Marius

Profession: Thief

Profession Skillset:

Dirty Trick: I/V

Uncanny Danger Sense: II/V

Coup-de-Grace: NULL

Stealth: I/V

Sneak Attack: I/V

Hasty Retreat: I/V

Tumblersmithy: II/V

Martial Skillset:

Short Blades: I/VII

Long Blades: NULL

Blunt Weapons: NULL

Archery: II/VII

Shields: NULL

Unarmed: NULL

Social Skillset:

Persuasion: II/VII

Intimidation: NULL

Bartering: NULL

Performance: NULL

Appraisal: II/VII

Equipped weapon: Steel Shiv

DMG: 1-6

“You know something?” he said, twirling his tiny shiv in his hand. “Some people say the size of a man’s blade represents his manhood itself.”

His audience didn’t reply.

“Oh, yeah,” he continued, leaning back in the rather uncomfortable sandstone chair they’d set aside for him in this dimly lit chamber of their crumbling castle. “I’ve met guys with swords the size of my ego. Bent, curved, twisted, coiled, oiled, and – in some cases – lubricated.”

No answer from his sleeping spectator. Not that that bothered him.

“Yep. And y’know something? Mama Marius had somethin’ to say about men like that – they go out swinging their dicks around like that, they don’t get to be surprised when they come home castrated. That’s the problem with all the big heroes out there. They think they got the biggest dick in the business, and every monster out there’s just gotta take it. Hard and fast. Until they die.”

His eyes passed over her with the nonchalant expression of a tired old man, jaded beyond his years.

“Not the most heartwarming thing for a mother to tell her son, eh? But then, Mama Marius was a master of stories. I guess, in a way, that’s where I get my particular little talent for yarn-spinning from. Point being, Yelena, I should be waiting for the moment when your metaphorical dick gets chopped away. I should be loving every minute of your pain. I should even be ending you myself, if I was being logical about all this. You're level 6 now – same as me. I’m bettin’ that the EXP from our deaths would be pretty big, eh? First, I could off you, then the red-head. Maybe a few others. Then I could probably slip past the Don and get below. See what’s what. Get a good headstart for the next layers… ”

Her pale, vacant face told him nothing. His eyes shifted to her gradually rising chest, and her hands clasped together over her sword. A funeral pose.

The Gnolls obviously didn’t know her. This girl had cheated death more than once.

“And that’s why you piss me off and intrigue me in equal measure,” Marius continued, as though responding to his own thoughts. “You just don’t stop. You believe you’re in the right, and you’ve got the gumption to back up your beliefs. You’ve never run away from anything in your life, I bet. And I wait, oh sure, I’m waiting for the moment when you throw your toys out the basket and say this is all bullshit. But then, you can’t do that, can you? You’d rather die, going out the way you came in – as you.”

He twirled the shiv in his hand, considering it like it was an old, long-lost friend.

“Guess that’s something we share,” he said quietly, watching the single candle burning next to her bed begin to flicker with a small, sudden burst of life. “We got all these skills the Everloft gives us – all these bells and whistles to help us play our ‘role’ however we want: sneaky, tanky, sociable, sharp, quick and agile or slow and strong. But none of them really tell us who we are, do they? We gotta come up with that ourselves. That’s ours. This place can’t take that from us.”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Another flicker. Thin embers played across Yelena’s pale features. He saw them twitch suddenly, then go still again.

“Yeah,” the sighed. “That’s why we can’t stop. We have to go on. We both know it, because there’s something that belongs to both of us waiting below, isn’t there?”

Appraisal: Success

Sound: footsteps. Two meters. South.

He sat back, swallowed his last sigh, and called out to the dark hallway behind him.

“I might be a useless fighter,” he said. “But I’m sneakier than you, Miss Lightborn.”

She appeared from the shadows of the hallway like a phoenix unwrapping its wings. Immediately her presence filled the room. Crossed arms, crossed brows, and with an air of superiority that defied her age, she came to stand beside Marius and regarded him for only an instant before she looked down at the fallen Yelena.

“How is she?” she asked.

Marius, quite entertained by the question, decided to answer as candidly as he could:

“She’s been through worse. Should see how the other guy looks.”

No laughter.

Did you expect anything else, Marius?

He looked her over for a second. Her silken red threads, puffy sleeves, and long flowing skirt embroidered with tiny whisps of flame. Probably something she scrounged up down here. But in her face and figure he could see she was young. Probably around 16.

Ugh. Talking with kids just ain’t what I need right now…

“What has she been through?”

Hah! Now that was a question he wasn’t expecting.

