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With Malice Toward None

Started by Magyar, March 20, 2017, 01:35:51 PM

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Magyar

The dry rustling of dead leaves was the only sound to be heard from inside the small clay hut. It was a little cube shaped abode, one room, and one door. Outside, the sun baked what was once an aloe garden, but what was now a barren strip of sun bleached dirt adorned with a wilted and crisping aloe plant.

Her long spined stalks shifted against eachother and rasped aloud in the silence, giving an odd serenity to this desolate place. But it was also a reminder of what this place was. It was a place for death.

Inside the hut, in exception of the strip of light that laid in front of the doorway, for it had no door, the room was encased in a cool shadow. Like all houses built in Essyrn, this one was built with temperature control in mind, and kept the interior heavily shadowed. Inside, just close enough to the door to be partially lit, was a table. Wooden of make and old of years, the furniture looked like it had been long since better days. Cracks ran across it's top, and the wood had gnarled with age. That, though, would not be what drew attention to the small and rather insignificant table. No, it would be the deep crimson liquid that had drained into the cracks, and soaked into the grain that one would notice first. The dark liquid was dripping grin a corner of the table and had saturated the sand beneath it.

Beside the table lay a chair, sunken ever so slightly into the clay floor of the hut, and in that chair sat a man without his fingers.

In fact, it was from the stubs of what were once his ring and pinkie fingers that the blood, as that was what it was, had gushed from. Now, the pumping blood was at a weak stream, and the man from which it came was pale and his face drawn in its absence. He was a short man, stout and pudgy. His nose was large and hooked and his chin weak, but he had eyes like an eagle's, sharp and glaring. They had recently taken on a glazed look, and now stared lazily at the ceiling.

He wore a skirt, and a butcher's apron, but no shirt covered his rotund girth. He was a man fat on wealth that did not belong to him, complacent in a place where complacency kills. As to how specifically he ended up here, in a small hut so remote that if you were to climb upon it and gaze around, the only thing you would see is sand, in every direction for miles... that cannot be said. Who brought him here, however, can be mentioned. Lucian Blassköhl brought him here, personally, three days prior, and had severed his fingers.

Then he had left this man, this fat, gluttonous man, with no food, no water, and two less fingers. And he had nailed the butcher's knees to the chair as a fairwell present before he departed. Brys, as the man shall be named, had slowly been dying of dehydration, and blood loss. It would be soon. He could feel death's cold hands wrapped around his legs, even as they still throbbed in agonizing pain. Brys laid his head slowly backward, for he could move no faster than a crawl in his current state, and croaked out a plea to his gods, a plea to save him from eternal damnation, a plea for redemption, and most of all a plea of vengeance on Blassköhl, and his entire family. It was with his last syllable that he drew a rattling breath, and the life slipped from his body...



Brys came to in a basement, underground for sure, very confused. What was worse, was that he had all of his fingers, and his knees were not shattered. Nor was he dehydrated, in fact he felt just as well as he had three days ago, before Lucian had taken him. The pain still echoed sharply in his mind, and the agonizing thirst was faint, like a memory of an injury long past, but here he was.

Brys began to weep, both in joy for knowing that he was not dead in the sand, but also in sorrow, for in the past three days he had experienced the most painful and mentally taxing experience he had ever faced. And he had thought over his experiences, he had repented in all but name. It seemed the gods had granted him mercy, and a second chance.

"How do you feel Brys?" A voice said to him. He knew that voice. Blassköhl.

Brys recoiled, sliding against the damp stone of the cellar, his eyes wide in fear and confusion. How could Lucian be here? In fact, how did he get here himself?

"Did you enjoy your little vacation?" Again the voice from darkness, and Brys had no answer, "I trust you will be reporting exactly how much coin you make from now on?"

Brys did not understand what had happened, or how, but he could guess as to why. His greed had resulted in this nightmare. In his terror, he nodded in agreement to Lucian's question. The next thing he heard was a high pitched whistle and then all went black.


