The city's docks were bustling: merchants from every possible sea route coalesced on the single intercontinental port of this coastal port. A melting pot of culture, fiery eastern men with curved blades met the refined gentile figures of pointed thing blades. Guards were stationed in every corner, with hands twitching by their sides. A penalty was placed, a high tariff on anyone who started combat, but most of the men held their pride higher than their profit margins, so blood spilled often, more so than bags of gold coins ever did.
Many a rich man was made if you played the job right. It was known to be the station of corruption, and many knew it. Most held themselves to a higher moral pedestal, but after a year of working the docks, their uniforms and homes were well furnished, and their scabbards glinted with Epic Level metals reserved for adventurers, not townsfolk.
With the amount of business brought by the docks, the city and housing around it flourished. Within their walls, they boasted an opera house, a stock exchange, and a fine university with landscaped green parks and trees that branched and loomed like magic and with magic as well. Private villas filled the rolling hills that were the suburbs, and mercenaries became bodyguards for the wealthy families of the ports. Some even went as far as to recruit low-end adventurers who couldn't make the cut themselves, so they lounged and grew fat but happy all the same.
Though wealth also meant oddities of all sorts. Men flocked, families fled neighboring villages hoping for riches, only to find hovels and work that paid abysmally. Broken attempts at riches made for broken men and women of the night to appear. Creating a section of the ports off to the East, a wrong turn and a skip, and the magic would meet the nightmarish homes of the forgotten. Missing teeth and rattling chants of nights with more energy than mornings filled the sunken homes that were the ghettos.
Occasionally, one or two would sneak out into the ports only to be battered back into their cavernous communities. Their courier was a man without legs who traveled in a wooden cart pulled by seven mongrel dogs. With surprising speed, he would pass the guards, enter the port, and deliver whatever information or package needed to be delivered, then, with a whip and a yelp, rush back into the back streets and into the shadow of success without more than a yell and a holler and little less than a crumpled dollar.
The waves broke early this morning, and the men readied their gadgets, back supports, and boots that weighed them down and would be thrown off rapidly if and when they fell off the pier. Gathering around a communal barrel, they spread around tonics and low-grade potions. Some are for strength, others for stamina, but most are simply for something to do. The rarity of the stuff was piss low, and most had grown enough of a tolerance so that they never felt that first kick of energy. Yet, when offered a cup, you didn't refuse.
Here, you always accepted.
If you didn't
You were never to be used.
You took your meager offering, smiled a toothy grin, and sent it down the hatch with a laugh and a smile. Around them, the men ran off with rancorous howls and jests.
Bobby ain't got no Billy after last night. Old Serena, the witch's daughter, found him in bed with Jessabelle from the 8th block.
Laughter and sour looks would ensue as the man stared off into the sea, eager for the work to start so the ridicule could end.
Another slurred voice, this wasn't a consequence of the low-grade tonics, but of the lower-grade lighter fluid they drank until one couldn't even remember how they were in bed with a whore they barely afforded, thus leaving them penniless here on the docks again. But the laughter continued as it often does with broke men who can only afford a good time.
Don't bully the boy, Patrick. You know he's got a mean old temper. Like an alley cat, he is.
The drunkard made outstretched fingers into claws and a hiss that no grown, respectable man should make.
With a deep sigh, Bobby remained without retort.
How long had it been, he thought to himself. At first, all of them still had hope; they ran the routes together and joked like now but with no buts, or at least it wasn't always him who was at the end of the joke.
Watching the sun slowly rise, he quietly said to himself.
6 years, five months, and seven days.
An arid wind from the scorching southern seas picked up then and there.
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Angered curses went up as the unexpected air soured the mood. And just when they had only started on the boy.
Horns wailed as a ship began its approach.
Stumbling from atop the pier, the captain came down and, with another type of air, took over. But this one was man-made. It was a natural aura that marked him as the leader. Then, as the followers maneuvered and embedded themselves within the day drinkers, uptight hands ready, almost sobering up, they straightened to attention.
Enough. Prepare for unloading.
His voice and the captain's command were unlike anything the men who held the pier jobs were used to.
Boy, that means you, too.
Snapping his eyes off the sea, he turned his intense gaze onto the captain and chewed on his words.
