Decisions made from desperation...

[Malagen]

((Takes place after “A profit far from home” (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=114&highlight=profit+home). Closed to Skyler Manfield.

WARNING: Might contain scenes inappropirate for younger readers later on.))

There is a simple reason why the food in prisons is as healthy as a sixty year-old hooker with cancer. It was the same reason you didn’t throw oil onto a blazing fire, the same reason you crippled the wings of the bird you didn’t want to see flying away. And it was that the weak and fatigued and crippled, they never ran away. They couldn’t. If you kept a man starved, beaten and bruised, escape wasn’t just improbable, it was downright physically impossible.

Malagen experienced this reasoning during the last week. Or was it just a week? He couldn’t say for certain. There was no natural light down on the subterranean level where his cell was situated and he lost count of the meals somewhere around the sixth beating that always preceded the maggoty bread crust and a rusty cup of something murky that might have been water once. But the logic was on the money. Chained to the moldy damp wall in nothing but a pair of tattered black pants, Malagen couldn’t determine whether he fell asleep or he just fell unconscious from weariness. His ribs were cracked, his face swollen as if he just fought five rounds with a bear, his hair that he usually kept combed and neat was tangled and tousled.

And all of that because of that damn girl.

A smile managed to emerge on his disfigured face, a creepy ugly thing that stretched his broken lips in a mask of dread. He didn’t even know her name. She was just a slave, a good that was to be sold on an action like a barrel of apples. And yet she was so much more. Her hair, her face, her benevolent mannerism, the stench of her fear, her eyes... Her goddamn eyes. They still reminded him of Dharnia. Dharnia who he murdered in cold blood. Dharnia who set him on this meaningless crusade to find his true heritage. Dharnia who was good, so unlike everything he ever was. He killed her once, in the frozen land of Ferioh that used to be her home, and he couldn’t do it again. Not even he could stand two ghosts creeping through the dark corners of his calculated mind.

So instead he set her free. And he fought and killed for her, decimated her captors as if they were dummies stuffed with straw. It rained blood that day in Salvar and Malagen was the rainmaker, buying her a way out. Buying them both a way out. She got away from the slavery, he got away from another set of haunting eyes that would confuse him.

Unfortunately, the price for that was significant and it had to be paid. Somebody had to be the fall guy, the monster that sprung from the closet and sliced and diced the slavers. Malagen accepted the title gladly. It wasn’t even acceptance really, but more like reestablishing the already known facts. Yes, he was a murderer. Yes, he was a monster. Yes, he killed all those people. And yes, the dungeon was the rightful place for him.

The firm pair of footsteps and the dull clank of the chain mails and the sheathed short swords could be heard down the corridor, together with a pair of whispers, both growing in strength with each passing second. They weren’t his executors. No, his execution was to be a ball, set on a stage right in the middle of the city, where everybody could see the monster die. No, these two were the usual daily visit he got, bearing his nutritious meal and the proper beating. The massive keychain jingled on the other side of the door before the grate of his cell swung inwards with an echoing obscure screech. Two guards walked in with a sickly grin on their faces. He wouldn’t give them the honor to see him on his knees. He pushed himself up, barely managing to lift the chains that restrained his arms, and put on his usual emotionless face.

“So what’s on the menu today?” he spoke in a voice of distracted customer that merely came for a cup of tea. His voice was cold, almost dead, and that was what they hated most about the man. He just refused to break.

But they all knew what was on the menu. It was pain, and plenty of it.

[skyler manfield]

It wouldn't have bothered her if she'd actually commited a crime. She knew every assassination was another poke at the ribs of the monster who would devour her. Skyler's ethics were virtually non-existent, and she didn't fear imprisonement. But this was ridiculous.

Triffin smirked at her one last time as they dragged her out of the small courtroom, which was really nothing more than the living room of the local magistrate - a man who could obviously be bought for a song. Her crewmate on the Koscheinoy had accused her of stealing his precious pocket watch and few measley coppers and then cutting him. And she had cut him - but not so she could steal from him. Triffin had caught her relieving herself while she was on watch one night, and as soon as he found out that she was a girl, and not Davie, a half grown lad who didn't even need to shave yet, he'd found that he couldn't keep his mind - or his hands - off of her.

So when he pulled her into his cabin (he was one of only three of the sailors besides the captain who actually had a private cabin, being the ship's blacksmith) after her watch duty one midnight and began fondling her roughly, she pulled out the stilletto she had hanging from a string down her back, and stabbed it into his shoulder. That obviously made him very angry, and wounded more than just his shoulder, because he immediately sounded the alarm, screaming at the top of his lungs "THIEF, THIEF".

Now Skyler found herself being led quite forcefully down a long set of slippery stairs and into a room lit only by a single guttering torch. Rats and roaches scurried noisily away as they pulled her down yet another set of steps, this time only three, and before she could so much as flinch, had her wrists chained above her head while they proceeded to "check her for weapons".

"I ain't got nothing on me, you smelly tub of lard, get off me," she growled angrily, trying to kick him away - but this only caused him to grin as the other slapped irons on her ankles and ran his hands up her inner thighs. A satisfying crunch sounded from his jaw as she kneed him in the face, only moments before being unchained and thrown bodily into a cell.

She landed facefirst, got a lovely kick in the ribs, and heard the heartbreaking sound of the bars slamming shut behind her. Skyler was brave, she was strong, and she was stubborn, but this was almost too much. She lay there for several moments, face down in the slime on the floor, trying hard not to cry.

A pair of tiny paws started pulling at her hair, elliciting a menacing growl from the young assassin, who backhanded the rat across the room angrily, before sitting up and backing into the center of the cell, where a tiny flicker of light managed to reach.

"I might as well have given myself up to Deacon for all the good this does me," she muttered sullenly, rubbing her ribs.

[Malagen]

The guards seemed relatively benevolent towards Malagen this time around. The usual assortment of kicks and punches and foul taunting curses that they rifled at him during the last seven days were diminished in number. So much so that this time they didn’t even knock him unconscious before they withdrew from his cell, leaving the measly meal on the filthy floor of his cell. Malagen’s tongue collected the blood accumulated in his mouth, spat the glob out before allowing a mesmerizing smirk. They were either getting tired or they just found no exhilaration in beating somebody who wouldn’t scream and beg them for mercy. Either way, it was a moral victory and a smile, regardless of how haggard it looked, was a proper way to celebrate it.

The guards, however, had the last laugh. The dent tin plate that held the piece of bread and a cup of water was set just out of the radius of Malagen’s chained hands. They’ve done this two times before, but then he managed to pull the plate closer with his feet. But now, even without trying to stretch to his fullest, he realized that he would be skipping yet another meal and that he would just be able to push the plate away with the toe of his boot. It was another detail that even further thwarted him plans to get out of this Salvar hellhole. He needed fuel to burn, even if it was a measly piece of bread hard enough to make your teeth chip, he needed it because despite the hopeless situation, he was planning a getaway. And possibly a getaway that would leave a good number of corpses in his wake as well.

Unbeknownst to any of the guards, Malagen’s focus and perception was piqued during his time in the prison. When the guards laughed and mocked him and chattered between themselves of seemingly inane matters as they lay a beating on him, Malagen was picking up the pieces and setting them into the jigsaw in his head. When they patrolled the hallways, his mind was noting down the frequency and filed it in his head. He even knew that in order to unlock the door that stood on the end of the hallway, one needed to twist the key halfway in the locking direction before turning it clockwise and unlocking the door. He knew the guards by their gait, by the echo their feet made on the stone floor. Such was the nature of his focus that none of these things passed by unheeded.

Needless to say, when the guards brought the fresh meat for the grinder, it didn’t pass by unnoticed either. In fact, given the circumstances, it became a rather important piece of the puzzle. He had to make use of every angle possible and a possible ally was not something to disregard, even if she was in fact a girl. True, a rather unsightly one that could easily be mistaken for a boy, but feisty and assertive enough to defy the guards even as they threw them into the cell opposite of his own. She got the usual prize for that behavior though, the one she would have to get used to if she was planning to linger within these wretched walls for a longer period of time.

He waited for the two guards and their raucous laughter to clear the hallways, waited another ten seconds after they locked the door to hear their boots clomping away from the heavyset barred door, before he motioned himself as close to the bars as possible. His messy mane fell over his face, tangled with the mush of dirt, blood and sweat, and from beyond it he spoke in a cold emotionless voice.

“You, wench.” he uttered. “If you plan to get out, you should make your move while you’re still strong and they haven’t restrained you.”

[skyler manfield]

Her pride hurt worse than her ribs, and that being the case, Skyler slowly got to her knees and crawled over to the bars of her new home, sitting down against them and closing her eyes for a moment.

“You, wench,” a man's voice croaked from cell across from hers, “If you plan to get out, you should make your move while you’re still strong and they haven’t restrained you.”

Turning away from the darkness that shrouded the back of her cell like a slimy curtain, Skyler squinted into the gloom between her and the voice, and found a barely human figure chained to the back wall. He'd obviously been there for quite some time, and he'd not been treated well. She shivered to think of what they'd do to her as time passed.

"How in the hell am I gonna get out of here, if you've been here long enough to look like that?" she scoffed, standing up and pacing back and forth along the bars like a caged animal. She hadn't even had time to think about planning an escape, but now the thought was in her mind, she knew she wouldn't sleep until she figured out a way to get out of this shithole.

"Besides," the assassin continued, "I wouldn't even know where to begin - besides hiding by the door and then slipping out, I have no idea how to get away from here."

She shook her head, rubbing her face where her hair was clinging in stringy clumps to the slime from the jail floor.

"Bloody hell," she muttered, "That's gonna be great, all of Radasanth and all of Salvar after me... bloody fucking hell..."

[Malagen]

“If all you can do is ask stupid questions, then you’re dead already.” he muttered, his voice indifferent despite his mordant words, almost annoyed by the girl and her hapless running in circles that made her no better then the rat she threw away seconds earlier. People always asked questions before they ascertained the situation, always bound themselves to failure before even considering the numerous factors that could grant them a triumph over every obstacle. It was the human thing to do after all. It was human to despair when pitted against a stronger enemy. It was human to conceive something as definite and just lay down and die. This girl was human. She was in the cell for a couple of minutes and already she spoke as if there was nothing she could do.

“Now, since you’re so incompetent, shut up, listen and maybe we can both get out of here.” he spoke again in the same tone after he was certain that nobody was listening in from the other side of the door. His azure eyes, though hidden by a thick curtain of what now seemed like dreadlocks forged by black hair threads and glue made of blood, sweat and slime. The chains above his head and beside his feet rattled wearily, their echo faint and fading even as it passed the bars of his cell, as Malagen edged a bit closer to the bars. The rusty shackles cut into his wrists, but it was such a miniscule amount of pain that he didn’t even feel the iron gnawing at his bones.

“The guards come here twice a day, once to bring food and beat you up and once with the shift commander immediately afterwards. During the night they only patrol once and rather early. They probably sleep through the rest of the night. They made the food tour today already, so in about four hours they’ll come with their sergeant. Whatever they do, you shall not make a move then, understood?” the Dram said, his blue eyes flashing with resolute on his disfigured face. They had only one chance at this and he seldom allowed chances to go begging. Especially when it meant the difference between guillotine and freedom.

“You’ll make your move during the night. They are usually quite tipsy in the night shift, but don’t count on it. They made a mistake by not restraining you. You’ll use this...” he continued in such a tranquil manner that, were the setting different, one could mistake it for a teacher tutoring a stubborn student with an endless amount of patience. It had nothing to do with patience though. Malagen never allowed for his emotions to even emerge in his mind, let alone take over his train of thought. His foot snapped forward, his toe hitting the edge of the tin plate, sending it towards the bars of his cell. The edge of the dish hit the bar as it squeezed through the bars, spinning like a gold coin gone loose and finally settling about a foot and a half from the girl’s cell.

“It’s tin. Bend it until it breaks and you’ll get a jagged edge good enough to cut the guard’s throat.” the barbarian instructed the brown-haired girl. Tin was a shabby material, especially when it was as thin as the plate. It was soft, it bent and it was almost useless. But if you bent it once, then bent it the other way, and did that a couple of times, it usually broke in half and provided an erose edge. If she snapped it in half, then did the same thing to the halves, she would have four daggers. The only question that remained was if she knew what to do with them.

“If you need further instructions then you might as well lay back and wait for the hanging.”

[skyler manfield]

Her mind railed against his insults, but Skyler forced herself to listen. Why in the world he told her these things she didn't know - but if he thought she was going to help him to escape, he was dead wrong. Even if he hadn't insulted her, she'd never make it out alive if she had to take the time to help him limp away.

Internalizing all of the information the prisoner gave her, Skyler mentally pictured what he told her, carefully calculating just how long she would have, and where she'd have to be. A skittering sound came from his sound followed by his battered tin plate which ricocheted off of her cell before landing just inside her reach. With a grimace, the assassin laid down against the slimy floor and slid her arm beneath the bottom of the gate, the rusty metal scraping her arm and leaving raw skin behind. Her fingers just barely grazed the plate, and she pulled and tapped at it for several minutes before a scraping noise at the end of the hall made her stop dead.

She looked up at Malagen with a horrified stare, and then somehow her arm seemed to gain an extra inch, because she suddenly held the plate between her fingers and pulled it back into her cell, leaving yet another layer of skin on the bottom of the door.

"You're crazy if you think I plan to help you," Skyler growled at the man across the way even as the door scraped open and the guards came in, laughing raucously and heading straight for Skyler's cell. A sick feeling in her gut told her she wasn't in for a fun time.

[Malagen]

Malagen smiled. It was an almost inconceivable occurrence on the face of the crumbling barbarian who hid his emotions like a snake hid its legs. He was forged in the frozen north into a weapon, a machine that alienated itself from sensations and sentiments that abraded the mortals like the very sands of time. Emotions clouded the judgment, which eventually evoked mistakes, which always led to failure. By eliminating such trivialities from his body and mind he relieved himself of the precarious unpredictable factors. But despite this emotionally blank mentality, her words simply lured his facial features to shift into a macabre smile. If he was one of those demented maniacs that basked in their villainy, he would probably laugh as well. But he wasn’t and only the mystique smirk reflected his mental state.

“You don’t want to help me?” he spoke, his voice finally deviating from the coldness, giving in to a quizzical, jeering tone. “Wench, I’m your only way out.”

Two reasons paused his speech and forbade him to speak further. The foremost was the fact that the shift commander and the pair of guards were making their second round of the day. Malagen knew this was a question of mere formality. The captain would strut through the damp hallways for the sole reason of being able to jot it down in his daily report and appease those that sat higher on the hierarchy scale. Ignorance was indeed bliss and the commander was religiously insouciant towards the conditions of the prisoners as long as none of them managed to fly the coop.

The second reason was a bit more complex. He wanted to add a bit of suspension, making the girl ponder on why, even though he was badly bludgeoned and fatigued, he was still her first, last and only chance of seeing the daylight again. It was a simple mind game, raising her interest and inadvertently ensuring her that what he spoke was the truth.

The thick iron-plated doors screeched like a banshee, hitting the stone wall and letting in three figures. The two were here a short while ago, archetype guards with the archetype dull looks on their badly shaved faces. The third one differed greatly from them. His amber colored armor shone like polished gold, his plumed helmet held beneath his right arm nonchalantly as he strode with a gallant gait. His eyes were keen, radiating with experience, his posture solid and firm. He might have been a general once, Malagen thought, but stepped on too many toes in the process and got degraded to babysitting a bunch of convicts.

One superficial glance was all that Malagen received before the captain turned to the new arrival. “She’s the thief from Koscheinoy?” he asked his escort, his voice remarkable and rough, striking respect to most that found themselves on the far end of it.

“Yes, sir.” the one on his right responded.

“Why isn’t she shackled?” he asked in the same tone, albeit a bit more annoyed. It was the tone Malagen recognized easily, the do-I-have-to-do-everything-myself voice, possibly followed by a thickening frown as the guards on his flanks rummaged through their inadequate minds, searching for answers when there were none to be found. The uncomfortable silence lasted for a couple of seconds. “Fix that after we finish the round.” the captain added, turning away from the girl and proceeding back the way they came from. The doors slammed firmly, the lock crackled with a metallic sound and once again the two were alone.

“You’ll have to act sooner then I anticipated. They will come back to restrain you in a couple of minutes.” he said to the girl, his voice back to the usual irksome icy tone. “If you by some miracle manage to overpower them, you may proceed on your own or accept my help. Just keep in mind that there are thirty-two intersections until the surface and you probably don’t even know should you turn left or right when you pass that door over there.”

Again the desire to laugh maniacally appeared. And again he simply smiled.

[skyler manfield]

"Fuck," she spat as the guards left the prisoners in darkness once more. The assassin began hurriedly bending at the plate even as she angrily contemplated the other prisoner's words. If it was really as complicated as he said it was to get out then she would need his help. Skyler couldn't quite remember the way down, because the guards had drugged her as soon as she started trying to bite them. Frustratedly, she stood and faced the man across the jail, still working at the weak metal in her hands.

