“Sorry! So sorry!” cried the dishevelled little boy through his sobs. He laid on the ground, bleeding from his scalp, presumably after being stuck by the four burly men surrounding him on the dirt path, only making him appear smaller. The boy’s skin was ashy and dry, riddled with cracks, covered in soot. His blonde hair was matted and so dirty I first thought it was brown. His scrawny body failed him as he tried to get up from the mud, just to be shoved back down by one of the more bloated men. His bony fingers clenched a pile of dirt as a track of tears washed down his face, cleaning off some soot.
The wooden carriage jostled down the dirt road as the whip pulled on the black horse’s reins, nearly coming to a complete stop. “Keep going.” I called down to the whip, clutching at my cloak as I laid on the hay filling the carriage floor.
“You can’t be serious!” The old whip shouted back furiously through the cotton veil. “They’ll kill the imp!”
Sitting up from my short hay nap, I snapped back, “He’s bait! This is Monulume, not Calee-Brot! Now, keep going.” The whip huffed on the other side of the veil, before I heard the crack of his whip, and the carriage gained pace once more.
Looking out onto the dirt road, the men had turned their attention to us. The grimy older men were all grimacing as we strolled past, furious that we had decided to not stop to help a poor feeble boy. They quickly grabbed the child and raised him to his feet. One berated the imp, claiming, “Ya useless brat! Feed ya too me porks I will!” The boy however wasn’t paying it any mind, instead he stared daggers at me. His eyes, while still moist with tears, reflected the hate being spewed back at me tenfold. His lip bled as he bit down, combining with the blood on the side of his face. The four men, still holding the angry child by the arm, dragged him into the surrounding shrubbery, leaving my sight.
How long did I rest for? Leaning back against the side of the carriage, I let down my greasy, black hair, letting it drop to just below my shoulders. I had that dream again. I looked down and grasped my tattered book of alignment.
How has it already been three years?
My fingers brushed against the soft and fuzzy cover. The black book had now faded to a darker grey, with the red alignment text at the top now almost pink. A few of the corners were torn, showing the board which the cover was placed on, while the rest were fairly beaten. It seemed the only thing that bound this book together was a few lines of loose, coarse black string running across each other on its bind. Each page of the book was now stained a yellowish tinge except for one purely white letter shoved in between pages. I brushed my pale thumb against the slightly protruding letters on the cover, A relic of the past. And with a faint smile, slid the book into my shabby rucksack.
My eyelids shuttered, trying to stay awake. The dark bags under my eyes probably droop down to my cheek bones. The bright sun shot its rays through the canopy of leaves onto my face. Grabbing part of my drabby cloak and lifting was ineffective as the rays seemed to pierce straight through, so I dropped it.
My tunic was ragged with tiny punctures, the soles of my leather boots had been resown too many times to justify, my scabbards’ and quiver’s belt buckles had torn off a few months ago, leaving me to tie both ends together. Maybe I’ll buy some new clothes when I’m done. I grasped the pendant hanging from my golden necklace, the only gift I had that was kept in good condition. The pendant had been moulded or cut into the shape of a griffin, with small carvings on the top to make the details of its feathers, wings, and face. When I’m done.
Sitting in the carriage, still burdened by the unrelenting sun, a shadow loomed over my face for a brief moment. Then it happened again. I turned, pulling back the cotton veil, and saw a bird flying behind us. It was nice for a moment before the bird’s flapping wings snapped to its sides and began to nosedive towards the carriage. Oh god. Is it a harpie? My hand trickled down my side to the daggers’ handle and gripped it tightly. The closer the bird fell, the less bird-like it looked. It had begun flattening itself and then expanding outward. I squinted my eyes, wondering if I was being deceived by a cast, but I wasn’t. The thing got closer and closer before reaching the inside and floating down, swaying left and right, onto the carriage floor. It was a letter. Cautiously, I slowly lent over, reaching down and grabbed it. No spell was cast from me touching it, so I pulled it up to my chest. Written in black and blue ink was, “To Taros” Slightly below in smaller ink was, “If you are not Taros, please throw it back into the air like a playing card” Why not say “like a disk”? Turning the letter around, blue wax with an hourglass imprint sealed the letter. Beuron. I snapped the wax seal with my fingers and opened the letter. A puff of grey smoke slowly wafted out from inside the parchment. Flipping it around revealed it to be completely blank. Rolling my eyes, I quickly waved the parchment through the puff of smoke before the carriage left it behind. As the cloud of smoke disappeared, ink began to slowly infuse into the letter. At first, it looked to just be blotches of ink scattered across the parchment, but seconds later, the blotches began to reveal the hidden message.
