Perhaps there had been a time when she would have cried. Perhaps that time wasn’t one far removed from the now. Seems time doesn’t need a lot of it to mold and dull you into a numb husk of what once was.
Kellen was dead alright. Deader than mud, face all pulped up as it were. Fucking Tempests. Would be just `their luck to run into not one, but two, and on the way back from a tiring and failed job. Withered muscles and withered spirits amass in such defeats as Young Kellen met.
Young Kellen, but truth is he weren’t but a few years behind her. A good sort, probably too good a sort for this sorry lot anyhow. One always to pick at scruples none of them had. She couldn’t help but wonder if had he been gifted the opportunity to stay breathing a bit longer if some of that good-sortedness would rub off on her. Aye, a good sort. But still no tears shed over him. A shame. Good pair of boots though.
“Mondrovia, must you really? The boy’s been departed naught five minutes.” Silvio said.
She gave a quick look to Silvio’s own stolen boots and scoffed.
“And how long dead for those ones, eh? Six minutes?”
He looked down all guilty with that pouty face of his, clicking his heels together to knock the mud off. Always the hypocrite, Silvio.
There was a scattering from the brush nearby, leaves rustled into the mud.
“Ah, but I’ve had to piss since fleeing Kerhal. Nothing like a battle with Tempests to threaten the rushing of such a process.” said Trinny. “How goes Young Kellen? Saw one of the mangy fucks pounce on him good.”
She had reached the clearing of leaves where the scuffle had taken place, Kellen’s grizzled-on body in the midst of the two dead Tempests. Bastard creatures.
“Oh.” Those deep blue eyes cast a regretful gaze upon the remains of Kellen’s once handsome face, now about as handsome as a squashed grape. “A good sort, it oughta be said.”
“Aye, too good I ‘spose.” Mondrovia replied.
“The fuck happened to his boots? Tempests gain an appetite for good leather?”
Mondrovia held them up, not exactly proud but smiling.
“Can’t say I wouldn’t have taken them myself had I not gone pissin’. Damn this bladder of mine.”
Always the pisser, Trinny.
Daylight was fading its way out, that familiar hue of hazy orange peeking through the treetops. Always made Mondrovia feel nostalgic, a sunset did. Reminded her of being back South. A rare sight here, nary a day without grey overcast presented itself.
“We better be on.” Silvio said. “Don’t want to stick around if more of those fuckers are lurking about.”
“Almost makes you miss Laphia, don’t it?” Trinny said. “No Tempests there, just the occasional Succubus or some such. And they at least know how to fuck. Damn these Northern wilds.”
“Would rather face a Tempest than my past.” Mondrovia said. “Let’s see if there isn’t a village nearby.”
Sure enough there was a village a few miles down the road. A sorry excuse for one, but still possessing an inn with an ample supply of beer. The Battered Tree they called it. Perhaps on account of the shitty construction of the place. Silvio, already a few too many drinks in, was back into one of his pretentious trances.
“Ah, but I will say one thing for Laphia, and the South as a whole for that matter. At least you can camp out there, feel free and unrestricted beneath the starry gaze of the cloudless sky.” He leaned back in his chair, hands pressed behind his head and closed his eyes. “God looking down on you as you stare back into His deep abyss. No Tempest, no Leshy, no Wyvern. Only tranquil peace.”
“Shut the fuck up Silvio.” Mondrovia said, placing Kellen’s boots on the table, picking away at some jerky.
“If God is gazing down on you, it's in disgust. When you feel the rain that’s His spit. You’re a treacherous bastard. A murderer and a liar. No peace could be had camping out there on account of you pissing off Dunstan Sinder’s gang. We’d be underneath the cloudless and starry sky, aye, but staring into a far different abyss.”
He opened his eyes and leaned halfway across the table, fingers pressed hard into the splintering wood. “I am to blame for Sinder’s rage? Was it I whose idea it was to intercept that shipment? Was it my revenge?”
“No, but it was you who botched the job, couldn’t kill a goddamn wagon driver. You’re a hypocrite Silvio.”
“Am I though? Maybe Kellen got into my head in a good way. That driver was good as innocent.”
“Never stopped you before.”
“Aye, maybe. But perhaps my moral compass strikes at inopportune time. One has to make the initiating action to change eventually. I thought that could be it.”
“Nope, you’re still a base murderer. Just like me and Trinny here. The sooner you accept it and get out of that fucking shifting head of yours the better. Because then we wouldn’t have to be paranoid about our fucking backs all day!”
He downed the rest of his beer.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“I’m not a hypocrite. Just wish I could be better is all.”
He made his way with his pouch of dirty coins to the innkeeper. Mondrovia finished her beer and wiped the froth away with a flick of disgust.
“Ugh, fuckin’ pious men. Always in their head. Never focused on the job.”
“You could be a bit easier on him. Forget he’s been in this business much longer than you have.” said Trinny. “Could be he’s becoming disenchanted with the work. I been in it even longer than him, and I know what he’s saying, though I feel I’m past changing.”
“I sure as hell would not call myself enchanted with the work. I’m simply just trying to survive, and just so happens this is what I’m good at. It’s a dark business aye, but we are dark people. Gotta be who you are. Live how you have to.”
Trinny only shook her head.
“You’re fiery, Mondrovia. A good thing for this life. But you aren’t dark. Only dulled. Be good for you to find enchantment in something. I gotta go piss.”
