Oriana expected her second death to be somewhat less violent. Although she had clear expectations regarding her demise from her first death, she…certainly didn’t expect to tumble to her death. She could have imagined herself snapping her frail body in half, seeing how she had a hole in her chest. She could have imagined herself starving to death as she endlessly traveled through the train looking for a way out. She could have even imagined herself dying from insanity trying to talk to the orange haired toad as he droned on and on about his projects and his purpose for bringing her back to life. 

She never expected dying from falling off a train. Or more accurately, smashing her head into the ground. Luckily for Oriana, she didn’t get the opportunity to face such a violent death yet again. 

The moment she felt her body tumble over the deck of the train, a cold, rough hand snatched her arm. Her entire body was yanked right back into the safety of the train. She was whipped around, where she was faced with the sharp eyed, man in the red coat. Instead of expressing anger or even frustration towards her seemingly fatal attempt at life, a rather frantic look appeared across his sharp face. For the moment anyways.

“W-what were you thinking?!” Altan grasped her arms tightly, his hands shaking feverishly. This action however, only caused Oriana to start squirming in an effort to be free of his tight grasp.

“Let me go-“ She hissed back. As soon as she squirmed and moved within his grasp however, her body was yanked nearly inches to his face. Her eyes instantly snapped wide open, and she was face to face with the unusually worried man 

“And let you find another way to kill yourself!?” He shrieked back “Certainly not!”

Altan dug his hands into her arm, and dragged her across the room as one would drag a crying child away from a playground. He instantly slammed the door of the storage room wide open, and yanked Oriana back into the safety of his office. As soon as the door unceremoniously shut behind the two of them, he wrapped his clawed hands around the inner portion of the doorknob, and switched the color sheet above to a familiar, burgundy red. 

“Let go!” 

Oriana finally slapped her way out of the man’s grasp, flicking her wrist into Altan’s hand to scurry away from him. Without a second thought she rushed right back to the doorknob, clawing both of her hands around the curved, metallic surface as she desperately wiggled it. But…she found herself in a puzzling predicament. 

The door wouldn’t open. Rather…it couldn’t open.

 “I’m certain you’ll find that difficult to open,” Altan finally announced as he crossed his arms tightly to his chest “seeing how this carriage is linked to me, exclusively,”

In spite of Altan’s warning, Oriana continued to tug, yank, and pull at the door knob. With each passing moment, her actions became more and more desperate, as though she was ready to rip the door wide open with her bare hands. She clawed onto the doorknob with much more force, she yanked her body back further, she slammed her fist harder into the door. She did everything, and anything on her power to escape the clutches of the man in the red coat. 

Which…Altan quickly caught onto.

“…Miss-“ Altan gave a light sigh, letting his hand hover into the direction of the frantic woman “Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot”

Instead of calming the anxious woman, this only caused Oriana to snap her body to Altan like a tree branch. A deep, angry scowl was all that could express in the moment.

“W-wrong foot?” Oriana dangerously stepped to Altan, snapping her shaky hands into the air “Are you that daft?”

“I beg y-“

Oriana quickly cut him off “In the span of an hour some some overly eager witch man tells me that they brought me back from the dead, I find out that my stomach is a gaping hole, and that this witch man standing in front of me brought be back to his maze of a train to…to I don’t know, play around with corpses?!”

Altan seemed to huff ever so slightly in response, a hint of offense drenched in his tone “Well that’s no way to address the person who saved your life. Twice if I may add”

“Excuse me?? This is no time for your ego to show up!” Oriana snapped back, stabbing a dangerous finger towards the man’s chest  “Am I even alive, let alone a person anymore? Who’s to say the next time I ‘sleep’ I’ll never wake up??”

“Well I would define you as a human, and I can assure you-“

“Assure me what?? You know what, what you’re going to “assure” me is the ability to get off this-this damn train! I-I”

Oriana froze right in her tracks. She pursed her lips together uncomfortably, as a rather concerning thought instantly shot through her mind. She was getting off track, arguing what was equivalent to nonsense to a man who seemed to flip flop between fake kindness and egotistical depravity. She needed to focus on what was most important.

Getting off the damn train.

