Solo Coping

[Konrad Venger]

22nd Bell - 1st Day of Winter, 516AV - Endrykas, Topaz Clan, Pridesun Pavilion

He should have seen it coming. Why didn't he see it coming? Complacency, he supposed. It was unlikely he'd ever considered the squat little sod a friend, a comrade, nothing more than a partner. One of many he'd had and shed over the decades, this one just lasted a lot longer. He was competent, for one thing, and didn't ask questions.

Maybe Konrad just assumed that Three Eyes would never have the balls to turn on him.

They were miles south of Kenash, skirting the city through the Sea of Grass, when Three Eyes did just that, and he did it smart. Konrad's street ears pricked as he heard metal slide free from leather behind him. But he hesitated. Disbelief. Doubt. Three Eyes? Would he really-

Yes, as it turned out. But that tick or two of pause was long enough for Three Eyes to free a blade and-

-toss it into Konrad's back, just as he started to turn in the saddle.

Which saved him, he came to discover. If he'd kept facing forwards when Three Eyes let loose, the blade would have been square on target... and buried in his heart, through the spine. Instead Konrad let out a shriek that died before it could reach any real pitch, unholy heated prick of metal scraping against his lungs as he gasped, tumbled, grass and crops and sky and Syna and twirling and-

He landed heavy and barely dared to breath, but was not able to, and so rued every single suck of his lungs. His grasping hands reached out and lost his reins, grabbed his crossbow from across the saddle instead and dragged it down with him. He clawed at his back then felt it and-

"Hurts like a bastard, dunnit, Kon?"

Oh, that tone was all the anesthetic he needed. He raised his eyes, filled with enough hate to torch a prairie, and drank in Three Eyes leering, victorious grimace, set into the fleshy, ruddy folds of his face. He was tossing another knife from hand to hand, in no hurry atop his horse. He made a show of looking into the horizon, then to the sides... and shrugged.

"No-one t'help you, mate. Still, beats some shykey alley in The Berth, right? Out in nature an' all that."

"Eyes," Konrad knew he had to buy time. Time to force the agony out of his muscles and let rage replace it. He forced himself up onto one arm... shyke... he could barely manage it. "D... Dun' be-"

"Stupid? That what youse were gonna say, you petching mage?!"

THUNK

Konrad screamed again, high and without shame, as the knife slammed into his shoulder and his arm collapsed under him. His other gripped the crossbow tighter but now, with only the one... gods, he couldn't lift it. Not high enough to-

Doesn't have to be that high.

"That... why?" He ground out, swinging himself up to sitting, feeling the ground under him go sticky, blood trickling down his back, his arm. "Petchin' j... jealous, are ya?"

"Heh. Nah," Three Eyes said, eyes widening. Konrad squinted. Thank petch his hat had stayed on. He could make out the fat blob atop the fatter blob of his horse. Hear yet another knife sliding free. Keeping his distance, too, the clever little sod. "Rooj want you dead. Now the Dynasts got a price on ya. Shyke, I might even start them biddin' for ya."

Doesn't need to be long, just gotta get a bolt into his-

Konrad's breath came out in a wheeze that tasted of copper. The strung was straight; the bolt was gone. He must have pulled the trigger on the way down. Gods... he was petching helpless.

"Oh... gonna use the bow, were ya? Good idea, Kon, good idea... want me to wait while you load it?"

Three Eyes was going to wring every tick of joy out of this. Twenty petching years he'd been in this scar-faced prick's shadow. Taking his jibes and insults. His threats. Soiling himself whenever he was in a bad mood. Always being behind, less known, less feared, less compensated when the coin was handed out. No petching longer. The grapevine in Kenash said the Rujaro would pay hefty to see him dead, after all he'd done... and the Dynasts were willing to buy a season of peace with his corpse offered up to them.

So why shouldn't Three Eyes seize the moment? Take his chance? Twenty years, all leading to this, immensely satisfying payday.

