I was a young girl in ripped and ragged clothes, as I ran for my life through the streets. Not an uncommon site for most people in this part of Raine.
I ran, and ran, my lungs struggling to give me enough air as I zipped into a narrow alleyway, jumping straight into the first thing I saw. I realised as I had jumped into the crate what it was containing—leftover, semi-rotten food from the market the day before—but I couldn't afford to be picky.
I slowed my breath as I listened. I heard three sets of heavy footsteps running, with one set stopping momentarily at the end of the alley, briefly looking over the area, before rejoining the rest.
I stayed silent for a moment longer, just in case they checked back here again.
Upon a satisfactory amount of silence, I released my breath, gasping for air, yet choking at the foul smell of my hiding place. I lifted myself out of the crate with a groan, and onto the solid dirt ground.
Things were already going wrong, but it was still salvageable.
This was not how I had expected that day to go so far, as I'd not planned to be caught. I brushed myself off in a feeble attempt to remove at least some of the foul smell from myself, but I couldn't do much without a bath.
I patted my pocket to make sure my reason for this chase was still there. It was. I then pulled it out of my pocket to inspect it—probably a bad idea, but I wanted to make sure it was still in good condition, which it was. An insignia, beautifully crafted out of a Mithril-gold alloy, depicting a snake wrapped around a branch.
A badge that showed allegiance to Selera—the goddess of deception. It belonged to the leader of a cult in this town, that worshipped said goddess. I personally had no allegiances to any gods, so I had been contracted to steal this insignia from its holder.
I stuffed it back into the pocket of my tattered coat and reappeared into the street, acutely aware of anyone I may have drawn the attention of. As I moved, I noticed a few eyes that stuck to me as I passed them, but these weren't stares of suspicion. They were stares of pity, and I was quite used to them.
My haggard look, however, was soon to be amended. The one who had hired me to do this job had promised a large sum of money to steal the insignia. Admittedly, I had no idea why this was so important to them, as the material value of the insignia was no-where near the payment they offered, but I just assumed it was some strange underground cult business.
The streets were quite busy, no busier than normal though. It just put me on edge when I was around too many people like this, especially now, when I had a stolen item of high value on me. Still, I just had to reach the other side of town, then I wouldn't need to take any risky jobs for a while.
Eventually, after travelling through the market and across the river, weaving through a mixture of houses and shops, and down an uninteresting side street, a found myself outside the back door of a distillery.
As I opened the door, the smell of strong wax candles and fresh woodwork assaulted me, immediately making me halt for a moment before walking in through the door and closing it behind me.
I looked over to the only other man in the room. A large, well-built man who looked as if he hadn't washed in weeks. Upon receiving eye contact, I simply nodded my head, and he nodded back, and I walked through the door to a small room filled with barrels.
With the way the room was lit, nothing was out of the ordinary, but from a certain angle, a gap in the barrels just barely big enough to fit through was visible.
The narrow passage gave way to a small staircase that led down into the basement, cold stone walls closing in on the space, and an arched roof that left just enough room to stand upright. I carefully walked down each step, avoiding the places I knew would creak, until I reached the door at the very bottom of the staircase.
Before I gripped the heavy metal handle of the door, I took a deep breath of confidence. I had met with these people only once, and they gave me the creeps.
I pulled down the door handle and pushed the door forward. I was then faced with a large hall, filled with chairs, and a statue at the far end. The death shrine, I called it. It was lit only by dim candles, which were sparsely scattered around the room, but more heavily concentrated around the statue to ensure it was fully visible from any angle. The statue was a depiction of the goddess of death, Nethraea. The statue itself was surrounded by four hooded individuals who, immediately upon my entrance, all looked straight at me.
"Elise. Do you have it?" A raspy voice echoed through the small chamber.
"Yes," I gave a terse response.
"Show it," the same hooded man ordered.
I hesitated for a moment, eyeing the man that had spoken and the people around him, before carefully slipping the insignia from my pocket and holding it towards them. Its intricate, shiny surface sparkled as it reflected the candlelight.
The man's bones creaked as he hurriedly scuttled in my direction.
"Hold on," I said, holding my free hand out and halting the man in his steps. "I proved my end of the deal. I need to see my payment before we proceed."
A tinge of impatience was painted on the man's wrinkled, shadow-covered face as he turned away, his cloak floating behind him as he walked towards the man on the right. The other man gave something to him—impossible to see in the dark—and he rushed back towards me. His sudden approach put me on edge, as I positioned my hand above the handle of my dagger that lay under my coat.
The man eventually stopped short of me and presented the item he held. If I had to guess, he looked about sixty years of age. His face bore wrinkles from decades of stress, and his right eye had an odd streak of white in the iris. His cold, wrinkled, spindly fingers wrapped around a leather pouch that was nearly falling apart in his hand. The man shook it a little, and the shake was accompanied by the sound of coins. I hastily presented the insignia once again, and both myself and the man reached for the others' offering and took it.
I looked at the man, and he looked at me, before I looked inside the pouch. Shining gold coins. Twenty rels to be exact.
We both quickly took a step back from each other.
"Pleasure doing business with you." I said
"Likewise." the man responded with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
I slowly backed away, as the man also just as slowly turned around, clutching the insignia. As he walked back towards the statue, I turned around fully towards the door, and exited the basement, quickly walking back up the stairs, out of the back room, and out through the main entrance of the distillery.
◊
The smell of the damp alley greeted me as I walked outside. As I reached the main street, I heard the first rumbles of thunder in the distance.
Looking up past the houses to the north-east, dark clouds were gathering in the sky, a distant storm. A faint rainfall had already been present for most of the day but, judging by the direction of the wind, it was due to get much worse further towards the night.
