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Description
The Knife of the Arcane

The sun turned a fiery eye upon the dockhands, each sweating as they worked to the point of collapse. Many could be seen chatting with their fellows amidst the sandstone buildings as they wiped the moisture from their brows. They toiled about the pale tan structures and strode across the similarly colored roads just as the people of the city had for the last many centuries.

The water was pure and clean; it stretched as far as the eye could see over the horizon; there was nothing to block it. As such it produced a brilliant and blinding glare in tandem with the angry sun's rays. The occasional splash against the crowded docks mingled with the voices of men and gulls to ensure the city always had a discordant symphony playing in the background.

Listening to both the birds and men alike squabble was a dignified figure, clad all in grey. His clothing was perhaps once mage's robe, but augmented and altered to the point where he would more likely be taken for a mercenary. The front of the robe about the legs had been cut off entirely, perhaps for practicality of movement, and replaced with cold steel plate armor above the knees. Below that was hardened leather boots, worn by excessive use. If one paid attention, they might notice the handle of a knife sticking from the left one. A belt was worn about his waist, more for storage than to hold anything up, over the top of a dark grey leather cuirass. His attire bore no sleeves, displaying powerful and muscular arms, deeply tanned from travel under the scorching weather of the region. Though his arms were for the most part exposed to the air, he did wear light plate mail gauntlets, with the smallest of points at each fingertip.

He was tall, but not unreasonably so. His face was as tanned as his arms, with wide features that were not exactly handsome, but bore a strange pride to them. His blonde hair, worn in a practical and short ponytail, had the peculiar effect of being just a bit lighter than his darkened face, which had a black tattoo under each of his eyes- the mark of an extinct gang of smugglers, each was shaped like a curved, artistic letter I. Few, however, paid attention to this when they noticed the unhealthy color of his eyes. The man gazed the world with eyes tainted yellow, marking him as one who spoke with demons and spirits alike on equal terms.

As the dockworkers shuffled passed him, he crossed his arms and leaned against one of the always available tan walls. Obscured under the shadows of a tower- which may have been a lighthouse, but the man didn't deign to raise his head to check- no one would see anything but a common ruffian. The boxes left ignored about him had likely been looted by thieves long ago, and there was nothing for him to do but turn his thoughts inwards to his memories with no risk of interruption.

Every once in a while, the man would smile widely and chuckle to himself, but for the most part his expression remained neutral, or perhaps with a ghost of a smile. At least an hour passed with this situation repeating itself, until the sun began to force its light about the shadows he had wreathed himself within.

He raised a hand above his sickly eyes to counter the glare of the sun with his own. Realizing he could not stall his purpose here any longer, he set forth into the streets.

If it had been anyone but him walking down the road they would have been assaulted by some organization of low-lives looking for some flimsy justification for their criminal actions, but he was not only able to pass the streets unmolested, he was given a wide berth. In this city, they knew exactly who he was.

A spot of laughter turned his head to his left, slowing his brisk pace to that of a slow walk. Two workers were chuckling over some joke, and one had set down the crate he had been carrying. When one turned his head innocently to the side and caught a glance of their observer, he immediately choked on his laughter. The second, wondering what had caught his acquaintance's attention, quickly followed suit and attempted to resume his work as if he had neither heard the joke nor seen the man at all. The only visible response on the grey robed man's part was a pained smile and the resumption of his original pace.

The buildings ahead loomed on each side of the street, each several stories high and built right up to the pathways; they were undoubtedly filled with people. Not a single alleyway existed between the houses; so dense was their construction that the smugglers ran openly across the streets and the rooftops. If one happened to glance up they would notice shoddily reinforced wooden boards placed from building to building for that very purpose. The buildings themselves were of equally poor construction, and seemed liable to fall into the street at any moment if one was to judge by the way they leaned. Even through the oppressive, cloister-like nature of the streets, one could still catch the scent of the salt tinged sea air through the haze of the repugnant living conditions.

As the man passed the nearly skeletal corpse of a horse, its bones picked free of anything remotely edible to humankind long since, the streets became marginally more open. Merchants began to replace the beggars, but the slums still showed through the poorly decorated stands, with flags and banners that seemed so long without color that they made a more depressing than lively sight.

Passing by a stand stacked with various alcohols, built out of an astoundingly intact wall and decorated with the greatest number of the downtrodden flags the man had yet seen, he halted on the opposite side of the street to stare for several seconds. Apparently having made up his mind, he waved a steel clawed hand beckoning towards his person. Less than a second later the most expensive of the bottled wines flung across the street with alarming speed, thrown by an unseen hand. He caught the glass bottle effortlessly, it providing a satisfying thump upon impact, and examined it a moment before walking off. He threw a coin over his shoulder in a meaningless direction which quite likely did not cover the full cost, and it too was snatched out of the air by an unknowable force and thrown at the terrified brewer. The man did not stop to check, but the coin's intended recipient only mustered the courage to pick up the currency after several minutes.

