Richard looked up when he heard the Dueglesteiners come back.
"Hey, what's going-" the peasant boy, Peter started to say, but one of the soldiers kicked him in the gut, sending him to the ground, coughing.
"No questions," the soldier ordered at them, and Richard craned his neck as he saw more of the Dueglesteiners walk over, and this time they were dragging two kids behind them, a boy and a girl.
The girl had fair skin, and dark brown hair in a dark braid, and what Richard thought was a mole on the right side of her face, right below the eye. She was unconscious, and 2 of the men dragged her over to the fire. At first Richard thought they might throw her into the fire, but then they unceremoniously sat her on the ground, and tied up her hands and feet like the rest of the children.
The boy, on the other hand, was a tall blonde with bright blue eyes full of anger as he struggled against the 3 Dueglesteiners trying to bring him over to where the circle of kids was.
"No! Let me go!" he shouted and screamed, thrashing against their grip. Richard had never seen someone with such bravery and fire in his spirit before he had seen the boy.
"Quiet!" one of the soldiers hissed, and the Dueglesteiner behind the boy kicked the backs of his legs to make him fall to the ground, before quickly trying to tie him up.
The boy thrashed and kicked, and when one of the Dueglesteiners tried to tie his hands, the boy simply bit him on the wrist. The Dueglesteiner screamed in pain, then backhanded the blonde boy.
When they were done tying him up and were about to leave, the soldier whom had been bit gave the boy one last kick before beginning to leave the fire.
As soon as the soldiers left, the boy's ravenous and fighting expression left his face, replaced by a scared and confused one just like the rest of the children. He had put up a fight, but at the end of the day...
"Who...who are you?" the boy uneasily asked.
"Hi," the blonde girl, Helen, said with a smile, "I'm Helen, this is Alice, that's Peter, and he's Richard." Helen pointed to each of them in turn with her bound hands, introducing them to the boy. Richard was surprised Helen had remembered his name, since it'd only been said twice.
"What's your name?" Alice asked the boy, curious.
"Luke," he said softly, "Luke Doogan."
Richard had been sitting in silence this whole time, deciding to not utter a single word while the boy was here. But now he could not handle it any longer.
"Who's your girlfriend?" Richard sneered. Luke looked like a filthy peasant, and this girl...this girl was a goddess. He didn't deserve a girl like her.
"Wha-" Luke started to say, "N-no, she's not my girlfriend. I-I just met her today! But, she saved me."
Richard scoffed, "Yeah, right."
"No, I mean it! She almost shot me with an arrow, but then she said something about me not being who she expected, and then these guys showed up, and we fought them, and..."
"Mhm..." Richard was still unconvinced.
"Wait a minute, you fought them?" the redhead asked incredulously.
"Uh, yeah..."
"Wow!" Peter said as he tried to sit back, "I was outnumbered by a whole lot, and I tried to run away, but I'm too scared to actually fight them!"
"Oh," nodded, then brushed it off, "I-it was nothing, really. We were just trying to defend ourselves."
"Sure," Richard nodded, narrowing his eyes at Luke, "You were just "defending yourselves" and what good that did you in the end, huh? You still got captured like the rest of us here!"
"Enough fighting," Helen, whom Richard had nearly forgotten about until this point, said, looking at both of them with a stern expression. "We don’t even know what’s going on. We shouldn’t be bickering over foolish stuff when we can try to figure this out. Together.”
The silence carried around them for a moment.
"So where are we, anyway?" Luke asked in the silence.
"It looks like between the border of Bellona and Hilgaria," Alice answered, seeming proud of her assumption.
"And who do you think kidnapped us?" Luke asked again.
"Dueglesteiners by the look of things."
"Really?" Luke's eyebrows shot up in surprise, "All the way out here?"
"That's what I thought!" Richard exclaimed, at this point just wanting to be heard.
"So what's the plan?" Luke began to lean forward eagerly, or at least the best he could while being tied up.
"We don't have a plan," Richard answered, then pointed to the surrounding kids, "And since none of you can seem to decide on one, I should be the one to come up with it."
Luke tried to cross his arms, raising an eyebrow at Richard. "So why haven't you come up with one yet?"
"I-I'm figuring that out."
Luke smiled at that, a crooked one that made his face seem goofy, and Richard immediately hated it. He turned away from the smiling boy, jealous of his humor in this situation. Richard grumbled to himself about the audacity of it all, laughing at Richard's demise.
Luke looked like he was going to say something else, when the girl stirred. Then her eyes fluttered open and something unexpected happened. The children began to glow...
ns 15.158.61.51da2
