Solo Someone's Gotta Do It

[Amoros Vittore]

3rd Summer, 514

"Did you hear?" Amoros muttered as he hefted a sack of grain onto his shoulder, his words laced with sarcasm as he commentated the conversations of his colleagues, watching them with scowling eyes as they loitered together in out-of-sight corners instead of doing their damned jobs. "Black Sun confirmed that the fish is real!"

Amoros' voice changed as he trudged along the familiar path between the pallet where the ship's cargo had been offloaded, and the warehouse where it was to be stored. "I told you as much!" his second voice interjected haughtily. "My sister's brother's friend's cousin saw it three weeks ago. I can't believe the city has let a threat like this go on so long."

A grunt of effort escaped as he hoisted the sack to join the growing pile of others that he had already carried thus far. They formed an unceremonious heap, stopped from sprawling out across the wooden planks of the warehouse floor by a cage of crossbeams. That didn't stop the grain sacks from trying, bulging out through every gap in the wooden mesh that they could, leaving tempting outcroppings for vermin to chew through or clumsy labourers to snag, spewing the contents everywhere and negating Amoros' efforts for the last hour. Such was the futility of his employment: a single link in the chain that transported such wares from shore to ship, to store, and then on to market. The sacks of grain that survived their overnight stay would disappear the next morning to be bought, ground, and whatever else was necessary to turn the loathsome little seeds into much more enjoyable bread and beer. Amoros didn't understand how either process worked; he didn't particularly care either, so long as the both of them found their way inside him at some point.

Speaking of finding their way inside, he mused, various parts of his back and shoulders protesting the physical labour even more than normal. His encounter with the Endrykas girl the night before had certainly been pleasant; his encounter with her brother a few minutes later had been less so, as the various bruises hidden away behind his scruffy half-torn work shirt attested. The physical pleasures themselves had been mediocre, but curiosity had been the greater motivator for that particular carnal conquest: at least he'd got to find out how far down those windmarks of hers went.

A sigh started to escape as he paced the exact same route back to the palette as he had several dozen times already, but the breath was quickly snared inside bulging cheeks, blown out through his lips in a staccato rhythm that matched the insidious tune that infuriating bard at the tavern had lodged inside his skull. Every time his mind fell quiet - which was often; perhaps more often than he would be willing to admit - it crept back in there, the same few half-heard lyrics tumbling over and over in his mind.

"There's a petching fish in the petching lake," he muttered under his breath again, as his gaze settled on the same few labourers, still fastidiously avoiding work in favour of exchanging gossip. Another sack was slung over his shoulder. Another turn. Another few dozen bitter, resentful strides back towards the warehouse. "Who gives a shyke? Shut your damned holes, and get on with your petching jobs."

There was a time when Amoros would have counted: kept a running tally of the loads he lugged from place to place. He used to score himself on how much he could move in a span of time, and then try to beat that score. Sometimes he'd got fancy, trying to keep a tally of how much weight he'd carried, or how much worth he'd carried. Such things were difficult for his limited intelligence and mathematical skills, but that made them all the better: the longer he spent distracting himself with complicated addition, the less he noticed the monotonous, repetitive nature of the task at hand. Not any more, though: such ploys had long since lost their effectiveness.

Another sack of grain landed with a disappointing thud inside the grain cage, and Amoros finally allowed himself a moment to pause. It was a risk: every halted moment - or worse, each one spent seated - was an opportunity for his joints to seize and his energy to fade. Each morning was an arduous process of levering himself into motion; each evening was a painful process of peeling calloused, aching feet out of sweat-sodden boots, and drowning his overworked muscles first in wash water and then whatever alcohol he could get his hands on. He grabbed for the flask at his hip, but only water made it's way past his lips and down his throat; his unfortunate sobriety so early in the day was yet another reason why the aches and pains of last night's scuffle were plaguing him.

