Grim finished pilling dirt on the shallow grave he had dug and walked out of the dark alleyway into the unlit street. He turned to the vagrant sat outside the alley and shook him from fake sleep. There had been nobody near him when he started the task and he’d felt eyes on him as he was getting closer to finish. Grim had no problem with the homeless, even going as far as to often use them in his business network when he could. Grim did have problems with the curious, Grim had problems with those who didn’t know their place.
Grim lost the fake smile when the body he was gently shaking failed to react to his presence. Snarling, Grim grabbed the sides of the downtrodden mans face. He stared into the dulled blue eyes of a man caked in filth and spat to the side in disgust and anger. Grim’s foul mood worsened as he gained more reason to hate the uncooperative creature. He swore at the vagrant in disgust in his home tongue. His emotion swelling with each passing second he stared at the disproportionate face. Grim slammed the sharp head of his shovel deep into the crumbling masonry of the houses foundations.
His eyes glittered red as he stared in silence. He spat into the man’s face and slammed his fist into the his weak cheek. The jaw dislocated as he fell to the ground whimpering. Grim lifted him by his face and stood, setting the damaged jawbone back in place. As Grim stared into the messy brown streaked eyes he became enraged and had to restrain himself from killing the vagrant on the spot, knowing it would be remarkably easy to snap the despicable things neck.
To find blue eyes was to find noble Heritage, and to find blue eyes in the dug meant something of foul repute had occurred. To find a blue eyes cursed with brown streaks…
This man had done something evil. He had committed a crime of a sexual nature, and judging by where he was it wasn’t simple adultery.
‘filth’ Grim growled.
The ugly man he held didn’t reply. His thin lips pressed together and his large nose releasing snorts like a panicked horse. His eyes were filled with contempt and fear, the tears in his eyes mixing the two into the gaze of a spiteful man. He was desperate, desperate enough to turn rat in this cesspit he fermented in. His dark soul craved the noble dressings he was born with, his foul mind wished for golden coverings to hide his hideous nature. It made him desperate, desperate enough to follow Grim to here, desperate enough to die. He would do anything to reach his once lofty status, he craved the wealth that used to deflect the eyes away from who he truly was. He would of sold Grim away readily for anything resembling what he once had.
Grim snarled and dropped the ex noble to the ground, it’s lip quivering as it tried to hold back the tears Grim was forcing from it.
‘Go cover the alley with your bowels, and I will let you live’ Grim refused to look at him as he dropped a single copper coin onto what was below him. ‘Tell no one’ Grim grabbed his shovel and fled fast. Five streets later a cry of rage escaped him and he slammed his fist into the side of a run down tavern.
It's wooden placard clattered to the ground loudly on one of the dug’s few cobbled streets. Breathing heavily Grim started moving once again, slipping through the shadows as if he was a part of their great shifting family- despite his monstrous physique. He vaulted a wall and jumped to a roof-just to jump down again into an alley. He moved without rhyme or reason, his path incomprehensible as he wallowed in great surging emotions. He didn’t seem to know what route he was taking, didn’t seem to be following any sort of path through the dark slum. His erratic trail impossible to follow and his flowing gait like the wind, lacking purpose. Yet when Grim stopped, he stopped exactly where he wanted to.
His large back rested against another tavern just as deteriorated as the rest-if a little larger in it’s size-and his seething breaths pushed out from between clenched, near perfect teeth. Grim was a large man in stature, and yet he was so small in profile. Those who knew him knew nothing and those who truly knew, they were in turn problematic. Grim was a secret whispered in the ears of people who talked empires into motion. He was a quiet force deep in a pit others in the dug lived scared of-scared of the sounds of him scuttling to the surface. There were more crime lords in the dug then the nobles had ever counted, There were so little of them who knew him. Grim was a giant who moved very quietly in the dark, but as Grim sat there behind his tavern, his hands clenched in the dirt, Grim was seemed very much human.
Grim seethed silently and his insides writhed in rage as he pictured the death of the man he had left outside the alley, over and over again. Tears fell down his cheeks fitfully and Grim began to choke out as he thought about what the man must have done. His entire body was tensed as he thought about what that person had gone through, what his sister had gone through. Grim shook as his fists closed around the dirt, his entire body vibrating. She was gone because of the actions Grim had taken. Grim hadn’t even know what she had gone through until he’d been told about her death. He’d distanced himself because he knew what would happen if they could connect them and yet he wasn’t there with her when it happened anyways. Grim had heard the whole story after the man had been hung and left rotting, killed for what he did. It had been months since he had been told about it, but the anniversary of the action was today.