The Butcher would wake in his own home, soon, but by then Lucian would be on his way back to the gang headquarters. He needed rest. Inducing such an illusion, compressing three days into half an hour, was taxing. Brys would, if he was smart, start giving a truthful representation of his earnings to the Sandlillies. If not, his next encounter with the Son in the South would not be so imaginary.

Lucian, although stoic and cold to the world on the journey from the outer slum to his inner city apartments, was anticipating the headquarters. He enjoyed the company of his long time friends, and had words for a few. Goyne, their number cruncher, would need to be updated on the status of the butcher's income. He wanted to speak to El'sahm about ordering more alcohol for the upcoming party the Sandlillies were hosting, and he wanted to speak to Zira. Even if he couldn't always get out what he wanted to say, simple conversation with her calmed his nerves. The two men who had accompanied him to the Butcher's territory stalked behind him like dogs to their master. Lucian snorted at the comparison; It wasn't so far from the truth.

DragonSong

The headquarters were surprisingly spacious and lavish, but to Zira they were stifling. She needed to be out, she needed to run.

Failing that, she at least needed to get away from Goyne's incessant muttering about incomes and profit margins. Gods, one of these days she was going to go cat and bite that damn counting hand, she just knew it.

The shifter sighed, rolling onto her back and letting her tail flick lazily as she mentally berated herself. She needed to be calmer. Why was she so anxious lately? It wasn't like she didn't know how important Goyne's work was, most of the time she even liked the man. Why was she so on edge.

With a soft huff, she rolled back onto her side, eyes flicking out from her perch on the slatted balcony out over the city. Her tail flicked back and forth in slow, sweeping strokes, paws kneading absently at the wood beneath her as she basked in the sunlight.

Suddenly her rounded ears flickered and she sniffed, then raised her head. Her mouth opened and tongue flicked out in a quick cat-smile and she gave a soft "Rrrow!", alerting anyone in the building in earshot that their boss had returned.

In quick, graceful movements she jumped from the balcony to the first story's roof, slid down the gentle slope, then jumped to the stone of the street. With a happy chirp, she came bounding out to greet Lucian and the two men he'd taken with him- it wasn't so odd a sight in Essyrn to see an exotic pet greet her master in such a way, though Zira would have hated the comparison.

Magyar

"Hello Zira," Lucian said, stone-faced. His smiles were rare and usually came about for odd reasons. Still, he extended a hand in offering to the cat shifter, as one would a dog. It didn't help that he smelled of a cellar, Lucian was still Lucian.

"Would you guess who I ran into today, on my way back from the butcher's?" He asked, indulging her in conversation he knew she enjoyed. Personally, he couldn't care less for the seemingly meaningless exchange, but he also knew that she would pester him with questions and witticisms if he didn't give her something to chew on first.

Zira was one of his oldest companions, from here anyways, and as such, she had earned special privileges over the years. His tolerance of her extroversion for instance, or the fact he extended himself to her in any way at all. Lucian wasn't solitary so much as violently reclusive, like an angry wolf who's been kicked out of the pack. He would bite and snarl at any who approached, except for the cheetah who had been his first true friend here.


DragonSong

The cheetah chirped again and rubbed her head against his palm, but quickly pulled back to give him space. She liked the touch, but she knew better than to push him after a long day.

Padding along beside him, the cat suddenly had two legs, tail shrinking away as she rocked up onto bare human feet and tilted her head at him, her multitude of braids falling around her face. The sarong and wrapped breastband that had been enchanted to stay with her through a shift were her only coverings as she walked along beside him, more or less ignoring the two guards.

"Who?"

Magyar

"The Elf-Orc," He told her, swinging the double-hinged door open in front of them, "Y'know, the girlishly attractive one, Bounty Hunter. He brought some companionship this time, but I'd be damned if it wasn't another freed slave. He's too self-righteous not to set loose every poor soul in a pair of shackles he sees."

Lucian walked through the door into a velvet hall, pausing momentarily to remove the slippers he wore outdoors. Lined with precious metallic light fixtures, the hall that led to the common room was probably worth more by itself than the entire upper floor where he had met Bolion some twenty minutes prior.