Having walked smoothly through the small trading bazaar, holding his acquisition with a firm grasp about the neck, the enigmatic ex-smuggler ducked back into the shadowed streets of the most downtrodden areas of the neighborhood. The pathway was not alike the simple stone roads he had encountered earlier, but was instead made of cobblestone. It seemed very out of place against the tan structures all about. This time the buildings were at such an angle that the streets were left dark and cold- it seemed some sort of moss was even growing about the dark edges of the street.

This did leave them marginally less crowded, leaving the loud banter and fruitless arguments behind. He took a long smell of the chilly, damp air as his unrelenting movement drove him onwards, the bottle occasionally clanking against his armor as he walked.

He had come back to the ocean. Though it was not visible, he could once again hear the lapping waves touch the structures of the port. Deciding arbitrarily to raise his gaze lazily to the sky, the ex-smuggler noticed with peculiar artistic insight the way the light from the sun's angle formed patterns with the wall's mismatched windows. The sky made a pure line of blue in-between the rooftops, unbroken by clouds for the length of the sparsely populated road.

He was near the end of the pathway, where the light began anew to just narrowly avoid gracing a small house buried at the bottom of one of the stacked up buildings with its warmth and light, when a heavily slurred voice drew him out of his reverie.

"H-hey! You there!" A clearly drunken waste of society stumbled out of the side of the ex-smuggler's vision, where he had apparently been lodging in a remarkably small crack in the side of a structure just behind him. The host of small bottles surrounding the crevice only confirmed this theory, the man's eyes sweeping swiftly over them before focusing solely on the drunkard who had addressed him. He looked at the drunk in complete silence, but his stance had altered ever so slightly into one in which his knees were faintly bent, his arms held out slightly wider.

The drunkard staggered out with a pronounced limp on his right leg he might have acquired during his past profession. He was holding a broken beer bottle in his right hand. "Y-you think that you can just waltz around this place, like you... like you own it, w-with those eyes? Are you stu... Stupid, or just plain daft?" At this the man smiled widely, revealing several rotten teeth, some of which were missing entirely. He wore a badly damaged set of clothing he must have been able to hold onto only because no petty thief would ever attempt to steal them, lacking in shoes of any kind. A thin rope had been tied about his head, with little clue as to why. He continued his pathetic advance on his motionless antagonist. "'Course you are. I... I know you, you bastard. Killer of the divine, they call you, Knife of the Arcan... Arcane." His fist wrapped weakly about his bottle, while the ex-smuggler made his first movement to set his down on the stone floor. "Well you... your reign ends here!"

The drunkard succeeded in closing the distance to the man he named the Knife of the Arcane. He raised the bottle high above his head, leaning far back in the process. As the bottle reached its peak, the glass caught a single glint of the sun, still teasing the ramshackle street with its light.

A steel covered hand shot out with an unreal speed, locking around his arm and forcing the hapless drunk to bend far backwards in a manner that appeared extremely painful. His other hand shot out, the claws landing just above the drunk's chest. At the faint narrowing of the Knife's eyes, the faintest white fog condensed about his hand and swirled violently over the drunk's form. His entire torso was frozen solid nigh instantly.

The Knife brought his free hand back far, until his fist was pointed straight up to the glorious blue line made by the sky. The drunk managed a whimper as best he could with a partially frozen throat and chin; he knew what was coming and was desperately twisting his head in a futile attempt to escape, his strength already draining to nothing.

His muscled arm flexed and began its movement with deadly precision. It arced back down its path, over the Knife's head and straight down into the frozen torso of the poor fool, who then shattered into pieces; his chest was no longer recognizable, the area of his heart completely hollowed out.

The grim process over in seconds, the Knife released the arm and the drunk fell over backwards. What little remained of him shattered into two distinct pieces on the stone floor. His finger gave a last, futile twitch, held to the sky by the unmoving ice, as he died.

The other beggars on the street were already slipping away, gone to their own crevices and crooks. They scuttled through nearly invisible passageways with the intimate familiarity most possessed with their own homes as the ex-smuggler watched.

"That was a bit much, wasn't it?"

He smiled tenderly, closed his eyes and sighed softly before turning to face the melodic new voice. "I have to eat sometime, Ethria." His voice was deep and formal in tone, but it had a strong undercurrent of levity, as though the whole world was nothing but grim irony to him.

He addressed a short woman of modest stature. She had features small and pointed to match her frame, and the faintest speckles dotted the skin beneath her large grey-blue eyes. Her hair was reasonably short, and possessed a dark brown color sometimes indistinguishable from black. She was thin, and had an uncertain frown upon her face.

