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Chauhn followed and helped Adal as best he could in the concealment of the two dead bodies, his chest heavy with anticipation of the Plague's judgment on his foolish actions. With every moment that Adal thought, the heaviness of guilt grew more and more in Chauhn's chest, weighing down upon his guts so that he felt nauseous, even moreso with the sway and rock of the ship. Above them, the boards bent and groaned underneath the feet of hurrying Cultists seeking shelter in the more manageable areas of the ship, a dim glow highlighting the ceiling above their heads.

Gasping underneath his dead man's porcelain mask, Chauhn looked back to Adal, who had taken off towards the stairwell with grim intent. They needed to move, and they needed to move quick, and Chauhn was as fretful as a broken winged bird, hopping about from one foot to the other as he skittered after Adal, his shoulders hunched up near his ears underneath the blood-stained burlap cloak.

Adal spoke as he walked, doing little to relieve the sense of guilt that weighed low in Chauhn's gut. He was glad that he had the Cultist's mask on his face, so that he could twist his muscles into a pain wracked mask of his own, blinking moisture from his eyes. He didn't know quite what to say to Adal besides sullen agreements to his foolishness, and with a weary nod, he tried to at least give him some form of vocal acknowledgment.

"Ah 'ad to save 'im, so ah jumped in after 'im," he said, his voice stripped of whatever defense there might have been before. "Ah..." but the words choked up in his throat. "Ah guess ah am." They made it to the top of the staircase, their shoes and, in Chauhn's case, bare feet sloshing in the rain water that gushed through the bottom crack of the door. Chauhn quieted as they listened to the door, the dull words of the captain pressing through the wood to reveal a pressing fact: The boat would soon be leaving.

"Adal," Chauhn whispered, the whites of his eyes showing in fear through the holes of his dead man's mask, "If'n the boat takes off now..." the unsaid fact of being forced to swim hung in the air as Chauhn gave a frightened swallow, "Clurie can't get anymore wet than 'e already is...'E'll die."

Chauhn did not have the olfactory senses that Adal possessed as a Plague, but he did have the well trained ear of a street urchin who could tell whether the footsteps fast approaching were intended for him or not. The hiss of disgust from Adal was as loud as a colorful swear, catching Chauhn's attention. He hunched close underneath his matted and stiffened cloak of burlap, awkwardly trying to get close enough to hear Adal's murmurs with the long mask still tied to his face. What he heard accosted him with such dread that Chauhn yanked himself back, as if waking up from a startling dream.

"Whot?" he asked, his accent thickening with his fear. The boy had to shuffle, digesting the shocking observation from his companion with slow and lengthy chews, as if he were trying to break a stale rock of a bread loaf with his teeth alone. The taste of the information was just as bitter, just as harsh and bland. "There are...others? Other litt'l ones?" he managed to gasp, his voice as stale and dry as the metaphorical bread he had attempted to swallow. He let the taste settle, his mind whirling up a thousand images of the weak, the beaten, and the slain. His fear withered to think of the dozens of Grimms, poor and pitiful people like himself, who were given something to protect, something to hold onto and hope for, to have it ripped from them in a sick scheme of stealth and trickery. He didn't dare think what might have happened to Clurie had Adal not come in time to save him. Now, buckling underneath the weight of the horrors that might lie in store for all the other young Excito, Chauhn knew that he could not yet leave the ship, even with Clurie's state.

Brotherly duty came first.

Furrowing his brows, expressing an anger that only needed eyes to communicate the kind of rage he was tending, Chauhn glared at Adal through the holes of the mask. He dug his fingers into his comrade's shoulder, following him with fleet steps as they stepped out into the rain, his bare feet slipping against the planks. The hiss he spoke with steamed up the porcelain of the mask, burning up the statement he had to give until it fell like molten stone, white hot and heavy with each word, "We canno' le' them ge' away wit' them."

It was a statement that Chauhn wouldn't let be denied, and he stared at Adal as they quietly shouldered their way along, drifting nonchalantly past the skittering fake doctors that were trying to wiggle their way to safety of the hull like cockroaches fleeing the light.

"We canno' le' them ge' away wit' wha' they di' to me 'n' Clurie, we canno' le' them ge' away wit' wha' they di' to all the other Grimms, Adal. We ough' to do somethin', stop the ship from leavin', somethin', anythin'," he whispered, his grip on the other boy's shoulder growing tighter. Escape or no, exit or not, they could do something to get everything they needed, revenge and escape, both. There was a way. Desperation gave rise to desperate measures, but desperation also bred insane schemes that would otherwise fail. "We 'ave to. We're the only ones tha' can."

