The morning light seeped through the irregular cracks in the inn's wooden planks, drawing lines of golden dust that danced in the heavy air. The room smelled of tallow, dry straw, and the acrid scent of blood that still insisted on emanating from my wounds. I was huddled in the darkest corner, a mass of shadows and rags, keeping myself motionless so as not to draw unnecessary attention from the rooms next door, as the walls were very thin. I no longer had the luxury of full sleep; instead, I operated in a state of persistent vigilance—a core of consciousness that refused to shut down 100% unless driven by extreme exhaustion. Tactical monitoring protocols continued to scan the environment for threats. My vision was grainy, a gray cascade of spots that made my head throb beneath the layers of linen and bearskins. I felt the unbearable itch of the synthetic dermis trying to close, a slow process that consumed every gram of energy my metabolism could process.
On the improvised bed, the boy began to stir. The sound of his breathing changed, becoming short and irregular, signaling the end of his rest. I watched him through the slits in the cloth covering my face. When he finally opened his eyes, the terror was instantaneous. He recoiled against the raw stone wall, merging into the furs as if trying to disappear. His eyes were orbs of deep red with shades of purple that glowed. I remained still; any sudden movement, any attempt at vocal communication, would be interpreted as an aggression. My voice, affected by damaged vocal cords, was little more than a wet growl—the sound of a jammed meat grinder. I tried to convey neutrality through my posture, huddling my broad shoulders to take up less space in the room, though I knew my presence was still a stain of terror in that bucolic setting.
Slowly, I extended a hand wrapped in linen strips, holding a piece of rustic bread I had brought the night before. The boy paralyzed, the cry threatening to escape his throat transforming into a stifled sob. He looked at my hand and then at the two purple dots glowing in my eyes through the shadows of the hood. Curiosity—that human instinct that survives even in desolation—began to fight against the paralyzing fear. He saw the cold metal of my cranial reinforcements where the cloth failed to cover, but he also saw that I did not advance. The room door creaked and Skewer entered, bringing with him the smell of warm bread and herbs. The little man skipped to the center of the room with an energy that suggested I shouldn't be there at that hour of the morning. He ignored the tense atmosphere and began to speak frantically. The sound of his voice was like the chirping of birds; he approached the boy and began to gesture exaggeratedly, pointing at me and then making circular motions on his belly, laughing and showing his missing teeth. The boy replied with timid whispers. They started a conversation that floated above my head like a dense fog. I watched them, feeling the isolation of my own mind, defeated by a language barrier in a dirty inn room.
They moved toward the rustic wooden table near the window, placing clay bowls with a dark, steaming liquid that smelled of spices and cheap grease. He called me with an impatient gesture, tapping on the wood. I rose from the corner, feeling every jolt of my weight against the floorboards that creaked under my boots. The boy followed hesitantly, keeping as much distance as possible from me as he sat down.
Sitting at the table, the contrast was glaring. I took up twice the space of both of them, my arms covered in grimy rags resting heavily on the wood that shone from years of accumulated grease. They continued to talk. The boy seemed to be asking questions, discreetly pointing to the metal parts showing on my wrists; my friend replied with short gestures, shrugging without quite knowing how to answer properly. For a moment he pointed at me, and I think he must have told him to ask me. The boy looked at me, his purple and red eyes now less feverish, returning to a glow that mixed dread with a morbid fascination.
"Great start with a child soldier; he's more afraid of you than the enemy. Pay me another 1000," I grumbled softly, thinking of what my superior would say if he saw this scene.
He saw the monster of his nightmares sitting at the table, eating bread and drinking broth like any other living being. I didn't understand what they were saying, but I sensed the tone. There was a kind of silly affection in the way Skewer spoke of me, as if he were trying to introduce a new protector to the boy. There, at that breakfast table surrounded by the misery of the periphery, I was the only anchor of security those two had.
With slow and deliberate movements, I began to gather small wooden sticks and splinters that had fallen from the fireplace and were scattered on the floor. My fingers, though covered in rags and wounds, manipulated the rustic wood with surprising delicacy. I began to stack the splinters on the table, forming four small walls and a slanted roof—a primitive sketch, a house of sticks that looked like a broken toy on the filthy surface. My friend tilted his head, watching the construction with curiosity. With a gesture, I pointed to the stick house and then to the boy, who watched the scene from a distance. I pointed to him, to the boy, and to the house, imitating a pain in the ribs to indicate weakness, pointing out the debilitated boy. He needed more than cheap broth; he needed the peace of a house to grow and recover the glow in those eyes.
He understood; his face, usually full of grimaces, became serious. He looked at the stick house and then at the boy. He looked at me and made a gesture with his shoulders and hands asking "Why?". Helping him out of nowhere—that is an idiotic act. I shrugged; even I didn't know why I was doing this, but I knew I could never abandon that child again; my conscience would never let me. Now I had a younger brother, and I was responsible for him. But there was a problem: we both knew that what I was asking for was expensive. He took his leather pouch and emptied it onto the table—only a few coins of raw metal. He made a quick mime: money. To have a safe, furnished, and preferably isolated place in the woods, we would need a mountain of money. He went to the remains of the fire, grabbed a piece of charcoal, drew a miniature of the city on the table, and made circles cutting through the scribbles, pointing to the city center where the nobles and powerful merchants hid.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The concern was visible; he looked at me with genuine doubt, silently asking if I was willing to face what came next. Giving an affirmative nod, I would accept any contract if the price of a home for that boy was selling my capacity for violence for a higher value. I would do it without hesitation.
