I did my time...

[The Cinderella Man]

((Solo.))

[Present Day, Radasanth Prison Facility ~ “The Furnace”]


The morning bell awoke Victor like three-thousand, six-hundred and forty-seven times before, and it was the bell that announced neither the beginning nor the end of the boxing round. No, prizefighting days were so far behind him that he forgot the stale stench of the canvas soaked with years and years of blood and sweat. No tears, though. Tough guys couldn’t afford to cry. This bell was much louder then any arena bell, much different in constitution and girth, spreading the DONG-DONG-DUMGH-DONG-DONG-DUMGH from the chapel tower and through the prison halls seemingly unhindered, snapping the convicts out of their slumber at the too-early time of five in the morning. For ten years Victor Callahan hated that bell, hated it because it wasn’t the boxing ring bell, hated it because it was out there, reminding him of the good old days. But this morning he didn’t awake with hatred as his first thought because today the bell announced the beginning of his last day in the Furnace.

“Get up, Rat,” Victor – also known as convict number 1987, Padre and several other nicknames – told his only bunkmate that slept on the bed above him. Rat was actually Grath Ewans, a two-time loser that was caught red-handed with jewels of an eminent Radasanth lady in one hand and the eminent lady herself in the other. He liked to say that his largest predicament was which of the two to let go first, but like all prison stories, there was as much baloney in them as there was truth. The fact of the matter was that Rat was a lousy thief that had a tendency to oversleep in the most peculiar places. A lofty bed of some married dame was one of them. Prison bunk was another.

“Fuck you, Padre. You’re getting out today. Easy for you to be chirpy in the morning,” the voice came from above, muffled by both the pillow and the shabby mattress below it. Victor responded with a lengthy yawn before he set his feet on the damp floor of the cell. His back insisted on listening to Rat and staying dormant for at least five more minutes, sending a dull pain down his left side where he was shived some...was it two years ago? The convict couldn’t tell with certainty without consulting the calendar that he made on the dark gray surface of the mattress above him. Who cared anyways? It hurt like a bitch and his body wasn’t young anymore. At the age of thirty-six, a lot of things tended to go awry in a man’s body.

“Whatever. It’s your ass Captain Fuckwit would go chirpy on when he gets here in five minutes,” Victor said, getting up with a groan and stretching his imposing bulk. The prison maybe killed his spirits and made him even more bitter then he was prior to entering the Furnace, but the physical work and daily exercise fleshed him out with muscles he didn’t even know existed. That’s why Rat stuck close to him; because he was one of the meanest lugs around. Two hundred and forty pounds of flesh that was now Victor Callahan dropped to the cell floor, starting a series of pushups.

“To hell with him. I’ll kill him if he touches me,” Grath said, turning on his back as the morning ruckus started to spread through the ‘D’ block.

“Sure,” Victor squeezed through his teeth, his muscular hands pushing his torso up.

“I could do it, you know? I really could. I have this here thing...”

“Great.... Just make sure....” convict number 1987 spoke between exertions. “....you do it.... after I’m gone.”

“Fine. I’ll do it once you’re as free as a fucking bird. Then I’ll escape. Because by all rights I shouldn’t even be here. Just like you,” Rat spoke, finally lowering his scrawny five-feet-nothing tall body from the top bunk. He walked up to the barred window that was barely larger then his skinny face, peering outside with his hand lethargically scratching his crotch. In his filthy canvas slacks that might’ve been light blue once, the rogue looked like a beggar. Victor got up to his feet with another muffled groan that sounded too old for him.

“Not like me, Rat. I deserve to be here, remember?”

[The Cinderella Man]

[Ten Years Earlier, Radasanth’s Slums District]


Everybody loses from time to time. It’s the way nature works; there is always a bigger, meaner, stronger predator around. And it’s not the loss that gets to a person. It’s if it happens again. And again. And again. And soon you’re not getting up to fight anymore, you’re getting up to lose another fight. It tires a person down, the losing streak piling around the neck like a millstone that efficiently thwarts every attempt to get to surface. You can either give up or keep swimming.

Victor gave up.

After another losing bout that added another notch alongside fourteen that were already there, Victor was sitting on a wooden bench, feeling a little bit like whipped cream. Patrick ‘The Machine’ Dandelo worked his kidneys all night long, bruising at least five or six ribs in the prizefighter’s torso and ensuring him that he would piss blood for the next couple of days. He was given another usual you-ain’t-worth-shit speech by the battle organizer and was left to lick his wounds on his own. And all of that for one hundred gold pieces. At the very least, this time he actually got the money for being fisting fodder.

“I don’t think people around here appreciate your talent, Mister Callahan,” a voice spoke from the blackness. The lights were out, nobody but the cleaning crew prowling around, searching for a lost coin or two at the foot of the bleachers. Soon the voice got a shape, a man wearing a pristine white suit materializing seemingly out of nowhere. Probably not out of nowhere, but when you got hit in the head all night, your perception wasn’t exactly at its peak.

“I got the purse. Appreciation doesn’t come with the contract,” Victor responded, unwrapping the taping around his swollen knuckles. He would have to pause at least for a week or risk a broken wrist, and that was a risk he couldn’t take. His mitts were his breadmakers, his only source of income. The scraggy white suit moved forwards, bringing a pair of gorillas in tow, both easily Victor’s size.

“Maybe you could use another contract,” the man said, now close enough for the prizefighter to see his face. Pointy nose, neat moustaches, characteristic smirk and a knavish gleam in the eyes. The man was either a politician or a crook. Probably both.

“You offering me a fight?”

“No. I don’t come to these bouts to watch the fights. I come here watching the potential recruits.”

The suit’s cologne was now prominent in the air – expensive smelling thing that the man obviously wasted carelessly - defeating the reek of stale sweat. The sleeves of the white jacket were empty, dangling loose like numb limbs, while the pair of small gentle hands held for the belt loosely.

“Recruits for what?”

“A job that pays a much more then a hundred a night. And you’re never left alone in the dark afterwards,” the white-attired man spoke, amplifying the cryptic tone of his voice as if he was a magician that just promised to pull a rabbit from a hat. Victor shook his head distantly. He knew men like these. His cousin, Jacob Thurmond, was a man like this, a corrupt criminal that worked on the other side of the law and Victor worked for him for a while. That was until the bastard tried to stab him in the back.

“I think I’ll pass. I don’t need the law beating the crap out of me as well,” the boxer dismissed the offer, uninterested and just plain tired.

“I’d take that as an insult, Mister Callahan, if I wasn’t in such a great mood tonight,” the suit continued, his voice falsely mirthful just like his amused chuckle. “But I assure you, you would have no run-ins with the law.”

“Right,” Victor responded with a sarcastic smirk, folding his battle shorts, placing them into his gym bag, then proceeding to stash away his boxing gloves as well.

“You would be a bodyguard. Not mine, of course. As you can see, I’m well protected.” The man nodded towards the unmovable mountains of bulk beside him. “But I have somebody who is very important to me and I need somebody to keep a close watch over this person. And after examining you, I think you would fit the job like a glove, as they say.”

“Why? Because I can take a blow to the head? I’m hardly the only one.”

“No. It’s because you can take a blow to the head and stay on your feet. And then take another and stay on your feet. A man of such persistence should definitely be rewarded.”

Victor eyed the man studiously, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his lower torso. He was beaten, fatigued and without a place to crash, and the hundred gold pieces would all be spent on repaying the amassing debts that hung over his head. This could be his way out. What was the worst thing that could happen?

“Persistent?” Victor retorted with a bitter chuckle. “Back in Scara Brae they just called me too dumb to fall. But I think we could work something out.”

[The Cinderella Man]

The slick man in the white suit was Walter Jimes, and he made it clear that his business was none of Victor’s business. He wasn’t hiring the prizefighter because he needed a consultant or an accountant or a bloody brainbox, but because he needed a big, mean and ugly bastard that would protect his investment. What that investment was, however, Walter refused to disclose as they rode down the benighted cobbles of Radasanth streets. There was still plenty activity in the Corone capitol, the taverns slowly reaching the pinnacle of their bustle as the first harlots started to seize the busiest corners of the Slum’s intersections. It was a sight that Victor saw countless times before. And how wouldn’t he when the streets were his home and the starry sky was the roof over his head?

But the elegant chariot took them out of the less fortunate portion of the city, passing through the unergetic Bazaar district and finally entering the much more refined pavement of the Government district. Only high rollers lived here, Victor knew, the kind that looked at his ilk with disdain and disgust. Prissy royal pricks and their powdered dames that smelled like a spilled bottle of perfume, fat slimeballs and their token whores that went after the sound of the jingling purse like bees after the honey, the worst of the worst sugarcoated as the best of the best lived in these grandiloquent manors.

“As you might’ve imagined, it’s a bit different here then it is in the Slums, Mister Callahan,” Walter spoke as they trucked down the significantly smoother pavement. “Here the fairest, the prettiest, the most honest people are the one who are most inclined to stab you in the back.”

Victor didn’t care. Walter’s business was none of his business and whether it was politics, investments or smuggling illegal weaponry and selling it to the rebels down in Concordia, it was something that had nothing to do with the prizefighter. He was in dire need of a bed and a shower, and tomorrow he was probably going to follow some legal shipment from point A to point B. And all of that for, what Walter ensured him would be, a helluva lot more then a hundred gold pieces and a punch in the face.

They turned from the main alley and up a stone-paved trail that led towards a majestic manor settled atop of a small hillock. It was a magnificent edifice made out of light gray marble, with the main entrance that looked like something that should stand on the front of a temple. Titanic columns held an offshoot of the tiled roof that stood over the heavyset oaken doors that seemed at least fifteen feet high, carved with immaculate precision. The windows were large, arced at the top and plentiful, making Victor wonder just what it takes to keep this place warm during the winter. Then again, given the loftiness of the entire estate, he reckoned that during the winter, Walter and his family – if he had any – probably sought refuge somewhere warmer. Like Serenti.

“Here we are, Mister Callahan. Welcome to my humble abode,” Walter said as a butler, dressed in spotless black uniform, opened the door to the chariot with a deep bow of his gray-haired head. Victor had a remark about the humbleness, but opted against lame jokes while still making first impressions at the man that was bound to be his employer for a while. Instead he followed the man down the red carpet that led up the stairs and towards the door that were now opened and another of the servants dressed in black was awaiting their arrival. He took Walter’s white hat wordlessly, then waited for the prizefighter to do the same with his possessions.

“No, I’m fine,” Victor said, holding the worn gym bag on his shoulder as he entered the manor. The hall in which he set foot in made him check if he had dirt on his boots because he seemed utterly out of place. The red carpet went in a single line a bit further, then reached a dead end and broke in two, creating a ‘T’ whose two appendages proceeded for what seemed like a hundred of feet in each direction, passing by the front windows down both wings of the building. Two half-circular stairways stood a couple of feet after the red carpet-made ‘T’, both leading to the first floor in a perfect symmetry. Above their heads, the chandelier glimmered as if it was made from white gold sprinkled with pearls. Tapestries and paintings decorated the walls, all in full detail, obviously made by deft artistic hands.

“Damn,” was all that Victor could utter, his eyes reflecting the glitter, lost in it. Never had the prizefighter stood in something so gallant, so rich with details. Surely this was what Walter wanted him to guard. Gods knew how many thieves would give an arm and a leg to get their sticky fingers around some of these goods.

“Trinkets and toys, Mister Callahan. Trinkets and toys. It shines, it makes you happy, but eventually it just consumes space,” the man in white spoke with a smirk, sounding a bit patronizing, but Victor didn’t let it get to him. If Walter Jimes had the dough for all this stuff, he was bound to have enough for a hefty paycheck at the end of the week.

“Now, there is a thing of real beauty,” he added, nodding his head towards where the two staircases met. And indeed there was a thing of undisputed beauty.

Her name was Aicha.

[The Cinderella Man]

[Present Day, Radasanth Prison Facility ~ “The Furnace”]


“Fucking sludge again,” Rat spoke in an irked voice, dropping the tin plate with a nondescript grayish matter that was supposed to be his breakfast. Five people already sat at the table, one of them being Padre Callahan. Beside him sat Alain ‘Bone’ Coolidge, a wrinkly elderly chap with a bald head and one operational eye who was incarcerated for running a sham with ownership papers of certain estates down south. Next to him was Berthold Runan, a murderer with a boyish face that tore his father’s throat out. Because he hit his mother, he said. The judge didn’t believe it. On the other side, outflanking Rat, sat Harold Tellen the falsifier of golden coins and Dahmir Weer who didn’t do it. None of them were in too much of a mood for talk except Grath and he usually pulled everybody into the argument.

“How do they expect us to work all day in the fucking Furnace with this?” he asked, but most at the table just rolled their eyes and forced the shabby meal down their throats.

“For fuck sakes, Rat. How many times do you need to hear it?” Bone told him, firing his healthy eye at him. “They don’t expect you to work all day. They expect you to work until you drop and then fall asleep in the evening. Keeps the escape attempts at the minimum. I have a plan though...”

“Shut up,” Harold spoke, not even looking at the old coot through the messy black bangs that fell over his azure eyes. “You always have a plan. And it’s either fucking impossible or you don’t have the balls to go through with it. Unlike those drow freaks.”

Two tables to the right, about a dozen drow perked their pointy ears at the mention of their race, grumbled something in their guttural language, and continued with their meal. They were the worst of the worst within the walls and most tried to stay out of their way. Once Victor didn’t and he got a knife in the back during an accidental rumble in the dinning room.

Luckily, the ex-prizefighter had the demons on his side and got out with his life from the massive strife. The demon folk mostly stuck to I don’t bother you, you don’t bother me philosophy, but during his first day in the Furnace Victor made a mistake by sitting at their table. This led to a fist fight in which he punched the lights out of their leader, a husky looking fellow that went by the name of Gha’Thar. Hammer for friends. And though it didn’t seem like that, after the tension died down, respect was born instead of hatred.

Beside those two prominent groups, there were a couple of elves and dwarves, but they spent too much time squabbling between each other to threaten the rest. And in such a shaky balance, the Furnace operated rather well. The head honchos made it certain that there was always an approximately equal amount of each race which created an equilibrium within the walls. The elves would never unite with the dwarves. The demons would never unite with the elves. The drow would never unite with anybody.

But Victor paid no heed to it all. His eyes looked beyond the walls, transcended beyond time and space, distant and weary, erasing the dining room and its current clientele. It was the daydreaming that he occasionally did, something his gang was used to, and today it seemed an appropriate time to mess with Padre about it.

“Ah, there he goes again,” Rat spoke with a chuckle, waving his hand before Victor’s face that shifted back to focus in a flash. “Now he’s going to start. Oh, my Aicha. You can’t even imagine how pretty she was. Her eyes, her eyes were like...”

He never got a chance to finish. Victor leant forward, pushing Rat’s plate towards the scrawny thief and spilling the gooey substance all over his shirt. “Shut up, Rat.”

“Aw man! You got it fucking all over me.”

“Better over you then in you, Rat. This stuff is like mud, only tastes worse,” Berthold finally said in his emotionless voice, his dead bullshooter eyes staring at the unfinished meal.

“ALRIGHT, LADIES!!” a stern voice spread through the room, preceding George Assante, or how most of the convicts like to call him – mostly behind his back, though – Captain Fuckwit. The man was about as high as Rat, as plump as a barrel, with cheeks and nose always crimson from the schnapps that he carried around in his flask, claiming it was water. “TIME TO DO SOME WORK!”

[The Cinderella Man]

[Ten Years Earlier, Radasanth’s Government District]


“These are the rules, Mister Callahan,” Walter started in his earnest tone, his eyes looking at Victor’s profile, the prizefighter’s eyes directed towards the lavish dame above them. Delilah was Victor’s goddess, his own personal Savior, his soul mate that drifted away from him back in Scara Brae, but Aicha was still undoubtedly the most beautiful woman he every laid his eyes on. Clad in a slim white dress that clung to her formidable curves greedily, she fired her azure, untouchable gaze towards them like a queen that didn’t like the court jester. Her black hair was cut short, clinging to her head in endless series of glistening oiled curves. In her hand – coated in a silky white glove with lace at the hem – a thinnest cigarette Victor ever saw spread the scent of tobacco through the room.

