• Graded • The World Beneath The World (Noth)

[Kasoria]

19th Trial, Ymiden, Arc 714
The Citizen's Market, Outer Perimeter
23rd break

There came a point when he stopped remembering them as he imagined other men would. And because memory and past experiences informed how a man lived in the present, regarded his future, what he did to them became as perfunctory as striking a quill through a name on a list. He did not feel the arousal, the sick joy that he had seen dancing in the eyes of others like him. There was rarely pleasure to be found in his work. Once in an arc or more there was someone, reviled or recollected as loathsome, and then, yes, mayhap a smile creased the killer's face as he watched the light blow out of those staring eyes.

But more often than not? It was a job, he was good at it, and he found himself gainfully employed with a man who always had need for a killing blade he could deploy.

It was before Vorund, if Kasoria had to dredge through his memories and pinpoint a rough time when it changed. Becoming a father did not change him so much that nightmares or second thoughts or other harbingers of guilt plagued him. Kasoria was born of the streets, molded and taught by them, as much as he was Sergeant Tantos and Bangun Vorund. Such lofty morality and pious hand-wringing was-

"Fuckin' waste a time, that was."

"Oi, I heard what I heard, a'right?"

"Yeah, well, then you heard a load of fuckin' shite, didn't you?"

Barry and Levin were jabbering as they climbed up and out the back window. One might wonder why a couple of burglars would be so dense as to be crowing while on the job, yet the skinny, short figure at the end of the alley would be a living answer to that. Barnaby - he preferred Burner, for fairly obvious reasons - was the lookout. Small enough at thirteen arcs to blend into shadows and keep watch, yet swift and loud enough to raise the call and give his "friends" warning should the Blackjack come trooping around the corner.

He did his job that trial, that was for sure. The city baked and boiled in the heat of the season, retreat of the suns seeming to do little to save it from such a fate, but he didn't move from his spot. The whole break, he kept his eyes panning up and down the street, sweat running down his slender body, soaking into his shoes... but he didn't move. He was important, they told him. He was their Eyes and Ears, and they were the Hands and the Brains. So, really, he was doing work for two!

He asked once if that entitled him to more of the share. Got a cuff around the ear for that, but his dad doled them out worse. Or used to, anyway.

"Ay, boy? We a'right t'go or what?"

Burner held up his hand without turning around. The two pairs of feet behind him stopped moving. Barry shot his partner a sneer and a roll of his eyes. Impressionable little cunt. Took things so seriously. But he was going to get big soon, and his use as an easy-to-conceal watch puppy would be limited. What to do, what to do... well... he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

Nobody in the windows... no feet on the cobbles... nobody on the roofs... old drunk across the street, laying in puke... yeah, we're-

"Good. All clear."

The trio made their way out of the shadows and into the pale moonlight. Etzos never slept, but it slumbered at certain hours, and seasons. The relentless humidity was driving everyone either underground, on the roof, on in domiciles that could be cooled during the day. The streets were left to men like them, or the crazies and sleepless who didn't seem to notice. Barry snatched his bag from Burner and took a long pull from the wine-skin he found, wincing as he did. Fucking shit was already warm. Levin made much the same face.

"None for you, lad," he said as Burner stared hopefully. "Thank this idiot, telling us there was some good loot in an empty fucking-"

"The fuck are you calling an idiot, eh?" Law of the streets: if you can't be strong, be smart, and if not smart, then strong. Barry was boss because he was strong, and willing to show it off. Even to his old friend. "I heard there's be rolls of silk from sodding Rynmere in there, enough for us to live high-like for two fucking seasons."

"Who told you... that?"

Burner wasn't watching them. Levin noticed that, and thought it odd. The little sod was always hypnotized by the bigger lads talking about big lad things, but that moment he was staring back the way they came. The kid swallowed, and Levin realized they weren't alone.

"Er... Burner, who-"

"It-It's a drunk. I mean, he was, he was in the gutter, 'cross the road from the place, all passed out an' drunk an'-"

"Well apparently fucking not!"

He was a little man and he smelled. He walked with a limp, but he did not meander. Levin heard parchment and weather-stiff clothes rustle and crackle as the limp assemblage of limb rose from his wine-birthed nap, and to his feet. The drunk had swung his head their way, and started following them. Keeping pace, but slowly catching up. Now he was a dozen or so paces away, and Burner felt his nostrils singe at his stink from there.

"Fuck you think, old man?" Barry said with a scowl, unsheathing his dagger with all the theatricality of a young man that had all his brains in his testicles. "Think we got something for you? See us go into that place?"

Barry licked his lips. Levin was getting mouthy. Had been for a while. Here was a drunk, glassy eyed and bearded like an old lion and no-one would miss him. Just another corpse in the sewers. Be a good chance to show these two what he was made of. Of course, he'd... well, the issue had never come up for him before, but he could go pretty far with what he already knew.

Take an eye out of the old cunt, at least.

"Tell ya what, ya cunt-"

His free hand snapped out and gripped the front of the beggar's cloak. Still he didn't move. Just blinked slowly, hands at his sides.

"-think it's time for-"

Kasoria blinked once more, and his hands curled into fists. He was tired of waiting. Tired of watching. Vorund's proxy had told the tale needed to place these opportunistic little bastards where they needed to be. Paying protection to his master was not just a euphemism for regular extortion: him taking your money, meant no other fucker would be. No exceptions. So when stores and warehouses were robbed, the clamor rose from his "clients" and Kasoria was sent with familiar orders.

Find them. Stop them. Send a message.

The dagger rose and Kasoria decided that's what he'd use. Eventually. Two young men, and a boy. The boy would carry the message.

The dagger started moving again and a trill or two later, the screaming began.

Thanks for Jade for the template

[Noth]

He blinked again, attempting to conjure up an image of something different, something that would bring a cessation to the incessant picture that constantly rattled around behind his eyes. The pressure mounted in his cheeks, the musculature in his face pressing inwards with crushing weight as it attempted to submerge the impalpable sensation below whatever mire kept such vivid thoughts subjugated and allowed for a person to continue in their daily activities. He pressed until it felt as though the tension in his face might stick, the muscles becoming stuck in their place, unable to be provoked to further action, and then allowed the sensation to bleed away into the ether with a defeatist sigh.

