Rough leather pushed hard into my shoulder. 

“Nathan, wake up.”

I laid still and silent, curled up on my side in the thin straw bedding, and hoped he would go away. Instead, I felt the light kick of someone’s boot into my side. My eyes cracked open to see Daven standing over me. 

Another voice to my left asked, “The sleeping beauty awake yet?”

“M’ up,” I mumbled and stumbled up to my feet before anyone could kick me again. My head swirled in pain, and bile rose up as I tried to keep my stomach from erupting. 

“We got a problem,” Daven said.

I looked at him questioningly until Fabian spoke up in his gruff voice. “Someone stole our flasks.” 

Damn, what a way to start the day. A hangover and things missing. “Who?” I asked, rubbing my face.

“Dunno,” Daven replied. “Fabian sent Nole out to look.” The shorter blonde boy gestured lazily at Fabian. 

“You sent Nole out?” I asked incredulously. 

“Yeah, well, we had to kick you awake still.” Daven grinned at me.

Looking around the old half-collapsed house, I could see the cask of ale Fabian had stolen still sitting in the corner we’d left it in. Our flasks though, as he said, had gone missing. Maybe we needed a new place to get plastered. 

“So we’ll get some new ones,” I said. It would be costly but seemed the most reasonable option. Or more than likely, Fabian would just steal some.

“No.” Fabian declared. He looked at me as if daring me to challenge him.

“No?” I probed back. 

“We’re gonna go get them back.”

That idea stunk. It stunk so bad I didn’t want to go within a mile of it. I gave them an exaggerated sigh. 

“It’ll be fun!” Daven piped out.  

Nole had probably abandoned his ‘search’ for the flasks already, if he did any searching at all. I didn’t blame him either way. He was a baker’s son, and we weren’t. The only reason he did anything with us is because I liked to invite him. Plus, his family was probably irate enough as it was that he’d been away half the morning sleeping off a hangover instead of at their bakery. 

“I guess you want me to find Little Mick then?” I asked.

Fabian just gestured me forward. I slipped my missing boot back on, checked my knife pocket, and we left the half burned and crumbling abandoned house to begin the search. 

The city was bustling, which meant we really had slept through most of the morning. Judging from the sun, it may have already been noon. We found Mick a while later picking at his toenails with what looked like a large sewing needle. He was sitting with his back to some little hovel I knew wasn’t his. Mick was small, more than just regular streets small, and despite his being over twenty years old. I don’t think he liked that everyone called him ‘Little Mick,’ but no one really cared what you liked to be called. Especially not when you were a street thief who still looked mostly like a kid. Who knew what his actual name was. We stopped a few feet away from him as he stood up and circled to the side to keep his distance.

“You brought muscle with you, rat boy,” he said. It was what a lot of people knew me as, that or sometimes just ‘Rat.’ It sort of just came with being known as a rat trapper, for better or worse. 

Fabian looked put off at being called the muscle. Not that he wasn’t a big and muscular guy, but he considered himself the brains of the group more than anything. He liked to threaten to jab holes through anyone who said otherwise. 

“Where’s your little crew?” Fabian implored. 

“Not here,” Mick quipped smartly. 

Fabian made a show of grabbing his knife, and my hand went out to placate him. “Mick, we’re looking for some missing stuff. You know anything about it?” I questioned Mick. 

Little Mick eyed the three of us for a moment, likely wondering whether to bail. He was older than us, but that didn’t matter when you were outnumbered three to one. And two of us were training to be part of the Inquisition as well. Fabian knew better than most how to handle a knife. “Wasn’t us. At least not that I know of. I heard the orphans were up to no good last night, though.”

“Beat it,” Fabian growled, and Mick turned to leave at a rather leisurely pace. It was probably meant to annoy him. Fabian sneered back. 

It made a bit of sense, now that I was more awake, even with the still throbbing head. What was the purpose of stealing a bunch of cheap flasks except to annoy us? It wasn’t that it was beyond something Little Mick’s crew would do, sometimes they did just steal for spite, but mostly they took to get by. Though the flasks did probably still have ale in them when we dropped them to pass out. That might be a reason all on it’s own. 

A few minutes later we were standing in front of the orphanage. 

