Even in the slums, not many landlords were willing to speak with someone whose clothing was stained with blood, especially after sundown. Gideon approached four different places and was turned away each time, with each landlord refusing to even speak with him after getting a closer look at his clothing.
He finally found one on the western edge of the slums who didn’t immediately refuse him. She was a spindly old Easterner woman, her gray hair long and unkempt, wearing an old dress covered in patches. He stumbled upon her pulling roots in a small, dimly lit garden belonging to a cluster of tiny one story half-timber cottages. Before saying anything, he pulled a handful of denars out of his pocket and showed it to her. Her eyes scanned him, lingering on the coins in his open palm, and after several moments of silent contemplation she slowly got to her feet and gestured at him to follow.
She led him to one of the cottages, speaking words in the Eastern tongue Gideon had no hope of understanding. After a moment of visible frustration, the woman held up ten fingers to him, a price that was far too low to possibly represent purchasing the cottage outright.
Guess I’m renting it.
He handed her the coins. She handed him a key, then left without uttering another word.
Inside, the cottage was tight, dusty and sparsely furnished, with a bare mattress against the wall on his right and a tiny wooden table barely large enough to fit a single dinner plate resting by the wall across from the door. Two flimsy-looking wood dining chairs sat at the table. A small window with exterior iron bars was positioned on the wall above the table, giving a partial view of the dark alleyway running west from the cottages, between two neighboring flophouses.
The only other room in the cottage was a bathroom, its door laying just past the bed. It contained a sink, a toilet, a small tub, and little space to maneuver. The fixtures were coated in a thin layer of grime and dust which indicated that neither the landlady nor the previous tenant had done much cleaning.
None of it mattered to Gideon. After a very brief walkthrough of the cottage he dumped his rucksack and claymore onto the bed, then pulled out some fresh clothing and a pocketful of denars. He changed out of his ruined clothes, and left the cottage barely five minutes after first stepping inside. Once the front door was locked he set off into the freezing night once again, his thoughts fixated on blasting away his conscious mind with alcohol.
He returned to the cottage half a day later, almost too drunk to walk and with empty pockets. After sleeping for a few hours he filled up his pockets with denars and left once again, long before sobriety could threaten its return.
Soon the days blurred into a drunken, delirious haze of tavern hopping, excessive drinking, and returning to the cottage to sleep and collect denars. His entire purpose in life became to blot out his consciousness with whiskey, regardless of cost. After a week or so had gone by—in one of his more sober moments—he discovered that he’d already spent a third of his money.
It felt like an uninteresting trivia fact he’d heard in a bar game, something pointless that didn’t matter much at all to anyone and wasn’t useful in any way. One third of his fortune was gone, and he couldn’t remember spending any of it.
At some point he realized what little food he bothered to consume was actively diminishing the effects of his enormous whiskey intake, momentarily absorbing and counteracting its effects, causing him to experience brief moments of relative sobriety. He stopped eating for days at a time, consuming nothing but alcohol to maximize the forgetfulness.
He kept drinking even after stabbing pains manifested in his guts. He kept drinking even after his stomach revolted against him and tried to reject what he was putting inside it. He kept drinking even after realizing that he was slowly poisoning himself to death. None of it mattered. Any price he had to pay was fine, so long as he didn’t have to think about the things he’d seen. Or the mistakes he’d made. Or the woman he’d caused so much trouble for.
Two more weeks passed like one long fever dream. He began to wake up in strange places, with cuts and bruises on his face, chest, and hands. Angry faces floated through his memory, strangers who hated him for being big and for having the money to keep himself constantly drunk. Vague memories of fist fights and searing pain floated through his mind like twigs tossed into river rapids, submerging and resurfacing in accordance with the level of alcohol flowing through his veins.
Through it all, and despite his best efforts to prevent it, the world managed to interject itself into his life. Rumors about fights between the resistance and the great houses spread like wildfire through every dingy tavern and seedy bar Gideon found himself in. People talked about it endlessly, spreading wild, ridiculous rumors about the young Forellian queen leading the slaves in their rebellion.
She wasn’t human, they liked to say. She was the daughter of Kalikaan, born in heaven and sent to earth with supernatural powers in order to revive the mortal realm and cleanse it of wrongdoing. She could read minds just like Kali, they whispered, and Kaan had lent her his infinite strength.
Every rumor he heard about Surelin drove Gideon even further into the bottle, and soon he stopped going to bars and taverns entirely, opting instead to drink at home. He rarely left the cottage, and when he did it was only to purchase more whiskey.
For another week he sat at his tiny table, staring out the window at the alleyway and the people who occasionally walked by, drinking relentlessly. Sitting at home would probably have been a very boring thing to do if he hadn’t been drunk. But it was quiet in the cottage, which he liked very much. No one was there to bother him as he gradually destroyed himself.
