Miklos poked at the suspicious sludge sitting in his bowl, and it shifted with a dubious squelch.

"What on earth is this?" he demanded.

"Vynax spider," Leo joked.

His two companions, Zen and Alistair, burst out in hysterical fits of laughter as Miklos's stomach rebelled. Luca tried to stifle his, but choked on a mouthful of cider instead.

"I'm not eating this!"

Rei reached over and smacked him across the head.

"It's stew. Eat up, stupid. We don't have anything else."

They glowered at each other from opposite sides of the table. Miklos put up a good front of holding her glare with a defiant scowl, but the mouse inside him ran and ducked for cover. It was like watching a storm brew right in front of him within her steel-grey eyes. To make matters worse, Rei had been casting prolonged, weary frowns in his direction as though he were a puzzle that she couldn't quite comprehend. Her expression was difficult to interpret, and Miklos couldn't decide if she looked frustrated, confused, or angry.

Thankfully, Leo came to the rescue.

"Meaties for veggies. Wanna swap?" He grinned at Rei with his sharp pointy canines and wild green eyes.

She raised a brow. "Yea, sure."

They exchanged portions of their food. To Miklos's surprise, Leo took the vegetables and Rei received the meat. When another odd-looking chunk was passed from one to the other, Luca intercepted it with a well-aimed stab using his knife.

"Oops." An instant later, he wolfed it down and flashed Rei a smug smile which she did her best to ignore.

The next few moments saw several of such exchanges between Rei's and Leo's team. It seemed that they were already well-aware of each other's likes and dislikes, for neither discussions nor arguments of any sort arose. Krea swapped her mushrooms for a couple of unidentifiable purple roots in Alistair's bowl. Luca exchanged his vegetables for Zen's meat. As it turned out, both Leo and Zen hosted - in Miklos's honest opinion - unhealthy obsessions for the limp black things which he thought looked nothing like vegetables, and he stared at them with a disgruntled expression.

Across the table, Rei pinned him with yet another frown.

"Eat," she scolded. "If you get hungry in the night, feel free to chew on your pillow."

In the end, he succumbed to her potent gaze, although he would have preferred to think it was on account of his growling stomach, and quite sadly: the lack of alternatives. So with a bated breath, Miklos lifted a spoonful of the gunk and clamped his lips over it. Six pairs of eyes watched and waited with suppressed anticipation. Just as he was about to complain through his stew about the indecencies of staring at others (hypocritical of him or not), his taste buds exploded.

It was nothing like what he had ever tasted before - in a grotesquely bad way. His first bite clouded his nose with a pang of sharp sourness, dissolving into unpleasant throbs of a bitter aftertaste. A detestable gloppy texture rubbed against his tongue. Instantly, he craved for the exquisite cuisines served back at home. He regretted the times he threw silly tantrums over perfectly good plates of pot roast, venison in broth, pastri-

Odd. The recollection of those experiences seemed empty, as though there was a void in some aspect of his memory which he couldn't quite place a finger on. Feelings of queasiness settled in his gut. The taste of the stew continued to burn through his tongue.

He swallowed, turned red, and retched.

"You'll get used to it," Rei assured amidst the unrestrained chuckles of his table-mates, save for Krea, whose eyes shone with concern as he struggled to maintain his composure.

Then all of a sudden, he found his left shoulder sinking under the weight of someone's arm. A tangled mass of dark hair tickled his ears, and very briefly, Miklos considered elbowing the person in the face.

"If you ain't eating that, y'think I could have it?" Alistair peered at him and begged with his ebony-colored eyes.

"Well, look who's a greedy cunt," Leo shot.

"You stole extras back in the kitchen just now," reminded Zen loudly. "And you didn't even share."

"Jeez, shut up!"

They threw utensils at each other and knocked over a tankard of cider.

"Beaten by a bowl of stew," Rei taunted Miklos. "Go on then, hand it over to Alistair."

That got him.

"I want it," Miklos snapped.

Alistair sighed out loud and sat even deeper in his usual slouch, looking so dejected that he almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Except for Miklos, they all dug into their meals with remarkable enthusiasm.

For all his regal looks and proud, charming face, Zen ate like a barbarian. Leo and Alistair, along with the masses, followed right along in his footsteps towards primitive living. As they belched, drank and ate with their mouths full, and belched again, Miklos stared horrified. They attacked their food with a fervour that he found appalling to watch. His jaw slackened, and thoughts of his father flogging him if he ever behaved in such a manner zipped through his mind. He shuddered.

