Artificial light painted the cavern's ceiling into something like a starry night, but those weren't really stars mere feet above, but small crystals gleaming in wand light.
Crystals of the same composite as the ones embedded in the dwarf's city ceiling had been quite intentionally placed here. Grooves were drilled and stone embedded, but the wizard had no inkling as to why.
Theodore's wandlight flattened the dwarf-sized tunnels, making them seem more open than they truly were. A shallow breath reminded the wizard that all that openness was a deception.
Theodore had taken a smaller form to accommodate these tunnels, and despite his desire to transfigure them larger, he knew he had made the right choice. The economical one at least
The deep roads, as Theodore had taken to naming them, were dank, dark, and cold, but it was the childlike form he took, not the place he found himself, that left him the most uncomfortable.
Theodore took a breath in and a breath out, and found neither to be deep enough.
The wizard couldn't breathe the same in this small form as he would usually, and he couldn't move as fast either, with muscles contracted to nothing or child size.
Ice-cold stone pressed against Theodore's hand as he held it for support as he squeezed through into another crossroads of the maze, and like before, the walls expanded like lungs taking a full breath.
There was space enough to accommodate his full form, and so he allowed himself to grow and let his lungs drink in their first full breath of dank air since his last crossroads hours before.
This crossroad came with seven choices this time. Seven tunnels fell dark beyond his wandlight.
Theodore didn't ponder long about which he should take; he chose the central tunnel, as he'd done twice before.
Like a scattershot, the labyrinth complexified each tunnel, intertwining with the two beside it. The middle allowed for the most drift.
The wormways between tunnels would allow Theodore to squeeze his way past collapses. These ancient tunnels, which were poorly made at the time, had many of them.
Theodore heard the faint scratching of something sharp against stone and winced as it rang like thunder in the dark.
The metamorphmagus turned, intensifying his lit wand until it was a beam, only to see nothing. The light sundered darkness to find not even a shadow of what had made the noise.
The wizard hadn't expected to find anything.
In the dark, everything was stealthy. Spiders weaved their webs of shadow, eyeless rats slunk through these tunnels, and something else hunted them, bigger and even more elusive.
'A stealthy cat?' Theodore wondered. He hadn't seen the creature, but he had seen the bloody leftovers of successful hunts.
Whatever it was, it was something relatively small and harmless, but better at hiding than all the rest.
Theodore hunched to enter a wormway as he encountered another collapse, shrinking again as he straightened but holding his wand more ready.
The wizard, in part to distract himself from the timeless darkness, continued to catalog the underground labyrinth as he went along. Mental markers noted turns and crossroads and the wormways between passages for the map he'd make later. The map he planned to gift to the dwarves for all the books they let him read. The hundreds of dwarven boasts that had entertained incredulous tales of dwarves slaying dragons and urgals, all of them as amusing as any Greek saga.
There was little doubt that whatever he made would be lost among the wonders of metal analyzed and dissected in a thousand practical dwarven books. That was what dwarves found interesting, even more than their boasts. It certainly was a priority over recording something so mundane as history.
In a way that was what the wizard intended. He'd not tell a single dwarf he'd slipped his present into their grand library. Perhaps the mystery of its sudden presence would be the thing to snatch interest.
The wizard had use for a dwarven historian, not in the least because the wizard knew he wouldn't have nearly enough time and patience to explore all the nooks and crannies of dwarven lore.
Another hat tossed into the constant search for truth and destiny never hurt.
Dwarves had no history books now, only the great boasts of dwarves long dead, often paid for by said dwarves, so their tales and boasts would not dull or change over the centuries.
At times, some wrote about the lives of great men without payment. That was close to what a historian should be.
All they needed was a little push. Perhaps his map would be that, and perhaps not. Theodore suddenly felt optimistic, sure that what he did now would somehow have the desired effect.
It was something like instinct.
That thought of dwarves yet to come and all their potential seemed to comb something from his mind. Theodore realized he did not need to explore these cramped tunnels, and as black moss clung to moist rock, he decided he would leave this task to another day, to a different year, and perhaps even to a different person.
A sudden change came over the wizard, a desire to be gone, and so the wizard, without a second thought, disappeared with a silent pop.
He wondered why he'd done so almost as soon as he left, but only for a second. In the next moment, other thoughts held his mind, such as what he might eat for lunch. His belly rumbled, and this mysterious feeling of missing something didn't seem nearly as important, but still, there was this tug he felt. He had work to do—work that had to come first.
When he arrived at his office, the wizard saw a note written in his own hand on the desk and beside it a delicate silver bottle labeled 'Deep Roads.'
The bottle held transpositional magic, his invention, capable of recording memories and storing them as they happened from a distance. Curiously, he poured memories into his pensive, and he was in the tunnels again, watching the memetic trigger that forced him to leave without its following influence.
Goosebumps prickled his skin just as they did in the memory. Then, there was nothing.
He never saw what exactly compelled him to leave, just a blank space where it should be.
'Something physical or soul-touching?' The wizard thought as he was more sure of the protections he'd made around his mind than anything else. He'd worked centuries to hide his thoughts even from fate itself.
Though to be fair, the wizard had almost as much protection around his soul, and while he wore no physical wards, the innate sense that belonged to all wizards was exceptionally sharp with him. They should have warned him of danger, even if it was chemical.
After a bit more pondering and a second and third watch, Theodore decided he would not risk himself again, but that was fine; he'd still find answers.
Enchanted armor would make as splendid explorers as they were miners.
Perhaps they would discover the cause of this feeling he had when thinking of going after the King, the one that left the faintly metallic taste of blood as he thought his name, as he was sure the king wielded the same magic as whatever lurked beneath. Whatever hid in the deep roads.
—---------------------------------------------------
Galbatorix, a false King in Uru'baen.
The stone gleamed a sickly black light as saliva coated its smooth surface. The light that touched it came from within the egg, beaming with magic and reflected despair as it shook in its flesh cradle.
The man who watched the egg waited eagerly for its hatching, and gave a smile so soft that it might pass for human. Though its dead eyes gave it away for false.
