Flashback I. Respite and Nepenthe

[Konrad Venger]

71st Day of Spring, 501AV || Robern's Reaches

The face was just the latest in a series that Konrad had given up keeping track of. Of course, at first, he remembered the number. The order. He even thought about getting tattoos for each one, like... tear drops, or blood from a dagger. Maybe flowers from a petal, that seemed like a nice, sly wheeze. But the years went on and they piled up and one day, Konrad just stopped counting.

It should have bothered him, he thought. That he stopped remembering the order. He always thought that every life he took would be as fresh and vivid as the first, a red nightmare he'd left hewn from balls to skull in some dank sewer. He'd never forget that one... but would he?

Sometimes he had to remind himself of the boy's name? Miles? No... Niles. That was it. It would take a chime of frowning, maybe a gulp of wine, and he'd have it. Because it meant something.

But he knew the beardless boy that coughed phlegm and blood onto his cheek as he died would not last the season in his memory. Stark and fresh for a few days, maybe a score, and then... he'd know he fulfilled a contract, and his hand was heavy with coin for the effort, but the face? The name? The reason, even?

They all became as grey as the leaden sky above him. Just an endless, formless smear of bleached color that bled warm drops onto them both. The boy who'd fancied himself a demon and cut up the wrong bastard in a bar fell back into the door way. He looked at Konrad with fading eyes, still holding out his kukri, slick with blood, scarlet drops falling with the clear water.

Konrad stepped forward, shadow falling over the dying man. He wouldn't die in the rain, at least. Konrad had his hat, though, as always. Rain chased down the brim and pattered onto the shoulders of his coat, faded old leather creaking as he went down to one knee.

"Pluh... Pluhs..."

The boy stuttered, frothy red foam bubbling on his lips as the same old litany started. The killer glanced down at the red atrocity wrought on the lad's stomach. Mortal wound. No matter what. Yet still he would beg, and hope.

Doesn't everyone?

Konrad's free hand grabbed the boy by his shaggy black hair, holding his steady so-

-his other arm could snap out, kukri at the end of it, curved blade not designed for stabbing or thrusting but hells, it was hardly a difficult kill or a squirmy target. The lad's mouth popped open and the queerest, breathiest gasp of shock Konrad had every heard hissed out of his mouth, nose and the hole Konrad left in his throat.

He twisted the blade, then pulled it free. A river of red flowed down and soaked cloth, flesh, hair, everything it touched, until it leaked into his breeches and spread onto the floor.

Konrad wiped the blade clean and replaced it in it's sheath. He had his kopis, of course, but this... it was close work. No point bringing out the big blade for something so simple.

He leaned back. Glanced left... right... no, he picked this place well. He knew roughly where the boy was, it was just a matter of deciding where to do it. This rickety, crooked alley wasn't much except for a shortcut to other places. Konrad had got the boy's attention with a brief "hey, mate?", and when he'd turned to see who it was-

Konrad stuck him in the stomach. That's how it started to end. The man flexed his jaw as he looked down. Damn weather like this. Spring storms, lightning in the air crackling down to the cobbles through the weathervanes and studs in the thatch buldings... they always made his face hurt. He caressed his jaw and felt the ravagings of his father on one side, a whole topography of vicious scars, spreading forth from one.

A gladius. Short blade, bur broad. Balanced. Double-sided. It should have killed him, and he knew it. Were it not for the sheer, raving, drunken state of the Elder Venger, it would have.

No, he thought with enough bitterness to shame a lemon. I was lucky, instead.

Konrad touched the brim of his hat, as if bidding the boy a polite farewell, then walked away, and started to forget.

[Konrad Venger]

"Venger? Got somethin' for ya..."

He was one bell and four tankards into the rest of his evening when that squirmy voice caught his attention. Konrad looked up over the rim of his drink as his other hand instinctively went to the dagger at his side. Usually it nestled in his boot, but hidden from view in his booth, he liked to keep it close and ready in case it wasn't just a voice that sprang at him from the crowd in the Drunken Dhani.

"That so, Ratter?"

The lanky man with sideburns you could scrub dishes with gave a wry smile at his old nickname, which told Konrad that it must have been something profitable. Usually that work alone would have been enough to sour the man's already lemony expression.

"Oh, aye. Somethin' you've been waitin' to hear."