“Several times a week Aicha will visit certain gentlemen – or gentlewomen – mostly here in the Government District. You are to be her escort. Most of her customers are older gents so there is little risk for trouble, but you are there just in case some decide to break that boundary between rough and too rough,” the white suit spoke in his calculated, emotionless voice, joining the boxer in the blatant admiration the scenery. “For each one of these escorts you get five hundred gold pieces from me, plus a small percentage of whatever Aicha earns.”

The awe turned into shock as Victor listened to these words, his appalled face turning to Walter and his pale visage and ridiculous moustaches. “So she’s a harlot?” the prizefighter said in a voice that came out louder then he intended, but the dazzling woman above didn’t seem to be significantly affected or offended by his words. Walter, on the other hand, diverted his eyes to Victor with surprise that seemed as fake as a Raiaeran dwarf.

“Mister Callahan! Harlot is such a god-awful word,” the man replied with false dismay and outrage that soon transformed into the wiseass grin as slick as the grease in his hair. Victor thought that there wasn’t an honest bone in this man’s body that could procure a genuine emotion. “I prefer to call her the Mistress of the Night.”

“You can call her the Queen of the bloody Universe if you want to, bub, but the fact of the matter is that you’re a pander and you’re peddling her like a sack of apples,” was Victor’s first reaction, but he kept it safely hidden behind his rather apathetic expression. Because Walter’s business was none of his business. He was to make sure she gets safe from one door to the other. What happened beyond those doors was best left undisclosed.

“Any questions?” the high-society pimp asked him after a short intermission.

“One. The same one I asked back at the arena. Why me?” and then, after Walter didn’t reply for a second or two – only looking at him with those emotionless eyes of a man that had everything under control and an ace up his sleeve. “I mean, obviously she’s of great importance to you. Why would you entrust her to someone you don’t know?”

“Because I don’t know you, Mister Callahan. Because people that know other people start getting smart ideas, start to poke their nose where it doesn’t belong, start asking redundant questions. Do you have any smart ideas, Mister Callahan?” The question was asked with the chill of a university professor that wanted to flunk you badly.

“One,” Victor replied coolly, and then his face broke in a minuscule grin that revealed his jest. “It involves a bath and a bed.”

Walter chuckled lifelessly, falsely, like an audience member giving a courtesy laugh to a lousy performer, like a man that was used to listening to bad jokes. “Ah, well, that can certainly be arranged, Mister Callahan.”

[The Cinderella Man]

Victor was getting mighty irked by the whole Mister Callahan and the creepy, pokey eyes of Walter Jimes, but once he dipped into what was certainly the biggest porcelain tub that he ever saw, all dour thoughts were eradicated relentlessly. Because this was too good to be real and he didn’t want to spend time on considering, reconsidering and then doing it all over again. Less then an hour ago he was still sitting in the arena, feeling sore and as lively as a two day old corpse, and now he was en route to a life that wasn’t exclusively consisted of head-punching and failing to make the ends meet. As far as he was concerned, his hands were as clean as a whisper, his job comprised of being big, dumb and mean if need be.

There was a moral side to it all, the pious clandestine side that still existed somewhere in Victor, a memorial to his father Hector, and his Sunday sermons. But time changed it, made it fade away like newspapers left in the rain, not because time had an ability to do that, but because time brought the ordeals in tow. Endless fights and bitter losses, disappointed looks and words of rejection, the inversion of what dreams were made of, it all came with time and Victor was tired of crawling through the mud. To hell with being the goody-goody two-shoes. Nice guys didn’t finish last; they never got a chance to start.

One of those middle-aged, slick-haired butlers in a black suit and ironed white shirt with a necktie held up a fluffy satin robe for the prizefighter to wear, putting his attire beneath his armpit, promising to return it in the morning. Cleaned up and ironed, no doubt. He also provided a pair of leather slippers that looked more expensive that the contents of Victor’s gym bag. Next, he was led down the corridor lit with strange fireless luminance, passing some minor works of art that stood on the walls covered with lacquered wood polished to the point where he could almost see his reflection in it. Their final destination was a room in what seemed like the west wing of the majestic manor.

“Have a pleasurable night, Mister Callahan,” the servant spoke in a soft voice, swinging the door open and bowing deeply. Victor, never treated with such utmost respect and honor until today, felt that there was a sham going on and there would be a bunch of thugs in the room, beating the debt out of him with interests.

“Thanks,” he replied, stepping into dimly lit room.

There were no goons with brass knuckles waiting for him beyond the oaken door that the butler closed behind him with a coy click of the brassy doorknob. Instead, the room seemed vacant, enlightened only by what seemed like a faint magic glow descending from the chandelier – not nearly as grand as the one he saw in the parlor, but still pretty damn expensive looking – and enshrouding the entire room with a vague yellowish tint. To his left stood two doors, but when he opened one and noticed the rather empty closet – only his gym bag carefully set inside – there was a hissing sound coming from the region of the room where the queen’s bed stood. The sheets were red and velvety, glimmering under the faded illumination, and in front of them stood a figure of a woman.

Once he stepped closer - his slippers making the funny flip-flopping noise – he could see her features much more clearly. She was a rather short blondie, curvaceous and as cute as a button, her large green eyes looking up at him with obedience and coyness. The diaphanous pink night gown that fell over her body failed to hide – or rather succeeded in revealing – all her charms, from her ample bosom, down her flat stomach and to her scant panties that seemed to be literally hanging by a thread on both of her hips. In her hands stood a tall glass filled with bubbling liquid of yellow color. She offered it to him as he got nearer.

“Who are you?” Victor asked, not accepting the glass, his strict face looking down on her lithe form.

“Master Walter sends his regards and says that he’s holding to his end of the bargain. Uhm...” she got a bit confused, pursing her lips and diverting her doe-eyes from him before she added. “Something about you never being alone in the dark...”

The prizefighter rubbed his temples briefly. “You’re a...” he wanted to say harlot, but decided against it. It’s one thing to call a woman a harlot behind her back, a complete other to say the same thing while she’s looking at you with those adorable not-so-innocent eyes. “...one of his ladies of the night?”

“Yes,” she responded, setting the glass on the nightstand before stepping so close to Victor that the nipples of her perky breasts brushed against his robe. Her hands started to embrace him, but his own stopped them from doing so.

“Stop that. I... I don’t want any company,” he said, passing by her and taking a seat on the bed. It wasn’t that he didn’t want a woman. Gods knew that he didn’t have one since... Well, he couldn’t even tell with absolute certainty since when. But during all that time, he made an oath to himself never to stoop so low to buy a woman. A bought woman was in many ways like using your hand; it gets the job done with no emotions attached.

“But Mister Walter... He told me to spend the night with you,” she insisted, still standing where he left her, only now turned towards him.

“Well, you don’t have to. You’re free to go.”

She didn’t go. Instead her bare feet took her to the bed soundlessly and once again he could see her emeralds boring into his skull. “Please, don’t send me away. If you do, he’s going to make me work the streets again.” The blonde knelt before him, first looking up at him and catching his lethargic gaze, then offering him a smile. Her hands moved to the hems of his robes, but his hands once again prevented her in doing so, catching her by the wrists.

“What’s your name?” he asked, his weary eyes offering something akin to a sympathetic look that came out a bit too pitying then he wanted to.

“Helena,” the girl replied.

“Alright, Helena. I won’t send you away.”

He made love to the girl that night, and in her face he saw Aicha and Delilah, their faces intertwined, their moans uttered in a voice of a blonde prostitute that was everything a man could ever want from a woman. Everything and nothing. Because as hard as she tried, it was just as false and his make-belief lovemaking. There was no love there, they both knew it, nothing but physics and sexual instincts. But for that one night they both believed the lie.

[The Cinderella Man]

[Present Day, Radasanth Prison Facility ~ “The Furnace”]


The Furnace.

Whoever wondered why they called this Radasanth prison by that particular name probably never set foot inside it, or more specifically, inside the work area in which the jailbirds repaid their debt to society. The Furnace got its infamous name from the area where the convicts did their daily travailing, which was just what the name said; a furnace, a vast chamber filled with large iron ovens that needed to be fed coal ceaselessly. Convicts got up in the morning, they shoveled coal, they dehydrated, they shoveled some more coal, and at the end of the day even the hardiest barely had strength to take a piss. At average, one convict died from exhaustion per week within the furnace and that was an acceptable death ratio for the brass. Especially if they made a profit out of it, and in this case they most certainly did.

The furnace wasn’t within the prison walls though. To get to it, the prisoners were led through an underground tunnel that looked like a genuine maze. It was a nice touch, but after the first month or so every convict knew the path through the maze enough to go through it blindfolded. Not that it mattered because there were only two ways out of the furnace; the way you came in or in a body bag. Supposedly the furnace was positioned below the Titan’s Forge, the largest assortment of blacksmiths and metalworkers in Radasanth, but the officials neither confirmed nor denied it. It usually meant that it was the truth, but it was irrelevant. Nothing but pipes filled with hot steam went upwards - and those weren’t exactly climbable - and they disappeared straight into the stone dome above. So you were either working or you were reckless. Reckless was the explanation that the guards would use when some of the convicts grew a brain and tried to avoid their daily work. They got reckless and fell into one of the ovens.

There were times when Victor was at the verge of growing a brain, especially after seeing a pair of guards whip a scrawny boy to death, but today he had no such ideas. Today was his last day in this devil’s vestibule and he had to play it smart. Gods knew that the sentries wouldn’t mind if he did some extra work because of violent behavior. More money in their pocket. The blacksmiths got their steam for cheap, the prison staff got the cut of the profit. Everybody was happy; everybody except the poor sod that has to spend another day on the hell’s doorstep.

So today Padre did his work wordlessly, thoughtlessly even. He didn’t think of what he would do when he gets out, as free as a bird. He didn’t ask himself would there be somebody waiting for him or how things changed on the outside or how old the people he knew became. All he focused on was the small gauge that stood on the oven, declaring the temperature, and keeping the little pointer in the red. As simple as that. Keeping the pointer in the red until they blew the horn.

“Hey, hey, hey. How’s our almost-fucking-free convict doing today?” Rat spoke jovially, bringing a cart filled with coal as black as...(Aicha’s hair)...the night and discarding the contents beside Victor. His scrawny face was almost completely black and when he tried to wipe the sweat from his brow, the charcoal smudged like...(Aicha’s mascara)...ink.

“We’re in the furnace, Rat. How the fuck do you think I feel?” prisoner number 1987 responded, opening the oven door with his gloved hand, sustaining the blast of heat, throwing in a shovel of fresh coal and closing the door tightly. He wasn’t sweaty by now. He was wet, from his shirt that he took off within the first hour to the socks that seemed to swim in the pool of sweat that accumulated in his boots.

“You fail to see the bright side of it, you know? The so called silver lining. This is after all your last... YEOW!!” a whip snapped in the air like a gunshot, its tip landing on Rat’s back and making him nearly stumble over his own wheelbarrow. About ten feet behind him, one of the guards was retracting the leather whip with a smirk.

“Back to work, Rat!”

“Yeesh, alright. You could’ve just...” and then the whip snapped again, but by that time Grath was already pushing the cart away hastily, straining his scrawny physique to the absolute maximum in order to evade another warning. Victor turned to his oven and his gauge.

Only now, though still wordless – unlike some of the jailbirds that either sang some melody very badly or muttered blasphemous curses – he wasn’t thoughtless. Rat made him grow a brain and it was once again recollecting the good things that he left outside and the bad ones as well. And the good ones hurt so much more.

[The Cinderella Man]

[Ten Years Earlier, Radasanth’s Government District]


By the time a ray of sunshine rudely crashed through the window and irritated his face just enough to wake him up, all that was left of Helena the Harlot in the room was the vague scent of her cheap perfume that crawled into the crumpled, velvety sheets. In the relentless illumination of the sunny morning, Victor’s room seemed like a different place, losing that mysterious chic and gaining a much more tangible stateliness. The yellowish details on the doorknobs and window latches could now be identified as genuine gold by their sheen; the rather incomprehensible painting above his headrest was now an elaborate depiction of a landscape with a farmstead in front and what looked like Jagged Mountains in the background; the unopened bottle – that somehow miraculously replaced the open one from last night – that stood in the ice bucket was without a doubt one of those hundred-plus gold pieces bottles of wine that you couldn’t find on the shelves of general stores.

Turning his face away from the intrusive sun that pierced the translucent, azure curtain, the prizefighter noticed two piles of clothes resting on an oaken cabinet. Lacquered and polished, of course. The first one was undoubtedly his old clothes, neatly folded and probably smelling better then they did in years. Next to it was a pitch black pile with a white shirt on top. It was a suit – a cashmere one, though the boxer couldn’t recognize the fabric – that was to be his working clothes from this point on. A suit. Victor swung his feet to the side of the bed and yawned wide enough to swallow a baby’s head. He didn’t wear a suit since his sister’s wedding, and even then it was his uncle’s old suit that was about a size and a half too small.

Given the time that passed from his last encounter with such attire, the rundown pugilist had surprisingly little trouble with getting himself into it. Partially it was because the damn thing was a perfect fit, but mostly it was because getting dressed wasn’t exactly science. He buttoned up the shirt, tucked it into the pantaloons – that had an ironed crease on the front – then got flustered by the fact that there was a matching tie. Luckily, whoever delivered the clothes already tied the knot, making Victor sigh and just toss it over his head, then tighten it appropriately. Next came a light, sleeveless waistcoat, the jacket, a pair of black socks and a pair of leather shoes that seemed to reflect the room in their svelte blackness. And suddenly there was a different man staring back at him from the mirror, a refined man, a better man that didn’t fight for scraps. Victor never believed that suit made the man, but it most definitely could make him feel like at least a few thousand gold pieces.

After a faint knock on the door, a butler – looking strangely similar as the one from the day before, but not similar enough to be the same man – came into his quarters and asked him if he needed some assistance. After the negative answer, Victor was told that Mister Jimes had some urgent business to attend to, but that this elderly gent was Vic’s personal servant from this point forth and that he would familiarize him with the compound. Still taken aback by the irrational benevolence of his new employer, the boxer found no reason not to go with the flow.

Though quite breathtaking under the artificial light of the torches, lamps and priceless chandeliers, the interior of the house was even more magnificent when stricken by the gold of the sun. The servant took him on a tour, explaining the purpose of every room with professional politeness and what seemed like stoic patience. Victor heard the words spoken, but most of it didn’t stick as his looks got scattered over the multitude of details that plagued the environment. It all came down to one thing anyways; you stick to the rooms in which you have business, stay out of those in which you don’t and stay the fuck out of the locked ones.

During lunch he was seated at a table that seemed fit for accompanying at least fifty people. The head of the table was reserved for the Master of the House, but Victor got a seat right next to it. That was when the first surprise of the day came around and struck Victor like a horse hoof. Aicha entered the room almost in a hover, her gallant, scarlet dress gently pushing up some of the pale, suave flesh and dragging after her as she ambled towards the table with her chin held high and her cigarette spreading the tobacco smell throughout the room. Her short, raven-black hair seemed a mirror image of the one from last night. And though the boxer was never a fan of smoke suckers and prissy dames, the very sight of her changed his aversion towards both. And he didn’t mind, not even when she sat on the opposite side of the table and gave him a rather sardonic, studious look.

“So, you’re the new muscle?” she asked, smirking wistfully before she extinguished her coffin nail in a small salad bowl. Her servant, a rather gangly maiden with tightly combed blonde hair, instantly took the porcelain bowl and ran off to replace it with a clean one.

