I was Ghul before I was Ares. That’s Ghul like the bird, not the spectre. Furthermore, you’ll notice the distinct lack of a family name. They've become all too common in our ‘polite' society. The Firenzii, the Thryshym, the Oskarii, all wear their names as a mark of distinguishment. Of peerage. Bloodline. Of which I have none.

I, Ares Hellblood, one of the walking gods of this New Earth, am the proudly born bastard of a smithy and a common whore. I was a pissant, not worth the cost to feed. Despite what you might've heard, I didn’t actually hold a blade before I could talk. In truth, I didn’t touch a blade until well into my fourteenth year. Even then it was to cut a length of rope.

I was born in the town of Lille on the northernmost peak of Mane, which is where our story will begin. Then, it was a provincial frontier rather than a chunk of the sprawling metropolis of New Rome.

I hope you haven’t eaten. This is a story best digested with a hefty serving of hunger and longing. Even then you will not understand the hunger of an urchin begging for scraps. So sit down, shut up, and listen- I’ll only be telling this once.

* * *

A dull ache wracked my body.

I felt like someone had run me over with a wagon, twice. I stood up. My vision blurred with stars and gray clouds, and I had to catch myself against a wall to keep from falling over. My stomach roared in dismay. That made sense. It was, after all, the source of all my ailments.

Today wasn't off to a good start.

A younger urchin, one hardly out of his cradle, had nabbed my place on Pyke Street. He had the good fortune of waking up before I did, and I wasn't the kind of person who felt the need to correct his behavior. Today, he could have the spot. Someone else would teach him a lesson later down the line.

Pyke Street was perfect because it was far enough from the market that it wasn’t patrolled, but close enough that it had a good amount of foot traffic. As a rule, guards were something you wanted to avoid when begging. But, you needed people because otherwise you wouldn't eat. So, I found it was best to strike a balance between the two. But Pyke Street had been taken.

I skirted through familiar alleyways to a backup haunt. It was a corner outside of a less than reputable restaurant called Gold's Grill & Silver's Song.

I found it surprisingly full when I arrived. The usually empty cobbles and khancrete were occupied by a shoddy wooden cart, full of the round green heads of cabbage grown local to Mane. Some poor farmer had decided now was the best time to sell his stock. In the process, he'd taken one of my best mooching spots. My luck was rotten today.

If I had to go without eating for another day, I wasn't sure what I'd do. My stomach had already begun to eat up the rest of my body; I didn't know how much more I could take.

I winced as the pain of another cramp ran through me. I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten. My head was cloudy with the pain. I was loathe to admit it, but I had to do something. I was starving, and if I didn't, then I would die.

I was starving, my thoughts echoed. It repeated in my brain like a noise on a loop. The idea made me angry. Angry at the injustice of the world, angry at my own situation. Angry enough that I wanted to lash out.

My stomach rumbled. It demanded that I notice it. I clenched my fists. I was still angry; angry at those damn cabbages.

So I lashed out.

In a fit of angst, I reared back my leg and kicked the cabbage cart. I didn't care if anyone was watching.

I felt the wood buckle under the force of my foot’s impact. Something important splintered and then a wheel rolled off of one side. The entire cart became lopsided and made produce spill across the street. Then, not wanting to wait around and witness the consequences of my actions, I bolted down a side-road.

None of this would've happened if I was just able to steal, I thought. If I could steal, then atleast I'd have a full belly.

Others in my situation might've been able to turn to a life of crime to survive, but I couldn't. It wasn't in the cards for me for one simple reason: I was large. Even emaciated, my teenage figure towered over grown men. I stood out, gaunt, and far weaker than I should’ve been. That, coupled with a complete lack of finesse, made me a clumsy thief. And clumsy thieves get killed, so I begged.

As I sprinted down the road, I realized that I really should've thought my plan through. Where the hell was I going to go?

My usual spot was unavailable. In a fit of childish rage, I'd just pissed away my backup. That was idiotic. I needed to go elsewhere. It couldn't be somewhere too seedy, as my frailty would make me an easy mark. But it also couldn't be too nice, as the town watch had already proved their willingness to throw me out. I had more than one scar to show for it.