His hands fell to his hips, and his gaze studied the insignificant and demotivating dent he had made in relocating the cargo, despite all the time and effort expended thus far. "And they wonder why I spend my free time getting drunk and hitting people," he sighed, deep enough to empty his lungs, before once again spurring his body into motion, and back to work.

[Amoros Vittore]

...

Amoros had once heard someone say: a change is as good as a rest. That someone was an old man and a fool, and Amoros was beginning to regret the fact that his knuckles hadn't had a swift encounter with the man's jaws for saying such an infuriatingly false thing.

Granted, a change in task did indeed provide a very brief reprieve from the monotony of carrying sacks back and forth, but all it did was replace it with a new kind of monotony. This new challenge was far more arduous; the sacks had been replaced with watertight barrels, filled with a liquid that sloshed just enough to make balance a precarious prospect. The route had changed too: not from the docks to a warehouse this time, but from a different warehouse, around a stack of inconveniently located crates, through a door that was ever so slightly too narrow to reliably pass through with a heavy load without depriving one's knuckles of skin, and onto a quayside where two men too smartly dressed to have a proper understanding of what a hard day's work was waited impatiently beside a small barge that floated in the canal.

At least Amoros wasn't working alone; though he was rapidly discovering that was more of a curse than a blessing. "Have you heard about the fish?" his colleague asked in a hushed tone as the two passed, his arms empty, Amoros' burning under the lopsided weight of the barrel. The fact that they'd refused to say what was inside made matters worse: that probably meant it was alcohol, and Amoros' current sanity was in dire need of such.

He tried to ignore the scruffy-faced, thickly-bearded labourer, and the oh so irritating subject he'd uttered in an accent Amoros couldn't be bothered to try and place. Instead he trudged on, breath held as he attempted to thread the needle and preserve at least a little of the surface of his knuckles as he squeezed through the door. A few more paces, and a few creaking stairs brought him out onto the quay, his barrel placed down beside the others under the disinterested gaze of one of what he'd decided were probably merchants: they were too clean for tavern staff, and were wearing just enough unnecessary items of foreign regalia to prove - to those knowledgeable enough, of course - that they were well travelled, and had trade connections in the fashionable parts of the world.

Amoros flashed his tightest, least-respectful smile, before clomping back up the stairs and back through the door. He tried to give Scruffbeard McChatterbox as wide a berth as he could, but to Amoros' great frustration, the barrel seemed little challenge to the man's expansive bear-like arms, and he was still as talkative as ever. "I heard that a man's bones washed up on the shore, the flesh completely stripped -"

"Would you shut up about the damn fish?" Amoros interjected, his heart sinking as his gaze settled on what lay before him. Only three barrels remained, which was a blessing of sorts, but all three stood on the ground rather than on pallets or stacked atop each other: a dead lift from the ground with little or no purchase.

Amoros drew in a breath, and tried his best to focus. His mind strayed back to the old man - the same one who spouted nonsense wisdom, as coincidence would have it - who had tried to teach a young Amoros to channel the magic naturally in his body, to cause the djed to flux and bend, and all sorts of spiritual jargon like that. The man had told him to imagine his breaths flowing into different parts of his body, or to imagine water being pushed through that veins; none of that worked, not for Amoros' simple mind. What had worked was rage. Anger was what had first allowed him to tap unintentionally into his djed the first time, and it was that hot fiery sensation bubbling away beneath his skin that had allowed him some modicome of control since. With clenched teeth, he mustered his anger - at the bearded man, at the merchants, at the other dock workers, at his life, at his friends, his absent family; everything he could bring to mind - and forced it into his arms, willpower pumping it through his shoulders. He stepped to the first barrel and crouched, careful to keep his back straight, and latched his arms around it, as tightly as his bolstered strength would allow. A grunt escaped - "Stupid fish." - and he pushed the anger down further, feeling it flow down his spine and into his legs. His breath stopped in his chest as he heaved himself to his feet, the barrel locked within his arms like a vice.

