"Did you really just slap me?" Mia asked wide-eyed after the contact to her skin. She couldn't believe Crystal took it so far as to hit her. To Mia, this confirmed that Crystal was truly jealous of what she got for the short time she started working here.
"What a dumb question," Chaos muttered annoyed with Mia. Why did humans state the obvious after it happened? Was she expecting the other maid to say no she didn't hit her? "Hey!" He called Crystal. "Slap her again."
Crystal raised her hand once more and brought it back down to Mia's face with much more force than the last slap. "Is that a good enough confirmation that I slapped you!" She yelled with a trembling voice. Yes, she was jealous of the things Mia was starting to have. She sent that man as a joke to Mia and he had the nerve to truly like her.
How could someone she helped up off the street be doing better than her? Working for the king in less than two months while Crystal had been here for three years but never got close to the king's room. How was that fair? How was she supposed to stand here and listen to Mia offer her a place to stay in the future? Mia was not supposed to be doing better than her. It was only because of looks and selling herself that Mia was getting all of this attention.
"You have truly lost your mind, you psycho! How on earth could you stand there and hit me twice?" Mia asked, holding onto the other side of her bruising face.
"She slapped you in the face twice and you are still asking dumb questions," Chaos smacked his forehead tempted to jump into Mia's body and give her some common sense. Where's the immediate reaction to slap back Crystal or curse her? "Humans are so easy to manipulate but the downside is their dumb reactions. I'm bored of this. One of you, just jump-"
"Chaos!" Artemis called to her pet in his head after hearing his plans for the maid. She didn't send him there to kill innocent people who weren't meant to die yet.
Chaos jumped at the sound of Artemis's voice. She was the only person in this world to scare him because she was the one that gave him life. "Yes, mistress? Aren't you supposed to be busy with that man you have?"
"Is that why you think you can pass time by creating conflict between maids?"
Chaos looked around for the source of how she knew what he was doing. One of his siblings had to be here and he was right. He didn't know how he missed the abnormal way Mia's shadow looked on the ground. The shadow waved at him then disconnected itself from Mia. Of course one of them would be keeping tabs on him to make Chaos get in trouble with Artemis. All but one of his siblings were evil and the only person they showed loyalty to was Artemis.
"I am just trying to have some fun. The king is away so he won't notice me missing. I will head back down and put on my chains," he sobbed hoping for some sympathy.
"Chaos, I am already upset with the others. Do not make me think of wiping out your entire existence. You will have a special task coming up soon to help ease your boredom but if the king finds you missing and knows something is fishy, I will kill you," Artemis warned him. She stood away from Alexander so that he wouldn't hear what she was saying.
She was about to tell Alexander how she was messing with the king's head when one of her pets told her what Chaos was doing. Artemis knew they were just trying to take heat off themselves and it worked. The king was not supposed to find out that Chaos was pretending.
Artemis groaned, pulling on a chunk of her hair since her creations were misbehaving today. It had been too long since she gave all of them a good scolding and now they were going to make her lose hair. "Forget what I just said. That's a story for another day," she told Alexander.
Alexander wanted to know right now how she was messing with Darius but he knew not to push it since she was already telling him a lot of information about herself. Maybe it had something to do with her loneliness and need to talk to that she was telling him things so easily. "If you're not the one making people disappear, how exactly does it happen?" This was a better mystery to be solved. Could he have saved them if they were still here like him?
"They walk in, that tree over there gets upset, and then the humans just disappear. You would think with the number of stories about a monster being in here that they would stop trying to enter the forest but humans can't seem to hate danger. Let me show you something," she walked towards the edge of the laker and smiled down at the water.
Alexander reluctantly approached her from behind. If he pushed her in this water, there would still be no chance for him to have a running head start and his fate would just be like the lost people in the forest.
"Thinking of pushing me? Don't deny it," Artemis muttered looking down at the water. It was clear as day what he was thinking. She wished he would push her so that she could have some fun in punishing him. Make him witness her power for trying to kill her. Instead, she wanted to mess with him a little. "Hold down your hand to the water like this," she did the same so he could get an idea of what she meant.
"Why?" He wasn't going to do it like an idiot. Something had to be in the water based on the way she was smiling.
"I want to show you something beautiful," she said, already seeing some of the sirens swimming up to the surface.