Man Down (Gunto)

[Naama]

70th Winter 511AV She hated this place. These streets, ever shifting, ever vanishing, manipulated by unseen forces of an illusive god, it was a surprise the myrian hadn't departed to some place more stable. But she had stayed, mostly because of the northerner she'd come to love, tying herself to him in a way she'd never imagined would ever have come to fruition after so many years of sorrow and hate. But even now she walked among the winding alleys, with their closed shutters and drifting debris, crumbling walls paired with beautifully gilded structures whose carved visage and outstretched arms hailed the young night. She passed young lovers seated amongst dilapidated stairs, an old crone whose icy gaze lingered far too long on her person, and several individuals shrouded by shadows. But the shroud of night hailed a nostalgic sound: Myrian, the language of her people, long since forsaken for a life of an outcast. There was a gutteral growl in common, and a string of curses that left Naama smirking in amusement. Humans cornering a Myrian? She approached, the voices escalating in tone, while a hand snaked behind her back to grasp at the handle of her blades. Then she stepped into the wide alley.

[Gunto]

Gunto's world swirled around him, and he wasn't sure if it was the gods forsaken city or the mostly empty jug in his hand that was the source. Likely a mixture of both, but no matter. He had himself a woman in one arm and a jug of... something in the other. It seemed that no matter where Gunto went, he drank alone. No one wants to get rowdy with the Myrian with bones in his face it seemed, and so more often than not he drank far too much. This wench had approached him though, and though he thought she might only have one eye it was still far better than he fared most places.

"Lonnie, we're lost..." she drawled, wrapping her arms around his neck and brushing her fingers along the bone piercings under his lips.

"You stupid bitch... I'm not Lonnie. You gotta... (hic)... be one stupid drunk bitch to mistake me for everyone... anyone... I love you."

Gunto pressed her up against the wall hard, his jug of god-knows-what forgotten as it skittered on the ground in the alleyway. His hair was hanging loosely over his face and his armor and clothes stank horribly, but she didn't seem to mind.

"Lonnie...!"

"Stupid bitch... not Lonnie!" He tried to kiss her, but his world twisted and he succeeded in planting a kiss with his forehead on the alley wall. He was still stumbling and cursing in his native tongue when another voice sliced through the darkness

"Too many black hands poking their heads heads where they don't belong. Hope you and your whore had a good time, savage. It was your last."

Gunto turned and spat, his drunken eyes focusing as best they could on a massive figure walking towards him. He or she or it or whatever was huge, towering over him by half a foot and carrying a menacing looking club braced with metal.

"Stupid deyhan, it's Shadow Hand. Now petch off, I have... guh..."

The man was on him, a giant fist cracking him across the jaw and sending him staggering against the wall. It was all he could do not to collapse into a heap; the fist had been mailed.

"I think you just chipped a tooth deyhan." Gunto growled, his right hand fumbling to his shoulder where one of his kukri was sheathed on his leather pauldron. The motion was interrupted by Lonnie's girl who was suddenly clinging to him. She was sobbing for him to do something, but Gunto pressed a rough shadowy hand to her chest and shoved her across the alley.

"Run away you stupid bitch. I'm not Lonnie."

She ran. Gunto thought he should probably have run too, but drunk or not a fight was a fight. He managed to free his shoulder mounted kukri and another hanging from a scabbard on his belt. The blades were thick and menacing, though their wobbling wielder was less so. Despite, he beat a fist to his chest and let out a series of insults in Myrian, proclaiming his attacker to be a Jamouran's bastard and that he would cut off his penis and use it to catch a fish. He was halfway through describing what he thought of the man's mother when a a fat, meaty leg impacted his stomach and sent him sprawling.

Gunto lay on his back, both knives lost and disoriented. The giant loomed over him, and seemed to be taking his time lining up the swing that would smash his skull.

[Naama]

The girl didn't get far. Assuming she was yet another perpetrator in the gloom, the myrian smashed her elbow into her nose, sending the whore sprawling against the damp cobblestones, blood poring from each nostril. There was a shreak, a glint of a blade, then a drawn out sigh. "Well petch, go on then, lass, go." The voices resumed, garbled, angry growls. Naama glanced up to find the myrian sprawled on the ground, a heavier man looming over him, weapon held high. There was a splash of ivory on the victim's face and a mass of ebony hair, much like her own. Zulrav's thundering arse, it can't be... A dagger pierced the cold, winter air, embedding itself deep in the man's leg. Naama hadn't expected it to hit, only to distract, but it was all she needed to prevent a crushed skull. The curve of her blades hooked around the man's wrist, and she twisted, the weapon wrenched from his grip, clattering against the cobblestone. There was a roar of agony from the human, cut short by the crunch of a fist in his face. Then a blow came crashing into the back of her head, sending her lurching. Another? She felt thick fingers clutching her hair, but with a vicious strike of her bladed hilts she left the man clenching the two gaping holes in his belly. Twirling to face him, the curved blades swept down, catching the attacker by the neck, slicing his throat. The blood spurted across the ground, pooling beneath the fresh corpse. A half-hearted groan crept through the fat lips of the heavier, injured thug, but Naama paid him no mind. She approached the Myrian, pulling him up by the shoulder, only to recognize both his markings and his familiar face. "Gunto? What the petch are you doing here? And how long has it been since you bathed, fool?" It had been too long since she'd spoken Myrian, it felt right on her tongue.

