4. Warning Whispers (1/2)
title: of the darkness||chapter: warning whisperscharacters: ryou, shou, camulachapters: 4-25||words: 1,134||total: 4,624genre: family, supernatural||rated: pg-13challenge: diversity writing challenge, ygo gx, j6, multi-chapter with 15-25 chaptersnotes: it's an au. it involves vampires.summary: shou invites his
other in after ryou returns from a long trip away. that is his first mistake. it only gets worse from there.
"m'lord shou?" a nervous hand tapped at the door as one of the higher ranked servants spoke. shou looked up from where he'd been working on his letter to kenzan. "may i speak with you for a moment, m'lord?"
"what is it?" shou turned all the way around, more than a little curious. the servants didn't usually interrupt when he was busy, so this had to be important.
the chief maid stepped more into the room, worry clear in her eyes. "m'lord, something strange is happening. in the last two days, two or three of the servants have...have vanished altogether."
shou blinked and frowned. "what do you mean?" he hadn't noticed anyone being missing, but he'd been up to his ears getting his letter written and taking care of all of his other duties, and being more than a little surprised to find that the weather really was clearing off, just like ryou said it would. "are they running away?"
she shook her head, one hand pressed to her mouth, as if scared to even let the words out. "no, m'lord. they would've taken things with them. their clothes or even stolen money or jewels." not that there were many jewels to steal around here, but shou understood what she meant. "but they didn't. they just vanish. it's like in the middle of their duties, something just took them away."
shou bit his lip. he didn't like the sound of that. "i'll talk to my
other about it." ryou would have to make the decisions on what to do. he wouldn't like this any more than shou himself did.
for a moment she looked as if she would say something else. then she nodded, bending her head further in the usual show of respect. "thank you, m'lord shou. and… please be careful. whatever is doing this probably would take anyone else. not just servants."
he nodded, more to reassure her than anything else. he kind of thought himself that if whatever it was doing this confined itself to servants, then it would be silly to suddenly attack one of the family members.
how could something like that get in here, anyway? where would it come from? there were all manner of strange monsters and demons loose in the world and always had been. that was one of the reasons the royal family always held a certain amount of power and ability to deal with them.
most of those beings had to deal with the same troubles a human did, having to eat and sleep at the very least. that could cause problems for humans as well, since not a few of the creatures fed on humans. if this was one of those, that definitely would explain why the servants vanished.
he stared down at the letter and realized he wasn't going to get another word written until he talked to ryou about this. not to mention that this was probably something they should clear up before anyone came to visit anyway.
his lips twitched for a moment. the thought of kenzan facing some monster provided a lot of entertainment all on its own. burly and well-trained in the use of every muscle he owned, kenzan would make even most monsters stop and think about it before attacking him.
for that matter, most monsters would stop and think about it because kenzan was a monster himself.
still, it would be rude to invite anyone while they had personal troubles, so he headed off to ryou's room.
"ryou?" shou tapped politely on the door. "i need to talk to you, are you in there?"
noises of some kind, footsteps, sounded from the other side. shou wondered who was in there with him, but didn't have a chance to think of it for long, as the door swung open. standing there was one of the servants, who bowed the moment the door was clear enough.
"m'lord shou," he murmured. "your