My brother won't leave me, even when I can't see him he's not really gone. He's a good brother. He smells of mom. Mom left, she didn't have a choice, my brother isn't like mom, he has choices he is strong. I'm waiting for my brother, not waiting for him to come because he is already here but like a shadow sometimes I can't see him, so I wait to see. He will tell me stories of mom and me, I will smile, he's not a very good storyteller so I will help. I am a much better storyteller but I don't say so often, if I do he wouldn't tell me any stories. When I sleep tonight my brother will hold me, I will have choices, I will be strong my brother won't leave.

A raven's whispers.

The sun was high above the secluded town of Tenlight yet the entire town was quiet. Its shops were empty and it's farms abandoned. The citizens could smell strife in the air. The last battle had been days ago yet no one was fulled into thinking it was over. To the people who lived there who won or lost didn't matter so long as it was not the Staves, horrible people them, and so long as they did it quickly. The little town could not survive another month of this.

Avin Crow was dealing with his self-destructive anger in the manner he felt most enjoyable, a spar with someone who could hit back. In this case his opponent was much larger and stronger than him to make up for the difference in skill. It also helped that his opponents mind wasn’t muddled… yet. Soon he might take away the man’s self-will and replace it with a desire to please him but for now it would be good to have someone who could hit him without reservations.

Avin Crow had been surprised when he first met his opponent, many were the man was an inch short of seven feet but that wasn’t what surprised Avin. The man was a War God deviant as most deviated men were, of the seed lust, physically aspected, and ability regeneration.

Normally what that meant was that said person could take hits much better than he could serve them but not the seven foot giant commonly known as Walrus. He had pushed his ability to the limit and used it to carve himself a body of breath taking power, the regeneration ability not only healed wounds it allowed the bearer to push his body further than it could go pretty much till it fell apart and then it would stitch it back together. Do this enough times and the results were inhuman strength and stamina but it took will, incredible will to accomplish it without the proper conditions and resources and Walrus had proven he had that. The man could trade punches with almost any warrior who had the ability of strength and easily come out on top. The problem was that was it, for all his ability to crush bones and regrow them, outside of a slugfest his sloppy lack of muscle control made him easy to best.

Swoosh a massive fist narrowly missed the Avin’s head as he deliberated on what to do with the giant. It didn’t bother him though, he could have put more distance

between himself and the fist. After all with Walrus’s body language he might as

well have screamed I’ll be swinging my right fist now and take note I am aiming

for your head. Fwoom the left fist came racing after the right. Avin ducked and

slipped past the Walrus’ large frame, a frame which subsequently lost balance and took a couple of steps forwarded. Before he could regain balance Avin gave him a forceful nudge with his foot and the larger man’s face met with the floor.

Honestly how could two measly brats escape him? They… his… dammit! His to do with as he pleased! But they hadn’t taken his mercy when he offered it, they could have been friends but now he would have to kill them. Not for injuring him, no that had solved been with a small dose of disideum, not even for threatening to kill him, friends say such things after all but for denying his offer at friendship even after he had proven he was more powerful than not just them but the combined might of their allies as well.

The giant was back on his feet, Avin observed him, trying to decide how best to defeat the man, normally he would have tried to tire out an opponent much stronger and more resilient than himself but a man like Walrus would be standing long after he was spent no matter how skillful he was. Any damage he did to the man would undone long before he could accumulate enough wounds to drop him and perhaps most painfully of all, the giants head was well out of his reach.

The giant tried to kick this time, Avin bent backwards in response and watched the

leg sail over his face. As soon as the Walrus’ leg touched the ground Avin let loose a barrage of swift, clean kicks that forced the Walrus’ legs to give away. Even before the man had dropped to his knees Avin delivered a deadly set of punches that slipped past the giant’s rather poor attempts at blocking. The giant tried some sloppy counter punches, even on his knees but Avin danced around them without losing the rhythm of his own strikes.

Finally the giant’s head dropped low enough, Avin didn’t waste a second, and slammed his knee into the giants head with as much force as he could muster. The giant lay at his feet, now the fight was over, the large man just didn’t know it yet. Avin kept a steady stream of kicks flying at the giants head careful not to let the man grab him. It took a while but Avin finally decided the Walrus had lost the will to fight at that point he stopped kicking the man and crouched so they could look each other in the face.

The expression on the Walrus’ face didn’t look like someone who had given up, it was closer to a man who was bidding his time more than anything else.

“I admire you, I am a Crow and Crow’s believe in the strength of a man’s will,

follow me and in turn I will teach you how to destroy enemies far stronger than

yourself, I will teach you just how deep your own strength runs. Follow me and

you might become an unstoppable force. I leave you to reflect on it”

Avin rose and turned to the door, oh well his opponent couldn’t hit but back he had still enjoyed it. In his own way the Walrus had been quite the opponent and there was something to be said about being one punch away from becoming paste.

“Wait… I’ll follow”

Avin smiled, today was a good day nothing like yesterday at least the Walrus

understood how it worked not like the runners. He would deal with them, Gerald, Kael and Elvyah he would deal with all of them. The was no where to hide, a new era was begining and it was not one that would shelter his enenies. Master didn’t need to hear about them, they were insignificant, all he needed to do was teach them why it was a mistake to refuse an offer of friendship from Avin Crow. And so even as a twelve year old Avin Crow strolled towards his office, planning how to absorb the sole remaining opposing force in Tenlight, the Tenlight family with minimal casualties, a manic grin split his face.

