Author Games: Empty Night

Quarterfinals: Leo Wilder

Temén Oblåk.

Are you speaking Bulgarian?

Yeah?

When the fuck did you learn Bulgarian?

I mean, the same day that you did obviously.

But I don't know Bulgarian..

Yes you do.

Leo searched his head for whatever the hell the Bulgarian phrase was supposed to mean. He climbed towering mountains and descended into abyssal valleys, traversing the entire landscape of his brain to remember when he would have learned any language that wasn't his native tongue.

You're thinking about it too much, Bear. Bulgarian is the tongue of your ancestors, it is the very blood in your veins and it is the match flicked at the gasoline in your bones. You know.

Leo let a soft, almost inaudible sigh escape past his lips and he felt this weight press down upon his shoulders as if they couldn't be allowed to reach any further into the sky.

The truth was that he did know what it meant, he just didn't want to, and the sudden realization that he knew made it hard for him to breath. It was as if there was an entire world resting on his ribcage, waiting for his skeleton to crumble so it could finally crush his lungs and rid itself of him for good.

Dark Clouds.

The words felt angry as they clawed up his throat; a warning of impending doom when it had seemed that maybe the storm had finally passed.

There you go, I knew that you knew it.

Okay? And why did you say it in the first place?

C'mon Leo, I know you aren't THAT stupid.

This was another question that he'd asked his voices that he already knew the answer to. He felt the air change the moment that him and Mal had found refuge in one of her factions' underground safehouses. They were never going to be safe so long as they were fugitives in the eyes of the Fae Courts and the Princess would not let them get away without paying for their crimes.

What they'd done that could actually be considered a crime was the one question he'd never know the answer to.

The air was thick with forewarning and although they were underground and Leo could not see the air that coated the Earth above them, the storm that was rolling in was palpable. His nostrils had already picked up its scent, and the density of the oncoming tempest burned it's way through his system, reducing his entire body to a mass of cinder and rubble.

Mal's sooty gray eyes regarded Leo carefully, matching the same hue of the very Temén Oblåk that the Fae had conjured for them.

The corners of her bow-shaped lips curved upwards ever-so-slightly so that the archer was aiming to shoot an arrow into the sky and not the dirt. She opened her mouth to speak before clamping it shut again. She could feel the storm just as he did, he was sure of it. She'd have to be stubborn to not feel the shift in the air.

"What are they saying?" she finally decided to end the cacophony of the silence and interrupted his thoughts to ask him this.

"They are complimenting us on our quick thinking," he said this and feigned a smile even though he knew that he had never been a good liar. All the magic in the world at his fingertips and he had never been willing to spend enough sanity to become adept at deceit.