It was mid-afternoon, with the late-winter sun barely peeking through the light clouds in the west, and I was likely expected to be home very soon, and so I continued through the streets and down through the central market, making a left and walking through a quiet housing area.
It was quiet. Strangely quiet, and I hadn't noticed until now. There was almost nobody around, a narrow street with large rows of terraced houses on either side. The wind that was starting to pick up earlier on was almost non-existent—like the calm before a storm.
Something was off, quite clearly. I couldn't be sure of what it was until I was just turning a corner.
The man used my own weight to grab me by the collar and spin me around so he could pin me against the wet cobblestone wall. Looking at him immediately refreshed my memory, but he decided to introduce himself anyway.
"Remember me?" he said.
He didn't actually let me answer before speaking again.
"You do," he continued, "I know you do."
His face was the type that was hard to distinguish the age of, looking both juvenile and senile at once. I looked past him, his head shaved and sweat covered, nearly making contact with my own, and could see his two other accomplices—a tall, dark skinned man to his left, and a large, strongly built woman.
"No, I can't say I d-"
"I want my insignia back!" he shouted, cutting me off.
He let go with one hand, holding up his gloved finger. A dim light glowed as the tip of his finger steamed with heat.
"And I will burn your eyes out if I don't get it."
The man pressed me harder against the wall. With him being much bigger than me, I couldn't move.
"Alright!" I said desperately, obviously not wanting to get cut, "I…"
"Huh?" He shook his finger a little, as if reminding me it was there.
"I don't have it," I stated. I wasn't lying.
There was a quiet moment, before he moved the heat to my neck, pressing his finger firmly into the exposed skin. I tried to hide the pain, but it was excruciating. I could feel the invisible flame burning into my skin, before he finally released it.
"You should know better than to say something like that, because I am not joking. When I say I will burn your eyes out," he moved the invisible flame closer to my face, "I will do it."
"Fine, fine. I'll give it back to you," I gritted my teeth as I spoke, the skin on my neck still feeling like it was on fire.
"Finally, some common sense." He replied
Carefully, I reached my hand into my pocket, keeping eye contact with the man as I searched inside. Moving aside my recently acquired pouch of coins, I felt around until I grabbed a small, innocent-looking rock. I pulled it out of my pocket with my fist closed tightly around it. The man held his hand out for me to place what he thought was his insignia in his hand.
"Well, come on then." he urged me.
And so I complied, and placed the smooth black stone in the palm of his hand.
I had acquired this stone from one of my close friends, Eva, who lived on the same street as me at the time, a few days before this altercation. I had wanted something that could provide me with a getaway opportunity if the need for one arose.
Clearly I wasn't the only one familiar with this kind of item. The man's face was suddenly turned from one of confidence to one of shock. He clearly knew what I'd just placed in his hand.
Before he even had the chance to move, I spoke the incantation I needed to put my plan in motion under my breath, swiftly but clearly.
"I call upon the goddess of flames, bestow upon me, a spark."
As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt a surge through my whole body. It felt like a surge of fire that coursed deep through my bones, travelling outward from the top of my spine to the tips of my fingers and toes, leaving a sense of numbness for just a moment. All this happened in an instant before snapping straight back to reality.
In that instant, a spark of fire appeared right where the stone was, and it ignited, bursting into a sinister black smoke that immediately spread through the street.
I swore that would be the last time I called upon the gods.
Before the thick smoke completely blocked my vision, I saw the man wince and flinch back from the pain, clutching at the hand that I had just ignited as he let out a cry. A just punishment, I thought.
With that, I started to run down the street in the direction I was originally headed. The black smoke was heavy, so as it dispersed, it tended to hang lower to the ground. Just as I'd travelled far enough for my head to start peeking out of the smoke, I heard a shout from behind me, assumedly from his female companion.
"Hya!"
A thwip of the wind sounded out through the street. I knew what was coming. I turned around to look behind me and saw an invisible swirling mass hurling towards me, displacing the smoke around it. A gust of wind, concentrated into one area, and aimed at me.
Before I could move, I was knocked down, flat onto my front. The initial impact knocked the breath out of me as I'd landed hard onto my chest, but luckily nothing was broken.
I could hear one of them running in my direction, their heavy boots pounding into the ground with each step. Hearing them coming, I hurriedly gripped the handle of the small blade that previously lay hidden on the inside of my coat—a last resort of sorts—and pulled it out as I pushed myself off the ground.
I managed to get myself upright, my legs bowed against the ground, just barely keeping balance in that first moment of standing up. As soon as I turned in the direction of the woman charging towards me—she was coming in for a tackle—I held the blade up out of instinct. She either hadn't had enough time to react, or hadn't noticed the blade, no thanks to its small size, and kept charging towards me.
Before I could move out the way, she barged into me, her solidly built arms wrapping around me as she tackled me to the floor.
We hit the floor, her landing on top of me, but…
There was a warm sensation travelling down my hands. I looked down as the woman groaned and twisted off of me, lying on her back. Crimson red blood oozed down my hands and soaked into the ends of my sleeves.
Upon realising this, I leapt up, getting away from the woman, the knife still embedded in her chest.
I was panicking. I didn't know what to do. I had never killed someone before. Had I killed her? That knife wound looked pretty serious, but maybe I could just…
I bent down and pulled the knife from her. She gargled in pain.
Shit, shit, shit. What did I do? Why did I do that? Why had I taken this job? I could've just taken a simpler job and everything would've been fine and safe.
Looking down the street, the two other men stood in shock, but it wasn't just them there. A passer-by, walking down the street at the end of the road, had witnessed it.
Without wasting a moment, I pulled my hood over my head and darted up the road in the opposite direction, wiping the tears that threatened to build up from my eyes. My destination: home, and as fast as possible.