A pointy-helmed soldier knocked on his door, and anger wrent through him like fire worms through blood, bones, and flesh, like a bullet and its victim, instant reaction a physical recoiling as he was reminded of existence outside his kin and touch.
The man's presence evoked an almost physical pain.
This humans mere existence was a sin, but it was one he bore. It was one he deemed necessary.
Time ate men as well as monsters, and thinking about countless examples of its cruelty settled him.
The 'King' could wait, and the man would have his due. He would only have to wait..
The Great Giants of Menace and Forgetful Mercy had set their eyes on their world, and both were vying to claim it as their prize. The false king didn't know which one would claim it, but either one didn't think much more of humans than humans did of ants.
"Sir, the hunting grounds have expanded, and hundreds more have died to the silver lion, " the soldier reported. He was a stolid man of little intelligence. The false king knew this because he hadn't gone mad yet. A more intelligent soldier might have noticed the King's increased height and the inhuman way his shoulders sloped as if they carried mighty wings unseen, unheard, and frightening.
Perhaps it was because he was a commoner that he was such a fool. Even the last King believed commoners in this land were dull and weak, not worth much thought. That might explain it.
He'd not broken down mad and screaming like his previous attendant. However, this man was different from the man before, with his armor unadorned, his cloak tattered, and his cheeks sunken.
"Pull them back." Galbatorix had no care for armies, but he who wore his flesh and stole his title did. Stroking faded hair that melted to flesh, he thought of the bodies he'd have no choice but to throw at the wizard; it was no paltry sum. The burden of victory rested on his shoulders, and more was at stake than simple mortal lives. This was more a reckoning of sorts—the time of a cycle's full turn—the time that came when all would die, and the unknowable great beings fought to decide who got to end all of creation, who got to kick off the tri-millennial wars.
Spikes grew like stalactites and stalagmites from the floor and the ceiling, and stone-secreted carapaced creatures of gargoyle figures that oozed to bow before the false King.
"Find me a weapon, " the King said as he had a dozen times before, and with it, a psychic impulse pervaded the room with the same instruction, only more in-depth. The words were irrelevant. It was a boast more than anything, a reminder that he could speak and they could not.
Like before, they would bring some new magic from this land to their 'King', and he would say it was not enough. Though every mask, gem, and alchemical herb would find its place. Everything was used, and nothing was wasted.
The soldier who'd been present for their sudden appearance did not comment on their presence. His eyes are somewhere distant and aimless, as if pretending to be a blind man.
"There is more, sir. Our soldiers have returned. The Varden have let some prisoners escape, and those soldiers have returned to the fold. They tell queer tales of Varden sorcery." The soldier said, his voice languid but tinged with mild concern. Perhaps he was too mild, but something seemed to occupy the soldier's mind; the 'King' could feel that much. Some soldiers and nobles alike had grown a taste for shade's blood—a holdover from the old King's rule. The 'King' knew the euphoria it gave, the power he held as the source of it.
That corruption was what led to his easy arrival and the King's easy replacement.
More than a few suspected something now, but it was far too late; his compulsion had set. None could act against their king.
"Kill them like the rest." The false King said with a casual callousness that could only be built with age. Though it indeed had become a casual affair. The king had sectioned off the soldiers who had come from the battle and was killing them in small groups as he summoned them from the wilderness.
The reason was simple: Even old gut-gulpers like him needed to concern themselves with morale when playing Kingdom.
No magic could cure the crippling fear brought by the horrors they faced, and 'There was no need for rumors spreading about the impossible danger that was coming for them.' and there was only so much mind magic could do.
The King could make the killing squad forget who they killed, but rumors infected armies in far more incurable ways.
The soldier turned to leave, his heels striking the carpet in a salute, perhaps the only regimented gesture the man still doggedly upheld. With a pivot, he tried to open one half of the Black King's enormous double doors. With a struggle as he bodily pushed himself against the opposing door for leverage, the door opened silently to reveal a lengthy hall beyond.
The King's imperious and mercurial voice made him pause.
"Wait, there might be a way. Yes... We might still kill them, but they might not all be useless. Send them hunting."
There was a pause as the soldier's throat bulged as he swallowed.
"Hunting, sir?" the soldier asked, though his tone was flat, devoid of human inflections that would indicate curiosity or interest.
"Yes, that wizard unleashed his beast onto the land. I've been told it's enormous and very deadly." The 'King' said, filled with excitement, which was followed by a predatory smile. Overly sharp teeth made him look like a wolf vying for easy prey. Though the soldier hardly seemed to notice.
The 'King' was not happy about the silver lion that repeatedly assaulted them. It was too small an annoyance for one of his brothers to confront it and perhaps lose one of his hidden cards, but one way or another, its endless feast on empire men did little for morale and had to be stopped.
"Yes, sir, I have heard the same."
"Then let the hunt begin." The King said, and satisfied, he settled into his gothic throne of spikes and bone that replaced the gaudy golden thing that came before it. "I want that beast dead. May the bravest survive and be decorated with the highest honors and all of what is usually said. You know the phrasing." The king waved his hand in lazy dismissal, and the soldier almost eagerly slipped through the crack he'd made with a mutter, " Yes, sir."
The 'King's unnaturally keen ears heard the soldier's tired shuffles and almost silent complaints as he left the palace to fulfill his orders. He likely would be horrified to know how keenly the king heard those insults. He was lucky the 'King' had restraint.
The shapeless ones still knelt before him, content to be ignored until now.
"You know your orders," and they vanished. Finally dismissed
The King looked at the egg still clutched in the jaws of his great black dragon, with its molten lava red eyes. The black beast was calmer than the magics of this land could ever manage to make him, all so that its dragonfire could be used to incubate his egg.
The great black thing nestled in the dragon's maw made a mighty tumble against sharp teeth as if it sensed him watching.
"Soon, you will be ready, little God Shot. My great consumer of all things." His voice seemed to settle the egg. The king still needed weapons and looked for weaknesses in the wizard, but this dragon egg stolen from one of the wizard's great families would soon make all his efforts anathema. Soon, this world would be burned into submission under the heat of its Megafire.
