Not now

"Wh--"

The first of a series of burning questions had barely left your lips before you were cut off.

"No time! Those damned Pretas found me sooner than expected, and they're not known to negotiate."

Her response only raised more questions, but the snarls and scraping had gotten louder. Whoever...whatever responsible for the racket was right outside your front door, which had begun to strain against the ****.

"Heads up!"

You reflexively caught the trinket that the girl(?) lobbed your way; an azure, comma-shaped bead barely bigger than your thumb. Its smooth texture and coolness against your skin was reminiscent of glass, but something told you it was made of something much less mundane.

The front door gave way with the ear-splitting screech of metal against metal, allowing a group of lumbering...things to trickle over the threshold.

That they were roughly humanoid was no reassurance. Their skin hung loosely off their wiry forms; dark and gangrenous. Malicious eyes glowed from sunken sockets, dwarfed by a protruding jaw and bloated gut that appeared to strain the spindly frame holding them together.

"uUUUrrYAAAAA! YoU! MaGATamaAAA!" the ugliest Preta, (as the girl called them) spat. He gestured toward the trinket sitting in your palm. Perhaps he was the leader.

"MagaTAMAA! YoU GiVE NOW OR YoU DieEEEE!"

He raised chipped black claws threateningly as he approached. His twisted, uncoordinated gait sent the dirty rats nest that was his hair waving.

Avoiding his gaze made it apparent that a certain other dangling part of his anatomy waved in tandem. Shriveled, leathery and...

That's enough of that. Instinct took over as you felt the Pretas killing intent. Your sweaty fist clenched around the trinket, sensing the power that it held, that the Preta sought.

A jolt ran up your arm as you heard the magatama shatter; so loud that it seemed to come from within.

Every nerve in your body ignited, urging your frozen limbs into action. If anything, the blood coursing through your veins seemed to have turned to ice in its stead.