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Kalanna Rai
Assassin for Hire
Joined: 21 Jan 2006
Topics: 173
Posts: 3102
Location: The Frozen North
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 Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 9:44 pm Post subject: Blade's Edge |
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He's coming...
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Tevrem had never seen this man before and he'd surely have remembered him if he had. The wind played the few strands of black hair that escaped the man's thick ponytail. Violet eyes empty of any notable emotion stared from as flawless a face as any that Tevrem had gazed upon. A face that belonged on no human man. And the stare of the other froze his soul cold, causing Tevrem to shiver in the summer air. Sweat ran in icy beads along his spine and his fingers shifted their grip on the well worn leather that wrapped the hilt of his serviceable blade.
The hem of the stranger's dark garments stirred in the breeze, like some creature stirring from slumber. Such odd clothes, long and heavy, covered in road dust and crusted mud where they had dragged along the ground. The stranger would have had to have traveled a great distance to find muddy ground, no rain had fallen in this area in Tevrem's memory. The whole place was bone dry, it's residents choking on the dust their lives churned up with every action. Nobody came here willingly. They came because they were driven, because they'd run, because they were hiding. That and honestly who would look for them here? It wasn't worth the effort. Except to this stranger. This gorgeous man in black and silver.
"I'll tell you once more, we don't know nothin'. Even if we did, we wouldn't be telling the likes of you Outsider. Now go back from whence you've come, go back before I have to carve up that pretty coat of yours...or worse." His words were brave and honestly, Tevrem did not know what it was about this stranger that unsettled him so. The stare, it had to be that unnerving empty stare. Almost lifeless.
"If that is your final decision I'll have to respect it then. But your assertions that you can impede my search are false. If you insist on offering me violence I shall be forced to respond in kind and that will not end as you are expecting." The stranger moved, slowly, deliberately. His hand moved upward, his long fingers wrapping around the black hilt that had protruded from above his shoulder. The blade pulled free with a note that could have been torn from the sweetest of music, rippling in the dust filled air with a pure sweet voice. It was clean, sharp, reflecting the light in a merry manner for a weapon with only the function of ending life. Soft etchings could be seen running along it's length but from this distance Tevrem couldn't make them out.
"That's a pretty cheese slicer you've got there. Do you actually mean it or does that little show you just put on normally frighten people into backing down?" It was a fragile looking blade, too pretty to be functional in Tevrem's mind. The same could be said of the stranger himself though. By now many of the residents of this dust filled land were crowding close, the prospect of blood and violence draw in them in the same manner as the prospect of fresh water. There was so little here to bestir them from their drudgery that any violence was treated as a refreshing diversion. They'd become immune to the heinous out here. Perhaps due to the large number of criminals lurking amount them. Wolves in dirty sheep wool.
"Sometimes. Usually not though. Everyone seems to believe that they are immortal. That their time will never come. Or that if their time is to come it will certainly not come at my hands. Now please, I would ask you one last time to reconsider. I only wish to know where she's gone." The strangers words were like bits of a song long forgotten, as flawless as his face and figure. As was the blade in his hand.
"Over my dead body." Tevrem spat the words like rotten meat, a gob of spittle flying from his lips to the dirt. Honestly the girl was nothing to him but his reputation was everything. He had an ironclad reputation for not talking. People around here didn't take kindly to people with loose lips. If you were too talkative...you talked yourself into an early grave. Tevrem meant his words literally. If the stranger didn't kill him, the word that he'd let something slip would. He'd be deemed dangerous. Oh why had the girl ever passed his way, and who had told the stranger about it? That was the person who should be here now staring down this blade.
"So shall it be."
Tevrem never saw the stranger move and never felt the blow land. All he felt was a tug on his clothes and the sudden taste of copper filled his mouth. His last sight was the stranger shaking droplets of crimson away from the perfect length of his delicate blade. Then those eyes, that empty violet gaze filled his and he fell into a soft oblivion.
The stranger stared at the dead man for a few moments before looking up and staring into the west. His blood had told the blade everything...and the blade said the girl had gone west. So west the stranger would go leaving the dusty little town to bury one more body.
_________________
"It's not just about living forever...the trick is living with yourself forever..."
"Music makes you braver."
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Kalanna Rai
Assassin for Hire
Joined: 21 Jan 2006
Topics: 173
Posts: 3102
Location: The Frozen North
Items
Legends
Fables
Strata-gems
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| Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2012 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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The man with the violet eyes...
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Rain pounded from an iron grey sky and battered the ground and everything on it into submission. The rock on which they stood was bare of life, no moss nor lichen clinging to the exposed granite. An iron cage sat wedged between two massive outcroppings, partially shielded by an overhang. The girl inside it crowded into that dry corner and whimpered. Her golden hair was smeared with mud and her pretty blue dress was little more than rags. She stared from between the bars at the two men, barely able to see one around the bulk of the other.
The beautiful man with the violet eyes had found his quarry at last. Thrice delayed, he'd only become more determined with every surmounted obstacle. Now all that remained between him and the girl was a giant of a man. Seven feet tall and made of muscle, as hard and unyielding as the grey rock they stood on. His face was scarred and his nose had been broken man times.
"You'll not have her. I will take her and sell her for good profit. Then I will take the gold back to my village." The giant shifted his stance. His heavy boots ground against the rock as he lifted the huge club that was his weapon. There were bits of rock and shards of glass and even chips of what could only be bone embedded in the bulk of wood. "You can buy her from market. But you'll not take her."
The beautiful man slowly drew his weapon and stared up at the giant with lifeless violet eyes. "I'll pay no coin for innocent blood. I'll give you coin for your village if you need it but that is not my concern. I've come for the girl and the girl alone and if you stand in my way then I will cut you down."
The giant was not a fool. He'd seen many men fight and many men die. He'd looked in the eyes of many more men than even that. But he'd never in all his wandering or all his long and brutal life seen a stare as lifeless as the man in front of him had. He stared at the golden haired girl, his one great prize, and then back at the man. "You'll give me coin for my village? To help with the sickness there?"
The stranger slowly shifted and reached under his long black coat to pull out a heavy bag, tossing it at the giant's feet. "I have no need for coin. Only for the girl. If coin is all you seek there it is, just let her go."
Slowly the giant stooped to heft the bag. His eyes widened at the weight, it was heavy for how casually the stranger had carried it and tossed it down. The golden glitter of the coins inside was dazzling, more money than the giant had seen in his long lifetime. He glanced back at the frightened girl in the iron cage and unlocked it, shaking her out of it and into the rain. With a grin he lifted the heavy cage onto his back and stared at the stranger. "I wish you the best of luck strange man. I wanted her only to sell her. Others have other uses. But I'm sure you know that. Take care."
The giant passed down the mountain without another backward glance, no doubt heading off to find his village. The girl and the strange man were left all along in the pouring rain on the bare rock.
Slowly the man sheathed his weapon, whistling lightly for his horse when that action was complete. As the black steed came into view through the rain, the man reached out his hand to the dirty girl. "Come, we have much work to do."
_________________
"It's not just about living forever...the trick is living with yourself forever..."
"Music makes you braver."
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