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As if he were merely a passenger to a wagon, Chauhn watched with bleary eyes as the scenery around him changed with reckless abandon. He stretched and squirmed, used all his urchin might to try and free himself, but he was so gripped tight that when he gave another desperate squirm, the blade snagged against his skin and drew a red line into his little burn scars from Clurie's hands. Chauhn gasped, just as he was dragged onto the unsteady plank to board the ship, and as he did, he gave an accidental kick of his leg. The motion jerked off his right shoe, which was already meagerly hanging onto Chauhn's skinny little feet by mere scraps and twine. He wasn't able to see it fall into the dark ocean brine below, but he heard the distinctive splash as it was swallowed by the ocean waves lapping at the crusted belly of the ship.

Chauhn gave another scratch of a wail, a struggle, and, with a desperate cling to the arm choked about his neck in a grim black noose, kept himself from falling with help from the cultist who shoved him roughly across the way. As soon as they touched the deck of the ship, Chauhn began to lose his cool and control.

"Le' go of me! NO! Ah don't want to go an'where! Ah don't wan' t' be converted! Jus' lemme go! Gimme back m'brother!" But his pleas were already heard. These weren't new facts or new observations, they hardly held any weight. They were familiar cries and default expressions that anyone who was captured would use. For the cultists, Chauhn provided probably nothing more than a familiar and somewhat grossly nostalgic background noise.

Repeating his pleas and cries, demands and shrieks of rage, Chauhn stumbled and slipped as he was pushed and urged along down a stairwell into the gut of the ship. The slip and slime did nothing but help Chauhn's awkward struggle, and it bunched between the toes of his exposed foot in unsettling chunks. He grit his teeth and fought back a wobbling sob that was threatening to belch forth. As the smaller masked boy and the cultist spoke, he slipped and writhed in the now bloody grip with weaker gestures. He was growing tired, and he had eaten little that day to give him enough energy to fight for very much longer. Now, he breathed and heaved like a fish out of water, his eyes bulging wide and his mouth agape as blood trickled out from the side of his neck in the shape of a gill.

"No," Chauhn growled, blinking madly, "No, don't wan'..."

If there was anything to praise about the hard earned skills of a street rat, it would have to be adrenaline. It was a last minute burst that saved him from so many near encounters, the kind of crazy energy that could send Chauhn up the side of the building in less time than it would to climb a ladder. It was this same kind of adrenaline that kicked up from the bottom of Chauhn's gut the moment the sound of the blade was heard. Until that moment, he had been shivering, madly sniveling and blinking away the moisture from his eyes, thinking nothing but of his brother and his pitch black pit of luck. He had almost lost hope, almost released his bite and struggling will. If it had not been for that sharp crisp whisper of sharpened metal, Chauhn might have walked somberly along with the cultist to his doom.

If it had not been for that sword.

As soon as he was released, Chauhn fell forward like a felled tree, falling onto the grit and slime of the deck's belly. It slid into his face, over his thin shirts and up the length of his arms and legs. He didn't pause to contemplate the smell before he was able to scramble up to his feet again. Adrenaline, like a fire, sparked up in the dry timber of Chauhn's depleted blood and he spun himself about. He could run to the open stairwell, catapult himself off the ship and into the water, hide underneath the docks until the coast was clear...He could. But not without his brother.

"CLURIE!" the Clemmings boy shouted. Without thinking further, Chauhn loosed his body to whim and rage, and he flew foward and onto the Cultist's back. He threw his young arms about its neck and squeezed, while at the same time, he tried to hike himself up higher so he could reach down the Obscuvian's chest and search for his poor and comatose little Plague.

It was also there that Chauhn glanced for the briefest of moments towards the masked boy, who had planted a good few inches of his knife buried deep into the cultist's lung. He wasn't sure if he could trust this stranger, or even the person behind the mask. But Chauhn knew one thing:

"Twist it!" he shouted, prompting the other to wind the dagger into the cultist's guts.

So pressed against the cultist's body, Chauhn was nothing more but a monitor to his throes of death. He held his grip firmly, his knees pinned tight as the tall body collapsed slowly to the ground. Finally upon the wood boards again, Chauhn was able to catch a stance against the rock of the boat, and he felt as, underneath him the quiver and shake of the stench crusted cultist stiffened into a deathly stillness. Pinching the muscles of his nose up tight, he forced himself to forget about the raw odor now expelling itself from the cultist, and he unlaced his arms from about the Obscuvian's neck as the masked youth slowly eased it back to fold over its legs on the floor, a puddle of pitch.

