If you gaze long enough into an abyss.
The abyss will gaze back into you.
----------------------------------------
“They are beneath the trap door in the wine cellar, It's right under the rug.” The guard whispered in the darkness, his voice quivering.
I brought my Sul enhanced knife closer to his neck, so close that it started to draw blood from his neck. “And the key?” I whispered back.
“T-there is none, you’ll need to lift the entire chunk of stone slab up to open it. Please, let me go, I have a wife and daug-”
Liar. I swiftly slit his throat and put a hand over his mouth, so that he wouldn’t make so much noise.
After he stopped struggling, I gently put his corpse inside a closet and silently walked away, making sure not to look at his eyes.
There was no point in keeping him alive, people like him who knowingly let families get torn apart, who let people get enslaved and kept in the dark, are not people in the first place.
Those people are no better than demons.
I walked through the giant lit mansion. Unlike the other mansions that I had snuck into before, this one was laid right outside the circle of the highest nobles.
Which meant that there were more than one guard and a couple of servants.
I silently made my way through the mansion, using a shard of a mirror to look around the corners, avoiding anyone who could sound an alarm and killing anyone who had their back turned against me.
I couldn’t get caught. It was already pretty known by the public and the church that someone was hunting nobles.
It became so dire, to the point that the church had started to send the inquisitors they had on night patrols. They had even wanted to make a trap at one of the noble houses, but it backfired as the noble didn’t want anything to do with executives of the church in his mansion.
Considering the fact that he had slaves at a dungeon, hidden behind an entire closet inside his room. I guessed that he didn’t want them to find out anything, but. He was already dead, killed by a knife in the back of his throat, so there was no way to find out anymore.
I made my way into the cellar after I swept the entire mansion. With the servants, guards, and the noble and his wife, all dead. There would be no one left to stop me or the slaves from getting out of the mansion.
And so I walked freely into the cellar, found the mismatched stone slab and lifted it up. As it dropped on the floor, the ground beneath it cracked.
All of those hidden passages to the underground were once built to protect the nobles from the demon hordes, approximately five hundred years ago. But they clearly lost their purpose.
I took a lit lantern and made my way down the dark passage. The familiar foul smell entered my nose and I remembered all the times in which I managed to get the slaves out.
Out of everything, from sneaking into the mansion and killing everyone, saving the slaves was the hardest part.
I made sure to not look away as our eyes met. Women, men, and children, all ragged and dirty, looked back at me.
I silently placed my hands on the bars of the cells, infused my arms with Sul, and pulled.
The bars creaked and bent.
The eyes of the slaves widened and some of them quickly tried to get away from the bars.
“You are free.” I said and turned back, I slowly made my way up and out of the dungeon, into the cellar, and from there into the main doors of the mansion.
“Wait!” I heard a weak voice call out behind me.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, preparing myself for the worse.
As I turned, I saw the young man look at me, his breath ragged and his face sweaty. He could barely stand right. “...Please… What are we… Supposed to do now?” He asked between heavy breaths.
My tongue felt as heavy as led, I focused on my Sul, feeling the warmth in my stomach. “Survive.” I answered simply. “Don’t pawn off the noble’s valuables, you’ll be found by the police and get thrown into another cell. Don’t go to the church, they will silence you the moment you would even talk of this occasion. Just, survive.”
“But what about the children?!” He wheezed out and coughed a horrible cough. “They- They can’t even walk right. What about them?!” He didn’t look away as I stared at him. His eyes bore into mine, with the same intensity the other slaves I had saved had.
I gritted my teeth, turned away, and made my way out of the mansion.
“Hey! Hey! Come back! Please!” I heard the young man shout, but I didn’t turn around.
I had already helped them, anything beyond that point would be nothing more than a burden, a burden that denied other slaves from being freed. A burden that denied the nobles from facing punishments for their faults.
If I survived on my own, they could too.
My fight was my own, and their fight belonged to them.
With a little leep, I was at the top of a building, making my way through the rooftops.
But what about the children? The small voice of the man I had left sounded in my mind, alongside Mother’s faint curses.
I used a bit more Sul and jumped high into the air. feeling the cold wind against my face I smiled and the voices lessened into faint murmuring in the darkest corner of my head.