"Fine," she finally growled, keeping an eye on the slit of light beneath the door. "What the hell is the plan now. I've almost got this thing broken, but if there's more than one of them I'm out of luck. And even then, I've got to hope that he doesn't just overpower me before I can finish the job - are you sure this plate will be sharp enough?"

In her mind, she was already running through the scenario: slip into the shadows of her cell as close to the gate as possible, using her skill at stealth to become invisible. As soon as the guard opened the gate (she prayed to whomever might be listening that there would only be one) she'd throw half of the plate across the floor to direct his attention toward the opposite corner, and then slit his throat from behind and steal his keys. The only question was how she would be able to travel quickly enough with the half-dead prisoner across the way as her only map.

The plate fell into two pieces in her hand, and she nodded to Malagen, holding up the two pieces to show him her success, checking the sharpness of the smaller piece on the back of her arm - it sliced through easily and she uttered a silent thanks to whatever gods seemed to have given her a momentary break.

"Talk quick man," she hissed as she saw shadows begin to move under the door, "We've little time!"

[Malagen]

Malagen was never the type of person that was easily peeved, but the girl was seriously starting to vex him with her endless questions. He didn’t know why they apprehended her, but it must’ve been something really foolish and trivial like stealing a sack of apples because the girl didn’t seem skillful enough to pull off anything more complex then that. What to do, how many guards, will it be sharp enough, it was like listening to the clucking of a hen that got stuck in a chicken house. Where were the real knaves when you needed them?

“Here’s what you do. First, you shut you stinking hole because your yammering is starting to annoy me.” he said, once again his voice barred of any and all emotions. He knew he was walking on the thin line, balancing himself between the reception of her help and the view of her back as she flees, but it was a mere reflexive reaction to bothersome people that asked too many questions. His ears were picking up the sound of the footsteps and the rusty jingle of the restraints that were being brought for the ratty girl. His mind started the countdown. “Fifteen seconds.”

“Now, there will be two of them. I’ll lure one of them here. You use your womanly charms, if nature gave you any, and make the other holster his weapon. He won’t step into the cell if he doesn’t see you. So get him close.” he spoke in a hushed manner. “Ten seconds.”

“Cut deep into his windpipe so he can’t scream. Creep behind the guard that will be beating me. Repeat the first cut.” Malagen continued, seemingly unworried with the execution of the plan. His tone was definite, as if their little escape was a part of a manuscript and all they needed was to play their roles. “Five seconds.”

The keys rattled on the other side of the door, making the rusty lock crackle with a suppressed metallic sound. “And don’t screw up.” was the last thing he said to the girl across the hallways, his voice sinking to a low growl.

The doors wailed once again, introducing the dumb and dumber for the third time that day. Their faces were grim now, the two obviously irked by the fact that instead of a nice warming sip of hard liquor at the end of their gruesome shift, they had to go back down to the lowest level of the dungeon to shackle some filthy wench. Their gait was hasty, making their manners so sloppy this time around that they even forgot to lock the hallways doors. Malagen smiled again. One obstacle less to worry about.

“Come on, let’s chain this bitch and get away from here. The reek is making me want to puke.” one of the guards said, shuffling through the stack of keys and fishing out the one that unlocked the girl’s cell. Malagen waited for the lock to make the familiar raspy clunk before he spoke.

“Oh, it’s not the cells that stink, cretin. It’s you and the fact that you’re carrying your head in your own ass. Your partner over here would probably warn you about it, but his head has similar lodging.” the dark barbarian spoke, his tone so cold and derisive that it made the two guards wince visibly and peer into the darkness of his cell. Their visages were harbingers of the drubbing that would follow for certain.

“I see. You haven’t had enough earlier today. Well, I guess we’ll have to remedy that.” the same guard spoke again with a gruesome grin and a deep frown, making a motion to lock the cell and move on to better things, like beating the crap out of the mocking prisoner.

“No, let me do it. You restrain the girl. We’ll get out of this shithole sooner that way.” the other spoke, snatching the key ring and advancing towards Malagen’s cell with a malicious grin on his face. When the doors opened and the guard took a first swing at him, Malagen only hoped that he wasn’t getting beaten for nothing and that there was more in the annoying wench then met the eye.

[skyler manfield]

She hadn't time to be angry at him, and even though her heart wanted to rebel against his scathing commands, her mind knew better when her life was at stake. A dirty yellow arc of light fell across them like a dying sun rising outside the door to the jail, and Skyler put her hand up to shield her eyes. She'd need her vision at its sharpest, and being half blinded by the men's torches wouldn't help anyone.

The guards split off and headed for the seperate prisoners, and the tubby older one headed for Skyler's cell. She wanted desperately to hide in the back of her cell where he'd never find her, but she knew the logic of Malagen's directive and reluctantly positioned herself near the door, her makeshift weapon in hand, a second piece of it tucked into her pants haphazardly.

Chains rattled menacingly in the guards hands, the shackles hissing against each other like snakes ready to leech their insidious poison into her veins. She shuddered, and as he opened the cell door and stepped toward her, she backed away and looked at him imploringly.

"Awww, c'mon sir, can't you make an exception for me?" Skyler wheedled, her voice sweet and rather soothing for once.

"Naw girl, the boss says ya gotta be restrained, now c'moverere."

"What, you won't even make a deal with me," she said, looking up at him through dark lashes with piercing grey eyes, "I'm sure I got something you want..."

The guard laughed, and looked her up and down, letting the chains fall to the floor and holding the torch up so he could see her better. She stood at least three inches taller than him, and weighed barely half what he did. Her face was smudged, her hair cut off jaggedly at her neck, with strands of it stuck to her cheek. The young assassin was by no means pretty. But the guard apparently decided that whether or not she was appealing, she might just be right about having something he wanted.

He took a step closer to her, and grinned, revealing a set of gappy brown teeth. His eyes sparkled lecherously on her, and he set the torch in a ring near the door which hung open invitingly. Taking another step toward her, he reached out his hand as though to touch the girl, but before he could lay a grimy hand on her, Skyler had reacted.

Before he could so much as flinch, Skyler darted around behind him, the shard of tin at his throat, sawing quickly through the gristly lard that protected his windpipe. He twitched and flailed, but she'd sliced into his jugular and through his trachea before he could cry out. With a startled look on his face, he collapsed to the ground with a low gurgle as he drowned in his own blood, and Skyler nodded. If there was one thing she knew how to do, it was kill a man.

Across the hall she could hear the low thud of a boot hitting flesh. Slipping quietly into the shadows, Skyler stealthily made her way into the other prisoner's cell, and fell like a wildcat upon his assailant, her already bloody weapon slicing wetly into his gut once and then up and into his throat. As he dropped to the ground, she stepped furtively out of the way and glanced at the figure on the floor beside the dead guard.

"C'mon Wheezy," she whispered, jerking him up from the slimy floor like a sack of flour. Reaching over to the prone guard, she found his keyring and fumbled with the two or three dozen keys before she found the one that would unlock the other prisoner's shackles. "We don't have time to waste, so get up - I can't possibly carry you."

[Malagen]

“It took you sweet time, wench.” Malagen responded once the tinny girl unlocked his shackles. His voice was hollow, uttering the few words in a tone of an overlord that conversed with one of his maidens before sending them away. He had no respect for folk much more imposing then her and it would be a cold day in hell when there would be a shred of sentiment towards her just because she done his bidding. She was a mean to an end, a tool that should, in fact, be grateful to come by such a deft master. He doubted she liked that analogy, but a nice clean murder always managed to iron out such disputes. Not yet though. She could still be a good bait if the shit hit the fan.

His arms and legs worked in a badly synced unison, barely managing to get the haggard man up to his feet. Despite the taxing week in the dungeon and the perpetual beating gnawing at his physique, Malagen still looked fearsome when he straightened his arced spine. In fact, with the messy hair that was inadvertently turned into filthy tangled dreadlocks and the dirt covering every inch of his body, he looked like a maniac that got unleashed by mistake. Before the dungeon he was a silent thunder that came from out of nowhere and wreaked havoc with a tacit manifesto that could be read from his dead eyes. But now he was a rabid beast that was getting ready to claw its way to the freedom.

Well, almost a rabid beast. As soon as he regained his footing for the first time in over a week, his right leg lost the battle with his weight and sent the man stumbling. Luckily, Salvar folk built small cells and the moldy wall was close enough to provide enough leverage and balance. It was not an injury that made him struggle with gravity though. True, he had a handful of broken ribs, maybe a dislocated left shoulder, a handful rather nasty bruises and malformations and a terminal headache. But it was the weariness that swept his legs from below him, the lack of tautness in his muscles that just wanted to give up. And for the first time in a long time Malagen was truly angry. Not at the guards, not at the slavers that he murdered, not at the cleric girl from a week ago and not even at the chatty tomboy before him. No, the barbarian was angry at himself and the weakness that was slowly breaking him.

“I know exactly how much time we have.” he stated plainly as his system slowly regained the balance and allowed him to move away from the wall. “Get their weapons. We might need them.”

His instructions were definite, leaving no room for rebuttals as he doddered out of the cell and just managed to make it far enough to prop his healthy shoulder against the hallway wall. His breath was shallow and accelerated, every intake providing a jab with the courtesy of his busted ribcage. There was no chance for them to make it out through where they came through. There were a dozen, maybe even two on their way to the exit, and while he had a profound desire to skewer each and every one of their heads, his current condition made it certain it would all remain just wishful thinking.

“We can’t fight our way out. There are too many of them and we’re too weak to struggle with all of them.” Malagen spoke again as he rejuvenated his stamina and waited for the unremarkable girl to join him. “There is a sewer system beneath this level. That’s our only chance.”

This was a mere assumption, but a relatively good one. In the dull hours of the night, when the guards dozed and the inmates slept in their chintzy cots, he could hear the faint gurgling of the water from beyond the stony floor. And water always found a way out. The only question was would it be passable for the two of them. Wordless from that point on, Malagen waddled ahead, holding close to the wall as he moved out of the hallway and turned left. The dungeon was indeed a maze, with every corner seemingly equal to the one before, with every hallway a reflection of the other. But the azure eyes picked up the pieces, the crack in the stone that looked like a face, the door with a fresh plank on the bottom, the slanted torch, everything was a story written between the lines.

He eventually led them to a stairway that gave them an option to go either up or down. A dash of fresher air was descending from above, inviting them luring them like a caress of a lower. Compared to it, the pungent repulsive reek from the darkness below seemed like a stairway to hell. But today he had to thread it if he wanted to see daylight again as free man. He made a motion for the first step, slipped on a splash of sludge and stumbled down like a sack of wet hay, ending up banging his head against a locked door. Some way above, maybe two levels above their heads, he could hear the guards raise their voices. They needed to hurry and hopefully the inept wench remembered to bring the keyring.

[skyler manfield]

With every stealthy step that she slogged along behind the man, Skyler desperately longed to kick him. She had to keep reminding herself that he was her only way out, but gods, she wished she'd left him behind a little more with every comment he made. Surely she'd have been smart enough to figure out a way out, she thought sullenly.

Fighting down the urge to toss him down a very long flight of stairs, Skyler muttered angrily to herself and tucked the unwieldy keyring into her fist as she snuck along behind him. The gods must have been paying special attention to her though, because as they reached the staircase that led to the sewers, the already decrepit prisoner tumbled headlong down the steps. She might have had the self-control not to throw him, but the girl just couldn't keep from giggling under her breath until she was panting. When she reached the bottom though, she simply smiled and waited for him to get to his feet.

"Well I hope your gracefullness doesn't lose us too much time on this tight schedule you've got us on," she commented snarkily. If he wanted to be a jerk, then he'd get a dose of his on medicine. She'd grown up among whore's and criminals, she could dish it out as well as she could take it. Besides, she couldn't bite her tongue a moment longer.

Trying the door her companion had smashed into, she found it locked, and pulled the keyring up to begin trying keys.

"Hope that fall you took didn't mess up your hearing, 'cause I need you to listen and make sure nobody's coming. I can hide if they do... I guess yer on yer own," the young assassin told him absently as she slid key after key forcefully into the rusty lock. After the first seventeen, Skyler became impatient, and had to concentrate to keep from fumbling the keys onto the floor. It was pitch black, but she managed finally to find the right one.

As she opened the thick wooden door, she curled her nose at the stench. The sound of sluggishly moving water reached her ears, and she turned back and squinted into the dark at Malagen.

"Please tell me we don't have to go swimming," she pleaded, knowing what the answer would be. Her gorge was already threatening to rise, her stomach desperately wishing to add its contents to the stinking mess they were about to take a dip in.

[Malagen]

Malagen felt a distinct urge to strangle the girl and mash her head against the wall for good measure. People used to die in the most atrocious manners for a lot less then a jeering chuckle, and now this pitiful unfeminine bitch was jesting with him as if he was playing a role in a burlesque. Alas, even the ardent desire to crush the wench like a maggot she was wasn’t enough to overcome the weakness that seemed to take reign in his every extremity. Even as he lay on the same spot where he crash-landed, his every breath felt as if it was inhaling and exhaling molasses instead of stodgy dungeon air. Needless to say, when his hands and feet barely managed to make a collective effort to bring him back to his feet, attacking her was not the wisest course of action.

His mind was still ticking at the same calm pace though. After he made a mental note to kill the girl once their escape was done (“Rip her tongue out first.” the remark said), he turned his focus to the heavy pitter-patter that descended from above. It wasn’t frenetic yet, the guards merely descending at a steady gait to check on the origin of the sound that stood out of the tedious routine.

“You forget that you would still be in your cell if it wasn’t for me, bitch.” Malagen spoke nonchalantly, his back propped against the coolness of a dank wall as keys jingled for the hundredth time as she tested the lock. The steady KLOP-KLOP-KLOP of the heavy boots hitting the stone floor was mixed with the occasional clatter of sheathed weapons against the armor and a murmur filled with discontent. They were getting closer, only four flights of stairs away from where the unlikely pair now stood. It woke a prominent desire in the barbarian to shove her away and do it himself, but despite her clumsiness and misfortune with the keys, she finally managed to find the right one.

The pungent smell struck them like an invisible barrier, assaulting their olfaction with such vehemence that even Malagen had to wince reflexively. No torches enlightened the circular hallways covered with greenish muck and it took only one inhale to realize it was probably due to risk of gas combustion. The faint streak of xanthous light from whence they came was the only illumination but it too died once Malagen shut the door behind them, leaving them in darkness dense enough to shove a nail and hang a painting on.

“You don’t have to.” he responded as his hands felt their way down the long stretch of concave wall, his feet cautiously pacing the advance. “You can go back and try your luck with the guards.” Spoken by a normal person, those words would come with a sarcastic twist to them, presenting the disdain rather clearly. But coming from Malagen they were a mere statement of a dominant diplomat that knew he already won the argument.

The gurgle of the flowing water raised in volume proportionally with the power of the maiming stench, their feet sloshing through substances best left unseen. Behind their back, the tranquility of the dungeon changed to a faint ruckus that grew more with each step made. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out where the pair headed after their less-then-spectacular escape from the cells. The guards maybe were idiots, but there were only a handful of routes one could take if he wanted to find an exit. This assumption made Malagen accelerate his advance despite the desperate plea from his leaden legs for a short pause.

The main tunnel opened up before them with a faint greenish glow strong enough just to enable them to see the surface. The dim illumination was coming from the several minute ducts that stood at the roof, but even if either of them could reach them, they were too small to squeeze through. No, their only way was down the disgusting stream that rushed by them like a river from hell, carrying feces and unclean rinse water at a remarkable pace. Some distance behind them a door opened up with a high-pitched screech, followed by disturbed voices and pattering feet, reminding the two convicts that they better break their pride and vanity and take a dip. Malagen looked at the girl at his flank with the annoyingly dull look, almost as if asking: “Is this too nasty for you, princess?” before he let himself be taken by the powerful current.

[skyler manfield]

The bastard was lucky she didn't have a temper - it was one of the things Hawk always praised her for as an assassin. One cannot be trusted with a job if one's temper could get in the way of doing the task properly - guard your temper, Skyler, doing so will serve you well someday. And the revered assassin had been right. With this fond memory of her mentor, Skyler found it possible not only to ignore the scathing remarks of her unwanted companion, but also to block from her senses (at least mostly) the stench of whatever seethed below them.

Pattering footsteps and jangling keys reminded her that if she didn't jump soon it would be much too late to jump at all, and even as Malagen glanced at her in the strange green light, Skyler knew what she had to do.

The mangled prisoner jumped first, and the unremarkable girl followed suit immediately after, trying not to open mouth or eyes in horror as she sank down in the miry goop that quickly dragged her along. The undercurrent of this disgusting river was much stronger than anticipated, and sent Skyler and the other prisoner tumbling through the excrement.