She wore two grey-green scarves, one of which was long enough to brush the back of her heel, which wore a stylized grey and white traveling boot, decorated with various flourishes and silver rings which occasionally clicked together with a faint ringing sound. She had several similar trinkets wrapped about her, all small and unassuming, ranging from a thin golden bracelet on her right wrist to the small silver-tipped collar about her neck. The rest of her attire was somewhat similar to his- it was clearly once a robe, long since modified for freedom of movement. Hers was not nearly as openly militarized as his was, with a faint green-grey hue and embroidered lines that made it look as if she had scrapped together finery from clothing normally reserved for those far above her apparent station, but if the jingling rings of her boots were ignored the listener might catch the soft clinking noise of light portions of chainmail across her stomach and back.

She was leaning on the door at the end of the street, curiously well decorated for the ramshackle surroundings- not unlike its owner- and it had been carved with all manner of vine and leaf-shaped designs. Her arms were crossed. Ethria looked down at the stones in the road while her fingers shivered slightly.

After this brief hesitation, she uncrossed her arms opened the door. With her left hand still on the handle, she motioned for him to enter using her right. "Come in." Her gaze was intently scrutinizing him, observing every action he made. Her wide eyes did not stray, but her movements occasionally twitched as though she was in constant discomfort.

He picked up his bottle of wine and walked up to her. The clank of his boots against the stone seemed to increase their noise the closer he came, echoing down the street when he finally reached the doorway.

His resounding footsteps paused in front of her, when he was standing in the doorway. Half cloaked by the darkness of the interior, he turned around. Taking in air, he seemed about to say something; it was then that he saw she had never taken her eyes of him, and something in her sorrowful expression stopped him in his tracks. He stammered out the beginnings of his sentence unintelligibly before giving up, dropping his shoulders and walking inside.

Once he was inside, Ethria looked out over the street. She waited several crisp breaths, as though to contain the full extent of the atmosphere within her lungs, before closing the door.

It was dark inside. There was but a single window, set upon those uniform sandstone walls, working in tandem with a meager fireplace to light the room. There was an oval table off to the left of the fire, with two simple yet decorated chairs on either side. The light through the quaint circular frame was so bright as to give the impression that the outdoors was a pure white void, its unearthly light seeping inwards between the four panes. The thick stone walls prevented all but the loudest of the waves from disturbing the unending peace of the room, otherwise disturbed only by the flickering fire. Were it not for that energetic quality, the room may well have been a part of some long lost ruin, undisturbed but for the looters who might have happened upon it. There was but one other room to the home of an equally small size; kept in darkness, one could barely make out a small bed, covered in sheets of the faintest blue, set beside a bookshelf and a nightstand. All were carved with intricate artwork depicting the natural world.

The man was shifting an additional log into the meager flame. The dull wooden floor creaked as his weight shifted, the noise paralleled with the shifting of his grey robe. His eyes were set forwards, his focus undeniable even on this small task.

"Seren..." she started, but stopped when he did not turn. Having finished setting the blaze higher, he stood and moved over to a small table.

He admired the ornate wooden chair for a moment before sitting down. "Did you carve these objects yourself?" He asked, motioning to the similarly decorated pieces commonplace in the house.

Ethria, for her part, looked as if she were about to cry. Her eyes were wide and nervous; her hands each clutched the opposite hip. She remained standing as she replied.

"They are not illusions, if that is what you mean." She hesitated once more before sitting down across from him with visible contractions. She sunk into her seat as though hoping it would eat her alive, and once in it, failed to meet his gaze. She suddenly appeared almost too small for the chair entirely. "I did use magic though. No one seems to question it."

"Except for me, apparently" He slid the bottle of wine across the table. She caught it without thinking with her left hand, her focus moving forwards. Her eyes thus caught, they did not soon stray from him again. "Thanks." She said, and pulled a corkscrew from her pocket to work at the cork. Halfway through this process, she sighed gently and shifted her shoulders slightly.

In place of human ears, the woman named Ethria suddenly possessed those of a fox, colored a melancholy grey. "I know you don't like it when I alter your sight."

"No, it's fine, really." He replied. "If you like it better that way." Regardless, she did not disguise the fox ears again. This was followed by a long silence, save the crackle of the fire and the occasional outburst of the sea. The cork was unusually well fixed.

After that pause, Seren rested his arms and clasped his hands together to form a triangle with the table. With a mischievous but mild grin he rested his chin upon them and said "I liked your flashier transitions better."

"I grew out of that." She said, blushing faintly. The cork finally came out with a pop, and she put down the wine. There was a faint shuffling sound. Seren suspected it was her tail wagging slightly. It quickly halted, however, and she looked down, her hair falling in front of her eyes.

"I am so sorry." She said bluntly.

