Gaz was bored. Signing on as a 'tough' for the biggest underworld kingpin in town had seemed like a great decision, a way to leave poverty and boredom behind. His family had spent generations as honest laborers, erecting the buildings that made the city grand. And what had they gotten for it? Nothing. So Gaz was going for the riches, the glamour, the danger, the rewards. That was the theory anyways.
Now he just stood outside this house of debauchery, guarding it against non-existent threats while watching everyone else reveling inside. The old-timers had told him why it was so boring: they'd driven all the other gangs out of town with blade and axe. They'd killed not only every gang member but all of their friends, families, dependents. Now nobody dared mess with Jahrdor, and it all ran smoothly.
Jahrdor was his boss, a Dragonblood from some noble family or other. Nobody really looked too closely into his background; presumably he'd also considered his family's toils insufficiently rewarded by the Imperial authorities and looked for a new way to make a name for himself. Now he ran all of Salvar's underground trades: prostitution, drugs, extortion, hired killings...quite a versatile man, actually. But at the moment he was just inside the Royal Knight's Night whorehouse and bar, drinking away while some noble's daughter caressed him sensually. Well, when her parents found out there might be trouble, Gaz hoped. Occasionally something like that flared up.
An older man was striding purposefully toward the Royal Knight's Night, Gaz noticed. Most people headed there would stumble or swagger more than stride, so that was a bit surprising. And on closer examination, the man wasn't really so old: his scarred, grizzled and jaded appearance just made him look that way. A veteran, probably: the wide scar across the left side of his face looked like it had come from a broadsword on the battlefield, not a knife in an alley; a tattoo on his shoulder also looked like a legion emblem. There were a lot of vets around ever since the Scarlet Empire had consolidated its legions a few years back, dismissing thousands of soldiers. They got a decent pension, but a lot of them just spent it on boozing and whoring. Well, good custom for Jahrdor.
The vet came to a halt in front of Gaz and his fellow bouncer, sweeping them with his gaze. Something about the man's expression was dead, almost frozen: had the scar severed some of his nerves, or was he drugged? Maybe he had mental scars to match his physical ones. That happened sometimes, Gaz knew: his buddy standing next to him was a cruel, sadistic bastard who had replaced the thrill he'd gotten by killing on the battlefield with doing a good share Jahrdor's whippings of insufficiently compliant employees.
“Is Jahrdor here?” the vet asked. Judging by his appearance, Gaz had expected his voice to be deep or rumbling, but it was more of a tenor. In a normal tone it would even sound quite pleasant, but this man had honed it into a razor's edge, sharp and forceful. Alarm bells were starting to ring in Gaz's head – the man also had a large sword sheathed at his side – but there were dozens of armed thugs inside, protecting Jahrdor. Surely nobody would be stupid enough to look for a fight here.
Gaz nodded. “The boss is here. Gotta leave your weapon with me, though. Just safety, you know.” He started to reach out his left hand for the weapon, while his right hand slid to the axe at his hip. Better to be safe than sorry: if this guy really had gone crazy in the war, maybe he was here looking for a fight fully expecting to die. It wasn't unknown, killing yourself by picking a fight with the crime boss. Unlike picking a fight with the city guards, it wouldn't stigmatize your broader family.
Smoothly, never losing eye contact with Gaz, the scarred veteran unbuckled his sword's sheath and started to hand it to Gaz. “Here, you can have it,” the man was saying, though it sounded suspiciously like a verbal stab with that sword-like voice. Gaz reached out for it, as the man offered it like a platter in his left hand...
A blur of movement, a flash of light. The other hand had pulled the weapon from its sheath before Gaz could even react, with the celerity of supernatural skill and years of military training combined. One smooth sweep of the blade – it was too fancy to be an ordinary weapon, although it moved too fast for Gaz to get a closer look – took the arm off the other sadistic tough, then his head.
Gaz had practiced too, and he brought the axe up in a guard position. No use. Still in the same fluid motion, the sword spun and cleaved straight through the wooden handle, taking Gaz's hands with it. Then the motion stopped and redirected, the sword plunging forward to find a new sheath through Gaz's heart. Gaz toppled backwards, while the vet kept him locked in a frozen gaze, so full of anger and hatred that it had boiled away and left only cold, vicious death.
“You wanted the sword? You can have it. For a moment.”
Then Gaz died.