[Gunto]

The world was on fire and nothing seemed right. Gunto groaned and spat a wad of blood and cheek tissue onto the ground as the sounds of steel echoed in the alley. By the time he pushed himself up onto his elbows, a strong pair of hands dragged him to his feet. His head swayed as he tried to take in the scene.

Fat guy is rolling around and skinny guy is dead and my sister is here and... Gunto shook his head as if the drunkenness would be expelled, but he succeeded in making himself dizzy for his efforts. He hadn't seen his sister in so many years he'd lost count.

"I don't even know where I am for truth... Naama, really? I thought you were dead. And I bathed this morning." The words rolled off his tongue in his guttural native language, but the strangeness of it all was too much. "Am I dead too?" He slurred, shuffling to the side and propping himself up on the wall with a lean and tattooed arm. His buckler jingled, several small bones, coins, and you-don't-even-want-to-know's clinking on it's metal surface. Gunto took a trophy from every man he killed.

"I'm drunk," He confessed, as if she couldn't tell, "and this deyhan tried to kill me. He called me black hand."

His head swayed as he scanned the ground for his fallen knives, and cackled when he caught sight of one. "Look sister, this dumb bastard almost cut his own head off."

Gunto stumbled forward and bent down to the thug Naama had felled. One of Gunto's kukri was lodged deep into the backside of his neck, and Gunto tore it free in a mess of gore. He didn't seem to mind. "Who falls on a knife like that, really." he muttered as he flicked his wrist towards the wall, expelling the blood on the blade and stumbled over to the groaning fat man.

"What do we do with the fat one?" He said in a drunken drawl, but the vicious kick he landed into the fat man's ribs didn't seem drunken at all. The man howled, and Gunto placed his boot on his mouth to stifle his screams. "Quit wigglin'."

It had been long since Gunto had been in Falyndar, but the natural instinct to let his sister give the orders was part of him. Little sister or not, she was as tall as he was... and only a halfbreed at that. Gunto pointed at the man with his wicked blade, content with his foothold for the moment. His body seemed to sway back and forth as he silently wondered where his one eyed wench had got off to.

[Naama]

She would have embraced him had his garb not been crusted with grime. "Me? Dead? You must be joking, we both know who the better fighter is, Gunto." Yet she grinned all the same. Here he is, my only connection to the kin I've forsaken. Oh Lhex, you wily being. "I know you're drunk, I can smell it from a mile away," she shoved him aside, bending over the incapacitated human whose thigh oozed red from the protruding dagger. With a smirk, she jerked the blade from his flesh, and when he howled in agony a tawny hand came sailing through the gap to smack across his bloody lips. "Why did you attack my brother, deyhan?" Naama growled, clenching the neck of his tunic, the fat man trembled in her grip, his large blue eyes fixed to her daunting jet. His lip quivered, spittle trailing down his chin, "I don't know anything, ya freak, it was jus' orders. We jus' got orders to kill the Myrians, that's it." "Not good enough." The blade sunk into the man's palm, spurting blood. There was a roar of anguish. "I SWEAR--AGH. I swear, we got orders from a shady man-- The man with a white eye. He told us to-- to tie up loose ends, is all. We didn't ask no questions, I swear on me life. Let me go, please." "What was the man's name? Did he mention someone called Niobe?" "I don't--" There was another scream, a sole digit severed from the main hand. "GODS, I-I don't remember the name, Shassai or Shaster, or some-something with an S and H." Naama glanced up at her brother, "Well?"

[Gunto]

Gunto moved his booted foot from the man's mouth as Naama began her questioning. He busied himself amidst his cries and sputters and pleas, reaching to his fallen comrade and wiping his blade clean on his dark tunic. Out of curiosity, he pulled free the leather and mail glove of the dead man's left hand and found a prize; a plain band of gold. He tugged at the ring, but it wouldn't budge. Gunto shrugged, nodding his head rhythmically as he set to sawing the whole finger off the man's dead hands. His blade made short of work of a few fingers, and he stood with his trophies to examine them.

