no way we're gonna be able to hide. Not while we're both bleeding." Roman opened his mouth, but Virgil barreled on, "I'm just going to slow you down. If you leave me-- you have a sword, you've got more of a chance, and you've already untied me. That's more than enough."

"Don't you dare," Roman snapped. "You-- What kind of person do you think I am, exactly? I'm not about to leave you to be devoured by wild beasts."

"Better than us both getting devoured!" Virgil snarled. "I can't even walk. You don't even really know me. Don't act like you're going to throw your life away for some village reject." Roman couldn't throw his life away. He had everything ahead of him, he was annoying and dramatic and fucking perfect, he couldn't die for Virgil's sake-- "I won't let you die here!"

"Then you had better come with me," Roman said, ashen and shaking and horribly determined, "or I most definitely will."

Virgil stared, bewildered. "You're going to die," he said helplessly. "I'm dead weight. You can't just-- people don't do this. You shouldn't do this."

"Funnily enough, I'm doing it anyway." Another shriek split the air, even closer than the last, and Roman asked, forcedly casual, "So if you could perhaps tell me which way is out?"

"North," Virgil said, "if we can't go through my village-- but we'd have to go deeper first. There's more of them there."

"Lovely," Roman said weakly. "It's a good thing I'm so dashing and heroic." He tried another grin, and Virgil felt a foreign curl of determination in his chest.

"Look on the bright side," he said for the first time in his life, and Roman looked up at him, impossibly real and hopeful. Virgil felt it like a knife to the chest. 

Roman had come all this way for Virgil. He'd risked everything just for the chance that he was still alive, like a prince in a fucking fairy tale. Virgil hadn't even thought people like him were real. He couldn't die here. Virgil wouldn't let him.

"If we go down, we go down fighting," Virgil promised.

Roman's grin was as bright as the sun.