From the sky, in the darkness of the night, Valinia looked gloomy, the dark stone buildings, whether the big ones or the small ones, looked small and somewhat dead. Even though there were families living in them.
In the higher echelon of the city, those families would be happy families. Families that had food on their tables, families that weren’t abandoned by their family members. Families that didn’t need to sell their bodies to utter strangers in order to live through winter.
Your fault. Mother’s faint voice returned, becoming a recognizable voice instead of a murmur.
When I finally landed on the next rooftop, I stumbled to my knees, feeling my stomach twirl, as I slowly started to think more and more of what I have done. Of the blood and sudden shrikes as both guards and servants died at my hands, without ever knowing what or who killed them.
I’m… No better than them?
I’m the only one who can do it, the only one who can bring punishment to the ones at fault. It is either them, or me. My fault or theirs.
My breathing started to get faster, and I couldn’t concentrate on my Sul. The vision in the corners of my sight started to darken, and my chest felt heavy.
Until I sensed Sul, not inside me, somewhere far from me. But, it was slowly getting closer.
My mind grew cold. My rampant thoughts, dark and loud, were silenced, as if they never existed.
I snapped in the direction of the source of Sul and saw a white robe illuminated by the moonlight and fluttering in the wind, covering a speeding masked figure.
An inquisitor.
He was close, too close for comfort.
I forced my body to move, my lounges to take air and breath, my eyes to focus.
With Sul in my body, I dropped down to the streets and ran.
Corner to corner, district to district.
“By the name of the church, I order you to stop!” I heard him yell from atop the rooftops.
His voice was thunder, crystal clear to my ears. But I remained cool, I knew where I was, and from the blurry shadow that his figure cast upon the cobblestone, I could tell that I was faster and that he was lagging behind.
Before I knew it, my hand was already holding the lid of the sewer in the air, and made my way down to the dark sewers.
I stopped using Sul and silently made my way through.
The only source of light was the small strands of moonlight, shining through the various drainage holes.
“You are suspected for committing multiple accounts of murder! Reveal yourself at once!” I heard the inquisitor yell from somewhere inside the sewer, his voice echoed to no end, like a hunted ghost.
He clearly knew that I was inside the sewer, but besides that, he had no clue of how to find me.
For as much as they were the so called protectors and overseers of the city, their knowledge over the complex sewer system was highly lacking.
For a time I silently made my way, stepping over dead rats, making sure that my feet didn’t touch any puddles of water.
“If you come out now! You will face judgment in front of the high court instead of being hunted and executed! You can’t keep killing innocent people! You can’t keep running away from your crimes!”
I stopped.
Me? A criminal? Me? They butchered children like they were nothing more than flesh puppets meant to be torn apart. They let the nobles use people, keep them in the darkest dump hole, and he calls them innocent?!
I clenched my feet and gritted my teeth. I heard a water puddle splash in the distance.
He is no better than the nobles. I turned back and listened.
A rat squeaked in fear, somewhere close, but in a completely different tunnel.
I’m done running. I thought to myself and realized that my mind was no longer cold and calculative.
My entire body was warm, and for a moment my entire body felt as if a thousand spiders crawled over it and stung me in different places.
I crouched and slowly made my way to the last place in which I heard a sound.
The inquisitor might have stopped using Sul himself, but he wasn’t used to the sewers like I was.
I’m no longer going to run away from you, you are no longer going to hurt me or any other person.
I heard footsteps slow at first, until a grunt sounded out. “Curses.” The inquisitor's voice echoed through the sewer and the footsteps grew faster and distant.
For a moment my mind told me to wait until he goes, until he leaves me alone, so that I could survive.
You are not leaving this place.
I made a detour and waited further up in the inquisitor’s path.
When he was right upon me, I infused Sul both into my body and into my daggers, and lashed at him.
The inquisitor, although surprised, managed to dodge a deep cut. He ignored his slashed chest and sent an arm towards me in a blur.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Without thinking, I got back into the deep darkness, stopped using Sul, went past another tunnel and a drainage hole, and waited.
The inquisitor lost me, but this time I heard him run, not towards me, but away. further from me.
He was running away.
No.
I took shortcuts and in a matter of moments I was ahead of his path again. This time I remained still until he ran past me.
