Killing is an art and you shouldn’t believe anyone who says otherwise.
At least, that’s what Alice had been taught as a child by her beloved granny. Was it a fucked up thing to tell a child? Yes. Was it the most fucked up thing the woman had told her? Not by a long shot. But, even now, no, especially now, Alice understood: her grandma had been a partisan during world war two, she’d killed fascists in cold blood when needed and had to find ways to hide it, to make it look like an accident or for the body to not be found at all because, otherwise, innocent people would’ve suffered under the bastards’ decimation politic.
‘War changes people’, they say, and they’re not wrong: war had changed Alice’s grandma. War, together with her knowledge on how the world used to work, had turned the woman into something of a caring psychopath.
All that had been transmitted over to Alice in the form of bedtime stories and lessons given in days spent in her living room or climbing the mountains.
So here she was, sitting in front of a table inside the Dream, looking at the ingredients she had at her disposal while repeating those words like a mantra: Killing is an Art.
Killing had always been the greatest of all artforms: there were the mediocre killers, the two-shot-Joes as grandma used to call them, that got caught immediately, and then there were the ‘ghosts-of-Jack’, those murderers who were never truly found, the people who became horror stories on par with Jack the Ripper, as if the man had come back from the land of the dead to initiate a new vendetta.
“Remember this very well Alice: killing is bad. It is the worst thing humans ever learned to do. Many a horrible things were born out of killing or messing with Death. Still, if you ever find yourself in a situation where killing is the only option, and do evaluate if it truly is the only one, then you should be a Jack, not a Joe. “
She had never outright told her how to kill someone and get away with it, but she’d told her stories of unfaithful and-slash-or violent husbands getting what they deserved… among others. Honestly, those had always been the most satisfying ones to hear about.
“When I was a lot younger I was forced to kill. There was no other choice, not if I wanted to help make a difference that mattered. I hope you’ll never have to end up in such a situation. I hope this world will change for the better one day.”
Alice didn’t know if grandma would’ve liked Earth as it had become. What she did know was that she wouldn’t have liked the world she was in right now. Too much war all around, too much death, and too many idiots in power doing the thing all idiots in power always did: cause problems for the populace.
That, however, didn’t matter right now, because she was dead. If she’d had the certainty that her grandma’s soul had followed her in this world she would’ve asked a [Necromancer] to let her speak with her ghost, but alas, for all that she had money to spare, she didn’t have any to throw around on project based on proofless assumptions.
So she looked at her options.
And sighed.
For she was at a dead end.
“FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
She had no idea where to start. Or rather, she had many ideas, too many in fact. She didn’t know where to begin!
“Ok, what did grandma always say? Oh, right: ‘If you don’t have many options choose the one that benefits you the most no matter the cost. While if you have too many choices then stop complaining and get a move on.
“Huh, for once her teachings are not helpful.”
Her grandma had always been a very decisive woman who always seemed to know what to do in any situation, so Alice could imagine her grandma never really worrying about such things.
“Ok, so, let’s try to see this… as a game. Yes, that should do. Every plant gives me Lethality Points in some way and I must just figure out which combo gives me more.”
She looked at the flowers and roots and many other things she’d obtained in the last few months in the dream.
“Nope, ok, that’s not gonna work at all.”
Sighing, she pushed herself away from her desk, her chair rolling away on its one giant spherical wheel and slowly beginning to turn in circles. She pushed against the air, a few vines sprouting from the ground to let her do so, and reclined further in, staring right up at the sky over her head. The stars moved up in that dark expanse, little pinpricks that, sometimes, felt fake, as if someone had taken a roll of dark silk, shining a light behind it while making small holes in it to make it shine through. The Land’s setting sun shone to one side, painting the world in purples, while its moon, sitting exactly on the opposite side, shone its own brand of truth upon the people.
Cruelty and Kindness. The cruelty of light and its all-revealing shine, counterbalanced by the beautiful lies of what-should-have-been revealed by the sister’s glow. And, underneath it all, in the dark places created by the thickest trees, Nightmares thrived.
Alice didn’t know why her mind wandered to those thoughts, but it was a sign that she wouldn’t be working out a solution to her little conundrum anytime soon.
She couldn’t concentrate. It had been a recurring problem in the last few weeks: everything seemed to have slowed down since she’d found out that Isse and Liam were both from Earth.
“Everything slowed down except for me,” she told herself, or to the sky, she wasn’t sure.