“Yes, ma’am. Victor Callahan,” he responded, bowing his head. Aicha smiled, but the red lipstick on her lips was the only thing on her visage that revealed any sign of livelihood.

“Oh, a man with manners. Walt certainly got a good one this time,” she commented rather distantly, her azure eyes relentlessly gazing at him. There was such undisputed power in that glare that Victor almost felt the need to divert his own and bow his head like a disobedient child. “Although, gentlemen with manners stand up when a lady joins them at the table. And they unbutton their jackets when they sit down.”

The prizefighter was caught in no man’s land and she saw it in his eyes. She was like a predator, catching the emotions from thin air and homing in on them, inexorably murdering him with her frigid, untouchable stare. A part of him reminisced the first encounter yesterday, reminded him that if she was a lady then he was a Steward of Corone, but the stupefaction caused by her eerily fairness and her ironclad coldness left both his tongue and his mind speechless. He unbuttoned his jacket, dropped his eyes first to her cleavage, then forced them to the flower arrangement that sat at the middle of the table.

[The Cinderella Man]

Eating lunch with Aicha’s eyes overseering his every move felt like trying to pass a test under the watchful eye of a professor. He couldn’t catch her looking at him, but he felt this pressure coming from the other side of the table that wordlessly made him keep his elbows off the table, his back straight and his manners at their best. True, he had a bit of a surplus when it came to utensils, but he was inconspicuous enough to subtly spy on the woman and follow her lead. So when she used the second smallest fork on the table, he used the second smallest fork. The meal itself looked like something that had a fancy foreign name even though it was just seasoned and marinated veal. A bit unsalty, but salt was on her end of the table and Vic reckoned he was better off with a rather vapid meal then risk making an ass out of himself. Again.

No words were spoken during the eating ordeal, the clicking of silverware on porcelain the only sound in the spacious room. Aicha ate like a bird, nipping bits and pieces as if her mouth opened only halfway, as if her stomach couldn’t accommodate a palm-sized piece of meat. Luckily for Victor, the black-haired vixen soon excused herself from the table – this time he got up which was quite an effort given the fact that he was in the process of taking a sip of wine – so he finally felt a bit more liberated. He finished his meal swiftly, not burdened by the strict set of manners and not using the salad fork on the salad.

“How was the meal, Mister Callahan?” his very own personal butler – who after Victor’s numerous protests, identified himself as Levi – asked, his face and his tone not deviating from the sleek, trained civility.

“Very good, Levi. My compliments to the chef,” the boxer responded, doing his best to get in touch with the fragments of mannerism that got eradicated during his vagabonding.

“I’m certain he will appreciate it. Also, my congratulations. You did exceptionally good,” the servant added, piling the dishes and the tableware on a small cart.

“What do you mean?”

“With Mistress Aicha. She seldom actually dines with her bodyguards. The last one she nearly stabbed with her fork,” Levi said, and even though his words were comical enough to make Victor stifle a chuckle, the callous, freshly shaved face failed to show any signs of joviality. “Now, if you would be so kind to follow me, Mister Callahan. Master Jimes instructed me to show you to the armory.”

Armory unsurprisingly always reminded the prizefighter of armor, so when the old man led the way through the corridors at a lifeless gait, Victor’s first thought was that he would be issued a sword and a full plate mail. And then his brain actually started functioning and he realized that steel padding and ironed suits didn’t go well together. The armory wasn’t locked, but there was no need to since beyond the door stood a counter with a rather rotund bald man sitting behind it. His suit – dark blue, but looking just as pricey as Vic’s – barely managed to hold his rather flabby physique, the buttons almost at the verge of popping out like corks on champagne bottles. One of his meaty hands was up, supporting the round face at the chin, while the other one stood hidden behind the counter, as calm as if it was frozen.

What stood beyond him though, seemed like a wet dream of firearms collectors. Flintlock pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, stacks and stacks of ammo all stood neatly piled, sending out the bitter scent of gunpowder. The fat armorer eyed them with his squinted eyes and then moved his static hand up on the counter. It was empty. Victor reckoned that whatever weapon that hand fingered stood safely hidden below the counter.

“Mister Callahan, innit?” the man asked, opening up what seemed like a guestbook. “Let me see. Two six-shooters, a cut-off scattergun, a brass knuckle, a pair of switchblades... Hey, I’m outta those. You don’t mind a pair of butterfly knives instead, do ya? I’m Flip, by the way.”

It took several moments for the boxer to acknowledge what the man spoke of before he responded. “Look, I don’t need any of this. I have both the gun and a knife.”

“Lookie here,” Flip said, leaning a bit more on the wooden surface. “Walt says this is what I have to give you and that’s what you’re getting. You can tuck it under your bed for all I care, as long as you get the job done. Alright?” The last word came out more like A-ait? but Victor got the message, nodding uninterestedly. He wasn’t a big fan of firearms. Not a fan of any kind of arms actually. He was a fistfighter after all.

“Now, any preferences? What kind of heat are you packing?” the round armorer asked, moving to the back of his inventory and picking up a pair of knives and a shinny brass knuckle that looked golden. When Victor didn’t answer, Flip rephrased, a bit irked. “The gun, Mister Callahan. What kind of gun are you carrying?”

“Oh. I don’t know. A six-shooter. I think it’s a fifty caliber or point-fifty. At least that’s one of the hawkers at the Bazaar said,” the boxer said, remembering that he forgot his pistol up in his room.

“Hmm... Does it looks like any of these?” the man asked, showing to a fine assortment of lined up revolvers, all as clean as the knight’s armor. Victor noticed a look-alike on the utmost left.

“Yeah. The one on the left.”

Flip picked it up, checked the cylinder, then proceeded to the other side of the room. From the forest of long barrels he fished out a more modest looking weapon, double-barreled and barely longer then the revolver. He dropped all the items on the counter, checked them off the list with a pen, then went back to his inventory again, picking up several boxes of bullets and what looked like a leather harness.

“I’m also giving you a shoulder holster. It’s not on the list, but I’m pretty certain Walter doesn’t want you walking around like a gunslinging brigand,” the bald armorer said, his cueball now twinkling with perspiration as he sat back down, added the holster to the list, then turned to book around for Victor to sign. “You take care of my babies now, Mister Callahan.”

The boxer-turned-gunman jotted down his signature, collected the issued items – Levi offering assistance with the shotgun and the bullets – and went back to his room.

[The Cinderella Man]

The rest of the day he spent in surveying his room (finding a classy leather duster in his wardrobe with a holster for the shotgun), inspecting his freshly acquired items (mostly getting acquainted with shoulder holster) and fantasizing about Aicha while he stood in the shadow of his loge. The garden below wasn’t one of those endless mazes made out of hedge, but rather a refined, well-chosen assortment of flowery bushes, trails made out of perfectly joined cobbles and smaller trails sprayed with some kind of gritty white gravel. Far in the back, on a small hillock plagued with yellow lilies, stood a white gazebo with a terracotta roof. Victor hoped to see the black-haired Mistress of the Night sitting there idly, but except the gardeners there was nobody in the spacey yard.

With the coy twinkle of the first stars came a knock on his door again. Levi entered with a bow that Victor deemed unnecessary, telling the boxer that Master Jimes expected him in the main study, ready to earn some money. Vic, never a man fearful of actually working for the bread on his table, got ready in less then a minute. Both of his revolvers – his own and the one given to him by Flip – were shoved in the holsters beneath his arms, the sawed-off shotgun in the inside left of his coat, extra shells in the right to balance the weight, the knives in the coat pockets and the knuckles in his pants pocket. And while he looked mighty mean and threatening when he looked at his confident self in the mirror, once he actually made a move towards the door, he noticed that the extra weight made him feel like a walking armory. His leather coat alone felt as if it was made out of some flexible iron. But that was acceptable. It was better to be safe and armed like a platoon of soldiers then risk and get caught with your pants down. Moving slowly for the first corridor or two, Victor made his way to the study.

“Why, Mister Callahan, you look like a new man,” Walter spoke, a fake smile on like an old battle scar. Everything in this household seemed like an act to the boxer. Fake politeness from the servants, fake friendliness from his employer, fake phlegm from Flip the Armorer... The logic spoke that Aicha’s frigidity ought to be fake as well, but Victor wasn’t certain how much of his hundred gold pieces would he be willing to bet on that.

“I feel like a new man,” the fresh bodyguard responded, taking a seat on one of the lofty armchairs in front of Walter’s desk. “I feel like I should be thanking you for all of this...”

“No thanks are needed, Mister Callahan. We couldn’t let you do the job without the proper tools, now could we?” the man in the spotless white suit spoke, his hat on despite the fact that they were indoors. “But before we start speaking about your first assignment, this is for you. You can call it an advance or you can call it pin money, it matters little to me.”

Walter slid a rather sizeable money pouch across the mahogany desk. Victor felt reluctant to take it, his mind once again swept by the doubt of a sham that would get him in deep, but those beady, tranquil eyes that gazed at him seemed unyielding. The boxer pocketed the money, then leant against the backrest.

“Now then, onto the real business,” the man with oiled moustache said. “As I mentioned before, you are to be an escort to Aicha and today she has to pay a visit to a gentleman in the Bazaar District. You don’t need to know the name of this gentleman. You don’t need to know the address – your driver knows where to take you. All that you have to do is get her to the door of the apartment, wait in front of the door while the two of them... conduct business, shall we say, and then bring her back. If there is trouble afoot, I’m certain that Flip issued you the means to deal with it. Are there any questions?”

“Nope, no questions. It’s your whore, your money, I’m just joining in for a ride.”

“Excellent, Mister Callahan. The carriage is already waiting for you. Lady Aicha will join you shortly,” Walter spoke, his faux mask giving in to a rather satisfactory smirk that seemed to be the conclusion of the conversation. Victor got up, once again feeling the weight of his coat, and walked out of the study and towards the foyer.

[The Cinderella Man]

[Present Day, Radasanth Prison Facility ~ “The Furnace”]


If it wasn’t for the high-pitched whistle of steam that designated lunch time, even the strongest and the most resilient to heat and dehydration would’ve been added to the list of the reckless ones before the day would’ve come to an end. However, as heedless as the officials were to the discomfort of the inmates, they had enough gray matter between their ears to know the difference between much and too much. And having a dozen convicts daily rolling over like dead fish from exertion and thirst wouldn’t fly even with the most lenient overseers. Besides, even the scum of Corone had rights and one of those was to three square meals a day.

So at noon – the timing was always rigorously precise, making it possibly the only aspect of the wretched place that Victor actually liked – the whistle that looked like a cylinder head of a man with a tin cap and an upside-down smile shrieked its steamy call. Harder, more coherent coal was fed to the ovens, so the embers would last until the feeders of the furnace fed themselves and returned to their workplace. Whoever did this last task the fastest got to be the first in line, which in turn meant the first in line for chow, but only the foolish and the green ever really tried to take that spot at the front. Other then the fact that they were all fed the same crud, standing with about one hundred weary, sweaty and seriously peeved convicted felons behind your back was a perfect opportunity to get killed. So Victor threw two shovels or rock-hard coal into the oven lethargically, then took his place somewhere in the middle of the line, waiting for the guards to lead the way through the mazelike tunnels.

Regardless of how cloudy the day was – and it was a stormy day, it seemed – the shock on the eyes was always devastating. It was one thing to look into the blazing flames in the dim, underground luminance and completely another to step back into the natural light. The guards seemed unmindful of this little consequence, allowing their surface counterparts to usher the jailbirds towards the mess hall. Still, taking that one breath of fresh air after the charcoaled dust and steaming fumes was like being liberated, like taking a breath of freedom that for most was still years or decades away. But today the ex-prizefighter was unfazed by this sensation. Midnight and his freedom were less then twelve hours away and even though there were no clocks in the prison, he felt as if he was standing in front of one, following each and every swing of the pendulum.

“Fucking hell! Didn’t we have this for breakfast?” Grath commented, taking a sniff of the thick stew that seemed a tad too green for his tastes. Old man Alain pushed him to get the line moving, picking up his tray of muck. A wink and a nod to the crimson-haired demon on the opposite side of the counter bought him three extra slices of bread.

“Eat your greens, Rat,” the gray-haired geezer said. “Otherwise you’ll be eating the same thing for dinner.”

They all sat on their usual places around the table in the left corner of the room, scrawny rogue the only one in mood for protests as usual. The rest of the squad didn’t mind the fact that Grath was a chatterbox. At first, such idiosyncrasy was annoying, then boring, then even more annoying, then annoying enough for you to kill someone, but after that it was just background noise.

“It’s probably gonna be fucking purple in the evening,” Rat protested, poking the steaming stew as if he expected for something to poke back.

Victor seemed oblivious to all these everyday antics. He was doing everything by the book today, doing his cut, staying in line, staying inconspicuous, staying clean during his last day in The Furnace. Of course, this rather ignorant demeanor left him wide open for that plague of thoughts that always overcame him when he least wanted it to. His gang – that would lose its leader before the end of the day – did the usual lunch talk, amicable insults going back and forward like a rubber ball, bouncing and keeping the momentum. He paid little heed to them and they understood. When their parole day came, chances were they would have the same melancholic look in their eyes. Except Grath. They all agreed that he would go out with his mouth running. However the next thing he said deviated from the usual sarcastic joviality.

“Son of a bitch! Vic, I think those drow freaks are up to something.”

Rat’s hand tapped Victor on the shoulder, pointing him towards the opposite end of the mess where about a dozen dark-skinned elves stood serenely, their keen eyes directed to the human batch of convicts.

[The Cinderella Man]

[Ten Years Earlier, Radasanth’s Government District]


Two hundred gold pieces. If Victor was extremely lucky and the battle organizers were in a charitable mood, it took him two harrowing bouts to earn that sum and leave him looking and feeling like a mashed pork chop. And yet today that was the amount that he was given for pocket money just for getting up and showing up in the study, all pressed and dressed. He almost felt like he was ten, it was his birthday and he got more money then he expected from his uncle that lived in Radasanth. This was usually the time when his pessimistic mind kicked in, reminding him that there was no such thing as easy money, reminding him of the strange gut feeling that made this whole deal smell a bit fishy, but he wasn’t given the time to mull. Aicha stepped into the carriage.

One of the cultivated servants opened the carriage door and the black-haired harlot slowly ascended up the pair of stairs and into the lofty carriage. She was dressed in a rather taut, velvety-white dress that clung to her body almost like second skin, but left her pale shoulders completely bare. The cut on the side of the dress went scandalously high, so much so that Victor almost expected to see the line of her underwear. Maybe he would’ve caught a glimpse of it if he allowed himself more then a skimming glimpse... or if Aicha actually wore underwear on that day. Her hands were once again covered, the fabric of her gloves smooth and pearly and once again there was a thin cigarette smoldering between her fingers. The curls of her hair were straightened, but her short, pitch-black hair was still heavily oiled and pressed against her head. The pair of azure eyes regarded him in a bored manner for less then a second before they were diverted to the exterior.

Victor felt like he did something wrong when that look fell on him, felt like crawling out of his own skin, felt like an overstrung harp wire. He removed his eyes from her sizzling figure, but even though he observed the fountain that stood in the courtyard with hundreds of tiny waterfalls cascading down the white marble, the mental image of this cold female burned itself into his mind. Luckily, their driver clucked the pair of horses and made the black carriage roll down the cobbles, introducing more of the scenery that should’ve distracted him from Aicha. The scent of her perfume though - delicate and sweet and combined with the smoke of her cigarette - reminded him that he was sitting in a carriage with a piece of hot coal. Hot, yet cold. A mind-shattering contradiction.

“It seems I overestimated your propriety yesterday,” she shattered the silence after about two minutes of trucking, her voice flat and emotionless. Even though she was clearly addressing the boxer, her visage was facing the window, giving him a view of her profile. “Not even a ‘hello’ or ‘good evening’ or even a nod. I’ll start to think that I’m transparent.”