I stepped out of the corner, took my dagger by the tip of the blade and threw it at his back, between his shoulder blades.
With dexterity that I had never seen before, the inquisitor bent his body at the last moment and the dagger hit his shoulder. With him using Sul at the last half of a second, only half of the blade entered his shoulder.
I entered the darkness again and the inquisitor kept running away.
This time however the inquisitor was closer to one of the sewer lids, and before I could reach him again I heard the lid open and sensed the inquisitor get out.
But instead of running away, I felt him rise to one of the rooftops and wait.
My eyes twitched as I realized he was waiting for me.
I knew.
I knew what was right.
I knew I shouldn’t chase, that I should get away, that it was too dangerous, that I didn’t survive and fight all the way to this point only to get killed.
Your fault. Mother’s voice whispered in the back of my head.
My feet carried me to a different exit, I covered my face as best as I could with my ragged hood, and made my way out to the rooftops.
The inquisitor, whose white robe was now covered in sewer stains and a surprisingly little amount of blood, threw the knife embedded in his back to the streets below and turned to look at me.
Only when our eyes met, my heart froze and I realized the utter stupidity of my actions.
I remembered the last time I saw an inquisitor soo close, tearing, butchering children, like a devil, like a hurricane. An utter force of carnage.
Your fault.
“Surrender now. And you will go through the court of law.” He said, his posture and voice serene, as if he wasn’t stabbed and bleeding.
I couldn’t help but scoff, my heart unfroze and started to beat, faster and harder. I was about to jump to his rooftop when my mind turned cold.
It’s not my territory anymore. I thought to myself, and analyzed the unmoving inquisitor.
I realized two things, the first was that he wasn’t bleeding from his wounds. And the second was that he was missing an entire arm, the robe managed to hide it until a gust of wind revealed it.
I can kill him, I can do it.
I twirled my remaining knife to a stance and the inquisitor stepped into a stance of his own, his one arm raised and his hand clenched.
I jumped forward to his rooftop while he jumped backward into another one behind him. I kept the chase, jumping and dashing, taking shortcuts on certain rooftops, until we both landed on the same rooftop.
With a dash and a swipe of my arm, I tried to slash him but failed as he dogged it. Instead of retaliating, the inquisitor took a step back and waited, his eyes stern but calm.
Why did he wait for me atop if he only planned to flee?
“What are you playing at?!” I roared, my heartbeat spiked as I tried to make sense of his game.
“Playing?” The inquisitor took a step forward and I instinctively took a step backwards. “Are you not the noble killer? You are the one who killed lord Edmuned tonight, aren’t you?”
I clenched my teeth and tightened my grip on the knife.
“Was it another noble who paid you for this job? Who sent you?”
The inquisitor took another step forward and I stepped another one backwards.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
The inquisitor stopped and so did I.
“You asked me what game I'm playing. But, it seems as if you are playing one by yourself. We know that someone hired you to kill those noblemen. Was it one of the high nobles of Valles? Or Orlet? Why do they want the supporters of the church dead? Why do they want to postpone the retake of Dresa?”
I blinked a couple of times. “What?” I blurted out and quickly jumped back as the inquisitor dashed towards me.
I was too slow.
He caught up to me and kicked me in the stomach. I managed to protect myself, but the inquisitor didn’t relent, he kept kicking me and I simply kept defending.
One of his kicks hit me in the leg and I stumbled. Before he could kick me again I jumped as high as I could, feeling the cold wind push against me until I landed hard on another rooftop.
This time the inquisitor didn’t follow and I noticed that I lost my knife without even noticing and that my entire body was shaking, like a dog who was standing in the freezing cold.
I found it hard to even look at his direction, especially after I had basically ran away the entire fight.
“You… Are you really the assassin?” The inquisitor asked, his voice hard but calm. “Surrender now, or I’ll make you submit.”
His words sank into my mind and my vision immediately turned red. “Don’t fuck with me!” I roared and my body stopped shaking, my heart thumped in my ears and my face grew hot.
We both jumped to the same rooftop and dashed at each other, this time, I let him hit me, but I kept pushing.
After the first two kicks, I was too close for him to kick. His single arm shot out and punched me in the face, to which I tackled him to the surface of the roof.