If I had been thinking properly, perhaps it would have struck me to pity those two men. They might have been twisted psychopaths, or they might have been good family men, forced into a dark line of work to make ends meet. I suppose I'll never know. I would guess one was a sadist and one just a vagrant looking for adventure, though. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he dies, the final look in his eyes before whatever spiritual force animates us winks out, leaving only torn flesh and shattered bone. I've seen a lot of those looks; one might even say I'm a connoisseur. Whoever they were, even the darkest of men can be redeemed...or so I hope. Yet they were only the first, and hardly the most innocent.
I put my hand back on the hilt of my sword and pulled it free. Although embedded deeply, it came out smoothly: flesh was no impediment to its blazing fury. Blue flames danced along the length of the elegant, golden blade, expressing the fire that was in my heart. No one here could stand against me. They were simply outclassed. Inside, someone had noticed the commotion and the killings, and pandemonium began to reign as drunks and whorers found more than they had bargained for. Thugs stumbled for their weapons; servants faded back out of the common room; a few of the smarter ones ran for the exits. It would be no good: I'd carefully barricaded every way out. There would be no escape from this reckoning.
I strode into the tavern-brothel-headquarters, ostentatiously named the Royal Knight's Night, and quickly sized the place up. I'd fought house-to-house urban warfare before – long before – but never tried to storm such a place alone. Nor had I ever assaulted the innocent along with the guilty, but that wasn't in my thoughts at the time. Only blood, vengeance, fury; the sword flickered red, although it had somehow remained immaculately clean of any of the two door guards' blood.
The Knight's Night was a large building, befitting the self-importance of a man like Jahrdor. It was three stories high, with the long drinking tables and bar at the bottom of an atrium stretching up to the roof. Stairs along the side led up to a second floor, with a balcony ringing the open atrium and hallways leading to dozens of rooms: bedrooms for rent to guests sleeping off a drunken stupor, bedrooms for use by the prostitutes and their clients, and little back rooms for illicit deals. Finally, the third floor had another set of small tables set on its balcony, plus Jahrdor's penthouse and a few smaller rooms for his henchmen. All of it, even the bar, was ostentatiously decorated with a mixture of whatever the gang had managed to steal, buy on the black market, or receive on bribes: tapestries, paintings, little statues, decorative weapons, hunting trophies. The door to Jahrdor's room was visible even from the entrance, the doorframe inlaid with gold and gemstones.
Three thuggish bouncers were already coming toward me, wielding crude weapons. Clearly they hadn't seen the details of what had transpired outside, or else they wouldn't have been so reckless. A large, muscular man charged with a club, only to find he had impaled himself on my sword. Another bouncer with a wicked grin and a knife; another sweep of the sword; another dead body. The third started to back up, but I reached out and cut the sword carefully across his abdomen, leaving three deep gashes. He fell back, clutching the wound, howling and dropping to the floor. I left him lying there, to die slowly and painfully.
Now the rest of Jahrdor's minions were taking me seriously. About two dozen congregated around a small dwarfish man [are there dwarves in Creation? I mean a human dwarf here], probably one of the crime boss's lieutenants. Four appeared to be city guards, wearing the distinctive chain mail and tabard; Jahrdor's corrupt influence obviously ran deep. I'd worked with bribing the city guard, convincing them to look the other way, but they never would've flagrantly advertised their complicity. Looks like things had changed. In a way, I had to admire the obvious success of the man's operation, even though it was all about to come crashing down.
The squat, dwarf-like man produced a compact hand crossbow, one of the distinctive tools of the criminal underworld, and pointed it my way. His aim wasn't bad; had I stood still, he would have caught me in the chest. I sidestepped and flourished the sword in the air in challenge: they wouldn't be able to pick me off from afar so easily. I grabbed the nearest table, shaking off the many drinks and dice games left abandoned on its long, wooden top. Then I started to pull it toward the door, ducking again to avoid a second bolt from the dwarf. His men were clearly unnerved: it would have taken all of them together to pull the table as I was doing.
I upended the table and placed it in front of the doorway, like a gate someone had forgotten to put hinges on. Two servants bolted for the door, trying to escape before I sealed it shut. I reached out my foot and tripped them, then executed each in a split second. There would be no escape from this place, from this fight: I was bound by vow and vengeance, the rest by physical barriers. A throwing axe whirled past my head, embedding in the door-table; I plucked it out and hurled it back at its owner, embedding it in his throat.