Any mirth or gaming mood Konrad may have been inclined to indulge vanished like a candle struck by a stiff breeze. His half-smile melted into a hard, straight line and he nodded to the space at the edge of the booth. The bar was half-empty but Konrad didn't like sitting with his back to anything. Here, at the end of the tavern, with the door right on front of him, was much more amenable to him.

Ratter slid into position and leaned forward, Konrad doing the same.

"Y'told me a while back to keep me eyes open fer a name. Rufus, wunnit? Ran a carting crew a' street rats years ago. Been kinda hard t'find since then?"

Konrad did not nod or question. Ratter spoke nothing he didn't already know. Information peddlers like him infested Sunberth, a thousand eyes and ears and wagging tongues that ensured the syndicates and gangs could always find a man or item they were after, given time. Of course, that time depended on your resources, and where you were. Ratter may have had a good handle on the Reaches and the Bay, but Sunberth was far bigger than those two districts.

Ten years, and that bastard disappears like a fart in the wind. No-one's seen him or heard of him. City like this... aye... probably dead.

"Well, ah," Ratter plowed on once it was obvious Konrad wouldn't be contributing a lot to the conversation. Stoic bugger had that habit. "Little bird told me that he heard the name "Rufus" from this bloke havin' a go at a bunch've beggars down some street. He seemed about as old as you said he'd be, but he only had one leg..."

Konrad listened but blinked a few times in muted surprise. He tried to imagine the lumbering, terrifying figure he remembered from his first, desperate year alone as a... as a cripple, and couldn't quite get there. Rufus was fear and brutality personified to the skinny little boy he'd been back then. He supposed those feelings never really faded.

"... but I dunno, Danny's a good sort, bit cracked, likes 'is cunny too much an'-"

"You checked up on this?"

Ratter had the gall to look offended for a moment; straightening up with professional indignation that he, a career rumor-spinner, would not confirm a titbit that could be worth coin in his pocket.

"A' course I did! asked around... where it was I heard this, an' seems like yer man Rufus has been there a year or two. Been movin' around a lot, I hear. Owes money, probably, changes 'is districts, 'is little crew..."

Konrad's eyes narrowed at the hesitation, but he was hardly surprised. The where was what Ratter was selling him. Blurting it out foolishly in the telling of a tale would rob him of his profit. The rest mad sense, too. Konrad wondered if Rufus had taken up with the Night Eyes, but that didn't seem their way; squeezing a few measly gold mizas a season from a cripple and his beggars. But is he was moving, maybe that was the point. He made a profit for a season, at the most, then moved on before the real power in the area could politely inform him that profit-making had an overhead.

Be just like him, too. Greedy cunt.

"An' what if it ain't him, Ratter?"

Ah, the eternal question for a knowledge broker: what if you're full of shyke? Ratter spread his hands, callused and lined beyond his two-score years, and shrugged.

"Then y'get yer coin back, a'course."

"All of it?"

"Well... what y'give me tonight, anyway."

"And how much'd that be?"

Ratter said a number. Konrad blinked and studied that thin face with the wispy beard for a few ticks... and smiled. Ratter smiled. Ah, well, this was going well. Honestly, he'd been thinking that a mad bastard like Venger would-

-do something like grab his wrist, pinning it to the table-

THUNK

"Shyke!"

-and in a flash, his dagger as half-buried in the wood an inch in front of his shaking knuckles. He looked up, sweat already breaking out on his brow, as Konrad reached round his back... and pulled another blade, curved and shiny... and pointed it at his face.

"Ratter... how long've I been payin' you t'keep your ears open for this man?"

"K-Kon, c'mon, I-"

Konrad pulled. Ratter's knuckles came closer to the blade.

"F-Four years! I-I think-"

"Three an' three seasons, in point a' fact. An' how much've I been payin' youse, each season, for yer ears?"

Ratter soon learned that it was not just bullshyke but hesitation that would cost him. Konrad yanked again and the callow man ground his teeth in pain as the blade bit into the space between two knuckles. If he even unfolded his fist now, it would splay his fingers all over the blade, lay them open on that razor metal... and if he tried something else, that other blade was ready. Hovering like a cobra, itching to strike.