“Whatever happened before she came here I don’t know,” he said. “But she was imprisoned by the Don – the Blackbird – before we got out. His prison guards ain’t exactly the gentle type.”

She considered him out the corner of her long-lashed eyes.

“Were you in prison with her?”

“Nah. I was working for the Don.”

He met her accusatory stare.

“You’d work for the man who was hurting your girl?”

He stifled a laugh.

“Firstly: she isn’t my girl,” he said. “Not by a long shot. Doubt she’s anyone’s girl – ‘cept maybe this ‘Dimedrious’ guy she’s always on about. Secondly, yeah, I wanted to survive. Find a way out. Maybe shiv a few berks* in the meantime.”

He yawned, and stretched out his arms, keeping one eye closed and one eye open to inspect her next movement. To his surprise, she didn’t make to reprimand him. He even noticed a little flair of recognition when he mentioned that name ‘Dimedrious.’

Now, that’s interesting…

“You found out how to get her out and escape together,” the redhead said. “I would have done the same.”

“Hah!” he laughed. “So the Lightbringer isn’t quite as noble as they say around here?”

“Who says that?” the girl replied, walking to the edge of Yelena’s bed, still totally focused on her. “Mendax? He knows I got two people killed before we got here.”

Marius shook his head. “They all love you, you know,” he murmured. “Must be nice for such a young girl to have so many fans at-“

He stopped himself as the flame of the candle blazed with unnatural energy, and her amber-clad eyes gleamed with power.

“I don’t want worship,” she said with spite. “I want power.”

Her hands gripped the edge of the bed. He saw little molten cracks appear in the stonework next to Yelena’s feet.

“Looks like you’ve already got that in spades, gal,” he said with a suppressed gulp. “So, why you helping these Gnolls out?”

She leaned back and faced him now. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Neither answered the other’s accusation. They let it hang in the air between Yelena – blissfully unaware of the silent war brewing just above her sickbed.

Finally, it was the girl that broke the uncomfortable silence with a sigh of her own.

“I don’t like you,” she said. “I don’t trust you. I don’t think you care about any of this.”

“You’re an astute girl for your age.”

“I’ve been through worse than you know.”

He chuckled. “Try me.”

Nothing this time. Nothing but a little gulp that told him there were skeletons in her closet, too. Things she couldn’t give voice too. But he could guess. His eyes served him better than any blade or arrow ever did. He could see the scars across her legs that probably drew a trail right up that skirt…and there was a certain flaring of her nostrils, a tensing of her features when she looked at him. He knew that look. He knew what it meant when a girl looked at a guy that way.

He knew that look all too well.

“Sooner or later,” he said. “We all get our dicks clipped. Or burned.”

She made to fly at him. “What-?”

“Look,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “You’re right not to trust me. Hell, not even Yelena likes me, really. But I’ll tell you this: I’ll be straight up and tell you I’m a scumbag through and through. I’ll tell you something else, too: I ain’t leaving here, now. Where this dumbass, pretty little Argent goes, I’ll be going, too.”

She stopped in her tracks and regarded him with the suspicions of a kitten about to be fed scraps from a picnic.

“That’s how it is?” she asked.

“That’s how it is.”

She looked between them both and then heaved a sigh that could have rivaled his own. A little puff of smoke escaped from her throat – a sign of what must have been rising in her at that moment. What exactly he’d said to make her stop, he didn’t know. But she walked towards the far wall of the room, slumped down to her knees, and closed her eyes.

“Eh,” Marius stuttered after a moment of hesitation. “You all good, Miss Lightbring-“

“Amara,” she said. “That’s my name, and I’m tired. I’m gonna rest here.”

He double blinked, only now feeling the sweat that had been building on his forehead.

As he wiped it away, he saw her smile.

“You ain’t afraid another hairy assassin’s gonna pounce on you again?”

“I’ve got Yelena’s little bodyguard to protect me here, don’t I?”

His voice caught in his throat. “Come agai-?”

Something flashed through the air that she’d thrown at him. Small and sharp – but he caught it by the handle.

A dagger.

Equipped Weapon: Keen Scorpirex Stinger

DMG: 8-15

Additional effects: 60% chance to apply status effect [POIS] on a successful sneak attack

POIS Duration: 5 secs.

“Made it myself,” Amara said as she drifted off to sleep. “Swords aren’t really my thing. Might not be a big dick, but it’s better than what you’re packing in your pants.”

And when she then settled down to her side of the room, Marius considered whether he wanted to laugh out loud or keep his amusement to himself.

Well, well, little Lightbringer, he thought. Maybe there’s something to you after all.

*assholes.