I advanced as a whirlwind of fury and death, chopping another crossbow bolt from the air with a sweep of my blade, lopping a man's head off, stabbing a drunk I found hiding beneath a table. In moments I was amidst the enemy; everything seemed a blur, a merging of present reality with memory of so many battles. All reflexive, all perfect. I slip out from between a vise formed by two of the city guards, then cut them both in half with a single sweep. Grab a spiked club in mid swing, turn it around, put the spike into the wielder's forehead. All effortless, all flawless. That was the difference from before, what distinguished present from memory: before, I had always feared death in battle. Now I had become death.
After half their number were dead, the remaining armed men turned and fled, a panicked mob. I grabbed weapons from the cold hands of those I had slain and threw them after the fleeing, leaving another three bodies littering the ground. The rest bounded up the stairs, toward more comrades gathering on the second floor. No matter; they would die later. For now I would finish with the ground floor: I had to be systematic, perfect, effective.
Some customers had backed into the kitchen, waiting for the fight to end, the storm to abate. No use. A drunken man stumbled in front of me, sprawling onto the floor. I broke his neck with my foot. I woman looked pleadingly up at me, babbling. I killed her quickly and mercifully. I think one of the prostitutes was trying to offer herself to me, but that only stoked my fury. A sweep of the sword and she died too. It went on like that, through the kitchen: the cook, the serving staff, a few children of nobility in 'disguise' and out for a night on the town, a half dozen men who were probably fellow veterans of the Legions but now drank their sorrows away.
Dozens of bodies. Dozens of screams and faces that now haunt me every night. But that day, I wasn't in the mood to be haunted. Vengeance had transformed me into death, and death makes no distinctions, knows no boundaries, takes no excuses.
After a few minutes, the only life left on the first floor was the mortally wounded dying slowly. There were only a few of them – all mercenaries and bouncers, as I was at least merciful with the customers and staff – but they kept screaming, forming an unholy cacophony with the sobs and shrieks coming from survivors above. The noise simply slid past my ears; I had been on too many battlefields to be shaken. But it clearly unsettled my opponents and victims: their debauched revelry had, in mere minutes, become a twisted nightmare.
It's hard to remember the details of those moments. It seems like such horrific and brutal events – perpetrated by my own hand! – should be deeply imprinted in my memory. I strain to remember, to agonize over what I did, but much of it is gone, glossed over. How can so many lives snuffed out be mere footnotes and forgettable pieces of the broader memory? Surely if there is some afterlife in which their minds rest – may they receive the mercy there they did not in life! – then the memory must be foremost in their minds. A tsunami of destruction, a merciless, pitiless killer, and swift death by shining blade.
Yet for me, it's only brief instants that stand out clearly in my mind. The servant woman, pleading that she has children to feed. I had children too; your master killed them. A moment of rage, enough to imprint the memory, a slice of the blade, another body on the ground. The sword fades back from red to blue; the floor is slippery with blood, and gore is coated on the walls, yet the blade remains perfectly clean: it reflects my will and mind, and at the time I did not feel bloody or murderous. A blade being wielded by another weapon, a weapon made of flesh and blood but as lethal as a scythe, harvesting life. All of those voices screaming; the mother falling dead to the floor...that's the price of letting a weapon wield itself. As I emerged from the kitchen, I was greeted by the voice of Jahrdor himself. He was barking out commands, directing his minions to fortify the staircases, get the weapons from storage, organize. Some distant part of my mind almost ached to obey the commands, bellowed out like a Fang Leader's. Had Jahrdor been in the Legions? No, I wasn't a Legionary anymore; I didn't take orders. Yet how much simpler it would be if I had, if I could.
As she caught sight of me, the noble's daughter Jahrdor had been entertaining screamed. My blade was clean, but I was like an apparition from the most horrific of nightmares, drenched in blood and dripping gore, strong as a bear and fast as a leopard, an emissary of death, some sort of demonic avenger.
Tables, chairs, cabinets, even wall hangings had been jumbled together into makeshift barricades at the top of the stairs. I bounded up the stairs toward them, dodging a dozen crossbow bolts and merely taking two more in stride, despite only a thin mail shirt underneath my clothes. It took me only seconds to smash my way through the barriers it had taken dozens of men minutes to make, and then I was once again in close combat.