There, the image remained, the scene blatant and grim in his memory, perhaps far more dramatically remembered than it had actually taken place, but memory was a cruel mistress, and it preferred the harsher fiction to the kinder truth. There, his eyes gazed down at the phantasmal representation of a figure appearing there in the midst of the street, his thoughts forcing the entity to become corporeal and real even whilst a massive section of his subconscious regaled the being to the category of imagination. Yes, if he directed his thoughts, it became clear that the corpse he saw now before him was not truly present, nor had it ever been present, but sometimes when the sudden appearance of the specter caught him by surprise, it seemed as lifelike as it had ever been, and it turned his feet to stone and his thoughts to little more than a viscous mush.

The Avriel could still feel the twitch and touch of cloth upon the tips of his feathered fingers every single time the apparition decided to haunt him. It made it difficult to grasp or maintain a hold on anything, the sensation numbing all the way up to his elbows in a way that was impossible to resist, and why would he even attempt it? Was this not a justified and righteous punishment for a being as wicked as he? Was it not… correct that he should suffer such a modest amount for so great a crime as the one he had committed? Oh, he could excuse himself from some wrongdoing because of his genetic makeup, could declare that the avian blood had gotten the best of him, and that the savagery of adolescence had forced him into striking out.

If only saying things made them true, then the hybrid would have revisited the home of his adopted father a season ago, and put his corpse to rest without little more than a second thought. He was owed that much at least for all of the kindnesses and mercies he had granted to the babe he had discovered in the woods being pursued by a plethora of flighty abominations who had been so quick to spill the blood of the innocent. Now, it seemed as though he had become everything that his father had declared was wicked, because in a moment of weakness, he had stricken out and slain his savior.

Noth’s stomach rumbled once more, reminding him of pains that were far more physical than emotional, present no matter the grief that drew its claws through his broken heart. In the end, he could not bring himself to declare that one was more important than the other, that surviving now was more important than grieving over the loss of his father and becoming contrite over his actions. Both were millstones that entrapped his neck, keeping him stiff and weighed down, incapable of even the most basic of action. Nevertheless, whereas one of the millstones could only be removed with time, the other could more mercifully be relieved with the intake of consumable materials.

The issue of food had seemed to be such an irrelevant thought when first the hybrid had fled into the woods. At first, perhaps it had been, because he had been quick to recover whatever food items he could from the home of his father, and divert them from their empty abode into the cavern which he had discovered some ways outside of Etzos. Yet, the desirable meals had quickly surpassed their usefulness as time tore away at their freshness, turning what had once been delightful meals into little more than rancid conclaves of worms. He had brought along his longbow in his exodus, and yet, it had granted him little reprieve though he had put forth an admirable effort in the hunt for prey. He was not quiet enough to approach the larger beasts which kept their ears sharply tuned for the snap of branches, and the smaller hares were both too small and too quick for his inexperienced missiles to puncture. He had considered foraging for assorted plants, and had managed to find a few berries hither and thither that he recognized from his childhood escapades, but for the most part it was little more than a deterrent to the inevitable as opposed to a solution, and he daren’t consume that which he did not recognize lest it tear apart his intestines, leaving him just as dead as…

He clenched again, leaning into the nearest adobe wall just so that he could feel its stability, could use it as a resting place while he regained his composure. He bolted his eyes down like warehouse doors, not allowing a single droplet of liquid to spill forth from them lest they make him look like prey to some conniving thief or ruffian. He knew enough of the world and its viciousness to realize that predators took many forms, and most preferred the guise of men.

The Avriel had little in the way of money, and so he kept mostly to the backalleys and side-streets of the market area, attempting to locate a nel scattered across the loose cobbles hither or thither, or perhaps to find some measure of edible refuse. How far his life had fallen in so short a time that whereas once he had enjoyed splendid home-cooked meals, now he was little more than a rat sifting through the detritus in search of something that might satiate his appetite. He pressed against a rather dilapidated door, feeling it shift and lurch as it gave way against his weight, and then, curiously it was thrust open, revealing a rather dim and dusty abode. The place had clearly not possessed residents in quite some time if the grime which coated the furniture was any indication, but nevertheless he felt inclined to scour through it on the oft-change that something consumable was present.

He went about the regular business of popping open every cabinet and cupboard he could find, though none contained anything in particular that he desired; simply more detritus, or in some cases food which had gone the way of all mortal things. Presently, the slight whisper of voices reached his ears, and he peered out of a nearby window, shrouded in darkness enough that he imagined it would be difficult to look inwards and spot him from the outside.

Suddenly, the voices seemed to grow somewhat more… tense would perhaps be the proper terminology, though the hybrid was not familiar enough with the brutish underworld to know for certain whether it was simply an intimidation tactic. Crimson eyes peered out from the shade, observing a trio of men, and what appeared to be a young boy near the end of the alleyway. There was a sudden flash of steel, his eyes paying rapt attention to it as it slid through the air, painting the walls with an unfamiliar crimson, and filling his stomach with dread and bile.

It took him a few moment’s to realize that he’d become every assassin’s worst nightmare. No, not a member of the Black Guard, because what could they do without evidence? Perhaps even worse than those do-gooders and law-bringers, he had become the ultimate enemy of subterfuge.

A witness.

[Kasoria]

He was proud of what followed, and prouder still that it was easy. He was far past the point where he lied to himself about "killing never gets easier" or "only the mad or monstrous brag of murder". His profession was killing people; he thus took a professional pride in doing his job well, without sadism or excess or witness. Doing so ensured his pay, and kept him fed. As for it being easy, well, they were two youths with a knack for pilfering, but little skin in the mortal game, as it were.

Repetition was on Kasoria's side. For with repetition, any task became easier. The mind dulled the horror and constructed fortification of normalcy around atrocity. Age and gender ceased to become relevant, although Kasoria would not guess when the moment or which life it was when taking it became... easy.