On his feet, he allowed the anger to subside. He'd been warned of the dangers of overreaching with his modest magical gifts, and was determined never to risk befalling such horrors; his muscles would have to suffice for the rest of the trip.

His delay had allowed the other dock worker to catch up; he hefted his barrel with considerably less effort, and followed along hot on Amoros' heels. "You should take this seriously," he insisted. "Black Sun has deemed that it is a real danger!"

With all the might he could muster, Amoros blocked the infuriating voice and infuriating words from his mind, concentrating only on depositing the barrel he carried beside the others. He barely managed to snatch his fingers out of the way before the barrel came to rest on the ground; he kept his eyes aimed away from the merchant, avoiding any further sources of irritation.

The merchant however was apparently not onboard with the idea of being ignored. "We're gonna need these loaded onto the barge now," he uttered; Amoros didn't need to look in order to detect the smirk that came along with those words, the merchant relishing the opportunity to make a humble labourer's day just that little bit worse.

"I don't think so," Amoros countered, shrugging off the instruction and turning back towards the warehouse.

A hand snatched out and wrapped itself around Amoros' arm. "I said," the merchant insisted, an edge quickly creeping into his voice. "You need to load these onto the barge."

Amoros' gaze settled around the hand gripping his arm; the merchant had failed in his attempt to wrap around Amoros' not unsizeable bicep, and had instead latched onto a scruff of fabric. Amoros felt the blood begin to pound in his ears. One beat, and his eyes were on the gripping hand. Another beat, and they snapped to meet the merchant's gaze.

On the third, his muscles sprung into action. His arm windmilled, shoulder rotating backwards to sweep the limb around past his ear and on until it was once again level with the merchant's torso. The fabric twisted, wrenching itself free of the merchant's grip; and at the same moment Amoros shoved, not hard enough to be considered a blow, but certainly enough to disrupt the merchant's balance and send him toppling into the canal.

The merchant splashed and spluttered, flailing wildly. "Are you crazy?" he screamed, desperately kicking and slapping at the water to propel himself towards the barge, dryness, and safety. "There's a killer fish on the loose!"

"So everyone keeps telling me," Amoros said with a sigh, and then disappeared into the warehouse without another word.

[Amoros Vittore]

...

"Vittore!"

The sound of his name being screamed across the warehouse gave Amoros pause. He threw a confused glance over his shoulder at the most definitely solid and not even remotely see-through wall behind him, and wondered how one of his supervisors could possibly have witnessed the come-uppance he'd delivered to the merchant mere moments before.

The supervisor's face was a frustrated snarl, his voice an equally frustrated growl. Thankfully it seemed to be aimed everywhere, and the dark cloud hanging over him didn't seem to have Amoros' name written on it. "Pier four," he instructed gruffly. "Broken crate." That was all the instruction that Amoros received; the supervisor stormed away as angrily as he had arrived.

Amoros sighed, relying on muscle memory to guide him from the warehouse to the tool store to retrieve the hammer and fistful of nails that he'd need to rectify whatever clumsiness someone else had committed. Ordinarily, Amoros would welcome being recognised for his skills. People took one look at him and dismissed him as someone only capable of lifting things and hitting things; and for the most part, they weren't wrong to think that. Amoros was a destructive person, and a destructive influence: but he didn't want to be. Not always.

As a young man, before Amoros had left Ravok to find his fate and fortune elsewhere - a plan that had clearly succeeded as intended - Amoros had been something if a miscreant. He still was, he supposed. At first he'd sought out fights, and then fights had begun to seek out him, and he had relished each and every one of them, and each bruise and broken bone that came along with it. The owners of the taverns he visited were far less pleased with the destruction he inadvertently caused however; it had reached the point where Amoros had been faced with the simple ultimatum: either fix it or by a new one.

So here he was, a decade on, a hammer being twirled idly in his hand as he strode towards where the crate's contents had spilled against the lake-sodden planks of the pier. The damage wasn't too terrible, thankfully: probably a mix of poor craftsmanship combined with poor handling. Nothing that a liberal application of extra nails couldn't fix.