In a way, this egg made the 'King' admire wizards. He certainly respected their ways of war. Even if this particular way had been borrowed from the Dawn Wars, they had no way of knowing that, and yet they had used it all the same.
There was so much planning to do, and much more killing to do this day, but first he made his way to the cellars, where the previous King had kept his casks of centuries-old dwarven ale from before the cities changed from Ilirea to Urû'baen; there his indulgence pampered with bruises and tattooed with blood lay eager for his attention.
Indulgence screamed almost as soon as he saw him, delighted by his presence. He could see the joy rolling in those eyes, its white catching fire light.
The 'King' took a nibble as he'd done before, and it was teasing more than anything, even indulgence seemed to think so. He screamed with delight, and he wouldn't stop crying. So the King, who watched indulgences' tears mingle with blood, favored indulgence with what it truly desired, the 'King' took a more significant bite, and life's blood spilled from a gaping wound as he pulled his bloody mouth away.
The whining stopped, and the 'King' wasn't done, though indulgence had already died of bliss.
Lapping at the blood that spilled from his bite, the 'King' dug his fingers into the man's chest and they sank like stakes through loose soil. Gripping tightly, in a practiced motion, the 'King' wrenched open the dead man's chest to the sickening crack of bone and the tissue paper ripping sound of flesh. Indulgence's heart lay bare along with the delectable metallic scent of working muscle that beat with such joy seconds before. The ' King' reached in and plucked his prize like a child plucking a dandelion from its tube stem, and just as carelessly, heart flesh and sinew seemed to pop apart.
The King bit, tore, and slurped just as indulgence would have wanted.
When he was done, a body lay abandoned on the floor like a broken toy. Pink and red stuffing covered the room to join old putrid remains left uncleaned, but the blood fell from the King's form like oil parted from water to enter the puddles that formed beneath the man.
When he left the cellar, he found his pointy-helmed soldier, back from carrying out his orders, standing dead on his feet, attentive to his 'King's' arrival.
The King asked him to bring him another indulgence, and to his pleasure, the man told him of one more indulgence that had fallen into his lap along with the other escaped soldiers, a man with a knack for fire. The 'King' liked his food hot, and even broiling it did not matter much.
As the king licked his lips now absent of blood, he daydreamed of what his next indulgence might taste like. His only vain wish was that the next might be Theodore Lupin himself. He thought of how powerfully he would taste.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim's freedom,
Jim watched the Smiling Eyes, wary as he always was of the bald bearded captain. However, he had more reason now that he had killed again.
Jim wasn't surprised when he had. No one was.
Whether it was those ruddy cheeks that seemed to glow the same as a drunk, or that smile.
He had not spoken much since Jim had become his prisoner, or if he had, it was a whisper that made men strain to listen.
Though the man wasn't Jim's only concern.
Jim's feet bled, and as dirt mingled with blood, those wounds stung likely badly infected. Amputating leg injuries aside, his experience had been about what he'd expected. Pain and a relentless march. Harsh treatment with not a word wasted on his sorry hide. No one bothered to treat his wounds though Jim expected nothing more from Varden scum. It certainly stung less among the Varden than it did when held captive by his Empire.
What Jim had not expected was that he would not bleed alone; he wasn't the only one mistreated.
Mewling over spilled blood in pain, one of the captain's men held their feet the same as him.
The man had that stoic look about him that would tell anyone he'd been a veteran of perhaps a dozen battles—a valuable sort of soldier, but he certainly wasn't treated that way. The man had worn holes through his shoes. Sharps stones made light work of his worn leather soles, and rather than stopping to treat the man or even showing him consideration, he was made to march on the same as the rest. With no horse and no second pair of shoes, he was forced to walk barefoot.
The thing was, it took time to build calluses that would protect the feet, and so even though his feet hadn't been burned thin like Jim's, the man's feet bled like his did. It was in his pain that the man forgot the taste of his master's whip. His whining and complaining got him slapped for his troubles. Snake Eyes, Smiling Eyes', eager lieutenant gave him 'just' punishment.
Veteran though he was, and stoic too, there was only so much a man could take.
The hurt soldier might have followed orders if he had been less irritable, if his foot had not been bleeding, and if his stomach had not rumbled from having only the soldier's rations to eat. Instead, the man complained for hours, and when the order came to march, he refused to bind his feet once more. So, he was no longer seen as a Varden soldier but a deserter instead.
Soldiers follow orders after all. Your commander told you to jump, and you jumped. Your commander told you to run, and you ran.
When a commander said to kill twelve soldiers on the next ridge over, even if their spears were made of diamonds and their shields skulls, you would die fighting those men.
Smiling Eyes did what was done to soldiers who did not follow orders.
The man was bent over and whipped within an inch of his life for insubordination by Smiling Eyes himself. Then, because he could not be allowed to slow the rest of the men down, he had his neck cut in twain by Smiling Eye's axe.
The men were quiet for a time after the man's murder.
Snake Eyes, the man who had named him 'coward' before, seemed unaffected. It was as if death were an old friend coming to visit. He greeted him by the campfire and offered tea for small talk before moving on to more important things.
Jim wouldn't have been nearly so casual had it been him, and those silver pikes that seemed to sprout from thin air in his nightmares reminded him he hadn't.
He'd run as they had died. He also knew he'd never forgive himself for their deaths. He was, after all, a coward. He should have fought to the last instead of running. He should have died on the burning planes like all the rest.
It had taken him a long time to admit to his cowardice even in his mind, and when he did, he felt relief. He should have died, and so he did die. Everything that came now was extra. Jim had died, and a new Jim, a better Jim, took his place—a Jim that wanted to live. A Jim that wasn't afraid to be a coward.
The Varden troop hid their discomfort, perhaps even guilt, more poorly.
Hunching their shoulders, they walked as if hiding from Smiling Eyes.
As they set camp, they began their debauched revelry as they did every evening, only they drank deeper and sang louder than before.