A silent energy rushed around his eyes, ones that bled and trailed around his iris like a snake.
The captain's face was riddled with scars and aged skin like dried earth along a riverbed. His eyes were downcast, and his hair, long and disheveled, revealed a mystery that stayed hidden.
In turn, an energy began to crack along the man. One that spoke of that mystery within, hiding but never afraid.
Relaxing.
The boy whipped away any animosity; any inkling of torn pride was redacted.
Yes, sir.
He smiled a corked grin. One that bites and snarls, hiding its truth for another day, for a better fight.
Seven ships harbored the sun from when it rose until it showed itself to sleep. High up, the watchtower loomed over; with a bright focus, it scanned the waters, peeking into the dark of its seas. A bell would chime thick and loud, springing those not drunk enough awake. The pay would be the same, so many preferred playing dead while others didn't play.
With a sack of rice over both shoulders, the man with the tall, overly muscular frame that they had named Billy or Boy made his way onto the docks and loaded the last bit onto a wagon full and waiting. The captain was at its reins with the owner of the merchant ship, smiling at one another; they did not wave goodbyes but instead galloped into the night, away from the pier, from its men, and most importantly, up the street through its buildings that swayed in heavy winds to where the markets were held, and the real gold was earned.
With the captain gone, it meant that if the bell rang tonight, no one would show. Laughing and jolly with the slightly higher pay of the day, the men skipped and hopped on the wooden boards of the pier as they whistled arm in arm in the direction of "Sally's Shipwreck."
Tonight we fuck and drink, boys. And tomorrow, well fuck tomorrow. It's all about tonight, boys.
He heard them cry in response like seagulls over bread; they gawked at what would become a night they would soon forget.
Watching his eyes strained on the heavy black of the sea. Waves would crash on the rocks, blow up, and splatter high in the air. This was the hub of it all. If someone were ever to be lost and found and then return, this would be the pier they would turn up in.
His eyes trained with an energy that enchanted him. Each wave became smaller and smaller as his focus became more and more out of reach. With eyes like a telescope, he strained harder and harder for his magnitude to grow. Trembling, his body shook at how the spell shattered inside as he forced it to its upper limits.
A rapture was upon him. Something was to give. Either his limits were to be tested and surmounted, or the spell would shatter, and its effects would fall away.
This wasn't the first night he had endeavored to test the echelons of his reach. It had become almost a late-night ritual that reminded him of his lost friend. Constantly pushing, continually growing, the man who sliced the world in half would not die in a capricious sea.
He would toss and break the waves around him. He would struggle but live regardless of the peril, regardless of the odds.
Soon, his strain broke, and with it, his spell. His eyes began to water, and his head began to throb. With a deep breath, he began to restore his mana reserves. Like a well, they had been run dry by his futile attempt, and now he waited with a meditation that let them slowly refill.
Cries could be heard throughout the town. A revolt, a rising, damn the man, they cried. El Bogotazo was a tragic event that echoed throughout the smaller cities of the East. In a populist government, a people's person elected had taken power only for that power to be stripped by a dagger and cloak shortly after.
This did not sit well with the newly proud people. Taking up arms, they revolted in the street for three whole days. Triggering then, a worldwide event for all nearby adventurers to play the role of revolutionaries in affairs that affected the people of the realm but not themselves. This frenzy created a bloodbath. When loot, riches, and experience are flung into the midst, carnivores' mayhem ensues.
When all was said and done, a puppet of the more significant state was left in control. Adventurers had done their part, obtained their rewards, and returned to the world's central hubs, waiting for their next opportune time in which they could, like some natural disaster, destroy any progress that the people of the realm had attempted.
Thwarted were their efforts.
And Billy was in the front row for every piece of it. He obsessively kept himself away from the core of the problems but intervened when his moral compass urged him to do so. The cries continued, and he observed the mercenaries and propped-up kings left behind.
Captain, we have a lot to talk about when you return.
The sea thrashed solemnly in response.
We are a plague. We are a scourge. We need a cleansing.
The System Breaker must make his return.
No one heard his words—or so no one with natural-born ears did. They fell into a thick and eerie silence. Around the man, chaos hummed, and power struggled to contain itself. A spilling would occur. Proving that men cannot behave for longer than seconds after the watcher leaves them alone.