He chuckled and licked the sweat from his lips as Konrad slumped over to his did with a groan, fingers abandoning the crossbow, pawing at the knife in his back instead. Bloody pathetic, it was. How many men had Konrad ended? Dozens? Scores? Hundreds? There were places in Sunberth he could silence, even clear out just by walking in the room... yet here was how he'd die. Gasping and groaning and bled out without even putting a mark on the man who did him in.

"Don't feel too bad about me, Kon," he said, relishing the unbridled loathing flooding from Konrad's eyes. Still pawing. Still spitting shallow breaths... and blood. "If it was the other way around, you'da done the same thing, aye?"

Konrad seemed to ponder this and nodded his head. A nod that turned into a lolling movement all around his shoulders. He looked back up, and Three Eyes was sure his knife was ready for the killing blow, raised a little above his head.

"Aye... aye, yer probably ri-"

He should have killed him quickly. All a man like Konrad ever needed was a tick, a chink, an opening. With a roar that spoke of pain and hate and anger that stilled the aching lead in his limbs, Konrad's arm swung out from behind him-

-grasping the kukri he'd pulled from the sheath at the small of his back, handle and blade slick with his own blood-

-and flung it at Three Eyes' horse. It was hardly a blade designed for such a flight, but the curve in it was enough across that distance, and in that broken tick he seemed to see Syna shimmer and dance over the silver and red until-

-the horse shrieked and a fresh torrent of blood blossomed into the air, doomed creature rearing up with a yelling Three Eyes cursing on it's back and seeming to dance and fly into the sky to Konrad's fading eyes-

[Konrad Venger]

Konrad woke to darkness and light. He was scowling.

At once his body bombarded him with evidence that the Dreamscape had deserted him. The sound of a moving city bedding down for the night, grumbling and braying and carousing around campfires and braziers. The sight of some of those figures, squatting around their own fire in the Pridesun Pavilion's little section of Endrykas, eating and drinking and nattering away, doing chores and trading advice, titbits, items here and there. Konrad breathed in deep as he sat up... ah, and there was the last assault on his senses.

Feces. Droppings. Dung. Stool. Tens of thousands of animals, on four legs and two, made for quite an aroma. That was without mentioning several thousand gallons of urine soaking the ground.

Gods, gotta stop petching thinking about this shyke...

His blanket had slipped off him and the chill didn't take long to gnaw at him. He shuffled it back, heaping material over his shoulders and jamming his hat harder on his head. Instinct whispered to him, telling him to go by the fire, where it was warm-

With the others. No. He didn't want to do that. He was too tired to lie, and that meant he would get angry. That wouldn't do. Didn't want to petch up a good thing before he was fit enough to leave.

Gods, and right on cue, the rest of his problems came back to plague him. The stitches in his shoulder, his back, his leg, the stiffness there that became fire down to his bones and then paralyzing numbness... and all that surrounded by the cold air.

Konrad closed his eyes and bit hard, willing his teeth not to chatter as he did his limbs not to shake. As if by sheer thought and grit he could stop the pain... but there, in every breath, it shuddered through him. Pulsing through where he'd been hurt until it was circling his veins like-

Yes... like that... and it's still with you.

Konrad probably couldn't have spelled "meditation" if you asked him to, but he could understand the concept. Trevin had educated him on putting his mind somewhere else to control the flow of his djed, and if it helped him to numb this pain a little, it was worth the effort. The others would see, though, and that made him pause... but not for long.

Let them see. Let them know. Not just some half-crippled bastard they can petch with whenever they desperate.

The Sunberth mercenary raised his hands, palms up... felt the brisk wind across them... closed his eyes and fancied that prickling of callused flesh sink through his skin, through pores and into veins... and there it would find that network of wyrd beyond blood and bone.

He closed his eyes and focused on the djed he knew flowed through him. Focused on the tiny tremor in the center of him, until it became like a second heartbeat, blocking out the noise, the smells, even the cold.

