Arfur Finds Out He Has a Nemesis

I watched Arfur as he went into the rundown cul-de-sac, rubbing his arms and cursing his lack of a jacket on this cold and snowing winter night. He's done with work once he finishes picking up from the last of his little girl prostitutes, his preferred type due to the ease in keeping them beat down and fearful of him. Thoroughly reprehensible that man, which is why you shouldn't feel sorry for him for what happens next. 

As Arthur came out of the ally, his belt jingling with several bags of coin, I emerged from the darkness behind him with two long and slender knives that terminated in needle-like points. Delicate blades worthless in a battle, but murderous in the streets and without the need for real muscle behind them. Quite an intimidating sight, if one finds armed eight year olds intimidating. 

Years of working as a vermin exterminator with sling and stone here in the Old Town paid off in these two throws, my Speed and Accuracy beyond the means of a normal child. In a Heroic feat of skill I threw the first dagger at the man's back and threw the second harder, the faster blade arriving at near the same time as the former and both of the thin blades slipping through Arfur's wool vest and shirt, and between his ribs, catching him just after his exhale. 

He jerked as he tried to take in the breath to scream, but two razors sharp knives in his lungs prevented that. I rushed over to push him down on his belly so that he didn't collapse onto the thin bladed knives and possibly snap them. Out of breath and drowning in his own blood, the top hat wearing man struggled limply as I snatched his purses off his belt. As a hero I have a fairly clairvoyant capacity to tell how much money I've picked up, and I feel sixty gold coins worth of currency in the leather bags, enough for my sister and I to eat for twelve weeks. Enough to see us through winter and spring without having to dip into my reserves built up by working before the damage this miscreant did to my reputation in the last week. 

I kicked the dying man in the head to get him to focus on me rather than waste his time on whatever sad or hateful line of thought his failing think meat is currently producing. 

"Remember this lesson in your next life." I told the man I so loathed, "Never get between a man and his meal." 

This leaking sack of shit was pressuring my own older sister to join his stable of child hoes, enough for most to consider murdering him, and some of an aggressive sort to actually do it. There might have even been some karmic gains from such an act, after all killing a pedophile pimp is a saintly act so long as one doesn't think to hard about what those girls will do for a living now. Well paying low skill jobs growing on trees and such. 

I; however, murdered the pale and rapidly graying slab of stink because I found out he'd gone to my customers - the people who pay me to kill rats, mice, giant beetles, and any other kind of vermin to be found in our city - and told them too their faces that I was engaging in such business practices as baiting vermin onto their properties, killing vermin off property and charging them for it, and other such chicanery as to rightly piss them off fiercely. 

He got between this man and his meal. 

So Arfur had to die. 

Even more importantly, murdering Arfur creates a perfect reason for me to take my sister and flee Bowerstone. Each day I feel myself crushed between the twin millstones of the richest man in Albion, Lucious Fairfax, and the blind seeress, Theresa. I don't know what the woman sees exactly, but if her magic can gaze upon this scene all she will observe is a hardened street rat handling a predatory adult and fleeing the next morning once the city gates open. Who knows what kind of countermeasures the woman might bring to bear for her arrogant plan to eradicate evil in this world, but I know that if I stay still and go with the flow my older sister will die, so I must act even if it ultimately proves futile. 

Grimacing more at the oppressive forces arrayed against me than out of sympathy for the lacking example of humanity under me, I slid my razors out of Arfur's back and after cleaning them off on his pants returned them to their protective wood scabbards on my belt under my thick wool coat. I considered taking Arfur's fine feathered top hat, but had it on good authority that Warrants of Arrest had been issued for Nickie the Nickname and his gang, meaning the law is cracking down on crime in the Old Town, and it's best for me to leave this a 'cold case' with as little linking back to me as possible. In that spirit, I pulled the man out of the street and propped him up on one of the nearby houses, leaving a big red skid across the white powder. 

My Labrador hound - a fine beast with excellent temperament and intelligence - summed up my feelings on this murder by relieving himself on the dead man, paying my final respects as it were. The pair of us made tracks away from the scene of the crime, allowing the falling snow to cover things up for us, hopefully long enough for Rose and I to see ourselves on the road without much trouble. 

I returned down the dark and icy cobblestone streets to my little corner of the world, a hilltop hut nestled between the three chimneys of homes pressed so tightly together one fire and they'd all be gone no doubt. I have slowly built up a comfortable dwelling here by cannibalizing building materials wherever I could find them, such as the bricks from the broken down wall nearby. I store everything I find on my travels in the remains of a collapsed shack nearby which doubles as a chicken coup. No use letting the damn things wander when they could be laying me eggs.

A home of river clay and stolen wood and stone might seem humble, but we have the best view in the city. Across a sea of steep sloped chimneys and billowing smoke stacks stood the fantasy-esque Castle Fairfax, home of my enemy as engineered by Theresa my many times over great aunt. My sister slept soundly in our warm hut, likely dreaming of a life of luxury living in that castle. I'd get us there one day. Though not absolute, Heroes have a form of mind control that I've employed myself. Through the use of well executed and timed gestures we can rapidly shape other's opinions of ourselves. I've done so myself many times to smooth my various business relations, tilting my dealings with others favorably as simply as giving a merchant an earnest thumbs ups. 

The rewards of my immoral abuse filled our vagrant's hovel, and I added split firewood to our trustworthy and average stove which kept the small space we claimed toasty and smoke free. I brushed Dogmeat's coat before changing into my night clothes and crawling under the covers with Rose. I'd grown taller than her this year, payoff for three years of bottom feeder grinding for experience points, the building blocks of a Hero's power in this world. Just two points at a time, one of Skill and one General, every time I struck down urban pests or took down a pigeon for dinner, my hunting aided by a Hero's moderate clairvoyance for objectives and more recently by my friendship with the loyal Dogmeat. I'd done this for over three years, since the age of five, and the results were… addictive.

Just like the great Luke Skywalker I'd developed the abilities required to destroy the Death Star hunting down vermin. Two levels of Accuracy, two of Speed, one of Guile, one of Health, one of Physique, one of Toughness, and most importantly of all, one of Heal Life which I channeled my fledgling Will to activate, illuminating us in a brief radiant light before putting down my world weary burden for the night, my single cast generating enough Will experience to cover several days of slaying my pitiful boyhood foes. It actually almost granted me more experience than I earned slaying Arfur, but that one cast left me feeling greatly depleted, a Hero's magic power a finite resource but capable of miracles. 

The immediate relief of my body and the fatigue of my mind took me into the darkness of sleep easily. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can support me and my family at 

ko-fi.com/jmanm