A Lesson in Will-Bending

[Fenris]

((closed to Khariss))

The last ray of pumpkin-hued sunset had ebbed from the small room's window hours ago. It had been even longer since Fihrinn had last moved.

The room below him lay exactly as it had on his entry. Not a grain of dust was misplaced. Granted, there wasn't much to disturb, besides the standard Silver Pub bedding, small table, and lamp. His target carried his belongings with him. Probably for good reason.

Fihrinn wondered for a while how Sevrath felt, seeing posters all over the city promising lucrative prizes for his demise.

Well...no. He didn't wonder. He knew what it was like.

He knew what it was like to be chased, mercilessly, by men hoping to exchange your blood, your skin, for added weight in their pockets. The feeling was not foreign.

Neither foreign was the feeling of a cage. Fihrinn had heard of how this man used his shamshir to bend creatures to his will, to use their desire to live to turn them into lifeless puppets. The urge to growl nearly overcame him.

Unfortunately, Khariss Sevrath, I have something to teach you. When you bend wills, they bite back.

His blades were pressed against his torso, carefully turned away from any possible source of light. They would gleam before the night was over--but only in due course. No poison lay in their veins. He wanted Khariss awake for every second his blood drained away.

Raucous guffaws still drifted up from the tavern below--but a man could only hold so much ale. The target would be here soon.

[Khariss Sevrath]

“…and in the middle of the bar, the girl was a flirt
turned every man’s head with a flip of her skirt…”

An off-key voice rang loudly up the stairs, tunelessly singing a bar ditty. Khariss Sevrath, head of the Illicit Entrepreneurs, followed the alcohol-influenced notes up the stairwell. Rum sloshed back and forth in the bottle held in one careless hand, and numerous wet spots on his shirt spoke mutely of the gulps that never made it to his mouth. He weaved with each shaky step up the wooden stairs, eyes slightly unfocused.

Could anyone blame him for wanting to drink? The entire city would have stormed the Silver Pub, had it known exactly who the famed inn housed at that moment. Bounty notices were nailed to practically every fencepost and every tree in the city. Khariss thanked his good fortune that the description on those papers was rough at best.

He had to admit, however, that the size of the bounty was flattering.

Whump. One of the narrow steps in the dark staircase caught his foot, sending him reeling into the rough, wooden wall. The tipsy man’s voice broke off the bawdy song to bark one particularly lurid word in the same loud voice.

“Fuck!”

Miraculously keeping his balance but obtaining a painful splinter in his right hand in the process, the entrepreneur continued his unpredictable path up the steps.

The man reached the top of the stairs and blinked a few times, trying to clear the haze clouding his mind enough to remember which room he had bought for the night. The hallway was dark and narrow, the walls plain and unadorned. Three doors lined the hall on each side, and five of them probably already housed slumbering occupants. Khariss continued his unsteady walk down to the last door on the left. Were he more alert, he would have noticed that it was already open.

Tripping into the nearly pitch-black room, blissfully unaware of the danger he was in, the man sat gracelessly on the scarcely-visible side of the bed. Unbuckling his iron sword from his back, the merchant eased the leather case to the bed behind him. At that moment, a spell of dizziness overcame him. With a groan, the man’s bearded face sunk into his hands as he tried to dispel the nauseating feeling. The night was likely to be a long one. Perhaps the barkeeper had been right when he had told Khariss to call it a night.

Three hours ago.

[Fenris]

The taint of alcohol drifted into the darkness as Sevrath's dissonant voice drew closer.


His father's eyes snapped open. The older wolf made no sound, but he smiled and silently nodded toward the clearing. Soon after that, Fihrinn caught it too--the faintest waft of venison and deer-hide, and female-scent. Soon after that came the whispering of bush leaves, and then the deer herself, tearing blithely at clumbs of foliage, completely oblivious to the two pairs of hunters' eyes watching her from across the clearing...


Khariss staggered into the room, collapsing on the cheap bedding. Fihrinn smiled.

Enter Mouse. Let the games begin.