Taros,
The path you follow is black
You feel alone, afraid
But I am here
When this reaches you
Come back to the hourglass
Beuron.
The nerve! The longer I stared at the message, the deeper the nails dug into the palms of my hands, scrunching up the rough parchment. You don’t know me. Moisture built up in my veiny, red eyes; my head boiled in rage as my teeth ground against each other. The parchment hissed with each tear made. I tore it in two, then four, and continued until it was nothing more than a pile on the carriage floor.
Looking down, drawing in multiple slow deep breaths, my head began to simmer out, and my hands laid flat by my side. The pile of torn paper sat on the carriage floor, jostling around as we bounced from holes on the dirt path. The clumped-up parchment melded back together, repairing the tears afflicted onto it, while simultaneously folding in on itself. The folds looked to be random at first, but soon claws became visible, followed by its tiny legs. Then feathers erupted from the pile as the bird’s wings expanded out the sides, covered in parallel ink lines. Before my very eyes, from the torn-up letter had a pigeon risen, like a phoenix from its ashes. Even the wax seal I had snapped had morphed into the pigeon’s blue beak and eyes. The pigeon fluttered its wings and shook off the excess parchment still stuck onto it before turning and softly hooting at me. It, very awkwardly, waddled over to my calf and began caressing it with the side of its parchment head. Reaching down, I ever so delicately picked it up, expecting it to be soft as a feather, but it felt more like a scrunched-up ball of paper. I patted the pigeon on its head with my fingers and it chirped at me. A smile curled on the side of my lips, but it left as quick as it came. Pushing the cotton veil aside, I held the pigeon out. The bird looked to me, gave me a low sombre hoot, then took off into the skies where it belonged.
Its wings elegantly flapped up and down, slowly shrinking the further it went. Its happy chirps beat out the wood wheels grinding against themselves until it was just a blip in the sky, and I could finally sit back down again on the hard wooden floor.
The dreary carriage I rode in continued rumbling down, slowly rocking me back to my slumber. My heavy eyelids slowly drooped down, each lash felt to be a hundred pounds, back to sleep I’d go. My hands clamped down on my legs, my feral nails dug through my pants and into the skin of my legs. They dug deeper, stabbing harder and harder until a warm liquid sputtered past my nails and oozed down my legs. I’m awake, alive. And I will change my dream.
After eighteen long and gruelling hours, we finally made it to Monulume. When we had left Alvorn, the sun had only just began rising, but now it sat at its peak. I leaped out from the back of the carriage, landing on the pristine limestone road. Carriages rushed past as I walked along the side of mine, towards the whip. Reaching down into my inner chest pocket, I pulled out a hefty crusty sack and tossed it to the whip. It jumped around in his hands until he clapped them together. I continued to walk down the road when a man yelled from behind. “WHAT? You can’t be serious! Sir! Sir!” Turning around, the whip lent in front of me, catching his breath. His battered, smooshed hat covered most of his face. “Sir, I cannot take this!” He spattered, his grey hairs peaking from underneath his hat, flopping all over the place. “It’s much too much! This amount of kol, it’s simply ludicrous to give to me for a ride.” His pale, wrinkly face sagged, he looked as if he’d seen a monster for the first time.
“Did you do your job?” I asked.
“Yes, but-.”