Not in terms of effort. That always varied. But accepting the act. Looking into their eyes and seeing a life lived short or long and deciding to squash it like a big beneath your heel. Taking that responsibility onto your soul, a weight onto your conscience. A memory of blood and begging that would stay with you forever.

Except it didn't. Given time.

Barry didn't know how to hold his blade. He brandished it as one did a torch, or a talisman. Not a weapon wielded with deadly intent. Kasoria's eyes flickered to the dagger as it started towards him, and he noted the bend in the boy's elbow-

Good enough window.

-swaying to his left, left arm jerking up to grab the boy's wrist, right snapping up at the elbow, squeezing-

"The fuck-"

He used his body, as much as his limbs. It was all leverage, after all. Put enough pounds in the right place, you could accomplish anything. Just a matter of how much, where, and how fast. Like when he burst his body forward, hands tightly gripping wrist and elbow, left arm turning the dagger back onto the body that commanded it-

-hinge in the arm useless as Kasoria gripped it and prevented it from locking-

-and as Levin and Burner and Barry himself watching with mounting horror the boy's lips pursed to curse and-

"F-Fuckin' shit!"

No noise came out. Well, no, there was noise. It just wasn't Common, or any language known to humans. Maybe the Mer, for it certainly was a liquid and flowing speech. It coughed and bubbled up from Barry's throat as his dagger was buried in the side of it, harmless little beggar looking at him with eyes suddenly very, very focused. And as the stunned, doomed boy stared, that's all he saw.

Focus. Intent. A desire to see a job through to the end. Nothing more.

The burglar twitched as Kasoria pulled his wrist to the side, and the dagger he still held-

-tore a ragged gash through various crucial pipes and tubes and scarlet sprayed into the air. Kasoria sidestepped away from him, ignoring the tottering, leaking, gurgling figure. He was already dead. His body knew that, his mind had yet to catch up. Frothy, steaming liquid sprayed and dribbled onto the cobbles as he stepped away, marching on Levin and as he closed in his hands vanished under his cloak and-

"N-N-No, no, please!"

Burner was, well, no longer Burner. The street facade had vanished from his face and Barnaby had returned. Lip quivering, legs quaking, shrinking back into the wall and praying to something, someone, anything that could make him drift clear through it like a ghost. Before he became one. He'd seen Levin stare down drunks and junkies in the streets, big beefy fists like ham hocks ready for a brawl. But he was all of his seventeen arcs in Barnaby's eyes now, sinking down to one knee when he should have been running.

Barry had been a tough sod, too. Now he was dead. Just like that. Ended quick and easy as a man blowing out a candle. Whatever fight he had fled when he saw his friend's throat carved open, and he babbled, desperate to talk down this, this-

"Mate, please, I don't-"

The beggar didn't even pause. Didn't say anything. The short, straight sword flashed, a backhanded stroke so fast that it seemed like a silver fan unfurled before the ragged men, and when the silver had ended, scarlet replaced it again. A brief, morning mist of red. Kasoria closed his eyes for a trill, until the spray had faded. Then looked down at the boy clutching at his throat. Trying to hold his voice-box together as veins nad arteries pumped madly between his fingers. Still begging. Still hoping. Teary-eyed and so very young.

He didn't dag it out. Wasn't his way. With a flourish that was, in fact, the prescribed way the Cade Academy instructors had told him for readying his gladius for a thrust, he drew the blade close to his hip, found his target and-

Barnaby twitched like a man struck by cloud-fires as he heard the wet, sick, rending sound of a blade punching through a breastbone. Levin managed to look down in sheer, stunned confusion at the thing sticking out of his chest. Had enough time to understand what it meant before the beggar-who-was-not yanked it out again, and-

He fell. Unnoticed by his killer. Kasoria knew from more than two decades of experience when a man was no longer a threat, and thus no longer his concern. His eyes were on the survivor, now. The sobbing, spluttering figure pressed hard against the wall, praying in a tongue he didn't recognize. Shaking his head with one trembling hand to the sky and-

"Quiet."

Barnaby did as he was told when he found the point of that gladius against his chin. He was terrified, a fool could see that. Trying and failing to keep his young jaw from trembling, and Kasoria gauged him in a handful of trills. As was his way, he decided to lay it on thick. It prevented the message from being forgotten and, if he was honest, the Etzosi underworld appreciated a certain... flamboyancy.

Fuck knows where that came from.

"You're going to live, and for one reason. Are you listening?"

How could he not be? Once a shaky nod was given - harder to discern, given how much other uncontrollable shaking was going on - Kasoria began his little spiel, as commanded and expected... punctuating it by rubbing his blade clean, one side on each of Barnaby's shoulders.

"You will spread the word, to the other burglars and thieves... that businesses protected by Bangun Vorund... are off-limits. Anyone that forgets that, or ignores it..."

After finishing repainting the shoulders of Barnaby's shirt, Kasoria stepped to the side, and let the lookout take in his work. He watched with cold eyes as he saw all of it scrawled and burned into the boy's brain. Both were still wheezing, rasping, barely clinging to life. But ah, how it clung. Resilient and eternally optimistic. Kasoria made sure the boy kept watching until he saw their eyes go glassy. Their spasm-firing muscles grow still. Until they were still and stones and cobbles and all the self-such dead things the city was built of.

"Next time, I leave no-one to spread the message. Just my master's words, carved into their flesh. Now-" the tip of the gladius pressed into Barnaby's cheek one more time, as if to prophesy that event "-do you understand all that?"

"Y-Yes-"

"Will you spread the words?"

"Y-Yes-"

"Good. Run."

The boy didn't need telling twice. He tripped twice and ran into a garbage pail once, but within a few trills he was flailing down an alley way and into the dark. Kasoria took in another trill to... appreciate, if nothing else. A handsome purse earned. A message sent that would please his master, and ensure no further pilfering would mar his reputation for protection. He was already planning the rest of his evening, blood-dripping corpses at his feet forgotten-

There was a noise. Living in a city, one learns to distinguish between them. The rodent and the feline. The drunk and the housewife. The deliberate bang of a pan to dislodge food, opposed to the sloppy clamor of one dropped. A hundred other sounds, a thousand, that a city-dweller could learn and never really tell you how. Kasoria heard something now.