She… she didn’t know what to do with that knowledge. She wasn’t the only one. There were two other people, both in extremely different situations, both of whom had gone through literal hell in their own way.
Liam had appeared in this world in the middle of a battlefield.
Isse had the body of a monster that would get her hunted wherever in the world she went.
Alice had been the lucky one of the two: she’d appeared in a town filled with kind and accepting people who had helped her until she’d managed to help herself. She had found love and she had found purpose, even forgiveness.
She had never lost anything so far, unlike Isse.
I wonder how she’s doing. It’s still too early to visit her though.
Then she sighed, taking a needle painted red with sap and pricking her finger.
The Dream folded into itself in front of her eyes.
And she woke up.
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He had spent so long trapped in those Mountains.
Generation after generation of [Witches] that had inhabited the Tiurna Mountains, the place they’d chosen to call home, had tried so hard to keep their stories locked there, even succeeding for a few centuries. Only the mountain folk, no, the Mountaineers, had remained for them to take from, and they were strange, as strange, if not stranger, than them.
Skinwalkers.
Although that name had been forgotten in those peaks now. The [Witches] had always called them Skinstealers, which wasn’t wrong per se, but it was very unflattering.
And then, recently, just a few weeks ago, things had changed: a woman had made a deal with them. A woman who knew of an old tradition from their home, Palaver. A woman who, the one who’d made the deal with her had said, smelled like home, for all that the smell had nearly been canceled by the passage of time.
She’d freed them, telling their tales to the people outside those accursed mountains,and all at the price of a single promise: kill no innocents.
Many would have called her a fool. Certainly the [Witches] of the mountains would have. For that matter even the ones from their home would have done the same before hunting her down and killing her mercilessly. Back then things had been so much bloodier and, actually, much more fun.
Still, they would have called her a fool for one reason: how could she trust the judgment of monsters like them? For all she knew their view of reality was so twisted they could see a baby playing with some dead leaves and call it a murderer.
The girl though, a girl going by the name of Garda, had decided to take a gamble on a very simple idea: Skinwalkers would see the nature of humanity from an outsider’s point of view and judge their crimes without the filters and ideas of humanity.
She hadn’t been wrong.
Now he stood in a dark alley in the city of Gunsee, the city the girl lived in, and he contemplated murder.
Killing, as they say, is an art, and nobody knew this better than the Skinwalkers. They had many advantages: they were made for killing. They could eat what remained of their prey without suffering any consequences, making the clean up of the body not a problem at all, for one.
But no, the real art when it came to killing someone, at least for them, came in the way they wanted to do it. After all, when they killed, it was to steal someone’s skin, and since a dead man’s skin couldn’t heal wounds, they had to get creative if they wanted it to be whole and undamaged, perfect for fitting in among other people. Suffocation was always a good way to go for it, but people tended to notice if someone’s lips had a strangely blue coloration, so that went out of the window in highly populated areas.
Another option was poisoning, which was much easier if someone had a skin to spare to use for the act and throw away later. Sadly he didn’t have such a luxury.
Another means was more ‘magical’, although calling it that would be a misnomer for it wasn’t exactly magic. He could, simply put, drain a victim’s mind of all things that made them, well, them, while they were alive, slowly turning them into an empty husk, but the process required a lot of time, sometimes even weeks, and he wasn’t confident enough in his rusty acting abilities to pull off an ‘I got lost in the woods’. People here had these things called Skills and some of them might be able to see through his lies.
Which left only one alternative: good, old fashioned, stabbing.
He gently gripped the handle of his stiletto, an old weapon he’d taken from a merchant who’d taken the wrong route through the mountains many decades ago. The blade had rusted here and there even with all the care he’d taken into maintaining it.
He watched the point of it, the small blade that would gain him what he wished most of all: a new skin, a new life, a chance at, one could hope, happiness.
His target appeared at the entrance to the alley.
He was a tall man with a bit of a beer belly, his face rather good looking even with the heavy bags under his eyes caused by nights of gallivanting at bars. His gait was unsteady and, more than once, as he navigated the dark corridor between two houses, he stumbled and, once, even fell to the ground face first. The grumbled insults made the skinwalker raise an eyebrow in distaste.
The man reached the middle of the alley.
The skinwalker fell on top of him.