"F-Five gold m-m-m-"

"mizas a season, that's right. So that's... how much is that, Ratter?" Konrad's face twisted into a smile that a demon would have envied. "I'm not much good with me sums."

Ratter swallowed a mouthful of stones and his greasy-quick wits had to grind and churn until he found the number.

"S-Sixty, n-no, s-seventy-f-f-five-"

"Aye, that's right. Soon t'be eighty. Quite a sum, over the years, don't you agree?"

He hesitated again,. Konrad jerked, barely even pulled, and blood ran down onto the table. Ratter nodded furiously, trying not to think about how deep that blade could go.

"Aye. Thought y'would. So how's about y'give me another number, eh? Somethin' a little more... understandin', of all those other scraps a' gold I've fed you over the years. Can y'do that, Ratter?"

Eventually and with much stammering, Ratter did. Konrad tightened his grip on his wrist, muscles tensing as if he'd yank him forward and have that dagger cleaving open his hand down to the wrist-

-then let him go.

Ratter recoiled straight out of his seat and upright onto the floor of the tavern. A burly passing figure snarled as he bumped into him and he swayed on his feet, tottering around until there was a jerk of movement from the booth.

Konrad was on his feet, too. His kukri vanished and so did the dagger, yanked clear from the table and cleaned with a quick shk-shk wipe on his sleeve. Ratter glanced down at his hand. The rivulet of blood running down his hand from his knuckles. Barely a half-inch deep but gods, it'd felt like a spear.

Metal tinkled onto wood, and at the sight of the gold mizas trembling on the table, Ratter's pain was soothed. Konrad set his hat square on his head and slid past him.

"Where, Ratter?"

"R-Riverside. W-West side."

"Thank yeh," the scarred man said, but before he left he turned his head and spoke his last words. "Better not be fuckin' me around, mate, or I'll come back for yeh. Yer not the only little shite who can find a man, an' once I get askin' about you... well... someone'll tell me."

Konrad walked away, leaving the wounded man cursing his name, his manhood, every person in his line and joy in his life. But Konrad paid him no heed, crowd parting for his hideous face as he strode from the tavern, and started to make his plans.

[Konrad Venger]

The problem with having a face like a Rottweiler's favorite toy, was it was hard for Konrad to get around in the daytime without attracting attention. Not to mention his adherence to developing a style all of his own meant that hat and that coat were just as recognizable.

So he'd had to ditch his precious hat and cloak himself instead, taking alleys and sidestreets until he crossed the river, then did the same and then some once he was away from the Reaches. No Daggerhand brands or tattoos there. No scrawls on the wall proclaiming their power. No familiar faces... not that he looked up often enough to check.

"Alms... alms... please, alms..."

If Konrad had been a man taken to musing on the thread of his life, he might have found some bleak amusement in the fact he was back to begging, to find the man who'd made him one. He tottered down the cobbles with his back hunched and a little bowl in one hand, crooked stick in the other. Now and then, someone tossed a copper in, so the day wasn't a total waste even if he couldn't find Rufus.

But Konrad had already decided he wouldn't be trawling the streets, looking for a one-legged man with Rufus' face. His scars may have set him back to hiding in a cowl and playing the derelict... but what he knew, what he remembered, that was taking him somewhere else.

At the edge of Sunberth, where the faint, alien scent of fresh air and grass and trees sprinkled the coal dust and carrion, Konrad found the sewage outlets. Most of them flowed to the river or the bay, but there were a few that led out into the wilderness, handling the overflow when rain or flooding became too much.

It was in the West. Where Ratter's man had seen Rufus.

If he hasn't changed tack, he thought as he straightened up from his masquerade, pushing back his cowl a little to peer into the black tunnel. He's still hiding himself and his lads in there.

He could have been wrong. Rufus could be holed up in a tavern, or an abandoned building, or maybe even the hideout of some gang or another he was paying tribute to. But Konrad didn't know that; he knew what he remembered, and so he squelched through the shit and detritus gathered in the mouth of the tunnel, and started walking...

[Konrad Venger]

Darkness closed in, and with it, the unwanted past. Konrad had been in the sewers before, long after he'd been a beggar for Rufus, and killed his second Niles in one... but that had been a different kind of business. There was no gold waiting for Konrad at the end of this tunnel, and it wasn't until after that he even thought of looting and spoils. The only thing he wanted was blood.