To Jim, it seemed they were desperate to forget. Perhaps they did all this in the hope of capturing something they'd lost, but like smoke, it was beyond their grasp. Jim also wondered what that something was. It certainly wasn't innocence. Jim knew killers when he saw them, and most of these men smelled of blood and violence, not all but most.
The only thing the Varden seemed to keep well stocked was wine. To Jim, it seemed they kept more wine than even food. Barrels of the stuff crowded the pack mules, weighing them down and making them slow, but it was never abandoned. All of it might have been in danger of vanishing that night, if not for Smiling Eyes cutting them off.
The other prisoners, Usef especially, found themselves afraid to speak even among themselves that night. There were no whispered complaints as they watched soldiers having comparable feasts while they ate scraps, and there was no talk of escape that night.
Jim, on the other hand, felt a genuine smile touch his lips, joined by a joy unaffected by everyone else's somber mood.
He'd watched a beheading and knew he had something to use.
His only question was how to play on the men's fear and make them see what kind of cornered animals they truly were.
Smiling Eye's reason for killing the man was weak.
If he genuinely cared about making good time, he would have killed Jim and all the rest by now. With bare feet, even when whipped like mules to keep pace with the packs, Jim and the rest of the Empire soldiers made poor traveling companions.
Yet they still lived, and one of their own had died.
The real reason the man died was because Smiling Eyes had grown bored, and that could only mean they were his entertainment.
Jim felt the man should be more careful, as even tame lions might kill their trainers. Jim would enjoy killing the man given the chance. Though he doubted he would be given much of one as everyday he seemed to become weaker.
Jim had made the Magician heal his arm as much as the man could, at least. The bones of his broken arm were set and settled, but it still ached, and the magic worked on him seemed to make him hungrier than the rest, with no more for him to eat.
The next day, Jim trudged along with the other prisoners. Linked together and tumbling over roots and rocks, they did not travel long before the procession reached a river. The rushing water had molded smooth stones for its floor that could be seen through the clear water as the brick and mortar of the river's mouth.
Pushed to cross the river where it ran the shortest, Jim decided he might as well grab a stone for his trouble. The icy cold water made his breathing shallow, and the shock of the water turned painful awareness into shocked wakefulness.
A wakefulness that only seemed to make his eyes wider as he and all the rest of the prisoners, all linked together, pulled each other into the turbulent waters. Pushing against the current, ignoring the ice that seemed to creep into his veins, Jim plucked a stone for use. It was larger than intended, and he pushed himself up to stand. Inadvertently, he pushed himself further through the river to a place where the fast-running water reached the height of Jim's lower chest, distorting the image of his new weapon. The stone took up Jim's entire palm and was barely held by his web of fingers; it was also useless, unless he used it immediately, of course.
Jim considered the impact an accidental death might have. Killing even one Varden's soldier now would make his escape all the easier later.
Jim dropped the stone. He deemed that the plan was too risky.
Killing the man a few feet to his side might be possible, and he might even avoid suspicion, but Smiling Eyes was hungry for blood and would take any excuse to make an example.
Jim felt the aches and pains that had haunted him for days of tired walking fade as cold water began to numb all it touched only to come jolting back with biting vengeance as Jim found a jutting rock to stretch the wounds of his foot.
Jim stifled a scream, only to be breathless as he and his fellow prisoners tumbled for a second time.
He reached down only to grab nothing. His hand yanked from its course by its neighboring chain, sending a jolt of pain down his freshly healed arm. Jim managed a pained grunt and tried again as the group inevitably fell a third time. He snagged a pebble. It was not big enough to kill a man, but it still might have some use. It certainly was easier to hide.
He tucked it away as he tugged out of the river onto dry land.
It was not long after they'd left the river that the men set out camp for the night, warming themselves by the fire.
The men bound him and his fellow prisoners a little way from them while they made camp. The soldiers, as they often did, carried torches to make their way, including their minder.
A younger Varden man, obviously bullied to the task, fiddled with his torch, turning it this way and that and even spinning the torch to amuse himself and stir the flame, all while foolishly holding his torch by the tip and pacing. By the gods, was Jim tempted to just trip the boy for how he walked, let alone the fact that he stood so close to the food packs that he might set the Varden's stores alight if he fell.
It was clear the boy did not have the makings of a good soldier. He seemed oblivious to the prisoners he guarded, and when he watched them, his gaze held none of the calm wariness needed when guarding dangerous men.
His blade was also dull.
It wasn't something that Jim would have noticed if he wasn't watching for weakness, but their guard had more than once taken his blade out in his boredom, as much as to threaten them as anything else. Jim had looked down its edge, and he'd seen something the man did not. Its edge reflected the firelight uniformly down the entire edge's length, a sign of an uncared-for blade.
Perhaps he lacked experience and good teachers, and with that, a dangerous glint entered the blonde man's eyes.
"What is your name?" Jim asked, his voice rough from equal parts starvation and dehydration, but still firm. It carried powerfully to the inexperienced soldier, who was startled at its presence in the otherwise quiet night.
The man looked at him nervously, and seeming to forget he had a sword, he held his torch before him as if to use it as a weapon instead.
"I mean you no harm, boy? What is your name?"
"I'm no boy." The very young man still showed his youth with his high-pitched petulance.
"He speaks." Jim smiled in a way he knew would look personable if he were clean and without holes in the rags he wore. Jim knew he wasn't clean, but he hoped that some degree of his former comely confidence would shine through. "I thought you were. I mean no offense. If you say you are a man, you are a man. In fact…. You know what" Jim made a show of looking into the man's eyes, "I can tell now that I've seen you closer. Those eyes are strong. The eyes of a killer in the making."
The Dimwit seemed to be happy with that compliment. It was clear to Jim that the other soldiers realized, just like he did now, how hopeless their newest recruit was. They likely teased him about it relentlessly. Jim had seen the same happen before in the Empire war camps. All those fresh faced recruits put alongside practiced men created an imbalance, a bit of teasing was inevitable.
"But you never killed anyone, have you?" Jim asked as innocently as he could manage, "You never did answer. What's your name, man?"