Until he breathed deep... welling that flow upward into his palms, angling them a little inwards...

Out.

His mouth moved without speaking, but his mind whispered the word and that command was enough. As he opened his eyes the green glow was already rising from his palms, tendrils of djed snaking from them. Power... he could feel it swell through his limbs... hissing like water on hot lead through as it passed through the flesh Three Eyes had ravaged.

Focus... focus... come together.

Obey.

It did. He willed it so, and thus it became real. The squirming fingers of green-black slime coalesced into a ball, a globe like a swampy planet spinning in the air between his palms. He moved his hands around it, like a potter shaping clay without even touching it, though he knew it was his mind, not his limbs, fashioning this work.

Burn.

Again, his lips moved, unnecessarily. But... necessary, for one at his level. Konrad may have loved his power, this ability to maim and kill without even needing a blade, but he wasn't an idiot. He'd felt overgiving before, knew what damage it could do... and what he needed to do to avoid it. This fiction of flesh-and-mime was just one such safeguard. And the results?

He was barely aware of a series of shadowy, bobbing heads jerking his way, making surprised little sounds as he transmuted the djed. Threw a mental match on a bundle of tar and the green planet became Syna, hovering between his palms. He raised them, and his mind followed suit, and the ball rose high, until he tilted his head to look at it and the warmth banished the sharp-toothed wind from his face.

He closed his eyes and savored the heat. Enjoyed it while he could, until the pulse and flow in his veins started to roil and boil in his body and he knew the time was close-

Fresh wounds ached and snarled afresh under their dressings. Long and deep enough for his eyes to snap open and the memories came back, as he stared into the fiery ball he'd created.

[Konrad Venger]

Thing about a brawl was, you needed to capitalize on those moments of brilliance that got you up on your opponent. Like killing his horse under him and getting him thrown to the ground, dazed and barely clutching his weapon. That'd be a good time to capitalize.

Problem with that was, you had to be able to capitalize, and Konrad was running on three limbs, half a back and probably a concussion. So he was a little sluggish when he-

-lunged at Three Eyes' prostate form, dragging his kopis out of its sheath with his right arm-

-that suddenly stopped working as the knife in his shoulder ground insistently at the slightest movement-

-like the one in his back caressing his backbone and lungs and guts and he went down to one knee before he even reached the treacherous litle sod, the man himself scrambling up to his feet-

No! Not like this, not from the likes of petching him!

Hate and Rage. Wonderful motivators, if you can direct them well enough.

Enough for Venger to lunge again like a crippled crab, snatching his old dagger from his boot with his good arm and bringing it down-

-to slam into dry soil and brown grass, Three Eyes scuttling away, pawing for another blade, trying to get some distance between them. Konrad wasn't having that. Breath coming out like shattered glass, he pursued, legs wooden and stiff, back on fire and shoulder dripping blood from his fingers, but on he came, slashing and hacking and Three Eyes-

-swayed away from him, ducking to the side-

-Konrad backhanded a slash and Three Eyes howled as his left arm was laid open to the bone, knife he had in it tumbling from his grasp but-

-he was still moving-

-and his other hands was still full-

Konrad didn't know just how slow he was until he went down to one knee, like his left leg had never existed. He watched it happen but couldn't stop it; he willed his body but he was too battered, too wounded, gashes and holes robbing him of too much blood. Three Eyes kept spinning to the side, arc of blood flying from his arm as he went past Konrad-

-ducking low as he did, making a backhand of his own-

-with far more accuracy. He always was good with a knife.