The only ones present at that table who retained a semblance of dignity were Rei and the others, and they even made eating sludge look refined. Krea savoured her cider daintily, delicate fingers hugging the tankard. Rei and Luca phased into aristocratic dining etiquette: elbows off the table, knives in their left hands, the meat eaten with spoons and the broth sipped.

"What's for breakfast tomorrow?" Miklos asked cautiously. The resolution of his throbbing hunger rested on the answer. 'I want it' had quickly turned into a solid 'no'.

"Quite likely a reprise of tonight's meal," Luca answered with a wane smile.

Miklos wanted to strangle himself.

"I can't eat this."

"It ain't that bad," Leo mumbled mid-chew. "But if they are serving us Wildlands mush-"

"Raid assignments!" Alistair burst out as if in a great hurry to purge the words out of his hyperactive system. "I'll bet my smelly socks the old man will have 'em coming our way in a day or two. We haven't had those in ages-"

"A week," Luca corrected.

"Right," Alistair said. "But anyway, the pantry must be running drier than-"

"Your stinkin' ball sacks," Zen input helpfully. He slurped up the last remnants of his stew and belched. As soon as his meal was over and done with, his fidgeting tendencies returned, compelling him to shift his gaze from one scene of interest to another in a restless urgency.

"Maybe we oughta abduct the king's royal cook, eh? Think he could find a way to grill the vynax spiders? We'd have feasts every day!" Alistair gave that a thought, a wistful smile plastered on his face before he let out a punctured sigh and proceeded to gargle a mouthful of cider. Miklos shot him a disgusted look. The tankard was brought back down on the table with a loud, unceremonious thud.

"Too bad, we exiled mages gotta have it hard. Can't have it any other way, can we?"

He started fiddling with the buttons on his sleeves.

Leo turned to Miklos and wagged a spoon in his face. "Eat anything other than Wildlands mush, and you'll have the worst tummy ache of your life."

Thrum thrum. His fingers were now drumming against the table top, much to Miklos's annoyance, and he gritted his teeth.

"Seriously?" Miklos whined. "There isn't a thing in this place that I can eat without throwing up?"

Somewhere inside, his heart sank a few inches as he realized, with considerable dread, that the longer he spent in these lands, the more he was hit with the cold-hard reality of his circumstances.

"Pretty much," all three answered.

"But see, that's where the raiding comes in handy!" Leo exclaimed triumphantly. "It's good fun to be outside every now and then-"

"Eh, sometimes," Zen interjected. "Only if the townsfolk play nice. Or if the prissies from Lux don't show up and beat our asses into the ground."

"Well. . . that," Leo considered. "But we still gotta eat, don't we?"

At that, Miklos hesitated. It was an unpleasant fact to come to terms with, and he wrestled to align his moral compass. Orichon was notorious throughout the kingdom, and even behind the detached safety of the vast high walls of his father's domain, stories had reached his ears. It was a simple matter of assuming that the mages of Orichon were the vicious ones; the vile and immoral. As fate had turned out, he was now forced to stand on their side of the fence, and to view things in their perspective. With a certain sense of guilt, the idea of raiding, or any act of crime for survival for that matter, shifted to form a prettier, more acceptable picture in his head.

To think the lines that separated right and wrong could be blurred so easily by the switching of sides.

"Very pleasant-sounding, the way the three morons have put it." Luca narrowed his eyes. "But the truth of the matter is that Loric forbids us to take more than what the guild requires," he said, tilting his tankard sideways with a finger. "He is a man of peace, and he believes that our part in the conflict with the kingdom's people is to remain submissive. Stick to the status quo. No rebelling, no outrageous acts."

"In other words, my mentally incapacitated friends," he declared drily and gave Miklos a pointed look, "we are disallowed from doing as we please outside the Wildlands."

In response to that, Leo straightened upright, scratched an imaginary beard in a comical fashion and imitated the guild master's gravelly voice:

"Absolutely no unnecessary plundering."

"And that includes everything under the sun that isn't yours, Leo."

"Please, refrain from killing if you can help it."

Unanimous mutters of dissatisfaction rose from the table, and Miklos guessed that the mages weren't exactly happy with that. Coincidentally, the table next to theirs convulsed into a chaotic uproar as if in agreement, but a cursory glance sidewards revealed yet another wild antic that Orichon's mages were indulging in. Roane, the scrawny snake boy, was egging his little pet on as it squeezed and wrestled someone to the floor.

Luca and the others took no notice of the absurdity.

"I mean, we love the old man and all," continued Zen, "and we try to do as he says. But those bastards out there deserve worse than death."

For once, Miklos could tell that he wasn't joking.