He looked up, his eyes dead set where hers were hidden. "You? What do you have to be sor-"

"I betrayed you! You were there, a-and it said that if I just-"

"You are not at fault! I killed you! Your blood was on my hands and-"

She looked up sorrowfully, a full range of emotions at once displayed upon her features. "No! It wasn't really me, it was just-"

"That is not the point!" He growled angrily, half standing from his chair which indignantly slid backwards with a screech. He raised his clawed fist for emphasis. "If it had been you, I would have done it! I would have killed you! The only person I had ever cared about and I murdered you, relentlessly, in seconds! No remorse! No fear! Just... anger. And death. Your blood on my hands."

"I attacked you! I turned on you right then! You could not have simply dodged for eternity! And for what, a spirit's lies!" She held out a hand, but could not reach him as he slumped back to his chair, hiding his yellow eyes in his steel wreathed hands. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" She continued. "What of my loyalty! What of my friendship! What of-"

"We were different then." he protested. "You can't hate yourself like this."

"Yes. We were different. But we're better now. We can move on, Seren, I know we can, we just have to do it together! I can't live with the guilt of destroying this and neither can you! So we won't blame ourselves and we won't look back and we'll make this work, one way or another, do you hear me?" She sobbed then, a powerful and respectable sort of tear, while only now realizing she had all but thrown herself across the table and placed one foot on her chair. Both her palms had been forcefully slammed upon the tabletop. She wasn't entirely sure when.

Seren, until this moment stunned by the sheer fury of her declaration, reached out a hand and wrapped his fingers delicately about her wrist before she could sit down again. "Can you forgive me?"

"Can you forgive me?" She returned. She sat down with a quick breath, looking at her heart as if it had betrayed her; wondering where her ferocity could have possibly come from. The fire crackled loudly; she tossed it an accusatory glare before becoming lost watching the flames consume the wood, searching for meaning where there may well have been none.

"It was never us." Seren said, speaking quieter than before.

She looked at him inquisitively. He began to elaborate. "When I first met you, I was starving, half mad and passed out immediately after our conversation, if you could really count my stammering that. When I woke up, you had gathered food and water for me. I didn't have the faintest clue about how to live in the wilderness, but you did. You were my survival, and you wanted me to lead you to the city."

"You did." She said indignantly, drawing her face back and tightening her lips.

He laughed. "I certainly did. Then I tried to get you as far away as I possibly could. You were a resource, like everybody else was, and you were useless, even a burden, in the city. I showed you every whorehouse, crime ring and smuggling operation I could in the hopes that one of them would get you to leave. I never could get why you didn't."

She mumbled something under her breath, and took a slight sip of her wine.

He continued, smiling faintly now and resuming an upright posture, his extraordinary eyes far away. "But what surprised me most of all was that you didn't leave immediately when we got to the city. The first thing I did should have turned away almost anyone. I lied. I had told you that in exchange for my life, I would help you find your fellow exile. I took you up to the port side wall, pointed at the sea and said 'He's somewhere in that direction' as I recall."

She interjected. "He could have been anywhere. There are so many trade routes and boats; I had never even seen such things before. My price was unrealistic, and you knew that."

"My point remains. You stuck around, even though I did my very best to keep you from slowing me down."

"I suppose." She hesitated, trying to think of her next words. Her fingers scratched at the wooden table. "I took an estimation of you character. I mean, you were trying to get me out of your way, but you didn't hurt me when I caught my first glimpse of civilization. When you showed me all those places, I just realized that I was going to be as helpless here as you were in the forest. I needed you to protect me."

He laughed again, but choked on his breath halfway through. "An unwilling, young bodyguard for a naive forest girl- I guess you were right about my character, I can't think of a better recipe for disaster." He sighed. "But you made me care, damn you. I guess I had never cared for any of those smugglers I worked with. Too high a death rate, it just would have ended in sorrow if I did. Regardless, a little magical crap and a noble cause later, and here we are, free from that life- pass me that wine, will you?"

She chose a wry smile and slid it back to him. "All the bards sing about a little magic, do they?"

He took a much less delicate drink than she had. "Well, there were all of the daring break-ins, high profile assassinations, and takedown of a church gone too far, but I'd honestly prefer the bards shut up and find some new material."

She stood up and moved her chair to his side, then sat and leaned her head on his shoulder. He leaned slightly towards her for her comfort. She closed her eyes. "I'll bet you wouldn't tell Rillian that." She said.

He burst out laughing then, forcing her to lift her head for a bit. His steel wreathed hand grabbed his stomach as he convulsed, needing to laugh for the simple expression of it. "No, I'd never say that to the innocent little idiot's face. What do you know? I'm a nice guy after all."

"That's all I needed to hear." She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and together they spent the rest of the day reciting their own story and listening to the fire dwindle with the rays of the daylight sun.

