Chapter 3
Born Under a Bad Sign
“Nobody knows exactly when the signborn first appeared, but we know it was only after the calamity that befell the gods that the sky began to herald bringers of death and destruction being born into this world with a beautiful and dazzling display of colors. To mothers giving birth under these signs however, it is a wretched sight, for their newborn babe may grow up to kill hundreds, maybe thousands… they can’t know if it is for their child that the stars shine for.”
- From Legacy of the Gods by High Father Loric II
Fleeing from the sounds of panic and terror behind him, a man runs wildly down an alley. Upon reaching a recessed backdoor in one of the bordering buildings, he gasps as he takes a moment to catch his breath. His eyes wide in panic, he checked either side of the alley from the doorway before bringing his gaze to his right arm, where his forearm and coat sleeve ended abruptly half-way in a charred mess. Strangely he felt only warmth from the mangled limb. Tears welled up as his eyes looked further up his arm, past the blackened end of his sleeve to his shoulder and eventually down to his chest.
His coat was a multi-hued patch work of vibrant colors just minutes ago. Now it, along with the rest of his clothing, was predominated by red splotches with giblets that provided them with a gruesome texture. With violent movements he tried clearing the viscera from his clothes as he whimpered, before giving up and throwing off the outer layer of his clothing.
Nausea blossomed from his forehead forcing him to double over and begin to retch. Nothing but spittle trailed down to the dirty cobblestones at his feet, it felt as though his stomach was hollow. He clung to the edge of the doorway, his mouth slack; he stared through the floor of the alley as the world moved around him.
The men he had killed up to this point were those who had it coming, but what happened back there at the markets… it was like he had no control.
The fish markets were always busy, the bountiful sea provided much of the food on an average Ferrian’s plate, Crowns End only made it more so. A second bout of retching gripped the man as he recalled seeing a small, crumpled body missing half it’s limbs before he made his flight.
A whistle filled the alley. The tall horned woman that confronted him in the markets slowly made her way down from one end of the narrow corridor as her tail lashed periodically against the walls on both sides. Fear froze him to the ground as she spoke.
“I’d probably be dead if blind luck hadn’t put me in one of the gaps of that little outburst of yours. Your aim could use a little work, quite the body count you’ve racked up. I suppose you’ve heard that my kind can know one of yours at a glance, and that is why you panicked when you saw me. That isn’t how it works but sometimes the rumor becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The woman sighed before continuing in a tone like steel.
“You know, complete skeletons of signborn can fetch quite the high price to the right buyer. That shit you pulled back there… it cost me a lot of money.”
The man started to cry again as he looked at the place that his right hand used to occupy.
“All those people… I didn’t mean…” He whined.
“Oh, come on, you’ve heard the stories, I’m sure. Did you think you were special or were you just too much a coward to do what you know you should have done? You humans may like to paint my people as monsters, but any self-respecting daemon who found out they were of your kind would have ended their life immediately.”
Kaiden sneered as she drew close to the man, who had now fallen to his knees. He started making fervent, hushed prayers to a long dead god.
“If you had just done this when I first came for you, all this could have ended much happier for everyone.”
The man’s prayer stopped mid-recitation after she brought the point of her sword to just above the man’s left trapezius before swiftly plunging it down.
It is a weak people who shamelessly rewrite history for their own benefit. To pray to the departed divinity is to deny and cheapen their sacrifice. There is no one left to answer prayers anymore. No one that you’d want to anyways.
While Sybil went about cleaning the kitchen Thomas started making repairs to the inn’s increasingly leaky roof. The roof had many different colors and sizes of tile, the result of donations from the guild over the years. The smell of the pitch he used to seal up the cracks brought back unpleasant memories that he pushed to the side while he gingerly navigated the rooftop, noting how many slate tiles would need to be replaced. The rain wouldn’t be a concern soon with Crown’s End usually marking a week or two before the first snow, but it was important to seal the leaks all the same, least the volatile blood of the beasts that the fall rains often brought hurtling from the sky, were to reach the timbers inside.
There were many stories on the origins of these beasts but the one most often repeated was that the almost bat-like creatures of a size between a cat and a large dog were the offspring of dragons that had mated with their lesser cousins. The scale-less, blind, and wretched looking things, with leathery wings and milky white eyes would soon all die from the cold, only for them to be replaced by their offspring when they hatch after incubating in the ponds created from old scars in the ground from which boiling water fountained out. Their father was a learned man with a particular fondness for beasts, having a more than modest number of books on the animals of the world.
Besides the physical damage the corpses cause when they fall, their blood is highly reactive to anything flammable for up to a day after they die, making it burst into flames if it’s dry enough. It’s no small blessing that they most often die during the cold rains of late autumn.
