“Open your fucking eyes and [i]look at me![/i]”

The veridian alchemist's light that swung above the table sent long green shadows across the room, guttering and flickering like candlelight. It shivered and shook, blotted out here and there as the swam swung from it, crawled on it, gnawed on it, watched from it. The rest of the room was dark as ink, but the sound of fluttering wings, tiny teeth, scratching fingernails the size of pinheads made it anything but peaceful. When he finally did open his eyes, trembling, at first he thought there was nothing to see.

Then he looked down to his chest, tilting his head as much as he could with the tight cord wound around his neck, and he started stammering.

“I don't know, I swear I don't know, I'd tell you if I did, I swear I don't [i]fucking know[/i]—”

“I want your eyes.”

The words stopped him for a moment as he tried to swallow past his bindings, tried to pull his hands free but couldn't. He finally managed it as the pixie astride his chest started walking up to his face, riding the bob of his adam's apple like a wave. The tiny points on it's little black shoes felt like pins on his skin. He opened his mouth to say something before there was a buzz of wings and a sharp pain on the bottom of his chin, a tiny piercing that forced his head back nonetheless and pushed his eyes to the dark ceiling above. Behind the light, he could see the fluttering of chitinous wings, the crawling bodies of tiny men and pinprick eyes that burned in the dark. A moment later the pain disappeared only to trace it's way up his face, dimpling it as footsteps made their way over his quivering skin with more surety than the should have had.

When the faery finally came into view, the man shivered again and stayed very, very still, afraid of what his minute captor might do if he tried to get him off. A little wasted form of a man—was it a man?—no larger than his hand, walked up his face with spider-leg footsteps until it loomed over him, astride the bridge of his nose. A white smock—dress?—hung down from its shoulders low enough to expose it's flat chest, tiny nipples, taut sternum. It ended mid-thigh where little black boots took up, scraps of leather laced with thread. Red hair hung lank to it's ball-bearing shoulders, surrounding a surprisingly pretty face, but the needle in it's hand drew his attention more even than the minute trail around it's eyes that bobbed as he breathed. The problem was he knew that face, and it didn't spell anything good.

“Did you know that changeling eyes still glow when you put them out?” It spoke lazily, almost bored, tracing the needle over the man's cheekbone to tap the bottom of his socket with the tip, a quiet smack as it tilted it's head to the side. Examining. He could see the cuts on it's shoulders and arms, dribbles of dried blood. “I've put out a lot of eyes in my day—comes with the territory, darling—but changeling eyes are my favorite. Sometimes I collect them, when I'm bored. I've pulled them out of babies, bitches and bodies, but yours are awfully damn pretty.”

He whimpered, blinking and leaving his eyes closed just a little too long before tiny lips screamed.

“[i]I said fucking look at me![/i]”

The pain was instant, minute, but he felt a tiny knee hit his cheekbone and sharp little fingernails hook under his eyelid to drag it, quivering, down. Surprisingly strong, for a bitty thing it's size, it's voice dropped much lower than he thought it could. The game was over, apparently—no more 'darlings'. His eyes focused on the tiny figure as it loomed over him, watched it's little fingers switch grip and raise the needle high. A normal sewing needle, like you'd find anywhere, it held it like a sword.

“If you've got nothing else for me,” it started, it's voice a vicious undercurrent, “I might as well get what I can out of--”

“She's in the Blight!”

It came out before he could stop himself, burst from his lips like the spit that dripped onto his grime-spattered face. He was shaking, eyes running circles around the tip of that needle—he couldn't even focus on it, but he spoke quickly. Anything to keep it away. “She's in the fucking Blight, I swear! We couldn't keep her anywhere else, we had to--”

“I know she's--”

“But she's on the move, don't you get it?! The goblins, man, we heard the fucking goblins were looking so we told her to head somewhere they wouldn't find her! The Boggart's Hole, that brothel up on King's and Wallace, I swear, I don't know if she's there or not but I swear--”

“And earlier you swore you didn't know where she was.”

The needle came down as Needle stood up. The junkie's howl was cut short by the rope around his neck, three tittering pixies on either side of it tugging with all their might as they hung from the table below to choke off the sound. Even while his lips turned blue, his hands scrabbled at the leather straps down the table and his body bucked trying to force his way free, his eye shined a ring of bright blue around the swiveling bobbing metal shaft.

By the time it was over—it took longer than most pixies thought to choke out a man, they had such big lungs—Needle was laughing in the air above his face, it's tiny body floating like a balloon as it's wings fluttered idly for direction.

“Stupid motherfucker!” It howled as the other pixies descended, the air in the room suddenly full of teeth and wings and clawing little hands, battering aside the weightless little crimelord in their haste to get to whatever magic-filled morsels they could scavenge out of the choking wyldling. He wriggled in the air in his mirth, the tension and effort it took to hold out for the answer releasing in a torrent even as his own kind shoved him out of way for the goodies. “Who the fuck collects [i]eyes[/i]!”

-----

Ten minutes later, crawling up through drain spout—mercifully it wasn't raining—Needle's filthy little form pulled itself free and stretched on the edge of a gutter, looking out over the town.

King and Wallace. He had a ways to go.