A powerful grip caught the front of my shirt, dragging me from the floor to my feet. I was starting to feel very small; everyone around here seemed to be able to toss me around. I could feel their breath against my face, they held me up so close, my heels lifted from the ground. At this close proximity, I noticed I was wide eyed and gaping at a fuming woman. “How did you get in here?” She snapped.

“I-it was an accident!” I squeaked, caught for what to say. I could hear Zelo being rough handled to his feet behind me. I could see another figure at a glance over the shoulder of the angry clan member pulling my shirt so tight I couldn't move my arms. They weren't amused. “We were trying to get away from the authorities,” I tried to gather my thoughts together to form a more coherent explanation, but the words weren't coming- my mind was fogged by the piercing glare I was receiving.

My right wrist was snatched and jerked so my palm was revealed. “I thought my eyesight had gone for a moment there, but look- he's marked.” I released a breath I didn't know I was holding when our eye contact was broken and she glanced down at my hand. Her lips pursed into a thin line.

“I'm an initiate from the next village...” Was. She sharply looked back up at me, narrowing her eyes.

“It's so fresh...” I gulped. “Who's to say,” she released one side of my shirt to catch my hand in a numbing lock, holding it up, “it's not forged?”

The second voice piped up again. “We know you smoked our clan out of that village to take prisoners,” they accused. “We saw it. Well, now we have one of our own.” The cat-like grin which snuck onto both of their faces made me feel the blood drain right out of my face. I shook my head fervently.

“It's not how you think! I escaped capture, I need to find my friends who made it-” I was thrown back down before I could finish. They didn't seem to care for my obvious bandages either.

“Aha! So you want to nab any survivors, huh? Well it won't work, you're not going anywhere.” She stood over me, grabbing a handful of my hair. Her nails dug into my scalp, making me cry out. Her accomplice knelt behind me and locked my elbows behind my back faster than I could comprehend. I heard Zelo begin to struggle with his own assailant, and I knew things were starting to get out of hand.

“W-wait! If you give me a chance, I can prove it to you.” The struggling quietened momentarily as both Zelo and clan member looked over. “I only recently had my tattoo done, I can tell you exactly how to draw it from start to finish, and I know there's only one way. We use a special kind of ink which fades over time but doesn't lose detail- a-and I'll draw the design for you if you just give me a tablet and stylus and I'll show you.”

The two ladies exchanged glances around me and nodded, though they looked less than pleased. Zelo was forced into a seat and guarded across to the side of the small undercroft, away from me. The two women attending me hustled me over to their table, where a small candle and some hemp paper lay. “We have moved on from wax and sticks, thanks,” one of them mumbled. I was handed a quill and a blank fragment, directed towards their ink. They stood at my shoulders, looming over me, watching me closely. “Well? Draw.”

I glanced back over my left shoulder, and saw ice-eyes glaring back at me. She was the leader, I had decided. She raised her eyebrows and nodded expectantly. I turned back and hunched over the paper, gripping the quill firmly in my left hand. Dipping it in the well, I began to scratch, squinting at the faint lines I made with the watered-down ink. They may have moved on, but they weren't made of money.

The task was long and complicated. I thought after the first five minutes it would become obvious I knew what I was doing, but they weren't satisfied until I'd drawn and filled in each detail in the exact manner. I had no idea how I managed to keep a steady hand in the tense silence that filled the room.

When I was done, I looked back up at ice-eyes, only to see her with an expression I just couldn't read lining her face. The candle flickered, chasing the shadows across her angular jawline and high bridge of her nose. “What of your friend?” She finally said, and it took most of my will to restrain the exasperation that overcame me from showing in my face.

Zelo was caught at the shoulder and marched over to us, forced onto his knees by the discourteous clan member. Zelo shot a frown in their direction but he quickly concealed it. I thought by their manner they would be a man, but when they looked up and the shadows disbursed from their features I found myself mistaken.

“He has no such ink,” the quiet member spoke. “But he does have status. I know of his family. His father is in the Authorities.” All three stared at Zelo, who's eyes bugged at the statement. He looked at her incredulously. I found myself giving him a similar look- the son of an officer was the last I'd suspect to be as rebellious as him.

It was a credit to him that he'd managed to keep his antics so secret, but it would have been so convenient for the clan to have noticed his frequent visits to the 'outside world' and recognise his disregard for the Authorities- that would have made it easy to show he wasn't a threat. For now, I watched the woman above him carefully, because she looked like she had been holding back her distrust of him for a while, and now she'd gotten her fellows suspicious of him, her composure was unravelling. “The likes of him can't be trusted. And now he's been lead straight into one of our last hideouts...” They were glancing about each other in silent decision making.

“He actually helped me escape. As you rightly noticed, he is my friend.” I reached up to touch ice-eyes' arm, but my action fell in her disfavour and she trapped my hand behind my head.

“Don't touch me,” she seethed. Despite my effort to prove I was one of them, they still didn't trust me.

The woman with Zelo underhand continued theorising. “He has no association with us. He's rumoured to slink off without detection. They don't even look for him when they must know he is missing- he could easily be a spy, and you-” she rounded on me, pointing a finger accusingly- “could have tortured that information out of our contemporaries!” I couldn't help but scowl at this point. Her imagination was getting the better of her.

“That's just redi-” I began to rebuke her, but to my great alarm she reached for a hidden sleeve in her cloak and the glint of a blade winked at me as she pulled a dagger from her person. “Hey!” I yelled, panicked, a sudden wave of strength coursing through me, allowing me to rise and overpower the two who tried to hold me down. I felt a rush of numbing cold surge from my core to my outstretched fingertips, and just as she caught the battling boy around the neck and raised the blade, a glacial blast erupted and threw her hard on the floor, dagger clattering out of reach across the frostbitten ground. My eyes glazed to everything around me as I stared at my finger which weakly pointed at where the woman once was. The room turned cold and all activity halted. The last noise before eerie silence was the ring of the blade sliding to a halt on the frozen soil.