He spotted the source of the loud thump he heard during last night’s shower; a weathered leathery carcass surrounded by a halo of cracks. Thomas set aside this bucket of pitch and secured his long forearm gloves with straps. The blood of the wretched things might not catch the tiles on fire, but human skin was another matter. Dousing the gloves with his canteen he began to pull the broken mass of pale leather and bone until it was close to the edge.
It’s lolled out tongue was both comical and repulsive. He looked at its cloudy eyes, large and round as if in perpetual surprise.
They really are ugly things.
Thomas soon found he couldn’t look away. He felt a growing desire to smash that face as anger began to swell within him. A nearly overwhelming urge to grab its legs and dash its body repeatedly until his arms gave out seized him. His mind gave him a pleasant view of what would happen if he gave in to the need. He could almost hear the satisfying crunch the tiles of the roof would make each time the pale mass came to a sudden stop, almost see it’s orange blood slowly flowing into the cracks of the freshly mangled tiles, almost smell the smoke wafting up as the beams below caught flame and feel the steadily increasing heat threatening to cook him if he did not move soon. The knuckles of his clinched fists were white under the gloves.
Muffled, excited yelling from inside in a familiar voice brought him from his visceral fantasy. The sound of Sybil most likely making another a mess while she tried to clean was somehow calming in this moment.
Collecting himself with a sigh, he wrapped the beast in a soaked sack and tied it closed with damp cord. He lowered it over the edge of the roof to the street below where he would need to soon place it in a filled wooden tub to be picked up by a cart on its rounds.
The disposal carts were an “altruism” of the merchants guild that had nothing to do with the horrid stench that could overpower the cold air of the common areas during their most profitable time of the year for their stalls.
Sybil came running out of the entrance to the inn, calling up to him.
“Thomas! Thomas! It’s Kell!”
Kaiden walked along the wide street of Morgan’s Way, and while there were not as many revelers this year as there should be for a city this size, the street was far from empty. She had no problem keeping a fast and steady pace however as people gave her a wide berth. Rumors of what had happened in the fish markets this morning were already swirling among the people.
There were angry mutterings as she passed through. Many of the versions of the events at the fish market had her killing as many people as the signborn. Kaiden wasn’t too concerned as the tall guard was in tow, luckily still alive and unharmed, a witness to tell the lord how things really happened.
Kaiden was in a good mood; this was by far the easiest hunt she had ever done.
Only half a day searching before stumbling upon the damned thing and not a scratch on me. It really couldn’t have gone better.
Bahram, however, was visibly shaken by the carnage he had seen but kept a better head on his shoulders than most would have under the circumstances. He looked, transfixed, at the dangling arm of the man over the daemon’s shoulder, coming to a blackened stump close to where the wrist should be. Unable to understand the nature of what he had seen, his curiosity had him going over the scene in his head despite his desire to put it out of his mind. A sound like thunder, accompanied by the atomization of anything or anyone unfortunate enough to be along a randomly snaking path. He had never heard anything so loud before in all his life, his ears were ringing softly even now.
“Why did he kill all those people?”
Kaiden looked back at him with mild annoyance.
“You’re telling me you don’t know?”
“No, I’ve heard what everyone says. That they eventually all go mad. That murder becomes fun for them. But… I saw his face after he… He was horrified by what happened.”
“Didn’t stop you from running like a coward, did it?”
Kaiden teased the dead man as she hitched him to a more comfortable position on her shoulder.
Looking back with a grin, Kaiden noticed the guard was still transfixed on the incomplete arm.
“You humans oversimplify everything. Yes, most signborn do go insane, about half of those are like you said, but the others are changed in different ways. Some of them might lose the capacity for a few emotions or have some magnified. They might develop obsessions or start seeing and hearing things that aren’t there. They might not kill for fun, but they can be just as violent for other reasons.”
When it was clear she wasn’t going to say more unprompted, Bahram risked her annoyance again.
“You said most go insane, some don’t?”
Kaiden didn’t respond right away, and just when Bahram thought she might not have heard him she answered in a measured tone.
“…All signborn are not quite right in the head but some manage better than others. But even if their minds don’t fully break, their bodies eventually will. Their abilities get stronger over time. Mad or sane, eventually their abilities become too powerful to control and they end up killing themselves or others. Often both.”
“We just happened to be there when he lost control?”
“These things are walking a wire whenever they use their powers. And it’s a wire that gets just a little bit thinner every day. Something is more likely to go wrong if they panic when they use their abilities.”
“What if they never use their power?”