A scream of surprise tried to rip through his throat, but a moment later he felt a prick in his spine, the pain that should’ve been there dulled by the alcohol flowing through his veins. The sharp blade cut right through his spine and into his heart. A bit of wiggling around on the skinwalker’s part assured that the damage there would hasten the slob’s demise, and then he just sat on him, a hand over his mouth to muffle the screaming.
Not half a minute later the man’s struggles began to lessen, his attempted movements more spasmodic than voluntary and, at the sixty second threshold, he stopped altogether.
Without losing a moment the skinwalker stood and began carrying the body towards a darkened alcove where he began the slow, methodic, process of stripping the man of his skin. First he licked his hands, covering them in his sticky saliva that was not just saliva. With careful, practiced, movements, he applied it to the corpse’s whole body, watching as the skin slowly began to prune, as if he’d spent way too long soaking in water. When he was certain the process had come to an end he reached his hands up to the back of the head and, in one swift motion, flung them open, a sound like ripping paper resounding in the dark alley.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Only a small tear had formed, which was a good sign: it meant the skin was durable and would last him for a long time. That, together with his Skills, would give him… maybe a decade. Hopefully more.
With a satisfied grunt he flexed muscles that hadn’t been used in decades as his actual body, finally, released his ragged, rotting, old, skin. He wasn’t careful about it, too, as, the moment it was free, he tore out of it, sighing in relief and shivering at the same time as fresh air touched him. He hadn’t been skinless in a very long time, knowing full well that doing so would’ve left him without one for a very, very, long time. It was liberating in a way he had forgotten about.
Still, he had little time to appreciate such small freedoms as, with a crack of his wrist, he put his entire arm into the small tear in his new skin. It was dry inside, another good sign, and, slowly, methodically, he stuffed his body inside, the muscles – without bones – he was made of twisting and turning into impossible shapes to pass through the small tear.
And then it was done.
He slowly rose from the ground, now wearing the man’s skin, and stretched, the tear in the back of his head closing down as the last of his saliva dried up.
Then, with a casual motion, he kneeled down, popping the man, his victim’s, eyes out of their sockets, and ate. They popped on his tongue, his teeth – slowly regrowing like the rest of his bones – tearing them apart.
Memories flashed before his eyes.
The memories of an unfaithful and violent husband, the hatred he felt for the woman he’d married who, in his opinion, was the reason for every failure in his life, together with his absolute loathing for the child he was practically being forced to raise.
Then more memories came, these ones tied to people he called friends, to him looking for a decent job, up to him making deals with a small gang of criminals that resided in the city, all to gather money to spend on drinking away the disappointment he felt towards himself.
So, in short, he saw the memories of a bad man.
His side of the deal had been respected.
Nodding his head he looked down at the corpse and, slowly, smiled.
An hour later the body was no longer there, he felt absolutely stuffed and, slowly, he walked into the man’s small home.
The place was dirty, although relatively well cared for. The room he walked into functioned as a kitchen, dining room and bedroom for him and his… ah, his wife. He had a wife now. That would be interesting.
There was also another, much smaller, room, in which they’d put their child’s bed.
Seeing how the woman was not in the entrance room he guessed she was asleep with her child.
So, with soft steps that were out of place on the man whose skin he was now wearing, he reached the door leading into his child’s room and opened it.
Sure enough, the woman was there, tightly hugging her daughter and acting like she was asleep. As an expert actor, the skinwalker didn’t even have to look twice to be sure of that.
He reached the bed.
Slow as honey running down a wooden spoon he knelt on the floor.
And then he whispered: “I’m sorry. Things will change for the better from now on. You’ll see.”
That day Larus Crisk died in more ways than just physically.
Nobody mourned that death.
[Skinwalker Level 24!]
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Alice walked into the Drunken Pig and sat down heavily at a stool by the counter.
“A beer please,” she mumbled distractedly, her head falling in the crook of her arm like a cheap knock-off copy of a character from an anime.
A few moments later something thunked on the wood in front of her.
Looking up she saw a wooden tankard, the handle being turned towards her by a surprisingly smooth hand. Once upon a time she would’ve killed for hands like those. Now? She liked her callouses, they were a sign of her hard work, of her constant search for redemption.
She looked up and, after a moment, a smile of recognition played on her lips.
“Larus Crisk! Long time no see!”
The bartender in name but not Class smirked down at her: “Alice-surname-unknown, I could say the same thing. I hear you booked one of the last carriages to the mountains not too long ago. Went to visit your fellows up there?”