There’s not a lot of sympathy out there for sixteen-year-old manlings in the world. In a working town like Lille, there's even less. That meant I'd find no safe haven amongst the townsfolk.

I took a sharp turn down an alley I was familiar with. Then, I scaled the side of a shed to jump over to an adjacent street. Voices yelled after me as my bare feet slapped down onto the pavement.

The cracked roads I ran atop were older than the town itself, and they were mostly unfamiliar to me. After a few seconds, I stopped running and looked around. I was surrounded by the ruined red brick buildings of the ancients. Their burnt out windows and shattered walls frightened me.

Uh oh.

In my haste to escape retribution, I'd jumped my way into a part of town that was usually best left avoided.

Some bruised greens and a broken wheel wasn't worth ending up in danger. Generally speaking, the older the building,the less you want to be in the area when the sun goes down. And these buildings were old. They predated the System. They must've been over a thousand.

I ran to East and Spring, a corner where the destitute had made a stomping ground. I’m sure it’d been lovely once, but now it was a mess of broken brick and jagged metal. The green signs left by the ancients marking their roads were long since stolen and melted down. Instead, jagged lettering etched into the stone denoted the location.

Today, East and Spring was empty except for a group of thugs joking about someone's [Status]. Shit.

They were exactly the type of people I wanted to avoid.

The [Status] was given to us by Zeus on the day of our 18th birthday. It was the year of “legal liability,” to use the obscure language of the System. Most understood that “legal liability” meant that the world recognized you as an adult, so the law must too. It’s a term straight out of antiquity.

On the other side of the street, the members of the group laughed. Their voices were ugly, and spittle accented each of their words. A soft green stream of semi-translucent light emerged from one's eye onto a nearby wall. He was projecting his [Status] for all his friends to see. I gasped when I realized that I could see it in its entirety.

Atticus

Vestige: None

Might: III

Arcana: -

Intellect: -

Dexterity: I

Supplication: IV

Traits: Ugly, Barhop

Abilities: -

It’d be a few years until I’d have one of my own. The [Status] was a summary of all that you were, wrapped into five attributes: Might, Arcana, Intellect, Dexterity, and Supplication.

Might and Dexterity were the physical characteristics. They determined how quick you moved, and how much strength you could leverage to do so.

Arcana and Intellect were mental. One changed how you thought, and the other gave you access to magic. I only knew about magic from rumors, as I'd never actually seen someone use the Arcana attribute.

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Supplication was your level of devotion to Zeus, our divine ruler. I struggled to understand it. How was something like that measured? Somehow, the [Status] had found a way to quantify it.

I stood there and stared at the green words for a little too long. I'd been taken aback by how willing the man, Atticus, was to expose himself. One of the men noticed my lengthy gawking.

He pointed me out to his buddies, and then one of them barked a warning at me.

“Oi, quit yer oglin’!”

His accent was the roughshod tone of someone who spent their life in unsavory places. Someone who wasn’t afraid to bloody a knuckle. Someone that I was right to be afraid of.

The entire group turned to face me. Some brought their fists together, others hands went to unseen weapons tucked at their waists. My luck couldn't have been worse.

“Meant no disrespect, Sirree..” I responded. Showing my belly was the smart move. I hadn’t been looking for trouble, but rather a bite to eat. The empty ache inside my stomach worsened. I'd made the mistake of thinking about food.

I wasn't sure what, but something I said got a lot of dark laughter from the assembled men. The one who yelled at me most of all. “You see a Sirree here, Atty?" He said. "It’s like he thinks I’m some lordie lout! Or an assemblyman!”

The gruff man keeled over, slapping his knee whilst continuing to laugh. He looked grotesque. His face had turned an ugly shade of tomato red, as if the action of amusement strained his unhealthy form. His chortles were closer to wheezing than laughter; he sounded like death.

"Wouldn't that be a hoot?" He wiped a tear from his eye, "Me, an assemblyman!"

It took him minutes to regain control of his faculties enough to speak. During which I stood red-faced and petrified.