There was never any doubt as to the outcome. By now my quarry realized he was trapped, and his soldiers fought with frenzied desperation, knowing the only way to escape alive was to take me down. Their efforts were laughable. I didn't even need to wait for the openings recklessness left in their guards: my ornate blade simply cleaved through ordinary wood and metals as easily as through flesh. My free hand darted around, grasping the weapons of the dead and turning them against their former comrades.
For a moment I had to drop my blade, abandoning it impaled through the corpses of two brutish Northmen. Blood began to stain the sword, and strange wisps of dusty smoke drifted up from the sword as the blue flames along its edges dissipated. What remained of Jahrdor's henchmen surged forward, seeing the bizarre weapon that had reaped such a harvest disappear. I wove around the thrust of the first thug, then simply picked up his heavy-set body and threw him into the next attacker with his arms flailing. I scooped the sword back up again while kicking a third man away, and the sword's edge reignited; blood and grime miraculously slipped off the blade and blue flames once more danced hungrily.
The dance of death went on for another few minutes, until several dozen bodies lay strewn around the balcony. A few still moaned and twitched, but wouldn't last more than another hour. I then moved through each side room systematically, slaughtering men, women, even a few children. Jahrdor watched from the third floor, dumbstruck as I meticulously destroyed every aspect of his criminal empire: every employee, every customer, every associate. Gamblers, drunks, prostitutes, toughs, bookkeepers ... it didn't matter. Some fled with haste born of fear, and two even tried to leap off the balcony to make a break for the door. I followed, landing unharmed and on my feet; the same could not be said for the pair of servants. I put them out of that misery. I don't claim to know exactly what Jahrdor was thinking in those minutes, while everything crashed down around him. Maybe he only saw the loss of money and destruction of assets, the utter annihilation of his wealth and power. Or perhaps he honestly cared about some of the people he watched me kill; it is my experience that even the ruthless and cold-hearted can be more caring for those directly in their company. Either way, he was unmistakably fearful, knowing the ultimate climax of this rampage of destruction would involve him. That might be part of why I don't remember the faces of everyone I killed, every person I hunted like an animal through that blockaded trap of a whorehouse. Each one was only practice, a prelude, leading up to the finale I was running through in my mind over and over again. And compared to what I was imagining, the swift deaths I was dealing out were merciful. When it was over, I climbed the final stairwell, ornamented with jade and silver dragons and built of marble. It seemed like a piece of a palace transplanted to a tavern, an anomaly even amidst the other fruits of crime and decadence that decorated the place; a fitting means of ascending to that final confrontation. Jahrdor was waiting for me, of course. The slaughter downstairs had given him time to dress in his armor and retrieve his weapon, both made of blue jade, the material of elemental Air. The armor was heavy plate, but I knew from experience that it would encumber him little, thanks to its magical nature. The thought that Jahrdor, too, had been in the Legions gained yet more credence. This was good quality equipment, ornamental but also practical, instead of the more ostentatious and purely ceremonial armor most crime lords would have chosen. It was an odd point of kinship – was his history even similar to mine? Perhaps he had been an officer in one of the disbanded Legions. Or maybe he had just received the armor as a gift from one of the corrupt city officials he worked with.
It was somewhat odd, but I didn't know much about this man I had vowed to kill. If he hadn't so obviously been in command I might not even have recognized him; I'd only seen his face once or twice, several years before. A squat nose, large, round eyes, black hair down to his neck...it seemed proper to finally fill in the blanks in my portrait of this man I hated. He was tall and slight, lacking in the bullish look and musculature of many of the thugs I had killed downstairs, and could well have looked elegant and noble had he tried to.
I extended my sword towards him, assuming a guard position. Better to be careful here; his training and skill were unknown, and I was not facing mere mortals anymore. Jahrdor followed, and saluted me with his blade. A strange sense of chivalry? Mockery? I didn't particularly care, though I distantly noted that it was impressive he was able to stay calm enough to do so.
Not totally calm though. He inched forward, noticeably nervous and tense, sword held a bit too tightly. Unlike the assorted fools I had dispatched downstairs, he seemed to recognize what I was: a Solar. I stayed absolutely still as if a frozen moment captured in a painting, baiting him in. Closer ... closer...
Jahrdor struck first, his sword a flashing arc of blue lightning. I broke my stillness, the painting come alive, and stepped to the side, deflecting the jade sword to the side and kicking at the dragonblood's shins. He scrambled back to avoid the kick – clearly experienced, in one manner or another – and recovered quickly, deflecting a riposte. Chop, parry; slash, parry. He was skilled, but I was better: I could have delivered a quick, fatal blow easily enough.