His eyes wandered to the fat man as he squirmed, Naama having pushed her knife straight through the thick leather and mail that covered his palm. The soft ones did not know a Myrians strength, especially a woman's. Little metal rings would not stop them. Gunto dropped the dead man's fingers into a pouch at his waist as he stumbled around the man to the side opposite Naama, and settled himself into a crouch. When Naama mentioned Niobe, Gunto head jerked toward her. He hadn't seen his other little sister in ages, and she'd been barely a woman grown the last time. If this had anything to do with with little Niobe, then this fat man would sing.

“I think the fat one is scared. He's pissed himself. But not of us sister, he is scared of someone else.”

Gunto swayed as he reached to the hilt of the dagger protruding from the man's palm, and yanked it free. He clamped a blackened hand over his mouth to stifle the cry as he tossed the dagger to the side, and grasped at his cloak to tear a wad of cloth from it's tattered surface. He shoved the ball of cloth into the fat man's mouth, and he did not do it gentle. He set to work pulled the mailed glove from his wounded hand, exposing his fleshy forearm and hand.

“You disrespect my sister, deyhan. I will not tolerate it. You are lucky she only took one finger. I am not so kind.”

His voice had lost most of it's drunken slur, and had taken a much darker quality. His kukri came down brutally, severing the man's hand from his wrist. The fat man's eyes rolled as his cry was stifled by the cloth and Gunto's hand once again pressed against his mouth. He picked up what had been his hand, and shook it in his face before tossing it aside in the alley.

“You will talk. If you don't answer rightly, I will flay you. Remember I am not so steady right now, so it will be not so good for you. I'll start here. I promise you, no death is worse than one at the hands of the Shadow Hand.”

His kukri danced over his body, and the tip came to a rest gently on his groin. The fat man looked ready to pass out, but his eyes were wide and alert. He began to nod quickly, words muffled by the cloth.

“Good. You talk now.”

Gunto ripped another long strip from his cloak and tied it off over the man's stump, then unbuckling one of the leather straps that held a multitude of knives. The knives fell to the ground as the belt became a tourniquet, synched down tight to stifle the blood flow to his stump. He wanted him alive long enough to talk. He yanked the sullied cloth from his mouth, awaiting the information his sister sought.

[Naama]

She hadn't so much as flinched at Gunto's exemplrary performance of Myrian brutally. In a way, Naama was content to see that her brother had not lost his way amongst his time with the alien cultures beyond the borders of Falyndar, as she had so many years ago. And let him keep to our ways. Myri deserves to be represented well. She didn't smile. Nothing was ever jests and tomfoolery when Niobe was involved. She wanted her sister, preferrably alive, and no amount of trickery would bring her closer to finding a clue. The garbled whimpering of the heavy thug aggrivated her just as much as his unsatisfying answers. She clenched the collar of his worn jerkin, tugging him so their eyes met, the black depths hard and unyielding. "Where did you meet this cretin then?" Her other hand pressed the blade of her curved sword against the raw stump of his hand as he howled. "How many men does he have looking for us?" "ARGH!--ENOUGH-- ENOUGH!" The blade receded, and between gasping breaths and dribbling spit he spoke. "W-warehouse, in the city, can't find it--can never find anything in this petching city, red walls. Had around twenty men last I saw, twenty or thirty, I don't know now--don't know nothin' more. Please...please, let me go." Naama sat in silece for a long while, but the myrian was never one for extended interrogation. They will send more, they always do. She looked at the dismal, pathetic man, trousers soiled with piss, mangled arm carelessly wrapped, blood and spit caked across his grimy stubbles and matted hair. She felt no pity. "Send my regards to Dira." I'll meet her soon enough. The dagger plunged, sinking into an eye socket with a vicious force and a sickening pop followed by a heartrending scream. She did it again to the other socket, and again and again, stabbing with an unrelenting ferocity. There was blood on her hands, splattered on her face, pooling on the blackened cobblestone, the smell filling her nose. The red consumed her vision, until it was all she could see. The bloodshed, the bloodlust she so craved for. And then she was gazing up at her brother, hands dripping. "Go ahead," She said at last, "Myri's offering is long overdue."

[Gunto]

Gunto remained crouched beside man even as Naama set to work, averting his face slightly as stray whips of crimson spattered against his bare chest. The last fits of life shuddered from their stout assailant at last. His sister looked pleased with herself for the kill, going so far as to offer the final act to Gunto himself. His right hand twitched along the thick leather wrappings of his kukri's hilt, but he shook his head. The adrenaline of the interrogation had subdued his drunkenness for a moment, but he already felt his head whirling again. Aside from that, he knew they could not stay here long enough to relish in this one's death.

"Overdue it is, but our God Queen must wait another day for an offering from the Shadow Hand. Let the rats have this one, he has no strength to grant us. A warrior dies with his secrets."

