“A-A witch doctor? No, no I’m just a healer that works in brews and herbs,” he uttered, and he was indeed telling the truth. Despite popular belief the practice of alchemy wasn’t one of some sort of dark magic, it was simply the science of brewing. After he’d managed to blurt out his answer to this question, he was bombarded with inquisitions from the terrifying man, and that was when he began to break. He didn’t have the ability to even answer Vahit’s rapidfire inquiries for as soon as one had passed his lips another followed close behind, leaving the poor boy befuddled and in tears, unable to produce any words from his watering mouth. He knew he was going to vomit if he didn’t get his nerve under control, and he couldn’t afford to lose what little he held in his stomach for fear that they wouldn’t feed him properly. He was promptly torn from his moment of attempted relaxation, however, when Vahit stand and strode around to stand beside him.<br/><br/>Niko’s slouched body went immediately rigid as he felt the man’s hands grip his shoulders, and his eyes all but bulged out of his head as he was spun around and then forced back onto the desk. Even if he’d wanted to fight against getting pinned down to the hard, cool surface he wouldn’t have had much of an option. He was weaker than he usually would have been, and yet even at full strength he was sure he’d not have been able to combat this pair of gentlemen. His brow knitted together and his lips parted as his captor was instructed to hold him down. He clawed at the wooden surface below him in a desperate manner but aside from that he didn’t make any attempt to squirm or wiggle from the massive Northerner’s grasp. Again, he was aware that fighting would only serve to dig him further into this nasty hole that he found himself in, as he knew there was absolutely zero chance of victory.<br/><br/>The tearful young elf watched closely as Vahit came into view, and when he saw what he held in his hand he instinctively began to squirm beneath Malta. He thought back to the day he’d received his first hideous scar, when he’d been held down by his mother and carved into meticulously by one of the council’s elders. The scar was a gentle curve from the corner of his mouth all the way up to his ear, and it was clear that it was done when he was restrained, and that it was done by someone who had a fair bit of practice in carving such flesh as that of a cheek. It was a purposeful wound, one that was fairly obviously a result of some sort of meticulously carried out punishment.<br/><br/>Now it seemed like it was about to happen to the poor boy again.<br/><br/>Vahit brought the knife in close to Nikodem’s face and the boy cringed, falling completely still beneath Malta’s steady application of pressure. It would appear that he didn’t have a choice, he had to say something. He couldn’t suffer through another bought of carving, he just couldn’t. “I-I’ve committed no crimes, I swear it … My only wrong doing was being born the weakest twin,” he choked out pitifully, trying his best to pull back from the dagger though the surface below his head didn’t allow for any backwards movement. “I was small, unintelligent, ugly, and generally undesirable in comparison to my brother, s-so they did their best to rid the community of me. Khryoskyra has no place for the weak and sickly in their midst,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut tightly and swallowing firmly. "I-If you want proof of what I was here to do, look within the saddlebags on the donkey. They hold m-my journals, my samples, everything I’ve been studying,” he whispered, swallowing once again and then allowing his tongue to dart out and swipe over his chapped, bleeding lips.<br/><br/>“I swear, I know nothing else,” he breathed out, a quiet hiccup escaping him as a result of all the tears he’d shed. Despite the fact that his nose was running just about as much as his eyes, and his sobbing had left his skin a bit red and blotchy he was still a rather pretty little thing. There was something about the look of people of the south that just screamed to a usually unattainable elegance. Though Niko claimed he was ugly as far as his people went, that didn’t stop him from being stunning when it came to introducing himself into other cultures, and he was a gorgeous little creature in comparison to many.