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++ Primordium
++ Present Day Take Someone Out There were some things for which Glaucon was suited, if only because he had been doing them since he was young enough to possibly still be mortal. Killing was one of those things. When he was little it was the way he survived, by killing those who meant to kill him first. When he was older it was how he thrived, taking over sections of land, killing those who stood in his way. By the time he swore his life to the Goddess he was very, very good at it. He was at the top of one of the higher buildings in the city, a private hotel and temple in which he had reserved one of the high-up rooms. This time it was playing on his vulture heritage, or so he claimed. A half-demon was less looked down upon in this city than it was in other places, as long as you had the talent and acumen to build yourself up another way. He had obviously done so. He was a bodyguard in service to a noblewoman, not Herself of course but one of her priestesses whose sole purpose was to be pampered and look suitably annoyed at everything. The visit was his. The mission was his. One foot on the sill, shaking his hair-feathers over his eyes to shade them from the sun. From this room he had a good vantage point over the entire city, and could plot out his escape route. They were going to services later in the day, it was planned, as part of her show of assimilating into the city in search of a husband. A husband with money was the on-top ulterior motive for that, for a noblewoman in search of more funds to add to her already considerable coffers was nothing new for the city. Would barely draw a second glance, except perhaps by those attempting to secure their own fortunes. He was a bodyguard protecting his charge, a bored man at arms for hire, also a thing no one would look twice at. Even with his appearance, in a city such as this one where their God was in the shape of a bird and hairstyles had become more and more elaborate, he would blend in. He and his knife would blend right in, and when he bustled her out of the way of the passing procession it would give him the opportunity to flick the dart into the robes of the reigning priest. Only a little dart, no bigger than the stinger of an insect. Carried on a wave of small magic and flicked by fingers stronger than they looked. The poison on the tip of it was deadly and had been carried from three countries over, certain to be unknown to the healers of this land. It would create a vacuum of power. The oracles had foreseen it; his Goddess had foreseen it. It would create a vacuum into which a number of people who believed they were the chosen one, who wanted power, or who simply considered themselves the best of a bad bunch would crowd, all trying to become the next High Priest. All of them jockeying for power and assassinating each other, until there was nothing left but a pile of chaos into which his Goddess could slip in, benevolent, kind, and ultimately all-ruling, all-powerful. That was his sole mission today. Create that vacuum of power and make the way for his Goddess to expand her empire and bring a new people under her hand. He never considered any other possibility; she wanted this High Priest taken out, so she had bidden him, so it would be done. ++ Main menu Show and Tell They are in the bazaar. It feels much the same as the grand bazaar in the outer ring of her city, but it is different. This bazaar is on another world, one they did not reach by shifting sideways or sliding through time and space, but on a machine. That part of it feels wrong. The rest of it feels right. The noise and lights, the crowd, everyone haggling, everyone wanting something and willing to pay only a pittance of what it is worth to get it. The rushing of people back and forth along the streets as they try to get their wares to their stalls in time for a deal. Underneath that, the children slipping through the crowd, reaching for what isn't theirs to take, trying to get it and be gone before they're discovered. He smiles a little, remembering that. He used to be one of those children, a long long time ago, and he is not too old to remember what that was like. Glaucon's fingers close around the boy's wrist and he grips just tight enough that the rough edges of his talons press into the boy's arm. It won't hurt, not yet, but it's a threat. Slowly, against the tugging, he brings the boy around to face him. "Do you know what that is you were about to steal?" The boy shakes his head, of course. Wide-eyed with fear and hate, he is angry at the world. A shock of black hair and pretty pale eyes stare out at him. The boy is human, and yet so familiar. An echo of the past. This could be a device by one of her enemies to get closer to him; she has made many of them over the years. But he doesn't exactly think so. It would take a more clever enemy than he thinks still live to extrapolate from Glaucon's life what his childhood might have been like, and at the time no one was paying attention to one tiny human. The resemblance is coincidence. A strange one that stops him in his tracks for a moment, but only a coincidence. He drags the boy over to a corner, one of the alleys down which folk make their escape and one of the few places traditionally kept open in any sort of market. Perhaps to give the thieves and beggars and the occasional assassin a chance at getting away clean. The boy won't get away clean. He holds his wrist tight and keeps him in front of him, pulling out his sword halfway and catching it between hilt and cross points in his other hand. Then he pulls it out the rest of the way in the next movement, flipping it in his hand to hold it by the hilt. "This is the sword of a warrior. It is not a toy, and it is not barter for trade. No one who you would bring it to would know what to do with it. This sword will not rust. It loses its edge very slowly, and it is light enough to be wielded or carried for days on end. But you don't know what that means, do you." Not a question. He was a little