“Then the coin is right, simple as that.” I replied earnestly, turning around and waving him away.
“But one hundred kol for a simple ride?”
ONE HUNDRED! My eyes bulged from their sockets as my skin paled, turning whiter than even his.
“Not one hundred Scalions?” The whip questioned.
With a small sigh and a whimper, I continued walking down the limestone path towards the main one, mumbling, “This just means I’ll have good luck.”
The old whip raised his arm, waving goodbye, shouting from the depths of his soul, “Thank you, kind sir! You have no idea how much this means!”
Walking out of the carriage drop off area and onto the main path, my eyes roamed the alleys placed along the sides. Small stalls lined the insides of the alleyways, all being stuck in-between businesses who could afford to have a real store. Some of these stalls were run by single people, others by families. Walking up the main path, a little boy who was too young to even speak, grabbed onto my cloak and began pulling and pointing at his mother’s stall. A sign sat out front of it, reading Mothro’s Crafts. Rolling my eyes, I gently pulled my cloak away from the boy. The more I looked down the alleys, the sadder it became. Some people were working two stalls, one in one alley, the other in the next over. Most were trying to pull people in, but few received customers. One man who was working two stalls had a group of mercenaries on both sides of him. He was drenched in sweat from running back and forth between stalls to help them. The mercenaries were all smirking and chuckling amongst themselves, and they had the same guild badges on them, the Dayl guild. It was a moon with triangles on the sides, acting like the rays of the sun. Poor bastard doesn’t even realise it.
The pin holding my rucksack closed suddenly popped open and something was taken out. Looking down, the boy who had grabbed my cloak earlier was booking it down the path, through the small gaps between fellow shoppers, and back down to his mother with MY BOOK OF ALIGNMENT! Grabbing out one of my daggers, I raced down the path, maneuvering through the same small gaps with greater difficulty than him. But within seconds, due to his much shorter legs, he was right in front of me. Snatching the back of his collar and turning him around, my dagger firmly and visibly in my grasps, through gritted teeth I growled. “What do you think you’re doing with that book boy?” The boy’s eyes grew twice their size as they swelled up with tears before bursting, washing some of the grime off of my arm holding him. He wailed like a banshee as he clenched my book to his chest, shoving his finger back down to the alley with his mother. With my dagger still in hand, I ripped the book from his grasp and lifted him off the ground from his collar. Looking around, everyone kept moving, not even batting a single eye. Well, that’s different to what I’m used to.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
I walked back down the path, back to his mother’s stall and tossed the kid over the table standing between us. Her face wasn’t even phased, like she had already been through this same incident multiple times today. “You should keep a better eye on that boy of yours.” I suggested, my dagger shimmering from the minimal light in the alley.
“Yes sir, of course sir, apologies.” She said in a monotone voice with a blank face. Her eyes were bloodshot, wrinkles littered her leathery face, her string-like brown hair barely dropped to her shoulders. Her garb looked like a well-used tablecloth taken from the backside of a pub, her nails were nowhere to be seen, and her arms had more purple markings scattered across them then white. “Would you like me to make it up to you sir?” She asked in the same voice. My stomach churned.
“Hey kid.” I said, moving as far away from that as possible. “Come here.”
The mother jumped in front of her child, her passive demeaner now erased by the love of a parent. “If you want to raise a hand to my boy, do it to me instead.” She fearlessly stated through the gritted teeth she had remaining.
Standing up straight and raising an open palm to her, I questioned, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I just wanted to know why he took the book.”
Her guard was still raised. She tried to keep the child completely out of sight behind her, but he quickly popped out from her side and ran to the table. “BAREN!” She screeched; her arm snapped from her side to grab any of him, but he was too quick. She fell to the floor with a deafening thud as the child rushed to the table. His blonde hair was a stark difference to hers, and he barely had a scratch on his body. His clothes were significantly better too, it looked to be a higher quality than mine had been when it was new. Once he reached the table, he held up a book and plonked it on the table with a wide smile, pushing his pink puffy cheeks aside.
