Cutthroats, criminals, and gang members are all too common in the Vast. The absolutely terrible government in Gribnik can be blamed for most of it. Offending a noble means a death sentence and, by the time most reach that point, they are woefully unsuited to the job market. As such, these people, poor and without proper education, seek crime as an alternative to starvation or [Thaumavore].
-Excerpt from ‘Traveling the World,’ By Gelnak
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Cecilia groaned as her eyes shot open. Instantly, a sharp soreness assaulted her. It was not a soreness that stemmed from her body or her mind, but one that flared and smouldered in the depths of her being. She sat up, half-remembering the events that brought her so much pain. She remembered tending to her bone-hawk, her childhood pet, and getting the report of what Rutli had been doing that day. She had always known about his tendency to do the grunt work himself —for entertainment, even, over distrust of his subordinates— and that he was not bright, but she was stunned at his lack of awareness.
The brute was threatening the life of a local worker to get some thief kid to help him with his shakedowns. She almost wanted to kill him for that. First of all, while a bit of bodily harm was an easy fix and barely a crime in the fight-happy city of Green Oasis, death was another matter entirely. The idiot could have been arrested just for saying something like that, but to use it as a way to threaten someone was just asking for him to get lynched in the street. Secondly, they had other people with similar skill sets, so threatening the kid was far from needed. And lastly, he was even stupid enough to get himself frozen to the floor by that random traveler.
Ignoring the anger at her subordinate’s incompetence, she tried to remember what happened after that. She definitely remembered speaking with Rutli and making plans to brutalize the girl who humiliated her second in command. Thinking back on it, she slightly regretted her actions; if she wanted to prove her group’s credibility and threat, she should have blown the skiff up. Thinking back on her plan to make Rutli take the fall for it, she realized that her anger at her subordinate made her make stupid plans.
After that, she remembered getting everyone in position and then… she almost felt like her mind was forcing her to forget what happened next. It was like a loved one tenderly holding her shoulders, saying that she was better off not knowing. She felt nothing like it before, but pushed past it nonetheless. Then the memories flooded in. She remembered locking gazes with the lich, fighting on the deck of its skiff, and being knocked out by the most painful thing she had ever felt. It was like a mace was flung against her being. She clearly remembered the scream she let out and how true it was. The pain was nothing like she ever felt, making being stabbed or shot feel like a relaxing massage by comparison.
With a sigh, she brought her turbulent mind back down to reality and calmed it. She stopped her introspection and turned her attention outward. She was in a cell, that much was certain. The air was drained of mana, making the place feel inexorably lifeless. She checked her own store of mana, the one she paid a few Trait slots for, and found it similarly drained of mana. She wore her normal clothes, but heavy cuffs were placed on her wrists, runes softly glowing. Even to her untrained mind, having the cuffs work in a mana-deprived cell was a feat of magical engineering genius. Fitting for a cell, the walls were made of bare stone and there was a heavy clocksteel door standing opposite her hard bed.
The only window in the whole cell in the door, barred vertically and horizontally to make it impossible to escape through, no matter how flexible one was. The only other thing in the cell besides the bed was a simple latrine she could use. Just as she finished examining the cell, someone banged on the barred window of the door. She turned and saw an orcish woman standing there, scowl on her face, “You’re awake. Good. I’ll be the one to ask you questions. Firstly, why did you attack that skiff?” she questioned.
Cecilia scowled. She was certainly thankful for [Universal Soul Language] for not having to translate the naturally atrocious accent of the orcs, but she was bemused by the orc’s question. She decided to throw out an answer, “The bitch on the skiff stole something that’s mine.” While her answer was not technically wrong, as the human woman did steal her gang’s honor, it would have implied other motives for her attack.
Cecilia had a bad feeling when she saw the orc woman’s face; they were thinking the exact same things at that moment, and her act of misdirection just landed her in hot waters, “So, what did she steal? Your pride? Your perfect record for shaking people down? The itty bitty pieces of your shattered ego?” the woman mocked, “You know I can just mark it down as ‘intentional and able-minded willing homicide’ and call it a day, right? Tell me why and you may get off with a light sentence.”
‘Bullshit,’ Cecilia thought. The powers that be would never, ever, go easy on her just because she played their games. She learned her lesson in Gribnik and Nolus and she did not need another one, “Maybe I did it as a satirical commentary on the corruption brought by those in power,” she said, grinning.
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The woman rolled her eyes, putting down her clipboard on something and weaving her arms into the cell’s window, “Look,” she said, “I get it. We already got the answer from your lackeys, about it being a message and all that. This whole thing is to get a read on your personality, free from the bias of the people you knew from before. Do you want to know what I’m getting? I’m getting the feeling of a broken woman, trying her best to put up a tough mask in fear of being exposed for the wreck she is. Even to herself.” Cecilia glared at the guard. She knew she was fine, was functional, and was about to interrupt the delusional guard when she was cut off, “You just thought I’m delusional, didn’t you?” she asked, showing amused eyes at Cecilia’s distrustful glare, “Look, I’ve run into your types all over the place. Hate to break it to you, but broken, paranoid guys and girls are a dime a dozen. I can probably guess your life story without knowing the first thing about you. Let’s see…” she trailed off, staring at Cecilia’s face, only scaled around her eyes, and her pupils, slits that ran down her yellow orbs of eyes.