That wasn't my intent. With each blow, I parried a bit closer to my body, letting him slide closer. After a few minutes, I saw his pattern of fighting, and thus an opportunity. I counter-attacked, but let Jahrdor knock my blade wide. He swung his blade back into line and lunged, straight for the heart. I shifted slightly to the side, but not quite enough to evade entirely: he was still on target for my arm, and wouldn't withdraw.
I leaned a bit more and snapped my arm in, catching the azure sword between my arm and side. Before Jahrdor could react and slice into me, I flipped my sword around, cutting off his sword hand. The jade weapon clattered to the ground. Another quick cut, and I severed his right leg at the knee. The snarl that had slid over Jahrdor's face as he fought fell off, replaced with shock and pain. His other hand reached for a knife on his belt, but I grabbed his body as he fell forward and hurled him down the stairs to the lower balcony.
The dragonblood landed at an awkward angle, and I heard something snap. I was surprised he didn't turn to look at me as I descended the stairs; his eyes seemed to be fixed on a distant point. Something or someone else important? No, just a wall. As I got closer, I saw why: the impact had snapped his neck. Jahrdor was dead. I howled in fury. It hadn't been supposed to end yet. I was going to cut him apart slowly, bit by bit and let him suffer; I was going to taunt and torment him; I was going to cut out his eyes, break his bones, skin off his flesh. All of those twisted fantasies of revenge shattered. Just a corpse staring at the wall, lying discarded at the bottom of a staircase. My blade burned bright, fiery red, and I used it to behead the body in frustration.
There was a muffled scream from upstairs. I stalked back up the stairs to find the last survivor of this macabre slaughter: a young noblewoman, the one Jahrdor had been seducing as I walked in. She just stood still, terrified, as I walked toward her, paralyzed by fear or by the realization that escape was impossible.
She looked so like Kyera – the straight brown hair, the slightly plump figure, the narrow face, the long fingers. Her dress was elegant, dyed with a beautiful purple that must have cost a small fortune, and her hair masterfully braided. An image flashed back to me: Kyera walking beside me, laughing, hand in mine, protesting that she didn't care if her expensive dress was dirtied, she wanted to see my part of town.
“Kyera.” I whispered. But it was not true, of course; Kyera was dead, and this woman several years younger than she would have been by now. She looked at me in mute horror and incomprehension.
I murdered her too.
Finally, I walked back down to Jahrdor's body, took the severed head, and dragged away the table I had set against the door. Doubtless I caused quite a stir as I left the place, drenched in blood, carrying a sword of shifting colors, and holding a severed head. But I just stumbled on in a daze, the adrenaline rush of combat subsiding and my mind clawing through the emptiness that now flooded back. My bloody oath was fulfilled, my future shattered: what was there left to do?
One more thing. I walked into a nearby alley, where a child's skeleton had been carefully propped up against the wall. I dropped Jahrdor's head into its lap, and stumbled off to leave that cursed city forever.
I believe to this day that it was a set of stairs that saved my soul and sanity, or such as still remains. Death, I believe, is a mercy. It takes one away from this world's pains, horrors, reeking imperfections. It leaves me incredulous that so many people can cling so desperately to the very source of their wrongs and pains; it is as if they hold on to an oven-heated pot even as it scalds them, because they fear the emptiness that would flood in without that anchor of pain. Perhaps I am simply grasping for an excuse. But what I had planned for Jahrdor ... that would have been inexcusable, the ultimate manifestation of the rage that had overtaken me.
What led me to that position, drenched in blood, stumbling out of a whorehouse with a kingpin's severed head? And how was I able to overcome such odds? Well, I suppose that's a bit of a story.
2 Months Before the Slaughter...[]
We are dead. All dead, and yet alive. Fragments, pieces, remnants of thoughts: all that is left of dozens of the dead. Each man, each woman passes: sometimes quickly, sometimes not. But they leave their imprint with us, like an outline in the sand or a fossil in the mud. How do many of the dead add up to life? We are unsure. Nothing but a collection of pieces, we suppose. There are many we hate that we also love. Many we would kill that we would also protect. Shards of lives the rest of the world has long forgotten.
We are a sword. A simple tool, built to serve mankind's darker, violent impulses. Millions have been made throughout time, from crude iron blades to the elegant daiklaves of the Exalted. Yet how many are like us, able to think? Not many, we believe. A few perhaps, made to think, with a purpose. But we are not one, not purposeful. We are a mere collection of echoes. We do not know where we came from: we were not able to think at the time.