Chauhn stepped to the side then, breathing hard and standing with a will as weak as string, for the few more moments it took for the last spasms of life to shake themselves out of the Obscuvian's form. He didn't notice it, but he was shaking, his body alive with the screaming rush of adrenaline. His eyes, large and fish like, were staring as the masked stranger peered through the Obscuvian's front pockets, leaning in and sniffing with determined pointedness. So alive was his veins with adrenaline that he didn't even think about the cut in the side of his neck, which was spilling trickles of blood into and down his shirt. The moisture that dribbled down into his shirt and eventually onto his front he mistook for sweat, which was also becoming a part of the mad mess and muddle of the dampness on his person.

It was when he was still in the process of mentally and physically recharging that the stranger snapped a hand forward and hissed something close to his face, a warning and command. He immediately set on the task of finding his brother, which was, at the foremost of his mind, even before breathing or swallowing back the lump of dry sweat in his throat. Leaning closely forward, Chauhn fumbled with shaking fingers he couldn't control for the bag the stranger had mentioned. Ripping the buckled bag from the belt, Chauhn wrenched it up close to his face before yanking it open. Sure enough, little Clurie was inside, limp and tangled in a heap of limbs from the rough travel within the bag. For a few tense moments Chauhn felt his heart clench tight, for Clurie had the limpness of one who was void of life, if it hadn't been for the little haggard draw of breath he was forcing. His mouth opened so slightly and closed with each lengthy and drawn breath he forced. Clurie was so weak, and Chauhn could see that if they didn't do something soon...

Chauhn closed the bag again and pushed it gingerly into his front pocket of his overalls. With a great sniff and a heave of dry crackling breath, he blinked wildly when he was started back into awareness by the tight grip on his arm just as he took the Obscuvian's dagger from the ground beside his twitching boots. Glancing over with eyes red with veins, he struggled to comprehend just what the other had said. There was another thing getting in his way just then, something distracting him from understanding just what the other had said, when, suddenly, it hit him like a splash of cold water to the face.

Why hadn't he seen it before? He knew that voice, and he knew that hair, little tendrils of frizz and fluff that protruded from just behind the other boy's mask. When he said his name aloud, Chauhn knew it to be none other than:

"...Adal?" his voice was one of disbelief. A dim light of hope fluttered to life in his eyes and cheeks, "...Adal, wha' are y'doin' 'ere...? How'd ya kno' ah was...?"

Relieved of his mask, the head of the Obscuvian was nothing more than that of a hallowed and haggard face belonging to something just as mortal as Chauhn was. He gulped, unsettled in the strange gift that Adal offered to him, the mask of a dead man, and it was with a wary gulp that he curled his still shaking fingers around the edge of the paper-based mask. As he fought with the mask, he kept his eyes on the Anhelo before him, his brows knitted tight above his weary face. His mind was working too fast, spewing a thousand thoughts a second, struggling with kicking feet to slow itself before it crashed. He was thinking, this is Adal, this is a Plague, my brother's a Plague, my brother is dying, Adal would know, Adal knows the Plague Doctor, he and Georgie work for him, Adal could help.

Struggling for a few painful seconds on a lump of words as Adal lifted up from the ground in one swift movement and began moving away, Chauhn swallowed several times to clear the thickness from his throat. His body moved after him, rather like a heavy loose jointed doll on twisted strings. The sound of his weary footsteps echoed dully in the hull, repeating back at them as they moved deeper into the mess of cargo and wooden boxes. and as he caught up beside the Plague, he dug his free hand's fingers into the loose fabric of Adal's sleeve. His other hand held the beaked mask up near his chest.

"Adal, somethin' terrible 'as 'appened to Clurie, y'need to help 'im," When the Anhelo continued forward with nothing more than a glance, Chauhn laced his grip around the fabric of Adal's collar, yanking him to face him with what little strength his adrenaline had left. He bared his teeth at Adal, moisture filling the corners of his eyes and flickering in the dim light of the lantern.