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Occasionally he would black out, waking up in random places outside. Usually he was relatively close to the cottage, but every once in a while he found himself far from home. It was on one of these occasions that the city watch found him.
Gideon was shaken awake, and after opening his eyes he saw two frowning faces staring down at him. Someone snapped their fingers in front of his face, and he scowled, squeezing his eyes shut again.
“Wake up, you miserable lout.”
“Think we found him, sergeant.”
He heard the sound of more footsteps approaching him.
“Gideon?” someone asked, surprised.
He opened his eyes again and saw a familiar man with a gaunt face and a large nose standing above him. The realization of who he was dawned slowly on Gideon’s alcohol-muddled mind.
“That Julian?” he grumbled.
“This drunk knows you, sergeant?” someone asked.
“Yeah,” Julian said worriedly. “What are you doing here, kid?”
“Fuck’s it look like…?”
“Kali save us, he reeks of alcohol! He’s gotta be the guy.”
“Pick him up,” Julian said.
“Aw c’mon sergeant.”
“I said pick him up. Where are you staying, kid?”
“...West end,” Gideon muttered.
A few irritated complaints left Julian’s men as they pulled Gideon to his feet. He looked around and through the alcohol haze realized the sun was setting. He’d been slumped in a dirty, stone brick alleyway, behind what looked to be a temple. Whiskey bottles littered the ground around where he’d been sitting.
They dragged him through the slums towards his cottage, following his mumbled, barely coherent directions. Once they found it, they promptly dragged him inside.
“Set him on the bed,” Julian ordered. “You’re damn lucky it was me who found you, know that?”
Gideon mumbled incoherently in reply, and the other watchmen dumped him unceremoniously onto his bed.
Julian stood over Gideon, peering closely at his face. “Get sobered up, then come find me at the Thundering Queen in the morning. You know where that is?”
Gideon shut his eyes and nodded.
“Don’t you take a single drink in the meantime, you fucking hear me? I’m serious. You’re in deep shit. I’m being generous with you.”
Another nod, this time an impatient one. The bed felt nice on his back and he wanted to sleep.
“This stays between us,” Julian told his men severely. “Not a single fucking word to anyone else! Go.”
Gideon heard them leave, and after the door shut behind them he instantly fell asleep.
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The shining sun beaming through the window into his face woke him up. He turned his head away from the light, and opened his eyes to stare wearily at the cottage’s wall.
I feel like death.
He slowly sat up and forced himself to his feet, then staggered over to the bathroom. Upon reaching the sink he bent over and greedily drank water directly from the tap.
That was Julian last night, right? And he’s a hussar? Weird...
A warm bath seemed to be the only thing that could help him feel better at the moment. He turned the faucet on and stripped while waiting for the water to heat up.
Guess I have to go see what he wants before I can get drunk again, he thought bitterly as he sank down into the warm water.
The bath did little to improve his wellness, but it did help to wash away the smell of whiskey. He pulled himself out of the tub before he could prune.
Once he was dry, Gideon walked into the other room and opened his rucksack, looking for clean clothing to wear. Inside, on top of his clothing, lay three empty burlap sacks.
He pulled one of them out to give it a closer look, wondering what he’d been using it for, and after a while the realization occurred to him.
Shit.
Frowning deeply, his fingers felt at the two other bags inside the rucksack, hoping to find at least one or two more denars hidden inside. But they were just as empty as the first.
Desperation came over him as he walked back into the bathroom. He picked his dirty clothing up off the floor where he’d left it, hoping to find a few coins in his pockets, but to no avail.
I’m out of money.
He dumped the clothing to the floor angrily. I spent seven thousand denars in…how long’s it been anyway? A month? Fuck me…now how am I gonna get drunk?
With an angry shake of his head that he instantly regretted, he returned to his rucksack in the other room, throwing on a fresh outfit. As he did, his gaze passed over his armor and claymore, resting against the far wall by the table.
The bloodstains on the armor will just draw attention to me. Fuck it. And the claymore…
To his dismay, he discovered that his claymore felt unfamiliar in his hands, as if it belonged to someone else. He pulled the blade out of its sheath, studying its assortment of notches and small chips closely.
Was it always this bad? It’s not gonna last much longer at all. I am the world's biggest fucking idiot for not getting this fixed when I still had money.
It felt heavy and uncomfortable on his back after he strapped it on, a feeling that alerted him more than anything else to his poor state of health.
I’m in really bad shape right now. And fucking broke. Very bad combination of things to be.
He left the cottage then, wondering if Julian was about to tell him something that would make his situation worse.
Well, I really hope what they always say about rock bottom applies to me.