Her lips curled into a smallest of grins and she faced him again, her blue eyes almost cold enough to make his shiver. “My sincere apologies, ma’am. I’m still learning the ropes of all of this,” he said, bowing his head gently.

“Well, you can start by dropping the ‘ma’am’. I’m not a madam and we both know it,” she said, put on a false smile and brought the cigarette to her full, rosy lips. She inhaled gingerly, almost in fear to mess up her vibrant lipstick.

Victor would beg the differ. Seeing her like this, dressed up in her finest attire, sitting on the carriage seat like a queen without the throne, he felt the urge to oppose this statement. And then a candid voice in the back of his mind reminded him where were they going and why. “Very well,” he replied, his eyes inadvertently making another survey over her curves before he turned his face away.

They arrived in front of a multistoried building in the Bazaar District just as the night around them erased all traces of the day that preceded it, cloaking everything in dim, melancholic shades. Victor exited the carriage first, then offered Aicha a helping hand which she accepted as softly as if she touched a feather. She then proceeded to wrap her hand around the crook of his arm before she led the way into the seemingly vacant building.

“Patrick is a real-estate agent,” she spoke as they walked through the faintly illuminated halls and up the stairs. “This place is reserved for his personal uses. He’s also somewhat of a rabbit, so I shouldn’t take long.”

Victor, a bit disconcerted with both this closeness with the woman and the information that she was peddling so freely, was actually rather relieved when they reached a polished oaken door on the second floor. Aicha detached herself from his flank, knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a reply. Before she entered, she cast one last cryptic glance over her shoulder. “Don’t go nowhere,” she said, and slipped inside.

Incomprehensible voices. Silence. More voices. Victor knew he had to keep a watchful ear on whatever went on behind those doors. He had to determine the difference between rough and too rough. A creak of the bed. A muffled moan. A stifled grunt. A scream that almost made him move for the door. But then laughter, feminine, sweet sounding and as fake as a five-piece gold ring. The creaking of the bed became rhythmical, gradually speeding up. It lasted for several minutes. Aicha moaned repeatedly. Heavy breaths and an uncontrolled grunt. A slight pause. The door opened and closed.

Aicha stood before him, fixing her tousled hair in a distant manner before she sighed audibly. “God, I need a drink after that.”

[The Cinderella Man]

It was so unintentional and unexpected that Victor didn’t even know when it exactly happened. It could’ve been that this realization struck him the moment Aicha emerged from the room, her clothes crumpled and her cheeks flushed. Or it could’ve been that it happened gradually while he listened to the sounds of the false lovemaking. But there was no doubt that it did happen and that he didn’t see anything else in her but a hooker now. Until this promiscuous deed actually occurred, he was looking at her with amicable eyes, deliberately oblivious to the obvious. But now that he led her to a room where another man paid her to lay with him, Victor could barely hide his disdain. If Aicha noticed it, she displayed no reaction to it, holding her pretense of perfection as coherent as the moment he saw her last evening; standing leant on a banister above him, basked in the luxurious light of the priceless chandelier of Walter’s manor.

They rolled through the benighted Radasanth streets in silence, out of the relatively desolate Bazaar District and back the way they came. However, instead of going towards the place that Victor still couldn’t acknowledge as home, their chauffeur took them to a fancy-looking restaurant called ‘Blooming Dale’. It was the kind of a place where ladies pranced around in evening gowns and the gentlemen walked in tailored suits with sticks up their asses. In all his years Victor never had a chance (or the money) to visit one such place and he wasn’t keen on doing so now either. But when the carriage stopped in front of the red carpet and the pageboy opened the door with a deep bow, he wasn’t given a choice. He stepped out rather reluctantly, then offered Aicha his hand once again. Once again, her body leant against his own.

“Don’t worry. The majority of these gentlemen are as gentlemanlike as an average yahoo,” she explained, leading the way through the double doors that a pair of menservants in scarlet attires opened up. Victor didn’t like that comment. He respected the simplicity of yahoos and roughnecks. What they lacked in manners they usually made up in their wide-eyed benignity. And he doubted that there was a kind heart in a two mile radius, his included.

They were seated in a rather secluded corner of the restaurant – the waiter leading them to a spot that was obviously always vacant for Mister Jimes – and Aicha ordered a bottle of wine whose name Victor couldn’t even pronounce. A double wooden arc crisscrossed above their heads with thornless blue roses coiling around the wooden support. The table that stood between him and the black-haired floozie had a pricey-looking cloth over it, the gentle blue of it in sync with the flowers above and the plush covering of the comfortable, lacquered chairs on which they sat. Victor looked at the cloth, at the ashtray that probably cost as much as his gymbag and everything in it, at the flowers, at the clientele, but couldn’t bear to looks at her eyes. It didn’t take a terribly perceptive person to notice something was wrong.

“I guess this is the part where you ask me how can I do it? How can I give myself to another man for money?” Aicha said, her tone the same cold insipidity that, instead of intimidating the boxer, now started to irritate him. She took another cigarette out of her purse, lit it and blew the first smoke sideways.

“No,” he almost added ‘ma’am’ but it would’ve been more hollow then ever, that word. “I’m not paid to ask questions. Yours and Walter’s business is none of my business.”

She had a rebuttal ready, but the waiter came with a bottle of red wine and a pair of glasses. He showed her the etiquette, then after she nodded he poured a little bit to both of them and excused himself with a bow. Victor thought that the wine would be the salvation, something that would steer them away from the conversation that she initiated, but no such luck. Aicha, without touching her wine, shook the ash off her cigarette and leaned onto the table in a highly dignified manner.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” she asked. The bulky boxer didn’t answer immediately, taking a sip of the wine that didn’t seem to live up to the price that was bound to be in accordance with it’s name; the weirder the name, the more expensive the booze. That’s why ale came so cheap.

“I’d rather not answer that question,” was the best defensive answer he could conjure. Aicha didn’t like it.

“Well, I want you to answer. I order you to answer,” she said, her voice deviating from the emotionless tone that gave way to a much more serious one.

“With all due respect, I’m not your servant. You can’t order me. Walter is my employer and this little detour is not the part of the job and neither is the interrogation,” Victor replied. Aicha’s face, that most of the time seemed as if it was carved from alabaster, was now marred with a frown. Her lips shivered for just a fraction of a second, as if she was trying to stifle an angry rant, before she shook her head and smiled. It was a fake smile.

“Interrogation is such a harsh word. I’m merely trying to make small-talk, trying to get to know the man behind all that muscle. I assure you, Walter will hear none of this,” she said, finally taking a miniscule sip of the red liquid from her glass. “But you don’t have to answer. I can see it in your eyes. You despise me. You think I’m taking the easy way out by selling my body. You think I’m a piece of dirt dressed in prissy clothes.”

“If the shoe fits...” was the only reply he gave her. It was enough to awake flames in her blue eyes.

“You know nothing about me. You know nothing, and already you judge me,” Aicha said, exhaling smoke and directing it towards Victor. He held his breath while it passed over his face before he replied, determined to give her a lesson.

“I know about your kind. Your father beat you, you had nothing to eat, your stepmother kicked you out of the house, you were an orphan, you were a slave, it’s always one sad story or the other. None of that makes whoring justifiable. There are countless girls going through those fates that don’t take that route.” His tone was acrimonious, his eyes meeting hers only at the end of his little exposition. He was probably risking his high-paid job with this, but if there was one thing he hated more then a harlot it was a harlot with a high opinion of herself.

Her frown thickened, making him remember what Levi said about Aicha stabbing her last bodyguard with a fork. He wasn’t attacked in the same manner, though. Instead, she took her glass and tossed the contents of it in his face before she marched out of the restaurant. Victor wiped his face in the pricy table cloth, paid almost a hundred gold pieces for the wine they didn’t even drink, and followed her. Needless to say, the drive back to the manor passed without a word spoken.

[The Cinderella Man]

The night was sticky. It was one of those summer nights when the humid, warm air seemed to glue to your skin, making you sweat regardless of how much you tried to remain motionless. The breeze didn’t help much. It caressed the transparent, bluish curtains with invisible hands, introducing the faintest scent of the salty sea, but it brought little freshness. Even when Victor stripped most of the fancy clothes off of his body and stepped out onto the balcony in his well-worn jeans and a sleeveless linen shirt, the coolness of the night found it appropriate to evade him. But it wasn’t the heat that kept him awake. It was restlessness and his crazy head that always went on a cerebrating rollercoaster at the weirdest times. It made him think of the things he shouldn’t, made him dissect the matters that should remain concealed. It made him think of Aicha.

Not even Helena was able to divert his thoughts. The blonde harlot was snoring sweetly amidst his bed sheets, grateful for another night void of molestation and beating and smelly blind alleys and men who reeked like latrines. He didn’t make love to her tonight, couldn’t. It wouldn’t be lovemaking. It wouldn’t even be pretense. He would look at her and see the face that he despised, the blue eyes that repulsed him, that made him think of sweaty old men salivating over alabaster skin for a fistful of gold pieces. He would look at her and see something morally incorrect, and yet something that tempted him on some profound level. He would see Aicha and feel the guilt for the harsh words he spoke earlier that night.

When his deliberating offered no solutions – as per usual – Victor decided to walk it off. Strolls in the night clear the troubled mind, he said to himself. It was a lie; they did no such thing. They were a mere distraction that burned the time it took for the sun to rise again and he needed a good distraction right now. So he snuck out of his own room like a thief, leaving Helena to whatever dreams got caught in the web of her mind.

The manor was a different place during the night. Every color seemed to die a little without light shining down on it, making the lofty corridors look more mundane, more like a place you could live in and less like a museum exhibition. It still made Victor thread lightly, though, because the sound of the wood creaking ever so gently below his boots was still terribly intrusive in the tranquility of the night. It took him several minutes and wrong turns to find his way to the backdoor. Streets of Radasanth would’ve probably been a better choice for solitude, but at this ungodly hour he would have to lug a weapon or two with him or risk an encounter with some shady gentlemen who were everything but gentle. Instead, he stepped into the spacious garden, the heels of his boots clicking against the mismatched cobbles that were mortared into a smooth web of pavements. It was a starry night, moonless, but with enough light to reveal the path for his wandering steps.

As usual, he didn’t get to do much mulling during his walk. His mind merely wandered in a different direction, making him chew over trite things such as the carpet-thick grass that looked almost too neat to step on and the annoying sound of a nightingale that never seemed to stop its monotonous song. With his head in the clouds, he barely noticed that his feet led him to the summerhouse at the far end of the garden and his surprise for the night.

By the time he noticed her, he had already started to climb the handful of steps that led under the thatched roof of the gazebo and it was too late to walk away. It was the cigarette that gave her away, the orange smoldering speck at the end of it glowing like a hot poker. She sat on the banister leisurely, her back propped against one of the supporting columns, her eyes searching for something unattainable in the blackness that fell on the city that stretched below. Instead of a dress, a black nightgown fell over her body, loose and velvety, as if it was made of polished ebony. When she drew the smoke into her lungs, her face was aglow for a moment, making her look almost ominous. Her hair was oddly unkempt, short spikes rebelling against the substance she usually used to fix it.

“I see I’m not the only one who has trouble sleeping,” Aicha’s voice came from the darkness, but it was the only manner in which she heeded his arrival. Her eyes were still somewhere far away, gazing into a different world.

“I suppose.” He should’ve left. She was the last person he wanted to talk to. A part of him - the goody-goody father’s son part - wanted to apologize to her for the words he spoke in the ‘Blooming Dale’. But then he remembered her casual demeanor as she stepped out of that room, acting as if nothing or importance happened, as if whoring was as acceptable as baking a loaf of bread. It was enough to evict the apology from his head.

“Helena keeps you up?” She said it with a bland smirk, the cryptic kind that was neither here nor there. After getting silence as a response, she took another gingerly smoke and let is creep out of her mouth. “She’s a good girl. Unlike me. That’s probably what you’re thinking right now. I’m a bad girl who thinks too highly of herself. You probably hate me as well. A couple of days ago you were probably earning honest money doing... well, whatever you were doing. And now you’re protecting a whore.”

“I get paid for protection. It’s still honest money.” It was a convenient lie. The fact that the money came from the same purse she got for peddling her body got lost somewhere between the lines. Keeping her at a courteous distance of some ten feet, Victor folded his hands over his chest and leant his shoulder against the gazebo pillar. “I don’t hate you, though. Hate is too strong of a word to be used recklessly.”

“Is it now?” Aicha asked, sounding intrigued as she finally turned her shadowed face towards the prizefighter. “And which one isn’t? Despise? Disgust? Loathing? Pity? I’ve heard them all, my dear Victor. Sticks and stones broke my bones plenty of times. Harsh words are just background noise.”

He knew what she was talking about and he knew she was lying. Their stories maybe differed, but the concept was the same. They were both at the rock bottom once and they both got a fair number of names written on their forehead. And they were never just background noise. Regardless of how callous you were, regardless of how high of a wall you build around your emotional core, harsh words found a way to hurt you. Sometimes it was a passerby calling you a no-good loser, sometimes it was a prissy noble woman chasing you away. Sometimes it was a prizefighter calling you a whore.

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to be sympathetic and listen to your story?” Victor said after some musing. He wouldn’t let her get the upper hand. He wouldn’t let her justify her obscene vocation. He was right, she was wrong and they were not the same. However, contrary to his expectations, Aicha didn’t explode at him. She inhaled some more smoke, tossed her thin cig away and slid down from the banister.

“No. You are right, my story is no different then hundreds of others. I have no excuse for being a harlot,” she spoke with odd, almost disquieting serenity, walking up to him until he could smell the remnants of the tobacco smoke on her breath. Only now he could see that she wore no mascara, no longer a queen on her little throne made of cardboard. “But what’s your excuse for being a cold bastard?”

She left him with that question, evanescing into the night like a corrupted fairy. It didn’t take long of Victor to realize that his little midnight walk brought only more questions instead of answers.

[The Cinderella Man]

[Present Day, Radasanth Prison Facility ~ “The Furnace”]


“FIGHT!!!”

Grath was the first one to raise the alarm. It was a precautionary measure, a scream that was supposed to nip the attack of the drow in the bud. The main idea was to alert the guards early, play it smart, intercept, even if nothing gory was about to unfold and the black-skinned bastards were just collectively stretching their legs. Raising a false alarm could get you accused of enticing a riot, buying you a week in the solitary. Raising a true alarm could save your life. Dozens of guards would pour in with their heavy iron clubs and tower shields and severe lack of restraint, beating anybody and everybody. It was standard survival protocol and Grath was the master of keeping himself alive.

Today, however, his tactic was a dud. Perhaps the guards were too tired to bludgeon some cons. Perhaps they found it entertaining when a bunch of inmates beat the crap out of each other with chairs and platters and dull utensils. Perhaps they were ordered to pull out. Either way, instead of storming the mess hall, the handful of sentries that supervised chowtime scurried out of room, locking the door behind their sorry behinds, of course. This was what they called ‘isolating the incident’. No one got in, no one got out, at least not until the madness inside died down.

The madness that was just about to start.

There were no speeches, no elaborate explanations or instructions; there was no need for them. When you’re imprisoned with the same people for ten years, there was always an ongoing grudge that could justify a good old-fashioned rumble. In many ways these jailhouse skirmishes became Victor’s ‘business and usual’, replacing the ring fights he had participated in while he had been a free man. And by now he got mighty good at them. He beckoned his human allies to form up behind him, their hands already latched to chairs and platters and their own little secret shivs as if they were swords and shields. His own hands fished out what looked like a very crude improvised knuckles from his right sock. Though prizefighting days were just a fading picture in the album of memories, he was still a fistfigther.

“Maybe they just want to say goodbye to you,” Rat again, trying to be funny in a time and place that refused to acknowledge even the existence of the word ‘funny’. The skinny rogue was probably right about one thing; they were trying to say goodbye to Victor. The hard way.