Enchantment. Whoever cared about so impractical a thing. Life isn’t a fairytale, only a way of making means to prolong an end. Passion is the killer of instinct. Sinder is the one told her so, and she reckoned no words have proved truer to her.
Silvio and Trinny. Old-timers in the trade. Silvio no longer able to stop living in regret and Trinny unable to control that damn bladder. Age is the killer of instinct also.
Perhaps it was time to move on from them, start her own band. Find a group of capable and practical mercs. Two jobs in a row fucked up, and nothing to show for except a dead Kellen and shitty ale. Silvio was making his way back to the table, sulky in his dark eyes, face all creased up. Gods, but he looked old.
“Got us a room upstairs. Only one bed, reckon you’ll be on the floor tonight.”
Before she could say anything he was already making his way towards the stairs, head down and a limp in his gait. The look of a man entirely burned out.
Sleeping on floorboards had unfortunately become a custom of hers. When she’d ran with Sinder such had never been an option. Always a soft bed to be had, and Sinder’s beckoning arms to fall into.
Sinder.
It was all his fault. His fault she’d fallen in with these eroding shells. Had she not been told passion is the killer of instinct? Yet she was played for a fool, snuffed out like a naïve child by that conniving prick. She grabbed hold of her knapsack, fished out her book from the bottom. Had to quell the anger quick before her head burst.
She fingered the engraving on the leather binding. The Grievance of the Other. Often, she felt like an other. Opening the front flap she was greeted by the familiar signature. Else Unknown. A bit pompous and grandiose but the writing resonated with her.
She found the idea of her reading a funny one. A quick glance at her and she didn’t exactly look the type. Black hair chopped to just below the ear, dark skin all muddied, and adorned with about five too many knives. She opened to the folded page where she read that line that had lit something inside of her.
The dawn of revolt rests in the hands of the one who incites the blade for change.
Trinny was right. She was fiery, and she had plans to use that fire. More and more each day it seemed those plans didn’t include Silvio and Trinny.
There was a piercing scream outside.
An old villager was hunched on her knees, retching puddled beneath her. Three men surrounded her. Mondrovia recognized one of them.
“Mondrovia Armadi! A pleasant surprise, you look beautiful as ever! We was gonna call for you, but this kind lady was generous enough to do it for us!” Qio. One of Sinder’s men and amongst the most vulgar serpents on all the continent of Drusa. He folded his massive, tattooed arms and spat on the ground in front of him. The spit landed on Trinny’s corpse, eyes wide open, pants still around her ankles, and throat mangled by a garrote. He smiled that dead smile he had, teeth all rotted and eyes all beady black.
“Sorry ‘bout your friend.”
One of his henchman twirled the garotte wire around like a plaything. A pale bald fucker, well on into his later years. The other was nearly as large a brute as Qio, with long golden hair and two axes sheathed at his side.
The whole of the small village had gathered around the scene as Silvio made his way out.
“Tsk tsk, Silvio. Should have brought your sword. You know how this has to end. The rest of you’s clear out or I’ll kill the lot of you.” The villagers scampered like rats back to their holes.
Just Mondrovia’s luck this day had been. Couldn’t say she was much surprised. Sinder was as relentless as they come, and Qio even more bloodthirsty.
“Boss has a pretty hefty reward out for you. Double if we take you alive. So do us all a kindness and come quietly now, no need to -”
Nothing shuts up a posturing man quite as effectively as a knife in the eye. And Mondrovia weren’t one for missing.
The three of them stood there all dumbfounded, especially that hulking Qio. Floundering at his eye like his brain were salvageable. Then he dropped and Baldy and Goldy were at her.
Silvio scrambled behind them, unsheathed the sword from the dead man’s belt.
Mondrovia fended off the two of them, ducking, dodging, sliding across the slicked grass.
As she slipped beneath Baldy he managed to grab her by the hair, put the garrote up against her throat. From the front Goldy was aiming to hack at her, arm raised up, unable to tell if it were his kill or Baldy’s.
She felt the wire grinding into her skin, wheezing as the first blood began to trickle. Then the pressure was released, and she felt the cold steel of a blade on her arm. Baldy ran through by Silvio. She fell to the ground, gasping and trying to regain. Goldy came on Silvio like a whirlwind, swinging those axes around like a fire juggler. Silvio blocked and blocked but was overwhelmed by the fury, made to sit up against the planks of the inn. Goldy came with one axe knocking the sword out of his hand for the force of it, and spun into a backslash, swinging across his body, knocking his head clean off. Mondrovia screamed, loosed a knife from her belt, and it lodged into his thigh. Threw another and he hacked it away. Wild in the eyes he ran at her, tried a throw of his own. Nothin’ doing. It stuck into the dirt next to her.
Mondrovia hoisted the axe from the earth, rolled away as the other came down where she had been. His axe had caught in the dirt, took him a second to face back towards her. A rare stroke of luck. She seized the moment, came down with his axe as hard as she could, crunched it deep into his forehead. He gave a cross-eyed look at the steel now embedded into his skull. Amusing, almost.
He toppled back, claiming that swath of earth that’d be his last. Mondrovia pried the axe from his face and his locks weren’t so golden anymore, blood gushing like the axe were its cell.
Of course the day had ended in a massacre. The sun had risen a peculiar crimson that morning.
Scared eyes stared at Mondrovia from misshapen doorways and windows. Hers didn’t meet them, only looked at the mess around her.
Silvio’s head by Trinny’s maimed throat.
Perhaps there had been a time when she would have cried. But that time was dead. Deader than Trinny, Silvio, and Kellen.