Venger went down with a snarled grunt; he didn't have the breath to scream anymore, and too much blood in his mouth. He spat it out as his knee whomped into the dirt, roped muscle above it slashed clean in two by Three Eyes. He tried to haul himself back up with his good leg but it was useless, he just tottered as he turned-

-an eclipse moving like a black bolt of lightning passed across Syna and-

-Three Eyes' fist cracked into the side of his head. Stars and shadows exploded into the midday glare and Konrad hacked out desperately, not backing down, needing to close in and get his hands on-

-Three Eyes-

-waiting for his slash to go wide-

-then stabbing his knife-

-into his belly-

He gasped. His eyes popped wide and the agony drained and flushed all the fitful visions from his eyes. His vision was clear, even as he dared not to breath... and even as all he could see was Three Eyes, face bloody and heaving with exhaustion, grinning at him gap-toothed and bug-eyed. Something called beyond them. Some rustling, flapping creature that vanished into the distance with an indignant caw.

Syna was above them. Konrad's head tipped back, his hat fell off, and when he breathed... ice pierced his guts and he felt his bowels loosen.

"This be the time an' the bell, Kon," Three Eyes said, and even him shifting his grip on the dagger felt like a fresh stab in his gut. "I'll see you in hell."

[Konrad Venger]

Meditation was concentration; something many forgot, Trevin had said. It was placing the mind in one place and leaving the body elsewhere, a feat one could not just happen upon without effort.

Konrad had learned the lesson, through practice and the pain of overgiving, but the memories, fresh as the wounds under his bandages, pulled his mind from the present, from the night, the djed between his palms-

Three Eyes' face vanished in a blink, garish day replaced by smoky night, worried murmuring, the burning globe spitting and spasming.

Kill it. End it.

He breathed in, though it grated. He forced his hands to still, even though his shoulders trembled. When he blew out, it was a halting, shuddering thing, but with it came the word whispered in his mind-

Out.

The murmuring changed in pitch for a moment. As the little ball buffeted under his breath and then the flames were gone, replaced by a hollow ball of smoke that was scattered at once by the persistent breeze. Konrad's hands flopped to his side and the murmuring lowered again, the high pitch of "ah, look at that?" replaced by a more somber "wonder how he does that, and how petching dangerous he is?"

Konrad grew up in Sunberth. He'd a lifetime to learn what crowds sounded like.

Yet his eyes were not for them, even as he was again just a wounded man squatting outside a tent, covered in a ratty blanket. He shook out his hands and felt them twinge and shudder. Pain that was anatomically impossibly but physically undeniable; the djed flow within him rebelling, punishing him for letting his memories override his practice.

He ached, but he smiled. Knowing it was still there... it reassured him, even as it chastised him. He'd been afraid that the sheer amount of damage he'd taken could have robbed him of his ability to use the gift Trevin had given him. But apparently, that was something else he'd escaped with.

It was easy for his mind to wander back to that day. But it was not with a furrowed brow and burning eyes he glimpsed back now within his mind. His eyes were bright. His lips were the same, flat line, mutilated across one side, but mayhap there was the hint of a smile at one corner.

Konrad raised his hand, and closed his eyes. That still helped, so he still did it. One day he'd be able to keep them open, but Trevin always told him to take small steps. Sometimes - very occasionally - Konrad regretted killing the man so quickly. He'd much more to teach, he was sure.

He felt the djed in his arm flow upward, directed it there like he was erecting tiny dams along a river. Forced it into his hand... then his finger... just one finger, one tiny river, and when he opened his eyes-

A murmur, then a hush. A worm of black-speckled green sticking out the end of his finger. Konrad's lips tugged up at one corner. The ruined corner. His thumb came closer to his index, and as he snapped-

Light!

Green and black became yellow and orange, smoking softly and hissing just above his flesh. There was a low, throaty thing that could have been a chuckle. Konrad was remembering... and learning, too. Before he drifted of into recent history, he blew on the flame-

Go.

-and it died in the frigid air.

[Konrad Venger]

It would have been easy to give up. Let it go. Just close his eyes and let that final agony cut him out of the world, then feel nothing forever. He was already dead on his feet; could barely feel his legs, one arm a numb lump at his side, cold creeping up his back from the knife embedded in it, which he knew was a bad sign.

How much blood had he lost? How much did he have left?