This standoff riddled with measuring looks and antsy fingers lasted only up until the point where demons – that were serving lunch up until this point – jumped over the counter with their mismatched assortment of makeshift weaponry. It was a clear sign for hell to break loose. Maneuvering almost like a platoon of well-trained soldiers, the drow split into two groups at the growl of their leader, an ancient-looking fellow who oddly enough kept his head bald. ‘Eight-ball’ himself led the charge towards Victor and his gang, with a pair of prison-made daggers slipping out of his sleeves and into his long-fingered hands.

There was no order in the fight that ensued, not firmly set guidelines that would lead a person to victory. It was a chaos of bodies and appendages and punches and kicks, and the only thing you could do is try to make sure you weren’t on the receiving end most of the time. Stay on your feet. Stay alive. Keep punching. Victor did all of that, utilizing his boxing knowledge and sending walloping punches that scattered the drow. Most of them missed, but those that connected were like a kiss of a maul. It was a brutish way to fight, but brutality was the only language that these bastards spoke. At his left, Berthold was swinging what was left of the chair, shattering a backrest on the head of one of the attackers. At his right, Grath was standing on a table, making a fool and a target out of himself as he kicked the dishes in the general direction of the drow. The curses he spat at them seemed to do more damage then his projectiles.

How many times he punched at the dexterous bastards and how many times their blades licked his skin, Victor couldn’t tell. But at one point, as he finally grabbed one of the dark elves by the throat and launched hook at his face, two pair of hands grabbed him and yanked him forward. At the exact same time, the rest of the drow ‘troops’ pushed forward, effectively surrounding the muscular boxer. An iron pipe struck the back of his knee, a foot landed on his gut. He tried to fight back, but the attacks were too many, too fast, bringing him to his knees. In the eye of this storm, a guttural voice muttered something with such a thick accent that Victor couldn't quite comprehend what it meant. It sounded almost familiar, as if he heard before, in some other life. In some other place.

[The Cinderella Man]

[Ten Years Earlier, Radasanth’s Government District]


“Walter sends his regards,” Aicha stated plainly, climbing into the carriage and dropping a jingling pouch next to her escort. She was in a golden garb today, her dress as puffy as if she had a cloud stashed somewhere beneath all those layers of silk. It was significantly more conservative then the ones she wore before, concealing most of her attributes and leaving only her smooth neck exposed. Her perfume, though... It leapt at Victor like a wanton lover, sweet and prominent and not entirely unwelcome. But as tempting as she was, Victor barely spared her a glance before he pocketed the pay for yesterday’s job.

She left quite a steaming potato in his hands last night, responding to the figurative slap with a just as figurative kick in the nuts. He had no answer to her question. Like her, he had no excuse for being what he was. Like her, there was a sad story resting somewhere on the timeline of his life, one that people told when they wanted to be pitied. And like her, he couldn’t use it as a trump card that canceled out all the queries. Fate threw wrenches in everybody’s gears and the world knew only two types of people; those that rolled up their sleeves and fixed it and those that walked out. The two of them walked, took the easy way out, and it brought them where they were today.

There were too many similarities in these comparisons for Victor’s liking.

Their black carriage rolled downhill once again, trucking the pair through the webwork of streets caught in purple twilight. They each looked at their side of the street, each with a set of thoughts that seemed to have more touching points then either of them was ready to admit. Finding the silence irksome, Aicha pulled out a silver cigarette case from her purse, placing another thin coffin nail between her lips. An irritated sigh followed when she found no matches in her purse.

“You’ve got a match?”

After minutes of neglect that both upheld, her question was almost surprising. “No, I don’t smoke. You shouldn’t either. All that smoke would be the end of you.” Even though his words might’ve given out a different impression, there was no genuine concern for her wellbeing in his tone just as there was no lightheartedness in her subsequent chuckle.

“Somehow I don’t think it’s the smoke that will do me in.”

***

Job number two took them to an estate not so different from the one they rolled out of less then half an hour ago. According to Aicha’s explanation, Count Vigo Denebh was a jeweler, an artist and a whole lot of other things, who liked to take his time undressing his nightly company, hence the multi-layered dress. It was a detail that Victor didn’t need to know, that he didn’t want to know; it replayed the disgusting images in his head. Vigo’s business must’ve been flourishing, though, because his manor seemed large enough to be a hotel. The architectural style was significantly different then the one used on Walter’s home, leaning more towards elven grandeur with its svelte lines and three-story towers at the ends of each wing. Their driver didn’t take the carriage down the road more travelled. Instead they approached the manor from behind, up the barely visible grassy trail.

The significantly less majestic service entrance still got them to the classy interior soon enough. Unlike Walter, Count Denebh seemed to have something called genuine refinement. Every piece of polished furniture seemed to be in unison with the carpet on the floor, the tapestries on the walls, even the color of the illumination that the crystalline lamps cast. Little did Victor know that this panache came as a courtesy of Vigo’s wife. Who wasn’t present, of course. Otherwise Aicha’s presence in the bedroom of the manor would’ve raised not only a few brows, but a few questions as well.

The pair behind the door went to business slower then yesterday. They forced Victor to hear infinite exchanges of empty words, giggles that Aicha professionally forced out just like the subsequent squeals of pleasure. It was somewhere in the midst of all the heavy breathing and the mattress-creaking that one of the servants came running towards the door. Vic stopped him with one hand beneath his duster while the other gestured to the man that it would be wise to slow down.

“M-Missus Denebh,” the elderly gent said, obviously exhausted by the run up the stairs. “She returned early from the party. I think she suspects something. I have to inform Master Vigo.”

Poor Vigo. That was the risk of bringing a harlot underneath the roof you shared with your wife. With all his refinement, the jeweler obviously lacked tact, or just simple common sense. With the bankroll he had, he could’ve rented an entire inn for the night somewhere in the less frequented part of Radasanth. But hindsight was always twenty-twenty, although when the stocky jeweler stormed out of the bedroom, he had a look of somebody who got a surprise visit from the God Almighty himself. His hands worked as fast as they could, stuffing the shirt into his pants, buttoning his overly-tight scarlet waistcoat, fixing his spectacles, desperate to make himself presentable for the inquisition of his wife. Aicha was much more calm. She flattened the creases on her dress as much as she could before she walked up to Victor and wrapped her hands around the crook of his arm.

“Just play along and everything would be fine,” she spoke, firing a confident smirk that seemed to radiate with seduction. Perhaps it was the remnant of the charm she used on Vigo the Fat Jeweler. Whatever it was, there was no time left for objections. Missus Denebh was here, climbing up the stairs and catching them red-handed.

“Vigo, what’s going on here? Who are these people?” the golden-haired woman spat at her husband, her tone making it clear that each question was less of a query and more of an accusation. Even though she was clearly an elf – or just a somebody whose ears were disfigured in a pointy manner – her face held none of the renowned fairness of her kin.

“Catherine Brenn, madam, and this is my fiancée, Vincent,” Aicha took the lead, using that tongue of hers to make the lie slither out of her mouth as if it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The minute curtsey was just a final part of the vow. “We are terribly sorry to intrude at such a late hour, but we had some business to discuss with your husband.”

Victor was lost, sneaking in a questioning glance at his bride-to-be only to find it intercepted by the keen one of the suspicious woman. “In our bedroom?” she asked.

“Yes. We were thinking of contracting your husband to decorate our home and your husband was kind enough to give us a tour of your home. We love what you’ve done with your bedroom. Don’t we, sweetie?” Aicha asked. It took a concealed pinch of her gloveless hands to make Victor realize she was talking to him.

“Uhm, yes. Very much. It’s quite a sight,” was the best he could do given the circumstances.

“I see.” The woman wasn’t terribly convinced and such disposition stood on her face like a mask. Aicha decided to make her case even more solid. With a mischievous smile and a hand that crept up his chest and to his neck like a spider, she raised herself to her tippy-toes, pressing her body against his own and boring a hole in his face with her mascara-outlined eyes.

“Are you sure we can afford it?” she asked, faking innocence with puppylike glance that cajoled belief to come out. And when he nodded, she put up the final act of the play, pressing her lips against his. Only it wasn’t just a token kiss, an insignificant touch of lips in service of believability. She kissed him with passion, as if she actually believed the story she told and they were soon to be wed. Was it all the part of the act? Was she such a good thespian that she managed to delude even herself with her antics? Or was there something more in this soft collision?

Victor didn’t know and didn’t care. All he knew was that at that moment, his dislike towards Aicha had a temporary lapse.

[The Cinderella Man]

Job #3

It was the one that turned everything upside down. Unlike in previous two cases, they didn’t wait for the cover of the night to get another adulterous excursion under way. It was close to noon when the pair recommenced their usual routine, boarding the carriage made of burnished, blackened wood and leaving Walter’s manor. The sun refused to spare them, its vibrant beams overly fond of the dark color of their rig, raising the temperature that much closer to unbearable. It made Victor tug on the collar of his hundred-gold-pieces shirt, trying to find just a tad more extra space in the loop of his constricting necktie. Even without his leather coat, he felt that the carriage was a furnace and he was a piece of metal that was about to be forged.

Aicha’s presence failed to make the heat any more bearable. Dressed in tune with the weather, the refined harlot wore an azure dress made of such fine silk that Victor could almost see through it. Almost. That last bit that would unravel the magnificence of her body remained concealed, vague, like a dream that was always within arm’s reach, but never in your grasp. It was more then enough to make him think of yesterday again. Even though he knew it was impossible, his senses still registered the pasty taste of her lipstick, the devilry of her tongue, the tantalizing caress of her fingers. This phantom sensation was what kept him up yet another night, what kept harassing him, forcing him to find an explanation why something so simple coming from somebody so impure could feel so enthralling.

But if yesterday’s kiss meant anything to Aicha, she failed to show it. She sat on her side of the carriage, drawing another fragment of death from her cigarette, stargazing. It was business as usual.

The customer for the day awaited them in yet another palace-like manor a bit farther up the Nerevar Hill. Nerevar Hill was where the richest amongst the rich lived, royalty lane where you felt you should walk through the streets in slippers. Arrand Beats was the son of Jerrand Beats, the Minister of Internal Affairs that spent more time putting out political fires all across Corone then taking care of the ones in his own home. His wife’s lovers were plentiful, a sort of a public secret that was whispered on banquets and balls. His son was no better, a deadbeat youth with barely twenty summers beneath his belt who had a knack for gambling away large chunks of his father’s bankroll. Ladies were his second vice. Violence his third. Both of those came into play soon after Victor took his post in front of another polished door.

The sounds on the other side were typical at first, teasing and taunting and groping and laughing and stumbling over various objects. Regardless of how much he tried to deny it, the mental image of the room was piecing itself in his mind, like a stage in a theatre. He could see everything in his mind’s eye, a subjective representation of the room beyond. The kiss... Even as he listened to them frolicking, that kiss was there, making him jealous, making him think how this whelp was unworthy of her. It was a ridiculous thought; she was a goddamn whore, the lowest of the low. The lowest of the low. It was a familiar definition.

After some ten minutes of foreplay, the things became heated. The wrong way. Instead of fake moans of ecstasy there was muffled mumbling, voices coming in whispers filled with an emotion other then passion. Then a curse. A familiar meaty thump of fist hitting flesh he heard thousands of times before. A scream. By the time the second thud could be heard Victor’s gun was out. By the time the female voice cried his name through a barrier of wood, he came bursting through the door.

Aicha lay on the baldachin-covered queen’s bed, feebly shielding her face. On top of her, the naked scrawny man held his fist at the ready, bawling at her to shut the hell up and take it. Whatever it was. He tried to shout something at Victor too, some crap how this was none of his business, but half of his words got stuck in his throat when the gun-wielding bodyguard grabbed him by the neck. Pulling him away from Aicha was almost too easy - the boy was all skin and bone. One hand slammed him against a framed picture of some idyllic landscape. The other pressed the revolver to his forehead.

“That’s no way to treat a lady, whelp!” Vic’s voice was acid, but it failed to burn itself into Arrand’s mind.

“Fool,” the boy spat at the threatening visage of the prizefighter. His breath was foul, borderline flammable, smelling of hard liquor. “Do you have any idea who my father...”

Victor knew. That didn’t stop him from letting go of the lad’s throat and introducing a balled fist to his gut. It made the youth crumble to the carpet as if somebody just took out his kneecaps. Next to this hostile exchange, Aicha was getting up from the bed, one hand holding the thread-thin strap of her dress that got torn in the struggle. Her face was like nothing he ever saw in her, lost and almost coy, staring at her rescuer.

“Go back to the carriage.”

She did. She didn’t even stop to pick up her shoes. Light and almost weightless, she ran like the wind and never looked back. Not even when a pair of gunshots cut through the storm in her head. She wanted to be away from this place, away from the events that reminded her of another time that held only pain in store for her. Hugging herself and staring at her own feet, she waited for Victor to return.

“Are you alright?” His voice was considerate once he entered the carriage, compassionate probably for the first time she met him.

“Just... Take me away from here,” she responded, shivering and evading his eyes.

Two thumps on the roof of their rig and a strict shout got the carriage rolling.

“Not to the manor,” Aicha pleaded, raising her head to reveal a pair of bruises. One made her cheek redder then her crimson powder usually did, the other splitting her lips and coloring her teeth with blood. There were tears in her eyes, pending, creeping towards the edge of her lids, but she refused to let them slide down her face. “Please. I... I don’t want to go back to that prison right now.”

[The Cinderella Man]

He shouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t in his job description, Walter made that much clear from day one. No smart ideas, no improvisation, no going out on any limbs. And yet here he was, taking the woman whose vocation he despised to one of his personal ‘mulling’ places. It was the good side of him intervening again, the one that took him on a guilt trip even before he did something bad. Against it, Victor was practically defenseless.

The path that led towards the northern outskirts of Radasanth came to an end once the Jagged Mountains started to rise, breaking the flatlands in series of peaks. There was nowhere else to go in that direction, no stone-paved road to follow up the steep hillside and eventually over to the other side that fell towards the northern ocean in a multitude of cliffs. However, wandering took a man about quite a lot, and during one of these goalless walks Victor discovered a goat trail that wound westwards. It wasn’t really a trail, just an auspicious natural formation that finished with a small grassy plateau. A glance towards the south revealed Radasanth in all its urbanized glory, with streets cutting the mismatched roofs in what looked like a never-ending mesh of more or less square blocks. Towards the west, the azure and deep blue of the sea dominated the scene, stretching from the docks to the horizon like an endless piece of ruffled cloth. North and east offered a less spectacular sight – mostly grasslands, farmsteads and the sentinel mountains with their white helmets. Gurgling merrily, a thin stream cut the plateau in two almost symmetrically before continuing down the path gravity insisted on, cascading down the gentle slope in a series of tiny waterfalls.

This is where the two eventually found themselves, each sitting on one bank of the creek, each wrapped up in their own swarm of thoughts. They left the carriage just around the bend in the natural trail that led them here, together with the seriously uninterested chauffer. It was just the two of them and neither knew what to say. It was Aicha who eventually got tired of the silence and the sound of the water swiveling amidst the grass and rock.

“You didn’t kill Arrand, did you? I... I heard gunshots,” she asked, sitting on the grass with her hand going through the icy water.

“No, but he’ll think twice before he does something like that again.” It was a small consolation for the both of them, but there was some satisfaction to be found in the fact that the bastard would probably have hearing problems for the rest of his life. A pair of gunshots next to your ear had a bad tendency of messing up your audition.

“That’s good. Walter will deal with him. He charges double if things like this happen.”

Money. For some reason it meant nothing to Victor right now. Some things didn’t have a price tag in his book and this was one of them. No amount of money should allow a person to get away with roughing up a dame, even if Aicha technically wasn’t a dame, but rather just somebody who dressed up like one.

