The Seven Stages of Sociopathy (IV)

Age: 4

There was no blood on his hands. Or anywhere else on him really. That felt… wrong, somehow, what with the eldest and most disagreeable of Reevor's cats lying scattered all over the floor of the storehouse, its blood splattered and seeping into wood boards and walls. And several of the crates piled alongside them. Cyrus felt strangely deprived of the full experience of his first live kill, and it was doubly strange that the cut and bites on his wrist and hand from the cat's unwarranted attack had disappeared between one ripped limb and the next.

"-yrus! CYRUS!" A linen towel suddenly fell on top of his hands and different hands were shaking him by the shoulders. "Son, answer me this instant!"

The boy blinked up at his father, still taller than him by a fair margin despite having bent nearly half-way at the waist. "Yes?" He asked politely.

Gorion opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times, not saying anything. Then he looked around at the mess and proceeded to stare at Cyrus for a long while. The boy hoped he'd pass muster. Gorion had educated him to always do his best not to make a mess of himself, especially not so near his bedtime so he'd done his best not to. "Son, what happened here?"

Cyrus blinked again. Didn't he already know? Gorion had brought him out of the main keep for a while, to get some sun and fresh afternoon air. Neither of them expected or planned for Cyrus to be commandeered by Reevor the storehouse keeper, but the dwarf loudly proclaimed that it was unseemly for a dwarf lad to be cooped up with dusty books all day and not even know he had kin in the same walls. Cyrus didn't care one way or the other where he spent his time as long as his father wasn't out of his sight for too long, and Reevor did seem to know new stories, and his gravelly, booming voice wasn't all that unpleasant once he got used to it. Things turned… unusual only when Reevor brought him to the storehouse on a trip to bring some whatever they were to the inn only to be faced with the sight of half a dozen rats scurrying about while the cats did precisely nothing.

Reevor had been incensed. After he ushered him towards the nearest of the useless cats he loudly commanded that Cyrus stand back and 'watch the deserters' and let him handle this, at which point the dwarf unfastened his handaxe and proceeded to engage the enemy with a truly inspired level of what could only be termed bombastic fervour. It had been interesting to watch actual life-and-death combat instead of hearing about it in bedtime fairy tales.

Cyrus related all this to his father while staring pensively at his beard. He hoped he'd have one at least as long when he was older. "It was oddly calming to watch, even if mister Reevor's technique wasn't suited to smaller enemies." The boy related. He'd gotten some good ideas to make the rat-clearing process swifter, involving less boisterous swings of the hatchet, among other things. He was sure he could improve the efficiency of the rat eradication process by at least 30%. "There was even a rhythm to the whole thing, or at least there was an attempt at it." He shrugged and looked up at his father. "I'm not sure why, but the way I was tapping in tune with that rhythm must have annoyed the cat on the same crate because it attacked me."

"Attacked!" Reevor burst from where he hovered near the door. A fair bit of gore covered him and his breaths were short. Had he run out to get Gorion? "That hadn' nae been an attack! She was playin'!" His eyes switched between him and the… cat all around him. Cyrus wondered if the blood all over Reevor was from the rats, the cat or both.

"Playing?" Cyrus frowned in confusion. "Cats use their claws and bites when they play?"

"Yes!" Reevor yelled in something like outraged disbelief. At least that's what Cyrus assumed it was, from comparing it to prior displays he'd observed on other people. And sensed, when he was close enough to them. "Moradin blast it, old man, what've ya been teachin'im if he doesn't even know that!? What are ya raisin'im on that he'd…"

The discussion devolved into something or other but Cyrus wasn't paying attention. He was distracted by something, or rather the lack of something. He stood still for a moment trying to figure out what it was, then his eyes snapped up to Gorion so fast that the old man started in place. Cyrus slowly blinked, then turned and pinned a long stare on the axe that the still ranting Reevor had re-strapped to his thigh. At this point his mind would be flitting all over the place with assessments, calculations and ideas for how to use the implement in order to enable the quickest, most efficient death possible on everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity.

Nothing.

For the first time since he'd first opened his eyes, Cyrus experienced nothing of the sort.

"Don' ya be getting' any ideas 'bout my Joy, brat!" Reevor suddenly yelled, turning to hide his axe from his direct sight. "This here's a man's weapon! Not fit for a lad who can't tell playing from fighting! 'Specially not one that reacts like… this!"

There were some more words exchanged but Cyrus didn't listen to them, and he paid just as little attention to the enforced trip back up to his room. He was more focused on trying to puzzle out what this sudden inner silence was. As if some ever-present drive had been satisfied for the first time. There was no sense of fulfilment, not really, but the lack of desire to know how to inflict death all over…

"Cyrus. Son." The dwarf boy looked up from where he'd been sat on the side of his bed. Gorion was looking at him with an odd expression, possibly worry given the similarity to the look he'd had every once in a while between the lady-that-couldn't-kill-infants and arriving at new-home. "What are you thi-" The man cut himself off and treated the infant dwarf to an even longer, tense gaze. "What are you feeling right now?"

He wondered if this was a question with only one correct answer. He didn't much care at that specific moment. Or any other moment really. He only had the truth to give. "Nothing." No desire to look for ways that everything in sight could be used to bring about end. No facts and instincts for how to swing and thrust and twist a blade just so. No points and lines that spelled out death everywhere he looked.

There was just calm inside. And silence.

And just like that, he realised that "nothing" wasn't entirely accurate. There most definitely was something there.

It was a heady, welcome feeling.

He thought it was called peace.