Warning: This scene contains Violence. Callousness towards the human condition. Depiction of the Fall of Good and the Rise of Evil. Think Jason. And I don't mean ancient Greek, I mean the movies.
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Pain.
There was someone screaming, but it wasn't the boy. He could hear them, the screams; he could make them out through the waves of invisible cotton that seemed to enfold him. He could hear them, but he couldn't feel them. He couldn't feel anything.
A blow.
Definitely someone was being beaten. He recognized the sound, in an absent, distant sort of way, from his own experiences. The smashing dull pain of his father's fists beating him, the red hot searing pain of his brother's attempts to burn him, the gritty pain of slamming to the filthy cobblestone street when the mark saw him try to steal, to eat, to move... Definitely someone was being beaten.
A sharp coldness.
There is something there with the boy, someone. Someone is holding a knife to the back of his neck, almost gently. The boy does not particularly care why, but somehow he can see again, in an odd sort of way. He can see through the grey mist that fills his senses, see the bright sunlight streaming through the smashed window opening onto the rough wooden table. He can see the young strong one, the one with the quiet voice, circling the table, circling a man. A man being beaten. He knows the man.
A cry.
The boy hears the inarticulate cry for help, for mercy, and notes that apparently he can hear things and see things, they just do not seem real. Everything tastes flat, with the acrid tang of blood. He absently reaches up, and realizes that he has been struck. The blood flows slowly from his hairline, warm and dark.
"What shall I do with you?"
The young strong man circling the table is speaking. He is gently moving his knife through the air, flicking out at the man with each one of his words, delicately tracing small patterns of blood in the air.
"where"
"is"
"my"
"profit?"
The boy nods absently. The young one is right. The man. His father. His father did not do the right thing, the smart thing. The boy's head moves slightly again, disregarding the tightening of the knife on the back of his neck, taking in the scene with his blank eyes. The woman, crumpled against the wall, sobbing, the smaller girl behind her. Another boy, on the other side of the room, bruised and battered, covered in filth, cowering away. The man, in the center, against the table, bleeding. The young strong one, circling like a cat stalking a mouse, knife flicking, words hissing, blood droplets flying, teeth gleaming, eyes dancing.
A sound.
The circling one looks directly at the boy, his eyes alight with cold gleam, ice crystals jaggedly dancing in their depths.
"Did you say something, boy?" The circling one stops, and his smile is a frozen politeness, a hidden snarl. But he stops. The boy gazes blankly into the ice eyes, detatched, bemused, and sees a curious recognition alight there.
Behind the boy, a rough voice beats the air. "Sorry, he didn't say nothin'. I just pushed too hard, is all."
The thief snaps his fingers once, then begins a low chuckle, as he pierces the boys' blank eyes with his bright gaze. "No, by Mask, you didn't. Jens, do you remember asking how we expect to make our way up in the Guild? How to forge a weapon of power? Some weapons are not forged of metal, my friend." He pauses, considering. "Some weapons are sent by the Gods."
With a slight bow to the boy, eyes locked into his and frozen smile in place, the thief's voice coils in the air like a snake seeking its prey. "Jens, give him your knife."
"What?"
"Give. him. your. knife."
The boy nods absently again, the knife hilt in his palm warm and damp. He moves forward as if floating. He wonders if this is how it feels to die. Perhaps now he is to fight. It was odd to not feel the air move, to feel the floor. Everything seemed tilted at an angle.
"Well, boy, I have a problem for you to solve." the thief's voice is strangely warm, liquid, gentle. "I have need of profit. And perhaps even a prophet. A great deal of coin has been stolen by this one." He gestures gently towards the man, the father. "Now, how do you propose I should rebalance my accounts?"
The boy pauses, considering. His arm slowly rises as if on a puppet's string, slowly, languidly, the dagger point rising towards the father. The boy's voice sounds loud and flat in his ears as if he were under water.
"That one is too rough with his charge. No one will come for the business if the merchandise is destroyed. He may prove profitable as part of the show at the Copper Coronet, but he would die too quickly. Little profit."
His soft soprano voice does not echo in the chamber as he begins to spin, dagger drifting lightly to point at the cowering brother. "That one is too emotional to be useful. He might be trained, but he would be more profitable on a Slaver's block." Turning, turning past the man who's dagger he held, the boy sees a vision of the future, and his eyes begin to glow with a soft, silvery grey light. "That one shall die by my hand in four years time for betraying you." Turning, turning faster, ever closer to the thief and the father, as the dagger slowly cuts through the air, through time, changing fate, changing history, passing over the woman who bore him, and the sister behind her; "That one is too broken to be of use. She can sell the girl on the street. If they run, beat the soles of their feet so that they cannot. If one resists, kill her as an example. If they both resist, then waste no more time and kill them both. Their example will deter theft and speed profit." Turning, turning, ever turning, he abruptly stops. The room rotates wildly in his senses, but he feels nothing, sees nothing yet everything, and then everything is grey.
Formless, drifting between light and shadow, he waits.
"And you, boy? What is your worth?" The thief's voice is a whisper, an icy caress.
Standing between the man who spawned him and the man now forging him, the boy considers. A small cry struggles deep inside of him, his old soul sobbing against fate and destiny, and the boy slowly, gently extinguishes it, his very first assassination. He steadies his eyes, now moving forward through the mist into the bright harsh sunlight of reality, silvery gleam matching the thief's silvery gleam, smile matching his smile, and with the flashing strike of a lightning bolt, the borrowed dagger appears upthrust through the throat of the man that spawned him.
The thief speaks warmly, rejoicing in Mask's new convert. "Quickly now, boy, while the blood is still warm. Your name."
Puzzled, the boy looks up into Aran Linvales's face, his brow furrowing.
"Your name, boy, to go with the new soul and life Mask just presented you."
The boy slowly lifts the hand stained with the blood of the man who spawned him, christening himself anew with a gentle touch. He gazes into the eyes of the man who forged him, but his voice speaks from his soul to the God that sharpened him into a Shadow Thief.
"Renal."
"Renal Bloodscalp."
Edited by cmorgan, 04 June 2007 - 06:08 PM.
Cheers! And two horns up for metalheads all around the world!