Bashing her head against the wall, slicing her arm on a metal hook that stuck out from either the wall or the bottom of the tunnel (Skyler was so disoriented at this point she wasn't really sure, and only hoped she'd be able to hold her breath long enough), and then suddenly finding herself tossed up onto a shore of stone bricks gasping for air, Skyler decided she wouldn't move for a few minutes. She wasn't certain where Malagen was, and honestly she found she didn't care. It would have been easier to wish that he'd drowned (can one drown on a river thicker than molasses, she wondered), but she couldn't find the energy for such ill will. The girl only lay there, trying to ignore the slime that clung to her face and hair, trying not to notice the stench that she could have sworn she could see emanating from every inch of her body.

She'd barely closed her eyes when another body slammed into her heavily, sending her skidding across the bricks with its weight. Opening her eyes, she expected to see Malagen laying on top of her, but this was the body of someone she didn't recognize, and definitely not the other prisoner - or anyone else alive. With a low cry, she pushed the body from her, and scrambled to her feet, even as Malagen finally washed up in the current, sliding onto the stone bricks at her feet.

"Took you long enough," she muttered, thanking the gods she'd had time to somewhat regain her composure, "I thought maybe you got lost."

[Malagen]

Malagen tried to wrestle with the current for about two seconds before he realized that in his degenerated state he didn’t stand a chance. The revolting river was relentless, taking him along for a bumpy ride and all he was left with was his breath and a hope that it would last him until they reached wherever the hell the canal led. There was a chance that it actually led to a grated vent, but Malagen pushed that thought aside, seeing no reason to dwell on it. Because if that was the case, the two were as good as dead already.

The thick liquid was like a moving jet of glue, forcing itself into his nose, his mouth, his eyes, tumbling him around like a wooden log. His already bruised body was further tenderized by the impacts against the bottom, the walls, the unknown floating objects (one of them probably the yammering wench that jumped after him). And just as he felt the trenchant urge to exhale and take in the first mouthful of the foul substance around him, his body struck a firm surface and stopped moving. He instantly exhaled in a wet cough, taking in the crispy air in short, frenetic breaths that hurt his lungs. The coldness of the Salvar night instantly clawed into his damp body, but for the time being he didn’t even felt its freezing grasp. Instead he rolled over to his back and fought the desire to take a nap that would most likely last for the rest of his life.

The slime-covered bitch at his side commented again - despite the shortness of her breath and the obvious fatigue - and made Malagen think what exactly has to happen for her to keep her mouth shut. “Tough luck, bitch.” he said with inadvertent roughness, knowing that she wouldn’t lose any sleep if he drowned in the process of their escape. He couldn’t blame her though; the feeling was rather mutual.

The dome above his head was clear and sparkly, littered with twinkling stars and a cheesy half of the moon that had a sickly green reflection in the canal water. This was bad news. Clear skies always mean bitter nights, especially in Salvar where regardless of the season, the nights always came with a pinch of sinister frost. He could feel the chill numbing his flesh and creeping to the marrow of his bones. And that was just one of their problems. The other came with a piercing sound of a bell that was soon answered by at least a dozen of others in different parts of the city. Sure, they escaped. But now they had a chase on their back and a chill that was bound to make them hypothermic before the night’s end.

“We need to move. Find some shelter. We’ll either freeze or get caught otherwise.” he spoke in short breath-long sentences, his body reluctant to obey the uttered advice. It seemed that in the end it was sheer willpower that put him in motion once again, turning his body sideways first, then bending the knees and pushing his hands against the damp rock surface. First time he slipped and fell down on his face, but the second time around he managed to get a firm footing.

The streets were still empty and dead, the perfect tranquility shattered only by the annoying bells and an occasional flowery tune played by some bard in a nearby tavern. Malagen moved like a decrepit shadow, his current demeanor genuinely resembling that of a drunkard that had a few too many and wound up in a ditch. And nobody noticed a random drunkard, not at this hour of the night. He didn’t look if the wench was following him. He didn’t care if she was following him. Their little pact ended the second they got out of the dungeon and she became irrelevant, a tool used and consequently left behind. However, if she wanted to outlive the night, her best chances were with him. He spent enough time in this backwater town to learn a few useful kinks and details and one of them was a couple of locations of uninhabited houses set for sale. And one of them was just a couple of streets away.

It took him longer then he anticipated reaching the house though. Between his energy drained to the point where almost every step danced on the border between collapsing and starting another step, and the necessary utilization of the shadows, it took him almost ten minutes to reach the house. It was a simple, one-storey mansion with boarded windows and a porch that seemed just about ready to crash and take the whole thing with it. Malagen leant his back against the front door, took a swift handful of breaths that prodded at his lungs like knives, and proceeded to the back entrance. Despite the chintzy appearance of the house, the backdoor were sturdy enough to take three of his shoulder tackles. The fourth one was do-or-die and sent the barbarian through the door and down on the floor. His body’s weariness made a decision for him, telling him to stay down for a couple of minutes and just breathe.

[skyler manfield]

Like knives stabbing into her marrow, the cold settled into Skyler's bones, leaving her gasping for breath. At first she'd been alright, but the wind had blown and she found herself shivering uncontrollably now.

Her teeth chattered to bad for the girl to even try to retaliate against the man she followed, she simply followed, keeping her eyes on his back and her head down in the wind. They wove through the streets, and although she tried not to, Skyler found herself terribly lost.

It seemed like hours before they came upon an old house that seemed on the verge of falling down. Skyler only knew that it beckoned to her like, well nothing like her mother, but maybe like the mother she wished she'd had. Malagen disappeared around the back of the house, and Skyler went the opposite direction.

Luck must have been on her side, because the young assassin found a broken window that was large enough for her to crawl through without too much squeezing necessary. With a bit of clumsiness unlike her, Skyler scrambled up into the house, cursing the cold and her mother as she sliced her hand on a shard of glass that clung to the windowsill.

A terrible noise was coming from the back of the house, and with a malicious snicker, Skyler realized that it was Malagen trying to break down the door with his already battered body. She reached the door and pulled it open even as he hit it for the fourth and final time.

As he collapsed on the floor at her feet, the girl stepped over him gingerly and shut the door. Blinking in the inky darkness, she looked down at the wheezing man with an amused grin.

"What took you so long?" she tried not to laugh.

[Malagen]

Even though he couldn’t see her looming face through the darkness, he could feel that she had that annoying half-caustic, half-entertained grin etched into her facial expression. It seemed like it was somewhat of a hallmark of the young wench, displaying itself with a dash of cocky superiority in her tone as she closed the door behind him like a scorned wife closes the door behind her drunken husband. He should have broken her legs right there from his fallen position, then proceed to slap her face until there would be no more face to slap. But like a plethora of things today that fitted in the should-have-done-it category, this one was postponed as well on account of utter fatigue.

Though the temperature of the interior wasn’t far from the one outside – their visible breaths served as a good proof of this - the lack of wind made it endlessly more comfortable. Still, he was aware he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He was still drenched to the bone, still in a room cold enough to make him fall asleep and wake up with enough cramped joints to look like an arthritic old man. If he woke up at all, that is.

Once again he struggled to his feet - like a pugilist who didn’t accept that the bout was over - and floundered deeper into the abandoned house. The moon was benevolent enough to provide him with a handful of beam that squirmed through the boarded windows, providing what seemed like silvery-white blades that cut through the pitch-black darkness. He recognized enough of the first room to realize it was a rather large kitchen, the long dusty counters and the nondescript whitish tiles enough for a proper identification.

“We have to get out of these clothes.” he muttered under his breath as he made his way down the corridor that led further into the benighted manor. He didn’t know why he spoke that thought out loud; it’s not like her particularly cared what happened to the girl whose name he didn’t even know. Or gave a damn about for that matter. Must’ve been the tiredness that clouded his mind enough to seem like he was worried about her. Either way, his right hand was feeling its way down the long stretch of the hallway wall and providing some support to the barbarian. He tried the first door to the right, saw an utterly empty pantry looking back at him, then proceeded further down the hall in his dead-man gait.

In the second room he found what he was looking for. The door opened to a large bathroom that, despite the dust-covered tiles and cobweb curtains, looked remarkably lofty. To the left stood what looked like a bathtub covered with a white sheet, its shape outlined by the moonlight that passed through the small window. To the right was something that looked like a rectangle cabin with a nylon curtain. In between the two were a number of small cabinets, a porcelain sink and a toilet bowl. Even though there was only a single translucent beam of silver, the ivory environment reflected enough of the light for Malagen to see everything clearly.

He paid no heed to most of the items though. Even if the plumbing was still working, chances that there was still water in an abandoned house were slim at best. Instead he slowly limped to the cabinets and started to shuffle through them. He found a bunch of empty vials and bottles in the first one, together with several bars of soap that was used for washing clothes. He took those out and closed the cabinet swiftly, trying to hide the shiver of his hands due to the crispy chill. In the second cabinet he found a pile of dirty clothes and rags that people usually used for cleaning the tiled floors and polishing the wooden surfaces. It would have to suffice for now. He took a handful of it out, threw it before the girl before he took another wad of tattered clothes and placed them on the cabinet.

“Undress, put those on.” Malagen commanded in his annoyed emotionless tone before he reached for the edge of his used-to-be-white shirt and pulled it over his head. The damned thing didn’t come off that easily though. His left arm was hurting like a bitch, the shoulder that got injured in his battle with the slavers obviously either unhealed or healed the wrong way, because it sent a jolt of pain through his spine. The only reaction his outsides allowed to this weakness was a cringe of his facial features that lasted for about half a second. By the time his shirt was off, he noticed that the girl was reluctant to do the same.

“What, wench? You think you have something I haven’t seen before? You don’t.”

Coming from an average man in a similar situation, those words should’ve been spoken in a rather humorous manner. But when it came to sense of humor, Malagen not only didn’t have one, he didn’t even know how one looked like.

[skyler manfield]

Wandering through the house looking for food or a source of heat, or anything that might sustain her through the freezing hours of night, Skyler realized that she was not even paying attention to her surroundings. She was shivering so violently that she felt that if the world around her were actually light that it would be vibrating along with her teeth. Giving up on her search, she found herself in a bathroom at the back of the house, where Malagen was pulling tattered clothes from under a cabinet.

As he threw the clothes at her and started undressing himself with obviously quite a bit of pain, Skyler stared at him for a moment. He obviously thought she was reluctant to undress before him, and she would have been normally - she hated men, and thought they were much too horny to deserve to see any woman unclothed - but for some reason only one thought seemed to penetrate her frozen mind.

"I don't even know you're bloody name," Skyler managed to whisper, as she clung to the ratty clothes with frozen fingers. Her teeth chattered so loudly, she knew that half the town had to hear them as they rattled together like shutters in a storm.

Shaking her head, trying to loosen the icicles growing in her brain, Skyler let the clothes fall to the floor and numbly started stripping off the rancid smelling clothes that clung to her boyish form. Absently, she crossed to the rusty shower, and without considering that the plumbing probably didn't work, turned the knob.

With a squeak, she found herself showered by water that although at first was freezing cold, seemed to get warmer quickly. Skyler only stared at Malagen, blinking the water from her eyes.

[Malagen]

Malagen didn’t even consider dignifying her question with an answer. Names were irrelevant. She was a tool to him, a mean by which he managed to escape the death sentence that got postponed by bureaucracy and paperwork that had to be done before they could hang him. The fact that she tagged along to this abandoned asylum that he found evoked no emotional attachment. It wasn’t the girl’s fault though. Despite her brassy attitude, her unfeminine demeanor and (as it turned out once she undressed) her rather unremarkable body, it wasn’t her fault that Malagen treated her like she was nothing but a piece of mud on his shoes. She simply got the regular treatment, the emotionless stay-away treatment that was trained unto his very bones from the moment he was born. It was an effective defense. It was an even more effective offense. Men that didn’t dwell on guilt and compassion and love, that let go of the so called human side of them, they could transcend to a whole new level. Malagen made a living on that level.

Her discovery came as a surprise to him though, but once he looked up above the shower, he could see the reason for it working. Instead of being attached to the plumbing that was flimsy at best in these parts, the shower was connected to an overhead tank that the previous owner forgot to empty. There even seemed to be some sort of an enchanted doohickey that kept the water from freezing at temperatures usual for Salvar. Malagen knew this because while he worked for the slavers a couple of weeks ago, there was a similar contraption in their barracks. And while the slavers were an idiotic bunch that wasn’t familiarized with terms like hygiene, he actually used the facilities. The bad news was that those tanks usually had a very limited water supply, enough for maybe one shower if the tank was half full.

Without mulling too much on the matter, the barbarian peeled off his drenched pants and stepped under the shower. Her hand snapped at him, trying to slap him while the other pushed on his bulk chest almost in desperation, but he caught both feeble attempts with relative ease and pushed her against the cold tiles. Their naked bodies, now standing only inches apart, slowly got rinsed by the warm water, hers still shivering violently and his stoic and unyielding. She looked up at him with fear, a look that Malagen saw so many times that it became something usual, something common. Her hands were still struggling against his grasp, but losing in power gradually. But she was one of the few that weren’t robbed of her life after one of those looks. “Don’t flatter yourself, wench. There’s only enough water for one go.”

He took one of her hands and pressed a bar of soap into it before he let her go and allowed the warm goodness to spill over his muscled body. His right hand did most of the work, his left still aching due to the fact that his shoulder had an unhealthy look under the gunshot scar that was fresh on his skin. Still, the necessity forced them to stand close enough to each other that the water cascaded from one body to the other, close enough for him to smell the sweat on her skin and feel her finger accidentally brushing against his skin, to see the irises of her doubtful eyes in full detail, to feel her every breath.

He still contemplated on whether or not should he kill her after this, but there was a part of him – not exactly human, but less predatory – that had to cut her some slack for helping him escape. At such a young age (Malagen assumed that the girl is still in her teens, albeit on the far end of them), it was quite a feat to escape from Salvar prison with a wounded murderer in tow. It was even more of a feat to get on Malagen’s... well, not exactly good side, but indifferent side, the non-murderous side. Especially since she was a girl. Not the ugliest he ever saw, definitely not the prettiest, but still just a wench that, until a short time ago, he wouldn’t waste a thought on.

The showering jet faded in power at first, then turned into a mere trickle, clearly stating that the shower time was done. Malagen moved away from both the girl and the cabin without as much as a pause, taking one of the sheets that covered the bathtub and drying his body with it. He tried to use his left, but even as he made a motion with it, his shoulder exploded with pain. It was certain now that it healed to wrong way after his injury, rendering his left almost useless. He would work with that in time, maybe find a good healer to fix it.

He put on the first pair of clothes that even remotely fit, disregarding the fact that they smelled like floor polish and that the shirt had a large tear on the back. The pants were missing a couple of buttons and had a small potion of the left leg missing. All in all, fully clothed he looked like a genuine beggar, except instead of urine and feces and alcohol he smelled like cheap soap and chemicals. With clothing out of the picture, he made his way deeper inside the house, hoping to find a proper place to rest.

[skyler manfield]

If she was cold before, Skyler was frozen completely by the time Malagen shoved her into the shower, pushing her body under the warm water. It wasn't because she was suffering hypothermia now though, but simply because he was so forceful it struck only one chord in her - one she'd not experienced since her childhood - fear.

Instinctively she railed at him, her fists flying only to be caught in midflight and her whole body shoved against cold tiles of the shower. Her mind raced, her heart beat insanely fast, and part of her wondered if he were going to rape her. But he hated her too much for that, she thought, although it didn't cross her mind that just that could be motivation enough, no matter what she looked (or smelled) like.

Trying to calm herself, and realizing he was right about the need for warmth - and quickly - the assassin took the proferred bar of soap and managed to remove her own clothing and quickly bathe and rinse.

The man before her was awfully scarred, and very thin from severe starvation. She tried not to stare as she finished rinsing the grime from her mousy hair, but it was inevitable. Realizing how forward she must seem, she found her tongue and came up with the same witty banter that she knew must make the man hate her so much. She couldn't resist though, and out it came.

"Don't flatter yourself, you're just... so ugly," she rasped, her voice half gone, and stepped from the shower only seconds after he did, looking around for another sheet, or towel. Finally, she decided that the makeshift curtain over the window would have to do and dried herself thoroughly before taking up the clothes he'd handed her earlier.

With a disgusted sigh, she pulled a dress that was obviously meant to flatter a more voluptous form over her head, and smoothed the tattered silk (the color of which was impossible to tell in the dim light) over her own much less well endowed body. It wasn't much but it would have to do, but Skyler decided that at the next opportunity she'd be stealing something new - her clothes seemed irrevocably stinky.

Malagen had already wandered out of the bathroom, and Skyler wandered out, still cold and barefooted now, through the dark rooms. Shivering once more, but at least marginally cleaner, she groped through the corridors until she found her erstwhile companion in a small dark room. She decided she must be too cold for her eyes to adjust to the inky darkness, and settled for the man's silhouette instead.