I was afraid to move. I was afraid to do anything, knowing how badly outnumbered I was by this man and his friends. If I ran, they’d chase me. The best strategy was to go unnoticed and I’d already failed. My game was up; my goose was cooked.

“C’mere and let Ollie have a look at you," he crooned. His tone might’ve been softer than before, but it was by no means gentle. His words were like the hiss of a snake. I didn't have a choice. We both knew it.

I walked slowly across the street to where the thugs stood gathered. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. A cold chill ran up my spine and I shook uncontrollably. There wasn’t a breeze, there was only my fear. I didn't see a way this was going to end well.

“Yer a bony fellah, ain’t ye?”

His voice had a permanent sickly rasp to it. The familiarity of his comment was surprising. I'd grown up hearing variations of it, and now I found myself unfazed by it. You can only call someone a skeleton so many times before it stops bothering them.

Ollie was nice and close now, his profile no longer obscured by the surrounding goons. He was balding, a patchwork array of hair on his head still in the midst of falling out and struggling to hang on. It was fighting a losing battle. The few teeth he had were yellow and crooked. Completing his visage was a trio of long and horizontal scars that marred his left cheek. The lines of the scars were clean and straight enough that a blade must've made them.

“That’s what they tell me, Sirree..” I replied with a gulp, which the onlookers immediately noticed. Each of them chuckled. His goons seemed to get a kick out of my discomfort. My cheeks reddened. I felt pathetic, but there wasn’t anything that I could do. There were too many of them. If I chose run I might as well be choosing get knocked around.

"Now do a little twirl."

I turned even redder, and circled myself around for them to see. I knew that my shame was visible on my face. The chuckling from the onlookers increased. Ollie guffawed.

“Good boy. It's only fair that we got a look at you. You've seen something as personal as Atty’s [Status], afterall. Tit for tat.”

Because the [Status] was the raw capabilities of an individual in an easily read form, it made it an intimate thing to share. It was like I’d seen Atticus in his undergarments. It was taboo. It was embarrassing for him, and it was more than a little weird. If I wanted to, or had the ability to try and fight the other man, I could use the status I'd read to gauge if it was winnable.

To show your [Status] made you vulnerable. It was pretty stupid of him to whip it out in an alley, but it wasn’t like I could've done anything with the information. I wasn't even able to put those numbers in context- I was unable to see my own because the System was still locked for me.

The laughter paused for a brief moment as the crowd caught its collective breath. Then, my stomach chose to remind me of its presence with a loud gurgle. The noise bounced off nearby buildings and echoed through our surroundings. I was still ravenous. I tried my hardest not to think about it and instead focus on the situation at hand.

Ollie raised an eyebrow at me, assessing. His mouth shifted into a grin, and the flat lines of his scars became diagonals.

“Say, how would ye’ be liken’ a job for an easy meal?”

He leaned in so close as he spoke that I could feel the warmth of his breath on my skin. I could smell the ale he must’ve drank earlier in the day.

If he was trying to speak directly into my ear, he'd failed. He was about half a head too short. As intimidating as the brute might’ve been, I was still taller than him. Ollie was imposing, sure, but only due to the musculature that comes with being fully grown.

I liked the sound of a meal. I needed to eat something. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted. If it meant I'd get fed I thought then maybe whatever he wants isn't all bad.

“I might be,” I said. An excuse didn’t come to mind fast enough. Thinking on my feet was never one of my strengths. "What's the job?"

Ollie smiled. It was all teeth.

A silver cap glinted in the back of his mouth. It made him resemble a pirate out of a children’s story. Lille was a days trip away from the coast, so the myths of maritime scoundrels ran rampant here.

But everyone knew there were no pirates. The seas near Mane were under the domain of the great Beluga, a cruel god. To trespass there meant death for all but Zeus. It was a fate many fishermen had met.

We stood in silence for awhile, Ollie's grin never wavered. Like a twisted caricature of the High Court of New Rome, I was dragged before Ollie and awaiting a verdict. A painful ache ran through my abdomen. As if on que, my stomach rumbled.

Ollie patted twice on my shoulder, and left his hand sitting there. The gesture felt anything but welcoming. He was like a shark that had finally stopped circling its prey, and was now going in for the kill.