Description
The Knife of the Arcane

The sun turned a fiery eye upon the dockhands, each sweating as they worked to the point of collapse. Many could be seen chatting with their fellows amidst the sandstone buildings as they wiped the moisture from their brows. They toiled about the pale tan structures and strode across the similarly colored roads just as the people of the city had for the last many centuries.

The water was pure and clean; it stretched as far as the eye could see over the horizon; there was nothing to block it. As such it produced a brilliant and blinding glare in tandem with the angry sun's rays. The occasional splash against the crowded docks mingled with the voices of men and gulls to ensure the city always had a discordant symphony playing in the background.

Listening to both the birds and men alike squabble was a dignified figure, clad all in grey. His clothing was perhaps once mage's robe, but augmented and altered to the point where he would more likely be taken for a mercenary. The front of the robe about the legs had been cut off entirely, perhaps for practicality of movement, and replaced with cold steel plate armor above the knees. Below that was hardened leather boots, worn by excessive use. If one paid attention, they might notice the handle of a knife sticking from the left one. A belt was worn about his waist, more for storage than to hold anything up, over the top of a dark grey leather cuirass. His attire bore no sleeves, displaying powerful and muscular arms, deeply tanned from travel under the scorching weather of the region. Though his arms were for the most part exposed to the air, he did wear light plate mail gauntlets, with the smallest of points at each fingertip.

He was tall, but not unreasonably so. His face was as tanned as his arms, with wide features that were not exactly handsome, but bore a strange pride to them. His blonde hair, worn in a practical and short ponytail, had the peculiar effect of being just a bit lighter than his darkened face, which had a black tattoo under each of his eyes- the mark of an extinct gang of smugglers, each was shaped like a curved, artistic letter I. Few, however, paid attention to this when they noticed the unhealthy color of his eyes. The man gazed the world with eyes tainted yellow, marking him as one who spoke with demons and spirits alike on equal terms.

As the dockworkers shuffled passed him, he crossed his arms and leaned against one of the always available tan walls. Obscured under the shadows of a tower- which may have been a lighthouse, but the man didn't deign to raise his head to check- no one would see anything but a common ruffian. The boxes left ignored about him had likely been looted by thieves long ago, and there was nothing for him to do but turn his thoughts inwards to his memories with no risk of interruption.

Every once in a while, the man would smile widely and chuckle to himself, but for the most part his expression remained neutral, or perhaps with a ghost of a smile. At least an hour passed with this situation repeating itself, until the sun began to force its light about the shadows he had wreathed himself within.

He raised a hand above his sickly eyes to counter the glare of the sun with his own. Realizing he could not stall his purpose here any longer, he set forth into the streets.

If it had been anyone but him walking down the road they would have been assaulted by some organization of low-lives looking for some flimsy justification for their criminal actions, but he was not only able to pass the streets unmolested, he was given a wide berth. In this city, they knew exactly who he was.

A spot of laughter turned his head to his left, slowing his brisk pace to that of a slow walk. Two workers were chuckling over some joke, and one had set down the crate he had been carrying. When one turned his head innocently to the side and caught a glance of their observer, he immediately choked on his laughter. The second, wondering what had caught his acquaintance's attention, quickly followed suit and attempted to resume his work as if he had neither heard the joke nor seen the man at all. The only visible response on the grey robed man's part was a pained smile and the resumption of his original pace.

The buildings ahead loomed on each side of the street, each several stories high and built right up to the pathways; they were undoubtedly filled with people. Not a single alleyway existed between the houses; so dense was their construction that the smugglers ran openly across the streets and the rooftops. If one happened to glance up they would notice shoddily reinforced wooden boards placed from building to building for that very purpose. The buildings themselves were of equally poor construction, and seemed liable to fall into the street at any moment if one was to judge by the way they leaned. Even through the oppressive, cloister-like nature of the streets, one could still catch the scent of the salt tinged sea air through the haze of the repugnant living conditions.

As the man passed the nearly skeletal corpse of a horse, its bones picked free of anything remotely edible to humankind long since, the streets became marginally more open. Merchants began to replace the beggars, but the slums still showed through the poorly decorated stands, with flags and banners that seemed so long without color that they made a more depressing than lively sight.

Passing by a stand stacked with various alcohols, built out of an astoundingly intact wall and decorated with the greatest number of the downtrodden flags the man had yet seen, he halted on the opposite side of the street to stare for several seconds. Apparently having made up his mind, he waved a steel clawed hand beckoning towards his person. Less than a second later the most expensive of the bottled wines flung across the street with alarming speed, thrown by an unseen hand. He caught the glass bottle effortlessly, it providing a satisfying thump upon impact, and examined it a moment before walking off. He threw a coin over his shoulder in a meaningless direction which quite likely did not cover the full cost, and it too was snatched out of the air by an unknowable force and thrown at the terrified brewer. The man did not stop to check, but the coin's intended recipient only mustered the courage to pick up the currency after several minutes.

