Tisiphone

One village down, another to go.

The Tavern was bustling with people of all shapes and sizes. Many from far off lands, many locals just coming in for an evening drink with family and friends.

Tisiphone sat in the corner, polishing off a falcata she'd picked up from the nearby town smiths. The shine reflected against the dimmed orange and yellow lights as music buried itself into her veins. People were dancing merrily, with arms linked and shoes on bars and tables clanking with raised glasses and frolicking wives.

Her eyes watched over the crowds of drunks, and her nose creased in disgust at the smells and voices of red-faced men surrounding her. With every wipe of her blade, the smooth sound resonated into the air through the music. No one else heard it, but Tisiphone did. She was waiting for someone, tonight. She just had to find them first. That was the thing with meeting strangers- you don't exactly know who to look for.

Eventually, after a pregnant few hours of shitting around with the live music, the man she was looking for went up.

The lyrics to his songs were a counter to who he was as a person. If they fit him- well, Tisiphone wouldn't be there. He wouldn't be taking in the scent that still lingered so faintly on him.

The familiar smell she followed since before she remembered.Her father had always said she'd complained as a child about it. She'd point to the meats on his plate and state that something stank just like them. He'd held her down once, taken a lamp off the side and held it to her face to see if her nose was just bleeding.

It never was. Once she got older, she began to realise that it was bought on by certain types of people. Ones she'd pass in the streets, ones minding their own business. Ones who had spilt blood before.

For some, they were soldiers. She could tell who, because their scents were wretched beyond her capacity to smell. She'd started avoiding cities upon realising that she passed ten of them in a day every time she went out to do her own thing.

As she watched the man singing on stage, she narrowed her eyes.

Her tongue flecked between her lips to bite off the smell where it was, and she tucked her falcata into the sheath on her side as she stood to reach the bar.

It was strange, what Tisiphone did for work. She never knew how it became like this. She remembered someone when she was young approaching her, coins in his hand, and telling her to follow her nose.

Once she had done just that, she awoke the next morning with a birds-foot trefoil beside her Inn bed, and her coin purse full of gold. Ever since then, she'd travelled and been paid to follow her nose.

Tisiphone wasn't ever sure, she thought as she drank, about what exactly made these men any different to those around them. What made them reek the way they did. But no matter what she did to find it, she could never see any difference. That didn't mean there was any remorse behind her actions. No, in fact it relieved the smell. As if the rot caked into them broke down and deteriorated into nothingness the moment they lost their minds, their footing, the moment they took the step and jumped themselves.

The moment she stopped hearing their heartbeats and smelling that horrid smell was the moment she felt pride in herself.

She flicked her tongue out again, between her pursed lips, collecting a sliver of salt from the rim of her drink as she stared at him from the side of her eye. Tisiphone downed it as the barkeep was hailed to some random woman across the other end of the counter, and rotated her stool to watch the man on the stage. 

It felt familiar.

It felt strange. That night, under the dark, as she met him outside without him knowing she was meeting him at all.

It was strange. They'd fought a hundred times in a hundred places. She'd always drawn first, spoken first, moved first. This was different, though. It seemed to draw from the blank and bloodlust in her eyes. Even through her own chaos, she knew where he was, how he moved, when he moved.

Maybe he shouldn't have strangled 'her'. He'd never gotten close enough to do so before- 'she'd always driven him off somehow, someway.

He heard, only small in the cacophony of destruction that rattled into his vision with that last step, uttered not form her lips but in her voice.

"I can't."

His body was fished from the riverbed the following day- bloated and sagging away from the world.

Tisiphone didn't recall exactly how he'd died. They usually ended up doing it to themselves, anyways. So she watched from a distance, finger twirling her long rook-coloured hair in a slow deliberate circle. She'd always hated that part of the job. Always hated how they ended up. Always hated the way it circled back to her- even if she knew they were likely horrid people.

Short, quick steps fell beside her as she stepped away, and Tisiphone waved her hand aimlessly in their direction.

"What is it, Plutus?" Tisiphone turned her head to the man as he handed her a daffodil with a wide, lopsided grin on his face.

She saw it, and couldn't help but smile too. It had become a force of habit to be happy whenever he found her.

"Take it as a compliment, Tis. That guy walked right into your minefield."

"I just followed him," Tisiphone scoffed, rolling the daffodil stem between her thumb and forefinger as it wilted pitifully under her gaze. 

"Ach! Don't sell yourself short! You have a skill to have made it as far as you have. A stubbornness, a grace, a hobby- something-" Plutus was interrupted by Tisiphone forcing the flower back into his hands and shoving her own into her pockets. Her boots made loud scrapes along the gravel of the pathway as she walked far from the village that man had been a part of.

"Something that's making my bones ache- woke up this morning feeling like I had a goddamn desert in my mouth. Did you clean up after him?" Tisiphone inquired. Her eyes followed a stray cloud looming gracelessly over them towards the way they had come.

Plutus shook his head, putting the flower in a tree stump as they passed it by.

"Didn't need to," he said.

"You know, something is going to keep pulling at you until you're nothing but threads. It's there, and it's gonna eat you alive."

Tisiphone crooned, "Just point me in the right direction of my next job and I'll be out of your hair, Plup."

Plutus took offence enough to slam a hand to his chest and wind himself in the process.

"Fine, fine, if you're gonna be an asshole about it," he imparted, "The next place is somewhere called Elendhor. Smell should drive you west from there."