The book’s cover was tough, opening it and flicking through the pages wasn’t a chore, not a single page fell out. The boy pulled up more from beneath the table and placed them on top. One had a golden cover, another had something akin to wool, and one had leather. All these books looked magnificent. No scratches, torn or completely yellow pages. The kid’s smile broadened while staring at me. “How’d you know the book was in there and in bad condition?” I pondered. The little boy pointed to the hole at the bottom of my rucksack, right where the beaten corner of my book would have been sitting. “Shit.” I spat out, completely bewildered. Looking away from the books and back over to the lady, she shivered on the floor, streaks of tears flowed down her face. I moved the books aside, climbed over the table, and crouched down in front of her. “Miss?” I asked. Her face was pale, her eyes filled with fear as she mumbled something inaudible. “Miss?” I asked again, reaching down and grabbing her shoulder.
“DO NOT TOUCH ME!” She hissed, slapping my hand to the side and leaping back against the boxes set up behind her. The boxes wobbled above before one dropped down. I jumped over the lady and took the heavy box to the back. My back cracked as the box pressed into it before bouncing off onto the floor. For a second, it felt numb before the pain crept in like a small fire sizzling the muscle on my back. Before I could reach for my back, a palm smacked into my jaw, jostling my head. “GET OF ME! BAREN! RUN!” She screamed again. I moved away from her to the over side of the stall, grabbing at my back as it adjusted to the new stinging sensation. The small boy ran from the table over to his mother, diving into her arms in loving embrace.
We sat in silence for a moment, both of us catching our breath, trying to figure out what just happened. Her arms were riddled with goosebumps, completely wrapped around her child, unwilling to let go. Her eyes were trained on me like a harpy’s, waiting for the slightest aggressive movement. I don’t have time for this. Holding my back with one hand and balancing against the wall with the other, I pulled myself up off the ground. Placing my hands on my spine and leaning back slightly, it snapped into place as best it could. Then slowly leaning down, I shovelled the box’s contents; needles, blades, bottles of some liquid, and an iron, back into the box. Finally, I grabbed it from the ground and hoisted it back over to the other boxes. “There.” I exclaimed, wiping the dirt from the floor off my cloak. “So, you fixed those books up?” I asked, pointing my thumb over to the pile. She didn’t say a word, just nodded her head while clenching her child. “Well good.” I said, popping my rucksack open and pulling out my Alignment. Chucking it on the table and hopping back over, I turned around to say, “I need this done by tomorrow or the next day.” Reaching into my chest pocket, I pulled out another crusty coin pouch and dropped it onto the table. “This should be enough to cover the rush fee.” And hopefully it’s not as much as last time, though Maria knows she needs it. “I’ll see you hopefully tomorrow.” With the bow of my head, I turned around to walk away, before snapping back to her and saying, “Oh, and take that boy to the Dayl guild hall sometime. I think he could be a fine rogue one day. Just tell ‘em Taros is calling in that favour. Maria, the Dayl will blow a fuse once he’s realised I’ve blown that favour on this. HA!” Her and her boy continued to sit where they were, but it didn’t matter much. I snapped my head around and continued back on my way to where I needed to be.
After a few minutes of pushing past vendors and vendees, something sitting above their heads caught my eye. The tip of a statue stood atop of the crowd. Pushing past more of them, the tip grew into a sword with a v shaped guard, resting in the clutches of a man. Even though the man’s face wasn’t very detailed, —it was quite plain looking other than his brazen and sharp chin— his hair looked expertly modelled. Each ridge and the tiniest of indents were chiselled to give his short hair the perfect sway and accuracy. The armour the man wore was dragon scale like in his fable, covering all but his face. The dragon armour was bulky, with giant scales covering each individual muscle, yet it still allowed for excellent mobility, I would know now, I had it for my damaged arm. The sculptor had moulded the way the armour stretched on his slightly bent arms and kneeling legs to a tee; he even got all the tiny puncture holes littered across the plates to absorb mana inside them like a hae crystal. The man sat on one knee, surrounded by human children huddling up against him for protection, fear covering their faces. This statue was made up of the dark grey cracked apostle stone that Alistanna’s staff was made of, and now so were my daggers.