"And I suppose we gotta sit our asses down and watch the prince prance through his fancy coronation party, eh?" he sulked. "Any luck buggin' the old man, Rei?"

He received a sigh in response. "No," and after a pause: "Loric has me placed under confinement."

The hyperactive trio exchanged knowing glances. More mutters of dissatisfaction ensued.

"Ehh, you'll come up with somethin', right?" Zen pinned her with a hopeful gaze. His eyes were almost pleading, just like how Alistair's had looked when he begged Miklos for his bowl of stew.

"But of course," she answered with tight smile.

"Fantastic."

All attention swivelled back towards Miklos.

It was Leo who spoke next, his fingers still working up a storm: "Well, in case if you're wonderin', most of em' raids go fine and dandy. We get what we want - in, out, no problem!"

"But if-" Zen started.

"Yeah, yeah," Leo rolled his eyes. "If the stupid townsfolk start gettin' feisty, or if the king's pet mages show their ugly butts. . . " his expression turned dark. "We're in for some mile-high horse shit."

A thought tugged at the back of Miklos's mind. As the next few moments passed in uncomfortable silence, he recalled an incident from four years ago. A raid had occurred in a town far south of Vargoth City, and word of its aftermath had spread faster than wildfire. Numerous were the dead, their bodies recovered in awful states - limp, paper-thin, and shrivelled dry, as though their life-forces had been sucked right out of them.

Or so he had heard.

"Dracmore Town." Miklos couldn't help himself. "Everyone knows Orichon is responsible for the massacre."

The fidgeting from Leo and his companions intensified.

"Er. . . Well, that. . ." Leo stuttered, stealing a glance at Rei. She had steeled herself - grey eyes flashing all hawk-like.

"It was an accident," Rei scowled. "In any case, I wouldn't call thirty dead a massacre. The people have been exaggerating," she said defensively.

Luca snorted. "That is still quite a number, you know."

Rei shot him a dirty look.

"Wait, were you there?" Miklos asked, his voice laced with suspicion.

"M-Miklos, Rei doesn't like to talk about it," Krea blurted out all of a sudden. Then, seeming to realize that she had overstepped her boundaries, Krea withdraw back into her shell, tugging and twisting at the fabric of her cloak.

"Hey, aren't I on your team now?" Miklos grumbled. "I deserve to know something."

No response. They ignored him, and he dared to try his luck once more, pinning Krea with an imploring, impatient stare. "Well?"

"It's not very nice of you to probe," Krea mumbled unhappily. "I-I don't like talking about it either. Bad memories are best left as they are. Unspoken."

Miklos had to strain his ears to hear her over the general din in the dining hall.

". . . Fine then, I won't ask," he finally relented, but not without sulking. "I don't know what the deal is though, unless-"

Unless they were the ones responsible for the deaths.

"Did you kill those people?"

"Stop it," Luca warned. "You'll-"

As if on cue, Krea's eyelids drooped and she tilted forwards.

She might have went face-first into nasty Wildlands mush, but Luca and Rei were quick as lightning. In an instant, they had halted her quick descent and were holding her now limp body upright.

Her head lolled to one side. A tiny snore escaped her lips.

What the? Miklos wanted to exclaim, but then he remembered that he was in trouble. It was likely that whatever had happened to Krea was his fault, and it might be best if he kept his mouth shut.

Leo, Zen and Alistair looked on with sheepish, lopsided awkward smiles. Rei and Luca shot him withering glares.

"This is why she hates interacting with people," Rei muttered, shaking her head. Gently, she lowered the girl onto her shoulder.

"Miklos," Rei turned to him. "Apologize."

"But she's asleep!"

"You can do that when she wakes then."

Miklos felt defiant. Defiant, but guilty. He mustered a feeble apology and glanced away. He was embarrassed, and that drew an automatic scowl on his face.

He was sincere about the apology though.

If Rei had registered his scowl, it didn't appear to have put her off to a degree one might have expected. Within his peripheral vision, he noted the troubled stare that she was fixing on him yet again - like the ones she'd been giving him all throughout dinner. Except this time, it looked less distant. . .

Miklos realized that she was staring past him, not at him.

Curiosity tugged his head around.

Barrelling down the aisle with perceptible tension arising from their sharp, worn features and rigid postures, a pair of mages were making haste towards their table. One female, the other a sturdy male - the latter of which seemed to be visibly burdened by sickness. Harsh racking coughs convulsed through his body as he shuffled to keep up with his partner, and with a sudden jog in his memory, Miklos realized that he was the mage whose bed he had passed by earlier in the infirmary.