Gunto rose and stumbled, feeling for perhaps the first time the blows he had been dealt. He jammed his knife back into the sheath as his hip and gave the alley a less than thorough look for his other knife. They did not have time to search for it, and the steel was old and spent anyhow.

"We need to leave this place. These are not faces the soft ones will tend to forget if we are seen. I know nothing of this place or who guards it, and I do not intend to find out this day."

Gunto tore his ragged cloak off and wiped away the blood from his face, hands, and chest. He almost offered it to Naama, but she seemed less than pleased at the smell of it. Rightly so, it reeked of every body fluid one could hope to expel. He suddenly wondered where his one eyed whore had gone off to.

"Walk with me... tell me what you plan to do. These men know something of our sister."

[Naama]

"Suit yourself," She answered briskly, wondering how Gunto would take to her newfound faith in the god of wind and storm. "If there were shadows watching us I'm surprised they haven't killed me already for all the shyke I've been through." Naama stood, wiping the blood from her hands with one of her sashes, frowning. "She can't be in this city, I would have known, I should have... and yet they sent men all this way to kill you.." Her brow furrowed, "It doesn't make any petching sense. Who would go out of their way to murder the sibling of a slave?" It was hard uttering the word, but she knew the reality of an abduction, death or slavery. One or the other, eventually. The voices of men and women grew steadily louder as they emerged from the alley. They found themselves in an open cobblestone path flanked by quaint shops with chipped, hanging signs. Men and women seemed to disregard the two Myrians caked in blood, or hid their curiosity under subtle veils. Behind them, the entrance to the alley vanished beneath the steady influence of the illusionist god. "I don't know what to do, Gunto," She replied, with a tinge of anger, "I haven't known what to do for almost three years now. Always a dead end, always. And you know I can't return to Taloba a failure, if I return at all." She offered him a weak smile, "Besides, I have someone I'm bound to." There was a pause as she considered a thought, "What have you been doing all these years, brother? Why haven't you returned to Falyndar? This was my quest, and mine alone. You have a chance at a life there, I never have."

[Gunto]

The world spun and danced away from his eyes, and he wasn't sure if it his drink or the very nature of this hellhole that was disorienting him. Gunto blinked several times as Naama began to speak, burying his face in a shadowy hand and rubbing it furiously to try to regain some semblance of soberness. He wasn't surprised that Naama had been up to no good… it seemed that was the calling card of their family when abroad.

“I know nothing and less of this, sister. Maybe she is here, and they thought we meant to take her back. It is not hard to connect our family by sight.” he said slowly, moving his hands to his temples. He was glad the people of this city had apparently learned not to take everything they saw at face value; the two of them made suspcious seem an understatement at best. The city had done it's work well enough, and the man they had just tortured and killed like a fat little pig could be on the other side of the city for all he knew. So long as he wasn't nearby, they were likely out of any immediate danger.

Gunto shivered as his sister expressed her doubts and frustrations. He was not dressed for the winter, and even the mildest winters made Gunto cringe. He was a creature of the jungle, much preferring the hot humid air of his homeland. Gunto turned to the sister he'd assumed lost. He hadn't realized she'd been searching so vehemently for their sister all this time. He had asked and looked himself in every city he stopped, but one Myrian could only do so much. His search had become half-hearted. He quirked an eyebrow however when she made mention of being bound to someone.

“Ha! He must have a three foot dong and a chin made of steel to have survived my sister. I'd like to meet such a man.” He said in his low pitched voice, but his chuckling subsided when she questioned his recent activities.

“It would take three nights, three dozen mugs of ale and a midget playing the high harp to do these last few years of mine any justice, sister. I am not long in Alvadas though. I came to the city to bring my reports of the cities I have seen and their capabilities to a messenger who will be taking them back to Taloba. I've not returned because my duty is not there... I've been told I am to goto Ravok, and discover what I can of their strength. Sometimes I think they want poor Gunto to die in a gutter.”

Gunto scratched at his thick beard, and let out a solid belch. “I have some time before I must leave. I don't even know how I will get there. I had to whore myself out to some pitiful bastard who sat me next to slaves and had me rowing his ship all the way across the Suvan Sea. I'll not be doing that again.”

He looked as though the work wouldn't have bothered him. Gunto had grown since Naama had seen him last, though not in height. They were still even there, but his bulk had become considerable. “No more fighting today sister, but on the 'morrow if you wish, I will help you find this red walled building with twenty dead men inside.”

Gunto was a Myrian and as capable as any, but even as he boasted he knew that many were a problem. They would be overwhelmed and killed, though a third of them at least would lose their lives for it. He rubbed at the jagged scars on his left breast, a hideous thing that by rights should have killed him if had been a typical scar. Myri's mark was only fatal for those he drew his blade against.

“My whore is gone, and I don't know where I am. Where do I go in this city for a bed and something red and bloody to eat?”