Liar

Cuu finished dressing himself, leaning in the doorway to the kitchen; his stomach growled through his skin. The Doctor hadn't returned yet, despite hours having passed. It felt wrong to simply take from the cabinets or ice-box; so he would have to wait. Slowly, the drowsy Wolf made it's way to the front door, hoping to spot the hooded figure of Dorothy on the road. His clawed fingers reached for the handle, only to stop; a throbbing, icy dread filling his heart.

"Go away." Cuu said, feeling the bubbling ink rise in his throat; his eyes clenched tight. "I don't need you."

A voice spoke, not with Cuu's lips; but in his mind. "Twice. I've gotten you twice now... in less than a month."

"It won't happened again... it will never happen again..." The giant of a man was shaking as he spoke; fists held closed as tightly as his eyelids now. "You nearly killed her."

"I know; and what a good story it would have been!" When Cuu opened his eyes, he saw a vague reflection in the glossy sheen of the well polished floorboards; only, the reflection was not his own.

The reflection of Melion spoke with sharp teeth, and a sharper tone. "Think, Cuu; think of how much The Author must like you; to give you such a tantalizing taste of tragedy."

Cuu whispered as his hate boiled through his veins. "If you say even one more word, I'll-"

"-Kill me?" The Wolf said with a smile. "You don't even know how... but I'll tell you, since you've been such a good little Wolf recently-"

"-all you have to do... is take my place."

...

Dorothy was disappointed by how deep in his cups Bellador seemed to be; the blonde-haired heir to the McDonald estate sat his spindly frame on a living chair that seemingly desired nothing more than to toss him aside. He had sobered enough to follow instructions, but clearly he had been at this near-suicidal level of boozing for days.

"Bottle? Bottle? Where are you?" He called, looking for the moving wine that Miss Shesh was had deftly snagged from sight.

"Mister McDonald?" Dorothy said; feeling as though it were some two months prior all of a sudden as she said the name. "Mister McDonald? Can you understand me?"

It took a few moments, but eventually, he answered back. "D-Dorothy? When did you get here?"

The hooded Doctor sighed. "Half an hour ago; now, come on, sober up a bit. I had to-"

"-I'm worthless, aren't I, Dorothy?"

She stopped her chatter as he looked vaguely up at her from his chair, which finally decided to sit still. "So worthless. I-I-I couldn't... couldn't hold my drink. I couldn't run the... the farms. I couldn't even... keep it in my pants. So f-fucking worthless; isn't that right?"

"So, you've heard about what happened in the field?" Dorothy asked; trying her best to move the subject along.

The sad sap of a creature seemed to get a few brain-cells back from his alcoholic oblivion. "Banned dips; I mean, Bandits? Wheat crushed, fields filled with craters; I mean, there aren't any kids to... to just be vandalizing fields like that! Of course it happens under my watch... so worthless..."

"Did you alert anyone?" Dorothy asked. "Like Constable Robertson?"

"No... Mother would hear about it..." This was a first; Dorothy had never heard Bellodor even mention his Mother before.

Well, at least nepotism and familial strife were finally acting in Dorothy's favor for once.

...

The woods went silent after the final attempt to break in the possible new commrades; the three of them were duds, as Linden had expected. Their loyalty to some big-shot crook kept them from understanding the necessity of the cause. She ran her wooden fingers across the blood-stained sheet that was pulled out beneath them. It was hard to believe that these three broken bodies once held such noteworthy Tales.

The Mindless, The Heartless, and The Spineless; three Tales who should be a hero in any other age; reduced to criminals by the weak society of the Grimmarchen Empire, and by the Nots who should have seen them as their betters. The last breaths of life were leaving them now; their bodies changing as **** took hold. What once was flesh, and blood, now became but parchment; flowing off through the woods. The **** of a Tale; going on to find it's next life.

"A shame..." Linden said, her wooden nose extending as she did so; the three were lowly weaklings, after all, so it was no great loss.

"At least their information won't go to waste. Five Tales in Antiquity, of all places..."