Silent as the new moon, he drew his legs up along the thick rafter, sinking the claws on his feet into the thick, splintering wood, and swung down. Quickly but soundlessly, he extended his arms through the slightly-chilled open air of the room. Without so much as a whisper of fur, he lifted Sevrath's sword, holding the leather against the hilts of his blades, and engaged his abdomen, curling back up to his hiding place.

And now, the door...

[Khariss Sevrath]

The nausea gradually subsided, and the semi-inebriated man opened his eyes. The room, while it wasn’t pitch-black like it had been before, was still pleasantly dark. Absently, he pulled the stopper out of his rum bottle with a pop and took a swig. The familiar burn flared in his throat once again, but to Khariss it now only felt like a dull tingle. One couldn’t drink as much as he had over the course of his lifetime without developing some tolerance. The liquor sloshed as he gulped down another swallow. Good stuff it was, a drink fit for kings.

Well… no, not kings. Kings, from what Khariss had heard, had little taste for the “common man’s drink.” They much preferred aged wine. The alcoholic made a face. That was one thing he had never developed a taste for. It was just too damned sweet, in his opinion. His carefree mind worked its way back to its original problem. A drink fit for… a drink fit for…

Hell, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter anyway. Shrugging to himself, Khariss’s reached behind him for his sword. He wanted to look at the blade. It had been awhile since he had inspected it, since he had searched its marred surface for any new nicks and dents. His searching hand, however, found nothing but bedding.

Khariss froze.

Why wasn’t it there behind him? His eyes narrowed suspiciously, mind working furiously…

Eh. It had probably just fallen off the other side of the bed when he hadn’t been paying attention. That was it. Smiling happily at his solution, the merchant took one more pull on his bottle before replacing the stopper. Setting the dwindling drink on the bedside table, Khariss lay back and closed his eyes.

[Fenris]

Mentally, Fihrinn sighed. He had almost hoped the sword would tip Sevrath off, put him on alert. It might have made things more interesting. Ah well. He couldn't expect much from a man drowning in alcohol.


"Careful, son. Never assume the hunt is over until the kill is gutted and skinned. Pride is a good hunter's worst enemy."

"Yes, father."


He waited, motionless, crouched on his haunches atop the rafter. A moment later a soft breeze blew against the inn, causing the walls and beams to creak softly. Masked by the sound, he slipped across the expanse to the rafter above the doorway. The breeze faded.

Again, he dug in his claws and swung down, nudging the door closed and curling back into the shadows.

The latch clicked shut.

[Khariss Sevrath]

Not even Khariss, nearly drunk and wishing for nothing more than a good night’s sleep, could have missed the alarm bells that sounded when the door clicked shut of its own accord. The merchant’s eyes snapped open and he bolted upright, hand automatically reaching for his concealed dagger. He immediately regretted the quick movement, however, when the dizziness returned. Blinking his eyes several times in an effort to dispel the woozy feeling, Khariss probed the sudden darkness with bleary eyes. Nothing. The only light in the room came from the crack beneath the closed door, and it was nowhere near enough to be able to see.

The merchant stretched a hand out to the door, trying to feel if anybody was present. His fingers felt nothing but air, and he nearly overbalanced and fell from the bed. He recovered and sat back on the bed, heart pounding from the near-embarrassment. Once again, the dizzy feeling intruded on his senses, making him feel as if he was spinning in a circle. A shaking hand reached up to massage his temples with little effect.

The door. Khariss cursed inwardly. Why did weird things have to happen when he was intoxicated and so easily distracted? It wasn’t fair. He groaned audibly and eased back onto the lumpy pillows, eyes staring straight up at the rafters and the ceiling beyond.

A chill washed up his spine, and the icy hand of terror sunk into his insides.

Up near the ceiling, a pair of eyes stared back at him, never blinking, never moving. A surprised yelp escaped his lips, and he pulled the steely dagger from its sheath at the small of his back. Paranoia be damned. It was the middle of the night, and this man was hiding, trapping him in his room. No good could come of this event.

Especially given Khariss’s current position. When nine out of ten men in Radasanth would have turned the entrepreneur in had they only known his name, he had a reason to fear the worst from every confrontation.

[Fenris]

Fihrinn smiled. The deer had finally caught its hunter's scent--but now, it was backed up against a wall, and the revelation brought only fear and panic.

