How could I confront sothing horrific? How was I ant to move on with the knowledge that soone so vile could walk the earth just the sa as ?
Intellectually, I knew people like Seph existed, it’d be foolish to claim otherwise. I could even make a few educated guesses as to why the witch would consign her son to such a fate. But I wasn’t forced to confront that reality until it beca my reality, and wasn’t that just a pathetic string of syllables to say that I kept myself willfully ignorant?
I knew now, and I couldn’t not know.
So I chose the simple option, I chose to ignore it.
Instead I’d been thinking of my training, and how I could prepare my magic pathways for another droplet of power. I could go to each, one by one, and train them to a point where I’d be capable of moving despite the pain. That would take too long, and the cerebral task of figuring out a solution was infinitely better than confronting the horror that is life.
I tried to condense two points at once, and while it was possible, it also took too much focus in the midst of pain.
Sothing I couldn’t push past no matter how hard I tried, but it was sothing to do. That interspersed with forming a mana ball provided enough training for my mind to settle. For it to calm, and I opened my eyes to find sunlight streaming into my room.
Morning gave a reminder that ti moved, no matter the circumstance.
I got up from my ditative position on the floor and stretched out a few kinks. I flooded my brain with so mana to deal with the fatigue, but only so. It woke up a bit thankfully, just enough for to go about my day.
I opened the door to my inn and walked down the steps, giving my morning greeting to the innkeeper with altogether too much cheer. The man seed delighted by my chipper attitude, how ironic. Nice fellow, not an idiot but he felt like it sotis with how much he pretended to enjoy our conversations.
I was paying an exorbitant amount to be here, so it made so degree of sense.
I walked past the crowds without hurry, even stopping for conversation with a few strangers at so points in the day. So of them ask if I was okay, the news from yesterday’s stabbing moved fast when you were an elf it seed. I nodded and told them that Healer Ken was a miracle worker. Which wasn’t a lie, just a subtle implication that I went to see him for the wound.
I made it to the hunters guild whistling a tune from my old world, it was freeing in a way, how none here could tell that I shouldn’t know such things. Most just assud it was so exotic elven tune.
I found Argyle already going through the process of butchering a deer and joined in the open spot next to the boy, grabbing my own piece of wildlife to skin and dissect. We stayed in companionable silence for a while, as was the norm, with Argyle’s guard watching on exasperated. Poor fellow, watching his lord do nial labour, I was surprised that whoever led the Rhombal house still permitted the boy to co here.
Eventually, after just an hour or so, we were called over by the head butcher.
“You two’ve never dealt with a monster's corpse before, have ya?” the muscular woman said, big ass knife resting over her shoulder.
“No ma’am,” I said for the both of us, and Argyle nodded along.
She nodded back. “Alright then, this’ll be a first then. The two’ve you have done good enough work where I can trust ya with a basic monster. I need yous to bleed a few scale wolves for , ya? Nothing complex, soone else will de-scale the bastards, I just want yous to collect the blood.”
“Why?” Argyle’s eyes seed to shine with the question, and the butcher lady let out a rry chuckle.
“Simple, noble boy. Monsters aren’t like all the rest of the wildlife you’ve been gorin’, they’re special. Each drop of blood can be used for so elixir or other by the alchemists. Sothing to do with mana, it always is with those fools. Go on to Irin, she’ll show yous the basics, ain’t nothing too hard.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Argyle practically skipped at where the butcher was pointing, leaving bemused as I followed. The boy was a little obsessed with butchering. To the point where I couldn’t tell if he let people address him so familiarly because he didn’t care for it, or because he was too distracted by the next carcass.
Irin was waiting for us next to half a dozen scale wolf carcasses, a raised brow of amusent at the excitent Argyle practically exuded. He despaired quickly enough once Irin determined we wouldn't make a ss of the place and left, realizing that bleeding a monster involves a lot of standing around.
Awkwardly.
I decided to save the boy from his fate, if only out of sympathy. “So, what’s a noble find themselves doing with most of their day? Watch the masses starve or so shit?” Oop, that might’ve been too harsh.
He blinked and looked at with a bit of confusion. “What do you an? Everyone’s fed in Anik.”
I couldn’t help it, that was so out of left field I actually barked out a laugh, then had to reign it into a series of barely controllable chuckles once I saw the guard’s face darken and Argyle’s confusion grow.
“You’re serious?” I said. “You really think people don’t starve in this city? Have you been to the south?”
The boy blushed out of embarrassnt and looked down. “No…father says a noble shouldn’t be seen in that part of the city.”
“Ah yes, too good for the filthy masses?” I said with a little too much bite.
“Watch your tone girl,” the guard growled. “Lest you be flogged for your insolence.”
Argyle paniced and stuttered out so words at the guard, sothing along the lines of there being ‘no need’, but I didn’t pay attention to that. Instead I smiled sothing sharp and sardonic. Spreading my arms wide like an invitation.
“Co and try , shrimpdick. I’ve t plenty of things scarier than the prospect of being flogged,” I said.
He stepped forward, storm brewing on his face with a hand on the poml of his blade, and I recognised that maybe I’d taking this a bit too far. That was the sensible part of , the chaotic part wanted a bit of violence right now. If only as a pleasant distraction.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t ant to be.
Argyle stepped in the way of the guard, and I couldn’t see his face but it was sothing that stopped the guard in their tracks. “That’s enough,” he said with a tone of finality and authority I never expected out of the boy. “When I tell you to stop, you listen. You do not continue to threaten my friend.”
“But my lord-”
“Leave,” Argyle growled. “Wait by the guild's entrance for when I am to return, I forbid you from this place so long as I am here.”
The guard's mouth clacked shut, and he looked at the boy with a hint of…betrayal? I almost felt bad for the sycophant if he wasn’t about to try and cut down. Plenty of people turned away, pretending to have been minding their business as the guard marched away downcaste, and I found the whole ordeal a tad too dramatic.
Then I realized I’d been silent for too long, and Argyle had been waiting for to say sothing.
“Thanks,” I said.
He gave a calculating gaze I was only used to seeing when the boy was focused on butchering corpses. “What’s wrong? You’re brash, but never so brash that you’d willingly risk your life over sothing petty.”
“People starving under the care of the magistrate is sothing petty?” I snorted.
“That’s not what I an, and you know it.”
I was struck by how blunt the boy decided to be, the blushing and embarrassnt from his usual interactions with seemingly gone in their entirety. I looked at him and saw real worry on his face. Not offence for being disrespected, not hurt for being insulted, but worry.
Worry for a friend who was lashing out like a child.
Unfortunate that I couldn’t tell him a witch tried to have killed with her thrall son because I was the apprentice of a greater witch. That likely wouldn’t end well.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
I regretted it almost as fast as I said it, so hurt flashed in the boy's eyes, but he masked it well enough with a smile. “Very well,” he said.
There was a return to the awkwardness from before I made my stupid little comnt, but it didn't last long as this ti Argyle was the one to break the silence.
“Perhaps…you could show the citizens starving under my watch?” he said. “Take a visit to the south soti? I’m sure I’ll be plenty safe with you and Rom.”
I raised a brow at him. “Yeah, no. Not unless you’re willing to dress like a peasant.”
“I can do that,” he chirpped.
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