Exposure

Chapter 3

Aesop's POV

Four left and falling fast.

"The hunter is near me!"
Emily screamed from somewhere on the field. This is bad. Emily was their main healer and Aesop had already used up his coffin. It didn't seem like he was getting another one anytime soon. All he could do for now was decode like a madman.

He hadn't really paid attention to the camera next to his cipher until it lit up without warning, making Aesop falter and miss a calibration. He flinched away for the sparks that flew from the machine and huffed, glaring at the camera as he started to decode again.

Aesop never really had much experience with the Photographer. He guessed he might have been in two matches with him but even then he'd never seen the hunter. It's not as if he was a new hunter, they'd simply just never really crossed match schedules. It was probably luck that he'd escaped twice and never seen the hunter. Now his luck was running low. Aesop stopped again as his mirror image got hit. He frowned and looked down at his body, he felt fine. What's going on? What's he doing to me?He questioned. Having little to no experience with the Photographer meant he was oblivious to his abilities.

His mirror image was quickly knocked and ballooned. Aesop had the insatiable urge to rescue himself? It sounded stupid in his head but he was anxious about the consequences of his mirror image being hurt. He ran into the camera's light and stopped to look at the dull, grey version of the map on the other side. He frowned and gingerly looked around. Aesop soon found his mirror image struggling in a rocket chair. It was even stranger seeing himself (even if he did look washed out, it was still him). Aesop watched his mirror image struggling in the chair,
"Is that really what I look like?"
He muttered and rescued the replica. Sure, he'd seen himself in mirrors but this fake was too detailed for him to not be fascinated with.

Aesop wasn't even sure if his surrogates were this uncanny. He then started to heal it and was so immersed in looking at how he appeared to other people that he didn't notice his heart starting to get jittery. He snapped out of his daydream when his heart felt like it was hitting his rib cage and spun around. He was faced with a tall man. Obviously the hunter, the Photographer, But Aesop couldn't, for the life of him, will his feet to move. Beautiful, Aesop thought, that was the only think to describe the man. He was all flowing white blonde hair and eyes so blue that they seemed to glow. Is he the one who makes these picture perfect replicas?

The hunter smirked down at Aesop and tilted his head at him
"What?" He said, his voice soft but powerful like cascading water "Cat got your tongue?"
He asked before promptly breaking yet another of Aesop's daydreams by thumping him on the shoulder with the flat of his sword. The pain woke Aesop up and he dashed away, using the adrenaline of the pain to go faster.

Aesop knew it was a poor bet but he climbed into a locker to let himself think. His heart was still beating hard enough for it to be noticeable but not so much as it was with the Photographer.
"What the hell was that?"
Aesop mumbled to himself, completely bewildered by the interaction. It was an unspoken rule that survivors and hunters should never speak to each other. Sure, there was nothing official forbidding it but they were supposed to hate each other. Aside from pained whimpers and bubbling rage, what was there to say? The Photographer even went as far to tease Aesop. Needless to say Aesop was stunned and strangely intrigued.

Whilst Aesop was still recuperating in the locker, Emily was sent off in a rocket chair. She was the last survivor apart from Aesop and now he was left alone. Tell-tale crows gathered above the lockers to alert both hunters of Aesop's position. Thankfully, Aesop knew where the dungeon was and it only took a matter of sneaking around the sidelines and shadows of the map to get to it. He followed the tunnel back to the Survivors' side of the manor and went to his room. Rationally speaking, it wasn't really Aesop's room. The manor was full of empty rooms and each survivor simply drifted to one and it naturally became 'their' room.

Aesop's was quite far from everyone else's. It was more of more in a tower than a hallway like everyone else's was, with stairs coming up onto a landing that could fit two people maximum and leading into a small bedroom too. Whereas all the other survivors had room that could be comfortably shared with someone else, Aesop's only just about had enough room for him. He liked it that way. Naib called it cramped when he came up to hang up but Aesop preferred calling it cosy. It had a double bed, a wardrobe and a desk with his embalming equipment. Not to mention the view, he got to overlook the hunter's side of the manor as well as some of their garden. Aesop thought it was unfair that the hunters got their very own garden all to themselves. He often saw the Soul Weaver climbing on the windows when they were preparing for their matches.

Aesop slipped off his shoes and perched on the edge of his bed, he felt restless, like there was something he desperately wanted to do. Every time he let his mind wander he found himself thinking of the Photographer and his stupid smirk and his stupid teasing. He was actually thankful when Martha called him down for dinner.