It was by a not so uncanny coincidence that Chauhn felt forced both physically, as he was carefully shoved and guided through the masses of wet and sloppy cultists, and mentally, as he battled between the urges to save the masses of other helpless excitos versus the safety of his own precious brother. All he could do was keep moving forward. None so gently trying to maneuver his way around the scattering of fake plague doctors, Chauhn grew increasingly distracted by the sounds of struggle and cries of help around him. The little voices were muffled by the rain and drowned out by the sound of the boat snapping into movement, its sails pushed up into the wind and its great hulking body creaking against the strain as it carefully moved away from the port's side, slowly, like an awakening beast, crawling back into the ocean. Chauhn's heart was building in desperate pitter patters of his chest, trying to sift out his objective from his honor. He couldn't save these, he had to repeat to himself looking back with discomfort and confusion at Adal as he shoved him towards the ship's side. He had to focus on saving one, the most important one, the one Excito on the ship that wasn't screaming for fear, but rather, deathly quiet and still.

Clurie.

But still, those voices. Chauhn was glad for the mask taped over his face for, otherwise, the grief he was expressing in his eyes would be completely and entirely displayed in its entirety upon his face, a twisted silent howl of indecision. The multitude of other little voices tore his resolve in twain. There were other Grimms like him out there, grieving over the loss of their precious little ones while the ones here were cut short of their potential.

"Adal, perhaps if we could..." Chauhn whispered, trying still to convince him to enact some last desperate attempt to save the other little ones, but his argument was cut short by a steady rumble in the clouds. As the other Cultists passed by, pressing and squishing against each other in a rush to get down below the decks, Chauhn stopped and looked up. The sky above them was deepening in hue, a terrible dark lavender that leaked with an increasing rain. Splattering in large heavy droplets, the torrent increased, further exasperating their situation.

Then, a few moments after Adal mentioned that they were jumping, a few moments into Chauhn's gasp of disbelief, one of the Cultists, who was trying to wriggle his way through the line of other dark robed cohorts, slammed up against Chauhn, tearing him out from Adal's grip and throwing him against the railing. Chauhn felt the breath get kicked from his lungs as he struggled to breathe, his torso bending nearly double over the ship's edge. In that abrupt shove of movement, however, the mask fell free from where it was secured over his face and hung around his neck, exposing his child's cheeks and boyish demeanor, certainly a face that didn't belong in the ranks of the Cultists. A cry of surprise, an angry shout, and word of escapees burned along the top of the ship like wildfire despite the drenching rain. Hands pointed at Adal's yellow glowing eyes, and shouts rose up in tenfold fear and anger.

They were discovered.

But Chauhn wasn't about to hang over the side of the boat like a coil of salt-swollen rope. Frustration and the feeling of helplessness exploded out of his throat like a fog horn of sound as he peeled himself off of the side and turned to face the mass of Cultists like a screaming beached seal. Grabbing Adal's arm, he began to run and force his way through the crowd of a suddenly belligerent mob of Obscuvian filth to the edge of the boat and the quickly diminishing dock.

"Run! Adal, run!" he shouted.

Behind them, small splinters of wood stuck up from the dock, tripping those who would follow after them, a small growth of branches emanating from where Chauhn once stood against the bow.

Freedom had been but a jump away when Chauhn felt his cloak tugged on, pulling him with every steady jerk into the mob of the Cultists. He threw his bare feet against the wet planks, but every attempt to get a step forward and away from their black maw made of hands and fingers sent him back another yard, his clothes pulled back into them. Protectively, he abandoned any use and struggle of his arms to protect his chest, where, somewhere underneath his precious brother Clurie was wrapped up, shivering and cold. He roared and bit at any of the hands he could, trying his best to do something anything, to worm himself closer to Adal who was curled up on the ground in the fetal position, but even that much earned him a tighter grip in their hands. With every shove both he and Adal were pulled into the center of the ship where, braced by dozens of arms against the judgmental glare of the ship's captain, they were made to stand before their punishment, like bread crumbs in the middle of a pack of white porcelain faced crows.

Then, to the captain's gravely question, there came an answer.