His legs wrapped around me, and he managed to hit me once in the face with his elbow, but that's all, simply because of the fact that I was able to hold his arm with one of my own.
A wide grin took over my face while his eyes remained stern.
I started bashing his face with my other hand, from simple punches to elbow hits, until his mask broke, revealing a heavily scarred face.
I was about to throw another punch when he relaxed his legs and threw his hips up, throwing me off him into the surface of the roof. In half a second he was already up throwing a kick at my ribs.
The kick was so powerful that it sent me flying into a house through it’s balcony.
I somehow managed to get up to my feet in time to see the inquisitor get through the balcony and march to me.
Without thinking I grabbed the closet thing next to me, an entire table, and threw it at him. But, with the same dexterity he showed in the sewers he managed to crouch so low that the table flew straight over him into the street, making a loud crashing sound.
I didn’t idle, before he fully got up from his low crouching position, I charged at him, grabbed him by the waist and threw ourselves outside the building.
The inquisitor managed to hit me twice in the head with his elbow until we fell on the ground, making the side of my head feel bloated with pain.
On the ground we struggled, until I managed to hold his arm again and started to hit him in the bare face again. I managed to land a few punches until he threw me off him with his hips again.
Instead of kicking me again, he sat on me and started to punch me swiftly.
I managed to defend my face with my two hands, but he started to hit me on my ribs making them feel as if they were about to crack.
I remembered what he did to me and tried to throw him off me with my hips, but his form was tight and firm, not giving me any chances.
Until.
A glint from the side took my attention, my dagger, the first dagger I threw at him, the dagger that he threw off the building.
A wide grin nearly formed on my face, but the punches were a grim and painful reminder of my situation.
With both my hands, my hips, and a large portion of Sul, I managed to throw him off me into a nearby building with only a couple of hard hits to my head.
I sensed him regaining his composure and making his way to me.
I crawled on the floor to the dagger, grabbed it, and with a quick turn I blindly swung and hit something.
I looked eyes with the inquisitor, and the inquisitor stared at the dagger stuck at his ribs with wide eyes. Without thinking I tried to pull the dagger out, but I couldn’t. It took me a second to understand that the inquisitor was holding it inside him using Sul.
I watched in stupor at it, as he raised his hand and punched me again in the face with a grunt.
Stars took my sight and the world was spinning.
When I finally came to my senses, the inquisitor was kneeling in front of me, breathing heavily.
I smiled, tasting iron in my mouth.
I won.
Slowly, I got up and stumbled as the world spun. I tried again, to a smaller failure of not being able to stand straight.
I won?
“Just… Tell me. Why?” The inquisitor asked between grunts. “Why… Kill all of those innocent people… Who would gain from this?”
“...Innocent?” I spat out, slowly feeling increasing pain in my ribs, legs and head. “Innocent?! You, and the nobles, are nothing but trash! You kill and use children like they were nothing! You are the reason! You are the reason that…!”
My body started to shake uncontrollably, with every ounce of fighting spirit I had leaving my body, I felt hollow and broken, shaking from the growing aching pain.
“You are the reason that my mom died! It is all your fault! You were supposed to protect us! To help us! But instead you let us die like rats in the sewers!” My voice cracked and faltered, and my eyes started to get blurry.
I quickly wiped my eyes and stared at the inquisitor who was looking at me with wide eyes.
Your fault.
I clenched my teeth, and stumbled towards the inquisitor, planning on finishing the job. But the world was still spinning and the inquisitor dragged himself away from me.
“S-someone! Someone call the police!”
“They are fighting in the streets!”
I froze as I heard shouts from one of the buildings.
I looked around and realized that all of the windows were aglow with light, some of them were filled with onlookers. At the same moment my mind turned cold and I sensed other sources of Sul approaching.
The inquisitor managed to get to his feet, even with a dagger inside his ribs. Though his expression was grim his eyes were still stern.
For a moment I wanted to finish what I started, to fight, not to run away.
But my body was shaking and hurting.
Whatever anger had possessed me before was gone, like a candle light snuffed in the cold winds.
I ran.
I ran into the sewers, like the rat I was.
And they lost me.
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I always managed to kill without being found in the first place.
A quick stab in the throat, a strong snap of the neck.