The statue itself was of Sulivin Dayl, the First Monarch and an Apostle, a myth of our time. It’s said that his dragon armour was attached to his skin, impossible for anyone else to detach, and even if they did by lopping off his arm, he could just regenerate it straight back. This was the possible power of a guardian and swordsman monarch. But there’s never been a monarch after him, he was the first and last, so many people refuse to believe that the monarch power ever truly existed, and some believe neither did he. One day.
The statue was placed in the centre of the central lot. Kids were playing around it, tossing a ball and playing tag, as their parent were buying pelts and books from the cluster of stalls on the outskirts. Most of the stalls in the central lot were of a higher quality than those stuck in the alleys. Their wood was of higher quality, without chipping and better finish, their veils were made of thin cotton, allowing the sun to shine through on their products, while the alley stalls were lucky to have a veil at all. The only exception to these pristine stalls were that of the alley dwellers who managed to save enough to reserve a spot on the outskirts in hopes riches will flow their way from this daring move. I had never seen one last more than a week before having to go back down with the sewer rats.
Meandering my way around, glancing at each stall past, nothing was what I needed. It was all weaponry, armour, scrolls, clothes, and toys. All of it useless to me. I wonder if a scroll could do it?
“That’s right!” A higher pitched voice rung out from a stall a few paces down. “With just one sip from this, you can have any woman you desire. Your neighbour’s wife, his pretty daughter, even Maria herself would fall head over heels for you with just one simple sip of this.” He exclaimed, tapping a glass bottle with his yellowish cracked nails.
The boy —who couldn’t have been older than fifteen— stared at the pink fluid splashing around inside of the bottle. His hand dove inside of his pocket and pulled all the money he had, tossing it on the table and clutching the bottle tightly in his hand. “Thank you, sir! This is just what I need.”
“Don’t thank me, it’s just my job.” Said the halfling, scooping the coins into a giant sack he had hidden under the table. His blonde hair flung aside as he shouted, still scooping his coins “You sir! The scruffy bloke! You look like you need a potion.” That I do. “And luckily for you I have all the pots you could possibly need, a potion that will give you strength no man has had before,” he said, waving a blue flaming liquid held in a triangle glass bottle clutched in his crusty, dry hands. “Or how about the elixir of eternal happiness?” He pulled out a different glass bottle, shaped like a horn, with a murky brown liquid. “Or even, the key to eternal life?” He pulled up a glass bottle shaped like a key, completely gold with gold flakes floating around inside it, cling to the glass. “Okay, that last one was a joke, but if you find it, let me know. What pot do you desire?”
He had a wide-eyed smile, each wrinkle in his cheek compressed into each other, flexing the muscle to force the smile longer than necessary; his hooked nose was scrunched back, and his ears grew redder with each word he spoke. “What potion did you just sell?” I asked.
“A man of taste I see.” He gave a slight chuckle that was not reciprocated, then continued. “It was a pot of love. It can make any woman fall for you. I would know, I used it on a beautiful royal girl in Belthreen. That’s right, Belthreen royalty. I have some more in the ba- ”
“No.” I interrupted. That potion doesn’t exist. “I need a lure pot, the strongest you have.” I calmly told him.
“Why, sure thing!” He replied, reaching down below him and chucking a purple liquid bottle on the table. My brow narrowed staring at it, eyes squinting. “This is the best lure I’ve got. Could pull a dragon away from its nest, and ain’t no other lure pot doing that.”
“It’s purple.” I growled, opening my palm and aiming it at him from under my cloak.
“Well, you see,” He said as I began mumbling under my breath,
‘Show thy enemy no mercy.’
“The lure pots are an interesting bunch, especially since you don’t drink them.”