Khariss probed the pitch, slipping a hand under his cloak to his back. He had another weapon there. Fihrinn could practically see the ale sloshing around in the man's mind. Fool...the city thirsts for your blood, and you drink yourself to stupor... The drunken vagabond moaned, and laid back onto the bed--

Their eyes met. The prey yelped, and steel flashed in the glow of the cracks of the doorway.

I've got your tail, Mouse. Try and run.

"How does it feel, Sevrath?" He shifted his weight, hoping his eyes still gleamed out of the shadows. "To be the prey before the hunter? How does it feel..."

Grabbing the rafter with his left paw, he rolled off, suspending himself for just a moment, his legs and paw against the plank, before dropping to the floor. Now three blades gleamed in the thin slats of light.

"...when it's your throat against the blade?"

[Khariss Sevrath]

It took a moment for the malicious words to seep through the wall of intoxication erected in the corrupt merchant’s mind. Once they did, however, even Khariss realized that something was amiss. Not even his drunken haze could mask the enmity, the grudge that this new figure bore against him.

A hundred responses to the question leapt to the man’s mind, and amazingly the entrepreneur chose one that didn’t worsen his position: silence. Anything the merchant said at that moment would likely fall on deaf ears. Khariss had no idea what the man’s problem was. The only thing the enraged figure was likely to understand was action.

Damn that last shot of rum…

The merchant was in no position to cope well with this brand of ‘action.’

Nonetheless, Khariss responded. He immediately rolled out of the bed to his feet, away from the dagger-wielding foe. It was a move that would have been graceful had it not ended in a clumsy crash into the wall. Such acrobatics were best saved for ones who had their wits about them. Peering through the gloom, the bleary-eyed man tried to keep track of his shadowy adversary. That was when the dizziness kicked back in. Even at the best of times, one does not want to rise to one’s feet so quickly. This definitely wasn’t the best of times for Khariss.

His world spun around, threatening to send him toppling into the wall once again. Dropping involuntarily to a crouch, the man groaned and massaged his temples with his free hand.

“Do we have to fight now?” he complained aloud to his stalker. “I’m not egshackly feeling too good right now.” It was a futile plea for peace, to be sure, but what was the harm in trying? It was just like his unofficial creed in business dealings: the chance that was most likely to fail was the one that was never taken.

A slow smile dawned on Khariss’s face. He was proud of that thought.

[Fenris]

Fihrinn resisted the urge to roll his eyes. For all his righteous rage, this was going to be disappointingly anti-climactic. However, as he advanced through the dark, it was nice to see his prey resort to the only course of action its breed of coward knew: begging.

"You know, Sevrath, I'm feeling reasonable. I'll show you the same mercy you've shown to all the men and women victimized by your corruption and greed."

Smells of thick ale, fear, and his own rage saturated the air, and he spun one knife around his wrist.

"That said, you should be worried."

He rushed then, sweeping down with his arms and blades to pin the man against the wall.

[Khariss Sevrath]

The more threats the wolf-man threw at him, the more Khariss felt there was something wrong here. Beyond the obvious – an attempt on his life was never a positive thing, after all – the conflict itself didn’t add up. His foe seemed to bear some grudge, some undying thirst for retribution, but the drunken merchant had never even seen him before.

His thoughts, however, were cast aside when his adversary made his move. The shadowy assassin lunged across the room with speed made even more impressive by Khariss’s current state of mind. As forceful as the charge was, however, it was apparently designed to pin, rather than kill. The knives weren’t held in grips that suggested lethal intent. In response, he dropped to the floor, his own blade held at the ready.

Too slow. His mind just wasn’t prepared to react with that kind of speed. Instead of passing over him, the enemy’s arms connected with his head, snapping it back into a rough collision with the wall. Stars burst in the entrepreneur’s eyes as he fell the rest of the way to the ground, his knife dropping away from his fingers with a loud, steely clatter. Between the booze and the blow to the head, it was amazing that Khariss maintained consciousness. That, however, wasn’t much of a blessing. He was still stunned, merciless against whatever the wolf-man decided to do next.

Perhaps it would have been better had he been knocked out. At least then he wouldn’t have been aware of his fate.