Snippet #2762490

"Th' hell!?" Anselm yelled as Akina nearly crashed into him. His trance broken, he spun around to look at the kid. "Dammit, kid, ya know at times like this, th' weird stuff creeps out and..." he paused, turning to look at some kind of mossy zombie... thing? He then looked over at Akina and Ein quickly and back at the creature, holding out his hands. "Okay, what the hell is that? The hell is it babbling?"

He then heard heavy footfalls, casting a side glance at Dahlia, smirking a bit. "Well, hell, th' gang's all 'ere, it looks," he mutters, letting out a short laugh. His scars still ached for some reason, more than the typical, and it clearly wasn't from this... poison ivy monster. Something else was approaching, humming a melancholy lullaby of some sort, something... nostalgic to the chief. He now readied himself, something etched deep into his very being now quivered. "Kid... ya stir sumthin' big this time... like a house."

"Oh, good, you came to get the lil'un," a voice spoke, Anselm's body seized up, his hair on ends. Bellatroix stands just feet from the party, her eyes scanning the gathered hunters, a smile on her face. She then spots Anselm, glaring directly at her and her smile fades. "Oh," she uttered, holding out her arms to him, causing him to back away without a word. "My, how you've grown, my chile," she said.

"You," Anselm says under his breath, his breathing becoming shallow, his inhuman pupil constricting. Finally drawing his knife, he points it at the woman, his face wrinkled with rage. "Vapor of fevers and nightmares, ya dun' exist!" he yells, his speech growing somewhat incoherent, his eye twitching. But to his shock she somehow broke the distance, now only inches from him. His eyes widen, he never felt her get this close.

"Easy, honeychile," she says, smiling, taking the knife from his hand and with the other touchis his cheek. "Ya remember the cruel fate ya were dealt, the father that hated you, the mother who looked away..? When no love was left, they cast you to the wilds... to me." Without warning, Bellatroix gently reached out and hugged Anselm against her, his body going limp for a moment, his face blanking. "When ya ran, I worried, thought the bit inside ya would eat ya away..." Realization came to him, however, and he pushed the woman away, or more like himself away from her, as she barely budged.

"The... what inside me!? You did this t'me!?" Anselm yells.

"Well, t'be fair, ya did it to yerself, but you were barely awake then," she responds, holding up her arm and forming a shape like a bite mark on it. "Was a scary thing you did... and look at your hair, and that eye... must ahve been awful painful. I'm truly sorry, mon chile..."

"Sorry?! Y-" Anselm began, but something in the distance caught his attention. The sounds from earlier that Bella heard have gotten slowly closer, and they sounded like motors to machinery. He didn't remember any of the city dwellers going off into the wilds, let alone with functioning machinery. Bella herself was distracted by it. He then looked up into a tree, and felt another odd presence nearby, as his senses were no longer fixated on the witch. "Damn, th' hell is with this day..?" he mutters. "As much as I hate it... we... gotta pull back."