"What's this?"
Janus stared down at his plate. While Flea and Ozzie enjoyed bread and cheese, Janus was handed what looked very much like a green turd.
"Well," Ozzie rolled his eyes, "since you enjoy acting like such an ass all the time, I figured you can start eating a matching diet. You'd better chow down on that too, never know when you're gonna eat next around here..."
Janus glared at Ozzie and pushed it away. "You cannot be serious."
"Hey, at least I'm offering you a choice. If you don't wanna eat feces, then you can go back down in the hole for the night with nothing. You brought this on yourself by acting this way for so long..."
Flea smiled, waving his bread in front of Janus before taking a big bite. "Ooooh, so delicious..."
Janus ignored the magician and focused on Ozzie. "I am not putting that in my mouth."
Ozzie responded in kind by getting up and taking the plate away. "Hope you don't change your mind, because its going, going... and gone. Out the window."
Janus watched, and, for a moment, wondered if it was a mistake to throw away supper. Just for a moment though. Long enough to say "of course not you idiot, he was feeding you a turd."
With a sigh, Janus walked out of the kitchen and towards his bed.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Can't I at least take some bedding with me?"
Ozzie shook his head. "Not if you plan on walking out of here without doing dishes, you aren't."
Janus didn't even eat with them, but still had to do all their washing. He could tell Ozzie was being downright abusive, but couldn't deny that he really did have some fault in this. After deliberately getting in trouble over and over, his actions had been catching up. Janus may have "supposedly" been shadow, but now Ozzie had a new magician that actually listened once in awhile, and he was much more talented than old Janus...
...or so they thought.
"One more night," Janus thought to himself. "I've almost got it all memorized by now. One more night, and I don't care what happens to the book... one more night and I'll be able to challenge...
...flea..."
Janus stared at the text. None of it made any sense. The letters were all jumbled, the words that were intact formed nonsensical sentences, if not outright jibberish. One of the diagrams was replaced by a picture of Flea smiling.
The door opened on Janus as he was taking all of this in.
"Well well well..." Flea smiled. "Someone found themselves a red book? Gosh, these are rare, hehehe... rarest of rare! thousands of years old. So dryyyyyyy... brittle... It'd be shame if it were to... burn."
Janus shook his head, slowly. "Don't you dare."
Flea smiled and shrugged. "Fine by me. It's not even the real one, anyways" Flea smiled, producing Janus's book from behind.
The prince's eyes went wide. "GIVE IT BACK!"
"What's that? Make it black?"
"FLEA, DON'T"
Flea smiled and put his hands around the book. a warm glow began to radiate from them.
"FLEA!"
The boy just smiled as the book quickly, almost instantaneously, went up in flames and vanished into ashes.
"FLEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"Awwww... you gonna cry? Sorry kid, but I can't have you upstaging me or anything."
Janus gritted his teeth. "THAT BOOK COULD HAVE BEEN ONE OF A KIND!"
"You know what your problem is?" Flea asked. "...you're too attached to things. Like this amulet for instance..."
Janus backed up. "You won't touch it."
Flea inched closer. "I beg to differ."
Flea chased Janus to the back of the cellar, where the two fought and wrestled over the amulet, screaming and punching each other. bloodied but victorious, Flea grabbed the silver bauble and ran outside, laughing.
"NOOO! COME BACK HERE WITH THAT!"
Janus climbed out of The Hole, met with bright moonlight. Not far away he saw Flea holding his amulet the same way he held that book.
"This thing is useless to you, Janus" Flea called out. "I'm doing you a favor. I promise I'll forge this into a nice dagger or something..."
"FLEA, NOT THE AMULET."
Flea's hands began to glow.
"FLEA, I'M WARNING YOU..."
Flea smiled as the amulet began to turn red. "Go to hell, Janus."
...
...
...
...Janus had no memory of what came after. One minute he was screaming for Flea to stop, and the next... ...Flea was on the ground, in the fetal position... he was screaming, crying, and... covering his smoking, smoldering crotch.
...there was blood.
"Oh shit."
"UUUWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!" screamed Flea in pain and terror "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOZZZZZZZZZZZZZIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! *sob* OOOOOOOZZZZZZZZIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Janus looked over at the keep. A light came on. "Shit," he thought to himself. "Shit shit shit shit shit..."
"Ok, Flea..." Janus tried to calm him. "it's not that bad I'm sure, just let me see ok?"
Between screams, Flea rolled to face him, and... ...it was that bad. It was bad-bad. Flea was left well-mutilated. Without going into details... there was blood, and nothing was recognizable anymore.
Now Janus said it out loud. "SHIT."
"Flea?" a distance voice called. "Flea are you alright?"
Janus looked towards the keep. Then at Flea. Then back at the keep.
...there was only one thing he could do now...
...run.
As Janus took off deep into the woods, his mind turned to the horrific injury he'd caused Flea. He always felt a little bad every time he made Flea cry, but Flea was such a sociopathic monster that he didn't exactly care either. Still, Flea had become Ozzie's golden boy, and now Janus had just signed his own death sentence.
Every time he stopped for breath or to try and get his bearings, he could hear voices from behind, screaming his name. Janus was tired though, and needed rest. He leaned against a tree to catch his breath, and Ozzie must have noticed it...
...slowly, the fat green fiend hovered towards the tree. "Oh Janus..." he smiled. "I know you're there, Janus... ..and I am *very* disappointed. Now, you're coming with me... right... NOW!"
Ozzie jumped out to face... ...nothing. Janus wasn't there.
"Huh? weird... coulda sworn..."
Meanwhile, from up in a branch, Janus watched Ozzie wander around a bit. He realized he could never go back to Ozzie after this, and would once again be cast away from his home, or whatever passed as a home, but at least he now had a strong understanding of Fire Magic. He feared to use it though, even as cold as he was, thinking Ozzie might notice. He and the magician must have realized by now that Janus could cast fire, and would be looking for it.
"I don't like this anymore..." Janus whimpered. "I wanna go home... I don't care what happened I just wanna go home... Everyone is so nasty here, it's WORSE than Zeal! S-schala... w-w-w-where are you..."
He knew it could never happen, but deep down he wished with all of his heart that she would simply appear in this time period and rescue him.
"N-no... I-I don't need to... to..."
Janus's attempts to keep it together failed, and he curled up, sobbing into his arms. "I-I DON'T WANNA BE HERE ANYMORE! I WANNA GO HOOOOMMEEEEEE! YOU STUPID CREATURE, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT! UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaa..."
Eventually, Janus cried himself to sleep. The next morning, he'd continue as far away from Medina as possible.
Eventually, he fell asleep in that tree, never to be found, or to return.
Janus was on his own.