We respond to our wielder's thoughts and emotions; they are channeled and made manifest on the blade as dancing flames, an icy chill, a warm glow. But each time these thoughts and feelings stream into our Orichalcum blade, a small piece is left behind as a permanent impression. Thus the swirl of thoughts and feelings that is our consciousness: little mental fossils of the many ages of the world.
And it is somehow fitting that our graveyard of thoughts now lies lost in a graveyard of bodies. It was here, at Raven's Drift, that our most recent wielder – and member – had the arrogance to lead his Legion alone against the tribes of the North. We remember why. He wished to end the campaign quickly, that he might return home to see his wife. It is sad that impatient love led to such a wasteful, bloody battle.
A vicious battle had raged the whole day, at the end of which the Dragonblood Legion commander had led a final charge against the massed barbarian tribes. His disciplined troops, desperate to break out, scythed through the barbarian lines, and eventually cut their way through the encirclement. Their commander did not live to see that triumph: he died leading from the front, fighting to the last against dozens of northmen berserkers. He wanted to die heroically, rather than face defeat. And so we fell from his hands, to lie abandoned in the snow. So remote was the battlefield that few human scavengers descended upon it, with the local tribesmen believing it cursed. We have been here for years now, alone with our conflicted thoughts and memories.
We lie isolated here, waiting. We cannot feel the cold snow around us, but we know what it would feel like. We do not see where we lie, but we remember the commander's last vision of it. We live entirely in the past, playing it over and over again, all at once: a hundred plays performed on a hundred stages for a single absent audience. The present is mere speculation, as though it were the future. A lifeline... we seek a lifeline back to the world. Surely we will not lie here forever?
Perhaps not. A ribbon of thought: pain from a cut, a cut from our blade. He nicked his hand on our sword; has someone finally come for us? Yes. A stream of thought now, as his hand wraps around the hilt: once more the sensation of holding our physical form. Once more the wonder at the beautiful blade, unblemished by years buried in snowbanks. We feel a kinship: a Solar? It has been so long.
The first rivers of his thoughts begin to flow into us as he holds the blade up to examine. Unknowingly, he is inscribing his thoughts and self onto a tablet, another to be added to our library. We watch...
A sheet of ice across a raging fire. A mental castle, its bulwarks thickened by years in the wilderness, fighting a desperate battle to hold back tidal waves of despair and fury. Threads of chaos around the edge, pieces of a mind unspooled, like the Wyld at the edges of creation. Slivers of such thought flow toward us and then bounce away, as if from a dam: remnants of thoughts-that-are-not-his-thoughts, and thus unable to enter. Drugs or possession; the former is much more likely. And inside it all, a golden egg constantly hatching into multicolored splendor, marred only by a single taint of darkness that spreads like an ink blot. An Exaltation.
The memories and thoughts themselves...they are a wave of blood, love, hatred, suffering, seeking, redemption. We listen...
3 Years Before the Slaughter...[]
She found me huddled in the corner, shaking, almost sobbing. The bag was held tight in my hand, and the residue of powder on my hands unmistakable.
“Again?” Kyera asked. It could have been accusatory, but she seemed infinitely patient, merely resigned. Her brown eyes stared at me softly, understanding. How could she be understanding? I had done this far too much.
I nodded, and the bag of cocaine fell from my hands. Tears were now rolling down my cheeks; it barely occurred to me that I would not maintain my position for long if the other thugs saw. Kyera could be trusted to keep a secret.
“It was eight days this time, right? You're getting stronger. You can do this.” She reached down a hand and stroked my hair, then crouched down next to me and let my head rest on her shoulders.
“No. No, it wasn't. I...I used two days ago, too. I just didn't let you see. I couldn't stand it. I just wanted to stop shaking so I could do my work, you know?” It was a pathetic, whining excuse, and I knew it. Yet she'd still understand. Why?
“I love you.” she murmured. There's my answer. And I love her too, so why can't I stop? Can I really stop a barbarian with a great axe, but not my own cravings?
“You'll do it. I'll help you.” She held me close, head pressed next to mine. Her skin was so soft and delicate, so unlike my rough and callused hide. We came from two such different worlds; how could we understand each other?