She nodded: “Aye, you could say that. There was this big festival and I really wasn’t feeling like spending those days down here. Air’s fresher up high, you should know.”
He shook his head: “I agree it’s fresher, but I much prefer it down here. For one, there are no rotting carcasses of animals left behind by a pack of wolves.”
They were bickering and enjoying themselves. It was a simple ritual of theirs: to say everything while saying nothing. To show that she knew his secret and had no desire to expose him. After all, he was keeping faith to his side of the deal that she’d struck with the whole of his kind on that night by her fire, a glass in hand and an emptying bottle between her and the one on the other side.
She’d found out about the little exchange of places pretty much immediately, her Skill [Natural Allies: Skinwalkers] practically screaming at her about the real identity of the one in front of her.
“So, how’s the family life been treating you.”
“Oh, absolutely wonderfully. It’s everything I could’ve ever hoped for!”
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“Dad?”
“Yes dear?” he asked his daughter as he slowly let the pancake batter solidify in the skillet. Buying the ingredients had cost him an eye. Not because they were expensive, no, but because of the frankly horrible family’s finances. The man whose skin he was now wearing had been wasteful in his expenses and was indebted to people who he’d rather not end up on the bad side of.
“What happened to you?” she asked back.
She was a beautiful child, with large doe-like, azure, eyes that spoke of the wonders only a child could see.
No matter the world, children always were capable of seeing more than adults. He’d never gotten to be a child to begin with, so he wasn’t certain what it was that people lost as they grew up that made them so blind.
“When you grow up a little more I’ll tell you.”
That was the right thing to say, or so his [Dad Comeback] Skill told him. It came in handy more times than he’d thought it ever would, just like all the other Skills from his new [Father] Class. He was Level 7 now: not an exponential growth considering he’d had the Class for nearly a month, but it didn’t matter to him. After all, before this world, he’d lived in one where Skills didn’t even exist and all that mattered were the skills you accrued as you lived.
His child, Maria – he still found it strange that so many names in this world were the same as the ones in his old one – pouted childishly, her lower lip pressing out in a way that made it impossible for him not to chuckle.
“But I’m already a grown up! Mama tells me all the time that I’m a big girl!”
Larus shook his head, the playful smile on his lips becoming slightly waxy: “Ah, she’s not wrong, your mama, but… maybe you should take it slow. Maria, it was my fault that you’ve grown up so much. I’m sorry about that. I promise I’ll make it up to you though.”
The little girl nodded, smacking both fists on the table, one of them holding a fork, the other a knife he’d carefully ascertained as being the one with the dullest edge. The little plate in front of her rattled on the wooden table which leg he’d recently fixed up. Now it no longer moved around.
“You weren’t a great papa, yes, but now you’re good! Although you’re still not good at cooking!”
He laughed heartily at that last one: “Come now, it’s not that bad. And anyways, I’m great with sweet stuff.”
“Mama is still better!”
“She is now? Well, I’ll have to show you otherwise.”
The pancake was ready and, carefully, he upturned it onto a nearby plate that was already piled high with them. He carried it to the table, a small block of butter waiting on top.
“What are these?” asked his daughter.
“These are called pancakes. Just take one, put some butter on top, let it melt a bit and enjoy the gooey goodness.”
She did, and she enjoyed it immensely.
And then she hit him with the question: “Papa, can you promise me you won’t let the older papa come back. I like you more.”
He froze for a moment before schooling his expression and turning towards her: “What do you mean ‘Don’t let him come back’, dear? I’m the same person I was before.”
She shook her head: “Mh-hmm, you’re not papa. You’re someone else. Papa wasn’t capable of being kind. He hated me, he told me himself. You cannot stop hating someone when you’re a grown up, or so my friends say. So please, whoever you are, promise me you won’t let my old papa come back. I like you better as my papa.”
The skinwalker could’ve tried to say so many things to try and change her mind, to try and fool her that he was her same old ‘papa’, but then his [Parental Instinct (Minor)] Skill activated and he understood that that wouldn’t help him at all.
So instead he just said: “Don’t worry Maria. Your old papa will never come back. I made sure of it.”
His daughter – oh gods he had a daughter!!! – smiled and jumped down from her seat, going for a tackle hug which he took the brunt of without any problem, hugging her back and, after a moment, giving her a little kiss in the hair, which he then proceeded to ruffle.
“Welcome, new papa.”