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Grim slumped against the wall of the pub.
He stayed there limp as the tears stained him and didn’t move an inch in that empty alleyway. Grim couldn’t hold back the feelings anymore-the guilt. It was deadening, a crushing weight made un-liftable by sapped limbs. Grim couldn’t hold himself to what he had become. He laid awash in shame and guilt and wallowed in weakness. Grim was a myth he told himself, I am more then a man-more then this. He couldn’t make himself listen. A myth didn’t fall like this.
Hours passed while Grim stayed shattered, mourning a sister he’d not even let himself know. The weight In his limbs didn’t lessen and Grim realised it would take more will for him to function then he was giving. He lay in the alley until the first lights of day brightened his vision. Grim stood up and wiped his face with his blood dried sleeve. He admonished himself for his actions seeing his own vulnerability as an exploitable weakness-although really Grim felt a sense of relief. He stumbled along the back wall of the big building and his hands trailed the stone. Eventually his hands felt the section that felt firmer then the rest and Grim took a step back from the wall. Grim lunged forward at the wall and pushed forward with all the force he could muster in his current state, the hidden door grinded as it opened.
Grim entered the back of the reverb to his room there and walked toward the wall where a pipe rested. Grin’s room was rustic and wood panelled. His bed was black and the wall facing out into the street was covered in plants hung from the wall. He’d asked a poisoner to fill the pots with plants he could safely live with and yet also use to deal with people in a more subtle way. The result was a number of quite exotic plants brightening up the otherwise boring room. Other then that there was a chest and drawers and a mirror on the wall across from the bed and a door to the bathroom that blended in with the wall. Other then that the room was empty. There was a long bar hung from the ceiling Grim used to train himself, but that was it as far as ornamentations went. Grim reached the three bronze pipes that sat on his bedroom wall and dropped the blue paper down the one with the blue rimmed top. The other two pipes included a purple colouring and a black. He waited for the water to arrive as he stood still behind the door.
After a while there was knock on the door and he opened it to see the retreating back of the servants that had carried up large basket full of water. Grim grabbed the container by each handle and carried it through to his bathroom. Once there he paused and filled his watering can with the clean water. He dropped some dirt rubbed in various metal filings into the pot and left it on his chest of drawers. Grim locked the bathroom door and poured the water into his silver bathtub. He threw two bars of soap into the full tub after it was full and stuck his hand into the cold water. Slowly, Grim sifted the temperature of the water to heat he could barley handle. Grim always felt tired after using his magic, but he figured that meant he was training it like any other muscle, so he let that felling encourage him if nothing else.
Bath heated and soap dissolving he went back to his room and opined the bronze lockbox fixed on the wall next to the piping. He shifted through the bunched up balls of paper until he found a golden one, he then dropped this through the purple tube.
Grim was a discrete man. He was so discrete in fact that the only way people knew about Grim was through him telling them or ordering they be told about his existence, Grim existed as much as he decided he needed to. That’s why as he dropped down the golden paper into the purple tune Grim summoned his ‘boss’ into his room to meet with him. Grim had long ago decided that to truly not exist, you had to exist as something else, therefore making it impossible for you to be anything else.
For Grim this meant becoming a simple cog in a large unsavoury machine. Of course with his capabilities he often didn’t stay as such as small cog but for now Grim was content with his role in this latest organisation. He was not a leader in any sense, but the ‘boss’ viewed him as important all the same; That was why a message was currently being sent to this ‘boss’ to let him know a Tobus ,who was truly Grim, would be meeting him in the square outside his office in a couple of hours to talk about the problem he had just buried.Grim didn’t particularly enjoy doing the dirty work of those lesser then him, but he could humble himself to such a level when necessary. After all, the ‘boss’ knew Grin existed, which meant Grim was here to plant that seeds that would flourish when he died.
When Grim’s name was whispered in your ear, it wasn’t because he wanted you to know he was alive, it was because he was warning you that you were already dead. So far nobody had managed to realise that- likely because everyone who could tell them this fact has been murdered.