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Carl, formerly known as the Wanton Demolisher sat on a large mattress in his son's old room. For some reason his new master found assigning him the room funny, Carl didn't get it and he didn't care to, he had important decisions to make.

Carl had made it to the age of forty three in a world where near fifty percent of infants died in their first week of life. He had come a long way, of that there was no doubt. Sure there had been bumps, ups and downs but he rode them out, did the distance and now he was here.

Yet where was here exactly? He had a lot to think about and time was short. Who did he owe and what was he owed, the summation of life in his opinion. Give and take..., some people were givers, whether willingly or unwillingly, it was what they were, others were takers, whether they confessed to it or not. Carl was a taker, he had no doubts about that but when you were dealing with other takers you had to make sure you got your due or you risked losing everything. Even a taker could be taken from.

He was owed and so he would collect, Avin Crow had attempted to enslave him and done a poor job of it too. The attempt wasn't what indebted Avin to him, it was the failure to do it right. Yet Carl had stayed, served even and for that too he was owed but... how much?

Carl's mind took him back to the day everything changed. Utter defeat, his men had fallen like stringless puppets behind him and the enemy loomed ahead undaunted and whole. Yet he, he stood broken, that was defeat and for that his guild, his men, his son, they were taken from him. He had no claims to them, he had lost that. If he wanted that he would have to pay the price, but he didn't want that, not really. They had always been a means, it was the end that he craved. Now though the end could be achieved without them and so their loss meant little.

After his defeat, Avin had pumped him full of some strange transparent liquid and for the third time in his life Carl loved someone. Truly loved someone. It ended like all the others, suddenly and painfully, with him feeling like someone had wrenched his insides out and forced him to look at them. Only in this case it was true, one of his three perks had taken whatever it was Avin had put in him and forced it out. Love never lasted long and it didn't end well either.

Three times Carl had seen it fail. His father, his father had failed himself, had failed Carl and then he died, sudden and painful. His fire spitter, his precious jewel, she gave him a son, one that was all her and none of him and then she died leaving him with a painful reminder of what was lost. His master, he had warped what it meant to be Carl but it was not meant to last and so he failed and Carl was himself again. All three times he hadn't seen the end coming, all three times the pain had left him scarred.

And so here he was, Avin failed to enslave Carl properly and yet Carl remained a slave. That meant Carl was owed and what he was owed he would collect. Carl stayed because Avin might just unite the forces of Tenlight and a united Tenlight was the perfect means to his desired end. His third perk had to be satiated, Carl needed more.

Deviants were always different from men, that was the point really, to be a man was to be weak, it was to be a giver. To be a deviant was a chance, the chance to take. Yet they all shared something with men, they craved, wanted, lusted, they had desires. It was so with Carl, he wanted more, he wanted to take more, give less again and again until he took all and gave nothing. The solution was simple, he had to be more deviant and less man. For a run of the mill, physical War deviant this was just a pipe dream but Carl was different. He had a chance, a chance to take it all. His third perk was his chance.

Perks were extras, subtle advantages given to some deviants and denied others. They were often pathetic on tjeir own but deadly when used together with deviations. If Deviants were the Hods chosen, the deviants with perks were their chosen favourites.

As War God deviant his perks were related to his 'seed'. The seeds of war were rumored to be causes of strife and conflict, there harbringers of war. Pride, sloth, envy, gluttony, rage, greed and lust. He had known his seed the moment he deviated in a lot ways he had felt it all his life, Carl felt a hunger that would not be filled, his was the bottomless seed of gluttony. His first two perks had come together the way it was supposed to be done, roughly two months after he deviated. The first one, heightened his sense of smell and gave him the peculiar ability of being able to tell what was poisonous from what wasn't. The second rendered the first pointless, it forced his body to reject any substance it considered harmful or lacking in benefits. Unlike the first it had always been useful it had allowed him to eat fruits corrupted by despair whether poisonous or not, keeping the benefits and discarding the rest. It saved him from being Avin's puppet.

The third perk came last it hadn't acted like a perk, it didn't even feel like a perk but what else could it be? It came like a terrible fever, leaving him bedridden and delirious for a week? Three days? He wasn't sure but when it passed, he was different. Every common physically aspected War deviant, barring balanced types got a boosts in relation to the other types, agility, cognition, perception, regeneration, strength and control. A slight boost that grew as their main aspect grew but always remained weak enough that it was in the background merely supporting the true aspect.

For Carl that changed, he was suddenly capable of using all his aspects to frightening degrees, in the beginning he thought he had somehow transitioned into being balanced, but i his main aspect ,strength, had superceded the others by an absurd margin. He was still strength aspected, he had just been gifted a decade of growth, maybe more more. That was the beginning of his ascent from trusted subordinate to guild leader. As if it wasn't enough every time he killed a corrupted being, the perk. He could feel the things it had eaten from his dead foes trapped within it but he couldn't reach them. But what if he could fill it with more dead than it could hold, if he could open it from the inside. He would neeed to kill a lot of beasts or a towns worth of deviants, whatever came first.

Leaving Tenlight with Kael would have ended his plans or delayed them for years. He needed a team that could take on powerful beasts and if they failed serve as powerful replacements.

He had no wish to watch his son die to some foul beast or even kill the boy himself, if that happened the last piece of her would gone. So he sent the boy off, to die where he couldn't watch and stayed here were he would have the support and resources necessary to complete his goal. And to do it he would take from Avin Crow what he was owed. Avin tried to take his will from him, his life. It was fitting a life for a life.