A heavy something, crashing onto floorboards from where an errant limb had knocked it off a shelf. It came from the nearly-vacant warehouse the trip had been lured to. Kasoria frowned and slid a little further from the nearest light, staring at the black, empty windows.

It was heavy, that was for sure. Heavy enough that prowling mice and rats would not dislodge it. But it came from there, where the boys had been, and surely any witnesses or vagabonds would have been sent packing by them before-

You're here to send a message. Now you have another mouth for it. So where is the issue?

Kasoria exhaled, and felt sweat trickle down his chest. Ymiden was a hot month in a Hot Season and he preferred the cold. He ran better in it, thought clearer. In the heat he was almost reduced, devolved to simple solutions. Most times... he preferred that. The simplicity of that life. But even he had to sigh and toss up his hands and admit that here, in Etzos, in the underworld, things could not be so simple.

On your terms. You already have. Any other reports, well...

His gladius stayed in his hands. His form glided back into the alley, and he started to make his way from shadow to shadow, back to the warehouse. Each step was careful, avoiding glass or trash or anything that could interfere with his pricked ears. He was hard to distinguish, but not impossible. That was half the point. They would see him. Odds are, they would move. He would hear them. He would know.

Then it would be easy. Simple. One more repetition.

[Noth]

Noth would never be able to understand the pride and satisfaction that filled the hearts of murderers and brigands when they committed their wicked deeds. Thieves took such great joy in the act of stealing from the pitiful and the helpless that they often shared stories with one another, carefully detailing the planning and schemes which had inevitably led to their successful heists. Robbers and brigands waited on the roadways, trading stratagems with one another on how best they might stop a family traveling down the road, the depraved things that they would do to them after they had gotten them to surrender. Serial killers and the psychotic individuals who trailed after them would relish the torturous inventions and concoctions that were conceived in their twisted minds, enjoying the pain and suffering that they could inflict.

Noth didn’t think he would ever be able to comprehend people such as those, such animalistic and hateful persons who would prey upon others for the sake of accomplishing their tedious goals. What he was doing now… scavenging through abandoned buildings in search of sustenance might have been considered a form of thievery by some, but he reasoned that because the building was abandoned, he would not be harming anyone by pilfering through whatever remained of it. In fact, he had discovered only detritus inside of the structure, and had left it, and so in the end he could not even claim the title of scavenger for his breaking and entering.

There was a pang of unease and disgust that rippled through the Avriel’s stomach as he observed the two men being hacked to pieces by the murderer in the alleyway. There was the chance, of course, that he was simply a vigilante and that he was executing a pair of vicious and violent criminals, but… he couldn’t shake the feeling that the entire ordeal was blatantly wrong, at least in the eyes of morality. His father would have disapproved of it, thought the hybrid, and Nicholas had never once strayed from a good and loyal path, even in his final moments.

It was messy and carnal to observe, but he could not pull his crimson eyes away from the scene, and he found himself analyzing certain pieces of the murder, observing as the knife shifted and slid through the air with such ease, the way that flesh was split open and blood was spilt with impunity upon the cold ground. A child waited at the end of the alley, frightened into inaction as the murder commenced, and the hybrid could not blame him, for he too desired little more than to wait out the crime, and then perhaps to see whatever damage control could be attained from the aftermath.

Eventually, when they began to beg for their lives, the hybrid felt himself pull away somewhat from the vantage point, bile rising up in his stomach, burning away at his intestines as he threatened to vomit. It was disgusting and despicable and cruel, and the immediate thoughts that came to his mind were that he should be perfectly capable of stopping such appalling behavior. Had he not grown up here? Was this all that his home had become: a den of murderers and vipers constantly striking out at both one another and the innocent? Where was their leader who would bend their knee and ensure that they could not harm anyone who didn’t truly deserve to be harmed, who could take hold of their reins?

No… no one existed who held that ability. Oh, certainly, there were criminal bosses and gangsters; even he who avoided the criminal underworld like a plague was aware of some of the names that were dropped around when polite conversation went out of the window and the broody and brutish tavern-goers began to talk of work. The next thought that rifled through his mind was that he should attempt to call the Black Guard… but what use was that when the two men were already dead? No, then they would simply pin the crime on him and make it appear as though he had wantonly murdered them just like he’d murdered…

He bit down on his tongue, suppressing the thought with pain until he could focus more intently on the physical suffering than the emotional. When he finally released the clamp of his teeth, he could feel the marks bored into the fleshy appendage where indentations had been made from the pressure. He hadn’t pierced it, thankfully, but he had probably come the closest he’d ever managed before to it. The Avriel began to disengage himself from the window, his thoughts still running rampant as he attempted to determine a solution.

Naturally, as is the way that fate typically transpires, he re-directed himself immediately into a nearby cabinet door which had long since rusted away at the hinges. The heavy item was thrust off of its resting place, collapsing onto the floor with a loud crash of noise not dissimilar to an explosion. Crimson eyes shot back across the room at the window, taking immediate notice of the fact that the man had finished in his murderous spree, and was now directing his attention straight towards the building.

Run, his mind screamed, and he obeyed, abandoning any pretense of stealth as he shot across the structure towards the exiting door, diving through it without a second thought as he raced through the unfamiliar alleyways, passing by the doors of ransacked and ugly adobe homes and businesses, finding himself tangled deeper and deeper in the nest of side-passages. Where… where was the exit? Where had he come from? Had it been the other way? Did this passage continue, or was it another dead end?

His thoughts shrieked in fear as he continued on his path, intent on escaping the murderer, uncertain of whether he was even following.

[Kasoria]

His father once told him never to run from the Blackjack, because only guilty people run. Innocent people have nothing to fear from the law, and they do not flee from the face of justice. Well, admittedly his father had not been that poetic - stock taking and sales patter had been more his speed - but the lesson has stuck with him.