So easy to just close his eyes. Feel Syna's warmth on his bare head for a few more ticks and then...

His eyes snapped open. This was the world. This was all the world he knew. The clothes on his back, the coin in his purse, the scars on his body and the hate in his heart, he owned all of it. No. No, he would not let this little link of shyke take that from him, not when he had so much left to-

Three Eyes' expression froze in shock when Konrad's hand dropped the dagger and grabbed the front of his shirt, jerking him forward-

-as Konrad's lolling head went from gazing nearly straight up to rushing forward, the crown of his skull-

CRUNCH

-slamming into his nose hard enough to break bone, smashing the hideous, ancient tattoo of an eyeball across half his face. Three Eyes staggered back a step, eyes unfocused, mouth filling with blood rushing from his nose-

"rrrrrRRAAAAH-!"

CRUNCH

He reared back like some prehistoric monster and hammered his head into the mashed mess that used to be Three Eyes, well, third eye. The blade vibrated in his chest, twisted slightly and a growl became a scream became a roar and-

CRUNCH

Three Eyes staggered back, eyes crossed, insensible mind dancing on feet fit to fall. Konrad let him go and his own ailing mind saw the killing blow as Three Eyes' head tilted back, felt the angry throb in his shoulder-

-left hand jerking up to grab the hilt of the dagger Eyes had thrown into his shoulder, jerked it free-

So much happened in just a thrice of ticks. Maybe even less. Three Eyes started to fall onto his back, pulling the dagger out of Konrad as he went. The sellsword gasped as he felt a fresh river tapped in his stomach, but soon the windy sound was a snarl-

-as he ripped the dagger free, slashing it backhanded-

Blood. His. An arc of it, from his shoulder and through the air, a crimson scythe across blue sky and yellow grain and brown dirt. Connecting him to the weapon as it swung-

-into Three Eyes' throat, slicing through fat and gristle cleave and the wet shudder of metal against bone-

Blood joined with blood. His and his partner's. Gasped and coughed and sprayed and spurted together in the bare space between them. Three Eyes kept falling, pawing at his throat, already a crimson deluge, coughing up what couldn't flow from the gaping gash, Konrad forgotten-

-as the man himself slumped down to one knee. His breath was a wheeze. Painful. Shallow. Unsteady. But he ground his teeth until molars cracked for he would not miss this. Wouldn't miss a second of Three Eyes knowing, understanding in that last second why.

Because your were slower. Because you weren't as tough. Because you wouldn't go as far. That's why you were always behind me, Eyes.

"Seh yuh... un... hell..."

Gods, Eyes was the one with a throat cleaved down to the bone but his words sounded like that was him, instead. There was barely an push to his breath; his lungs could spare no air to force the words past his teeth, so they died on his lips even as he spoke them. Three Eyes heard the, though. Saw his bloody grin, too, as Konrad looked down on him, wings of blood sprouting from the sides of his throat and unfurling across the dirt.

Konrad watched. Waited until the gurgling grew faint... and then he toppled onto his side like a felled tree.

It all went away. His body, too. He knew it was there, but... it didn't matter. He'd rest. Just for a while. That furious, flailing thing in his soul raged at him not to listen, to get back up, damnit, and move, but... no, he could barely make it out. He was so hurt and so tired.

A short nap. A little rest. Then he'd get back up. Just a little while...

+++

In a tent he shared with two other lost men, Konrad slept. He was smiling.

[Rufio]

　　　
　　
　　
　　
　　
　　
　　

g r a d e s

xp

Observation +3
Meditation +1
Endurance +3
Reimancy +2
Weapon, Dagger +3
Brawling +1


lores

Three Eyes turns on Konrad!
Dynasts have put a bounty on Konrad
Meditation: An art in focusing
Brawling: Bashing with your noggin
Endurance: Never giving up
Konrad kills Three Eyes


penalties

Injuries have already been added to Konrad's CS

If you feel I missed anything shoot me a PM.
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