“I-I just have to get off NOW!” Oriana suddenly shrieked, her voice dripping with demand. She stabbed her expectant finger to the door, waiting for the man to open the door at any moment to fulfill her request. However, Altan responded with a deep, tight frown. It didn’t seem like a sour expression, but Oriana didn’t like the look he gave towards her. 

All she saw was pity in his eyes. 

“Unfortunately for you, I cannot fulfill that request” Altan respond firmly and calmly. 

“Excuse me?? Now you’re holding me HOSTAGE!?” Her voice became a shrill scream of anger. Which only made Altan frown even deeper. 

Altan carefully held up his palm to the woman’s rageful expression “Would you be quieter for once? Perhaps then I would be able to explain. You are going to blow out my ears at this rate…”

Oriana wanted to snap back. Every bone in her body was ready to jump right into Altan’s words and scream at him until either she blew out his stupid ears, or until she blew out her own voice. As much as she didn’t want to be lectured…she felt like she didn’t really have a choice at the moment. So all she did was huff back to the man annoyance, and let her gaze drop downwards. 

“The church doesn’t take kindly to those who practice magic outlawed by the high priestess, much less necromancy,” Altan explained with a sigh “The last thing I- well perhaps we want to be is behind bars,”

“T-then fix me!” Oriana demanded “Now-“

 Altan swiftly cut her off “I wouldn’t have clue in the world as of how to ’fix’ you as of now, you’re the only successful experiment I’ve had-“

“Experiment, that’s comforting,“

“Agh- you know what I mean!”

“If you can’t help me, then you are going to let me off this train now,” Oriana continued to press, stabbing a demanding finger towards the floor

Altan then released a deep, frustrated sigh, pressing the palm of his hand into his forehead “I am not-“

“I said now,” Oriana sliced through his frustration like butter  “I don’t care about being arrested, I- I have to get out!”

“And why are you so adamant about leaving?” Altan pressed her “As I told you, your safer in-“

“I don’t care about my DAMN SAFETY!”

“Well I do!“

“Oh cut the polite crap, you just see me as some- some ’thing’ you created that you need to ‘save’ for experiments!”

“You’re starting to annoy me, miss…”

Oriana was nearly dumbfounded by his words. For a moment, for a split second, she didn’t think she heard the man correctly. But as soon as his dismissive, frustrated words entered her ears. 

She unleashed a barrage of sharply curled words onto the orange haired toad.  

“I-I’m annoying you? My-my damn pleas are getting on your NERVES?!” She then stepped up to him, her rageful, angry face a mere few inches from Altan’s ”Listen here you-you emotionless gasbag, you’re going to let me go RIGHT NOW! If not, I’ll go scratching and crawling my way to the holy guards-and I’ll find my way, don’t you worry about that- and report this entire sick and twisted experiment you have going on here, reviving corpses for who knows what.,”

She stabbed a finger into her abdomen. Her finger sunk a few good inches into the bandages of her abdomen, only further focusing on the hole ripped through her body.

“Do you know how sick this is? How revolting this is, dragging a child into your-your disgusting little experiment?! How dare you-" 

“Shut it” 

The air went cold. It felt like at that very moment, all the air was sucked right out of the room. It was in that mere moment the man in the red coat grew as icy cold as a blizzard high in the mountains. His eyes grew as sharp as a blade, his voice grew as coarse as a rock, and his hands became as stiff as a statue. 

“Shut it before you make some other ignorant accusation,” Altan hissed, peering down at the shocked woman “Do you really think those holy guards would protect you if you reported me? That’s laughable. They would treat you as nothing more than some experimental product of illegal magic. You would be nothing more than a piece of evidence that would be ’disposed’ of after your ‘usefulness’ had run its course. You are some unholy being in the eyes of the church, and even you know that. You will be dead again, and permanently I may add, if the church knows about you,”

Altan stepped back from Oriana, his glare cutting through her like tissue paper. 

“So in spite of your past, how you died and your reasoning as to why you want to leave my train, forget about it. You will be staying right here whether you like it or not, where your chance of dying is significantly reduced, assuming you don’t find some stupid way to get yourself killed again. And perhaps the most infuriating thing to address, the Mazel, is not even remotely involved in my alternative uses for magic, nor will she ever be. And no random child will be either, so I’d advise you never to make such a meaningless accusation like that. Or else I wi-“

“I need to find my daughter!”