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“Larus, I’m trying to make someone’s mind disappear. Do you know of a way?” she asked all of a sudden. She was on her second tankard of beer, which she hadn’t touched yet, instead spending her time looking into the piss colored liquid. The drinks here weren’t great, but they weren’t bad either, and the price was good, so everyone came here sooner or later, be it to enjoy a few beers in the company of friends, or to get so drunk you forgot what month it was.
“Well, a good three quarters of the stuff on the wall behind me could achieve that effect with different quantities.”
She huffed and took a sip of the beer. The taste seemed to have become mildly better in the last few weeks, even Av agreed on it. Had the proprietor of this place Leveled? Or was it the new bartender? She didn’t know.
“I need something more permanent than that.”
“In that case I find that a good knife to the eye tends to solve the problem.”
She huffed even more: “And that is not an option.”
“Then I think I’m fresh out of ideas.”
For the third time Alice huffed into the wood.
“You keep that up you’ll find out you can breathe fire and burn down the place. And while it does need a bit of remodeling I think that would be excessive.”
She looked up at him, chin on her arms, and sighed: “Sorry, I’m just in a bit of a conundrum and I can’t find the answer I’m looking for.”
“Alice, how do you expect a bartender to have the answers to the problems of a herbalist?”
“Don’t bartenders always have the answer to every problem in life? Isn’t that, like, ninety percent of your job?”
“My job is making and serving drinks to people, not being an encyclopedia, and if I were I’d probably be dead in a ditch the moment someone important found out.”
She huffed a fourth time and then began drinking again. When she was done she looked up at the skinwalker and, whispering, she said: “I need some help to brainstorm an idea. Occult help. Please.”
Larus looked her right in the eyes and, after a moment, sighed. Then: “Boss, I’m taking my five minutes!”
“Sure, go ahead!” shouted back the voice of the Drunken Pig’s proprietor.
In a matter of seconds he was on her side of the counter and walking briskly outside, followed by the [Occultist].
They found a comfortable spot to sit down in the form of an abandoned and battered bench. Sitting down he turned to look at her and frowned.
Alice spent a moment admiring him and decided that yes, he had done a good job at hiding himself. Weren’t it for her Skill she wouldn’t have thought him to be a skinwalker.
“So, what do you need?”
“I’m trying to create a poison powerful enough to destroy a mind.”
“Alice, I’m not sure you know this, but I wasn’t just ‘playing into my role’ when I said I am a bartender who doesn’t know jackshit about botany. I really don’t.”
She glanced up at him and chuckled: “Well, what if I just wanted a rubber duck to throw ideas at?”
That took the wind out of his sails: “What?”
“Nothing, doesn’t matter, it’s a thing from my time, you couldn’t know. Anyways, I’ve come here because I’m pretty sure the answer to my dilemma cannot be found in plants. But you?”
She smiled, suddenly starting to whisper: “I know that your people can feed on memories and knowledge. I could use that. Or rather, I could use the destructive part of that. How does that work?”
If anyone else had asked him something like this he would’ve just told the person to fuck off… and then promptly killed them because that someone knew his secret. The problem was, this was Alice (he was the only one among the skinwalkers to know her real name), the girl who’d helped them for no real reason and had asked practically nothing in return. He felt something deep inside him telling him that he should help her, no matter what. Because she was a true friend. Their only ally.
So he took a deep breath and, after a moment, spoke: “It’s our eyes. They’re the reason we can take the memories of others. We eat the eyes of others, sure, but that’s just the form for it, if you get what I mean.”
Alice batted her eyes: “Wait, you answered that easily? No need for me to haggle around, make deals and the likes?”
He shrugged: “I see no need for that. You helped my kind plenty already, giving you this information doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like you can take my eyes and use them to gain that ability. It’s sort of intrinsic to us.”
She waved that off: “I’m sure I could find a rite to get that ability but that’s not the point. Then here’s another question then: do you dream?”
Confusion wormed its way to his face: “Wha – ? Of course I dream, why shouldn’t I?”
She smiled.
Then got up: “Oh, it’s nothing.”
Then she gave him her hand to shake: “Thank you greatly for the help. Tonight you’ll have a nightmare, but I promise I’ll make it up to you. Alright?”
He shook her hand back, uncertainly: “Err, alright, yeah, sure.”
“Great! Then, see ya around! And do say hi to Maria, alright? I’ll be sure to bring her a toy one of these days.”
And, with that, she walked off, a plan brewing in her mind. Yes, this would work out perfectly!!!