Sergeant Tantos had a different take on things. He knew that innocent people ran all the time. Not out of guilt, but plain, simple, stupid fear. Just because you were innocent of that crime, unfolding or stamped across the scene you were spotted, did not mean some other secret offence was lurking in your heart. The scholar's called it "fight or flight", how men reacted when they were confronted with danger... and innocent men did not fight the Black Guard, either. So they tried to run. So they looked guilty.

Kasoria wasn't interested in such concepts as guilt or innocence. He hadn't been for nearly twenty arcs. Philosophy was the concern of the hand and mind that wielded the sword; he was the sword. Weaponry had no place judging, or even thinking. Accomplishing his mission and earning his crust was what he cared about. What little moralizing he was prone to, was the reassurance that Bangun Vorund was not some power-drunk fool who lashed out at any and all, killing for the slightest reason. When he was dispatched with gold pressed into his hand, names and faces whispered and etched into his ears, there was a reason.

It was business, nothing more. But it did not seem so in the moment. It was... far older than that.

They see you coming. They're bolting.

The avalanche of noise from the darkened warehouse told Kasoria that his quarry wasn't even trying to be subtle. Just like he'd half-hoped, they were fleeing, something nigh-impossible to do quietly, unless you had wings... or magic. The killer winced as he broke into a run. Fucking Hells, he really hoped they didn't have magic. That shite was a right cunt to deal with.

He didn't bother going through the window the boys had, just careened around the corner and saw a flash of flapping cloak vanishing down an alleyway. He pounded after him, breath coming out in snorts until he remembered to regulate it. Every second footstep. Inhale, exhale, don't wind yourself, all words hammered into his head years ago. But now his own shoes against the cobbles were deafening him, and they could be his greatest aid in the chase-

"Fuck!"

-since the bastard was fast, whoever he was. Another corner and he just missed him. A blink of a limb. A hint of a torso. But he was fast, fast and... lost. The sewers were the obvious gamble. Or ducking into one of the shebeens and pubs, rowdy blazes of light in the darkness. But whoever it was, he wasn't going for the obvious solution. He was running just to run, so maybe-

He's scared, and he's lost. Not his area. Good

No-one will miss him.

Kasoria ground his teeth as hair smacked his face and trembled around his head like snakes. Gripped his word tighter and that time he saw a boy proper. Tall and broad but running with all the speed of a startled deer. Past gutted houses and roof-ravaged stores, abandoned to the derelicts and the junkies and detritus that even the lowest booze-holes wouldn't let in. The figure plunged into another alley, cloak billowing behind it as it whooshed past a mound if dying candles the locals used as lighting and-

The killer blinked. No. He couldn't... no, he was seeing things.

Focus!

The little man growled and surged forward, upper body tilting towards his prey, racing past that pitiful public lighting ticks later

He was catching up.

[Noth]

Noth had never had much trouble with the law when he was growing up. Of course, he had spent much of his adolescence; the time when many decided to test the boundaries and limitations that government had placed upon them, locked away in his home’s attic, and had thusly managed to avoid much of the ill-conceived plotting and scheming that often accompanied youth. Nevertheless, as a child, he had never encountered quite as much difficulty with the Black Guard as others, perhaps because he was careful not to get caught up in much trouble. Oh, of course, when he had broken the neck of one of his neighbors dogs after it had tried to attack him, he had been questioned rather thoroughly by the sergeant involved in the investigation, but for the most part, the Guard had left him to his own devices.

As with all things that are good, however, that treatment of general ignorance eventually faded into nothingness. Perhaps Nicholas had made some manner of agreement with the Black Guard that he knew which had managed to keep the Avriel orphan under his care safe from their reprimand, or perhaps he had held some aspect of charisma that had managed to subdue their inherent disgust towards his race. He supposed that it could even simply be that he had been little more than an adorable ball of feathers when he had been younger, and now he had grown into something more akin to a monstrosity.

He hadn’t even noticed the sudden change until he had gone to speak to a member of the local Black Guard, only for them to ignore him entirely as he attempted to question them on the location of the nearest food vendor. When he had persisted instead of taking the hint, the Guard had turned with evident frustration, and promptly told him off with far more expletives then the hybrid believed he had ever heard throughout his life. It had been so sudden that it had caught him off guard, and whilst he had conceded and abandoned any attempt of speaking to the man, it had stricken him as something far different from what he seen as a child.

Everything was different now, the hybrid considered as he passed another corner, his lungs undulating as they struggled to suckle in enough oxygen to allow him to continue his sprint. It was difficult running for long periods of time, but at the very least he wasn’t being restricted or restrained by any sort of heavy equipment; he could only imagine how difficult it must be for the Black Guard to attempt to chase down a criminal when they were outfitted in the finest chainmail.

His mind raced as he began to question what he had happened to perceive whilst observing the murder. The killer had very clearly used a bladed instrument, something which had appeared to him to be little more than a knife, and yet, it had caused so much damage that perhaps it would be better considered a sword for the sake of the killing it had caused. Had the man been draped in any sort of armament other than the knife? Had he been wearing any form of protection to keep himself from being wounded in the fighting, or had he simply been too quick for the opponents he faced? It became more and more difficult to recall the truth of the encounter the further he ran, the more his lungs shrieked for additional oxygen, the longer that time ticked onwards in its never-ending motion.

Briefly, he caught onto the fact that some of the buildings he had passed in his desperate run were occupied with persons, he could faintly recognize the whisper of voices, observe the piercing flame of candlelight as it cut through the otherwise dark and dim alleyway. Yet, he did not know how far behind him the assassin was, and he certainly recognized even in his panicked state that to turn around would likely mean confronting him directly. If even the Black Guard cared so little for his existence, then what would a band of ruffians and scum truly think of him? Would they not simply allow the murderer to drag him outdoors the instant that he promised not to stain the floor with the avian’s blood?

No, he needed to run, he considered, and perhaps… he could do even more than that. A sudden realization struck into the mind of the Avriel as he glanced up at the nearby structures, taking especial notice of the fact that many of them hung rather low; they were not the grandiose structures that one might have been familiar with near the center of the city, but rather he had run far enough that what had once been reasonably built had degenerated into slums and shanties. The only structures of reasonable quality had clearly been rotted away over generations, and he sincerely doubted anyone other than the truly desperate now resided inside of them.