disappointed in the uncomprehending stare with which he was faced, but not surprised. People used blasters and pistols these days, not swords. "This is the sword with which I was honored after the first battle I won for my Goddess." He redacted the name. It would mean even less to the boy than the sword he was describing. "She had conquered my people in fair battle and raised me from the ground where I lay dying to swear me to her service. It was the first chance I had to prove to her, and I did so well that she rewarded me with this sword and a post in her army. I have kept it ever since, by my side at all times, as a symbol of my loyalty and faith to her and a reminder of what I must never forget, that every moment in my life now is her gift to me, and that I am grateful for the time I have been given." The boy nodded. "Whatever, can I go now?" Glaucon let him go, disgusted. There was a pause in the footsteps as the boy ran a little ways, stopped to look back, then kept running. Glaucon did not look over his shoulder until he was gone, but he was smiling when he did, sheathing his sword without looking. ++ Main menu Crushed Manual labor was not, he had thought, among his list of duties. Then again, as far away from any garrison or town or temple of hers as they were, everyone was performing tasks outside their usual duties this time. They had only a handful of soldiers left in this campaign, all of them exhausted, some of them injured. None of them inclined to risk the trek across the mountains and the possibility that few to none of them would survive. None of them were inclined to lay down and die, either. Glaucon being one of the few who had sustained no injuries, he was tasked with moving the rubble of the keep in which they'd chosen to make their shelter. Once, it seemed, it had been a fortress of some long-dead people with considerable strength. The outer walls were constructed thick, two layers of stone with a layer of rubble bordered by wood between, all of it cemented together with a compound he had never seen before. What did remain of the wood constructions within the compound, small barn structures and scaffoldings, was petrified. Ossified and covered in the same gray dust that covered everything outdoors here. Inside the structures the furniture remained, somewhat, even a few of the tapestries were intact albeit in no state to be touched or moved. They had what clothes and fabric they had brought with them to keep them warm. Chopped wood from the scrub and small copses of trees nearby; the furniture was too hardened to burn easily. He stopped and rubbed the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, leaving a smear of gray paste beneath his crest of black hair-feathers. So many of the stones that had built up this place were falling apart, crumbling in his hands, the dust and debris from them getting in the way of everything. Crumbling off in his hands and making his grip more uncertain than the sweat already did. The pebbles and broken off bits ground into his hands, too, ground into his legs where they got down between his boots and his body and left indentations and sore spots at the very least, if not actual wounds. After this, if they had drawn enough water, he was going to bathe. A lot. "Are we going to finish today?" He glanced over his shoulder at his second, shook his head. "I would not think so. Too much rock to shift, too few of us able to do so. But within a day or three, we should have both fortifications and a more stable shelter." The keep, as it was, had some crumbling ceilings, collapsing walls. They had found one section where the structure did not seem in danger of immediate collapse, where, indeed, most of the walls and ceilings remained intact. Some of the rubble was going to re-create the multi-layered walls, with intact stones on the outside and rubble on the inside. As best they could, wedging it in to shore up the roof. The rest of the rubble was being cleared out and used to plug holes in the outer walls. His second-in-command nodded, joining him without further conversation. It was easier with the two of them, especially being as his second in command at the time was one of the burlier types of demons, broad shoulders and russet short-shaven fur. There had been five of them in his unit. Now there were two, one of whom was still injured. It seemed that was the survival ratio for the whole campaign, two out of every five, only one in any shape to do anything. Glaucon hissed as the wall stone he'd been carrying slipped from his grip, bending one of his talons almost back on itself. The heavy thing slipped entirely after he gave up on the job and scooted out of the way barely in time to avoid having his toes crushed. "Sir..." He looked up semi-irritably. "Sir. It might be best if you were to go in and advise Lakata of the plans for provisioning our people," he told him. "It will be dark soon and the gathering of edibles in unfamiliar territory will be hard enough in daylight..." "I know," Glaucon nodded, irritated with the restating the obvious even as he was grateful for the excuse to go in, do something that did not involve labor he had not endured since... well. Since the last campaign, he supposed. This was labor of a different kind, though, and now he had a renewed appreciation for the craftsmen who drove themselves day and night in the quarries, in the smithies, at other backbreaking tasks for little thanks or reward. He stood up straighter, working back and shoulders until the ache was somewhat eased. His hands and lower legs he'd have to fix later. "Shall I send out others to assist you?" "I will finish clearing this section myself," said his second. "I can do that much." "Then that is all that need be done for the day," Glaucon told him. "We will work more inside, tonight, and I will not then spare another able-bodied soldier from searching for food to assist you. Now that we have at least adequate shelter that will be our next priority..." He shook his head. These were things they could speak of later, indoors, by even dim