“It would eventually start to manifest itself regardless, often to disastrous results. If they haven’t had the experience of controlling it when it was weaker, when they were younger, they will lose control even sooner than those that did.”
As Bahram opened his mouth to inquire more, he noticed a large group of guardsmen approaching. Led by a man whose stature was close to Kaiden’s, with coppery hair, a jaw carved from granite, and eyes the color of steel. Even with his scars and a gilded metal nose, Kaiden still found the closest thing to a friend she had in the southern lands quite handsome.
With a voice approaching but not quite reaching familiarity, Kaiden called out to one of the few humans that were a credit to their race.
“Ranulf Waller. I was disappointed when I learned you were out of the city yesterday.”
Ranulf’s usually stoic face showed a hint of displeasure. Kaiden was unsure if it was because of her or something else. The guardsmen made no move to encircle her, but Kaiden could feel their tension.
Her free hand drifted towards her pouch as she jerked her head towards Bahram.
“I don’t know what you or your lord might have heard but one of your own saw everything. I’ve only killed the one today.”
She dropped the body not just to show Ranulf but also to free her arm just in case.
Ranulf looked down at the now pale body for a few seconds before he turned his gaze to Bahram.
“It’s true, sir. The-”
“Is that how you properly guide and protect your charge guardsman, from behind?”
Ranulf’s calm question might as well have been a livid dressing down for how much Bahram shrunk from it.
“N-No, Sir.”
“I was told that Orvyn was also left to aid the lady Bishara.”
Confused, Bahram opened his mouth to reply but stopped before he made a sound. Bahram after a few moments of confusion, he realized Ranulf was talking about the Daemon.
“He was instructed by the… the lady Bishara to-.”
“I had him watch over an indisposed boy I intended to question.”
After a moment, Ranulf looked back to Kaiden.
“Indisposed? This wouldn’t be the same boy whose skull you bashed in as you stumbled about like a drunken fool.”
Ranulf’s first words to Kaiden held anger and disappointment. The first was something familiar to Kaiden, the second less so.
“If you know that then you know that I fixed it didn’t I?”
“And how did you? The injuries described to the mender should have made it impossible for him to survive. What you used to save his life; kings would have a hard time acquiring. I know you Bishara. What value does a boy from the clans have for you to use something you could have sold for a fortune?”
Contempt played with her face, Daemons really had a special way of looking down on others. Her honest sense of pride offered a response that served as a deflection by coincidence.
“Unlike your trade nobles, gold doesn’t hold the same sway with me.”
Kaiden’s hand was fully in her pouch, grasping a round phial of clear liquid.
“Good. Because you’re getting silver instead.”
He tossed her a small bag filled with coins.
Kaiden quickly freed her hand from the pouch and caught it. She opened the disappointingly sized bag.
“Both light and silver?”
Forgetting her last words, indignation moved the woman’s features in an amusing fashion.
“Don’t look at me like that Bishara, the only reason you’re getting anything is because of me. That man nearly doubled the number he’s killed in one day since he started two months ago. You knew what would happen if you confronted him among all those people, you just didn’t care.”
It was true. Kaiden had been eager to pursue the lead the boy might give her, and when she saw a man suddenly bolt she acted in haste. Leaving a high body count was bad for business.
“You can keep the body like you asked though.”
Kaiden snarled before she threw the corpse to the ground in disgust. She went about decapitating the man there on the street.
“Only thing worth carrying around is the skull if you don’t have everything else. Your cults ruined the charm trade a while ago by starting to lash anyone buying them.”
After Kaiden had finished her grisly task she inquired in a heated tone about something else that was promised.
“What of the wagon and horses?”
“Your wagon will be delivered to the inn you slept at and here is a guarantee of the court.”
Ranulf signaled to one of his men, who walked up to Kaiden and presented a piece of parchment bearing Krast’s signature and seal at the bottom.
“The city has no animals to spare so you are to be welcomed in Ursica and given two draft horses from the garrison’s stock.”
“Ursica!? That’s a week and a half west from-”
Kaiden suddenly went quiet, and rage began to fill her eyes.
“And how, pray tell, am I to use a wagon with no horses?”
“It is North-west from here actually. You will have work there as well, they have need of a hunter.”
Ranulf’s embarrassed face made it clear that he disapproved of how his lord conducted himself.
“I’m afraid you are to be a pawn in one of Lord Krast’s petty vendettas. He wishes to punish the merchant council there for a slight done to him by saddling them with his debt to you and your services.”
“With my services?”
“With how you conduct your services.”
Ranulf was looking at the now headless body as he said it.
“I’m sure you can disappoint my lord and manage to not leave a pile of bodies in your wake next time.”