Ten years, he thought as he made his way through pitch tunnels, lit only by shards of sunlight through manhole covers and cracks in the ceiling. Ten years this has been coming, you bastard...

He was about to turn back or find an exit when he heard it. At first he thought it was just echoes from above. Carts and vendors, travelers and drunks, for night was beginning to fall... but no, it was too close. At his level, almost. Then after a while, he thought it was his mind, casting shadows of the past into the darkness where all manner of nightmares were given a blank canvas to spring into life.

Again, Konrad was wrong. As he edged along the tunnel, his ears pricked and he heard a voice unknown to his them for ten years.

"... tellin' yuz, dun'I?! Yuz wanna get the good coin, yuz gotta look paf'etic! Yuz gotta look broken! Das' wud'I'm doin' for ya, s'stop yer sniveling, er fuck's sake..."

His feet, his heart, his thoughts... all of him stalled for precious ticks. He'd heard those words bawled before, at weaker boys in his old crew. The ones Niles held down and Rufus had crippled with relish; breaking knees and elbows with a club and telling them it was for their own good. Crippled boys got more coin. Everyone knew it. But Rufus never led by example. It was always the boys that had to suffer.

Memory died, drowned by rage. Old and hateful, stewing so long in his heart he could taste it like bile. Konrad kept walking, and the darkness gave way to eerie, flickering light at the end of the tunnel.

"Please, I-I need my arm! I-I'll do better, I promise-"

The boy had not even seen ten Summers, if Konrad had to guess. He squirmed and begged and he was crying, but the larger boy holding him down was... too big. Too much like Niles. He even had the same shock of blonde hair and the feral smile on his face, telling the world and his audience that this wasn't just business. It was fun.

A dozen ragged specimens were in the filthy, dank crossroads. Wider walkways flanking the flowing filth, boards laid over the rivers so they could sleep and eat. A pathetic little stove in the corner, something that smelled like rat and rotten vegetables bubbling in a pot on top of it. Konrad peered out of the darkness in the tunnel leading to it, and he saw... saw far too much of the past.

"Shuddup, boy. You'll thank me later, just y'see..."

And in the middle of it all, crutch jammed under one arm and thick stave in the other, was Rufus.

"You... bastard..."

Every pair of eyes in the hovel snapped to the direction of the voice. Even a rat or two stopped their scurrying to observe the strange confrontation between the man-creatures. At once a chorus of high, childish whispering began, the canting crew muttering about the thing glaring at them all from the shadows. Tall and burning with anger. Cloaked... but not for long.

Konrad strode into the light from the dripping, used, reused and used again candles they'd all pilfered, taking off his cloak as he went. He held it in one hand while he drew his kopis with the other. Another chorus of noise, fearful and... almost wondrous, at the same time. Street rats. Never seen a real blade.

Rufus turned with fury in his eyes. But as he stared, and the bare head of the newcomer was revealed, his trademark hardness crumbled like a wall struck by a trebuchet. Disbelief warred across his features, and Konrad saw just how much ten years could claw and gouge from a man on the streets of Sunberth. His hairline had not just receded, it had ran from his face as if terrified of it. Lines and crevices had marred a face only a handful older than Konrad's. Gods, he'd seemed so powerful when he was a child. A vast, towering pillar of savage strength.

Now Konrad saw a crippled man with fear in his eyes. Knowing what was coming. He'd seen a thousand kids over his years, broken most of them, tossed plenty to the wolves or the sewers or the slavers... but he'd never forget those scars.

"N... No... You're... You're petching..." Rufus seemed to snap out of it. The crew was staring in shock at his weakness, his fear, and he rallied, pointing at Konrad with the stave. "Jerron?! Fuck do I pay youse fer?! Kill this cunt!"

Niles The Second let the squirming, crying boy up as he rose, pulling a shiny dagger from his tunic. He flexed his shoulders, tossed the knife from hand to hand and Konrad rolled his eyes.

Everyone does that. Why does everyone do that? Who does that in a real fucking brawl?

"Youse really wanna die fer him?" Konrad asked as the beefy boy approached. Quite a bit shorter than him, but still well-muscled and with the confidence of youth shining in his eyes. Oh, this would be a fine boast for him. Killing a scary-looking bastard with a real sword. "Is he worth yer life?"

