Author's Note: Writing fanfiction for this fandom is tricky. Everybody has their own PC and interpretation of his personality as well as that of the other party members. By no means do I intend to intrude upon those fantasies. Although my Bhaalspawn does appear, this story is primarily about Anomen and the PC appears more as a cataclyst than anything. There is one tiny exception, though, in regards to the Solaufein mod and the fact that I absolutely adore the guy.
I love Anomen. I always take him along in a invariably evil-ish party, for the irony of it (and because he gets really powerful).
I, Anomen
by moondusted
The man sat in a corner of the Copper Coronet, somewhat hunched over a dirty mug. He had the appearance of someone used to drinking alone and the only reason why he sought something as pubic as this place was because they delivered the alcohol directly to him. No one paid him much attention, as was customary in this place and he was far from the only lonely drinker lurked around the dark corners of an already dimly lit place.
Closer inspection, if there had been anyone interested enough to care, would reveal him to be a man of noticeable breeding, something in the way he held himself, an underlying confidence so ingrained it failed to desert him. His age, in the dull light, was difficult to judge, older than the handsome face suggested, certainly, and much younger than the world-weariness could account for. His clothes and weapons were good, though not overtly so, chosen for practical reason rather than their appearance. His shirt hung open, carelessly, and against the heat of the fire pit and the mass of people.
Anomen leaned back in his seat and lifted the mug, waved it slightly in the vague direction of the waitress and barely waited for her hasty nod. She was a new girl, still red-faced and somewhat helpless against the onslaught of the men around her who would grope at anything rounded. If she didn't grow some backbone against them, someone would make a meal of her very soon. Someone should, possibly, offer the girl some help.
Anomen had to smile bitterly at the thought. Just the role he should have jumped at. Great shining knight saving poor princess, or a tavern wench at any rate, but he supposed it made no difference as long as she was a young woman in peril and comely besides. Once, he was sure, he would have jumped at the opportunity, but now he didn't even look at her when she brought him a new mug. He might have been roused to action if one of the gropers had made her spill his drink, though. He could pity that younger self of his, the blindness of his zeal and sheer naïveté of his idealism. The feeling never came, instead only bitter bile lurked at the back of his throat every time he thought of it and the beer, tasting just as bitter, never completely washed it down. He was not sure where he had taken the energy from to so strongly believe in anything that much.
The Order of the Radiant Heart had welcomed him back to their midst with a warmth he had never considered possible. He had been taken by surprise, he had felt himself so removed from them, their existence had barely registered anymore within his mind. He had walked into hell and beyond, he had fought vampires and monsters and all manner of demons. He had journeyed with a god. True, it was an evil one, but at the time, he could not possibly have known and the Order had no way to verify the tale he told them. For he had lied, straight-faced with complete calm and utter composure. Most of the tale had been true, he had travelled with the Bhaalspawn, as trusted companion and fought at his side on that last battle at the throne of Bhaal. But then, he had claimed toward the order, the Bhaalspawn had shown his true face and taken the power in his corruption and Anomen, rendered powerless by the divinity, could do nothing but watch in horror. The knights had been understanding, crediting him for trying, crediting him for loyalty and trust that was betrayed by the other side.
There had never been any horror. It had long since become apparent that Ysen was going to pick that route over any other. They all had become cynics on that journey, tired of the constant lies, the ever-present stink of death and the hopelessness of existence. It was not even hunger that had made Ysen take the power, it was simply there was no longer any reason not to. Anomen suspected he would have done the same, had he been in the other's place.
They had awarded him his knighthood, even, for his outstanding skills and the staunchness, as they said, of his morals. He had nearly choked during the ceremony, coughed hard to keep the laughter down. One could suspect, though, that Helm himself shared the joke, because surely otherwise the noble knights would have received some kind of warning about what kind of serpent they were honouring.
He had tried his hand at teaching, in the beginning, but he had soon realised he was ill-suited for it. His own skills had been hard won in years of fighting for his life and he found he had little patience for the clumsiness of the young. Now the order was paying him for... he wasn't quite sure. Something of a pension, he suspected, although he was not officially retired. Maybe they had finally caught on to the monumental changes that had taken place within him and while they were unwilling to just cut him out, they were far more comfortable with him pacified and elsewhere. He lived well, in a small house by the Docks rather than in the more pompous parts of the city. He hardly feared Shadowthieves and other criminal ilk, after all, and in contrast to the ever-gossiping nobility, people in those shadier parts intruded far less on his privacy and solitude.
Something shattered elsewhere in the room and he turned his head to assess the situation. Of course fights broke out all the time, drunks of the coarse sort where likely to solve all and any dispute with their fists, after all.
The fighting was quickly escalating, taking in more and more of the surrounding tables and their occupants.
Anomen put the mug to his lips and tilted his head back, drinking in deep gulps. Still, the mug was not empty when he put it back down. He saw his waitress hiding in the doorway towards the kitchen. He walked over to her, thrust gold into her hands and turned to go.
Unfortunately, a large man suddenly blocked his path. Originally, he must have made a beeline for the girl, but when Anomen almost collided with him the man changed his mind.
