The sun entered its final hours on another hallowed day, its trail through the sky an august trail of crimson clouds and fading glory over Corone’s Jadet. The town had survived another winter, the streets still slick with the remnants of frost, the breeze still cold with the season, and the salt of the ocean where it belonged. The forests nearby marked the path to woodcutter’s village of Underwood, a shorn passage through the forest by courtesy of Baron ruler and many men’s backs. The day was ending in one direction, but with a turn of the head, the prevailing night could be seen as it rose from over the sea.
Shops closed with a common mind for prudence, but places for the night dweller, insomniac, rogue, villain, watchman hard at hooky, and women of less repute than merchant’s spittle gathered. The pub as always was open, and new nothing of night or day with forever lit lanterns and forever dimmed windows. It was a place filled with the scent of fire, filthy meats made sweat by necessity, and the grim spiteful hand of a cook and his wife. All the tables were fully occupied but one, and above it was the nailed flyer for a hunt.
‘Zombies… if there is anything more confounding than vampires in both the nature of their characters and the motivations behind their very being, it would have to be zombies,’ Herobrine thought. The shapeshifter had yet again found himself living someone else’s life, a life old enough to feel justified in pondering nothing as he draped on arm over his chair, set his heel to the table, and lowered his gaze to the mug of ale that tinted the air with its beard curling alcohol. ‘Strikes the mind, soft though it is, that a zombie is always craving flesh or brains… probably because the silly thing knows it lacks—‘ His thoughts were interrupted by the shrill of a terrible klaxon.
The bronze heights of some female baritone rattled the taverns walls enough to leave every man sure that the nails and wood had been loosened in both the floor and tables. It was a death knell for happiness and freedom, “Drinking! spitting! cursing! shiftless! witless! buffoon!” The man, hollowed eyed with both his graying hair down and his shirt torn open real under every accusation as if he had been struck—at the very least more so than the one which had bloodied his nose and lip. He raised his hands to ward off the sphinx like horror that though not half his age (her youth a child of comparison, looks too) was strong enough in character to treat him like a child.
The old man’s wandering eye had seen her come in, and he’d laid eyes on her bitter looks and pink gown; she thought too highly of herself and had too little money to spend putting on airs for a people whose business was just as involved with liquor or death at Schioleck’s Pub. He’d seen the stick in her hand, a thing of wood like the leg of a chair whose only use these days was propping doors shut.
The second thwack of what would likely become a slowly progressive drubbing spread a yellow toothed smile across old Herobrine’s face. Elderly by line of face and fade of clothes, a giant by the length of his limbs, he was not a cruel man, but the stumbling, bumbling, simpering of, “honey,” and, “darling,” and, “I’m sorry,” and, “please!” were enough to make a man ambivalent about another man’s suffering…
As the two left, and the cheer everyone felt as fate spent precious seconds belting one rather than another ran its course, Herobrine drank deeply and rubbed at his throat at the blazing heat he knew to be health searing his body came and went. ‘That’s how you know you know you’re alive.’ His father had said some decades earlier with son at knee (choking). “That’s how you know you’re alive.” He mumbled, keenly aware of how alive he was, before turning his thoughts to wonder of time.
Three weeks ago he’d paid some boys to spread the fliers and word of a job, the kind that paid when it was done and not a second or gold piece until the graves were filled. It had cost him ten pieces of gold—children’s prices had risen lately, he noticed, before writing the rats off as greedy—and they’d delivered. Nailed or sealed with glue or spit, those flier were on every third street, and if that wasn’t enough, the story on every fifth persons lips. A world of fiends, elves, despots, and fools and Herobrine still found his ears perking to the sound of worry and fear.
On the table before the man lay the crumpled paper pinned under an ashtray, its mottled parchment running the catchall slogan “Jadet’s Mercy: Help the living impaired find their proper place!” in large black letters, beneath it a casual grave and flowers had been drawn, none of them looked the same, but these were usually the same. It hadn’t been the first they’d been made either, more had been lost trying to solve this problem than when it had started most said, they said it there too, the mouths of the faceless turned away from him whispering things they had every reason to think he couldn’t hear. One thing Lawrence was certain of was this old man was one who needed his meditation…otherwise the voices bled through his skull.
“He’s so old.” “The hell does the fool think he is?” “We’ve got watchmen and soldiers, why don’t they handle...” “He looks like one of those old things at the citadel; poor soldier doesn’t know when to retire.” “I’m telling you, Jadet belongs to us, not some baron too stupid to make his own bed.” “Think he’ll end up like one of them?” “At least he’s willing.” “We’ve got a civil war too, and the drafts dragging away anything that can stand.” “Did you see the size of that spear?” “Aye, that place makes a corpse out of anyone who dares to die, but it’s better than being trampled by every regiment that crosses the frontline.”
“SHUT UP!” The inn trembled under his black gaze as the man’s moustache curled upwards with his snarl, the inn went quiet too. Turning, drinking, huffing breaths of what might be paint thinner without relief, the man awaited his party of whoever dared to arrive. He’d met two earlier: a man who stank of death and magic, and a woman who had managed to arrive at a pleasant juncture in the old man’s estimations between spiteful bitch and damned useful. Baring children, Herobrine Svarldin was largely indiscriminate about who followed him to death’s fields.
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