“You probably think I deserve this. Occupational hazard, right?” the black-haired vixen said with a bitter chuckle that stretched her lips in the manner that made her wince. Victor didn’t respond, at least not immediately. His eyes looked at her for what seemed like the longest time, looked at the face that once looked almost divine, looked at the ruin several well-placed punches brought to it. She didn’t deserve it. Whore or not, there was still a human being there, a woman that under different circumstances could’ve been a debutante at the side of some royal prick that didn’t beat the crap out of her.

“I think nobody deserves to be treated like that unless they’re a fistfighter,” he responded, unsmiling, his tone almost too callous to offer any sympathy. That’s why his hands did better, untying the knot at his throat and taking off the tie. He drenched it in the stream before he offered it to Aicha. “Here, it will help with the swelling.”

When she accepted the soaked tie, their hands touched, and for the briefest of moments yesterday seemed to reflect in their eyes. Perhaps it were just panic-ridden emotions appearing, the irrational kind that seemed to emerge at the weirdest of times. But it was there, staring at both of them through the irises of their eyes. It beckoned them closer, it tempted, but it was but a mirage, gone as soon as Victor backed away and sat on a flat rock.

“That’s kind of you to say. Now, tell me what you really think.” The words he spoke several nights ago, the cold ones that whipped her with accusations and indifference, they were still fresh in her memory, reminding her that she was his job, not his friend. He saved her today because that was what Walter told him to do, not because he cared for a prostitute that got roughed up a little bit. However, when his eyes met hers again, there was a different accusation in them. The angry kind that told her that she could be wrong.

“I think if you play with the fire, you get burned sooner or later. And I think it’s a risk you shouldn’t be taking. There are other ways for a woman like you to earn money. But it doesn’t matter what I think,” Victor spoke, eventually finding her gaze unbearable and shifting his eyes towards the vibrant city of Radasanth below.

“A woman like me? And what kind of a woman is that, Victor? Easy? Defiled?”

“Beautiful.”

His word stumped them both, catching them unprepared and bringing forth a pause during which their eyes met again. They negotiated, his browns irises and her azure ones, trying to reach an agreement on the truthfulness of the statement. Aicha’s eventually forfeited, yielding before the honesty in his.

“It’s... it’s more complicated then you think. I could never just walk away from this. Walter would never let me.”

Excuses. She had a bundle of them. She was trained in making them; after all, she kept repeating them to herself every time she felt wretched and wile and soiled from all the men that touched her, kissed her, penetrated her. The truth was neither black nor white, as usual. It was true that she couldn’t just leave this kind of life, but it was also truth that she was reluctant to do so. Despite everything, she found stability here, an eerily kind of safety where nobody could harm her. She barricaded herself in her own little world, shielding her emotions from all the filthy men that weren’t interested in what was hidden behind her lofty exterior. Breaking out of the prison you made yourself was always the hardest thing to do.

“You could run away, catch the next boat out of here and keep on running until you find a place so far away that even a thought of Walter couldn’t catch you. Take a ride to nowhere and never look back,” Victor spoke, his voice putting on the distant, daydreaming cloak that made his words seem so plausible, almost tangible. She could almost see herself on the deck of some freighter, smelling the freedom in every whiff of salty air. It was a dream she gave up on years ago and his words made it sound so simple. Almost achievable. It made her smile an unrestrained, unabridged, unblemished smile.

“You make it sound easy. I probably wouldn’t be able to even get to the docks on my own.” Aicha toyed with the idea, flipped it over and over in her fingers like a birthday present she didn’t want to open from fear of what could be inside. It could be failure. It could be freedom. It could he him.

“Then you need somebody to help you.”

They both knew where this was going. It was just that neither of them had the guts to say it yet.

“Yes, I’ll pick one of the heroes I have lined up and make them do that.”

“You don’t need a hero to get lost. Just a really lousy guide.”

They both chortled at his remark a little bit, a relieving moment of insouciance amidst all this solemnity that was grim enough to murder the liveliness of the summer day. But when the sounds of their merriment died down and they looked at each other again, they couldn’t play hide-and-seek anymore.

“So how good of a guide are you, Victor?” Aicha asked, touching the edge of her lips with the coolness of his tie.

“Oh, I can get pretty lost if there’s good enough reason for it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

[The Cinderella Man]

[Present Day, Radasanth Prison Facility ~ “The Furnace”]


“Walter sends his regards,” the bald drow growled from above, calmly readying his blade for the execution in the midst of canteen chaos. His words failed to reach Victor in their comprehensible form. His ears were buzzing – somewhere between standing and kneeling, a tin platter connected with the side of her face with enough force to make his ear bleed. Hands held to his shoulders with steely grasps, keeping him in the inferior position. All around him the room was caught in madness, resonating with shouts and curses and sounds of flesh colliding with solid objects. But in the middle of this inmate-made hell, the boxer and his black-skinned chums seemed isolated.

He should’ve panicked. He should’ve pleaded his case to this relentless judge, jury and executioner that loomed above him like the grim reaper incarnated. Midnight and his freedom were less then half a day away now, waiting for him beyond those gates with a promise of a new life. He had some family on the outside, people that actually gave a damn whether he lived on not. He even had some money stashed away, waiting for him to use it for a new start. It seemed like plenty to live for. But Victor didn’t panic. His eyes peered at the dark elf above him, clashed with the relentlessness from above with a calm of a man who had nothing more to lose. This indifference seemed to goad the elf, provoke him, proing him that he wasn’t the meanest lug around.

In fisherman’s tales and barroom stories this was usually where the big bad villain sees the error of his ways, finds a greater madness in the eyes of his foe and walks away with his tail between his legs. Real life was a lot more prosaic.

Something came flying over the ring the drow made, a divine intervention dressed as a filthy convict. Preceded by a shout, it landed on the menacing elf, making a bowling ball out of the two that kept rolling on the messy floor, knocking down a few of the black pins. It was more then enough of a sign for Victor to reactivate himself. Grabbing the hand that kept him pinned to the ground, he yanked at it, sending one of the black-skinned assailants flying over his back. The second one tried to strangle him from behind, but by the time his black fingers were on Vic’s neck, Vic’s elbow was lodged in his groin, causing pain and possible infertility. And then the demons came, agitated mountains of flesh that played the role of the teacher that still had a lesson or three to teach. They were like a plow, stomping and crushing their way forward. They left Victor unharmed. They pulverized the rest.

But in the assortment of broken bodies they left behind, there was one that didn’t belong to the monotony of drow bodies. Coughing up blood as dark as if it was ink, Grath was struggling to get up, holding for one wound on his belly while the other three on his chest gushed with crimson. Despite the predominant red hue, already the scrawny man was pale and feeble, his hand slipping, his body collapsing into the pool of his own life liquid. His breaths were shallow, his perforated lungs barely able to rise and fall as he tried to get some much needed air.

“They got me, Vic. That bastard carved me like a fucking turnip,” Rat spoke as Victor knelt at his side, every word a battle he had to win against pain. When the ex-boxer ripped the shirt off one of the unconscious jailbirds, a weak hand stopped him. “No, forget about it. I’m as good as dead. By the time...”

“You shut the hell up, Rat!” Victor tore his hand away from the feeble clutch, pressing the cloth against the multiple wounds. “What the hell were you thinking?! Gung-hoing like a goddamn hero.”

“Hey...” This time, when the wounded thief coughed, the glob of blood came out of his mouth just high enough to taint half of his face. But in the middle of this gory scene, there was a smile. A fool’s smile, but a smile nonetheless. When he spoke there was a wheeze between every couple of words, making him sound like an old man with respiratory problems. “You always play... the goddamn hero. I just wanted to... find out... how it felt. Not the... best feeling ever... I’ll tell you that.”

He tried to laugh, but the attempt wound up as a cringe that drew tears out of Grath’s eyes.

“I’m going to kill that bastard.”

“No... You’re... You’re getting out.” His voice was dying, following its master down the one-way street to afterlife. But his eyes were still clear, staring upwards into Victor’s. There was respect to be found there, the kind that only friends shared, the kind whose extents you never knew until something dire occurred. But there was also hope, not the selfish, self-serving kind that resided in every person, but the kind that reflected right back at you. It was the hope you gave to others, a rare gift only a few were able to give.

“Don’t you... fucking... dare...”

And then it was lights out for the unlucky rogue.

[The Cinderella Man]

[Ten Years Earlier, Radasanth’s Government District]


“Mister Callahan. Admiring the view?”

The words caught Victor unprepared, slithering from behind as if they were uttered by a stalking assassin. They disturbed the man’s serenity as he stood with his shoulder against a neatly trimmed birch tree, ambushing him as his eyes remained locked on the gazebo. Behind him the white suit and a matching hat stood, together with the smarmy procurer below it and his lizard smile. Despite the dry heat of the day, Walter failed to give up on his usual jacket whose empty sleeves dangled like limp appendages. Compared to the comely man, the boxer was almost ungainly, his sleeveless undershirt tainted with splotches of sweat around his armpits.

“I guess.” It was an uninterested reply, perfectly in sync with Victor’s eagerness to palaver with the sleazy, sweet-tongued man. He didn’t want to deal with Walter now. There were too many questions running through his head and all had the epicenter in the woman that sat in the summerhouse, puffing the delicate smoke out of her mouth once again. Despite the touchy direction in which their conversation went back at the precipice, once they were back at the manor Aicha was on her little throne again, cold and untouchable.

“I see. And the garden isn’t too shabby either,” Walter again, obviously noticing exactly what the prizefighter had in his crosshairs. “She’s quite a looker, isn’t she? No wonder people pay small fortunes to spend time with her. I have to admit that without her, my business wouldn’t be nearly as prosperous.”

Now, that was definitely not something that Victor wanted to talk about. As if it wasn’t enough that whoring and jingling money pieces and unfaithful old men ran through his head all the time, now Walter the Suave Pimp found it appropriate to offer a reminder.

“Yeah, well, whoever has to part with a small fortune just to spend a night with a woman deserves to lose a small fortune,” Victor responded with a sigh, taking his eyes off of Aicha and turning towards his employer.

“My thoughts exactly, Mister Callahan. That’s why I would hate if something happened to her. But from what I hear, she’s in safe hands. Your performances yesterday and today were quite commendable. I might even give you a bonus.” The cryptic eyes below the brim of the hat were inspecting the boxer, as if measuring his reaction, expecting him to make some sort of a mistake. Once the man in the suit was satisfied, he continued in the same half-patronizing, half-benevolent and all-annoying tone.

“But why did you ruin it with your little getaway today is beyond me. I thought I made the rules clear to you, Mister Callahan.”

“Aicha said...”

“You don’t work for Aicha.” Even though agitation was evident in Walter’s eyes, his voice was as smooth as death, trained to maintain perfect equilibrium. “Try to remember that the next time you get a smart idea. I would hate to terminate our agreement due to our professional differences. Do we understand each other?”

“Perfectly.”

***

The night was a duplicate of the one before it, copied and pasted over a different set of thoughts. The only difference was that Victor was alone in his lofty bed – Walter apparently wanted to teach him a lesson, barring Helena from serving as a neat little distraction. It was a small matter. He couldn’t bed the coy harlot anyways, not tonight, not after all that happened. Aicha kept jumping into his mind, Aicha he met briefly in the mountains, a black fairy that sought salvation and offered damnation. Was she toying with him, playing a temptress’ tune and making him dance to it? Or was there something genuine below all that makeup, emotions unfiltered and untainted? Was there enough of a woman left inside of her or was she just a harlot, a mistress of the night that lived the only life she knew?

Unsurprisingly, no matter how much he busted his brain synapses, there were no answers to be found in all the mulling and tossing and turning. Little did he know that time really had the answers to all question. At least to this one it did.

It was a wake up call from a dream, a gentle nudge in the direction of consciousness. Something soft and wet and familiar touched his lips, once, twice, accompanied with fingers that quested over his half-naked body, searching the right spots to deliver a pleasurable caress. A distant voice in his head – a cry of his reasonable subconsciousness – claimed that it was reality that beckoned him, and that Helena came to a nightly visit after all. The voice was only half right. It was the reality, but Helena wasn’t the harbinger of it.

Victor’s eyes opened to an enchanting pair of blue eyes. They looked down at him with flaring passion, dripping the fuel of desire that got inflamed every time she touched him. He recognized the taste now, the artificial one of the rosy lipstick that was gradually getting smudged like fresh ink on a parchment of her visage. The perfume he knew as well, its sweetness eliciting all the right thoughts and all the wrong ones as well. His hand reached up, cupping the side of her neck, touching that which he coveted ever since he first stepped into the manor. She was so soft, so warm it made his heart clench.

“Aicha?” he uttered her name, a whisper that brought forth another kiss that poisoned him, breaking his immunity to her. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m giving you a good reason to get lost.” Sitting on top of him, Aicha untied the sash of the scandalously short violet robe, removing the only piece of cloth she had on her alabaster skin. There was only the light of an almost burned out candle illuminating her body, but it was enough to unravel all the secrets that insofar only existed in Victor’s head. His hand were reluctant to touch her, as if she was a dream that would pop like a bubble made of soap, but her hands guided him, liberating him from his scruples. The earthbound, reasonable part of him that was drowning in the flood made the last stand.

“But Walter...” but even as he said it, she silenced him with another touch of her lips, long enough to efface the concern from his mind.

“He’s out,” Aicha’s husky whisper said, her lips exploring his neck, descending to his impressive pecks. “Besides, we won’t have to worry about him for long, right?”

She proceeded lower, kissing her way down, her fingers dipping past the brim of his shorts. But his hands stopped her from venturing further, taking her by the shoulders and leveling her eyes with his again.

“No. I’m not one of your customers. I want to make love to you.”

This was her territory. Aicha was the alpha female there, queen that ruled the bedrolls as if they were her kingdom. But right now, as she looked into his eyes and read the request from them, she was in no man’s land. Sex was her profession, not lovemaking. Ever since she was old enough to be considered a woman, sex was demanded from her, uncouth, with no emotional attachments whatsoever. So even though in her life she serviced countless men, tonight was the first time Aicha was asked to make love to somebody. And fear overtook her. Because as she looked in Victor’s eyes and realized that this act can mean more then just bodily satisfaction to somebody, she was afraid that she had nothing to offer.

But Victor knew better. And it took him most of the night to prove it to her.

[The Cinderella Man]

The plan was so simple that it couldn’t fail. Plans were like machinery - the less complicated they were, the better they worked - and Aicha and Victor kept the number of the moving, variable parts to a minimum. The philosophy that guided them was the crude one the boxer uttered that day on the hillside. Take a ride to nowhere and never look back. Althanas was a big place. There were plenty of nooks and crannies where a pair of losers could isolate themselves from the world, fade to black and be born anew.

The nowhere they were aiming for was currently Fallien, but it wasn’t their final destination. It was just the first stop on a journey that was bound to commence on the clustered Radasanth Docks and finish one some undetermined point beyond the horizon. Finding an outbound ship with a captain willing to accept two passengers with no questions asked was almost too easy, especially for Victor. The boxer lugged his share of cargo on the Docks back in the day when bouts were as scarce as gold pieces in his pockets. He didn’t know any of the ship commanders, but he knew some people that knew some people. And with his rather heavy money pouch – courtesy of Walter Jimes – all it took was to jingle it a little bit, throw a golden bait and see what bit. Emile Salasashka, the captain of the merchant freighter called ‘Lorelei’, was the one who decided to trade a pair of cots on his vessel for a thousand gold pieces.

As unlikely as it seemed, Arrand Beats did them a favor by beating Aicha. Walter Jimes maybe was a heartless bastard who had gold pieces for eyeballs, but he knew his business well enough to know that he couldn’t peddle damaged goods. His customers expected excellence and perfection, top-shelf flesh for their top gold pieces, not swollen faces and broken lips. If they wanted that, they could’ve gone to every street corner in the Slums Districts after nightfall. So during their conspiring days in the manor Aicha and Victor were left at peace, forgotten for the time being. Walter was just a white specter, appearing sporadically with his enigmatic eyes and thin-lipped smirks and cologne that stunk to high heaven. After the little garden chat he was back to his falsely benevolent mood, addressing Victor as if nothing happened and they were back at square one.