‘Cull their skin from their bones.’
“I mean, you could if you wanted. But purple is how lure spells look at such a level, I’m sure you wouldn’t understand the deeper details.”
‘Bind their death into their life, Mentum.’
My hand snapped closed; a strange, viscous liquid poured from my wrist, down along my fingers and leaped across to this halfling. He let out a high pitched scream as he crashed into the limestone floor, writhing, digging into his own skin. His skin grew redder by the second, his clothes began to rip at the seams, until my hand opened up and the liquid slacked.
“WHAT WAS THAT!” The horrid halfling shouted, pulling himself up. “I’LL GET THE GUARDS! THEY’LL HAVE YOUR-” My hand clamped back into a fist, tightening the liquid on him once more, causing him to crash back down.
“You can feel it, can’t you?” I hissed, my eyes wide open glaring at him as he now started to pull at his face. “You can feel it wriggling inside, under your skin. Trudging through your veins, piercing and lopping off different muscles, slowly making its way up to your skull.” Little bits of blood appeared on his red cheeks, then more came gushing out. He dug into his ears, reached down his throat to pull it out, to stop the oncoming disaster. “It’s unbearable, isn’t it? The harder you fight the worse it feels, the deeper the creature buries itself inside. You don’t even have enough air in your chest to beg, to plead.” The halfling’s hands shot up and down onto his eyes, his fingers dug inside the socket, he’d pull it from the source. My hand opened once more.
He gasped for air, dragging himself slowly away from the stall to his boxes in the back. “What do you want?” He whimpered in a now dry, croaky voice.
“My lure potion.” I answered dully. “You do actually have one, don-”
“Yes!” He exclaimed, grabbing a dull sword and popping the lid off of one of his many boxes. “It’s in one of these somewhere, if you just give me some time-”
My fingers bent slightly and he snapped up and out of the box, all his hairs stood on end, liquid dripped down his legs. He dove straight back into the boxes, tearing the wooden lids off every one with just his hands, which now bled profusely. Pot came flying out of the boxes and crashed out onto the limestone, slowly congealing into one giant gloopy puddle of potion and blood. My fingers bent closer, now halfway to a fist. He yelped, falling out one of the bottom boxes, toppling the rest and sending potions sprawling across the floor. His face fell ghost-white as his soul left his eyes, but a little squeeze of my hand sent him back to searching. After a few more seconds of frantically tossing bottles and boxes out of the way, he finally leapt at the floor, entangling a circle glass bottle in his hands. He quickly shot up off the ground and rushed over, dropping it on the table ever so delicately before rushing back to the boxes and hiding inside one. “There.” He whimpered. “That’s the best I have.” Picking up the bottle with my visible hand, a greenish blue liquid swayed around it, acting more like smoke than a liquid, with a single short and cut strand of Gantis hair, which took up half of the bottle.
Looking around, people stared at the vendor and I with open mouths. Some looked away as I glanced in their direction, others were too shocked to be able to. They all wore cotton and high-quality leather, coloured just to their liking. One of these higher-class people in the back was trying to be discrete but was still obviously shouting for the guards.
Rolling my eyes, I turned back to the dishevelled halfling huddled in his box, all that was visible of him now was his sporadic blonde hair. “This’ll do.” I said, gifting him a nod and dropping a light sack of coins. We stood still for a moment. Something feels wrong. My eyes shone, a devilish grin warped my face as I pulled out another sack of kol and dropped it on the table.
The halflings eyes popped up from behind the box as I turned to walk away and he whispered to himself, “What’s the other sack for?”
Immediately swishing back around and pulling my hand from beneath my cloak, I cackled, “For this.” And closed my hand in front of him. Once again, he fell to the limestone, now covered in a mixture of potion and glass, and his high pitch scream launched from his chest, filling the central lot with his cries. The crowd began shouting for a warden, waving their hands, jumping up and down, some pointing at me as I continued down the path, sliding into the next alley to find the last thing I needed.