Daven looked over at the two of us with a small smirking smile. “So how are we gonna do this?”

I shrugged and simply walked through the door. Several young children almost stumbled into me. Peering around, it seemed like only the smaller children and the matron watching over them were here. She hadn’t noticed us yet, or perhaps simply hadn’t acknowledged us. Maybe we could just find our stuff and leave before anyone showed back up. It was better not to start a fight in a state building, even if it was just an orphanage. 

I bent my knees down to one boy who was watching us warily and faux-whispered to him, “We’re looking for some stuff of ours that got taken. You seen any water flasks?” I noticed the little elven ears poking out from his hair. It meant he was probably a bit older than he looked.

He seemed to think a moment and then slowly nodded his head. I began to smile at him when there was a shout from outside. Seemed the quiet approach was out. 

I turned to find three older boys, a number that quickly doubled, out in the street and jogging towards us. It was at that point that the matron began shooing us out as well. We quickly stepped out, the door closing to our backs, to be surrounded by the six boys, most of which were a few years younger than us. I considered and thought it was a toss up as to whether we could take them. I just hoped Fabian didn’t lose his head and pull out a knife. A fist fight was one thing; we’d been in a lot of them. A knife fight meant people dying. I’d been in one with him once before, many years back. Or rather, Fabian had had a knife while no one else did. The image of the dead kid laying there on the street still haunted me. Younger kids having knives wasn’t so common back then. Now it seemed every five-year-old had one hiding somewhere. Every fight since that moment, I’d feared it would happen again. It seemed just a matter of time, a matter of the wrong buttons being pushed, and the next time it would be much more bloody. 

“Well, what can we do for you three fine and upstanding Inquisitors?” their lead boy taunted. The three of us were certainly the sons of Inquisitors, and both Daven and Fabian had begun learning the trade, but it was a big stretch to consider any of us actual Inquisitors. His words smacked not only of condescension, but of insult to the organization. No one called the Inquisition ‘fine’ or ‘upstanding’ unless they meant it sarcastically. 

Daven took the taunt for what it was and glared menacingly at the boy, “Shut up, Chester. We’re here to get our shit back.” He hated Chester, said it was the boy’s voice that annoyed him. I thought it was probably something else. Chester was rumored to have slept with a few elven girls, and Daven had never had a high opinion of elves. Most didn’t. 

“You wouldn’t happen to be willing to just go get our flasks and we can be on our way, would you?” I proposed in appeasement. 

“Now why would we have a couple of flasks from you?” Chester argued.

“It’s three flasks, and we’re getting them if we have to beat them out of you,” Fabian put in. 

It was at that moment that two of the boys from Chester’s side jumped, rather literally, on Daven, bringing him to the ground. The fight was on. I stepped towards the boy in front of me and threw a punch to his face. He managed to cover it with his arm in time, and meanwhile another boy to my right grabbed my shoulder-length copper-brown hair and pulled. My breath hitched as I was yanked to the side, nearly losing my balance. I threw an elbow at him and connected somewhere, but at that point the other boy was back on me with a fist flying into my stomach and then another into my face. I staggered back as the boy who’d grabbed my hair wrapped his arms around me. I managed to throw him off and to the cobbled street while another punch connected to my arm. Then I socked the young boy in front of me in the jaw. 

He went down, but I hadn’t anticipated the other one behind me already being on his feet and tackling me to the street as well. I rolled slightly as I fell, my shoulder crunching into cobbled rock, but the boy was quickly back on top of me, his hand shoving mine out the way and fist smashing into my face. I squinted my eyes, trying to get my arms up to protect me as he hit me twice more. 

When I opened them again, the boy was no longer on top of me. I rolled over, trying and failing to get to my feet, and looked around for him. It was just Fabian, Daven, and I. The orphans had left, and I must have blacked out. I could feel blood dripping down from my nose and lip, and damn did everything already hurt. Fabian was up but hunched over coughing and probably throwing up his guts. Daven was still out cold. 

Slowly, we got ourselves together, with Fabian and I making it to our feet and Daven eventually being shaken and slapped awake. As we started to walk away, I noticed a pair of small eyes peeking from the side door of the orphanage. A young boy eased out, the same one I had whispered to not that long ago. In his arms were three small flasks. I grinned at him as he shyly made his way towards us and brushed the top of his head as he approached. 