He said again, his voice threatening to break, "'E's 'n a bad way, Adal, please, y'need t' 'elp 'im. Ah don't know whot else t'do. You would know, you would...'Elp 'im or ah'll...or ah'll..." The words again got caught in his throat, a sticky mess of desperate pleas, half-hearted demands, and thin threats. He didn't care about getting off this ship as much as he did saving Clurie, right then and there. He could feel the weight of him in his pocket, cold and still unlike the warmth and wiggle that Clurie so usually made.

Beneath them, the hull groaned, a deep and long roll of drowning thunder.

Whenever he was caught in the yellow prism of Adal's gaze, Chauhn always felt like the connection from his head to his body had become irreversibly severed. There was nothing he could do to move his limps, twitch the threads of his muscles or even force his ribs into squeezing his lungs to breathe. His grip around the collar of his shirt became eventually weak the longer the Locos glared deep into his own sharp green eyes, and he lost all the moisture in his mouth. He stood there, mouth helplessly dry, too dry too swallow, and too dry to speak a retort or a defense to Adal's all too accurate observations and condemnations. Chauhn's own wrist was snatched in his grip and it tightened, and as it did, Chauhn felt as if he were slowly tightening his grip around his core as well, stopping his heart from beating.

There was nothing he could say in his defense, nothing to dissuade him from his already poor opinion of the desperate urchin boy. In all honesty, Adal was completely and entirely right. It was his naivete, his foolishness, that did Clurie in, it was his own lack of competence that failed to save Clurie from the tides.

Very weakly was Chauhn able to answer, "Yes...Yes, it was all of tha'." His face was pale as the lantern's light made it out to be and as guilty as a child who had accidentally killed a bird.

Then the light shifted away as Adal turned again from him, leaving him to the gape of the shadows as they sought to engulf him. He stayed for a moment there, quivering underneath the heaviness upon his shoulders. He had to get it together. He had to pull himself up. Clurie had to be saved, and Chauhn had already done enough ill to his brother. He had to start making things right. Sucking back a breath that he used to fight the onset of tears, Chauhn bit himself back into the composure of an older brother. With a careful press to his face, he pulled up the beaked mask, and with a careful twiddle of his fingers, he tied it back so that it hung securely on his face, the mask of a dead man. Then, with a careful scuttle, he fell into step again beside Adal.

"Wha' d'you need me t'do?" he asked, his voice now muffled underneath the plaster of the mask. "Ah'll do anythin' for Clurie. Anyth..."

But before them, came a series of thuds, a melody to the base groan of the ship. The march of cultists began down the steps.

The voices of the Obscuvians were a chilling addition to the low groan and grumble of the hull, echoing into voices larger than the shapes that made them. Upon hearing the word "brother" called out, Chauhn's stomach clenched, the word being a sensitive one, and he had to refrain from making quick and loud movements to hold his own comatose brother close. He sucked his mouth shut, biting down tight on his lips so that he didn't make a sound as the creaky floorboards whimpered and whined underneath the heavy boots of the soaked cultists. So far, their suspicions were nothing dangerous, threatening sure, but nothing that would seal their fate to the dark clutches of the Obscuvians, and it was that little faint hope that kept the fire burning in Chauhn's body. With a quick over the shoulder glance from Adal, Chauhn backed up, pressing himself in between and tightly to the cradle of boxes that they used to obscure their small shapes. With the steps of thin legs used to creeping in alleyways and over precarious rooftop shingles, Chauhn was able to move with nary a sound despite his one poorly soled foot and his bare one.

Underneath his muddy folds of clothing, Chauhn breathed as silently as he possibly could, his eyes wide and blinking against the hooded light of the Malt brother. The footsteps were drawing near, and when they were only yards away, Adal mouthed to him. At first, he didn't understand. He flinched his face into a gesture of confusion, and inched closer. Thankfully, he caught the echo of the word, and with a determined nod, he gestured his confirmation of the order. His face screwed into a serious frown, the kind of face a street urchin would put on before a fight. He didn't have anything to wrap around his knuckles to protect them, but Chauhn determined that he wouldn't need them in this fight. This brawl would be raw.

Chauhn would fight, tooth and nail, like the best of the street rats.