He couldn’t run forever, he finally conceded as his chest painfully pounded, slowing him rather substantially for a few instances. He couldn’t hear the footsteps of the man, and he was fairly certain that he had at least a few trills before he would be discovered. He ran through a list of what he could attempt, coming to the logical conclusions almost instantaneously. He could fight: he would die. He could keep running: eventually he would be caught.

Or… perhaps…

The Avriel looked towards the nearest structure, saw its decrepit nature; not altogether dissimilar from the one he had been in mere moments prior, and immediately an idea began to appear into his mind. He sprinted for the door in a heartbeat, thrusting it open loudly, not worrying about whether it was inhabited, or whether or not the man would hear it; it would be better if he did. Once the door was open, the Avriel would back away, and immediately sprint towards it, as if though he intended to run directly through it.

At the last moment, a great black wing extended itself from his back, hurtling him upwards and onto the roof of the structure. He scrambled roughly to a halt atop of the building, hidden away from the ground by the crumbling stone outliers which lay along the edges of the roof, much like the castellation of an ancient castle. He lay there quietly, attempting to listen for approaching footsteps beyond the rhythmic thudding of his pulsing heart.

[Kasoria]

Whatever will or demon or simple darkness within him guided his limbs when he killed, Kasoria felt it fill them as he turned yet another corner, ran down yet another rank of dilapidated houses and tiny stores. He could hear the fleeing footfalls of his quarry over his own now. He could almost smell the fear and sweat trailing behind the fleeing witness.

The gladius was light in his hand, as if it were part of his body, just stretched out and sharpened. Sweat was flung off him with every step, splattering his growing exhaustion over the cobbles as he went, but he did not slow. He was close. He knew it. It would be trills or bits are the most before he was face to face with this poor fuck and then-

It filled him. It grew. Snaked through bone and muscle and blood and soul until he could feel it grip his gladius tighter.

Poor bastard. But it don't change shit.

A door was cracked open round the corner, the runner apparently deciding to chance hiding, or at least changing direction. Kasoria grinned behind his messy hair. Foolish. Should have tried that when he had a head start, maybe Kasoria would lose his trail in the time it took to catch up. But this close, it was only a few trills before he spun around the corner, free hand grabbing onto the wall as he went, so fast was he moving-

There!

-a door swung open in the night, faint shafts of candlelight clawing feebly out into the street with every swing. Kasoria slowed down and cocked his ear to the inside of the house. Feet on stairs, across floorboards, scrambling along hallways, soon he would...

He stopped in the doorway. There was no sound. No movement. The house was silent save for the whistling wind. The killer frowned and tried to think if... no, he couldn't have gone anywhere else. He would have heard the pounding of his feet as he escaped, so... it was here. It had to be here. He looked around as he stepped into the house, eyes piercing every corner and crevice that he could. Nothing but an empty hallway smelling of piss and ashes in there. He made a move to go into the-

"Wuh... Wuh..."

He spun around and beheld a crusty creature made of rags and stinking of... well, pretty much everything that made a man want to retch. The bottle in one of his hands was shaking, what little liquid left inside sloshing madly. But Kasoria could see it was not just the sight of a wild-eyed man with a weapon that had birthed such terror in him; his white face and egg-wide eyes had been such for a little longer than when he'd arrived.

"Wuh... Wings..."

Kasoria blinked. The creature as derelict as the building he squatted in, as forgettable as the potato sacks and ancient horse blankets he'd piled on himself, pointed up. To the roof. The killer followed the gesture, looking straight up at the ceiling, and did not believe it... until he looked back and saw no lie on that stunned old drunkard.

"W... Wings..."

The vagrant expected the lad to go tearing off again, of course. Well, he was actually expecting very little: arcs of slowly pickling his own brain with brandy, rum, hooch, grog and anything else that could strip paint at five feet had left him open to pretty much anything the world flung his way. Every break that followed the previous break was fresh and new to him, and such fantastical things as dragons and wind spirits and bird-men were part of his day.

But that one had seemed so real. He could smell the sweat on the tips of his feathers. He could feel the rush of air against his face as that huge wing whooshed and swept the frantic creature upward. He did not expect much, did Old Herbert, but he knew when-

The man approached him. He didn't expect that. Why was he concerned with him? He'd been cowering in the shadows the whole time, from when the door burst in to when that thing flew up onto the roof, so why was-

The gladius rose. He looked up and saw a monster, fangs and melting eyes and all and he made to scream but the stars, the stars they melted into the sword the monster carried and the flashed across the distance between them. Herbert coughed and tried to scream again. But the booze was thick in his throat, it seemed, so he tried to drink some more. Maybe it would wash away the star-shine tumbling out of his throat. His hands, though... they were... old. He couldn't lift them. He coughed again and just that simple thing made him tired.

He closed his eyes and heard that girl who he always thought might be his daughter. She was singing to him and he slumped to the side, stars and monsters and bird-men forgotten.

Kasoria flicked his gladius to one side, snapping off most of the blood. It was not a decision he came to lightly, but adrenaline and frustration and the sheer, cold pragmatism of the streets demanded it. The old drunk could be right. Looked like he wasn't lying, anyway. Certainly looked incapable of sprinting half a fucking league away from him, then breaking down a door, then hiding himself and then just waiting for him, to try and lead him astray.

Unlikely. Implausible... but not impossible.

You have to be sure.

Words that always served him well. Especially when witnesses to his craft were concerned.

So he advanced on the muttering man. His shadow loomed and soon all he could see was the madly-sparkling stuff in the bottle, and the rheumy red-white eyes staring up at him, just before his gladius thrust forwards, under his matted chin and into where, roughly, his throat would be.