It came from Chauhn, who, without thinking, acted in fear of Adal's health, who was the focus of the captain's ill-intent. If there was any hope of them getting out alive, it was up to Adal, the quicker and smarter of the two. By himself, Chauhn could hang on, but he knew, as Adal probably knew, that he couldn't free himself from this dreadful pit of Obscuvian filth. He wouldn't stand a chance if Adal was hurt or taken down. Clurie would die. So, without more thinking than that, Chauhn acted. He filled up his dry cheeks with as much spit as he could manage from the walls of his sticky throat, and spat into his eye. In the initial shock of the men around him, Chauhn slammed his heel into the booted foot of the man behind him, sacrificed an arm to slam it up into the underside of the chin of the man who was directly between him and Adal and tried to wiggle free, but almost as soon as he had started to step forward, a ratty rope was thrown across his neck, a heavy and scratchy thing that, when yanked, pulled Chauhn off of his feet and onto the cracked and growing floorboards of the ship. With the air punched from his lungs, Chauhn could only blink and stretch his legs as he was picked up by the white masked Cultists and hefted up between them in their arms like the many legs of a gigantic spider and sloppily, yet firmly, wrapped in the coils of rope around his torso, arms, knees, and ankles. He began to shout again for Adal, his voice willed with worry, and which each crack of his voice, the wooden boards of the ship would crack, wriggle into itself, a nest of roots, and settle. But Adal, as well, was knocked into, a brute amongst the doctors smashing the bottom of his elbow into the pinnacle of Adal's skull with a resounding crack. Another kick to the back of his knees would send the Plague onto the deck, and he would be taken up and wrapped in coils of rope just enough so that he couldn't give a fight.

"These drowned searats 'ave done enough damage to the ship," the captain was grumbling, digging his stubby fingers into his eye in an attempt to clear out the thick sticky spit, and with a dark frown he nodded at the Cultists who were grinning back underneath their masks, hungry for the sick delight of what they were about to be ordered to do. "Hang 'em for the gulls."

With delight only capable of those in the Obscuvian order, the writhing masses of black robed Cultists moved and parted, making way for those who carried up the bodies of the trapped to the belly of the main mast, heading for the ropes that would lead them into the sails to makeshift gallows.

By the time that Chauhn realized that he could just barely breathe past the rope wrapped about his throat, he was folded over a broad man's black cloaked shoulders like a net of dead crows, flapping lamely in the wind. From his angled and uncomfortable view against the man's met back, his chin slamming into the man's spine with every lurch up the rigging, he could see the monotone world of wet deck and gathered Cultists splayed out beneath the Cultist's climbing legs like a weird assortment of black storm clouds and gray mist. Then he realized just how high up he was. Of course, Chauhn was no stranger to heights, being a chimney sweep had stolen that fear from him long ago, but the fact that he was tethered, roped, and steadily getting dragged higher and higher with little control over the movement of his legs and arms, was a serious threat to his composure. He felt his stomach roll up into his throat, and what came out of his mouth then was a squeaky cry, strained tight by the rope about his neck in a lose knot. When he screamed, the wood of the deck responded, shifting like a carpet of worms underneath the Cultist's feet so that they stumbled and looked about their toes in confusion before glancing again at the entertainment soon forthcoming. Though, from Chauhn's standpoint, the deck looked only wet and mottled and populated with squirming Cultists.

Beneath him and to the right was another cultist with Adal's lanky body thrown over his shoulders, climbing the rigging at a steady clip behind Chauhn's bearer. He could hear him just barely over the rustle and shift of clothes, the tense whine of the rope and the exhale of the wind, laughing himself silly. That laughter, misplaced and unnecessary made Chauhn all the more terrified at their devolving situation, and he shouted back at the Plague, his screams mutilated by the wrap of the rope.

"WHOT?!"

He listened as best he could, shouting again when the man who was carrying him gave a threatening twist of his ankle. The nearby wood of the ship's mast, wiggled in response. And then Chauhn thought that Adal said something that he couldn't entirely understand and when he digested what it was that the Plague had to say, Chauhn furrowed his brows in raw confusion, and shook his head. If he were in any other situation, he would've left it at that, a firm denial and no other words said, but there was not much else to do on the man's back. Chauhn replied back, his voice cracking as he tried to spit both clumps of hair and bundles of words from his lips.

"Are you mad?! Ah can't use magic! Ah don't 'ave it 'n me! No one 'n m'family 'ad it! No one! Ah can't use it at'all!" he shouted in return just as Adal started to wail, or was that sing? Chauhn felt his leg twisted again and he screamed as loud as he possibly could the moment that he felt something in his ankle snap. It wasn't bone, he could tell that, but he was sure that something was not the way it should be in his ankle anymore. Nearby, the wood atop the masts sprouted twigs.