One of those questions was easier to answer than the other, and the boy almost absent-mindedly gave up his name, "Gwaine." The lad said as the torches' light cast shadows on the left half of his brown, matted hair. Jim noted the boys' hair, and noted he'd likely cut his own hair. In parts, it ran long before falling off to rough stubble. His skin was riddled with pimples and scars of pimples.
"Gwaine, have you killed?" Jim asked more seriously this time, and the change in his tone captured the boy's attention as he knew it would.
With a gulp, the boy managed to choke, "No".
Jim turned jovial in his reply, "It's not hard lad, a slit throat, a spear in the gut or perhaps the heart if you want to be quick about it." Jim did not mention beheading. There was no need for the boy to clam up just yet, not so soon after he'd seen one himself.
"It's not the killing that is the problem."
"It isn't," Gwaine asked, confused.
"No, no, it's what comes after." Jim raised a brow, "You've heard of the shakes, haven't you?"
"The shakes?" the boy asked, holding his torch to one side to see the prisoner more clearly. He was more curious than cautious now.
Jim smiled but didn't immediately answer. Instead, he told his tale the same way he might to scare a new recruit because he knew if he was treated as such, he might fall into the role, and because the more he led him on, the more he might forget himself.
"There are all kinds of different killers, you hear. There is the reluctant sort, willing to kill readily enough when ordered but squeamishly. Those who kill and deny it. Those who kill for enjoyment. Even those who want to kill and don't even like it, but still it feeds a deep, abiding anger. And more besides, but all of them have the shakes for their first kill."
The young man gulped and flicked out his tongue to wet his lips, "What are the shakes?"
"Do you think it is hard to kill a man?" Jim's smile became wider still until it came close to splitting his dry lips, and even weak as he was, he knew he had the boy's full attention, "In fact, it is easy. Whether you stick a dagger in a man's head, a thumb depth, or a nail width, he will die. Whether he is a monster or a saint, all his life's deeds will have come to an end. Unless he is a great man, no one will sing his praises. Unless he has made a great story, he will be forgotten."
Gwaine's eyes flickered toward the bonfire behind him as if for assurance. He watched the men drink deeply and laugh, oblivious, before he spoke, "Isn't that obvious? I barely think of Bracknack, and he died yesterday." The man's eyes seemed troubled by the thought.
"I can describe to anyone the feeling of flowing water between my fingers, but does that mean they've felt it? I can describe the taste of a kiss, the burn of love to a person, but that does not mean they have it." Jim looked into the young man's eyes and could glean desire there. "Killing is the same. Every man is told how fragile life is, but you have to feel it to know that truth. That is what shakes are. They are feeling recognized."
Even more, desire sprang into the young man's eyes, and Jim could see it happen.
"Your fellow soldiers do not much like you," Jim spoke plainly, stating a fact that would have been seen as the most incredible insolence, deserving of a rough beating only minutes before.
Gwaine pulled back as if stung and avoided Jim's piercing blue eyes. His hand even seemed to reach for his sword, as if preparing to feel anger that did not come.
Gwaine's pimpled face, which Jim was sure had not felt a woman's touch, twitched with discomfort, and his hands, which were clean of blood, clenched his torch and empty air alike as if they were unable to decide what they should do.
"They don't know me. They say I'm unproven."
"And I can help you," Jim said with sympathy.
Some scorn made its way into the boy's voice, "How could 'you' help me when you can't even help yourself? You are a prisoner, remember. Not even fit to lick the soles of my boot."
"Not even fit to lick your boots," Jim said in a way that signaled danger to any who heard it, and it made the young soldier wince, Gwaine seemed to forget he held the sword. "You're as dull as your sword boy.."
Gwaine hesitated, unsure. " My sword is sharp." The boy unsheathed it and exposed its length to the torchlight to show his ignorance. "More than once, I've cut my hand on its edge. Branches and brush split before it like fire. I swear it's true." he said, almost desperate to prove himself right.
Unable to contain himself, Jim let out a hearty laugh, "You use that thing for bushcraft? You are too much of a boy."
Gwaine chuffed indignantly, "I'm not a boy. I am a MAN; you said it yourself." His voice took on that high pitch squeal the same as a child throwing a tantrum it made Jim chuckle some more.
The sound of their conversation roused the prisoners beside Jim. They turned from their listless staring or half-muttered sleeping to watch what was happening. The boy's cheeks reddened at their attention.
"Calm yourself, Gwaine. I jest, I simply meant you were acting like a boy, not that you were one. Though the way you denied me wasn't convincing. Put that blade down before you manage to cut yourself," Jim said, though the way he raised his brows made it clear he didn't think it was likely. "A blade is meant for killing, not bushcraft. That was all I meant."
Jim waited until Gwain lowered the sword before he spoke again.
"You can tell how a blade is dull by how the light hugs the edge. No one had shown you that because perhaps they don't care, but I can show you. I can help you with things a soldier might need if you ask."
"Shut up?"
Gwaine, with red ears, walked away into the night, leaving his prisoners unguarded, seemingly without care for anything besides his feelings.
The boy was too easily riled, but at least it made Jim's job easier.
Jim looked to the man who had held fire in his hands all those nights before, it seemed years ago now, even if it had only been a few days, the same man who had healed his broken arm. He gave the man a nod, and the magician cupped his hand over the chains between Jim's hands and fed magic into the metal until it was cherry red and melting, and Jim with all his might ignoring the throbbing pain that remained from his half healed arm pulled with all his might. Like glue melting the chain link began to stretch, but not break. He didn't manage much; the metal thread became only a little thinner before the magician fell back, pale and exhausted and the metal hardened black once more.
Jim sighed, and Usef, chained beside him, did much the same.
—----------
On the fourth day of Jim's capture, more than one of the almost a dozen Empire prisoners was whipped beyond exhaustion. Bloody feet and bloody backs made little difference. The men began to slow to accommodate their prisoners. Slow too much.
Smiling Eye decided it was time to thin the weeds. He was glad for another pot of blood. His smile seemed wider, His eyes more mad than ever before.