Having walked smoothly through the small trading bazaar, holding his acquisition with a firm grasp about the neck, the enigmatic ex-smuggler ducked back into the shadowed streets of the most downtrodden areas of the neighborhood. The pathway was not alike the simple stone roads he had encountered earlier, but was instead made of cobblestone. It seemed very out of place against the tan structures all about. This time the buildings were at such an angle that the streets were left dark and cold- it seemed some sort of moss was even growing about the dark edges of the street.

This did leave them marginally less crowded, leaving the loud banter and fruitless arguments behind. He took a long smell of the chilly, damp air as his unrelenting movement drove him onwards, the bottle occasionally clanking against his armor as he walked.

He had come back to the ocean. Though it was not visible, he could once again hear the lapping waves touch the structures of the port. Deciding arbitrarily to raise his gaze lazily to the sky, the ex-smuggler noticed with peculiar artistic insight the way the light from the sun's angle formed patterns with the wall's mismatched windows. The sky made a pure line of blue in-between the rooftops, unbroken by clouds for the length of the sparsely populated road.

He was near the end of the pathway, where the light began anew to just narrowly avoid gracing a small house buried at the bottom of one of the stacked up buildings with its warmth and light, when a heavily slurred voice drew him out of his reverie.

"H-hey! You there!" A clearly drunken waste of society stumbled out of the side of the ex-smuggler's vision, where he had apparently been lodging in a remarkably small crack in the side of a structure just behind him. The host of small bottles surrounding the crevice only confirmed this theory, the man's eyes sweeping swiftly over them before focusing solely on the drunkard who had addressed him. He looked at the drunk in complete silence, but his stance had altered ever so slightly into one in which his knees were faintly bent, his arms held out slightly wider.

The drunkard staggered out with a pronounced limp on his right leg he might have acquired during his past profession. He was holding a broken beer bottle in his right hand. "Y-you think that you can just waltz around this place, like you... like you own it, w-with those eyes? Are you stu... Stupid, or just plain daft?" At this the man smiled widely, revealing several rotten teeth, some of which were missing entirely. He wore a badly damaged set of clothing he must have been able to hold onto only because no petty thief would ever attempt to steal them, lacking in shoes of any kind. A thin rope had been tied about his head, with little clue as to why. He continued his pathetic advance on his motionless antagonist. "'Course you are. I... I know you, you bastard. Killer of the divine, they call you, Knife of the Arcan... Arcane." His fist wrapped weakly about his bottle, while the ex-smuggler made his first movement to set his down on the stone floor. "Well you... your reign ends here!"

The drunkard succeeded in closing the distance to the man he named the Knife of the Arcane. He raised the bottle high above his head, leaning far back in the process. As the bottle reached its peak, the glass caught a single glint of the sun, still teasing the ramshackle street with its light.

A steel covered hand shot out with an unreal speed, locking around his arm and forcing the hapless drunk to bend far backwards in a manner that appeared extremely painful. His other hand shot out, the claws landing just above the drunk's chest. At the faint narrowing of the Knife's eyes, the faintest white fog condensed about his hand and swirled violently over the drunk's form. His entire torso was frozen solid nigh instantly.

The Knife brought his free hand back far, until his fist was pointed straight up to the glorious blue line made by the sky. The drunk managed a whimper as best he could with a partially frozen throat and chin; he knew what was coming and was desperately twisting his head in a futile attempt to escape, his strength already draining to nothing.

His muscled arm flexed and began its movement with deadly precision. It arced back down its path, over the Knife's head and straight down into the frozen torso of the poor fool, who then shattered into pieces; his chest was no longer recognizable, the area of his heart completely hollowed out.

The grim process over in seconds, the Knife released the arm and the drunk fell over backwards. What little remained of him shattered into two distinct pieces on the stone floor. His finger gave a last, futile twitch, held to the sky by the unmoving ice, as he died.

The other beggars on the street were already slipping away, gone to their own crevices and crooks. They scuttled through nearly invisible passageways with the intimate familiarity most possessed with their own homes as the ex-smuggler watched.

"That was a bit much, wasn't it?"

He smiled tenderly, closed his eyes and sighed softly before turning to face the melodic new voice. "I have to eat sometime, Ethria." His voice was deep and formal in tone, but it had a strong undercurrent of levity, as though the whole world was nothing but grim irony to him.

He addressed a short woman of modest stature. She had features small and pointed to match her frame, and the faintest speckles dotted the skin beneath her large grey-blue eyes. Her hair was reasonably short, and possessed a dark brown color sometimes indistinguishable from black. She was thin, and had an uncertain frown upon her face.