You learned a lot from the feel of a blade when it struck home. The difference between soft, unyielding and thick, stiff. A glimmer of dark satisfaction flickered over Kasoria's face as he felt the double-side blade cleave through veins and fat and muscle. He pulled it back and watched the man choke, cough, try to speak or beg or maybe just throw up. Instead all he did was fall over to the side and lay there. He sighed, just once, like a man about to have a nap he'd been looking forward to all day. Then there was nothing, save a steady hiss of warm blood into cold air.

Then the killer looked up the stairs. The corpse in front of him, the carcass he'd made with one solid thrust of his sword, had been the result of him being sure. A part of his professional code that accepted death, even of those not connected to the parties of his contract. Already it had come into play, so to leave now, without being sure, without checking the rest of the house?

Then his death meant nothing. It was just laziness, because you could not be bothered to search the whole property.

Kasoria could not tolerate that.

Each footstep was measured and patient. In no hurry. Just like the drunk would not be missed, kasoria would not be disturbed, not in this wreck among a street that was a cemetery of them. He was no scholar of physics, but even he knew that speed combined with mass, created noise. And so there was no haste in his footsteps, as he skulked from hallway to kitchen to parlor, and then finding them deserted, started to move up the stairs.

Haste bred noise, too, and he would need his ears. What took a casual man trills took him bits, but still he moved slowly... and he listened... and began to work his way upwards.

Gladius still in hand. Mayhap nothing had changed. Mayhap the old man was just the cost of his doing business. Kasoria was not about to wax philosophical at that time, though. He would entertain moral dilemmas and ethical quandaries later, from the convenience and safety of his home. This was a night for dark deeds and blacker souls. He thought not longer, instead pouring his being into his senses, prepared for nothing, or something.

Until that thing stirred again.

[Noth]

Throughout his entire adult life, the twilight hybrid had always had an impulse towards the ‘fight’ side of fight or flight. Of course, one could simply argue that he was a young adult male, and that the red-blooded arrogance and youthful energy that flowed through his veins had disposed him more towards violence than towards having his pride shattered in retreat. In many ways, there was probably at least some semblance of truth to that analysis, and the hybrid was certainly not an expert enough to attempt to argue it in any case other than internally. Within himself, however, he felt as though perhaps it was an urge that had been formed by some different cause, not simply a side-effect of his youth, but perhaps something which ran far deeper within him, his very blood written in such a way that it was overly aggressive. The human side of him for the most part controlled his mind, ensured that good decisions were made, and that he thought tactically and carefully about all matters, but the Avriel side of him was vicious, it was cruel and quick and animalistic in its impulses, and try as he might to remove it from the equation, it was always present, always roiling within him.

In this darkness, he thought that it took on a more palpable form, the pulsing and raging motions of his heart as it thrust within his body, sending adrenaline and blood outwards to his extremities. The stress of the situation made him curl his fingers, and he could feel the tingling sensation of numbness beginning to settle into their very tips as he awaited the arrival or the departure of whoever had decided to turn his decent trial into what could only be described as a nightmarish scene. He had had nightmares of being chased as a young boy; weren’t all children affected by such dreams? Yet, there had been some manner of disconnect between those events and the real world. Even when the dreams were frightening and terrible, filled with the most abominable of scenarios, he could always wake up at the end and dispel them as simply being the contrived experiences of a bored mind. This was so much different… if he failed here, then he would reverse the scenario, and the only place that his mind would go would be a world of eternal sleep.

The twilight hybrid didn’t dare move from his resting place upon the roof. He was concealed if a person were looking directly upwards from the ground, though, he did genuinely question whether or not there was another way up to the roof that he had somehow managed to ignore in his rapid climb. There could very well be a ladder on the side of the home that led upwards to the roof, and it could well be that the place was occasionally used as a gathering place for friends and relatives, though, the hybrid could find no evidence of that given that the entire thing seemed barren and relatively empty, in many ways, it was a perfect representation of the city where it was built.

Vaguely, on the edges of his auditory range, he thought he could hear someone speaking, but the combined distance between them and the still racing pulsation of his heart made it difficult to perceive what had been spoken. Had someone else managed to see him in his flight? Had someone decided to rat out one of their fellow citizens for the sake of ensuring that they would be kept alive? He thought he heard… liquid begin to fall in its dripping and dropping way, and the fact that the sky had not poured forth rain in a few trials indicated to him rather quickly that whatever had made noise had quickly met the end of the assassin’s blade and suffered a similar fate as to his original targets. Why would he go through so much effort to ensure that he was not caught? Was it really such a risk if the hybrid managed to get away to he and his career? Of course, he could inform the Black Guard of what had happened, but would they even believe him? He was a half-Avriel… did they even have time for what he had to say or would they simply shun him for his race and presume that he was making things up for the sake of enjoying a moment of fame?

There was silence again for several moments, but as with all things, it was inevitably disrupted by the most uncomfortable of noises. He could hear the gentle scuff of shoes against the floor downstairs, and the very occasional creak of elder wood as pressure was exerted unto it. The man was for the most part quite quiet to the extent that the hybrid was having some difficulty perceiving where he was inside of the building at most times. Yet, there was little doubt that he was there, and that was enough for the Avriel to determine that he ought to remain quiet. The noises grew closer as the assassin maneuvered his way upstairs into the secondary floor of the home, and the hybrid genuinely began to fear, questioning just how much material had been placed between the ceiling of the secondary floor and the beginnings of the roof.

He was worried and frightened and terrified of what might yet come, but he did not utter a word, nor make a single movement as he waited on the roof, listening intently to the murderer below, mentally preparing to shoot into a run the instant that he believed he had been caught.

[Kasoria]

It was easy to think that what unfolded was a simple matter of hunter and hunted. But that implied too much, and incorrectly. The hunted had speed and stealth as their advantage, the hunted strength and size. That was how it was throughout the world of animals, where only the desperate flight and keen senses of the hunted kept them from hunters had the choice between success, and starvation.

Kasoria knew it was not the case with men. Because there was that extra... dimension, that was the word he'd read. That of the mind, beyond instinct and cunning and sheer survival.

This is a contest, he reminded himself as he stopped at the top of the stairs. Between two minds, as much as two bodies.