The manor was a maze for the pair during those days and they were little white mice. Only they didn’t seek a way out; they had one waiting for them, beckoning them, making them antsy and almost giddy. They felt like children again with a secret they couldn’t share, but a secret that wanted to be shared nonetheless.

Timing was the key of everything, Aicha and Victor agreed during one of their storage room encounters. What little time remained between the kissing and groping and wanton words the pair spent on verifying their plan, re-hashing the whole thing and then doing it all over again. They were supposed to leave the manor in the dead of night, but not together. Victor would go first, cut a hole in the hedge that separated the manor compound and the streets and prepare the pair of horses previously purchased from the nearby stables. He would then lead them to the rendezvous point – the Arden Park – and wait for Aicha. From the park to their extraction point at the docks there was about fifteen minutes traveling at a steady trot. ‘Lorelei’ was to ship out some ten minutes after their arrival. They would be cutting it close, but that was the whole idea. Less time they lingered, lesser the chance that they would get caught.

It took them three days to set everything up. Three days of concealed glances that sought the eyes of the other. Three days of stealthy touches and stolen kisses in some unfrequented corner of the manor. Three days of notes beneath the doors and shaky handwriting and words of hope that were burned as soon as they were read. Three days of sitting in the waiting room, expecting admittance to the rest of their lives. Three defiant days that refused to pass, moving at crawl speed for the pair. Three days of torment and unsated desire. Three days.

On the night of the escape, they both sat in their rooms, eyes on the clock, bodies tense and hearts pounding. They were like chambered bullets, ready to be fired with only one purpose – to finally break free.

[The Cinderella Man]

The Arden Park was an enchanting place by day. Victor didn’t know the history of the place, but the sky-tall thick-trunked trees and the graceful marble fountains looked genuinely elvish to his eyes. On a sunny summer day these sentinel trees cast such a thick shadow that one could walk comfortably in his coat and not feel overly warm. What little sun penetrated the green canopy came down in sharp beams that set made the springing water sparkle like liquid silver and set the static ponds alive with all the vibrant colors. It was a place of serenity, where even the birds seemed coy and the wind came by only in mild caressing whiffs.

By night, however, it was almost a dismal place. The majestic trees were like looming guards, eclipsing the already scarce nightly illumination to create cold, dense darkness. The white stone of the fountains was pale gray, an elaborate tombstone on a forgotten graveyard. The gentleness of the wind was replaced by the sharp knives of the chilly northern wind that slipped down the mountain and ventured amidst the trees. The crunching of gravel underneath was almost an insult to the uncanny peace of the park, making you almost cringe after every step you took in fear that something would get agitated by your presence.

Victor didn’t cringe as he walked around the pair of horses. There was a different tension raging within him tonight and the haunting darkness of the benighted park took a very low spot on his list of worries. No, his mind had other things to consider, other ghosts to wrestle. He checked the horses for the umpteenth time, reran the entire plan in his head, relived fears and doubts every time he heard the sound of dry leaves shuffling. Though the plan was simple, the boxer came up with at least two dozen things that could go wrong. The first one of them was simply that Aicha wouldn’t come, that Walter somehow wasn’t in Concordia where he was supposed to be but rather in his manor instead, nipping their escape in the bud. When he heard the rustling the next time, however, it was clear that his fears were wrong.

“Aicha,” he whispered as she almost materialized from the darkness. She wore a jet black dress that covered her from neck to ankle. It would’ve made the woman invisible if not for her pale face and a pair of azure eyes. The contrast between the night and her clear face made her look almost petrified, and when she wrapped her hands around him, she felt as cold as well. The nightly rendezvous drew a tentative smile on his face, but not on her own.

“Victor, you must go,” the dark vixen said, pulling away from his embrace just enough to gaze up at his face. There was fear in her eyes, the kind that he saw only when she curled up in the carriage after her customer beat her bloody.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. She didn’t answer him, didn’t need too. More shuffling could be heard from the direction she came from, louder, more intrusive, a legion of hooves trashing the silence recklessly. “You were followed? By who?”

“I...” She wanted to answer, feebly biting on her lip, but he didn’t give her a chance.

“It doesn’t matter. We can escape them ahorse. We can still flee.”

“No, you. You don’t...” And again he cut her short, this time with a kiss so hasty and rough that it nearly bruised her lips. And when it was done his strong hands were clutching at her waist, lifting her into the saddle as if she weighed as much as a child. The hoof beats were edging nearer, accompanied by incomprehensible hushed voices that the silence conveyed halfway across the park.

“I’ll meet you at the Docks,” Victor said to Aicha, slapping the flank of her mount before she could speak again. There was doubt in her, he knew, a bad case of cold feet emphasized by the fact that their escape might not be as stealthy as they planned. But he knew this was a one shot deal. By morning Walter would know about their little midnight escapade. The sleazy man would gather a throng of his nitwit guards and come knocking on their doors with a golden smile, false courtesy and a pound of lead in small, bullet-sized bits. No, there was no tomorrow for either of them. Only tonight.

Once the night swallowed Aicha and her mount, Victor climbed onto his own. He didn’t follow his lover, however. Instead he set off in a different direction, down the entire length of the park and out the other way, driving his horse down the gravel paths to make as much noise as possible. He even heeled his steed hard enough for the beast to let out a whinny of complain. It was more then enough for the pursuers to turn their spurs in his direction.

Down the stony streets enshrouded in the veil of darkness the boxer rode and the suite followed, pushing their mounts in a wild gallop. Victor was never an overly deft rider – horses were like boats to him; naught but a necessity – but he was able to keep the distance. But it was a fool’s errand. In the stillness of the night they didn’t have to see him in order to tail him. The sound of the galloping beast beneath him made such a racket that several street windows burst open to let out a mouthfuls of curses from those roused from their slumber. The boxer improvised. Veering into an alley, he brought his steed to a skidding halt just long enough to dismount. He struck the beast as hard as he could, making it neigh and jump to its hind legs before it ran away. Several seconds later, two-score of men rode past, just as Victor slipped into the shadow of an awning that overlooked the porch of an abandoned shop.

With the heat off, it was almost too easy to reach the Docks. The wide avenues were rivers of xanthous luminance, but the side alleys were still realms of darkness. And Victor knew the streets. He crept through them like a shadow, peering around every corner before proceeding, making sure there were no mounted riders within an earshot. A couple of times he recoiled at the sound of hooves, throwing himself in ditches and behind garbage heaps, but they never ventured into the alleyways he walked. By the time he reached the Docks, he was certain that the ship sailed already. But the ‘Lorelei’ was still anchored, floating serenely next to the wooden pier. He ran the whole length of the pier, glancing over his shoulder and thinking how Lady Luck had their backs tonight.

By the time he reached the gangplank his heart was an unrestrained beast beating at his ribcage and his lips couldn’t stifle a smile. It was a sly smile, the kind that a man got when he successfully pulled off a scheme of sorts. And it only widened once he saw Aicha on the far end of the gangway. With no-one in sight, he felt liberated to speak without silencing his voice.

“We did it. I lost them in the city. They’ll find gold beneath the pavestones before they find us now.” He expected for her to run into his arms again, to shower him with kisses and join him in this celebration of freedom. Her freedom. Instead she just looked at him with a forlorn look on her face, tears welling in her eyes as if she just stabbed him in the gut. And, in a way, she did.

“Mister Callahan,” a familiar voice from behind the woman spoke, heralding the smiling face that Victor didn’t want to see for at least a lifetime. For once Walter Jimes was in a black suit, and when he stepped before Aicha, the sleeves of his coat were filled with arms. On the end of the right one was a gun as black as night, as black as death it was bound to bring. In the shadow of a matching hat, the smooth face that always donned a fake smile was expressionless. “It seems you have some smart ideas in that head of yours after all.”

[The Cinderella Man]

[Present Day, Radasanth Prison Facility ~ “The Furnace”]


By the time Captain Assante led his metal-clad platoon of guards, the brawl died down to sporadic kicks and punches at those that still dared to be conscious. The mess hall lived up to its name, being as messy as messy could be. Overturned food stands, chairs broken into piles of wooden debris, smears of sauce and porridge and blood, scattered utensils and platters and teeth and half-dead bodies, there was so much filth that the tiles of the floor were seldom to be seen. The demon contingent was sitting on one of the tables, gargling something in their raspy tongue. Most of the others were just lazing around, feeling damn lucky that they didn’t get a facefull of the floor. Victor was still bent over Garth’s body, wrestling with a predicament: listen to Garth’s dying wish or follow the path of righteous vengeance.

He was still mulling when the sentries came, waving their clubs and giving equal treatment to both those who resisted and those who didn’t. An iron bat connected with Victor’s shoulder, a blow from a shield throwing him on the ground before his hands were manacled. It was a mere formality, he knew. It was easier to sort out the mess when all the participants were restrained and cooling down in solitary. However, this time around Captain Fuckwit found himself in quite a predicament. More or less everybody was involved in this little wrangle; he didn’t have nearly enough cells for all of them.

He crammed most of the demons and the drow in the solitary, confining the rest to their usual cell. Most of them wouldn’t see the Furnace today anymore. No, there was questioning to take place, one that started with words and ended with kicks and punches if you didn’t sing the song the guards wanted to hear. Victor knew that his fate depended on George Assante now. If the man was feeling prickly today, he and his boys would beat up a confession out of the ex-boxer, lock his release papers and throw away the key. A part of Victor wished for that to happen. It would give him a chance to get revenge for Grath. The boy was a fool, a loudmouth, a jester without the motley, but he still deserved better then dying on the floor of the prison cantina.

His cell was a prison now more then ever. The wait was gnawing at him. All around him guards visited inmates, asking their questions and bludgeoning when they didn’t like the answers. Victor tried dozing off, but his mind wouldn’t let him. It was working overtime, thinking up the possible scenarios, fantasizing about the black skin of a drow throat and the sensation of squeezing the life out of it. There was time for Aicha as well, and the reminiscing about the days of foolish hope, when he rode in as her knight in a shining armor and rode out like a loser he always was. And probably always would be. There was even a renegade thought that she would be waiting for him once those massive outer gates open, a hope beyond hope for something better waiting for him on the outside, but he shook his head away at it. Optimism was one thing, but hoping for impossible was a little bit like fishing in a barrel; you knew there was nothing there for you to catch, but you threw the hook, line and sinker anyways.

The night had already cast its black shroud on the world outside when the doors of his cell opened with a complaining wail. His visitors were the expected ones; red-nosed Captain Assante, armed with his flask and an iron stick that doubled as a cane when the man was too tipsy. Four of his “interrogators” escorted him, grim men with heavy hands and heavier clubs. However, instead of treating him like a punching bag, they merely arranged themselves next to his cot, for once the calm sentries that they were supposed to be. The stocky Captain remained outside, leaning on the bars as if waiting for something.

“What? No questions?” Victor asked, pulling himself out of the bottom bunk and finding himself amidst four mountains of flesh and armor.

“What’s the point?” the Captain responded, coughing dryly. He reached for his medicine, taking a sip of schnapps from his flask. “I could ask you if you killed that boy, but I know you didn’t. I could make you believe you did, but I have a dungeon filled with folk I’d rather reassure in their guilt.”

“You kindness knows no boundaries, Captain.” If the sarcastic tone wasn’t enough for George Assante to acknowledge the mockery in those words, there was an accompanying smirk, the presumptuous, cocky kind that the prison built into a man. Victor couldn’t stifle it, not after the benevolent Captain sat on his hands while the mess hall turned into a fighting pit.

“You know, that’s one thing I won’t miss about you, Callahan. That cockatoo smirk of yours. I always want to bloody it with my stick.” The smirk was a new development, something that a man got as a reward for ten years of dwelling and festering and shoveling coal.

“So why don’t you? Nothing stopped you before.”

“I could. But I’ve got to get you ready for release.”

“You’re releasing me?”

“The Corone Government is releasing you. The papers say that you did your time, Padre, and for once I have to agree with them. You sure started your share of fights, but you prevented a good share as well. It’s proper enough behavior in my book,” George said, wiping the sweat that the booze forced on his brow. His fingers fixed his thin, graying hair in an offhanded manner, as if he was having a palaver with one of his pals.

“Stop it. You’ll make me blush. Better yet, you’ll make me believe I could do something with my life after this.” The indifferent smile was still there, a defiant curve of lips and a slight frown that completed an expression of a man who couldn’t be broken anymore.

“Now you’re just pushing it,” the Captain said, nodding towards one his guards. A club flashed in the dim light of the torches, landing on Victor’s gut. “Consider it a farewell gift. Something to remember me by. Now, let’s go.”

***

The outer gate stood before him, foreboding under the black, starless sky. The convict number 1987 stood with nothing but the clothes on his back, observing this boundary that stood between him and his freedom for ten years now. Surprisingly, a part of him was already warning him how he was going to miss his place. The Furnace was a hard place, a hazardous place, a place no sane man could grow fond of, and yet there was still a sense of loss within Victor. Perhaps it was because these barren walls and these rigid people were the only thing he had nowadays.

And then that silly thought from back in the cell appeared again, sneaking into his head with the deftness of an assassin. And he could see Aicha standing on the other side of the gates. Beautiful. Serene. Prideful. Just the way she was when he first saw her in Walter’s manor. The thought brought a smile on Padre’s face.

And then the gates swung open.

The black nothing on the other side set his thoughts on the right track. It reminded him that Aicha couldn’t be there. It reminded him why she couldn’t be there. Ten years ago the memory would’ve brought tears to his eyes. But right now all it elicited was a different emotion.

[The Cinderella Man]

[Ten Years Earlier, Radasanth’s Government District]


Aicha was breaking down, all tears and sniffles, leaning on a bulwark like a fatigued woman and seeking words in his eyes. The ones she found were: “I’m sorry, Victor. I’m so sorry. I tried to warn you. I tried to tell you to get away.”

“Yes, our Aicha is a quite chatty little dame, isn’t she? I bet she could talk a wizard into setting himself aflame,” Walter said, diverting his eyes from Victor for just a moment in order to look at his mistress of the night. His gun hand was steady, keeping the firearm on Victor while his off hand reached up to touch one of Aicha’s messy, jet locks. “She was very talkative earlier tonight as well, when she told me all about your little plan to get away.”

“You stagged?” The information caught the boxer aback, so much so that a touch of anger seeped into his voice. But a defeated woman looked back at him, a prisoner whose hopes were murdered in their sleep, and he couldn’t be wroth with her. “Why?”

“Ah, yes, the eternal question,” Walter jumped in before the black-haired prostitute even started searching for a viable answer. The pander’s fingers touched her white cheek, a gesture which Victor wanted to reward with his own fists. But the gangplank was too long to be braved, he was never quick on the draw and bullets had a habit of traveling faster then a human being. Mister Jimes urged Aicha with a voice that could’ve been mistaken for genial. “Go on. Tell the man.”

“I... He, he told me he’d kill us both... if I didn’t tell him.” Her voice was a little more then a whisper, but the lazy sloshing of the waves against the ship’s hull was the only other sound on the pier, leaving her voice comprehensible despite its feebleness. “He knew, Victor. He knew we were up to something. I had to tell him. He promised he’d let you live.”

“Such a noble thing to do,” the man in the black suit mused, still looking at Aicha’s visage, still stroking her cheek with a caress that made her shiver. For the briefest of moments the lizard smile returned to his face. And then he drew his hand back and backhanded the woman so hard the slap sent her crumbling on her knees and clutching to the fence. It was all that took for Victor to dart forward like a raging bull, reaching for his revolver, his shotgun, his knife, anything that would make Walter Jimes dead in a heartbeat. But his quasi-refined opponent was quicker. Before the boxer even set his foot on the gangway and his hand on a weapon, both the beady little eyes and the pistol were locked on him. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Mister Callahan. It’s not good for you, dare I say foolish of you, to get all riled up over... what did you call her the first time you saw her? A harlot?”