She wore two grey-green scarves, one of which was long enough to brush the back of her heel, which wore a stylized grey and white traveling boot, decorated with various flourishes and silver rings which occasionally clicked together with a faint ringing sound. She had several similar trinkets wrapped about her, all small and unassuming, ranging from a thin golden bracelet on her right wrist to the small silver-tipped collar about her neck. The rest of her attire was somewhat similar to his- it was clearly once a robe, long since modified for freedom of movement. Hers was not nearly as openly militarized as his was, with a faint green-grey hue and embroidered lines that made it look as if she had scrapped together finery from clothing normally reserved for those far above her apparent station, but if the jingling rings of her boots were ignored the listener might catch the soft clinking noise of light portions of chainmail across her stomach and back.

She was leaning on the door at the end of the street, curiously well decorated for the ramshackle surroundings- not unlike its owner- and it had been carved with all manner of vine and leaf-shaped designs. Her arms were crossed. Ethria looked down at the stones in the road while her fingers shivered slightly.

After this brief hesitation, she uncrossed her arms opened the door. With her left hand still on the handle, she motioned for him to enter using her right. "Come in." Her gaze was intently scrutinizing him, observing every action he made. Her wide eyes did not stray, but her movements occasionally twitched as though she was in constant discomfort.

He picked up his bottle of wine and walked up to her. The clank of his boots against the stone seemed to increase their noise the closer he came, echoing down the street when he finally reached the doorway.

His resounding footsteps paused in front of her, when he was standing in the doorway. Half cloaked by the darkness of the interior, he turned around. Taking in air, he seemed about to say something; it was then that he saw she had never taken her eyes of him, and something in her sorrowful expression stopped him in his tracks. He stammered out the beginnings of his sentence unintelligibly before giving up, dropping his shoulders and walking inside.

Once he was inside, Ethria looked out over the street. She waited several crisp breaths, as though to contain the full extent of the atmosphere within her lungs, before closing the door.

It was dark inside. There was but a single window, set upon those uniform sandstone walls, working in tandem with a meager fireplace to light the room. There was an oval table off to the left of the fire, with two simple yet decorated chairs on either side. The light through the quaint circular frame was so bright as to give the impression that the outdoors was a pure white void, its unearthly light seeping inwards between the four panes. The thick stone walls prevented all but the loudest of the waves from disturbing the unending peace of the room, otherwise disturbed only by the flickering fire. Were it not for that energetic quality, the room may well have been a part of some long lost ruin, undisturbed but for the looters who might have happened upon it. There was but one other room to the home of an equally small size; kept in darkness, one could barely make out a small bed, covered in sheets of the faintest blue, set beside a bookshelf and a nightstand. All were carved with intricate artwork depicting the natural world.

The man was shifting an additional log into the meager flame. The dull wooden floor creaked as his weight shifted, the noise paralleled with the shifting of his grey robe. His eyes were set forwards, his focus undeniable even on this small task.

"Seren..." she started, but stopped when he did not turn. Having finished setting the blaze higher, he stood and moved over to a small table.

He admired the ornate wooden chair for a moment before sitting down. "Did you carve these objects yourself?" He asked, motioning to the similarly decorated pieces commonplace in the house.

Ethria, for her part, looked as if she were about to cry. Her eyes were wide and nervous; her hands each clutched the opposite hip. She remained standing as she replied.

"They are not illusions, if that is what you mean." She hesitated once more before sitting down across from him with visible contractions. She sunk into her seat as though hoping it would eat her alive, and once in it, failed to meet his gaze. She suddenly appeared almost too small for the chair entirely. "I did use magic though. No one seems to question it."

"Except for me, apparently" He slid the bottle of wine across the table. She caught it without thinking with her left hand, her focus moving forwards. Her eyes thus caught, they did not soon stray from him again. "Thanks." She said, and pulled a corkscrew from her pocket to work at the cork. Halfway through this process, she sighed gently and shifted her shoulders slightly.

In place of human ears, the woman named Ethria suddenly possessed those of a fox, colored a melancholy grey. "I know you don't like it when I alter your sight."

"No, it's fine, really." He replied. "If you like it better that way." Regardless, she did not disguise the fox ears again. This was followed by a long silence, save the crackle of the fire and the occasional outburst of the sea. The cork was unusually well fixed.

After that pause, Seren rested his arms and clasped his hands together to form a triangle with the table. With a mischievous but mild grin he rested his chin upon them and said "I liked your flashier transitions better."

"I grew out of that." She said, blushing faintly. The cork finally came out with a pop, and she put down the wine. There was a faint shuffling sound. Seren suspected it was her tail wagging slightly. It quickly halted, however, and she looked down, her hair falling in front of her eyes.

"I am so sorry." She said bluntly.