The house was empty, save for the corpse he'd left downstairs. Just the detritus that the ragged and scavenging had left behind, the worthless remnants that even those desperate souls could not find a use for. Nothing left but off scraps of furniture covered in dust, rooms with floorboards ripped up at odd spots, likely for firewood. Kasoria had drifted through each room like a wraith, as silent as he could make himself... and still he winced with every creak of the boards.

You're never as quiet as you want to be.

He peered around the attic, long and arched and wreathed in darkness... and he saw no hint of life within. Just the scurrying of rodents and the writhing of wing'd things in the rafters, unnerved and insulted by the careless biped's searching. The old, dead drunk's words struck him as he stared at their hanging or roosting figures. Wings. He'd heard of creatures that looked like men, but bore wings. Something beginning with... A, if he recalled correctly. But he'd never heard of them in Etzos. Maybe the climate was wrong or-

Kasoria's gaze kept moving up. There was only the roof left, yet he'd heard no scramble of claws or feet across tiles. No breathing or prayers. No footsteps or shuffling. Just the wind moaning through the chimneys, and the distant sound of a corpse-collector's cart winding through the streets, bell ringing, voice calling, likely taking his two victims down into the hollows.

It reminded him his work was not yet done, but... how to finish it? Was there even anything to finish? Kasoria spied the window at the end of the attic, and concocted his final plan as he walked over to it. Questing fingers found that it would open, and peering beyond the glass he saw the ledge outside. He could drag himself up onto the roof and from there, well, he was going nowhere. Because there was nowhere left to go. He opened the window and shook his head for a moment, eyes closed.

This was going to sound really stupid.

"Gotcha, ya bastard!"

He half-snarled, half-shouted the words to the empty, whistling air outside the window, loud enough for anyone on or in the top floor of the house to hear. He used his words like a hunting dog, sending them plunging into the darkness to hopefully flush out anything lurking within. That's why he paused after he spoke: a handful of trills, not longer, long enough for him to hear any frantic movement above him that would tell him no, he had not been wasting his time, and his quarry was still abroad that night.

And if not... he would go up anyway. For the sake of completion, and the sake of the contest. Because sometimes the contest was one between equals, possessing wits not to be fooled by such a simple tactic. But would they know it was a bluff? Would they stay still and silent and trust to the shadows to protect them? Part of Kasoria, tiny and odd to his street sensibilities, hoped it was the case. Only through equal contests and greater enemies did one grow. He'd gone too long with easy kills, street trash long on muscle and short on brains.

He waited, for those handful of trills, and listened. Wondering. Hoping. Resolved, either way.

[Noth]

Cylus 28, 718

Noth had been on a few hunts throughout his lifetime. He had gone when he was still quite young with his father on a few excursions where he had been taught the absolute basics of the craft, and where he had worked to assist his adoptive father in varying tasks. He had helped to hold open the flaps of a dead animal’s stomach so that his father could field dress it, removing those organs and tissues that were unlikely to be consumed. He had assisted too in the spotting of prey, his natural vision in regards to the wind making it somewhat easier for him in many ways than the ailing elder. Nevertheless, he had left much of the actual hunting aspect of the trips to Nicholas who was more than capable of downing prey with his crossbow. Throughout those excursions, Noth would occasionally wonder what it must be like to be a hunted animal, how it must feel to be going about one’s business and to suddenly find themselves being assailed from an unknown direction by an unknown assailant. At least in the natural world creatures had to approach the beast to harm it, but men were clever and quick, and they had constructed devices that would allow them to slay from afar so that they needn’t even bother with such physical aspects as stamina or vitality. A fat and lazy man could kill just as easily as an athletic and vibrant one.

For what must have been the seventh time since he had begun his retreat from the murderer, Noth wished that he had managed to bring his longbow along with him when he had made the trip into the city. Of course, logic dictated that it would have encumbered him enough that he would already have been caught, and further consideration would reveal the fact that he probably would have missed the fellow unless he was already close enough to hurl his blade at him with expert precision. Yet, there was at least some semblance of comfort that was associated with the fact that he didn’t have to be the strongest or the fiercest or the bravest so long as he possessed that longbow, that he didn’t need to work on training himself in any art of self-defense so long as he possessed it.

Reality settled into his mind, and he realized that he had relied upon it so much that he had forgotten entirely how he was meant to be defending himself in scenarios like this. It was not as if though he had any sort of official training, but he had been in at least a fight or so as a child, and he was certain that many of the principles then probably still applied today: Get the opponent on the ground as soon as you can, and then keep kicking until the candy comes out. His thoughts were suddenly and abruptly interrupted as the sound of a window being opened reached his ears. Had he been discovered? The hybrid tensed immediately, casting his crimson eyes towards the source of the noise, logical thoughts and analysis running through his mind on how best to de-

The shout made him shiver immediately, the tension releasing itself in a moment in what could only be described as a sudden intake of breath. No, the man was certainly not up on the roof with him, he determined, staring towards where he knew the window’s opening must be from just below the lip of the roof. Had he been heard? Had he made too much noise? The thought from earlier returned to his attention, the thought about knocking an opponent to the ground and kicking. Noth had no doubt that the man before him was a skilled combatant and that he would surely be exterminated if he tried to engage him in a direct confrontation, but… he did have the advantage upon the roof, especially if the fellow was trying to climb up onto it. His hands and feet would surely be occupied, and perhaps he would be able to make his escape!

Quickly, the hybrid shot across the length of the roof, peering down and taking notice of the fellow leaning part-way out of the window, apparently listening for any sign of his presence. The hybrid didn’t consider what to do next, and instead just gave into his base instinct, leaping off of the roof and dive-bombing feet first directly at the portion of the man that was visible. Talons would sink into cloth with relative ease and then into flesh, the sudden force adding enough weight to make them fierce once more, and half a trill later they would abandon their new roost, the great whoosh of his wing signaling that he had abandoned the area as he used the foe as a launching pad towards the next building, unconcerned over whether or not he had actually managed to fling him out of the window with the fall.

Either way, he had full intentions of leaving the city the instant that the opportunity presented itself.