Two at a time, prisoners were released from the line of shackles, and the Varden captain made them duel to the death.
To the shouts and cheering of soldiers watching bloodsport.
Shackles trembled with fear and indignation as Usef was released to face one of the prisoners Jim had never talked to. He was a man who sat at the very end of the Chain link, far from Jim, one of those who had delighted especially when sitting in the shade before. A broad man with fair, pale skin and a full head of frayed blonde, the color of rotting straw. He seemed to have a little more meat on him than Usef did, but he was still frail and skinny like all the rest. The Empire hadn't fed any of them much, and the Varden only had compounded that abuse.
Both their burned feet tumbled together in what would have been a flurry of violence had they been healthier, but instead came slow, laboured strikes. Jim wanted to say measured strikes, but it wouldn't be quite accurate. Each tried almost in slow motion to flatten the other. To knock the other to the ground, where kicking would be easy and gravity could do most of the work.
In the end, it was Usef's soul, which could barely interpret pain, that won out. He ignored the other man's flailing limbs and, with his full weight, knocked the other man to the ground, where He almost reluctantly stomped him to death, all while the man struggled to rise for what seemed like hours, but were instead likely a few very bloody couple of minutes. The soldiers started cheering as soon as the man stopped struggling. The sound rang out abruptly and out of place until Usef began crying.
The broken man seemed empty before, but now the death of his chain brother seemed to dredge up what little emotion he had left, and it made the soldiers who had cheered before uncomfortable. Looking for him, Jim quickly noticed Gwaine's pimpled skin became an odd mix of red and pale.
Smiling eyes, even after his men fell silent to the crying of a broken man, gave a genuine smile as he sent the men to clean up the body and sent Usef off to retake his shackles.
A few more Empire deserters were thrown in the middle of cheering men. Sometimes one walked out, leaving the other dead behind, and sometimes both died. Either way, Smiling Eyes got his pot of blood, and the soldiers got to release their guilt and fear through cheers and bloodsport.
Then it was Jim's turn. His hands were steady as a Varden soldier unshackled him. Like the man who fought Usef, Jim still had some meat on his bones, even exhausted from the magician's healing he retained his muscles and the greater part of his strength, but his feet and back were just as bloody as all the rest.
Jim prepared himself to kill someone. To kill a prison brother he'd been with since their mutual desertion.
He frowned when he saw who was unchained to fight him. It was their magician, the man who could summon flame in the palm of his hands.
The howling began again, and the soldiers got back their appetite for blood, Smiling Eyes most of all as he started their feet stomping and their hands clapping.
It was almost like a ritual. The men encircled them and forced them forward.
The magician looked at Theodore, and he, like Usef, was a broken person, with those eyes that could not quite meet his. With a posture slumped as if waiting to be beaten. He expected Jim to kill him, and Jim, despite how pitifully the man held himself, was tempted. Jim had grown to hate unnatural things. He'd come to hate magic and those who wielded it. Every time he closed his eyes, he remembered the screaming of his men as silver sheathed itself in their bodies. Jim remembered the bolt of lightning that killed thousands. 'Men shouldn't hold such power,' he thought, 'it's unfair.'
'Unfair?' He could thrash himself for how whiny that sounded even in his head, but despite all the man had done for him, he couldn't help project some of what he felt at the magician.
Jim had always told others that inherited power was the way of the world. When others spat venom and hate at nobles, he'd always been quick to defend their benevolent, and sometimes not so benevolent, overlords.
Did his hate of magic make him a hypocrite then?
In a way Jim wanted to be a noble and he often played the part when farmers and merchants tried to mess with him and his boys. He remembered those times when people would cower in fear at his uniform, at his blade, and the thick arms and legs he could use to wield it.
Reaching for the man's neck Jim found no resistance even with both hands wrapped to constrict the man's breathing. The man whimpered, but Jim didn't stop; instead, he pulled him closer for a better grip. In doing so he'd brought the man's face closer; its shocking familiarity didn't stop him; neither did the man's hands scrambling at his arms in instinctive desperation, and then, as if he'd given up on saving himself, the magician let his arms hang by his sides. Jim squeezed harder as he felt hot tears begging to sting his cheeks.
The man's mouth fell open with spittle flying from his mouth as he tried to say something. What that something was, Jim had no idea the man had no breath for even a whisper, but despite everything he was also curious. without thinking, Jim loosened his grip
"kill me," the man whispered. His words said with an emptiness that lacked any of the warmth or comfort of the living.
Finally able to look into the man's eye, the Empire Deserter saw his own shade of blue reflected in the man's eyes. The man's shaggy hair had hidden the man's face, but now that it had parted he knew who he choked.
"Marlan?" Jim rasped, feeling as if he were the one choking. He felt dizzy. He'd never been quite able to see the magician's face before. When he had been held in a cage the three parasols of bars between had made it difficult to see his face, and after the Varden had captured them, he had hardly paid any attention to faces or names.
'Marlan,' This was the man he'd dug out of a ball of that flesh. The man he'd dragged fro the horrors of the burning plains when he deserted.
If he was being honest, that man hadn't meant much to him. He hadn't known him long. he'd never drunk with him. He barely knew anything about him, besides the fact that he was the one soldier he saved from the trash heap the Empire called a battle, and yet somehow knowing who he was changed everything.
Jim let him go, and Marlan fell to the ground head first, sprinkling his curled, matted hair, with dirt.
The man lay there waiting, not bothering to rise again.
Jim was on his knees now, not staring at anything in particular, knowing that because he couldn't kill what amounted to almost a stranger, he was a dead man. Smiling eyes wouldn't let this end peaceably. He'd kill both his little contestants if they did not fight. He'd promised as much, and Jim didn't doubt he was capable of it.
The men fell silent, and Smiling Eyes emerged from behind his crowd of fanatics. The man's bald head reflected the firelight, and in his eyes, Jim could see the whole world burning.
He looked between them as if waiting for something, and when that didn't come, he made a gesture.
"Kill me because no matter what happens, I will not kill that man."
Smiling Eyes seemed to be chuckling at Jim's reluctance, his eyes never losing that smile as his men came forward to bind them in shackles again.