But if Chauhn were paying attention to the state of the wood in the ship's masts, it would've been quickly stolen by the fact that Adal was getting his head bashed into the pole by the Cultist who was knocking his skull against it in an attempt to shut him up. The cultist had stopped there, clinging to the rigging while Chauhn's carrier continued on until he was able to crawl out and stand along the length of the mast. Chauhn felt like his stomach were doing somersaults at the back of his tongue, and he, realizing that this man had no ounce of pity in his heart, that he was seriously going to go through with his master's demands, began to struggle and cry out, fear finally taking the best of him.

"No...No, no! NO!" he bleated, wiggling as best he could so that he wouldn't harm his little brother, who was still somewhere underneath his clothes close to his racing heart. That's right, his brother. His brother was going to die if they didn't get help...He might already be dead! Chauhn couldn't die, not here...He had to uphold the family name, he had to protect Clurie, he...The Clemmings boy, with a terrible and ear-splitting shriek, began to kick his legs, to anything so that he might free himself and somehow loosen his binds. The wood of the mast crackled again, buckling out from it's shape, throwing up elbows and knuckles of stumps and branches, just waiting to flower. With another scream, they did, but Chauhn was screaming too hard, screaming with his eyes shut, to notice. The man, astounded and all too aware of the manipulation going on about his feet, gave a twisted growl. If this boy was to mess with him, then he was to mess with the boy.

Chauhn felt himself whipped off of the man's shoulder, his tiny for his age body held aloft by the scuff of his collar so that it wrenched up around underneath his shoulders, exposing his tummy and dragging the scratching rope up over his ribs and into his skin. Chauhn yelped, wiggling weakly like a fish dangling from a hook before the man lowered him down and then hefted him up into the air, letting him fly free for a few heart-stopping moments, and then he fell down again, but not to the storm-like deck below. The man caught the loop of his rope underneath his hand and yanked him from falling to his death, laughing with a deep rumble at the fear now shaking the Clemmings' boy's body with the full force of a gale. Chauhn screamed again, whimpering as his stomach seemed to bounce loosely through his ribs, his throat, to the bottom of his gut, and then up to his throat again.

"Alrigh' littl'un," the Cultist cooed, laughing into Chauhn's ear as he pulled him up once more extending his arm so that Chauhn could see nothing beneath his feet but the gray below, "You're goin' to learn to fly."

Then, with the throw of his arm, he let go. Chauhn felt his stomach all but fly out of his mouth in a burst of birds, and for a split moment, he felt nothing but gravity cradling him and yanking him down through the air. Some of the ropes had become loose in the throw, surrendering Chauhn's legs to freedom, but his arms, yanked behind him, were still taut, and his neck was still caught, and when the rope's length finally snapped straight, tied around the top of the mast, Chauhn felt it yank up as if a man's hands were collar around his throat, determined to pop his head off like the cork from a cheap bottle of barley.

There had once been a dream in Chauhn's scrambled memory like this: falling through the air, through a chimney, that was, in fact, a world of it's own, out on the Imisese shore while plumes and puffs of rot and fetid stench swarmed about him in the air, stinging his nostrils and eyes like a hoard of bees. There were ethereal flickers of mirror, sharp bangs of light and reflection. He remembered shouting, though he wasn't sure if that was in the dream or if it was happening then and there as he careened in the sky, a whirl of grey and copper rust ocean, swirls of black and, occasionally, a strange shape that represented either an angel, a tattered sail in the wind, or was that Adal? Chauhn was too busy spinning, drunk with colors and choking on the wind that rushed into his screaming mouth, to pick out the details of his maddening spiral to death. He did shout one word though, and if anyone else heard it, it was their guess as to who it was, but Chauhn knew and loved that name with all his furiously tattooing heart.

"LYNN!!"

It had been some time since he had screamed her name, nearly three years in fact, but it was hardly intelligible to anyone else but himself. It sounded like a scream to anyone else, but to Chauhn, it was a desperately screamed prayer, a name that he would have screamed in his youth as he woke up from a bone-chilling nightmare.

And wake up he did.

Chauhn awoke with a hard thump to his shoulders and head, falling sloppily on his neck and shoulders like a discarded toy in the rain, falling to lifeless pieces on the dock where he laid for sometime, just trying to get a hold of his breathing. Around him, the sky grew congested with the full weight of the storm as it laid down on the coastal town, a choking cottony fog of gray and mist, dripping a torrent of rain wherever the growing wind did blow. Heaving, blinking, listening to the roar of his beating heart in his ears, Chauhn waited for his motor functions to return to him after the blaring numbness of hurt faded from his limbs, but even before he could completely convince himself that the burning and stinging lump of weary muscle and twisted sinew was his body, Adal was pulling at his shoulder, forcing his green eyes to open groggily in stunned question.