As soon as the cultists stumbled by, ambling through the darkness against the toss and turn of a sea sick ship, Chauhn slunk free from the darkness, his small form easily lost to the shadows as he scuttled after the cultists. Bearing his teeth, his eyes still lined with the moisture of shame, he sought out the swaying bulk of the cloaked man. He had him in his line of sight, a man who would take his brother away from him, an enemy. Blind to anything else but the saving of his brother, which meant the strangling of this man, Chauhn quietly slipped out of his last shoe, tossing its messy and ratty leather to the side, before he launched himself into a deft and direct dash for the cloaked man. He wanted to be quick, quiet, and most of all, effective, so like a falling cloud of ash, Chauhn descended upon him with a single leap, scurrying up by digging his feet against the small of his back and throwing his arms around his neck. He worked and wriggled himself onto his shoulders until he could hold his arm tightly and entirely around the cultist's beaked face, with the a strain of his arm, and a push of his legs, he began to pull back with every intent to crush the man's windpipe. There was nothing but a big brother's fury commanding his actions now.

What fear there might have been rattling about in Chauhn's chest it never had the chance to play the full scale of its effect on his body, for, moments after the heavy body he had tackled had slammed into the ground, Chauhn was distracted by the loss of air in his lungs. The rebound of the man's body into his chest had enough strength to kick out all the air, and for those few precious moments he was vulnerable, his back exposed to any dreadful blow that might land upon him. But such a blow was never to be given for Adal, quick moving and deadly precise in his actions was the fleeter. While the other cultist fell, his back split in twain by Adal's dagger, Chauhn had plenty of time to gather in lungfuls of painful air. He raised himself up from the limp man's body beneath him and, trembling with hands unused to squeezing the living life out of another being's throat, he pushed against his knees until he was able to force himself into a stand. From that vantage point he could more easily see the twitch and squirm as the last dregs of life exhausted themselves from the Cultist's body, and the blood that bled from the gouged shards of porcelain mask into his face were enough to make Chauhn's stomach flip. The urchin gave a heave of his shoulders, but nothing came from his bowels save a few dry retches.

Immediately, he looked for Clurie. He yanked open his front pocjet, worried for his brother's precarious position on his chest, and upon looking inside, he saw that his little brother was indeed fine. If he had been squashed at any point, it certainly didn't show now, and, by all accounts, it seemed like Clurie was the same as when he last checked on him: comatose, unaware, and haggard with breathing. The flux of his mouth was so small that Chauhn had to wait a few patient and tense moments before he was able to see any sign of movement. Clurie was still with him, barely, but still there.

Gulping down a large lump of worry, Chauhn took the lantern from Adal's hands and moved forward with a stumble. There was a sudden buck in the ship and he was thrown off his balance into some of the cargo, his shoulder crushing against the corner. There was no hurt in his shoulder from the awkward slam into the crate, proof of the fact that adrenaline was still running rampant through his body. It was a good thing; he would need to rely on his energy if he was escape with Adal, especially having used up what little energy he had before. Chauhn wrapped his arm around his stomach, forcing back an empty gurgle, as he searched out the cloak that Adal had mentioned. It was easy to find since it was still near the area of the first man they had killed. With shaking fingers, he knelt down and pulled up the blood-stiffened fabric, and it only took a few tries at tying the strings about his neck to don the burlap cloak about his shoulders. With a weak wobble back to Adal as fast as he could toddle on the unsteady deck, Chauhn came to a stand beside Adal in the dim lantern light as he fought to rip the other cloaks from the fresh fallen foes.

He was posed a question to answer, a question that would, more likely, do Chauhn harm in whatever capacity he tried to tell it. He took an unsteady breath, still trying to gag back the smell of the recently relieved bodies, and spoke in a rushed whisper.

"...Clurie, 'e...'E fell 'n the water, the waves were too quick 'n' they took 'im when we were by the sea. Ah panicked, Adal, 'n' ah rushed back, 'n' ah was tryin' to find someone, anyone who could 'elp 'im...A council man or...A man came up to me, 'n', by all accounts 'e looked like the Plague Doctor from whot stories ah 'eard, mask 'n' all black, but ah was..." Chauhn gulped and tried to finish the rest of his recount. With each word he felt the guilt weigh even more and more heavily on his shoulders and gut, "Ah made ah stupid mistake, 'n' the man took 'im. Ah chased 'im for a long time, ah wouldn't let 'im take m'Clurie away, but then 'e caught me when ah tried to fight back for Clurie. 'E took me wit' a knife, 'n' brough' me 'ere..."

The Clemmings boy hung his head while, above his shoulder, he still hung the lantern high for Adal to see by, "Ah made a stupid mistake...It's m'fault why Clurie 'n' ah are 'ere."