“Nothin’ so untoward, laddy. No need to look so damn tense,” The hand on my shoulder jostled me back and forth. I could feel his palm squeeze.

I didn't believe his reassurance. I suspected that it'd be criminal enough for a night in the stocks, if not worse.

“Sorry," I apologized. I couldn't find an easy way out of this, no matter how bad I needed one.

Ollie took another long look at me, then explained, “It’s a razzy job. Should be nice and simple like.”

A razzy job meant looking out for the guards as someone else committed a crime. You were the lookout. It wasn’t a risk free role, as many would see the razzy punished just as soon as the perpetrator.

The game with being a good razzy was making it unrecognizable that was what you were doing. Things like talking up a vendor, a group of children playing knuckles, or staging an argument in the middle of the street.

A great razzy was both a lookout and a distraction. Except, I wasn't a great razzy. I was a downright lousy one. But I came with the added bonus of being expendable.

I was acutely aware of the shortblades on the waists of Ollie’s men. Ones that they still hadn't let go of.

I took a deep breath and steeled my resolve. It took me a second- longer than I’ll admit- but I mustered my courage and repeated myself.

“Like I said.. I might be. What’s the job?”

Ollie started to hoot and holler in response, but his hand went to the hilt of a knife.

“Get a load of the ‘nads on this one! He thinks ‘es apart of the planning!”

I raised my hands and took an uneasy step backwards, showing him deference.

“Let’s not get too quick," I said. "You'll get no trouble from me. Where are we headed?”

His hand moved off the blade and I almost sighed in relief. I wondered if my nonchalance sounded as forced as it felt. Ollie made a quick motion with two fingers and a pair of his goons fell in behind him. They stoop in the shape of a V, with one of them on either shoulder.

One was called Atticus, and I'd seen his [Status]. The trait Ugly was a harsh, if not accurate, descriptor. The other I knew nothing about.

“You don’t need to worry ‘bout that. Just follow us.”

Getting pressed into an act of larceny wasn’t how I’d imagined the morning going. The practice wasn’t uncommon in the rougher parts of town, I’d just never before had the misfortune of it happening to me.

Ollie led me through the streets and alleys to the glam part of town. It was a place that urchins didn’t go. We knew that we had to stay out, and if we didn't, we learned via a beating.

He probably knew this too, but it seemed like he didn't care very much. When we reached a windowed storefront displaying clothing, we stopped. All the manners of dress shown were impractical: what was the point of shoes with feathers? You'd end up looking like you wore a bird on your feet.

Ollie and his men exchanged a glance, and then the both of them went inside. That left only me and Ollie on the street. Alone. If I was lucky, then maybe I'd get a chance to slip away.

That train of thought ended when he took me by the arm and squeezed hard around my wrist. He squeezed so hard I worried it’d break. .

“Ye stay here," He growled through gritted teeth. "We go in. Make a racket if any guardsmen swing by.”

I nodded profusely, eager to show him I understood. It sounded simple enough. I hoped my compliance would make him release my arm. And after a moment, Ollie did let go. But not before adding a final warning.

"And if you split on us, we'll split your stomach in two."

His words were my first lesson in the power of a good threat. It was so grossly violent that it strained belief, but it made me stay put. I waited for them to return outside the store for the better part of an hour, and watched for guardsmen all the while.

Morbid thoughts of stomach splitting aside, Fortuna smiled upon me that day. Ollie and his goons weren’t busted for their midday burglary. Furthermore, they'd actually made good on his promise of giving me a meal. Eating good was a special occasion for me. The taste of the stew they brought me wasn't half bad, despite the meat itself being a mystery. It was the first time in a long time I'd eaten something whilst it was still hot.

That marked the start of a long business relationship. I’m hesitant to call them friends, as our interactions were purely transactional and littered with implied threats. But, once I’d become a known factor to Ollie, he ‘employed’ my services as a razzy somewhat regularly.

Only now, recalling these events in adulthood, do I recognize that Ollie only returned to me because of how easily I’d been cowed. That’s a lesson in the wrong form of governance- fear crushes dissent. It does not engender love, or loyalty.

And, as I said before, I was a lousy razzy.