DragonSong

Zira quirked an eyebrow as she followed him. "You mean Bolion?" She'd never actually spoken to the bounty hunter- the only time she'd met him she'd been in cat form, but he did leave an impression.

She shrugged. "Not everyone is lucky enough to be traded away to the Sandlilies to pay off a debt," she pointed out casually. "If he wants to free them, that's his business, isn't it?"

Magyar

"Perhaps," Lucian replied, "Until he's freeing slaves from our business partners, or burning down drug dens out of a sense of moral obligation."

Lucian walked toward the second door they'd come to since entering the building, an iron faced slab of reinforced titanium, with hinges thicker than sapling oaks. This door was not so easy to open. Lucian had a password but didn't bother to so much as knock. He was tired, and all he had to do was give a mental signal to the bouncer on the other side. The slab swung inward as he approached it, not a hitch in his stride. This was his kingdom, this prime real estate, and inside it he was supreme.

DragonSong

The shifter fell back into her place just behind and beside Lucian- closer than most people dared to get, but still distinctly separate. She shrugged.

"Well, if he does, you just give him a warning. He'd back off quick enough, I'm sure." She tilted her head the other way. Something in her old friend's scent was...off. Anxiety, maybe? No, that wasn't quite it. That was completely out of character for him anyway.

She didn't ask. If he wanted to talk to her about it, he would. Otherwise, she'd probably only piss him off by asking.

Magyar

Lucian shook the tension from his hand and blinked away the tiredness of the road, kicking off his sandals. He let himself drop into a beanbag chair, a leather bag filled with tiny dried beans; Hence the name, Beanbag. Lucian sunk into the chair, sighing, and snapped his fingers at a dark skinned man.

"Alan, I'd like a glass of cold water," He said, "And a mango, and a knife." Alan left immediately, giving only a nod in Lucian's direction before going to find that glass and mango.

"Would you tell Goyne that our Butcher was taking more than one hundred pounds of silver for himself every month for the last three months, and have him adjust our income budget for that, Zira? I'd appreciate it," He asked, sparing a look the shifter's way.

DragonSong

"Of course." She nodded, though her eyes flickered over him in a worried sort of way. He seemed tired. Well, he was usually tired, she supposed- perhaps she was being too precious about it.

Shaking the thought away, she slipped out of the room to find Goyne. The man had set up shop on the second floor and she knocked at the door to the makeshift office.

Magyar

A muffled voice came from behind the door, something along the lines of, "I'm busy, leave me alone!"

That was just Goyne's way of saying hello, however, and he promptly opened the door to find Zira waiting for him. He smiled widely and extended his arms before stepping back and gesturing to his tiny accounting room.

"Welcome to my abode," He said cheerfully. Risiart Goyne was a northern man, of the same nomadic people that Lucian hailed from. Lucian had brought him down south a few years ago, as he trusted only one of his own kin to do something so essential as keep financial records for the organization. As such, he was tall, like Lucian, and thin as well. They were actually second cousins, Blassköhl and Goyne, and Goyne shared many of Lucian's features as well, inherited from a shared great-great-grandparent. One major difference was his nose, large and hooked, taken from his grandfather, a southern man. Goyne was older, however, and was nearing his forty-eighth year. His hair was close-shaven, but he wore large mustaches and his chin had a light dusting of stubble. "You never drop by of your own volition. Is Lucy back?"

DragonSong

The cheetah shifter quirked an eyebrow as she swayed her way into the room. "Can you blame me? Gods, man, you keep so many books and papers in here it smells like the musty end of a library." She crinkled her nose dramatically, but there was no real bite in her tone.

She nodded and leaned back against the door frame at his question. "Mhm. Wanted me to tell you the butcher took a hundred pounds silver once a month for the last three, asked if you could adjust the income."

Magyar

Goyne crinkled his own nose, and asked, "That fat man, Brys?"

He walked back over to his desk, steeped as it was in piles of paper and thick volumes of printed records. The walls all had shelves filled to the brim with such papers, floor to ceiling, but each filed and sorted especially to Goyne's liking. It was a maze to anyone else, but Goyne could find what was needed at any given time on the turn of a dime.