"What is this place," she asked, and whether she referred to the room, or the entire building, was anyone's guess.

[Malagen]

She almost looked like a woman, but almost covered too broad of a specter for that phrase to serve as too much of a compliment. Despite the lack of light, Malagen managed to notice that her tomboy figure got lost in the crumpled dress, making her look like a rebellious daughter that crept into her mother’s wardrobe and decided to try some of the clothes. She was a gangly thing, lacking the feminine grace in every part of her demeanor despite her rather impressive height and lanky legs. But when he thought about it straight (and the fact that he actually thought about it was surprising enough), what else could he expect from a girl that got thrown into the slammer? Certainly not a ravishing exotic dancer that overcharged a noble for a lap-dance.

He led the way through the hallway and into the lounge rather precariously, saving himself the handful of stubbed toes that he would certainly earn by advancing at a faster rate. There was nothing discernible in the room that they could use for rest, so he led the way down the dusty carpet and beyond the heavy oaken door. He needed to rest, to take a breather at least for a short while despite his outsides no showing it prominently. He hasn’t had a proper meal for a week and most water that he got seemed like something that took out of a rain barrel. And as if that wasn’t enough, the coldness slowly defeated the warmth provided by the recent shower, enveloping him into its rough steely grasp once again.

The small study opened up before him, offering nothing but a handful of emptied cobwebbed bookshelves, a worn oaken desk, a dusty couch and what seemed like an armchair, all forgotten in time and set to decay soon. Malagen figured this was as good pace as he would find. The window behind the desk was small and boarded up completely and if anybody enters through the front door, they were bound to hear them with ample time to react. The brown-haired wench behind her asked another inane question.

“It’s a house. I thought it was obvious.” was the only response she got, his voice unintentionally patronizing and yet completely uninterested to pursue the topic any further. Once he got close enough to the sofa, he noticed that its surface was covered by a blanket, probably with an intention to preserve the original surface below or just forgotten by the previous owner. Either way, it was bound to serve as the only heat that they could afford tonight. He swiped it, shook it once with his right hand to get the dust off and then decided to sit down and wrap himself in it.

The clatter of her teeth stopped him in doing that. He didn’t know why they did so – he saw many a man dying from coldness in frozen land of Ferioh. It certainly wasn’t the miserable look on her freckled face because such sentiments were disallowed in his mind. But maybe he did owe her some small boon for her aid in the escape. Maybe she did deserve a tad more then just the usual. Or maybe it was just the weariness messing up with his reason.

“Here.” he pushed the blanket into her hands before taking a seat on the couch and allowing an audible sigh. The desire to sleep was overwhelming, obviously working in sync with the coldness that wanted to lull him into slumber for eternity. Mostly to fend it off and keep his mind focused on something, he started to speak in his usual, albeit a bit more raspy and weary, voice. “It’s set to be sold. The house. While I worked for the local slaver, I accompanied him as he surveyed the houses for sale. This one was one of those he didn’t pick, obviously.”

He paused, coughed in a weak, dry manner, before her tried to pull his shirt closer as if to draw all possible heat from it. “I’m Malagen.” the barbarian finally said, not looking towards the girl anymore, but rather just keeping his eyes at the window on the other side of the room and trying to fend of the chill that crept over him once again. Back in the day when he was the Dram Messiah – a man-god to the barbarian shamans – there was a specific training for these kinds of situations. They would strip you naked and send you into the woods during the spring time. If you returned, you were worthy. It didn’t sound like a bad thing to most people, but most people didn’t know that Ferioh springs were more or less similar to Salvar winters. Every man in the tribe had to endure this test once. Malagen did, and then proceeded to do it two more times. But back then, he wasn’t fatigued and broken like today.

[skyler manfield]

"You don't have to be an ass about it, I just didn't know why we were here," she muttered testily, rubbing her hands over her arms in an effort to stay warm. At least she wasn't wet anymore except for her hair, but even so she was still chilled to the bone. Her teeth chattered loudly, and she clenched her jaw trying to stop them.

The proferred blanket was a suprise and a blessing, and she gratefully wrapped it around her, bestowing a rare genuine smile on the man, which she doubted he could see in the dark. He collapsed on the couch, and she could tell he must be at least as cold as she, and in his condition that was probably quite dangerous.

"You worked for a slaver?" Skyler questioned his late answer, her weariness still not as strong as her curiousity. "Were you a slave, or..."

The man was starting to shiver violently himself, and as he offered his name, it was more of a peace offering than just a moniker by which to call him. Almost hesitantly, because she still had the remnants of fear from all the things he'd said and done, especially the shower, she crossed to the couch and sat next to him.

"I'm Skyler," she told him, "Manfield. Here, don't freeze on my behalf, you won't make it to morning if you do."

She pulled the blanket over both of them, while trying to stay arms length away, which was not quite possible with the rather small coverlet. Leaning her head back against the couch, she closed her eyes and sighed.

"Thank you," she finally said, her voice low and thick with drowsiness, "For not killing me back there once we were out."

Sleep overtook her, and she fell deep into its embrace, her body relaxing under the blanket with the dreadful weariness that she'd fought since they'd washed up out of the river of sewage. Her head lolled over onto his shoulder, and in her sleep she leaned against him lost to her dreams.

[Malagen]

The very fact that she even considered him as one of those pitiful slaves was preposterous, but he decided it was best to let it pass and blame it on her witlessness. They weren’t out of the woods yet and if the local law enforcers decide to be persistent in their search, he would need an ally at his side. And insults, even masked in a bland form of sarcasm, seldom managed to forge alliances. That was probably why he didn’t react, not even when she sat next to him and offered to share a blanket, throwing in her name in the process. Malagen didn’t care too much for any of it, not even the warmth that the blanket started to provide gradually. She wasn’t his friend and they weren’t going to buy each other drinks after this, that much was clear to him. Because there seemed to be a shield around both of them, a cold malevolent thing that neither could – or wanted, for that matter – to breach. And an uncanny status quo seemed to be the right flavor for the night.

She thanked him and her words seemed to crash and break against him. Because chances were that, if he was even remotely capable, he would’ve killed her back then. In fact, he would’ve done it the second she unlocked his shackles if he wasn’t feeling like a beaten drunkard that fell asleep in a wrong ditch. But then she fell asleep and her body somehow found its way to his own, first her head wearily slumping to his shoulder before the rest of her followed inadvertently, leaning completely on his side, and he wasn’t certain that he would’ve done it anymore. Despite her scrawny body, she felt so warm and soon simply curled up beneath the blanket and held to his side as if they were bedfellows caught in a rather ungrateful situation. Next to her, Malagen seemed as cold and as inhuman as a stiff.

A part of him – marauding and numb – wanted to push her away and go sleep on the chair, taking his chances with the cold. Or it could even do one better. It wanted to go to the kitchen, find a semi-sharp knife, kill the wench and have the blanket for himself. About two weeks ago that part would’ve probably prevailed. But something happened on that day, something... well, it didn’t exactly snap in him when he freed the slaves and fought the slavers. But it cracked at least, like a dam that couldn’t withstand the flood, and though at first it seemed the cleric girl he saved was the reason for this commotion within him, he seemed to be feeling the effects even now.

“Could it be? Is this what it’s like to feel?” Malagen’s mind tried to rationalize as he looked down on her tranquil face. Such an unremarkable face, freckly and almost unfeminine, and yet there was something about it that made him not want to kill her. And that was certainly a novelty when it came to him. He killed more then his share of women more beautiful and more important then this Skyler. But before he could mull on it any further, his thoughts started to wander, incoherent and choppy, until his consciousness slipped away to the world of dreams.

***

A rather distant rattle of carriage wheels running down the cobblestone road snapped him from slumber rapidly. His eyes opened up to the dim study, his ears already doing their job and trying to track down the sound of incoming footsteps. There were none to be noted. His eyes looked at the boarded window ahead, noticing the thin beam of light that his mind put in the calculations instantaneously. The answer that the sunlight gave was close to noon and the question was, what was the current time of day. Which was good. His perceptive mind managed to retrieve the uncanny focus.

Not fully though. Because only then he noticed the girl that still slept, clinging at his side. She was so motionless that the warmth of her body became so normal to his body it got used to it and stopped noticing it. But now it did and his simple predatory mind retrieved its edge as well. He snuck away from her precariously, laying her down on the couch before he slowly made his way out of the study and headed towards the kitchen. His bare feet were soundless as he walked down the carpet and onto the cold tiles of the kitchen and less then a minute after the awakening he found what he was looking for. He returned to the study, looming over her sleeping figure. In his hand, a slightly rusty butcher’s knife moved towards her neck.

Her freckly face was tranquil, her body unmoving. The only trace of life in her was the slow-paced breathing that he could almost hear. He had to kill her, it was in his program, it was just the way things were. His hand shook gently. His face was still adamant in its emotionless expression, and yet his hands shook. His damn mind replayed the events of the last night. “Thank you,” she said, “For not killing me...” Damn that stupid freckly face that looked at him then. Damn it for making his guts somehow usurped now, quivering with... Was it guilt? He couldn’t say. Emotions were hard to define in an emotionless mind. But whatever it was, it withdrew his hand and made him step away.

He walked out of the study at an uncertain gait, exploring the house in search for anything usable. In the pantry that seemed utterly empty yesterday in darkness he found a sealed jar of what seemed like pickled cabbage. There was some mold on the very top of it and it smelled... well, like it was pickled. But it was edible, as was what seemed like a dried sausage that, wrapped in what seemed thick paper, fell beside the cupboard and wound up overlooked by the previous owners. Not by vermin though, since half of it seemed to be eaten by rats. He chopped that part away, then made his way out of the pantry with the jar and the sausage beneath his hand. He didn’t return to the study yet though. His calculated mind found something else missing. He returned to the kitchen once again, took two forks and the first pot that didn’t have a hole in it, and went outside to fill it with snow. Luckily, the backdoor looked into nothing but a sturdy fence, so chances of being spotted were minimal.

With the makeshift breakfast, he doddered back to the study, his left shoulder still hurting like a bitch. He realized that he had only limited motor skills with it by now, but at least the damn thing was still attached. When that slaver shot him, it seemed he would loose it for good. Now at least he could hold the jar beneath it while he walked.

Skyler was still asleep when Malagen walked into the room, but when he set the pot and the jar down, he reckoned it was enough to snap her out of the slumber. He didn’t particularly care, but rather just took a seat in an armchair, split the sausage in half and set one half down, munching on the other slowly, uninterestedly. It was rather bland in taste, but it wasn’t spoiled yet.

[skyler manfield]

Malagen woke and left the assassin on the couch. She knew he thought she was asleep, but as soon as he'd moved she'd snapped to awareness. Skyler left her eyes closed though, listening and waiting.

He did what she expected, finding the only knife available and holding it to her throat. She stayed still though, keeping her face emotionless, her breath rhythmic and shallow, her eyes closed. What she didn't expect was for him to hesitate and then give up on it all together. As he left the room, Skyler let out a relieved sigh, opening her eyes briefly to watch the back of the man that could have been her murderer.

When he returned with what seemed to be a meager attempt at breakfast, and as he set the pot down nearby, Skyler opened her eyes and watched him. After a long while of watching him munch absently at the piece of sausage, she sat up, letting the blanket fall away.

"Why didn't you do it?" she asked quietly, staring at Malagen curiously, "I mean, if I'd have had the chance to kill me, I would have taken it."

The young assassin stood up and stretched, the hem of the dress rising well above her knees as she lifted her arms above her head. Quite stiffly, Skyler crossed over and grabbed up the last half of the sausage and the jar of cabbage. When she opened the jar, she gagged at the smell, setting it back down at arms length and just taking the sausage.

"I think that cabbage is bad," she said, curling her nose.

[Malagen]

Why didn’t he do it? It was a question he wasn’t ready for, a factor that didn’t fit into his clever little calculations that were supposed to prepare him from every imaginable outcome. One of the reasons it blindsided him was that he didn’t expect for Skyler to even be aware of his failed attempt, because that was supposed to be his little secret that nobody needed to know about. It marred his cloak of stolidity and he didn’t like that cloak to be touched. Or did he? His guts still seemed to be pondering on that little question. At first he thought it was just the stomach acid negotiating with the food, but he knew better. He felt better, because even as she got up and stretched, his eyes looked at her and saw a woman, not some knave that wasn’t worth to touch his boots. He thickened his frown, cursing at himself for this. It was a deviation in his demeanor and he had to isolate it and kill it before it dulled his edge.

“You should be glad then that I’m not you.” Malagen spoke after a short pause, calm in the armchair like a corpse, his dull faded-blue eyes looking at her own. The he added, as if to clarify at least a fragment of his reasoning: “We still need to get out of the town and there is strength in numbers... even if the number is two.”

It was more like one-and-a-half given their current state, but that didn’t change the fact that his explanation was a pile of cow dung. Sure, she could still be a worthy ally. Sure, he needed one at this time. But that wasn’t what stayed his hand minutes before. In search for what did, Malagen’s mind came up blank, but once he looked at her, he was pretty certain that it had something to do with her being so warm last night. So welcome at his side. And he realized that, though that warmth was breaking the calm that he maintained for years, it felt right. It felt good. And good and right was something that the Dram didn’t feel for a while now. His teachings told him to kill that warmth, his gut spoke otherwise. He opted for the gut this time around.

When she discarded the jar of cabbage, he picked it up with his right and used one of the forks to cast out the mouldy greenish covering that stood on the very top. Once that was out of the way, the murky contents still smelled awfully acrid, but not bad, so he took two mouthfuls before placing it down again. “It’s not good, but it’s not bad either. You should eat, we’ll need our strength.”

He pushed himself up with his decrepit left hand, uttered a muffled groan once his shoulder sent a painful jolt, and proceeded out of the study, leaving Skyler to her breakfast. Or rather lunch, given the time of day. He started inspecting the numerous cabinets and wardrobes that the previous owners left behind, but mostly he found cobwebs and pieces of trash. Here and there he would find something more, a discarded item here, a forgotten one there, but nothing terribly useful to them. They needed clothing. They needed footwear. Because right now they were shoeless and looking like beggars and he doubted they would get out of the city in such a state. And even if they did, what were they to do in the frozen wasteland in their current state? Die sooner or later, no doubt.

He proceeded to the second floor of the house, but his prospecting kept producing crummy results. He found a tattered gray cape in one of the bedroom wardrobes filled with trash and a pair of shoes that had several holes at their sides and were too small for him. With these poor finds he made his way down the creaky wooden stairs and back to Skyler. He dropped both items on the couch, set himself back in the armchair, them proceeded to drink some water from the pot. The snow was still far from fully defrosted, but enough of it melted to provide water for a couple of deep draughts that seemed to have a tendency to freeze his brains.

“We’re going to need some fresh clothes if we want to get out of the town. Maybe some weapons as well.” Malagen spoke, but his voice was still just more of the same; dull and indifferent. “You got some thievery skills?”

[skyler manfield]

The assassin glared at Malagen, and stood up, looking around for something she could wrap around her bare feet. There were some ragged curtains at the window in the study they'd slept in, and although threadbare and quite dusty, they would do more for her feet than they were doing to keep light out - the grime that clung to the persistent frost on the window was doing an admirable job of that.

Ripping the tattered cloth to shreds, she wrapped it around her feet, hoping it would be enough to prevent frostbite, at least until she could steal shoes and warmer clothes. She'd never really stolen anything but information before, but it couldn't be too hard, as long as she kept from being noticed.

Skyler wanted to snag the blanket from the sofa, but she knew that would only draw attention to her, and she was already strangely attired. With a silent nod to her companion, she slipped out the door they'd entered through and quietly walked through the outer edge of the town, watching people from the shadows until she was certain they didn't notice her. Besides the clothes on her back, the only thing she carried was a large burlap sack that had held a few rusty tools.

It didn't take her long to find a merchant's stall closer to the center of the city, one with clothing hanging from wooden pegs on every side. On tables in front of his cart were various types of shoes, but Skyler saw a couple of pairs of boots that looked warm enough to make the very long trip out of Salvar.

With a deep breath, and a slow circle around the shop, Skyler watched as the merchant went about his business, talking shop to a young mother carrying a baby in her arms, turning and smiling to a farmer who was glancing at a leather jerkin, and completely oblivious to the slender shadow that was creeping around.

A pair of fur-lined leather pants disappeared first, and she waited for a moment to be sure no one noticed. Next, another pair of pants, these a thick grey wool that was sure to be water-proof and warm (albeit itchy, she thought to herself with a grin - they were the perfect size for Malagen). Two woolen sweaters and a couple of linen undertunics slipped from their pegs, followed by a matched set of fur-lined woolen cloaks, and finally, most challenging, two pair of furred boots. Skyler hoped they were the right size as she slipped away, the bag bulging at her side as she slipped back into the shadows.