The threat stopped Victor in his tracks and left him fuming. His knuckles itched, the way they always did before a battle when he was eager to do some bludgeoning. Looking at Aicha who was crawling back on her feet, holding a hand over a bloody lip as if hiding it would somehow make it disappear, only fueled his anger further. Compared to him Walter was an iceberg, cold and unmoving, as if he was conducting everyday business. For all Victor knew, the man was doing just that.

“Harvey, Harold, disarm him,” Walter spoke, and a pair of gorillas appeared from behind a pile of crates and fishnets, each holding a sawed-off shotgun. They nearly tore the weapons from his body, shoulder holster and all.

“She doesn’t want to be your harlot anymore, alright? So let her go!” Victor spoke as the pair frisked him. “You want your money back? Take it!” The boxer took a heavy pouch from his belt and threw it at Walter’s feet. The bag contained the combined resources of the two of them, every single coin Victor and Aicha ever earned while working for Walter. But the offer only made the man in the hat laugh. He kicked at the coin pouch, sending its contents scattering over the deck and overboard, the golden doubloons splashing in the sea like pebbles.

“You think it’s money I want?” The smile beneath the brim of the hat turned into a wide, wry, ugly thing made for mockery. “I don’t think you quite comprehend my line of work, Mister Callahan. You see, I obtain goods and nobody takes them away from me unless I want to.”

“She’s not a sack of turnips, you bastard!”

“She’s not? Well, I guess you’re right. She’s much prettier then a dusty sack of turnips, and definitely worth more. But I bought her all the same. Did she tell you that? How I bought her for a fistful of coins? How she begged me to take her in? She was already a whore when I found her, Mister Callahan. I merely gave her an opportunity to be a good one.”

Victor looked at Aicha, but couldn’t find her eyes. They were starting downwards, seeking something in the black water of the docks. He looked at the dismal figure of Walter instead. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t own her. Slavery is...”

“...prohibited? True. But so is murder, and yet I have a feeling that nobody will hold me accountable when they found your body in the morning, floating like jetsam.” His thumb cocked the hammer of his semi-automatic. In a nearly soundless night, the click was as loud as a bang of a real hammer. Behind the long-barreled firearm, Walter smiled his serpentine smile.

“No!” Aicha exclaimed. “You said you wouldn’t. You said you’d let him go! You promised!”

“Ah, promises,” the dark man in the black suit said with a sigh and a shrug of his shoulders. “The hopes of the foolish. Goodbye, Mister Callahan.”

There was a pause before the gun fired. It could’ve lasted no longer then a fraction of a second, that pause, a seemingly meaningless reprieve in a night of havoc. There were no last second revelations, no life flashing before Victor’s eyes, no deus ex machina riding in to save the day like the tales claimed. There was a singular image, though, one of a woman dressed in night and moving in a blur, her white face opposing the shadowy, death-bringing man. There was fire and smoke in that image as well, an orange flash and gray smoke tendrils. And there was blood too. The gunshot sent a spray of blood from the back of the woman’s head, the scarlet liquid black under the cover of the night. Aicha fell back against the bulwark, a mere ragdoll with life blown out of her by a shot meant to be the end of him. Behind the smoking barrel of the gun, Walter was smiling a different smile.

[The Cinderella Man]

“Well, that was unexpected,” was all that Walter Jimes said in a tone so drab that it turned his words into a lie. His beardless face was expressionless, save the smile that stood for the words unspoken. “You win some, you lose some,” that smirk said, more fitting for a man who just lost a hand in a low-stakes card game then a murderer.

It was more then Victor could handle. He shouted something horrible and moved for the gangway, but either Harvey or Harold – they both looked much the same in their dark blue suits and hats pulled low – kicked at the back of his knee, causing him to bend the knee. Another whipped him across the back with the butt of his firearm, but pain was just sidenote in the boxer’s mind. He struggled up to the deck, first on all fours, then regaining his footing, then crumbling again once he reached the dead body of his lover. Or rather, the dying body. The shot was merciless towards Aicha, tearing nearly half of her skull but keeping her alive and wide-eyed. Her slick black hair was moist and awry, hanging from her skull like some animal that got run over by a carriage. Her azure eyes gazed through him, and when she talked her words made no sense.

“Bear... Bear on the sun,” she whispered as he knelt next to her, his hands reluctant to touch her lest they compromise her frail condition. Gooey, dark blood poured from the gory wound on her head, pooling around her head like an ever-growing splotch of ink. Her hands tried to clutch to something, missing him and grabbing fistfuls of air. He wrapped his large hands around hers. “Remember,” she said as if it’s something gravely important. “Motley comes after.”

Victor wanted to cry, but his eyes were oddly dry. Instead the skies started to cry for him, starting with tiny slim drops that gradually turned into the big fat ones that rapped against the wood of the deck and pelted the sea that grew more restless. It diluted Aicha’s blood, making it pour off the edge off the deck like a crimson waterfall. It showered her face too, washing off the red smears and making her skin sickly pale. Her full rosy lips were rosy no more, growing pale and dry as they struggled to shape the words that her damaged brain emitted. He lied to her, telling her that everything would be alright when it wouldn’t, telling her she would make it through when he knew she couldn’t, telling her that they had a future together when it went down the drain with a single gunshot. She didn’t seem to hear a word of what he was saying, but it didn’t matter. Those lies were something he needed to hear.

Walter was usually unimpressed. “You see what you did, Mister Callahan?” he said, pulling the magazine out of his gun and taking out the chambered cartridge. He threw the pistol in the dying woman’s lap. “You went and killed a poor harlot.” And to his twin goons, that in the meantime climbed the gangplank, he added, “Keep an eye on him until the City Watch comes. Tell them that he shot her.”

Victor didn’t hear them, or he did, but their words had no weight. Compared to the gravity of Aicha’s death that could already be noted on her face, their words were feathers that the wind blew by. In his arms Aicha was dead and didn’t even know it, talking about bedspreads and cold water and walls that blossomed with roses and tulips. Her eyes were already set on another world and she kept staring at it. Wrath didn’t fill the boxer; it consumed him, spilling over the brim of his being. But when he raised his head, a pair of twin shotgun barrels stared back. And Walter, saying goodbye in his sly voice, tipping his hat like a gentleman he wasn’t and apologizing for the fact that they won’t see each other again.

No sooner then the man in the suit was gone, Aicha followed. It was an unceremonious death, starting with a whisper of an unfinished word and ending with the gentlest of breaths. Only her eyes remained open, gazing at the cloudy night, gazing somewhere far away, gazing lifelessly... Gazing.

“A damn shame if you ask me,” Harold or Harvey said, the twin mountains of brainless muscle towering over the dead harlot and her never-to-be savior. “She was a nice piece of flesh. Ever got a chance to fuc...”

And then something bestial awoke in Victor. Her dead skin was still warm on his hands and their words were knives that still stabbed at her. Death alone wasn’t enough of the prize for them. It was degradation they were aiming for. But he didn’t let them. He leapt from his kneeling position like a feral beast, burying his shoulder into the gut of one of the bastard that spoke the horrid words. The man stumbled backwards, heaving for air, but by the time he caught a whiff of it the boxer had his hand around his weapon. He didn’t pry it from his fingers, though. Instead he aimed it at the other man, pulling the trigger hastily. The buckshot tore through the neck of the muscular crook, leaving a fist-sized hole where flesh used to be. Harold fell to the ground, gurgling. He was the lucky one. Snatching the sawed-off shotgun from Harvey’s hands, Victor brought it against the man’s face like a club. Once, twice, thrice he flogged the man, and when he was down and coughing out his own teeth, he flogged him some more. By the time he was done, Aicha’s death seemed like an act of mercy.

Somewhere on dry land, a bell was ringing, a telltale sign that the Watch had been roused and that they were on their way. They would catch him, he knew. Even with Harold and Harvey indisposed to tell the story, Walter would undoubtedly slip one to the officials by morning with a nice fat coin purse as well. But that didn’t matter. Jail or death sentence, it made little difference to Victor now. What did matter was Aicha. He couldn’t leave her lying on a deck of ‘Lorelei’. The Watch would bag her up, throw her on the same pile as the homeless and bury her in a nameless tomb somewhere in the outskirts. And she deserved better. Perhaps she was a harlot through and through, perhaps she didn’t have a heart of gold, but she deserved better then being abandoned.

He gathered her up in his arms. Even with her dress soaked she felt light and almost weightless. Carrying her like a man would his bride, he walked off the deck of ‘Lorelei’ and into the night.

Lorelei. The name certainly suited the ship.

[The Cinderella Man]

[Present Day, Outskirts of Radasanth]


What started as a cool, moonless night when he passed through the outer gates of The Furnace turned into icy blackness drenched by waves of sleet. The northern wind brought both the chill and the melting snow, bombarding the ex-convict as he walked through the outskirts of the Corone capitol. He was dressed lightly, the prison staff seeing it fit to give him naught but a linen tunic and a pair of denim pants in which he walked into the prison ten years ago. The boots were good, though. They kept his feet dry, but it was probably the only part of him that wasn’t touched by the night’s precipitation.

A lot had changed in the last ten years, Victor contemplated as he walked the same path he walked a decade ago, and yet it was all familiar. Nothing ever really changed. Buildings were torn down and other buildings took their place. People died and other people took their place. Streets were repaved, but they still ran on the same course, like rivers too stubborn to move out of their centuries-old riverbeds. Only the Jagged Mountains were the same, the same as they were as he looked at them from the prison’s courtyard, his eyes foolishly searching for that one precipice he grew nearer with every stride now.

There were times when Victor had walked this path with reprieve on his mind. He’d head out through the shabby northern outskirts, then up the winding paths in the mountainside, all the way to that plateau that was the nature’s balcony, casting a view over both the landscape and the mesh of streets and stone edifices. Once he had walked this path with fear in his mind, when Aicha got beaten by her richboy customer and needed a place to get her head straight. But that particular visit wasn’t on his mind tonight. No, he remembered another night, another rainy night filled with smiles and lies and smoke and blood and death. He remembered carrying a corpse of a woman – she was always a woman in his memory, never a harlot – that he grew to love. He remembered clawing at the rocky ground, digging a shallow grave with his bare hands. He remembered lugging stones and piling it on her lifeless body. He remembered the kiss on the cold, clammy lips and that last stone that hid her face for eternity.

He had sat next to her grave until morning that night ten years ago, and when he heard the hooves approaching and bloodhounds barking, he made not a move. They had locked him up for ten years. “An appropriate punishment for killing a harlot,” the judge said. Even the sanctimonious bastard had found it fitting to demean her for what she had been forced to do. And now, ten years later, he was retuning to the place where his Aicha adventure should’ve ended.

He found the plateau just the way he remembered it, with the calm bubbling brook turning into a raging stream due to the rainy season. Everything else fit the picture he carried in his head; the soft grass that moves like sea waves under the assailment of the wind; the endless view that looked down on the rows upon rows of street lamps and an occasional yellowish light from open windows; the mound of stones that was the resting place of Aicha. He never learned her story, he realized then. He never found out the reason why she turned to whoring, or where she grew up, or what were her dreams, or what her favorite color was, or did she have any relatives. He didn’t even know her family name. And since the stones weren’t talkative, chances were he never would.

But Victor Callahan didn’t walk to that place for stories. He didn’t come for closure either. His hands started upturning the mossy stones of Aicha’s grave. He piled them neatly on the side, as if haste would break the sanctity of this place. After he removed enough, he could see the bones of her legs and the acrid stink of decay grabbed him by the throat, forcing him to gag. But he kept on working, uttering a silent apology to Aicha for disturbing her eternal rest. After enough stones were taken away, a black leathery bundle stood atop of the bones. Victor took it out, then returned the rocks back to where they belonged.

No, Victor Callahan didn’t come to put a seal on the story. He came to open a new chapter, the final one that spoke of bloody vendetta and righted wrongs. And his dead lover kept his tools safe, ready to bring death to all those who evaded it for far too long.

“You were right,” he said, sitting on the ground next to her with his guns in his lap as rain mercilessly barraged his already sopped body. His fingers dismantled the pistol as best they could given the scant light, ultimately making it click dryly. “It wasn’t the smoke that wound up killing you. The smoke came afterwards. But you keep an eye on the city, now. Because your man is about to smoke out the rats.”


((SPOILS:

Victor loses his “Widowmaker” revolver, but gains a .45 caliber semi-automatic (picture (http://bohwa-technical-lab.hp.infoseek.co.jp/pict/04042002.jpg)). This pistol isn’t really an upgrade, but more of a swap; it can hold seven bullets (eight if one is chambered) instead of revolver’s six, but the caliber is smaller and so is the stopping power.

Victor also gains a sawed-off, double barreled shotgun made of titanium and ebony.(pic (http://i.cnn.net/cnn/SPECIALS/2000/columbine.cd/Photos/DOUBLE.BARRELED.SHOTGUN.JPG))

However, due to the lack of maintenance during the ten years spent in prison, Victor has to pay 1000 GP to a Bazaar merchant to fix both of these weapons for him. He also has no bullets for these weapons and has to buy them on the Bazaar.

Also, Victor is ten years older, making him a 36 years old ex-con.))

[AdventWings]

And not a bad one, at that.

And thus, a new story unfolds...

Story

Continuity - 8

You sort of left the readers wondering how Victor got into the predicament he was in, but the overall direction the story was headed felt like one of those "Memorable Moments in Life" that needed to be done. Coupled with ten years lost in the Furnace, you made the story credible while not really messing up your storyline.

Setting - 9

Not too much, but just enough to be effective.

Pacing - 8

It came off a bit odd with the double-timeline between the Ten Years Ago and Present Time switch. Still, it fit the story format very well.

Writing Style

Mechanics - 8

Good use of English writing mechanics, as well as using some of the more obscured formats to good use. Not perfect, but very good.

Technique - 8

The tandem story-telling format and the various use of advanced literary devices flowed well into each other.

Clarity - 7

Muchof the action, reaction and circumstances had a function - even if only vaguely detected - and hinted to the end of the story and its eventual direction.

Character

Dialogue - 7

Victor here sounded a bit like your generic anti-hero, with not much of a clear, distinct personality. A bit much like the Marshall Letho Ravenheart, except for the fact that they ended up on the opposite sides of the Law.

Action - 7

Generic and predictable, but at least he did not feel too generic to be swallowed up by the rest of the Anti-Hero crowd.

Persona - 7

His persona here came off a bit lack-lustered and too hesitant than the Victor I knew, even in the Ten Years Ago time frame. It clashed soundly with the equally frigid but timid personality of Aicha, so I gave you points for the personality interaction. Especially in contrast to the "I really want to rip a new hole in your face for being so calm" personality you gave to Walter Jimes. *Makes angry, itchy hands going for Jime's imaginary throat.*

Miscellaneous

Wild Card - 7

A new format and a new direction for Victor as... The Punisher.

...Actually, I wouldn't really know where this story is heading to and what the outcome would be. Nonetheless, I see no reason not to give you some high marks. Mad props for the clever interplay of the past and present.

Final Score - 76!

The Cinderella Man receives 4,500 EXP, the pistol (which I assumed it would have schematics similar to that of a .45 Glock Single Action Pistol) and the double-barreled shotgun. Of course, you would need to spend some money at the Bazaar getting it fixed and obtaining ammunition. That would be a follow-up thread you would need to do over at the Bazaar.

I trust you not to be using this willy-nilly and only in quest-related issues. Do not powergame and you'll be fine.

[Letho]

EXP/GP added! Padre kicks so much ass he levels up!