But the inquisitor, he knew how to fight, he knew how to get me off him, he knew how to use Sul better than I did. The only reason he didn’t win was because of pure luck.
The dagger that he threw off the building was the only reason why I wasn’t stuck inside a dungeon, being tortured to death.
If it was the same inquisitor from the first mansion, would I have been able to stand against him for more than a moment? I thought to myself I traveled through the sewers.
After last night’s situation I had decided that even the slums were a bit too dangerous. And even if the thief’s guild was to spot me, they'd rather not deal with another Sul user.
I looked down at the sewer drainage water and saw my reflection.
Bruised and tethered face stared back at me.
My brown hair looked messy and dirty, my brown eyes had deep dark circles around them and they had a far away look, distant and eerily familiar.
I looked away as I felt shivers run through my spine.
I started to spend time in the sewers, often making my way into the lowest levels, making sure to avoid any tunnel marked with the thieves guild mark, a circle filled with straight lines.
The lower levels were in of themselves an entire small city, though dark, the small light that spilled through the small openings was its lighting. Made of piss and shit, moss and rats, tunnels, large drain pipes and steam pipes.
After I got used to the awful smell, I came to understand that the lower level had its own kind of beauty.
like snow in the winter, which beautifies everything it touches but at the same time causes your body to freeze, making your fingers cold and blue.
The lower levels had their own beauty, going through enough shit, piss and dead rats would lead to a colossal convergence point. A giant hole which all the water fell into. It had a few thin metal bridges and the walls had sections filled with giant moving wheels.
Like a giant clock.
I realized that apparently, almost everything in life has its own good and bad. The snow was beautiful but cold. The sewers were literally full of shit, but they were complex and magnificent.
Days slowly and calmly passed. I let my body rest and at the same time let the situation outside calm down. After my fight, the church hasn’t been pulling back, they had been putting more forces outside during day and night looking for anyone suspicious.
One stolen newspaper detailed the occasion as: ‘Noble killer still on the loose! One inquisitor was heavily injured in combat.’ I didn’t know what to think about the title ‘Noble killer’ Nor about the inquisitor, so, I didn’t think about it.
Instead, I rested. Enjoying the calm waterfall like sounds, only stealing food when I needed. And sometimes, with dark enjoyment and embarrassment, I pissed from the metal bridges into the void below.
One day, as I was sitting and resting on one of the metal bridges, thinking about how the giant wheels kept turning and spinning, one of the giant sewer pipes caught my attention.
And whatever beauty I found in the lower levels was gone.
As torn limbs and body parts, some too small to be an adult’s, flowed from the sewer pipe into the giant hole below.
Into the abyss.
One of the body parts was a head.
A head of the same person I had ‘saved’ from the noble a couple of days before, the same person who begged for help, the same person I left to die.
As the head twisted and turned in the air, I could see for a split second its socketless eyes stare into me.
Your fault. I heard Mother’s voice as the head was swallowed by the abyss below. And for what seemed like an hour, I kept gazing into the abyss.
I realized that no matter where, the world would continue to hunt me down. No matter where, there will always be people that need to be stopped. And if I would stand by while evil thrived and I would be no better.
It was my fault Mother died. She was the first person I killed indirectly. I always knew that as a fact. I was always a worthless person. If only I did more to help, if only I wasn't a burden, she could have lived, we could have been happy.
It was my fault when the old lady died. I pushed her to the ground when she simply tried to help me, she was already sick, I only made it worse.
It was my fault, when the first slaves I tried to save died. I could have dashed forward, to buy them some time, take on the bullets or simply distract him until they fled. Instead, I froze as they were torn apart.
It was my fault that person died, it doesn’t matter how he ended like that, though I had my strong suspicion on the inquisitors from that night, who knew that I was at the nobleman’s mansion, after all, who would tear people apart like that other than them.
It was my fault.
Now it was my punishment, to make things right or die.
I rose up from my sitting position and forced myself to look away from the abyss.
I felt something warm drip from my hands, I looked down and found them clenched. Clenched so tightly until they started to bleed.
I knew that something was burning inside me, it felt like the anger that filled me when the inquisitor looked down on me, when I ran away from battle.
But instead of warmth, I felt only coldness, burning coldness that slowly ate my entire being.
Pure hatred.