The town was maze-like, as though it had been built in stages, with little planning. Nothing like the perfect gridlike map of Radasanth, where nothing happened without reason. The assassin began to worry she'd taken a wrong street and was lost, when the ramshackle house rose up before her.

Slamming through the back door, Skyler tossed the bag on the floor and started pulling things out of it, not even caring where Malagen was. Here were warm dry clothes and shoes, and that meant her chance to finish her escape - she didn't really care anymore if it was with him or without him.

Her modesty was gone this time, no worry about the sharp-tongued man finding her unclothed - all she wanted was to get into something warm and get the hell outta dodge. Stripping down, she found the leather pants and unlaced the front so she could start pulling them on.

[Malagen]

Malagen wasn’t a pessimist. To be a pessimist, one had to have sentiments about certain situations, and sentiments and emotions weren’t the currency that the barbarian worked with. Instead there were facts and odds that, when put in a rather simple calculation, could predict the outcome of a certain event. It was the way that he was taught, an automaton kind of rationalization that formulated every aspect of life, giving it value and coming up with a realistic conclusion. It worked for battles, it worked for the weather and ultimately it worked for people. And what odds and facts were telling him right now was that Skyler wouldn’t come back.

Malagen sat in the armchair, a haggard weary apparition that pulled the edge of the rusty butcher’s knife over the rim of the pot. It seemed like a redundant procedure, but he knew well that in lieu of a sharpening stone, metal can sharpen metal just as well. And while this monotonous process went on, his mind mulled on the mistake that he made by letting her go alive. Because the facts couldn’t be wrong. Fact: She hated his guts. Fact: She was in better physical shape then he was at the moment. Fact: She risked a lot less by stealing just one attire then she did by stealing two. Fact: She was no do-gooder. Fact: She would have an easier time slipping through the net of guards alone.

Fact: He was hung out to dry.

His finger passed over the edge of the knife, testing the sharpness by allowing the metal to pierce his skin just deep enough to cut the first couple of layers of skin, but not deep enough to draw blood. It wasn’t even a shadow of Ferioh steel, but it was better then the bludgeon damage of his fists. And he would surely need to do some damage now that he was on his own. Skyler was gone and he made peace with that. Skyler was gone because the odds said so, because it would’ve been the smartest thing to do. Because it was what he would’ve done.

In such thoughts - that would surely depress the mentally weak which Malagen wasn’t – the Dram got up from the dusty armchair and decided to do one final sweep of the house. There was still a basement that he didn’t inspect and there might be something useful there. However, by the time he found the entrance – hidden below the tattered carpet in the pantry – he heard the backdoor crashing against the wall, followed by the soft pitter-patter of feet. His first thought was that the local law enforcers finally decided to check out the house, but there was only one pair of feet and there was no metallic clinking that would signify the presence of armor. Still, Malagen moved from the pantry deliberately, following the damp trace of footsteps that led to the study. There was a voice in his mind, meek and broken, that reminded him that there was always an exception that confirmed the rule, but he hushed it efficiently as he prowled down the hall and to the doorway. Once he was there though, he had to admit that the quelled voice was right.

Sklyer stood in nothing but her skin, her hands hurried to put on a pair of tawny leather pants. The bulk of her acquisition stood on the couch, a pair of attires fresh from the stalls. A pair of attires. Not one, not one and a half, but a pair. What were the odds of that? He returned his eyes on the girl, peering at her bare back that looked feminine, inviting even, despite the freckles that seemed to cover her skin. And once again he had to set aside such thoughts.

“You came back.” Malagen finally said, his voice failing to reveal the surprise that those words should’ve signified. He couldn’t say with absolute certainty whether or not he startled her, but she put the dressing on pause abruptly to snatch her head back at him. He took a step forwards, then another, and then xhe once again stood within arm’s reach, his lifeless azure eyes looking at her from above. “Interesting. I wouldn’t.”

He spoke no more, only leant sideways to pick up the clothes she procured before moving away from her and placing them on the desk. And while he put them on, he thought about the truthfulness of what he said to her. Was that a fact? After not killing her this morning, was that really what he would do if the roles were reversed? And if not, then why, for gods sakes? He didn’t come up with an answer by the time his clothes were on and he was certain that he wouldn’t be able to do so if he wasted an entire day on pondering. So he just let it slide. He made peace with the fact that he felt some actual fondness – or rather lack of hostility – towards the tomboyish wench.

“They’ll be looking for us.” Malagen begun once he put the sharpened knife into the inner pocket of his cloak. “They’ll set up checkpoints on every town exit. We need to find a disguise.”

His voice left little to be discussed about; he wasn’t asking for her opinion, but merely stating what his next step would be. If she wanted to tag along, then she could, which was a lot more then a lot of people had a chance to. If she didn’t want to follow him, he was more then ready to give her good riddance. With the cold words spoken, he led the way out the back door that she left open.

The air outside was crisp, a harsh polar opposite of the stuffy dustiness that he breathed while inside the house. The sun was somewhere behind the constant white of the clouds above, a lackluster outline that appeared sporadically. Around them the day revolved as per usual, with the usual bunch that strode through the chill with their minds set on the warmth of whatever destination they were heading to. In such an environment, where most were miserable and wishing they were somewhere warm, nobody paid heed to a pair of strangers that walked hurriedly down the cobblestone road. Malagen stuck to the narrow alleyways, avoiding the wide streets that the guards usually liked to patrol and the chintzy taverns where they stopped for a drink and the daily fat chewing.

In one such alley, hidden from inquisitive eyes, was the disguise he was looking for. One of the merchants was loading a wagon with the goods, a pair of workers carrying crates and sacks through the backdoor of his store and arranging them neatly in the carriage. It was perfect. He would kill the merchant and his lackeys and ride right out of the town with the nitwitted law enforcers thinking he was a merchant.

“We need to dispose of these men. I’ll take care of his workers, you kill the merchant.” Malagen spoke to Skyler as if it was the simplest thing to do, as if it had nothing to do with taking three lives. His hand reached for the knife, pulled it out, then spun it in a smooth effortless motion before pushing it towards the girl, butt first.

[skyler manfield]

The assasin-turned-thief finished pulling on the pants and picked up the wool shirt as she turned to face Malagen with a raised eyebrow. There was something missing in the man's brain, she decided, something that was key to interacting with those around him without a snide remark or a murderous glare.

"Of course I came back," her voice was muffled through the shirt as she pulled it over her head, "I don't know about you, but I like to finish what I start."

Skyler was infinitely warmer now, and she sighed like a happy kitten as she pulled the immensely warm boots onto half frost-bitten feet, the silky fur inside cradling her feet like the boots were made just for her. She quickly laced them up, and got to her feet, pulling the cloak off the table and swirled it around her shoulders where it settled warmly.

"Well if I'd thought about disguises I'd have found different clothes for us," Skyler sniped at him, but she was only half kidding with him, "But you're right, we have to do something."

If this whole "we" thing was half as awkward for him as it was for her, Skyler figured he must be pretty damn uncomfortable. Maybe she should just go without him, and be glad he hadn't killed her already. It was an attractive option. But she'd just said moments before that she always finished what she started.

She followed him through the alleys, carefully skirting iced over puddles, and trying not to run into the merchants and farmers who hurried past them to and from their various activities. There was a grimy skim of ice over the bricks of the buildings they walked between, and the sky was lowering threateningly - it would likely start snowing soon.

As they came upon the merchant and his men, Malagen was obviously thinking the same thing as the young assassin - it showed on his face. But his idea to kill the men, although tempting and probably the easier way to go about things, suddenly seemed like a bad idea.

"It's not a bad idea," Skyler said, taking the knife from the barbarian and spinning it one hand to find its balance, "And the easiest idea by far. But maybe it isn't the safest. We want to get away, and leaving bodies behind is gonna get attention. I'm an assassin, the first thing I think of is how NOT to get caught. Can we do this my way?"

The assassin nodded her head toward the wagon that was filled with bags of turnips and beets, and ran the edge of the knife across her thumb, deep in thought.

"I think the quickest and most discreet way to get out of town, and maybe even out of this godforsaken country, would be to hide in that wagon and get off at the next stop. We just have to be really well hidden - they'll probably check the wagon on the way out of town."

Skyler paused and looked Malagen, the corner of her mouth upturning in an almost playful smile that twinkled in eyes the same grey as the snow-laden clouds above them. Handing the knife back to him, she raised her chin and waited a moment before speaking.

"So, do you trust me?"

[Malagen]

Apparently the wench – that was allegedly some kind of an assassin according to her own words – didn’t understand that Malagen wasn’t making a proposal when he spoke of what should be done. Because as soon as he concluded and handed her the only weapon they currently had, she decided to make a rebuttal, advising a different course of action. And even though she did it with relative subtleness, trying to sugarcoat it to some degree and slip it under his unyielding radar, he still felt it as a threat and a slap to the face. So far they followed the plan he charted and his way brought them this far. Bending to her will was bound to disrupt the ultimate control that he had so far. In many ways, though he was unaware of it, Malagen was like a spoiled brat that always had it his way or highway. Granted, his childhood was everything but dreamy and cozy, but it produced the same inbred stubbornness that refused to accept outer influence.

Trust was a completely different issue. Of course he didn’t trust her and he reckoned the feeling was mutual. They just broke out of prison, and whether they were rightfully there or not didn’t matter because it was rather clear they weren’t the good people. No, they were the living, breathing scum of Althanas that thrived most when they operated on the dark side. And usually one couldn’t trust such people further then one could throw them. However, Sklyer was the only ally he currently had and regardless of her rather quotidian looks, she did seem like somebody who was rather deft in such artifices. So Malagen decided to do something that went against his predatory nature, something that he hasn’t done ever since he left Ferioh. He listened to something other then his instincts.

“I don’t.” he replied flatly, seemingly uninterested in whatever she spoke of. His left hand snatched the knife from her hand, but his shoulder sent another piercing jolt of pain through the nerves of his arm and he fumbled it. The stone-cold face cringed only for a fraction of a second before his right hand picked up the chintzy weapon, returning it to the interior of his cloak. “But it might be worth the effort.”

It was a risk, but the payoff seemed too attractive to pass on. If they managed to mouse out of the town without being spotted, chances were that by the time they would be on the Salvar/Raiaera border, the local lawmen would still be looking for them within the city walls. But if they were caught, there was little the two of them would be able to do with a single rusty knife against maybe a dozen armed guards. And again, the odds were against them. But given the uncanny way the things were occurring lately, spiting the odds on numerous occasions, Malagen reckoned they should ride their streak right out of this shithole.

They waited for their cue like a pair of stalking raptors, monitoring the workers loading the wagon with what now seemed like bagged spices, and once the shipment seemed complete they made a run for it. Sklyer took care of the timing, leading in decisive, nearly soundless strides, making use of the short window of opportunity that opened once the loading was done and the merchant was making his way out of the shop and into the street. And by the time the scrawny looking trader was out and ready to drive away with his goods, the two of them were safely nestled behind a pair of crates filled with turnips, lying next to one another like canned sardines. Pressing down on them were sacks of what to Malagen smelled like a mixture of cinnamon and menthol – a dreadful combination that tickled his nose to the point where he sneezed once and cursed at himself for displaying such weakness. Luckily, by that time, the independent merchant was making his way down the stone-paved streets at a steady pace and the sound of the steel-covered wooden wheels of the carriage rolling down the shabby uneven path was more then enough to cover any noises that the two might make, intentionally or otherwise.

After about five minutes of steady rolling and three sharp turns – “Left, right, left” Malagen kept track, calculating that the man was taking the westwards road – they started slowing down rapidly. A stern voice uttered a harsh HALT! and the Dram knew this was the moment of truth. Either they would slip through their net or get caught in it.

((So I was thinking. Since we’re going to keep it all in one thread, it would be fun if they noticed us in your post. Skyler could kick the inspecting guard in the nuts and then in my post I would make Malagen kill the merchant and hijack the wagon. And then they would chase us or something. :) ))

[skyler manfield]

"I need your export papers sir," the guard barked huskily. Skyler held her breath, making herself as unnoticeable as possible. The only problem was that she couldn't do the same for Malagen. Even if she was completely invisible to the guards, they still might see him, and then she might as well be seen too. Of course, they may still not notice her if he didn't say she was there.

There was a rustling of papers, and then they heard the crunching of snow beneath boots as the guard circled the wagon, then paused at the back. With a dull creak, the gate lowered and the guard began shuffling bags around.

"Mr. Demera, I think you have some rats," the guard said, grabbing Skyler's foot with a grin. "I'll help you with a little pest control, eh?"

But in his effort to be funny, the guard made what might just be a fatal mistake. Skyler jerked her foot free and at the same time blindly rocketed her other foot at what she hoped was his groin. A grunt followed by a sick sounding groan affirmed her aim, and Skyler sat up quickly, throwing herself at the guard who was half bent over, holding his crotch protectively.

Fists flying, the assassin slammed into the heavily armored man, knocking them both to the snow-covered ground with a loud thud. A haymaker to his jaw stunned the guard, and she followed it up with a solid jab to the solar plexus which left him gasping as she climbed off of him. Almost as an afterthought she kicked him soundly in the ribs before glancing around to assess the situation further.

There didn't seem to be any other guards, and the merchant hadn't moved from his seat atop the wagon - he sat staring over his shoulder at the scene unraveling below him. Crouching down behind the wagon, Skyler waited, hoping Malagen was ready to grab the merchant and slit his throat, so they could get out of town with the wagon before anyone sounded the alarm.

[Malagen]

Their ruse failed, but Malagen wasn’t surprised. This wasn’t his plan to begin with and as such, it lacked the immaculate precision that his plans always had. The hope that the guard would be too lazy or too reckless not to check the cargo was too flaky of a factor to be counted on, regardless of how lucky they were for the last two days. Lucky streaks, after all, never lasted forever. That’s why the Dram was able to foresee this kind of development, foresee it and prepare a contingency plan. His knife was already drawn when the guard started inspecting the contents of the carriage and he waited for the right cue.

Skyler moved like a cobra, her reaction blistering fast as she kicked the guard in the groin, and Malagen moved at the same time. Only, in a different direction. While the assassin woman was knocking the soldier’s lights out, the barbarian made his way to the carriage front and the petrified merchants that seemed ready to empty the contents of his bladder. His hapless eyes looked at Malagen with desperation, fleeing to the squabble in the back with what seemed like a wordless plea, then back at his would-be executor. He begged the gods that the guard overcomes the vehement girl and save him from the dark man. No such thing happened.

“Please... Take the wagon. I won’t tell a soul...” the man whimpered, his hands joined before his chest and his eyes welling with tears. “I beg you! I have a fam...”

SZOCK!

The sound of the metal slashing through the flesh and tendons of his neck was the last thing the merchant heard before his eyes went dead. The blood didn’t spray over Malagen, but rather just gushed down the sallow skin of the neck before tinting the lofty clothes scarlet. He was deft enough in anatomy to know how to cut a man and not get showered in crimson.

There was no regret in the Dram Messiah. To have regret would mean to feel and even though a lot of disconcerting things happened in the last two days, emotions were something that Malagen alienated efficiently. For most people, those dead disbelieving eyes of the murdered folk were like a weight that kept dragging them down. Malagen taught himself not to carry that weight around. Besides, he did nothing wrong to feel bad about in the first place. The weak died. The strong prevailed. And if one day he was the weak and he perished at the hand of the strong, he would go down without the ridiculous last-second begging because that’s how the world worked.

“Get on.” he said to Skyler, shoving the merchant from the carriage seat with his foot. The cadaver of the man fell into the snow face first, its blood first forming a small splash, then proceeding to eat its way through the soft snow. Malagen grabbed the reins and slapped them over the two mounts without even checking whether or now the girl climbed back on board. The horses started to take the carriage down the cobblestones at a slow pace, but a handful of more whipping and they were charging down the dirt road outside the town limits. Vaguely, through the filter of galloping hoofs and rumbling carriage wheels, he heard a female scream and he didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that somebody already found the rapidly cooling corpse of Mister Demera.

Less then five minutes of intense riding down the well-trodden dirt road the sound of the galloping hoofs multiplied and it was clear that they were being followed. Or rather, chased down like runaway cattle. Four riders were catching up fast, armed to the teeth and eager to finally put an end to their not-so-furtive escape attempt. Their bows were still slung across their shoulders, but Malagen was certain that once they get within arrow range, they would do their best to make a pin cushion out of the pair of escapees.

“We need to lose them.” the barbarian told to Skyler, his voice once again indifferent and obviously unaware of the dire situation. “Dump the cargo.”

[skyler manfield]

Skyler glanced at the dead man in the snow, admiring Malagen's handiwork with a professional repect. Unfortunately this momentary distraction almost left her stranded for the guards to have their way with. The assassin screeched a mess of curse words as she grabbed the rail and dragged herself up over the side even as the wagon took off over the frozen road.

