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Skeppy wouldn't make it very far on his own.
HIs legs grow weak from hunger, the peasant clothes not hiding how he has never suffered from hunger. Bad laughs beside him sharp and angry; legs just as weak, if not more than Skeppy's. A6d is oddly silent, borrowed green eyes searching the darkness, seeing what the older two could not.
They are careful to not look the enderkin in the eyes.
At least never when the world was silent, when shadows danced around A6d's skin, the night and the boy breathing as one.
What a shame the locals had not learned that by now.
The scream of something living, soon dead, pierces the night air, yet not a soul apart from their own stirs.
Hunger gnaws at Skeppy's bones, and he wonders how he would ever make it in this world. He stares unflinching at the enderkin of the group.
A6d's Jaws are unhinged, white shrapnel sticking into a woman's throat, some bunny hybrid.
Just as skinny as all of them, but where they had claws and teeth, they had nothing.
The trio eat the meat without a hint of remorse.
(and maybe at some point in two of theirs' past they would've been disgusted, but it's surprising to see how far hunger can push a person's limits until they're nothing)
Hunger gnawing at everything. It's constantly in the back of his mind.
And when they have eaten their fill A6d smiles up at them, blood and inky black and shimmery purple dripping together in a violent display of desperation.
Skeppy idly thinks of a story told back home about a man who is too greedy and kills his brother before he, consumed by grief, joins him soon after.
He blinks the thought away and bites down on the cooked flesh.
The Saint sits beside him, shorter than all of them, red eyes passing over them - judging. Pale skin and white hair almost blinding in the darkness. If it weren't for the blood dripping between his hands and painting his lips, Skeppy could have considered him an angel.
"Prince," A6d purrs, Skeppy glances at the younger, irritation at the nickname, but unwilling to do anything about it.
(His past haunting him despite a promise)
He's holding a purse, and Skeppy notes that his mouth has gone back to 'normal'. Even though he can still see the faint light pink stretch marks - illuminated by the dim moonlight. The Saint snorts beside him, a glance his way reveals a smirk. His stained lips curled back revealing bloody fangs.
'A fallen angel is there's ever been one,' Skeppy thinks, looking back at A6d.
"We're eating good boys!" A6d whoops, pulling out the money and the other invaluable valuables. The younger pockets what they can pawn off, and throws the rest over his shoulder, by the bloody remains of their meal.
(and Skeppy hates them, loves them a little too - sometimes)
Skeppy doesn't think about how this place is hell for the living. About how it's a miracle he hasn't gone insane by the mess going on inside his head. Nor of the home he left behind.
Lies, lies, lies.
He doesn't smile. A prince doesn't smile, can't afford to show weakness to those who might betray him. Who will.
'One day, soon,' his mind whispers to him, and he knows that no one can survive without betrayal.
and hIs hands are bloody, and there's a static in his ears.
The Saint's eyes are bloody, his mouth open in a soundless scream. A cough breaks through the static, feeling the front of his shirt dampen Skeppy turns, and wishes he hadn't. In front of him the mess of his lack of discipline stares up at him. A6d's eyes are blown wide, toxic green, crystal tears streaming down gaunt cheeks. A bloody hole in his chest, and in Skeppy's palm his -
Skeppy awakens without a sound. He listens to the breathing of the others. The Saint's soft breathes, and the humming coming from A6d. Skeppy lays in the dark, awake, listening to their breathing, until the sound lulls him to a dreamless sleep.
///
Bad wouldn't make it past a day in the land he stumbles across.
At least not the old Bad, but the one that they held down and burned, the one that brought justice back into his home by tearing out the monster's throat.
The Saint?
He would thrive.
The Saint is everything Bad is and isn't. Best and worst parts of the both of them, all dialed to the extreme. The Saint will do anything in his power to survive. (At least he would, until two pairs of eyes are looking at him - scared and vulnerable and betrayed)
"Saint!" A6d barks, mouth bloody and hand bloodier, " you think you can take care of the other one?"
The Saint grins, cracked lips and stained fangs twisting up.
"You know I can!"
When he catches the man, boy - he doesn't beg. A small part of him, something that is still distinctively Bad, is secretly grateful. Yet it doesn't make him change his mind on what he is about to do. The Saint is apathetic about the man with steely brown eyes - his hair falling over one side of his face, blood dripping from the hidden part of his face.
'Prince must've nicked them,' Bad thinks, and doesn't waste a second before slamming his dagger through their chest. It's quick and painless. He ransacks the corpse's pockets for anything of value, takes what he can, and steps away from the body. There is no police force in the city, at least one that would care about the common people.
Only the rich and powerful had protection. The rest were fair game.
A6d's green eyes glow in the darkness, and Bad instinctually looks away. (His borrowed green eyes making Bad uncomfortable, much like looking into a mirror). In a blink of an eye A6d is in front of him, bloody but unharmed.
"You got them?" he eagerly asks.
The Saint nods, holding up a pouch filled with gold coins.
The Prince comes out from the shadows, diamond morphing back into skin. Souless black eyes probably looking at them. Maybe looking around them. The Terrafolk was the most disciplined and clean out of both of them when it came to these missions.
A6d was the worst out of all of them, which didn't come as a surprise.
Bad has only spent a few years in the Inbetween and already he is picking up the traits of the desperate. He can only imagine what being raised in such a place would do to a person.
Bad's throat is raw, and he can not see.
Bad is blind and his cheeks are wet with something warm and sticky. He brings his hands, claws, to his face rubbing at his eyes. Hissing at the sensitivity he feels. He pulls away, and swipes his tongue across his cheek - tasting copper.
Blood.
His eyes have been ripped out.
And maybe he should've felt the assault, the pain, but he still remembers that day.
"Your eyes mean death, your eyes mean death -"
("You mean death," the magik user had hissed, and then Bad was on fire)
He had torn his eyes out.
He had his body marred with symbols meant to suppress a monster they believed within.
Bad learns how to live without his sight.
Or the Saint does.
One of them does, and both continue on to live another day.
"Where'd you get your scars from?"
The Saint freezes, remembering fire. The sting of betrayal, he puts a hand over his shoulder. The word 'Daemon' is inscribed permanently onto his skin.
"Magik user," he finally says, and can't meet the Enderkin's eyes.
///
A6d goes insane.
Something he knew would always happen. Ever since he was young and he beat an old man to death.
"Your eyes mean death," the old man had said once, as he offered A6d a cigarette. His addiction starting there. Voice raspy and the scent of smoke following him wherever he went.
(The boy staring back at him has sunken cheeks, and there are stretch marks around his mouth, lips stained permanently red and gums black. Green eyes the only thing he cannot recognize.)
"Your eyes mean death."
That's the only thing that he can understand.
And he tears out the Saint's eyes because he never liked red and he almost tears out the Prince's, but the Terrafolk didn't earn his name because of a pretty face and the Prince had always been the killer out of all of them despite trying to hide it.
A6d loses.
He loses.
He lost.
He coughs up red and doesn't live.
But he gets to see what remains of the two boys he took under his wing. (who took him under their wings)
He smiles, green eyes wet, fat tears streaming down his face.
The silence of death is a relief.
And A6d doesn't stick around to see how the two pick themselves back together and survive for another day, week, month, year, years.
And he's glad.