Jim went without complaint, and Marlan barely seemed to notice being tugged along before slumping in his chains.
Snake eyes, rubbing salt in a wound, told them both that they would soon wish one of them had killed the other, and Jim, knowing what kind of person Smiling Eyes was, didn't doubt it.
"A coward until the end. I didn't know they made such soft men in the empire. I doubt we'll even need Riders and Urgals to kill you lot." Snake eyes taunted.
"Trust me; those unnatural things are the only things that cause us any problem. Soon, when the black king becomes angry enough, he will brush you aside like leaves in the wind."
Snake eyes smiled, shaking his head to let his perfect black hair swivel and stretch like strands of shadows attached to his head. "Your Black King has no chance against our Thunderer."
Jim looked away and gave no reply. He had no way of knowing. He had never seen the king use magic, but he had seen the lightning the Thunderer had loosed on the Empire's soldiers. He'd seen the pikes of silver that had impaled his men and nearly impaled him.
Slumped in his chains, Jim watched as the prisoners halved themselves. The killing didn't stop and, in fact, grew more brutal with each fight. It was as if the prisoners had begun to accept their new reality. That this was kill or be killed.
Instincts for survival had been called forth, and it had resulted in more and more desperate fights. Some use their fists and feet still, but most used everything they had, including their teeth, they became like feral animals, finding that last pocket of strength they never realized they were saving.
Evening quickly came, and Marlan again attempted to melt the chains that bound them. Jim again pulled at the cherry red metal that had already been stretched slightly thinner from the first attempt. Again, Marlan fell back pale, exhausted, and drained of magic, and the attempt was unsuccessful.
They sat bound to a smaller tree now as the forest was thinning. The brush gave way to larger stones and the occasional jagged cliffs.
Soon, those too would fade.
Jim did not begrudge those who would have to walk barefoot on hard stone as they were forced on. In a way, it made him glad to die. He found comfort in the thought that all the pains and ails he felt now would fade to nothing as he went to the void.
His battered and bruised body would never again feel pain.
The morning sun seemed to rise slowly for Jim, but soon, light filled the sky, and Snake Eyes and Gwaine, armed with swords, came for him and Marlan. They were quietly unchained from the rest until it was only their own shackles that kept them bound.
They were led along to one of those jagged cliffs, forced to climb over unforgiving rock. Jim's feet bled again, but they were also used to abuse now. Calluses had begun to form.
Jim idly noticed Marlan's throat had bruised as they were led along, and the man was still pale from the magic he'd worked the day before. After he noticed, Jim tried his best not to look at the man, as he found him a painful sight.
"So, how will you kill us?" Jim asked almost casually as if he was asking about the weather and not his own mortality. He didn't expect an answer, and he didn't get one. Snake Eyes kept his piercing blue eyes pointed forward at some vague point ahead.
Jim eyed the man's blade, wondering if he could snatch it. Looking behind him, he saw Gwaine ensuring that neither of them fell behind, but the young man did not pay attention to much else. As always, he seemed barely aware of his surroundings.
Gwaine nervously met his eyes and swiftly paved the trail ahead of him, maneuvering more carefully than he had to around the prodding stones as if he could also finding a path to avoid Jim.
"This is far enough," Snake Eyes said after they had reached the edge of a cliff. Looking down, Jim could see that it was a 60-meter fall—in other words, very much not survivable.
Jim swallowed a gulp as he took in the rest of their surroundings. Not only was there a jagged cliff in front of them, but the edge of the cliffs crowded in behind them. It was as if a giant had carved stairs toward a mountain peak but had grown lazy with his chisel as he finished the process, leaving each step crooked.
A small path led away from the cliff's edge behind them, but heaps of rock crowded in on each side looked treacherous to climb.
Drawing his sword, Snake Eyes held it point forward. Jim idly noted that his sword was sharp, unlike Gwaine's.
"Now, who's first?"
Jim, who had said almost nothing the entire trip, gave a smile uncharacteristic of one facing their death, "Please there is no need."
"I say there is. Choose, die by blade or cliff." Snake Eyes said unblinking.
Jim's smile didn't fade. "Would you really sully your blade with the blood of a coward. The blood of a deserter? I thought better of you, Snake Eyes."
Snake Eyes' expression changed for the first time since he'd drawn his sword, and it showed genuine confusion.
"Snake Eyes?"
"What is a man to call you if you don't give him your name?"
The man snorted, "You still don't deserve my name, traitor, and I don't deserve to sully my blade with your blood. Now be a good coward and jump." Snake Eyes raised a brow and gave his mocking smile, which had left wrinkled scars from how often he used it. "You might even survive. I'd say cripple fits with coward. What do you say?"
"You are truly a kind man," Jim said, and he found he genuinely meant it.
Snake Eyes' smile seemed to press his lips into pale lines.
"Yes, truly kind. I wonder what Smiling Eyes really wanted to do with me," Jim shuddered, considering, and then his eyes met snake eyes with faked compassion,
"It's kind of you to kill me quickly."
Snake Eyes grinned, but Jim could see how false his smile was, "He wanted to put you on a stake and let you bleed out. You should be glad I convinced him to let you take the cliff. A quiet dive, and the old man can still hope you'll feel pain for a long time afterward."
Jim gave him a look that made his disbelief clear, and Snake Eyes pressed his already pale lips tighter.
"The old man didn't let you do anything." Jim stated that as a fact because he was quite sure of it, " It's a good thing some people have more mercy than that old codger. There is no need to lie to me. I will soon be dead. What use do we have for lies now?"
Jim had been paying special attention to Snake Eyes ever since the old man beheaded his veteran soldier. He'd also done it before that, but he'd paid special attention after.
He'd always thought it peculiar that Snake Eyes had never shown much emotion after it had happened until Jim realized that he did, only it was quieter with him than with the others.
While the others had their hollow laughs and drinking, he'd done neither. He drank nothing where he had drunk little before. While the others hunched down as if trying to avoid Smiling Eyes, he'd stood beside the man. Only he didn't even smile when the men traded jokes like he used to, and he watched the old man like a hawk, and so Jim hadn't believed the facade the man had put on.