"I'll have to if he was packing that much away. Three hundred pounds of minted silver... That's a lot for a low-level provider. Lucy probably scared the shit out of him for it. Poor man." Goyne wasn't being sarcastic either, and he wasn't exaggerating. Lucian's methods of punishment were well known, and had left people emotionally unstable and mentally broken before. If he had opted to scare Brys, he could very easily inspire real terror. Goyne did feel a measure of sympathy for Brys as well. He'd once asked Lucian what he could do, and Lucian had replied by showing Goyne one of his darkest fears and then one of his greatest desires in a split second. It had given the older man a new respect for Lucian's boundaries, to say the least.

DragonSong

Zira frowned slightly, but she didn't comment. She knew as well as anyone what Lucian could do- it had been quite a strain on their early friendship, when she realized how easily he could make someone come undone. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't been scared of him, and she could tell he knew it.

But she also knew he never did anything without a reason, and she'd chosen to trust those reasons. "Yeah, well. So you've got the numbers then? Need anything else?"

Magyar

"Ahm... Yea. You can tell Lucy we're now above the budget we need for his party, and can if need be, pay both our operational fees and add a little extra to the party budget. You can also add in that we can increase tobacco production at a lower cost, but only if we pay Connie's men for it, and shift all of our current stock to her holdings. That way we don't have to mortgage out the drug den from those dicks north of the Delta, and we can fuse the opium dens with lower incomes to increase our total profit from the areas. On the topic of opium, we've also invested into that rooftop garden system, and it's rather expensive, so we'll have to muscle down on the protection money to finance it."

Goyne glanced up from his sheaf of papers and noticed the slightly bored expression of his guest. He said then, "Or you can just tell him I need to talk to him later."

DragonSong

Her eyes hadn't exactly glazed over, but she certainly wasn't paying as close attention as she could have been. "Ah, yeah, I will. Thanks, Goyne."

She pushed off the door frame and tripped lightly back down the hall to the room where she'd left Lucien.

"He says he's fixed it, and something about the drug den and the party and paying Connie's men- I dunno, you should probably talk to him," she said breezily as she entered the room.

Magyar

Lucian raised an eyebrow at Zira's lackluster explanation, turning his head in the beanbag chair. He made a mental note to visit Goyne before he went to sleep but didn't prioritise it. If it was urgent, Goyne would find him. At the very least he would have told Zira to emphasize her message.

"What's wrong?" Lucian asked, "You seem... perturbed. Goyne didn't bore you that much, did he?"

DragonSong

The shifter snorted and flopped down beside him, using a corner of the chair to rest her head as she twisted onto her back to look up at him. "Maybe it did. Your cousin is not an interesting man, Lucy," she pouted dramatically, simplifying the relationship between the two men casually.

Magyar

Lucian's eyebrow remained raised, and he added, "If he hasn't grown on you in the three years you've known him, I doubt you'll ever find him interesting."

He watched Zira, his expression dry and almost bored. He was really thinking and probing, trying to get a read on his friend. She'd known his mental touch long enough to be able to pick him out among her thoughts, but that was half the fun. If he could get his information without her knowing, was essentially his game. He was combing carefully through her thoughts, trying to understand what had her so uncomfortable. Maybe it was himself, he thought, and a grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. It didn't get much farther than that. However, the thought that his mannerisms would still set her on edge after so long amused him.

DragonSong

It took longer than normal for her to notice the tickle in the corner of her mind. Eyes closed, she frowned, then smirked to herself. Furrowing her brow slightly, she concentrated on a single thought, throwing into to the front of her mind in an effort to block Lucian's probing with the spectacle.

He knew she didn't appreciate being snooped on, served him right.

The image she chose was half memory and half a conjured fantasy, something she'd idly considered in passing and had deemed useful for just such an occasion, but hadn't had the chance to test before: an image seen through her eyes, looking down at her own body as pale fingers traced the spots over her shoulders and slipped around to her breasts, hands sliding to her hips to lift them and the fantasy lover lowered his mouth to her, making her spine arch and her breath hitch.

She cracked an eye open, hoping she caught Lucian off-guard and wanting to see his reaction.

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