Climbing up onto the seat next to Malagen, Skyler glared at him but remained silent. They hadn't ridden for very long when it became quite apparent that they were being pursued.

“We need to lose them.” the barbarian told to Skyler, his voice once again indifferent and obviously unaware of the dire situation. “Dump the cargo.”

"No shit," she spat, crawling in the back and beginning to shove various crates and sacks over the gate and onto the sodden ground behind them. Great puffs of spice rose from the bags as they burst against the road. With a loud huff, Skyler clambered back to the front.

"An even better idea would be to detach the horses from the wagon and ride them - much faster I promise," she said, looking pointedly at the barbarian, and then back over her shoulder at the riders that were quickly closing on them.

"We don't have a chance if we keep up like this. Can you ride? Because if we stop now and do it we have time. If we wait, we're dead."

[Malagen]

Malagen listened to Skyler, but most of her words were just background noise to his cognitive process. Because while her advice seemed effective and wise, it was flawed in the long run. The riders behind them had fresh mounts, the kind that were born and bred to be ridden, while they were stuck with a pair of nags that couldn’t outrun their own shadows even if the sun was in their face. His first idea was to make a stand. Stop the wagon, block the road with it, and wait for the riders to come close enough to get attacked. It was, naturally, a risky plan, the kind that depended as much on their skill as on sheer luck, but it was a plan with a chance of success. A minimal chance, but a chance nonetheless.

However, once he craned his neck and cast a look over his shoulder, the seemingly suicidal plan was postponed. The four riders that were closing in on them started to slow down rapidly, their steeds neighing and shaking the long heads ardently. Even though he couldn’t say with absolute certainty, Malagen was rather certain that it was the discarded spices that got the beasts, irking their olfactory systems to the point where all they could do is sneeze in an attempt to expel the substances from their nostrils. It wouldn’t last forever, of course, and it certain didn’t buy them a ticket out of the mess, but it opened up a window and the barbarian decided to take it.

“No.” he simply replied to the girl, calmly driving the carriage away from the disrupted sentries that struggled with the controls of their mounts. The road ahead of them made a gentle turn, swiveled a bit between the trees, then proceeded southwest. Once they passed the forest, Malagen pulled the wagon to a stop, then proceeded to tie the reins to the seat.

“Get off.” he said, descending from carriage and waiting for her to do the same. When she looked down at him in the cocky, ball-busting manner, he had an option to either paste her one or explain his intention. And as much as he wanted to do the former – “And how much was that?” the not-so-emotionless voice in his head asked – he decided to elaborate.

“We send the carriage rolling down without us. It might not get far, but it will be enough to throw them off and give us time to cut our way across the countryside and towards the mountains. Now get off.”

Once she finally did, Malagen took out a knife and made a swift, precise cut on the horse’s flank, sending it neighing wildly and trotting down the saturated, muddy road. The wound was bound to be enough of a threat for the beast to gallop at least a mile or so, and by that time they would be long gone. His hand put the knife back into the interior of his bulky coat before he stepped into the knee-deep snow beside the road and started plowing the way through the grove and towards the mountains.

Footslogging through the snow reminded Malagen of Ferioh despite the fact that he always forced himself to think of the memories as irrelevant and redundant distraction from the present. Salvar was in many ways like the Dram homeland, albeit a bit gentler when it comes to the weather. Salvar at its worst was basically a typical Ferioh autumn, with razor-sharp snowflakes carried by the tempest that slapped you like a hand holding a piece of sandpaper. Today there was no wind and the murky gray sky above held on to whatever precipitation it had in mind, but the setting was basically the same. Cold and frigid and endlessly white as far as the eye could see on two sides. On the third one, the road was shrinking in the ocean of pearly white. On the fourth the mountains beckoned to them menacingly, tall and inaccessible, their only way out.

[skyler manfield]

She stared at him disbelieving, but as he explained and his idea came into focus, Skyler nodded and jumped down without any argument or commentary. Landing next to the barbarian, the assassin watched as he sent the wagon careening down the hill.

Shivering, she tromped through the snow, thankful that she'd been able to find leather pants and good boots - otherwise she'd be frozen to death within an hour. As it was, she wasn't sure they'd make it far before that happened anyway.

They'd barely gone a quarter mile when a sound more menacing than that of the guards sounded to their left. A moment later, they heard it again, much closer. Wolves. Skyler glanced at Malagen, eyes wide. Men she could take, wild animals though, were something all together different.

"What now?" she said, trying hard to keep her voice even, looking to their right where the sound came from now. She fancied she could see figures moving between the stark grey trunks of the trees, against the pure white blanket of the snow.

She had no weapons now, her stillettos had been taken and her poisons (which would do her little good against the wolves anyway) lost. The loss of the stillettos hurt more than the poisons, and not just because they were her only defense against attacks on her person. No, it hurt because they had been her gift from her mentor, Hawk, after she'd successfully completed her first solo assassination.

"They'll catch us if we try to run, Malagen," she whispered, moving closer to the man, "And your blade is little use against a pack of wolves."

Crouching to the ground, she picked up a fallen tree limb, hefting the stout wooden weapon in her hands to find its balance. It wasn't much, but perhaps it would be enough, she hoped.

[Malagen]

“They’ll catch us either way.” Malagen responded to the girl, his voice remaining insipid despite the obvious threat that lurked around them. He knew that the conflict with these beasts was inevitable. It was winter and that meant that the pack was starved, and hungry predators knew no fear or fatigue. They would come at them and keep coming until they either got their prey or death claimed their lives. It was the way of the wild, the ruthless way that the barbarian was taught for twenty years. Kill or get killed. Face your fears or cower in from of them. Make a stand or flee with your tail between your legs. And Malagen wasn’t the running kind.

“Just stay back, no matter what happens.” he told her before stepping away. The howling that was sporadic died down now, gave in to the sound of frantic bestial feet plowing through the snow and the incessant growling. The Dram had to draw their attention. His hand fished out the butcher’s knife from the interior of his coat, then sliced the palm of the opposite hand which he balled in a tight fist. The blood wasn’t gushing, but enough drops slipped through the tight grasp and onto the snow. More then enough to summon the wolves to him. Malagen returned the knife into his coat calmly.

He knew exactly what he had to do. The philosophy of the pack was rather simple, resting on the rudimental mechanics where the alpha male was a leader, an ultimate commander, a god. If you wanted to take out the pack, you had to go for this authority figure, but not in the manner that most people thought. Because if you killed the leader, the pack kept on coming. They kept on coming out of vengeance and because, regardless of the fall of their leader, they were hungry. The role of the leader would be taken by the next in line, the second strongest animal amidst their ranks, and the hunt would go on. But if you faced the alpha male, if you faced it and proved your dominance over it, it would back off and take his buddies with him. It was risky business, something Malagen did only once back in Ferioh, and it nearly cost him his life. Granted, he was a twelve year-old back then, but still, a hungry animal was always a force to be reckoned with.

The growls were more prominent now, but the Dram stood in a small clearing perfectly tranquil. The alpha would come first, there was no doubt about it, leading by example. It burst through the bushes like a raging bull, a huge muscled beast with light gray fur and golden-ringed eyes locked on Malagen. But even as the beast made its appearance, the barbarian stood still, his azure eyes making contact with the ferocious ones of the animal. The beast charged, and Malagen gazed at it. The beast leapt, and Malagen gazed at it. They were both intrepid, unyielding, a tide and a rock facing each other.

When they collided, the Dram was thrown on his back and rolled through the snow with the maw of the beast snapping inches from his face. They tumbled, they turned, almost disappearing in the sea of white before Malagen flung the beast away. The wolf returned the favor though, tearing through the biceps of Malagen’s right arm. Before he even got his footing back, two more animals came at him from behind. He managed to kick one of them with his foot, but the second one bit at Malagen’s shoulder blades. Only after a swift jerk of his torso did the beast fell off with a chunk of Malagen’s flesh in its jaws. And yet, after this ordeal was done, Malagen simply pushed himself up, reestablished eye contact with the alpha male and waited.

The wolves now circled around him, measuring the right time to strike, but the barbarian followed the movement of the alpha. When the great wolf moved, Malagen moved in sync, never breaking eye contact, his dead azure eyes ceaselessly pouring coldness into the enflamed ones of the wolf. It was a dance, slowed to a crawl, a battle of souls that emitted themselves through the eyes of the participants. And when it was done, it was the beast that bowed its head and walked away with a stifled irked whine. Intimidation was a powerful tool, an ability that Malagen didn’t practice in this shape for years, and now that it surfaced, it saved both his and Skyler’s life.

“Let’s go.” he merely said to the young assassin girl, pulling his coat a bit closer to his body and restarting their trek through the woods that were soon coming to an end. His wounds throbbed with pain, screamed at him to stop moving and attend to them, but his pace was same as ever, measured and precise as he led the way through the snowy landscape.

[skyler manfield]

The fight was over almost as soon as it had begun, taking place in a frantic whirlwind of teeth, claws, and blood. Golden eyes flashed on blue as the barbarian and the beast circled each other warily, until finally the alpha slunk away with a hungry whimper, the rest of the pack following with a baleful look back at the pair.

Skyler had remained crouched nearby ready to spring if at any moment the Dram should become overwhelmed, but her fear had left her paralyzed, and somehow Malagen had come out of the skirmish alive. Recovering her senses, the assassin returned to the barbarian's side, following him in silence.

Ahead she saw an enticing shadow near the edge of the grove of trees. Not a wild animal, or one of a million trees, but the long sweep of a roof, the glint of setting sun off of a window. Skyler could have cried with relief, and barely glanced at the barbarian before taking off ahead of him, leaping over snowdrifts and arriving at the small cabin that rose invitingly before them.

It was an old abandoned ranger's outpost, the back half of which was collapsed under the weight of years and snow, but even half a building was enough to protect them from the elements and the eyes of animals and searching guards.

Skyler waited on the decrepit front porch, and as Malagen got to the steps of the place, the girl turned and tried the door, which fell from its hinges into the foyer. Listening for a moment for any occupants, Skyler nodded to the barbarian and disappeared into the shadowed interior.

Finding a room off to one side, where the roof and windows were still intact, Skyler pulled a dusty blanket from a tall bed which stood in one corner, and tossed it to the floor. Turning to Malagen, she smiled slightly, grey eyes surveying the barbarian for his injuries.

"Come over here and let me get you cleaned up," she said quietly, "And don't argue with me, it will get infected and be the death of you if you don't."

[Malagen]

The abandoned cottage was a decrepit looking thing, half of it fallen to ruin under the burden of the ages and the other half slowly getting there. Not so long ago, Malagen would abhor even a thought of spending time in such an unsightly place, but he wasn’t in Ferioh anymore, people didn’t worship the ground he walked upon and he wasn’t the Dram Messiah anymore. In the wilderness of Salvar he was nothing more then a runaway convict with a chronic pain in his left shoulder, two fresh wounds and a rusty knife as his only weapon. Suffice to say, the barbarian couldn’t exactly afford to be picky at this moment. In fact, given the weariness that he refused to display and the throbbing pain of both his fresh wounds – and a dull pain below the mangled scar on his left shoulder – the crumbling cabin was a windfall.

Skyler eagerly took the initiative once the cottage was close enough, leading the way past the rotting door and into the equally rotting interior. The rather cramped lobby was collapsed at the far end, a mixture of snow and rubble blocking any further advance. Luckily, past the door to the side, there was a relatively spacious room that still managed to maintain structural integrity and provide relative safety to the pair. It was robbed of all luxuries – not a surprising detail given the location and the state of the cabin – but by now Malagen was rather certain that both of them got used to crawling from one shithole to the next like roaches.

Still, what remained in the room was relatively tidy, dusty and stuffy, but still there was a certain order in the room that clearly stated that most of the stuff remained in the same position their old owner left them years ago. A rather robust bed dominated the scene with a solitary nightstand on the right side that still had a half burned candle nestled on top of it in a small ceramic plate. Opposite of the bed was a voluminous wardrobe with a pair of wooden doors that hung slanted on one remaining hinge on each side. From why the Dram could see under the daylight that managed to filter itself through the dust-covered window, the closet was empty.

The freckly assassin girl instructed him to allow her to mend his wounds, but even though she managed to do it with a modest smile, Malagen merely brushed past her and approached the bedside. “I can mend my own wounds, wench.” he said, unbuttoning his coat and taking it off. His right arm slid from the sleeve easily, but when it came to his left – that carried both and old wound and a new one now – his face once again winced in pain. He pushed it aside, in the efficient way he always did when it came to pain, set the coat aside and took a seat on the creaky bed. The same ordeal that he went through when he took of his coat awaited him when he took of the shirt, only now he was cold as well. The room maybe was shielded from the wind, but it was still cold enough for him to feel the pinch of the chill biting into his skin. Once again, he pushed it aside stubbornly.

The truth was that he couldn’t mend his own wounds though. Well, at least the one on his back anyways. Back wounds were often the downfall of lone travelers and Malagen knew that quite well. With back wounds you usually had to ask for assistance or die a rather slow and agonizing death, just like Skyler said. Still, for far too long he traveled alone, for far too long he was the only person he trusted, and he disregarded her offering for the time being.

Instead he focused on fixing his arm, using the knife to cut the bed sheet into long stripes. He wiped the open gash in slow, lifeless movements, then pressed the bloodied rag against the wound until it stopped bleeding. Once that was done, he picked up the makeshift bandages and started wrapping them around the wound, using his teeth to tighten each and every revolution around his arm. It was tedious work, straining for both his wounds, but Malagen was far too headstrong and ignorant towards outside influence to know any other way of doing it. To an extent, he was like a child that was never taught to accept or offer a helping hand, somebody who didn’t know how to deal with anything that didn’t fit into the template that the years of training built into him.

[skyler manfield]

Skyler frowned and grabbed Malagen very pointedly by his injured shoulder and pulled him her direction, making eye contact with barbarian and glaring daggers into his brain. The stubborn fool would rather die than let anyone help him, but she hadn't come this far just to wake up in the house with a dead man she hadn't killed herself.

"Just sit the fuck down," she said, pulling the blood encrusted cloth from the wounds on his back, "This shit would kill you if you'd let it. If you're gonna die, it's gonna be at my hand, understand?"

Skyler gave him a move or die stare and left him sitting on the edge of the bed as she ran outside for a few handfuls of snow which she put in her cloak instead of risking frostbite. With her makeshift antiseptic, and a handful of torn bedsheets that took her only a moment to rip up, Skyler went to work on the barbarian's back, kneeling behind him on the bed.

"Good gods but you're stubborn, Malagen," she said as she worked, carefully washing away bits of dirt and tattered cloth from the wound and then working a bandage over it which she struggled to tie diagonally across his back and around his chest, "Something must have happened to you as a child to turn you into such a bloody bastard. That's what always seems to do it, some bloke touches you wrong, or your mother calls you some crazy name nonstop, or your pa beats you a few too many times about the head and shoulders, and next thing you know, you're all grown up and a fucking cuntrag to boot."

She knew her chatter was wearing on his nerves, but she also knew that it would keep him distracted from her poking and prodding at his back for any wounds she may have missed. Finally satisfied with her work, the assassin climbed off the bed and faced Malagen, with one eyebrow cocked, still waiting for an answer.

"So what was it then? You one of the ones that got hit in the head too many times, or one of the ones that dear old uncle was sneaking into his bedroom at night?"

[Malagen]

Between the sloppy wound-mending that the assassin girl did and her incessant yammering, Malagen found the latter more irksome. A couple of days ago he would’ve probably paste her one or even gut her like a fish just to stop the constant flow of words from her mouth. And while he would’ve probably done that even now with any other girl, Skyler for some reason wasn’t any other girl. The barbarian couldn’t quite decipher why that was the case, his emotion-deprived interior unable to handle whatever connection that was being developed between the two, so for the time being he just sat stoically and waited wordlessly for both ordeals to end. And yet, even though he sidelined the pondering about this improbable turn of events, he had to admit that Skyler’s touches – despite the fact that they caused him pain – weren’t unwelcome. His usually calm mind, that refused to dwell on the past, even went back to the night the two spent in that abandoned house after escape, reminiscing at the first time he felt the closeness of the freckly girl rather pleasurable.

The recollection didn’t last long though. Once the bandaging was done and Skyler stood in front of him with a smarmy look on her face, Malagen merely pushed her aside and got back on his feet. “I have no father, no mother, no uncle and was seldom hit in the head.” he responded, inspecting his tattered shirt before throwing it away in the corner. Instead, the Dram picked up his heavy coat and threw it over his shoulders, not bothering to put his hands into the sleeves for the time being. He took a couple of steps away from the bed, just enough for him to approach the window and cast a glance at the snowy outside. In the reflection on the glass through which he peered at the exterior, Skyler seemed rather disappointed by his reaction. And once again, for some reason beyond his comprehension, that expression stung him.