Jim didn't doubt that Snake Eyes knew exactly what kind of person Smiling Eyes was, but trying so hard to hide a reaction meant whatever he truly thought and whatever he wanted to do about it ran deeper than the other men.
Why Smiling Eye killed his veteran soldier is anyone's guess, but Jim liked to think that the man had friends in the Varden, and the captain didn't much like his big mouth blabbing about the things he did amongst his little tribe.
Smiling Eyes had likely been baiting the man who died—poking and prodding him until he broke. Then he waited patiently to reap the rewards of his little games, and Jim hadn't been the only one to notice he'd been a little too excited when collecting his due.
Jim guessed that Snake Eyes had even tried to stop that death. That slap he'd given his obstinate soldier was a desperate measure, but the situation didn't quite pan out favorably.
Jim remembered the time when they were first captured, when he'd asked for Snake Eyes' name. He remembered his evasive refusal. The man wielded his insults as well as an urgal did a blunt weapon, and now that he had perspective, he could see why the man had been so biting.
He had no desire to know the names of dead men, and all Smiling Eyes captives were already dead men.
Like Jim, the man had likely seen some of his friends killed, and he couldn't bear to make more only to watch them slaughtered. Not that Jim and he would ever be friends.
They'd never be friends, but acquaintances were enough for it to sting.
In Fact, even knowing a little about a person and then watching them die made it real.
Jim understood all that, and he didn't care how the man was hurt. Fuck the leashed dog and his master.
"I'll take that sword to the gut, please. I'm not that much of a coward, and besides, it's easier for you to just tell Smiling Eyes I died in pain and show my broken body to get him off your back. You won't even have to hear my screaming, but first." Jim let out a sigh. "I'll tell you a little about myself." The man made some sound to interrupt, probably trying to interject something sarcastic and biting, but Jim didn't let him.
"Don't even tell me you wouldn't mind hearing my screaming. I know you would. I know you would because you're a coward like me."
Gwaine who had been silently taking in the conversation until now screwing his face into one of obvious confusion, took in a sharp breath as he'd been the one struck a blow.
Snake Eyes gritted his teeth, but said nothing which Jim took as much as confirmation.
Jim giving Marlan a side glance saw that he looked absent for his own execution. Jim could tell the man was far away in some lala land that no one had been to or even visited, and Jim in that moment couldn't really bring himself to care if he came back to himself.
carefree as if nothing in the world mattered because in truth nothing did. He begin to tell Gwaine and Snake Eyes about his life as a soldier. Even as he gripped the pebble he'd stolen from the river in his pocket unsure what use it would have.
He told them about all the common people he'd bullied, all the thugs he'd beaten. All the property he'd recovered and all the things he'd stolen. He'd told them about the first man he'd killed. He'd been a bandit, a man barely out of his teens. A boy really. Jim told them how he could see himself in the boy. How he'd have become him if he hadn't joined on with the Empire.
That was why he liked being a soldier. It had given him structure, it made him more than he'd been born. It turned a farmers boy into the closest thing to a noble.
He'd told them more too, about his family and friends. About all the people he'd known well and the Urgals he'd killed. Words could barely express his anger at those unnatural creatures but he tried his best.
He talked about that last drink he'd promised his men after they left the burning plains victorious, a victory that had turned into a rout, a playground for those with magic.
Out of shock or perhaps Snake Eyes was trying to build up the nerve to kill him they let him talk and talk and talk until his throat was dry.
Jim kept talking even when he was parched, not bothering to ask for water knowing he'd likely get none.
When he was finished Snake Eyes still hadn't killed him. Jim had expected him too, but he hadn't.
The man's face seems to complexify. It was as if two natures fought for dominance in the man's mind, and Jim wondered which would win and what it would do.
Gwaine seemed unsure as always. The young man wasn't a decisive person.
Marlan beside him was quiet as always, and empty.
Jim gripped his pebble tightly in a way that he was sure would make his fingers pale, and still did not know what he would do with it. A few more minutes past and he took it out of his pocket. He dropped it behind him without turning to watch it fall to the bottom of the cliff.
Jim was a coward, but not that big a coward. He'd die with some dignity at least.
"Well get on with it." Jim said his voice turning hard, his thoughts running slow as if they were treading water
Jim didn't know what he had expected, but it wasn't for Snake Eyes' blade to flash towards him. Almost as if driven by instinct, Jim's hands rose to protect his face from the blade edge, and almost as if it had been fate, the sharp blade met the thin metal of his half-melted chain cut through, and still went for his face. The blade had slowed, but not enough for Jim to avoid injury.
Blood melted against skin, a fresh wound gushed blood, and Jim's vision fell black in one eye. There was a tortured scream that scraped rock, and with horror, Jim realized it was his voice that rang out. He tried to stop screaming and the spasms of pain that wracked his face. He failed at both.
He was free now; he had fallen to his knees. It took a second for him to rise and begin charging through the pain.
He wasn't blind yet. Through one eye, he saw the surprise spread across Snake Eyes' face as his body slammed hard against the other man's center mass.
Jim heard the breath leave Snake Eyes' lungs, but the man still clutched his sword and managed to keep himself upright, while Jim, weaker than he had ever been from captivity, fell. He could feel the bruises forming on his right side as he fell on hard rock.
Desperate, Jim pushed himself to rise, but before he could even manage to rise halfway, stars took his vision as Snake Eyes cracked him across the head.
Jim began to lose feeling, and yet still he mumbled, "die.. Die!.. Die." He heard fire lick stone the pop of air as it was sundered thin.
Jim, at the edge of consciousness, could hear more screaming, and it sounded inhuman. It was louder and more hair-raising than his screech before.
Jim, half blind, half insensate, stood up, wobbling. Like in a dream, he could see Snake Eyes' skin turn black, and the smell of burned dinner rose above his screams. Marlan Stood behind him, his hand outstretched, his face pale.
Jim managed a small chuckle before he collapsed for a final time.