Curiously, Rei and Luca exchanged apprehensive glances as if they had both simultaneously arrived at the same conclusion, prompting Miklos to look to Leo and the others for a clue. They shrugged and shook their heads. The duo approached, and Leo held up a hand in greeting.

Before he could open his mouth, the girl beat him to it, her words spilling out in a hurried rush and jumble of incoherent sentences. As she twisted her features into anguished, broken shapes, the thick scars that ran along her face contorted along with them, so prominent that Miklos couldn't help but stare. They reminded him - most disturbingly - of the claw marks he had seen at the entrance of Orichon's dwelling.

The only person whose presence was registered by those brown eyes alight with anxiety was Rei. She made no indication that Miklos, nor the others, existed. Once again, the boy felt as though he were being compelled from one sequence of events to another, in which he held no power of stopping. He was an oar-less boat, left to the devices of a great, tumultuous ocean of madness.

"Woah, gurl," Leo begin. "Calm d-"

Rei silenced him with a look.

"It's Finn. Finn isn't back yet." Eloise's companion said in a strained voice. He stepped forward, and with a shock, Miklos realized that he too, brandished the same scars that ravaged Eloise's face. Tell-tale signs that the male once held a smooth complexion and warm, gentle features could be gleaned - but the scars wrecked those qualities entirely. If it were not for the sickness that had seeped in, making his skin pale and wane, he might have came across altogether as wild and quite alarming indeed.

Meanwhile, Eloise looked ready to burst into tears.

"It'll be dark soon!" she moaned. "Even with the storm gone, Loric will never let us out!"

They were beginning to draw stares from the other mages. Leo, Zen, and Alistair continued to watch the proceedings like obedient, quiet children. Even their fidgeting had ceased: a blatant indication of their undivided attention.

"Don't be stupid," Luca remarked curtly, wrinkling his nose in disapproval as he rocked the edge of his spoon back and forth with a finger. "Crossing the plains outside at this fiendish hour? These lands will soon be crawling with hostiles until dawn breaks. I do hope grief has not rendered your common sense utterly useless."

It was hard to disagree with him when he adopted that matter-of-fact tone. His words, crude and insensitive as they were, were met with little resistance. Instead, Eloise turned to Cyril for help, her eyes pleading him for assistance.

Unhappily, however, Eloise's companion only shook his head with visible reluctance, a downcast expression set deep in his face.

Miklos wondered what was ailing him. He knew he could find out with a simple touch; a bit of concentration. Even better still, he could heal him - but he didn't care enough for the mage to be willing to shoulder the burden.

"Cyril!" Eloise stomped her feet, glaring at him in desperation. "We can't just leave him out there! He's going to die!"

"We should have shoved his arse right back through those doors," Rei muttered.

"What?" Eloise's voice rose to a higher pitch. "You saw him leaving? Why didn't you stop him then?" Hurt and betrayal shone in her eyes. Tears threatened to fall in a torrent of despair.

"Eloise, please," Cyril pleaded. "It's not her fault."

Rei looked like she was slapped in the face.

"I. . ."

"She tried to stop him. He said he would be fine," Miklos dared to say.

All eight pairs of eyes swivelled towards him - Rei's with restrained surprise - and he gulped. Where had that come from? Inside, he berated himself for intervening. As if his mouth hadn't caused him enough trouble.

Perhaps he had wanted to redeem himself.

Well, better late than never. Unfortunately, he had an inkling of a feeling that he was about to bear the brunt of Eloise's ire, whom he was certain was in the midst of deciding whether to snap at the boy, or crumple into a despairing heap of sorrow. She sized up Miklos with her brown eyes, now blazing and alight with barely restrained emotion.

It was at that moment that Krea decided to awaken from her untimely slumber. She shot up so quick that a perturbed, startled Miklos almost exclaimed out loud. She blinked once. Twice. Three shakes of her head, as if she were trying to shake off a hovering cloud of drowsiness. Dutifully, she then set to examining the newcomers, a little wide-eyed.

After a while, she breathed an almost inaudible murmur: "This is terrible."

With that, the evening's repast met a premature end, as all nine mages at that table were seized with an unshakable sense of dreadful premonition.

Miklos was still hungry.

---

A/N: HAI. I'm so sorry for the long overdue chapter! University does not permit me the luxury of time. As for the following chapters, I'll try my best to keep the quality consistent, but I expect I'll have to write in short bursts and cut chapters abruptly. That being said, I'm a perfectionist so I doubt that'll happen.

Priority #1: Get. The. Story. Down.

Also, I know this chapter may have been a drag to read, with some parts seeming non-essential to the story. "Filler" material. But I swearrrrr they will eventually amount to something in the later chapters.

Thank you so much for reading this far :3