“Thank you...” he squeezed through the words that he probably didn’t speak from the early years of his childhood. “...for your assistance with the wounds.”

His mind’s rationale insisted that there was nothing to thank for. He saved her bacon a couple of times already and it was the wench’s duty to return the favor. If anything, she should be thanking him for allowing her to tag along and for not taking her life when he should’ve. And yet, the rational had little to do with the commotion that seemed to rumble through his insides, rebirthing something that was murdered a long time ago. Something that he felt he should speak about, if for no other reason then to answer her question.

“I was taught only to kill, Skyler. I had no father, no family, just endless line of mentors that honed my skills and eventually fell to my blade. The shamans back in Ferioh said that I am destined to bring them a victory over the kingdoms of Audelas and they taught me only how to do that; how to win.” Malagen spoke, his tone still emotionless as he kept his eyes locked on the endless white beyond the glass barrier.

“They said emotions were an enemy of clear thought, a downfall of every warrior, so I was forced to abandon them, to be better then every warrior. If I didn’t, they punished me. And though twenty whip lashes don’t seem like a terrible thing now, it’s a lifetime of pain when you’re seven years old.” he continued, his voice refusing to display any kind of deviation from the usual, annoyingly calm tone as he finally turned his back to the window and faced Skyler once again. “So that’s my story. What’s yours? What turns a girl into a murderer?”

[skyler manfield]

Skyler sat down heavily on the bed as Malagen pushed her aside, listening to the barbarian's bitter recounting of his own life with a bitterness of her own. They weren't so very different after all. Raised without the love of family, taught only to kill, but where Skyler had never mastered her emotions, Malagen had mastered them perhaps too well.

"At least you had a destiny, eh?" Skyler said quietly, as the barbarian's story came to an end. Standing up, she wandered to the window, and looked out onto the quickly darkening forest. Her cheeks were burning as she considered her own past, and she leaned her face against the cold glass for relief.

"I know the feeling of 20 lashes on a child's back, and the feeling of having no family to speak of. And what it's like only to be taught to kill," Skyler admitted, her voice a bit harsh. It wasn't a story she told. It wasn't anyone's business who she was, it was only their business to leave her alone or die at her hand. But for some reason she wanted to tell Malagen.

"My mother was a whore," she glanced at Malagen to guage his reaction, "Really, she was, at a well-known brothel in Radasanth. And that's where I was born. The girls passed me around to whoever wasn't busy, and sometimes everyone was busy, so I just had to stay out of the way. If I didn't.... well Madame Rose isn't the nicest of women, and she didn't care if it was a 5 year old or a 25 year old who messed with her business, they'd be punished accordingly."

"Of course I'd rather have been beaten, than... some of the men that came in the brothel had strange appetites. I killed someone for the first time, when I guess I was no more than eight. He tried to..." why was it so damn hard to say? It was like the words just caught in her mouth and refused to leave her tongue.

"They found him the next morning - he'd somehow fallen on his own dagger," Skyler finished abruptly. "Anyways, Rose sold me to Deacon, and I ran errands for the Radasanth Crime Syndicate until Hawk found me. He's my mentor. He taught me everything I know, and when I was eighteen Deacon told me if I wanted to be a real assassin I'd have to kill him."

The assassin girl felt like she couldn't breathe, and shoved against the window frame until it opened slightly, gasping the icy air into her lungs as though it would cleanse the memories out of her mind.

"You probably would have killed Hawk without batting an eyelash," Skyler said bitterly, turning to face Malagen, "And you probably think I'm weak because I couldn't."

[Malagen]

Malagen didn’t hear many sad stories in his life mostly due to his lack of interaction with people, and those that he wasted time on listening didn’t manage to strike a sensitive chord in his lifeless insides. They were all different and yet all alike, different twisted paths that passed through the same checkpoints such as pain, misery, agony, death, the works. In fact, he was on several of this checkpoints himself, playing his role as the executor, tormentor and generally the source of sorrow for many a household. And the Dram was perfectly fine with that. It was the way life was, or at least that was the way his life was.

But Skyler’s story didn’t go in one ear and out the other. The more she spoke about it, the clearer it became that her life path was pretty much parallel to his own, with the similar twist and turns that ultimately led her to this point in space and time. Malagen took it in without a single trace of reaction on his face – except maybe the minute, unfathomable spark in his eyes that announced his elevated attention. The emotions were prominent in the girl’s voice - almost tangible enough to be touched and tasted and smelled - despite her attempts to keep them in check the way he did. Daughter of a whore, forced to kill at a young age, passed from one hand to the other like a piece of hot coal... If he really wanted an answer to the question he posed (and strangely enough he did), she just presented it to him, straightforward and slightly abridged. And the motionless piece of rock that was never a heart reacted.

There was too much similarity in their stories – not in the specifics, but in the consequences that followed and emotions that were awoken. They dealt with them differently, Malagen quenching them like a pitiful candle flame and Skyler bottling it up and dealing with the overflow when it happened, but in the essence they were the two sides of the same coin. She showed him her side today and he did the same, and they stood on the edge of it now, each drawn to the other because of the same cold metal core that they were made of. It was a novelty to the barbarian to find somebody who understood, who knew what it meant to have no beginning and no end, and he didn’t know how to deal with it.

“Yes.” he finally said, his reply usually curt and callous. He saw no point in lying and sugarcoating a conclusion that was rather clear in his head. But while he would usually end his part in this dialogue at this point, today wasn’t a usual day and Skyler wasn’t a usual wench. “But that’s the way things are. Some are stronger, some are weaker. We can’t all be made from the same substance.”

He wanted to add several other things, how being made from the substance he was made of wasn’t really living at all, but what his newly awoken emotions whispered to his mind, his tongue was unable to pronounce due to the years of restraint. Instead he looked at her long and hard, his azure eyes once again seemingly cold and lethargic, tracing the contour of her face, catching the woe in her eyes, sensing the emotions the way a predator sensed fear in its prey. But instead of making her look weak and pitiful, they made her feel beautiful to Malagen, like a broken sunflower that still tried to look up and meet the sun. Her umber hair threads fluttered minutely in the fresh breeze that caressed her freckly face. He had girls significantly more beautiful then her, but none of them managed to elicit this genuine turmoil in his insides. He had to either have her or kill her for doing this to him. He opted for the first.

His movement was swift and robbed of any sort of coyness as he leant towards her and pressed his cold lips against her own. It was a strong kiss, almost insensitive and passionless, but his arms embraced her and held her close for the duration of it. She seemed frigid in his hands and yet at the same time Malagen felt as if he was holding on to the live fire that scorched the snowy waste of his soul.

[skyler manfield]

It was the last thing she expected, and to her suprise not something she necessarily wanted to stop. He grabbed her and kissed her so roughly that her lips felt bruised, making the chill of the wintery air on her skin fade with the fire that seared through her veins.

Instinct overcame desire though, at least for the moment, and she angrily shoved him away, slapping him hard across the face. Anger at herself mingled inextricably with her anger at him for being so forward, and the fire that had begun as lust turned into pure loathing for the moment. She had hated men and all things related for so long, that her mind automatically returned to that state whenever given the option.

"What the hell!" she shrieked, stumbling away from him as she extracted herself from his embrace, still trying to come to terms with her own unwanted desire for him. It was strange to her, even as volatile and emotional as she was, men never left this feeling in her brain as though her body was taking over.

But there was more to it than that. And somehow she knew it was the same for him. Skyler pushed the thoughts to the back of her mind, thoughts of how alike they were, and how if he hadn't killed her by now he was probably more trustworthy than anyone else she knew, and how terribly she longed for that. She pushed aside the fact that she wanted him to kiss her again, and that she hoped that he wouldn't just give up.

What she couldn't ignore so easily was her body's reaction to the situation at hand. Her breath was short, and her face was flushed, her blood rushing through her veins so quickly that she was almost lightheaded. She told herself it was just anger, but even as inexperienced as the young assassin was, she knew better.

"What gives you the right..."

[Malagen]

When Skyler slapped him like a mischievous child and shoved him away, Malagen expected for every part of his body to react the way it always did when somebody opposed him. He expected retribution, swift and efficient, that would end her life before she drew in another breath. It was the way he operated for years, with death being the penalty for every bit of defiance against him, regardless of who stood before him. Countless times before he killed for a lot less then an insult, for a lot less then a smack across the face. But today his hands didn’t even consider making a hostile movement towards the assassin lass.

Perhaps it was because there was no real intention to hurt hum behind her strike, no resolve, no force that would make it clear that the words she spoke corresponded to her real desires. Or perhaps it was the flare he saw in her eyes, the fire that was awoken after their lips broke contact, a frivolous spark that flushed her cheeks and shortened her breath. Then again, it might’ve been simply the fact that she merely recoiled but stayed in the vicinity, seemingly dumbfounded by his action but not repulsed by it. Malagen assumed it was a little bit of everything, an uncanny combination that made her feel the same way he did. Enthralled, losing control, helpless in front of a warm wave that seemed to circulate through every part of their beings.

The barbarian never felt like this around a woman. They were all just objects to him, something he needed to fill his quota and get rid of the sexual desire that naturally accumulated in every being. There were no emotions involved in the intercourse, no pleasure, just basic mechanics and friction. But today he wanted something different. Today he wanted to make love to a woman... No, not just to a woman. He wanted Skyler. He wanted her, to feel that eerily comfortable closeness he felt, that emotion that he couldn’t quite define.

“You do.” he interrupted her, his voice cold but his dead eyes vivid for the first time in years. There was a smirk on his face when he approached her again, his substantially larger body disallowing her from escaping from the corner of the room. When he once again came within the reach of her arms, she fired another slap, but his face merely snapped sideways for a second before returning to the regular position. And before she could do that again, both of his hands moved from below his coat, grabbing her by the wrists. His azure eyes never broke contact from her own. The bulky coat slipped from his shoulders as he pulled both of her arms up and pinned them to the wooden wall of the shack. His wounds still ached with pain, but the ache he needed to quench right now superseded the physical. He brought his face so close to her own that her breath – now visible because of the chill that crept through the open window – warmed his skin.

“Tell me you don’t want this and I’ll stop.” It was an offer that he never gave to the wenches he bedded, a luxury that he gifted to none save a freckly, unremarkable hoyden. Malagen knew she could still break free if she wanted to, probably kick him in the groin in the process, but he took the risk. Once again he kissed her, once again with fierceness, only this time his callousness seemed to wane a little bit. His left hand now held both of her wrists while his right crept down her arm, tracing the contour of her body. She didn’t smell like a dame, puffed up with perfume and dressed in clothes that smelled of jasmine. But the sweat on her skin and the distinctive mundane aroma of her body was all the perfume that he needed.

“All you have to do is say a word.” he whispered, breaking contact with her lips long enough to remind her of the choice she was given. How much of a choice it was though, Malagen wasn’t certain at this point. If she rejected him, would he force his hand to kill her in order to alleviate the pressure on his immense pride? And if she rejected him, would he have enough integrity and willpower to stop? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He kissed her again, tasting her lips and touching her body with as much gentleness as his murdering hands could muster, and shunned the predicament aside.

[skyler manfield]

He came toward her again, trapping her in the corner of the room, and like a caged animal she did not think, she simply reacted, slapping him hard across the face once again. But it did not effect him, he only continued unmoved, grabbing her wrists and immobilizing her against the wall. Her mind glossed over all the ways she could stop him, the ways she could hurt him, even kill him between this breath and the next. But each idea only sent other things through her mind, images of what he would do to her if she didn't stop him. And once more to her suprise, she found that such advances weren't unwanted.

If she wanted him to stop he would. His face showed it, and his mouth said it. Whether either of them would follow through with it if she said she wanted to stop, was anyone's guess. He kissed her again, and instead of fighting him off, or even remaining frozen, she found herself reacting by kissing him back, her lips moving instinctively against his.

"Don't stop," was all she could whisper, her grey eyes the dark of the sea in the storm as she held his gaze. All of her skill at ignoring her body's needs, all of her promises to herself never to let a man touch her, all of her hatred for the opposite sex meant nothing suddenly. The blood roared in her ears as she tried to consider what was different, and the perplexing thoughts drifted away on the steam that was their breath.

His touch was a strange entanglement of possessive roughness and tender reassurance, and Skyler's body was reacting to it with a fire that was uncharacteristic even of her. It didn't matter that the window was letting freezing air into the room - in fact, she barely noticed. It didn't matter that he still gripped her wrists tightly over her head - his other hand was tracing the boyish curves of her waist and leaving a trail of chills behind in its wake.

She'd never so much as been kissed by a man before, and had effectively blocked from her mind all the memories of her childhood in the brothel - at least those of the business dealing's of Rose's establishment. He would have to lead this strange dance, but she knew without question that wherever he led, this time she would follow.

[Malagen]

There was no need for the declaration of her desires – they were perfectly clear to Malagen once he felt her lips liven and returning the kiss. But the two words she spoke were mellisonant to his ears, announcing the fulfillment of everything he wanted right now. There was desire in those simple words, primal, uncontrolled, like a forest fire that was transforming from a spark to a furnace at an exponential rate. He let go of her wrists, allowing her hands to embrace him, pull him closer into a passionate kiss. Both of his hands passed over her rather scrawny, almost unfeminine body that was right now the embodiment of a perfect woman to him. They paused on her buttocks, squeezing them firmly and lifting her up effortlessly. With her arms interlocked around his neck and her legs doing the same around his waist, Malagen’s lips broke from her own and pressed against her neck.

He could’ve taken her right then and there, engage her in unhinged, animalistic intercourse with the wall being their only support, but this was not a night for a quick fuck. Skyler was special to him, the first in more ways then just one. With her, he for the first time actually felt what affection was all about, what meant to have sympathy and regret and woe. And with her he wanted to take this ritual of mating to a new level, unexplored by both them.

His lips – not so long ago cold and thin and lifeless – kept caressing her skin, returning to her own and their enticing taste and her shallow breaths as he carried them both to the bed. The gray dusty sheets were tattered and turned into bandages that now stood around his torso, collecting the blood that his wounds oozed due to the exertion, but neither of them seemed to notice it as they fell on the creaky mattress. To the left of them, the draft whined and whistled, bringing in the chill of the frigid exterior, but between the two the there was only heat, slowly climbing up to the inevitable climax. Skyler was so warm, warmer then that night in the abandoned house, her every touch awakening a portion of his frozen insides.

To what seemed like mutual disappointment, the kisses paused as his hands went to the hem of her shirt, deft in undoing the buttons despite the passion that seemed to cloud his judgment. Malagen mustered enough patience to unbutton them all, finally pushing the rugged cloth aside to reveal her pale, suave skin. She wasn’t a well-endowed girl, wasn’t gifted with a perfect milky tan of a dame, but that wasn’t what he saw today. What lay in front of him, ready to give herself to him, breathing fire in her lungs just like he did, was something incomprehensible to his mind. A more poetic soul would’ve said it was a piece of art, a piece of heaven embodied in a mundane shell, but to Malagen she was simply the cure for the itch that was following him throughout his entire life.

His hands undid her pants with the same resolved gentleness that seemed both patient and hasty, then proceeded to do the same with his own, and once again he lowered himself on her significantly smaller form, this time both of them without a single obstacle between their passion-consumed bodies. There seemed to be still some coyness in her, a remnant of fear that still twinkled in the corner of her eyes, and for the first time in forever Malagen actually took the emotions of others into consideration. Tonight wasn’t just about him. It was about both of them and he didn’t want for his rugged, uncouth demeanor to ruin it.

He kissed her once again, once again lacking the refinement and the trained gentleness of a tender lover, but then he paused and looked into her eyes. There was a threshold to be passed and he didn’t want to barge in unwanted. It was a point of no return, and he waited for the final confirmation from Skyler that would take them beyond it.

[skyler manfield]

Except for the shivering of her body, Skyler grew perfectly still as the barbarian undressed her, grey eyes never once leaving his face. Part of her was still scared to death. The other part though was stronger, and that part was impatient and wild, longing for this interval of lust to continue to its inevitable conclusion. It seemed to take an immeasurably long time for the stolen clothes to give way to alabaster skin and subtle curves, and as they did the shivering grew more pronounced. Not from cold or fear, at least Skyler didn't think so, but instead from anticipation as Malagen loomed above her.

He had paused, and seemed to be waiting for something, but Skyler did not think she could wait any longer. Her body was crying out for that which he was offering, and in silent affirmation, the assassin girl pulled Malagen to her, twining her long legs around him and drawing the barbarian closer.

As he entered her she cried out once, the sharpness of the pain suprising her, but easily pushed away as their bodies rocked against each other in a slowly increasing rhythm. He was moving so slowly, almost as though he was afraid to hurt her, but what had drawn her to him thus far was his refusal to treat her like some fragile ornament.

With a low growl, Skyler pushed them both into a sitting position, her legs straddling his waist, her knees on the bed and her arms around his neck. It was no longer a possiblity to let him continue to be the one in control. Almost violently she changed their rhythm to one of needful frenzy, her forehead against his shoulder as their bodies collided against each other, against the frozen air that drifted between them.