“I won't...I won't stop if you keep letting me do this,” I raised my hands in front of her eyes, palms open, so she could see the powder. “Sometimes..sometimes you have to stop me. Don't understand. Don't understand!” I cried, almost in a tantrum.
Kyera was silent, and just held me. Of course, we'd tried that once before. She'd cleaned all the drugs out, and stopped me from going downstairs to buy some. I'd hit her, and knocked her out of the way; it was the only time I'd hurt her, and I felt I'd never be free of that burden. She had good reason for not wanting to go down that road again.
“I have to leave. I can't clean up here; it's too close, too tempting.” I said quietly, my voice dry and barely above a whisper.
Kyera looked honestly shocked for a minute. “Leave where? And the children!” We were lucky Naya and Sajat weren't here; I hated to let the children see me like this. Would they grow up to be addicts and thugs too?
“I'm only hurting them here, love.” I whispered. More tears glistened in my eyes; I was increasingly certain this was the right path, but at the same time it was the hardest choice I'd ever made. “They can't grow up with a gangster, a thug, a drug addict for a father. I'll only get worse from here, Kyera. It's better for your sake and theirs if I'm far away.”
“Where? Will you come back?” she asked; her voice remained remarkably calm, considering what I'd just said. Kyera had more steel inside her than she let on. Raising children around here...you had to.
“I'll be back,” I reassured her, “as soon as I get better. I'll just wander. I know how to survive, and I don't look like either an easy or a juicy target. But there aren't drugs out there, love; it's right downstairs here. I'll never come clean here, and the kids will grow up into this cesspool. It isn't right to make them pay for my mistakes. My many mistakes...” I trailed off.
“And me?” she asked. “My family won't take me back. They send me money, but they tell everyone I'm in a damn hospital. If I suddenly show up again with two children, my parents' friends start asking all sorts of questions, and no, they don't want to face the truth. They'd rather sacrifice me than let anybody know where I've been, much less what I've been getting for them.”
Kyera had struck a bargain with her family: they'd send her money and keep the guards away, and she'd use her contacts with my underground organization to arrange for her parents' enemies to 'disappear' or to put bribes in the right hands. It was a useful arrangement...but it couldn't go public.
“Carlyle owes me a lot of favors,” I noted, naming the kingpin of the organization I worked for. He was a ruthless bastard, true, but he had his redeeming virtues, and he took care of his own. “You just stay here, with him. We know people here, right? They aren't going to hurt you, or Naya, or Sajat. You'll be okay. Just until I come back.”
“Promise you'll come back?” she asked.
“Yes. I swear. I'll see you again, Kyera. I'll see Naya become this city's finest painter, and I'll see Sajat run his own Imperial department. If I stay, all I'll see is me dragging the three of you down into the abyss with me. You know I'm spiraling down, don't you? I just have to leave here. Leave it all behind. I'll be honest – it might take me years. But I will be back. I swear by all the Gods, all the spirits, all the Immaculate relics you can find that I'll be back. Okay?”
Kyera just nodded, and held me tighter. I left the next day, but I would never see any of them alive again.
6 Months Before the Slaughter...[]
It was on a simple road, atop a simple hill, as a simple cart rolled by that I found enlightenment. I had wandered far and wide, sought out both shamans and monks, and visited some of the most inspiring natural tableaus the North had to offer, but it was in that most mundane of places that I finally finished my quest. I just looked, over into the eyes of the donkey plodding by. It looked back at me, our gazes met, and I realized that I had been as much a slave to my desires as that beast was to its master.
And then I changed. It was as if I had been struck by lightning, as if all the drugs I had taken throughout those decadent years of my life resurrected together for a single, mind-blowing high. The clouds in my mind blew away, and the chains holding me down broke. As if some sort of power had hatched inside me, and was now flowing into me. Echoes of memories and thoughts, shadows of previous lives, and a strength and fortitude beyond anything I had ever imagined.
The donkey passed by, oblivious. The cart driver offered a wary smile, which I was too dazed to return. And that was how I became one of the Exalted.
4 Months Before the Slaughter...[]
This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. I was going to come back and find Kyera lonely, but taken care of. I would show her what I was now, what I was capable of; I would let her see this inner strength, I would let her into the sanctum I had built inside. We would marry – fuck her family and their fucking power feuds and reputation – and go somewhere. Maybe I could undo some of the wrong I had wrought, or maybe we would just settle down somewhere quietly and pamper the children.
It didn't work like that.