"Wha..." Chauhn was muttering, "A nightmare...My..." But Adal, without words, began yanking him onto his feet, and when Chauhn tried to gather his legs beneath him, which was rather like trying to stand thin strips of seal fat, he let out a stark cry. His ankle had been twisted by the man in the ship. "The doctor...The doctor, where...He's here?" he stammered. His voice wasn't prepared to start working again after so much screaming. Though, when Chauhn forced himself to stand on his other foot, balancing precariously while he favored the injured ankle, he saw Adal's reason for urgency. A whole two fists worth of Cultists, forlorn and bitter, were scuttling towards them like seaweeds tumbled forward in a frantic ocean wave. Quickly forgetting the pain in sparkling firework displays all throughout his body, Chauhn jumped forward with Adal, doing his damnedest to keep up with the bumbling stagger of Adal, who seemed to be walking with all the weight sloshing about in his head.

As they increased their drunken speed, the Cultists increased just a little bit more, and it was Chauhn who realized that without clever ploys and traps, they would be soon outrun by the mob. Urchin street knowledge of two years had seasoned him in the way of fleeing from unwanted confrontations, and he wrapped his fingers around Adal's wrist, who had already locked his fingers around his, a strong and trustworthy brace of grip.

"This way," Chauhn said, meaning to duck into a maze of ropes, discarded nets, and left over stock, a labyrinthine passageway of boxes and carted storage crates, and with a yank, he pulled him towards it. There were times before when Chuahn has used such similar routes for escape, but those were times when he wasn't so riddled with ache and ague, exhausted to the point where his body was burning fumes for energy. Slipping on the wet cobblestone and plowing through puddles, the two boys vanished into the labyrinth, only to be crushed by a push of boxes in the next. They might have made it through and out to the other side, time to their advantage so they might have gotten away, if it wasn't for the wounds they sustained. The Cultists were upon them quick, and, seeing their route, charged into action. Crates of rope and fishing nets were pitched to their sides and ripped of their contents, like animals ripping out intestines, and the Cultists thrust a mess of knots and ropes onto the fleeing urchins so that they fell, chin-first into the cobblestone, caught in a snarl and tangle of ropes. Like trapped fish, Chauhn struggled and kicked, only getting himself more tangled as he struggled to wrestle free, but to no avail. He shouted, his voice beginning to strain and break so that it was only a short and hoarse cry, but when he raised his voice, the crates nearby shivered and shifted the grains in their planks.

Then the Cultists, malicious intent and nothing but on their minds, surrounded them while, behind them, their boat and life's work sunk to the depths of the bay.

His spine was frozen. Frozen with fear, frozen with utter and total dread for his mortal life, Chauhn couldn't convince himself to move from the place he had become tangled in, wrapped up in a net of rope that added to the weight of doom anchoring his shoulders and gut to the pull of gravity. They were trapped. They were netted, helpless like fish, and here was the soggy and defeated captain of the ship, ambling over the snarls of rope to gut them like the defenseless trout they were. Chauhn's belly turned in on itself, already anticipating the dagger's slice from his collarbone down to the bottom of his navel, and he couldn't find the strength to scream. He was too petrified to make a sound.

Though, when Adal rolled over to him, throwing his weight against him where Chauhn was struggling to get up onto his hands and knees, something happened. The weight of the golden-eyed plague's body slammed against him, pitching him to the side, and something was whispered into his ear, but Chauhn couldn't hear it because of the enormous lightning strike of pain snapping through the frozen rod of his back. Adal had pushed him onto his ankle. Not just onto his ankle, but onto it at a terrible angle, an inhuman angle, a twisted direction it was not meant to go, and no matter how Chauhn wanted to push back against Adal, the other was the stronger.

Imagine, if possible, a balloon of some sort, like the swelling belly of a rotting corpse, bulging and distended, ripe and terrible to look at. That was the sound welling up in Chauhn's chest. Adal, metaphorical bearer of recently sharpened stake, had slammed the weapon down into the ballooning stomach, and what exploded out was terrible, strong, and terrific ugly thing, namely, Chauhn's anguish filled scream. It was loud and powerful, straight from the gut, and what followed in its stead was a rampage of magic.