"Gonna find out, ain't we?"

Konrad smiled thinly, then threw his cloak at him.

Instantly Jerron's view became nothing but a blanket of cloth flying towards him like a fluttering sheet of nothing. He stopped in his tracks and slashed at it out of instinct, losing sight of the petch-faced arsehole-

-Konrad moved under that tick or two of cover, and moved with intent. He only wanted Rufus, but if this kid was dumb enough to get in the way...

He slid to Jerron's side and swung the kopis parallel to the ground with both hands... through the cloak he'd just thrown. He saw something punch and slash at the fabric from the other side, Jerron hacking at the garment about to cover him like a net-

-but Konrad's weapon was bigger, heavier, and designed to cleave. It tore through the cloak and into Jerron's belly like a paper sack. He doubled over as the kopis bit deep into his guts, tall killer finally revealed as the cloak fell to the floor, cut nearly in two. Went down to his knees as Konrad yanked the sword free... and rolled onto his back with his guts leaking out like hungry snakes, steaming out into the sewage along with blood and what he'd had for lunch that afternoon.

Stopped breathing. After a while. Not a sound but the creak of Konrad's leather breeches as he straightened back up. Not even breathing from the other waifs who couldn't tear their eyes away. And, one by one, as Jerron finally expired, turned to Rufus...

"He was lucky. Stupid, but lucky." Konrad sheathed his sword. He didn't bother to clean it. Then he bent down... and pulled his dagger from his boot, and flashed it at Rufus. "Remember this? Took it from Niles. You don't get the sword. You get this... and you ain't gonna be lucky."

The beggar prince aged a century in a handful of ticks. His skin moldered to blanched white. He trembled so hard his crutch scraped and skittered next to the stump of his leg. He tried to back up and... and he knew how useless it was.

He did it anyway. With a yelp and curse, he spun around and started to hobble away into the nearest tunnel. The shadows swallowed him but his crutch, his limp, his panicked breath him gave him away at every step. Konrad swept his gaze around the sewer-

"Out."

-and started walking after him as the carting crew exploded in every direction, as long as it was away from him.

[Konrad Venger]

It was everything he'd been waiting for.

Rufus coughing up blood in filth and darkness, alone and terrified. He'd tried fighting, fool but living, struggling being that he was. Lashed out with his crutch, so pitifully that Konrad had just snatched it from his hand.

The beggar went into the flow. Choking on piss and shyke and foulness from every district in the city. Konrad yanked him out by what hair he had left, then shoved him back under. Let him taste what Niles had forced him to, years before in a different sewer, right before he tried to take the last shred of innocence he had.

"Tried" being the important word.

"D... Dun... Dun do dis-"

The begging came next, as Konrad knew it would. Rufus trying to squirm out of it, scrambling back across the slick bricks on his bank, hands up as if flesh could ward off steel. Konrad advanced and nearly kicked his nose through his face. He was still begging, though. Words spitting through broken teeth and snot and blood-

Even when Konrad stuck the dagger in his guts up to the hilt. Even then, Rufus thought he could talk his way out of it.

Then Konrad reached a hand into the wound he'd made and yanked out a handful of the things Rufus had seen boil of of Jerron's trunk. The pain was white lightning, a snake pit in his stomach, lava and acid and it was so much it went beyond pain. His mind just shut down, refused to deal with it, walked away... and left his eyes and body full awake.

"F... Fuck you. Fuck... you!"

Konrad smirked into his face as Stage Three arrived: dying with defiance. Predictable right down to his last sodding moments, was Rufus turning out to be. Blood dribbling down his lips and hands weakly pawing at Konrad's shoulder, he was nothing like the giant he'd been, the ogre that ruled Konrad's weak little world.

The killer's smile flickered.

This isn't that man. It's just... just a cripple. A cripple who never stood a chance against me.

"I'll see you..." Rufus sucked down breath that already leaked out of the wound Konrad was carving up through his torso, splitting open his stomach, his guts, his lungs, sawing up to his heart. "See yuh... n'a hells..."

His eyes started to glaze and Konrad realized how little time had passed. Chimes, maybe. The world beyond the tunnel started to jabber and whisper at him. That there was no audience to cheer him or pat him on the back, but since when did he need that? Konrad's motivation was Konrad, and that had been the same for a decade. He didn't care for approval, or even gold today.