“You were born in… let’s go with Gribnik, to a poor family. For the first stretch of your life, you were content with your parents and or siblings. Then a tragedy. Hmm… My guess is that your mother caught the attention of some spoiled, rich young noble and he… well, you can guess.” By that point, Cecilia was gritting her teeth. A few details were wrong, like how it was her father who caught the attention of a young noblewoman, but almost everything else was true. Seeing her clenched jaw, the orc guard sighed, “Right on the money, then. Let’s keep going, then. Your mother was… you knowed by this noble brat and your father was tortured or was forced to watch or some other cruel crap and killed. Learning of this, you spent the rest of your youth trying to get close to the guy, successfully killing him.”
Cecilia kept her teeth gritted. The woman was still mostly right, only getting the method of assassination wrong. She ran the noble bitch through with her own guard’s pike. The blood that splattering across the ground. The horrified, outraged expression of the woman. The fear of the guards. The sheer terror of the people around her. The feelings of elation that rose from her chest like a fountain. It was the most satisfying thing she had ever done in her life. And a random city guard working for a city half the vast over just guessed it as if it were a trashy romance novel. Cecilia Violta was not happy.
The orc obviously noticed Cecilia’s anger, as she half-heartedly raised her hands in front of her, “Calm down, there. Like I said, that sort of story is way more common than you would think. From here… well, that’s where there’s a lot of divergence. Do you want to know the fates of most who kill the nobility of Gribnik?” she asked.
While she did not want to play into the guard’s mindgames she was sure that she was curious, and she always had a soft spot for curiosity, “Fine, I’ll bite. What?”
The orcish woman smiled, as if she had won, and opened her palm. Suddenly, a little noose made of water floated above her hand, “They mostly die. Studies from researchers counting that stuff says that over two percent of the population will go on to offend a noble to the point that they are punished. Of those, around a tenth of them live to tell the tale, be it through escape or survival,” she explained. Cecilia was a bit stunned; she knew that Gribnik was a place where the nobles ruled with an iron fist, but she had no idea that almost one in fifty people would be killed because of it.
She caught herself before she lost herself in that train of thought. She was still a prisoner, stuck in a cell, being interrogated by a guard, though without as much outright torture she had dealt with in Nolus, “What’re you getting at?” Cecilia asked, nearly annoyed with the conversation.
The guard rolled her eyes, “Look,” she said, “I need to finish everything I’m saying or else you won’t get why. From there, after you left your old life behind, you probably traveled somewhere else: Nolus.” she stated. Cecilia was catching on to the guard’s pattern, so was not as surprised as she was before at the woman knowing where she went, “You went there because it’s where exiles and criminals go, right? Well, most do as well. From there, you became a small-time criminal —guessing based on your abilities, you were a small-time assassin— and made ends meet for a while.” She was almost correct; in Nolus, Cecilia was a thief by trade, but aspired to be an assassin, hence her skill with short blades and Traits, “Then you stepped into the dragon’s den, so to say. You got on the wrong side of some bigshot and got convicted in a phony trial. Seeing as you’re so young, you probably ran to the only place you could get away from it. Green Oasis.
“You wanted to know why I’m telling you this, don’t you? Well, what if I told you that, out of everyone I’ve had this discussion with, easily in the hundred by now, there’s only one person I couldn’t convince to work with the city guard?” she asked.
Cecilia narrowed her eyes, not daring to betray the surprise she felt, “That’s your angle? Recruitment drive? What would happen if, perhaps, someone doesn’t behave when they get out of their cell? What if a mass murderer does as they are wont to do and kills once more?” she asked aggressively.
The orc woman rolled her eyes, “I’ll have you know that I was a killer my first time here. I know what goes down, and let me tell you, if you act out, the corrective counselor will kick your ass into shape. That woman could probably treat a dragon like a misbehaving puppy and the dragon would be too scared to go against her.” She stopped for a moment, sighing, “Listen, normally, we let you inmates calm down for a month or two before we give our pitch, but we don’t have the time for that.”
Cecilia raised an eyebrow, “Go on,” she said.
“Aekan has fallen,” the guard said quickly. Cecilia’s jaw dropped and she went wide-eyed, “We need as many people as possible to clear the Hive, so we’re recruiting prisoners as an auxiliary force. Long story short, you’re not special and I’ve seen your kind a million times, but every person counts, so please help us out here. Will you join?”
Cecilia looked into the guard’s eyes, saw the sincerity in them, and clenched her fists, “Give me some time,” she said.
The guard simply nodded, pulling her arms out from the grated door, “That’s fine, but you need to make a choice soon. I’ll go get you something to eat.” The guard picked her clipboard up and walked away, her footsteps echoing down the hallway beyond the door as Cecilia Violta thought harder than she ever had before.