firelight. Right now they were wasting daylight. "Until this evening." "Of course." Glaucon rubbed his injured finger in mild aggravation as he went to round up the rest of the able-bodied, to keep an eye on the sick and injured. He gave out his orders in terse phrases and brusque tones, making sure they understood while taking as little time as he could manage; his second had been right, after all. They were down to early evening. And they were heading down to the last of their rations, which if they did not replenish them soon they would be resorting to methods Glaucon found personally repugnant as a waste of resources. They all moved without unnecessary questioning of orders. They, too, knew the stakes. Which left him to sit with the injured men, give them what clean water and sustenance he could, and talk with them to keep their spirits up. Among the many things he had learned in the service of his Goddess, though she permitted herself little to no emotions of her own, was the manipulation of emotions of others. There were more ways to crush the spirit than to raise it up, and reflecting on the labor they might not have the laborers for or the food they might not be able to find was one he would prefer to avoid, no matter what his true thoughts on the matter. They would build their fortifications, gather or hunt what they needed from the countryside, and survive. He had to believe that, and since he had survived more than most in his remaining company, they would believe it too. ++ Main menu Quote - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius." They spoke over dinner. Glaucon smiled through his illusion and shook the hand of the mortal, who smiled back. Bright blue eyes, wavy blonde hair, this was an exceptionally beautiful mortal who used that beauty as a weapon. It reminded him of his own days of fluffing his crest and using his talons to similar, if only parallel effect. They smiled and used their teeth and sat down in cool metal chairs that were the height of aesthetic for the mortal set with more money than taste. Within two pleasant and overtly civil sentences he knew he was in trouble. They spoke in soft, conversational tones, neither of them raising their voice to so much as summon the servant. Waiters, they called them these days. They smiled and did not clatter their forks against their plates, drank from the right glasses at the right time, backs straight and movements graceful. It was a polite business meeting. Two men discussing their business over a meal and a glass of good wine. Nothing to get excited about. Beneath the surface of the conversation was the second conversation, the real discussion of what he needed, the services to be contracted and whose proxy he had. Beneath that was a third conversation, as both men evaluated each other and drew conclusions from tiny details of behavior, shifts in posture, facial tics, word choices and tones of voice. Something so simple as tense change, number change, the emphasis put on each separate word versus the flow of sounds one into the other, they all meant something. At first he wasn't certain, but when theory after theory was borne out by reactions predicted by the patterns he saw it was hard to deny. The dinner progressed. Veiled threats slid across the table like cards, dealt with meticulous precision and withdrawn again just as carefully. Glaucon smiled. The blond smiled. They challenged each other to the death and then made excuses against it two, three times. A pretext of terminating contracts and severance pay and euphemisms as tiny as an excuse me and no one outside of their little table had any idea. Glaucon had an idea. He had an idea that this person might be as good as he was, better than. Every question had an answer, and every answer had bite. He had wit and he had hunger, the kind of hunger that had motivated Glaucon himself to become what he was now, or take the steps towards it anyway. Glaucon knew that hunger well. The mortal had all the cleverness of the demon lieutenant; perhaps more than. To achieve this level of awareness in a world that had so hampered its senses took patience, dedication, perseverance. Strength of will and sharpness of mind, the weapons of a dangerous man, and the only weapons such a man might need. Such a man could be as great an asset to his Goddess as Glaucon himself was. At the very least. The thought sent his glance to the table, and the blond man's smile grew daggers. To be fair, the only reason the other man didn't see it coming was because it was considered very bad form to poison one's dinner guests when one was seeking a business relationship. But he had no concern for form tonight and keeping his Goddess safe was the driving thought. If he, who had achieved great things through determination and seizing opportunities, was now her right hand and standing at her side, this mortal could achieve still greater positions. It was possible. It had happened before. And she had been betrayed before, and he would permit no servant to her side whose moves he could not necessarily anticipate. Not when that servant was starting out as a paid assassin who could not be trusted past his pay. It was a simple movement. His thumb brushed over the rim of the other man's glass and the tip of an invisible talon expressed a poison into the man's drink. No taste. No texture, it was a poison of the spirit rather than of the body, but effective nonetheless. The blond assassin didn't see it coming, had no idea such things existed. Over the next several days he would find himself growing despondent. He would doubt his skills, doubt his abilities, doubt what his senses were telling him. Eventually he would pass on either by his own hand or out of carelesseness so acute it might as well have been suicide. Glaucon would watch for his passing in the local reports, and then think no more on him. Except, perhaps, to note that it was a pity he had had to forgo such an excellent resource. His Goddess, however, was better off without. ++ Main menu |
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