The crates, of which there were dozens, exploded in unison with Chauhn's voice, a sudden winter whipped forest of bare branches that sank into the fleshy bodies of the circling audience of Obscuvians. Crackling with glee, the branches snapped out and grew upwards, lifting up the suddenly pierced bodies of the black robed men as if in sacrificial offering to the invisible gods above, and with it, the rope and netting that had once covered the boys, now leaving them cowering and trampled against the ground, staring in terror and ecstatic glee at the nightmare taking place about them. The captain, who had nearly fallen onto the boys with the daggers if it weren't for the branch that nestled and wormed it's way through his chest and into his throat and out the other side, choked on his blood, staring with bulging fish eyes at the boys beneath him.

The growth of the impromptu forest grumbled to a halt once Chauhn stopped his long shriek of anguish, a new addition to the Imisese port side, creaking to a slow and satisfied lurch of new forestry, holding up a trembling and twitching flock of gasping Obscuvians like black party lanterns. All around the two boys, shoulder to shoulder on the ground and staring up at the morbid sight, a gentle red rain began to drip from the hems of the Obscuvian cloaks and dress.

Chauhn, choking a series of painful gasps as he maneuvered himself off of his now-limp and swollen ankle, turned a terrified and wondering stare at Adal, "'Ow'd you do tha', Adal?"

In the amount of time that Chauhn managed to steady his breathing, he was pulled up onto his feet and supported by Adal's arms, wrenched into motion before he was even able to get his feet underneath him into a run or even into a stumble. What he did manage to do was put his other arm around Adal's neck, supporting himself by clinging onto his opposite shoulder. He was entirely convinced that Adal was the one wielding the magic, for he felt nothing of magical indication in his own body save the stab of pain as it rocketed through his synapses and the increasing wear on his throat as he screamed. Glancing back at the rest of the horde of Obscuvos, at least a dozen of them wielding splintered bludgeons, Chauhn bit his teeth and tried his best to scamper along with Adal, hopping mostly on one foot while he favored his swollen twisted foot. There were times in their mad dash away into the deeper of the Imisese alleyways forced Chauhn to steady for balance, help Adal along by teteering on both his feet, and when that happened, the Clemmings boy shouted between grit teeth, and the wood of the nearby homes, support beams and doors, window sills and crates left to be forgotten in the alleyways, sprung branches behind them, making a slowly more and more impassable obstacle for the Obscuvians to blunder through. But the branches were thin, only as strong as Chauhn's voice, which was being restrained and held back through the bite of his teeth and clench of his jaw.

When they slammed into the wall of the hallway, taking that moment to propel themselves off the wall, Chauhn's damaged foot caught underneath the kick of his healthy one and he almost would've fallen if it weren't for Adal's tight grip around his chest and shoulders. He shrieked with pain, pausing for a moment to try and tuck his knee up high and keep his foot out of harm's way, while, behind them, a solid sapling grew up in their wake, spreading it's arms to scratch into the faces of the Obscuvians as they squirmed between it and the alley walls.

The boys' combined efforts at keeping a steady run was growing weaker and weaker. It was about that point in time, when they were both heaving for breath, dizzy with adrenaline, that Adal began to cackle and shout in Chauhn's ears with all the strength and severity of an elephant seal barking at a particularly funny joke.

Wincing away from the pointed funnel of noise that was Adal's mouth, Chauhn cringed and shouted back at him, his chest already flustered and near to bursting with frenzied terror. "ADAL! What's wrong wit' you?! This isn't a time for 'ecklin'!" he bleated, stumbling again with a trip that very nearly sent him to his knees. Then he snapped his head to him, his green eyes suddenly filled with a hurt and offended flare, "PRINCESS?! IF'N AHM A PRINCESS YOU'RE A DROOLIN' TROLL. 'N' IF'N AHM A PRINCESS, AHLL GIVE YOU A SCREAM TO BREAK YOUR EARDRUMS AND RATTLE YOUR BRAINS TO RAT FOOD AH WILL!"

Around them, the nearby objects of wood make and construction, rattled and blasted into forestry, a tangle of branches and twigs to trap the path behind them. But, when Chauhn sucked in his breath to scream, all that came out was a breaking and hoarse squeak, a terrible scream if there ever was one. No strength, no body, only a race of scratchy sound and forced squeaks. Chauhn tried again to scream, but nothing came out. He began to cough, and once he had enough breath to breathe, he opened his mouth to try and speak, but all that was left was a ghostly wheeze.

"Adal...! Adal, ah can't speak!"