Chapter 6

Again, many thanks to you guys for all the reviews, favorites and follows! At first I only wrote this story for my own fun and clearly did not expect it to be so appreciated! So I won't be sending out bags of fleas to anyone soon :)

And now on to the chapter… crack is on :)

Another day and night passed slowly, seemingly uneventful. And then…

"Easy, easy now… Please be good, please, please, please! No, no, don't! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Lukas begged, his hands pressed tightly to his chest, in a desperate plea.

However, the odds were clearly not in his favor.

-x-

Arthur entered the Great Hall which had been arranged for breakfast, donning his usual pristine black robes. If his early morning mood had been joyous, the sight he was met with instantly annoyed him. His brother Alfred, who had been mysteriously absent the previous day, now sat at the far end of the table, a huge woolen scarf wrapped around his neck, while he shoveled impressive quantities of bacon and eggs into his mouth, and scribbled something in extreme concentration on a colorful piece of paper. Like, who knew he had distributive attention to begin with…?

"HEY! Where the hell have you been yesterday? And why the fuck did you dress up like Russia for breakfast, you bloody git? Are you high?"

-x-

Dragos walked somewhat hurriedly down the main corridor on the way to the Laboratory Tower, already concerned with the work due. He'd missed just one day with the… well… cooking, and no sooner than the previous day had he been faced with a mountain of research paperwork. In truth, the vampire was suspecting that the rather unusual task had been some sort of prolongation of his punishment, but his thoughts were cut short when the door to Elizabeta's chambers opened quite abruptly, hitting him square in the face.

"Oh, good morning!" greeted the Hungarian, her otherwise flushed and angry face lighting up a bit.

"May be good to you…" the vampire muttered in response, a black leather gloved hand still clutching his nose. "What's going on anyway?"

Elizabeta shook her head, as if in disappointment, taking a sudden interest in the tips of her shoes. "Well… it's that cousin of yours"

Dragos jumped, secretly amused. "Oh so now he's that cousin of mine! No more he's so cute and I'd play seven minutes in heaven with him, huh?"

The girl's cheeks turned an even more pronounced shade of red. "Don't you even mention that! I only meant it theoretically at the time!"

The vampire failed to grasp the concept behind that statement entirely. "Well what did you expect? He's Italian"

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?"

"Nothing! Nothing! It's just an expression, God!"

"Anyway" Elizabeta concluded, crossing her arms. "You need to have a word with him… You know, tell him to behave!"

"Oh sure, I'll have a word with him" the Romanian agreed. "It will go like this: I'll say Feliciano, this is unacceptable! At which he will reply Veh, you're so scary and a dick and I want pasta! At which point I will most likely strangle him. What did he do, anyway?"

"Well… the first night, you know, when we were stuck in your coffin… it was okay, nothing happened"

Hell, good to know nothing happened! My coffins have seen enough action as it is, ugh!

"But last night…" Elizabeta trailed off, scrubbing a hand over her heated face. "Well as you know we've put him in my bed, however since I only have one bed, I had no choice but to squeeze in next to him. And this morning when I woke up… well he was asleep but my skirt was lifted and his hand was under it..." she added after a pause. "And he called me… um… Ludwig I think…"

What do you know, who would have thought that that stiff gentleman who always seems to have a stick shoved up his ass actually wears a skirt? Maybe we can blackmail him with that…

Unable to contain his amusement, the vampire burst into laughter.

CLANG! The Hungarian's frying pan hit him in the head, flattening his hat.

"Oww! Okay, okay, I'll talk to him later, damn it woman!" he said, removing his accessory and examining it displeased.

-x-

Finally rid of Elizabeta and just as he was about to turn the corner towards the stairs to the Laboratory Tower, some unidentified flying object hit him full in the face before dropping limp onto the stone floor. The Romanian picked it up carefully with two fingers and held it in the light of the nearest torch. It was a glittering pink envelope, sealed with a bright red heart made of something sticky and emanating an unmistakable strawberry scent.

Wrinkling his nose, he turned it and read the following single line that had been scribbled on its back in an equally glittering purple ink:

EVEN IF YOU DON'T SPARKLE…

Furrowing his brow as he suddenly guessed what this was about, Dragos proceeded to pull out the piece of paper contained inside, which was scribbled in the same ugly and uneven handwriting. It said:

Hey dude! Just wanted to say that I think I have like a crush on you or something!

-Love, Alfred-

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" he cursed out loud, shoving the letter into his pocket. "I'll just have to deal with this later"

The Laboratory door was wide open. In fact it was sort of swinging, barely holding onto its last hinge, while the Laboratory itself looked as if it had just been bombarded. All the jars, instruments and furniture lay in pieces, scattered all over the place. In the middle of all the debris, there was Lukas, down on his knees, sobbing uncontrollably with his face buried in his hands.

"Oi! What happened here?" the Romanian questioned.

The Norwegian stood up slowly, wiping his tears with the sleeve of his robes, and sniffed. "Well… you know how Master is obsessed with becoming more and more powerful these days… Yesterday evening he remembered that I know a lot about mythical creatures and stuff…"

"And?"

"Well… he wanted me to make him one. One of those powerful mythical creatures, that is… so I did, I was up all night working and ended up making a pretty good troll…"

Lukas sighed and his eyes lit up a bit as he continued, dreamily. "Oh, you should have seen… it was so beautiful, large, grey, with muddy-green eyes and those crooked teeth… It was magnificent! Oh well, the only problem was that it could not be controlled, as hard as I tried, so it kind of… destroyed the Laboratory before…"

"Before you had to put him out?"

The blonde boy laughed nervously. "No, actually before he darted out…out there" he replied making a vague gesture towards the door.

The vampire cleared his throat and arranged his tie with his long slender fingers. "Lukas, are you telling me that there is a troll wandering around the castle? A giant, grey, ugly, carnivorous troll? "

"Eh….yes"

Lovely!

To be continued… :)