“Thanks, kid.” 

We decided to get wasted again that night, just the three of us this time. Nole wasn’t in the fight, after all. For much of the night, Fabian kept mumbling and grunting to himself, and it wasn’t long until Daven began to get troublesome. He started by bothering Fabian, asking him about the girl Fabian’s parents had recently engaged him to, until the boy threatened to gut him, and then he started snooping through the things I had hidden around our collapsing hovel. It was mostly the stuff I used to make my rat traps, but eventually I found his hand wrapped around my latest project. It was a small circle of thick foggy glass that I had slotted into a ring of carved wood. Along the wood were numerous runes burned into it. It wasn’t particularly impressive to look at, but that wasn’t what mattered. 

“Put that back.” I told Daven. 

He ginned back at me defiantly. “This your witch finder, then?” Twisting it in his hand, he added, “Doesn’t look like much.”

“It doesn’t find anything,” I said. “Just an experiment.” I reached out to grab it from him, only for him to pull it out of reach. “Come on Daven, getting glass is a pain in the ass.”

“I’m just looking,” he said and peered through it with one eye.

Finally, I managed to pry it from him and decided I needed to find a better hiding location for it when he wasn’t looking. I would have to hold it till he got distracted by something else.

“What’s it do?” he asked.

“I told you, doesn’t do anything. Still trying to figure out how to get the glass to show any magic that runs through it.” 

There were a few different ways to identify witches, but all of them revolved around viewing the magic within someone’s body. Everyone had at least a bit of magic in them, but witches were different. They weren’t like humans or any of the other races. Magic flowed through us like blood or water. Witches only had magic in their heart. Not their literal heart, but rather, a sort of magical core inside of them that grew over time. To find a witch, you either had to find their heart or somehow spot that magic wasn’t running through them. Most methods focused on the latter, the most common of which checked for magic in a certain part of the body like an arm or hand by pressing something against it.

Magic was difficult to actually see through the body, and was near impossible to view from a distance. A lot of inquisitors had spent enormous amounts of time trying to make lenses or other objects that would let you physically see the magic inside someone from a distance. I didn’t completely understand why they didn’t work, much like I didn’t really understand most of what I was trying to do with my device. Half of the runes I had simply copied from elsewhere, and I only had a vague idea of what they did. Eventually, the idea was that the glass would glow… or something, when you touched it, powered by the ambient magic within you. It was something I’d been working on for months. 

“You wouldn’t have to make that junk if you’d just give up this nonsense and join the Inquisition proper,” Fabian grumbled. 

“You know it’s not that simple,” I countered. 

My father didn’t think I had what it took to be an Inquisitor, or as he liked to put it, I was ‘a timid puss that would run off at the first sign of a witch.’ He may not have been high up the ladder, but my father was an Inquisitor. One Inquisitor’s word against you was generally enough to mean they wouldn’t let you join. And against the word of your own father? There wasn’t much hope to be had. 

“You haven’t even tried,” Fabian barked back. “You haven’t even asked to take the trial. You’re too scared they’re gonna turn you down to even try.”

“Shut up, Fabian. I ain’t scared to take the trial. They’ll just say no regardless of how well I do.”

“So what are you gonna do? Get your little trinket there to find you a witch and prove yourself? She’d splatter your guts across the city.” He walked over to me, his hand slamming against the wall to my back, making it shudder as he sneered, “Or what? You think the pretty little witch is gonna grant your wish?”

That was a low blow, a really low blow. That fucking bastard. I tried to stay standing tall and look him back in the eyes defiantly. But I could already feel my hands shaking for some reason. 

“Fuck you,” I said with a slight tremble in my voice that I hoped he didn’t notice. My emotions were spewing out raw. “Fuck you, Fabian. I’ll find the witch, and then I’ll fucking kill her.” I shoved him away from his loom over me, making him back up several steps. 

He didn’t push me back or throw a fist towards me, as I’d expected him to. Instead, he snorted in morbid amusement. “You can’t even deny it, can you? You’re hoping somewhere deep inside that it’s true. That she’ll grant you ‘a wish for a favor.’” He howled out a laugh full of loathing, and I couldn’t bring myself to speak. “But we both know it’s not real. And really, you’re not gonna find her anyways. You’re no witch hunter.” Then with a pause he added, “And you know what, maybe your father is right. You’re not really Inquisitor material either.”  