The first hint – if you can call such an obvious sign a mere hint – that something was wrong came when the carriage driver pulled up next to what used to be Carlyle's hideaway, the Bleeding Star. The place had deserved its name; blood was more than occasionally shed in the raucous drinking hall. No more blood would be shed here, though: it had been burned to the ground.
I passed the carriage driver a few coins. He was obviously nervous – I had to promise him a high fee to get to this part of town – and motioned for me to disembark. Hesitantly, I did so. I no doubt looked like a criminal too, at the one time in my life I didn't feel like one: I had a black hood over my head, covering my forehead and shading my eyes. I'd only done rudimentary research on what I had become, but I knew enough to cover the caste mark on my head. My first research stop had been an Immaculate monastery, where I asked the ranking monk – who I'd had a pleasant discussion with before – about my new powers. Needless to say, friendship turned instantly to hatred, and I had to fight my way free. More names I'd added to the never-ending roster of those Death has harvested.
There were few clues around the Bleeding Star: the damage had been done more than a year previously, and apparently nobody dared to rebuild. I knew enough about the criminal underworld to realize an undisturbed ruin on perfectly good property meant only one thing: a message.
An elderly man straggled past down the deserted street. With my newfound speed, I rapidly caught up to him, and seized him by the arm. The man tried to struggle free, but my grip was iron: had I wanted to, I could have crushed his bones without effort.
“I don't have anything! Nothing, man! Used it all! No money, neither. Try Jayus down the street...he got some...” he protested meekly, voice squeaking in increasing desperation as I held on.
“What happened here?” I asked, motioning toward the ruined tavern.
Silence. I squeezed a bit, and his arm broke. “What happened here?” I repeated.
The man – he actually wasn't elderly, merely prematurely aged by hard living and drugs – screamed, and writhed in my grasp. “Jahrdor!” he finally squealed.
“Jahrdor?” I asked. It sounded like a name, but I'd never heard it, and part of my business in past years had been to know names and positions in this part of town.
The interrogation took a few minutes: Jahrdor must have been quite fearsome, since the ragged man took eight broken bones to conclude that I was to be feared more than Jahrdor. Finally, he told me the story. Jahrdor was a ruthless crime lord who had moved in from another city and quickly taken over the entire underworld. Unlike the locals, who had an uneasy truce dividing up parts of the city and cooperated against the guard, Jahrdor muscled in on others' territory and corrupted the guard, using them for his own purposes.
It was one detail that made my heart drop out and the bulwark of mental strength break as though hit by a trebuchet. Jahrdor had solidified his reign with one terrible gesture, violating all the rules of the decades-old criminal 'game'. He had seized all the dependents – women, children, relatives – of his rivals and their gangs, then tortured them to death.
I knew in my heart Kyera and the children were among the dead.
I broke down and cried, letting the bruised, battered and frightened man stagger off. His wounds were sufficient that he might be another dead body tossed at my feet, though I can't be sure. But it must have been unsettling to see his seemingly unstoppable tormentor break down so completely.
Later that night, I went to the graveyard. Kyera's family, the Sinchai, had a family mausoleum where their dead were buried with honor. However detached from her in life, I knew the Sinchais would never let one of their children lie unburied or in a mass grave. For one thing, they dared not let her spirit rise against them – and she had many legitimate grievances.
The mausoleum was locked, of course. But I simply hauled one of the stone blocks aside, and walked into the ornate tomb. It sprawled out underground, a whole set of catacombs beneath the commoner's graveyard that lay above; somehow it was ironic that the common men be physically above their social 'betters' in death. I wandered aimlessly through that maze, until I eventually found my way to Kyera's tomb. Three tombs, actually: the children lay in their own coffins, recognized as part of the family at last.
My howl of fury and despair sent rats and spiders scurrying away and echoed through the chambers. I pried the lids off the two small coffins, and through teary eyes saw what I had most feared: the skeletons were all wrong, broken and battered. Their deaths had not been quick, and doubtless the childrens' flesh would have shown even more scars and mutilation.
The radiance that I had grown used to over the last two months seemed to contract and fade away. In its place came a darkness, something beyond anything I had ever known: not only natural fury, but a supernatural rage that burrowed into my very soul. Not that I needed much prodding.
I pledged then and there to deliver Jahrdor's head to my children, and to make him suffer as they had. But first, there was something I somehow knew I had to do. Whatever was inside me was drawing me back to the godforsaken place that had started this all: Raven's Drift.
I had a sword to retrieve.