He looked up, his eyes dead set where hers were hidden. "You? What do you have to be sor-"

"I betrayed you! You were there, a-and it said that if I just-"

"You are not at fault! I killed you! Your blood was on my hands and-"

She looked up sorrowfully, a full range of emotions at once displayed upon her features. "No! It wasn't really me, it was just-"

"That is not the point!" He growled angrily, half standing from his chair which indignantly slid backwards with a screech. He raised his clawed fist for emphasis. "If it had been you, I would have done it! I would have killed you! The only person I had ever cared about and I murdered you, relentlessly, in seconds! No remorse! No fear! Just... anger. And death. Your blood on my hands."

"I attacked you! I turned on you right then! You could not have simply dodged for eternity! And for what, a spirit's lies!" She held out a hand, but could not reach him as he slumped back to his chair, hiding his yellow eyes in his steel wreathed hands. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" She continued. "What of my loyalty! What of my friendship! What of-"

"We were different then." he protested. "You can't hate yourself like this."

"Yes. We were different. But we're better now. We can move on, Seren, I know we can, we just have to do it together! I can't live with the guilt of destroying this and neither can you! So we won't blame ourselves and we won't look back and we'll make this work, one way or another, do you hear me?" She sobbed then, a powerful and respectable sort of tear, while only now realizing she had all but thrown herself across the table and placed one foot on her chair. Both her palms had been forcefully slammed upon the tabletop. She wasn't entirely sure when.

Seren, until this moment stunned by the sheer fury of her declaration, reached out a hand and wrapped his fingers delicately about her wrist before she could sit down again. "Can you forgive me?"

"Can you forgive me?" She returned. She sat down with a quick breath, looking at her heart as if it had betrayed her; wondering where her ferocity could have possibly come from. The fire crackled loudly; she tossed it an accusatory glare before becoming lost watching the flames consume the wood, searching for meaning where there may well have been none.

"It was never us." Seren said, speaking quieter than before.

She looked at him inquisitively. He began to elaborate. "When I first met you, I was starving, half mad and passed out immediately after our conversation, if you could really count my stammering that. When I woke up, you had gathered food and water for me. I didn't have the faintest clue about how to live in the wilderness, but you did. You were my survival, and you wanted me to lead you to the city."

"You did." She said indignantly, drawing her face back and tightening her lips.

He laughed. "I certainly did. Then I tried to get you as far away as I possibly could. You were a resource, like everybody else was, and you were useless, even a burden, in the city. I showed you every whorehouse, crime ring and smuggling operation I could in the hopes that one of them would get you to leave. I never could get why you didn't."

She mumbled something under her breath, and took a slight sip of her wine.

He continued, smiling faintly now and resuming an upright posture, his extraordinary eyes far away. "But what surprised me most of all was that you didn't leave immediately when we got to the city. The first thing I did should have turned away almost anyone. I lied. I had told you that in exchange for my life, I would help you find your fellow exile. I took you up to the port side wall, pointed at the sea and said 'He's somewhere in that direction' as I recall."

She interjected. "He could have been anywhere. There are so many trade routes and boats; I had never even seen such things before. My price was unrealistic, and you knew that."

"My point remains. You stuck around, even though I did my very best to keep you from slowing me down."

"I suppose." She hesitated, trying to think of her next words. Her fingers scratched at the wooden table. "I took an estimation of you character. I mean, you were trying to get me out of your way, but you didn't hurt me when I caught my first glimpse of civilization. When you showed me all those places, I just realized that I was going to be as helpless here as you were in the forest. I needed you to protect me."

He laughed again, but choked on his breath halfway through. "An unwilling, young bodyguard for a naive forest girl- I guess you were right about my character, I can't think of a better recipe for disaster." He sighed. "But you made me care, damn you. I guess I had never cared for any of those smugglers I worked with. Too high a death rate, it just would have ended in sorrow if I did. Regardless, a little magical crap and a noble cause later, and here we are, free from that life- pass me that wine, will you?"

She chose a wry smile and slid it back to him. "All the bards sing about a little magic, do they?"

He took a much less delicate drink than she had. "Well, there were all of the daring break-ins, high profile assassinations, and takedown of a church gone too far, but I'd honestly prefer the bards shut up and find some new material."

She stood up and moved her chair to his side, then sat and leaned her head on his shoulder. He leaned slightly towards her for her comfort. She closed her eyes. "I'll bet you wouldn't tell Rillian that." She said.

He burst out laughing then, forcing her to lift her head for a bit. His steel wreathed hand grabbed his stomach as he convulsed, needing to laugh for the simple expression of it. "No, I'd never say that to the innocent little idiot's face. What do you know? I'm a nice guy after all."

"That's all I needed to hear." She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and together they spent the rest of the day reciting their own story and listening to the fire dwindle with the rays of the daylight sun.