I wanted to punch him, or possibly to cry, but mostly to punch him. A fight with Fabian, however, wasn’t one I could win. 

Silence fell over the three of us, with Daven glancing back and forth between Fabian and me, seeming to wonder who would speak up next. I stared down at the floor for a long moment, attempting to gather myself together and just trying not to fall apart. Then I made my way towards the exit and through the half-broken down wall that once held a door. I wanted to say something, to give an excuse. ‘I should sleep in my bed tonight, my mother’s probably concerned about me. I should go see if she needs anything or has work for me.’ Any excuse, really, would do. 

Instead, as I passed through the doorway, Fabian called out after me in a placid voice, “That’s right, little Rat, run off like you always do. Go find a little corner to hide in.”

The night was cool as I wandered the streets back home numbly, only occasionally stumbling about from the alcohol running through me. I was shivering and couldn’t tell how much was from the temperature or Fabian’s verbal assault. The metallic taste of iron was rich in my mouth, from the bloody wounds of earlier today. I’d probably reopened something without realizing it. I still had my little witchfinder clutched in my hand, having almost completely forgotten about it. I tucked it into a pocket along with my wooden pipe, hoping I wouldn’t forget it was there. 

I knew why he was actually mad, though he didn’t say it. We’d lost the fight with a bunch of orphans. Sure, there were six of them, but they were still just orphans. Fabian blamed me for it; I knew he did. He almost always blamed me when things didn’t go the way he felt they should have, and I was likely the first one actually out cold in the fight. It had all happened so quick.

So I knew why he was mad, but the more I thought about it, I realized I couldn’t help but agree with him in some ways. The hunt for a witch was a fool’s errand that was at best futile and at worst suicidal. While it was known that there was one somewhere in the city, I’d never actually find her. If the entire Inquisition and any witch hunters that were here couldn’t, what chance did I have? And then if I did find her? I’d die, most likely, or run away. Like a scared rat. I could almost hear Fabian’s voice saying it. I would never be one of the freelance witch hunters, or a proper Inquisitor. I’d be lucky if I wasn’t catching rats the rest of my life. 

Then there was the subject of the wish. I should have never told Fabian and Daven all those years ago that I wished I’d been born a girl, that I wanted to be a girl. I had hoped that everyone had those sorts of feelings, or was at least curious about what it would be like. Instead they’d only ever teased me for it, with Fabian becoming increasingly aggressive about it over time. I couldn’t deny that a part of me dreamed of the children’s fable of meeting the witch who granted twisted wishes. ‘A wish for a favor,’ as it was said. It was just a children’s tale, a way to teach a lesson to children about not trusting strangers or some such, but I sometimes imagined meeting a witch like that and asking her to somehow make me a girl. If only that were how life worked. Instead, the magic they had was very limited and different from witch to witch, and meeting one of the bloodthirsty creatures would mean your death the moment you realized what they were. 

I could hear thunder rolling in the distance. It would be just what I needed, for the sky to open up and soak me down to an even more cold and miserable existence. Though being at the edge of the valley near the start of the Vanitas, the planet-wide desert, meant that we often heard more thunderous storms than we saw in the city of Vallis. They often stayed to the other cities of the valley and edged by us. It did explain why it was so cool out, at least. The night was largely empty of people out as well, though I did notice a few, mostly the homeless. I passed by one girl in particular who stared blankly back at me, her face void of emotion, as though she were a doll. She wore a long frilled dress that had seen better days, with hair that was a matted and tangled disaster, and she appeared to be just a couple of years older than me. I hurried past her as she watched, continually more eager to get home.

The walk was long and slow, but I made it back, back to a real straw bed, wrapped in cloth, rather than the scattered straw of the abandoned little hovel. I nearly fell into it and hoped that I hadn’t woken my mother and younger brother, both curled up together in a bed of their own. Thankfully I was too tired to stay awake and brood any longer. I was out, like a candle without air. 

FlitterPuff

And here's chapter 1! Was it anything like what you expected? Do hit me with your thoughts, rating, and theories! Preferably not literally.