Sadly, the spill of cargo was far easier to resolve than the spill of moronic excuses tumbling from the workers standing around wasting space and air. "I coulda sworn I saw it!" one of them insisted, fingers scratching through his sweaty tangle of hair as he stared out at the lake. "Damn thing distracted me. Made me drop it."

"Oh, you did not," Amoros interjected, exasperation thick in his voice.

"You calling me a liar?" the worker challenged, unwisely. He recoiled slightly as Amoros, who he had expected to halt several comfortable paces away, continued his approach until he was close enough to tower over the far shorter worker.

Amoros glared into the man's eyes. "I am," Amaros agreed, his voice unsettlingly calm, gaze shifting to study the detail's of the man's face, which had become a few shades paler, he noticed. "And while I'm at it, I might as well call you an idiot, clumsy oaf, and imbecile; because that's what you are."

"I am -" the worker tried to protest; Amoros didn't give him the chance to finish.

"What you're going to do," Amoros stressed, the head of the hammer he still held in his hand tapping threateningly against the other dock worker's leg, "Is leave me in peace to clean up the mess you made. And if I hear any of you mention the fish again -" His eyes narrowed. "- I will feed you to it. Are we clear?"

The man thought about answering back, but his mind apparently changed, and he took his opportunity to flee from close proximity. Amoros heard them muttering behind him as they walked away, but he phased out the sound, welcoming back the bard's insufferable song as a way to clear his mind.

He crouched, carefully tipping the crate back onto it's base, his hands holding closed the corner that had burst. He glanced at the nails, rusted and bent; from the state of them and the bleached state of the wood, he guessed that this probably wasn't a new container; more than likely another contributing factor. With the hammer he tapped each damaged nail back out the way it had come, dropping them through a gap in the planks beneath him to avoid confusing them with the newer replacements. Using his knees to hold the crate intact, he set about hammering in the new nails, trying to avoid the holes from the nails he'd removed so that he could pound the replacements into slightly stronger wood.

Once the first few nails were in place, and the crate was a little more structurally sound, he relaxed enough to sit back on his haunches. For every nail he had hammered in below the hole of one he'd removed, he added an extra one above, hoping it would provide a little extra integrity. Task complete, he turned his attention back to the contents that had spilt across the pier; an assortment of nicknacks and bric-a-brac, from buckles and spoons to broaches and beer steins. One item in particular caught his eye: a simple little cloak pin, a little grubby and tarnished, and set with a dark blue stone that he couldn't really identify. If he squinted, he thought that maybe it looked like an artsy stylised bird; or maybe it was waves, or hills. He wasn't really sure; but that didn't stop him from peering carefully around him to see if anyone was watching, and then sneaking it into his jacket.

Fixer's fee, he told himself, as he finished placing all of the other items back in the crate, and nailed the lid back in place. He sighed as he heaved himself back to his feet, the time spent stationary giving his limbs and muscles the opportunity to seize. He twirled the hammer idly in his fingers, fumbled, and almost dropped it; another sheepish glance cast around him to once again check for observers, and he set off back towards the warehouses, whistling the bard's infuriating tune under his breath.

[Nemesis]

Amoros Vittore

Knowledge :

Skills

Skill	XP
Bodybuilding	+3
Carpentry	+2
Endurance	+1
Rhetoric	+3
Socialisation	+1
Unarmed Combat	+1

Lores

*How Dock Workers are Viewed
*Rumour: Giant Fish

Micellaneous :

Injuries

*None

Loot/Expenses

*None

____________________________________________

Notes

*Loved this thread, really well written. Very impressed, and I cannot wait to see more ^.^ I think, for you, Bodybuilding is the most important skill for you to be building up, but let me know if you think I've missed something out.

Feel free to PM me with questions, comments, or concerns, if you have any.
Also, remember to either delete your grade request or edit it as 'graded'.
Thank ye!