He just wanted the stone in his stomach to vanish. Yet another smirking figure from his past rubbed out like chalk from a board. Niles. Tazloor. Now Rufus.

Remember how it felt, he told himself, the merest frisson of worry in his thoughts. With Niles. How you felt... you felt...

Didn't you?

Konrad gulped and closed his eyes, trusting the blackness behind his eyes to stoke his memory. He remembered Niles, naked and bent over him, then blinded in one eye, impaled through the throat. A blur of rushing red and frantic panting as a younger, smaller version of him had straddled the older boy and hacked and stabbed and slashed until...

I know it. I remember it. But... I don't feel it.

I can't feel it now.

Konrad opened his eyes and Rufus was dead. Not desperate breathing. No bubbling froth. Just dead, glassy eyes staring up into the dark, body still as stone. Fluids still drained from him but were already slowing. Within chimes he'd be just another corpse in the underworld, food for rats and roaches and adventurous wild dogs who trawled the sewers for food.

"Hey... Hey?!"

He shook him. He must have been alive. He couldn't... he couldn't go so soon! Konrad had to feel this, had to stamp every tick of this scene on his souls so he could... because if he couldn't-

A larger shadow loomed. Would always loom, until Konrad ended him, too. The one who'd given him his scars. Taken the only thing that meant anything to him. Set him on the path to the streets, the sewers, Rufus and Niles and all the things he'd done, the monster he'd become.

It was everything he'd been waiting for. Until it arrived. Then he looked down and Rufus' face was the boy in the doorway, a bottle-struck visage in a bar brawl, a howling mask of fury in some street scrap years before.

All just a grew swirl. For gold or for himself, Konrad couldn't tell anymore. He dragged deep on the past and tried to stoke his indignation, that corner of him still human beyond the cold give-and-take of murder-for-hire... but the embers were dead and naught but ash was left.

Konrad slumped back opposite Rufus. They looked like two friends reclining in a strange and stinking setting. He breathed calmly. His face was blank.

He couldn't feel anything. Just like Niles, once the redness had passed. Had he been a simpler man, maybe that wouldn't have bothered him. But he wasn't, and so it did, and all his doubts congealed into one question-

What if there is no peace? I can kill them, all of them. Rufus and Niles and Tazloor... my father... but if there's nothing after, no change...

Konrad pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around them. He stared at the corpse, half-expecting it to cough back to life. But it didn't. It wouldn't. It would just lay there forever, until scavengers of all kinds stripped it down to bones and rags in the dark.

He sat there until there was no light from above. The night arrived and Konrad had to force himself up to his feet, feeling his way down the tunnel towards... anywhere. Somewhere. He didn't know.

It didn't matter. None of it did.

Continued here

[Aladari Coolwater]

Name:Konrad Venger

XP Award:

• Intimidation +2
• Philosophy + 2
• Observation +2
• Tactics +1
• Disguise +1
• Begging +1
• Torture +1
• Weapon: Dagger +1

Lore:

• Philosophy: Forgetting the Names of the Dead
• Long Term Customers Deserve Discounts
• Disguise: Can't Change Face Scars
• Disguise: The Hat is Iconic
• Tactics: Blind the Enemy
• Stages of Dying: Persuasion, Begging, Defiance
• Philosophy: Nothing Matters Without Pleasure
• Rufus: Never Coming Back

Penalties/Rewards :

Awarded 4 copper pieces from begging. Konrad's cloak is torn straight down the middle. You can keep the pieces, or remove it from your CS entirely. That's up to you.

Comments :

I didn't award points for your weapon usage in the first post, as it was shortly described, and you're high in the skill already. If you disagree with that decision feel free to message me and we can discuss it.

"Enough bitterness to shame a lemon" was my favorite line. Those and other beautifully strange analogies, put with the cynical mood meant I couldn't help but read it all in a film noir detective voice. Very fun, and a great writer's voice.

The end of this thread gave me chills. The moment he tried to wake Rufus was the peak to me, and after that everything felt like I was still in shock, so I can only imagine how Konrad felt. It's great to see such character development in Konrad's feelings as well.

If you have any questions or feel I forgot something, please contact either me or Anarkhos.