By the age of eight, Brannok was a solitary boy, but he was never truly alone. His mother's brothel was a microcosm of Hyboria, a crossroads of flesh, rumor, and forgotten tongues. Lyra was just one of the many women who lived there. There were his "aunts" – eleven strong, broken women from the four corners of the known world.
At first, they regarded him with distant affection, a quiet little bastard who watched them with eyes that were far too perceptive. They told him he was too small, too young to understand their adult stories. But Brannok was no ordinary child. The mind of Marc, though integrated and muted, granted him a capacity for understanding and a thirst for knowledge that far exceeded his years.
He didn't ask for anything. He simply was there, sitting in a corner, listening to Tala, the raven-haired woman from Zingara, negotiate her price with a merchant with a sharp wit and complex metaphors. He watched Anya, the thick-armed redhead from Vanaheim, repair a shelf with a brute strength and efficiency that spoke of the fjords and forests of her people.
One evening, as Anya grumbled over a stubborn plank, Brannok, without a word, stood up, adjusted her grip on the hammer she held, and with one fluid, precise movement, drove the nail home in a single strike. The woman stared at him, mouth agape. The strength and precision were not that of a child.
"By the gods, boy... How did you...?"
Brannok looked up at her with his grey eyes. "I watched. The way you positioned your wrist. It wasn't efficient."
That was the beginning.
The "aunts," intrigued, began to teach him, no longer out of pity, but out of curiosity, and then respect.
· Tala the Zingaran taught him languages. She schooled him in the sensual lilt of Zingaran gutter-cant, the guttural consonants of Khitan, the sing-song phrases of Ophirean, and the sinister hisses of Stygian. Brannok absorbed them like a sponge, his superhuman memory and hearing allowing him to grasp accents and nuances in record time. He learned to curse in five tongues and to barter in seven.
· Anya the Vanir taught him the customs of the North. The stories of the berserkers, the respect owed to weapons, how to read the frost on leaves, how to follow a trail in the mud, and the fierce loyalty that bound the warriors of the tribes. She showed him how to sharpen a blade until it sang, and how to tie a knot that wouldn't give, even under a man's weight.
· Shani, the dark-skinned woman from Kush, told him of the desert spirits, the customs of the nomadic tribes, and the art of moving silently on sand. She sang him strange melodies that told the history of the stars, and Brannok discovered he could hear the faintest notes, the harmonics other ears missed.
· Zara, the dancer from Zamora, taught him grace and control. Her movements were a language in themselves, a story of seduction and danger. She showed him how every muscle must obey, how a twist of the wrist could disarm, how a glance could distract or threaten. Brannok, with his nascent agility, learned quickly. His dodges became dances, his strikes almost aesthetic gestures.
It was during these "lessons" that Brannok began to consciously discover and map the contours of his power.
One day, while helping Shani sort dried herbs, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. "There's wild mint growing near the east wall of the city. And a nest of mice... dead, behind this wall. The smell is strong."
Shani looked at him,astonished. No one could smell that from such a distance.
Another time, as Tala spoke to him in a low voice about a suspicious client, Brannok turned his head. "The guard at the door... his heart is beating very fast. He's lying when he says he has no money."
His senses were nets he could cast out or draw in. He learned to filter noise, to isolate a single conversation from the chaos of the tavern below. By concentrating, he could perceive veins of water under the stone floor, smell the weakness in a man's posture.
But the strangest were the strength and speed. He controlled them, dosed them. While playing with the other children, he could run fast enough to lose them without effort, but he chose not to. He could lift objects far too heavy for his child's body, but he feigned difficulty. Granny had told him: "A knife shown is no longer a surprise."
He was learning patience. Tactics. The art of concealment. His aunts were giving him the pieces of the world's puzzle. His unique heritage, this fusion of a modern man's mind and a legendary hunter's gifts, gave him the ability to assemble them.
He was not yet a warrior. He was not yet a hunter. He was a scholar of shadows, a linguist of gestures, an ethnologist of vice. In the belly of Shadizar, Brannok was forging a weapon more formidable than any sword: knowledge. And every new skill, every new sense mastered, was a step closer to discovering his true nature and the destiny that awaited him beyond the grimy walls of the pleasure quarter.