Skewer then made a "wait" gesture and searched among his belongings for a yellowed paper. He pointed to the paper and then ran his finger along the innermost circle of the city; he knew of a place where there would be work, followed by a "much money" sign, rubbing his fingers—a contract where the payment was high. We gathered our few things and left the inn in silence, leaving behind the smell of old straw and the gloom of the room. As we descended the dirt street of the periphery, the air began to change drastically. The acrid haze of coal smoke and the odor of open sewage were left behind, replaced by a light breeze carrying the scent of exotic flowers and a woody incense that seemed to permeate the very stones of the city. The two walked in front of me, dodging the imperfections of the path with natural agility, while I kept myself wrapped in my rags, trying to merge with the walls as the brightness increased.
As we crossed the transition to the central districts, the architecture became oppressive in its clarity. White marble and polished stones replaced the clay, and the streets were so clean they seemed to have never been touched by human feet. But what really triggered my recognition protocols were the people—without the hunger and severe injuries, I could see them better without them looking like ill-formed shadows. Now, stature was the least important thing. The problem was the absolute symmetry. They were too beautiful, in a way that assaulted my senses. I passed men and women whose faces seemed to have been designed by a high-fidelity aesthetic algorithm and printed in warm porcelain. There were no dilated pores, no smallpox scars, no subtle deviation of a nasal septum—the biological marks of real life found in everyone in the normal world. Every facial line was mathematically harmonic, a sterile beauty that caused me deep discomfort. Those people looked like a processing error, as if the world had generated luxury mannequins and given them the gift of movement.
The colors were the greatest insult to my sensors. A woman's hair that passed us was not brown or blonde; it was a deep electric blue, shining with a metallic reflection under the sunlight. Another man displayed strands of a vibrant copper that looked like interwoven gold threads, moving with a fluidity that seemed like an error. And the eyes! It wasn't just the boy's eyes that were different; as I walked, I saw irises of liquid gold, emerald greens that resembled cut jewels, and grays that shone like mercury under perfectly shaped eyelids.
That symmetry and those impossible colors made me feel like I was in a hall of mirrors. They walked with a grace that required no effort, silk robes floating around bodies that seemed to have never felt gravity. It was a perfection that gave me a sense of danger—an instinct that was likely a remnant of the human ancestors from the prehistory of my world. There was something so flawless and artificial there, stamped on every pedestrian, turning the city center into a gallery of living dolls where I was the only stain of dirty reality. I quickened my pace, feeling that this porcelain paradise was more threatening than any filthy alley we had left behind.
They stopped before a structure that stood out even in that setting of absolute luxury. The building was a monument of dark, carved wood, with roofs that curved gracefully toward the sky and lanterns of fine paper that emitted a constant golden light, even during the day. The air around the entrance was saturated with a dense scent of jasmine and sandalwood—an odor so strong it tried, unsuccessfully, to mask the smell of sweat and dried blood I carried under my linen rags. Observing the flow of people, the nature of the place revealed itself. They were not weary travelers or merchants seeking basic rest. The sound escaping through the half-open doors was not that of metal mugs clashing or crude road grumbles, but a melodic music accompanied by laughter that sounded as artificial as the perfection of those faces—a high-class cabaret. It was a market of refined pleasures and dark influences, a place where the elite came to exchange secrets under the veil of silks and incense.
Skewer signaled for me to follow him to a side entrance, away from the porcelain stares, and I knew that the contract for the boy's future would not be signed among the lights, but in the shadows that sustained all that brightness. We left the boy under the watch of the first floor of the inn's basement, heading down toward the marble heart, descending cold stone stairs to the underground, where the muffled music of the hall became only a distant vibration in the soles of my boots.
In the center of that low-ceilinged room, enveloped in a mist of smoke that smelled of cinnamon and exotic flowers, was the man. He was thin, with sharp features and silver hair tied impeccably at the nape. He wore wine-colored silk with gold collars and smoked a pipe with an absurdly long stem, whose carvings looked like serpents twisting in ebony. He appraised us with a smile that didn't reach his eyes, his long, ring-covered fingers drumming on a yellowed parchment. Looking at my friend as if I were an inspection, he began to ask him questions. I didn't understand anything they said, but I could see their gestures. The man with the pipe blew a puff of lilac smoke—if it were even possible for smoke to have that color—and made a simple gesture with his hands, spreading a dozen small stones across the table. It was an explanation of the work he had.
He pointed to a central pebble, brighter than the others—someone who needed guarding—then surrounded it with other stones, less bright but still shiny and smaller. Finally, he took some common river stones and placed them around the brighter ones. Skewer tried to explain through signals. The river stones were us and a horde of other mercenaries—the "meat sacks" contracted to be the shield between the guards and the client who needed protection, and the blades that would surely come for us first to give the guards time to kill the enemies.
The catch in that contract, however, was explained with a cruel movement from the contact. He used the long stem of the pipe to sweep three of the pebbles off the table. Then, he took the gold that was in the center and redistributed it among those that remained. The sapphire glow on his fingers caught the torchlight as he repeated the gesture, removing more stones until only one remained beside the target.
The message was brutal and crystal-clear: there was no honor in that caravan. We were many to ensure someone survived, but for every "meat sack" that fell on the road, the profit for the survivors would increase. It was an incentive for slaughter, a mission where your own allies might wish for your death as much as the forest bandits. The man with the pipe leaned forward, the sweet smoke hiding his face, and pointed to the blank space at the end of the contract.
I looked at Skewer, whose face was serious. I needed that money. I took the quill with my fingertips, trying not to crush the thin wood with my hand, and drew a gigantic X over the black strokes I couldn't read.
The contact collected the paper with a fluid motion, the gold chains on his vest clinking. He didn't offer a handshake, only a nod charged with a decadent and dangerous nobility. Payment would be delivered if I managed to keep the noble alive and, preferably, if I were one of the few to return. We left the basement in silence, leaving behind the smell of silk.