[Malagen]

She was a virgin – that much his passion-dazed mind could acknowledge from her scream – but after the first couple of moments she didn’t seem like she was having a man for the first time in her life. She urged him to pick up the pace, locking her long, well-toned legs around him and pulling him closer with her arms. In his hands she became a glowing ember and after every tender caress, every fierce stroke, there was heat following in its wake, enflaming their joined bodies. He kissed her again and again and again, catching each little moan she uttered, gazing at the spark of passion in her eyes that grew with each passing moment.

Soon enough it grew too large for Skyler’s body to contain it while lying on her back. She pushed him back – and admirable effort given her lithe form – and into a seating position. Her hands embraced him as she commanded the rhythm now, her nails inadvertently cutting into the skin of his back more and more with each motion she did. Malagen didn’t mind. The pain and the pleasure often went hand in hand, especially when there was a firecracker in his lap. In return he motioned her chin upwards and kissed her neck, tracing the contour of it, tasting Skyler’s sweat until he reached her shoulders and bit it just strong enough to leave a mark. It elicited a moan from the assassin girl, an unhinged burst of pleasure as she clung to him even more tightly, moving even more rapidly, turning that spark into a supernova that was about to explode.

He didn’t allow it yet though. As incredibly pleasurable as the sex was, he was the one in control and he decided to make it clear to her. His hand grabbed her by the elbows, breaking the embrace before he pushed her back down on the mattress. They both breathed heavily now, their sweaty chests rising and falling as if they just ran from one end of Slavar to the next. And they still had some running to do. The wind swept over their bodies like a silken sheet made out of icy tendrils, but neither seemed to get fazed by it. And in that instant, kneeling over her glistening naked body, Malagen did something that he seldom did. He smiled.

But before Skyler ever got a chance to protest or come at him like a nymphomaniac after a week of purdah, the barbarian grabbed her by the hips and rolled her on her stomach almost effortlessly. Her head snapped back, but there was no other movement that would obstruct his intentions. The Dram took her hands, put them on the headboard, his lips once again finding her own before biting into her neck. He drove into her again, this time more fiercely then before, his hands now squeezing her buttocks and pulling them in sync with the rhythm of his rapid pelvis movement. The buildup that was postponed several moments ago now returned at full force, Skyler’s shallow breaths and loud, dulcet moans signifying that it was reaching new peaks. Behind her, Malagen’s ferocity almost bordelined with savagery now, his long black hair tousled and swaying like a pendulum gone haywire.

The fire. The fire consumed them both. They were human and they were animals, and the mechanics and friction that the barbarian previously used merely to relieve himself of the pent up sexual tension became a united endeavor that led them to the realm of sheer delight. There was no stopping anymore, not when their muscles flexed and every iota of their body quivered in anticipation of that detonation that would signify a bittersweet end for them both.

[skyler manfield]

Skyler awoke to find herself still in Malagen's embrace. At some point, before they had both passed out from sheer exhaustion, one of them had closed the window - and thank goodness. The room was frigid even now; if the window had been left open they'd both be dead from exposure.

Extracting herself from the arms of the sleeping barbarian, Skyler carefully dressed herself. Leaving the room, with a backward glance at Malagen, she pulled her cloak around her and stepped outside the ranger outpost into the chill air of the morning. The pearlescent glow of predawn slowly expanded until at last morning shattered itself across the horizon like a stained glass window, the shards of color lighting the sky and dappling down through the forest and onto Skyler's face.


It had been an odd night, and Skyler's thoughts were a dirvish of confusion. Ecstasy tangled with excruciating pain, lust with loathing, fire with ice - even now part of her wanted to run, but yet she stayed and fought against the urge to return to the bed and wake the sleeping barbarian and relive the night before.

Skyler snapped out of her reverie as a branch snapped a few hundred feet away, and a shadow moved behind a tree. The assassin frowned, and remained still in the shadows, glad that she was not likely to be seen. The feeling of being watched grew stronger until she could hardly bear it, and with her natural stealth, Skyler stepped backward through the open door.

Instinct said to run. Go out the back and sneak away until she was out of Salvar. Forget the barbarian who slept in the next room, regardless of what had happened between them, what was happening between them. But she couldn't, no matter how easy it should have been to slip away and disappear from both whoever was watching and Malagen, Skyler couldn't just leave the man behind.

Stepping back to the window beside the door she'd gone out of, Skyler watched carefully, the hair rising on the back of her neck as two figures moved from tree to tree. She and Malagen could not stay any longer.

[Malagen]

Malagen didn’t wake up to be a new man. Regardless of what transpired between him and Skyler on the night before, regardless of the emotional constrains that he broke from during their intercourse, when he opened his eyes to the crummy interior of the cottage he was still the calculated murderer from the day before. Changes... They didn’t happen overnight, not even when something groundbreaking happened and especially not when it came to the barbarian and his machine-like mind honed to be thoughtless and indurate. There was too much wrong with him to be righted by a night of passionate sex, too much rotten and decayed to be mended by the kisses shared and the emotions awoken. So Malagen wasn’t reborn, wasn’t about to mellow down and become a touchy-feely wimp that would crawl on his belly and cater to Skyler’s every whim.

And yet, there was something. There was this sting inside his chest, this indeterminate feeling inside his gut, this strange voice in his mind that might’ve been conscience. Not goody-two-shoes kind of conscience that would make him see the mischief in his actions, but definitely something, a whisper that refused to be consistent with the indifferent, cold voice that usually reigned in his mind. It was almost like a completely independent train of thought that brought a different set of imagery before his mind’s eye, sensations that defied the placidity of his mind. It reminded of last night, brought back the taste of her skin, replayed the manner in which her body moved and flexed under his touch, showed him once again the fire in Skyler’s eyes. And while on any given day Malagen would evict such thoughts and deem them redundant, obstructing even, today they felt too good to be left to oblivion, too right, too warm.

So he decided to let them stay. The Dram didn’t know if this was the fabled love, but thought that if it was, it was highly overrated. But it gave him a compass, a direction at this point in life where he was on the run and fleeing without a coherent goal. The assassin girl was something that was here, something tangible, and while neither of them seemed like the family, touchy-feely type, she seemed like a good temporary acquisition.

Malagen didn’t know why Skyler stepped outside nor did he notice it. It was only when she returned to their room that he was finally torn away from slumber completely. His wounds were still aching, more so because of the exertion during the night, but it was a small price to pay. His insides reminded him of another necessity, making it clear that the last food he had was some half-rotten pickled cabbage and half of a sausage as tough as toe nails. However, there seemed to be no time to deliberate on the state of either his mind or his body. Skyler looked on her toes, peering through the window as if something was moving outside. Without a word spoken, the barbarian got up from the bed, leaving the dressing for later and approaching the window. Outside, a pair of figures wrapped from head to toe in what seemed like wolf furs slowly traversed the distance from the forest, advancing towards the cottage. They followed the exact path that the two of them took the day before, obviously following their tracks.

“Scouts.” Malagen said, his voice making it sound like a mere statement of the obvious. His mind did its calculation and it didn’t take him longer then several seconds to realize it was a lose-lose situation. They couldn’t outrun the scouts because the bastards obviously had a nose for sniffing out trails. And if they killed them, whoever sent them would know something was amiss which consequently meant a larger posse on their tails. Then he inputted the mountains in the equation in his head. The craggy area was only several miles behind the cottage, beginning what seemed like an impossible ascend towards the jagged, rocky peaks miles above. It was almost an impossible option given the fact that they had no climbing gear and no food, but it was a chance.

“We’ll go over the mountains. They won’t follow us beyond the mountains.” he said, turning away from the window and picking up his scattered clothes. The scouts were still far enough. If they moved right now and keep the cottage behind their backs, the pathfinders wouldn’t see them until they had a nice head start. And over such rough, snow-covered terrain they won’t be able to catch up before Skyler and Malagen reached the mountains. He dressed hastily, paying little heed to the sharp pain in his wounds and the trickles of blood that oozed from below the bandages. Once he was done, he led the way out the backdoor and into the harsh environment.

The wind was picking up. The snow could be smelled in the wind. Two figures braved the spotless pearly plain, a burly one plowing the way with a significantly smaller one following his lead. Despite all his calculations and attempts to foresee what would come out of this escape attempt and this peculiar relationship with Skyler, Malagen was left clueless. Luckily, the road before them was long. He would have plenty of time to untie that gordian knot.

((SPOILS: Intimidation – By establishing eye contact with his target, Malagen can make his foe think that he is inferior to him. This can have various effects, from making his enemies flee, making them uneasy and lose their focus, making them irritated and provoked by the indifferent annoyed chill in his eyes or it can have no effect at all if his opponent’s willpower is above average.))

[skyler manfield]

The odds were against the pair, but Malagen was right - escape through the mountains was their only possible option. Skyler tried not to dwell on the fact that even if the scouts who'd located them didn't catch them as they ran, the winter itself would. It was much too likely that the pair would never leave those forbidding peaks alive, especially not the way they were dressed and with no food or water.

"You're right," the assassin said quietly, following Malagen out the back of the cabin and into the snow. Her hair whipped around her face, and she pulled the hood of the cloak up against the bite of the ice that swirled around them angrily.

No matter how fast they went, Skyler always felt like the scouts must be just behind them. The sun crept up the sky, but did not lend any of its warmth to the fugitives; it only promised a colder night as it made its way to zenith. They stumbled over snow drifts, and fought off tree limbs that whipped at their faces, until finally they reached the treeline, and were left only with icy stones that balked their already exhausted and unsure feet.

It seemed hopeless, but Skyler knew there was nothing she could do but follow the resolute barabarian before her. What shelter they would find that night, or what they would eat or burn for warmth was all but impossible to dream of.

If they survived this, Skyler couldn't imagine what she would do or where she would go from here. Whether or not she and Malagen would seperate, whether she would find somewhere that was safe from the Syndicate, whether she would ever find Hawk. That didn't seem likely, since as far as she knew he was in Knife's Edge. She couldn't go there now.

Clenching her teeth against the wind and against the doubts that spun through her mind like the snow that swirled between the crevices of rock they climbed, Skyler decided that the only thing to do was simply to make it through this day. If they survived - if SHE survived - she'd worry about tomorrow when it came.

((Spoils-- Novice Thievery: Although Skyler has never been one for theft, it has become necessary to her to survive. The assassin has learned to use her skill of stealth in order to steal what she needs from those around her.

[AsukaStrikes]

And here’s my Decision Made in Due Time

Story

Continuity - 8/10

Both of you made an overall good effort in tying your previous locales into this getaway quest. Extra good job to Skyler for giving her enough reason to be thrown into the same pit as Malagen, who slaughtered an entire slave block.

Setting - 9/10

Vivid description given from the inside of the prison dungeon to the Salvic highland. The description during the chute-running was especially vivid – almost to the point of me losing my lunch right in front of the console. I could’ve sworn I smelled something, but then I realized it was all in my head. Admirable interaction with the environment as well as portraying it in vivid details – even somethings that most people would neglect i.e. the constant biting chills. The setting appeared quite consistent at most times and helped to set the readers in your universe. ^_^

Pacing - 8/10

Each post eased into one another very well. At times the story quickened and gave me a sense of urgency, especially during the last two posts that ended with a cliff-hanger. Also at times you made the readers linger around to soak in the atmosphere.

Skyler – You had a few recaps that were unnecessary, such as the ones in post 32. You did not need to reiterate what Malagen said outright to get the readers to understand you were reacting to his “command” about dumping the cargo. But you did not repeat that instance later on, so it was fine for the most part. Just remind yourself: “You don’t need to say it again.”

Character

Dialogue - 8/10

Malagen: As a heartless, emotionless killer, his dialogues came off as stoic and patronizing. I find it hard at times to actually believe that a person like him could say something so straightforward, but then again I haven’t exactly met a heartless, unemotional person myself. Therefore, it was a bit hard for me to visualize how Malagen would interact with other people via verbal communication. At points the speech sounded forceful, but not like it was out of his character. Malagen, in my perspective, is a rudely forceful person. That’s what made those stiff dialogues sounded so like him.

Skyler – A brash, reckless young assassin with the wits to boot. Her snarky words were not what I thought as common for assassins, but then again she is just a teen. But… A teen whose lives revolved around killing would not be so much as playful as loathing. Most of her words were true to her character, still, with extra vinegar behind each word.

Action - 7/10

Malagen: His actions were thoroughly understandable for the most parts, with the little bits of odd twitches here and there. Still, he looked a bit too capable with a malformed shoulder and broken ribs. I would expect him to be an extreme burden with that many broken bones, but I’m not too familiar with the Dram anatomy. If it were the same as a human, walking alone would be downright torturous – not to even speak of the little bed game you played later in the story.

Skyler: For someone who took a tumble through the sewer (with a sliced arm from the metal hook), she looked fairly capable and far too healthy to make such subtle movements during the clothing heist. An opened wound in a stream of sludge would most certainly have given her either blood poisoning (of the really bad kind) or a nasty gangrene within a few days. The Salvic winter could have made the pain more or less unnoticed compared to the bitter chills, but at least she should have noticed it as well.

For the rest of the story, your actions were justified for the most part. You two played a dangerous game of diplomacy and got out alive, for the most parts. Malagen kept Skyler in tow because he needed her as a tool. Skyler needed Malagen to guide her out of the dungeon in the beginning, though the later reasons for following him was a bit ambiguous at best. Even after the bed game, I was still pretty clueless why she kept following him.

Persona - 7/10

Malagen – I could see him slowly dissolving his anti-personnel shield away, though a part of him remained stoic and unemotional. In my country, this is called the “Coconut Syndrome” – Tough on the outside, but a really big softie on the inside. I would wonder if Skyler would finally crack his tough shell somewhere along the Salvic peaks?

Skyler – I did not see much internal thoughts or rationalization coming from the mind of a teen assassin. There are a few thoughts here and there, but they were sporatic and sometimes not very powerful. At this point in time, she is still not entirely three-dimensional but not two-dimensional at all now. Somewhere along the lines of a high-relief sculpture. Add some more internalized thoughts (which could count towards internal dialogues as well) and Skyler could be easier to interpret and sympathized with.

Writing Style

Technique - 7/10

Few errors, mostly from easily misspelled words and run-on sentences such as:


There were some ragged curtains at the window in the study they'd slept in, and although threadbare and quite dusty, they would do more for her feet than they were doing to keep light out - the grime that clung to the persistent frost on the window was doing an admirable job of that.

This could be split into two sentences and still retained the same meaning, leaving out a few details that seemed redundant or all-in-all unneeded.


In the study, there were some ragged curtains at the window that would do more for her feet than keeping the light out. Although the cloth was thread-bare and quite dusty, grime clinging to the frost on the window was doing an admirable job already.

Plus, don’t always trust what MS Words try to correct. Sometimes it is best left to the writer’s discretion, since the suggestions could be well worse than what was originally written. It is only a computer program, after all.

Mechanics - 8/10

There were a lot of simile usage and I see a hint of foreshadow coming from Malagen as well. Some words and images stuck vivid in my mind as I read over the story for a second time, noticing a few similarities here and there. An overall great job at using higher literary devices.

Clarity - 8/10

Some parts were clear as day (note the part about Setting) while some parts remained ambiguous and hard to figure out. Gratefully, there was more of the former and the story went along quite well. Some grammatical errors kept the reading from gliding seamlessly right through the entire story, but overall it did not detract from the enjoyment. Great job.

Misc

Wild Card - 8/10

Thanks for the heads-up about the N-17 Warning in the starting of the quest. I was at first reluctant if I wanted to have that image in my head but I also wanted to see why. Here’s my assessment of the aforementioned scene:

“Three posts of intimate pleasure, zero direct visualization saved for those familiar with smut stories.”

Admittingly, I have read a few of said “smut stories” myself on a separate website so I understand what went down that eventful night in the shack. Even though there was minimal visual description, I still blushed while reading that.

Also... Congratulations for a job well done!

FINAL SCORE – 78!

Malagen receives 2150 EXP, loses his starting gears and replaced with the ones at the end of the quest: Light-grey wool Sweater, bleached linen tunic, grey woolen pants (albeit somewhat itchy), a pair fur-lined dark brown boots, a rusty butcher knife. He also receives the skill Intimidation. -3 Salvar Reputation Points for Escaping Prison and Man-slaughter.

Skyler receives 1400 EXP, loses her starting gears and replaced with the ones at the end of the quest: Matted grey woolen sweater, bleached linen undertunic, fur-lined brown leather pants and a pair of fur-lined boots. She attains the skill Novice Thievery. -3 Salvar Reputation Points for Escaping and Man-slaughter.

All skills/abilities awarded are temporary until approval by the RoG upon your profile update.

[Cyrus the virus]

EXP added, Malagen levels up!