"Where are ya goin', little one?" he asked. His voice was heavy with drink and Anomen saw him swaying just that little bit on his feet.
"I have no quarrel with you," Anomen said and took a step aside. He heard the girl suppress a squeak when she realised this move left her completely exposed to the big man.
"Do you?" the big man asked. "You ran into me! I ain't having that!"
"Good sir, I have not even touched you," Anomen said politely and made to finally walk away. He never expected to get anywhere, though. This type was unlikely to respond well to his words, considering them a weakness. The big man reached out to grip Anomen's shoulder and, presumably to thrust him back against a wall or something. Anomen stepped back and twisted just out of reach of the grip. The man was so slow, some mage might as well have caused time to slow down for all Anomen noticed.
The man growled when his quarry was suddenly not where he had expected him to.
Anomen was still bent on leaving, he had no interest in getting caught in the fighting and by the size it was currently reaching it would soon draw the guards in force. He was not in the mood to deal with them for the rest of the night and he had beer at home, too, even if he had to fetch it himself.
"I'm not done with you!" the man bellowed and lunged at Anomen again, so slowly again it could make Anomen weep just having to see it. He dipped out of reach again and felt the vicinity of somebody else just behind him.
He ducked to the side before someone could crash a stool over his head. The move, however, made him bump into a knot of fighting men, this time for real and as a few of them collapsed, the big man saw his chance, swinging his fist in a great arch. Anomen jumped forward, though, past the arm and took one long swing with his leg, taking the man's feet away from under him. He fell like a stone, prone onto his back, unable to struggle back to his feet before somebody else, the stool-swinger perhaps, actually stepped on him.
Anomen received a sloppy hit to the shoulder before he could dispatch the man by potting his elbow to his attacker's nose. Someone kicked at the back of his knee and he felt his balance waver and let himself fall, using his untouched leg to guide the move, connecting his shoulder with another, and taking two others down with him.
He slipped back to his feet before either of them was even on the floor. Just in time to bring his arms up and deflect a rusty knife aimed at the side of his face. He followed up the move with an open-handed slap at the knife-wielder's face.
Someone tried to grip him from behind but he snapped his head back, felt the crunching of bone as he connected with a pointed jaw. It jarred in his own head, but he could have fought them all blind and deaf and half-conscious. Until, of course, a dagger flew at him from somewhere else. It probably had not been aimed at him in particular, but it struck perfectly true, in the middle of his bare chest even as he turned gracefully. The impact made him stagger back and he felt a table at his back, catching his fall.
He grasped for breath, waiting for the pain, waiting for the darkness, but nothing happened.
Silence was all around him, silence and stillness. The brawl had been frozen in time, only he himself seemed still capable of movement. He pushed himself up from the table and stared down at his chest, the dagger struck in it to the hilt.
He opened his mouth to utter some trite sound of incomprehension when he saw movement suddenly through the statue-like fighters in the room.
A tall man slowly walked around them, sliding like mist, making no sound at all.
Anomen knew him, recognised him instantly, even if something was deeply wrong. The face, the body, it was not lifelike at all, and neither did it appear undead in any way. It looked like someone donning a face he had abandoned long ago.
The Lord of Murder stopped in front of Anomen and tilted his head to the side slightly. "Why like this?" he asked, soft-voiced, the way silk sounded as it slipped past a sharp blade.
Anomen arched his eyebrows. "Whyever not?" he asked back. "What difference does it make?"
Ysen, or whatever name he might carry now, only smiled. He reached out with a gloved hand and gripped the hilt of the dagger, slowly pulling it out of Anomen's chest. There was no pain now either and no blood welling in its wake.
"This is the instant of your death," Ysen explained. "It is my domain. I cannot heal, of course, but I can refuse to take you."
"I don't care either way, you know," Anomen said. He tried to breath and expected it to somehow feel different to the countless breaths he had taken before. "I tried to seek you out," he said. "I went to that temple near Saradush."
Ysen still smiled. "I know, you killed my worshippers."
"They attacked me."
"What else would they do? Dying in such a violent fashion, they served me well."
"You could have answered me," Anoman said. The bile again, there in his throat, threatening to rise. He was sick of all of this.
"It is not my fault you have lost your way. And I am hardly going to grant you enlightenment. I do not know what you look for."
Anomen snorted. He straightened away from the table. "Do you remember how I was? All those years ago? When you found me right here in this den of sin."
Ysen smirked. "It was you who spoke to me, I remember that. Pompous fool that you were, arrogant and blind. There was a thrill in watching your light change, but I never meant you any ill."
"Light," Anomen repeated with mockery.
"Of course," Ysen said. "Our shining knight. Our saving grace, for all the months of battle, through all the deaths. It does not need to end like this."
"You are right," Anomen replied. "But I already told you, I don't care."
Ysen took one more step forward and put his hand on Anomen's shoulder, squeezing slightly. An oddly friendly gesture, but the hand within the glove radiated frost. "My friend, my poor lost friend."
Anomen looked at the strange, familiar face and tried to read in it, but of course it was not the same, it was a mask worn by a god and nothing else.
"If it is truly death you seek," Ysen continued. "There are better places to find it than this rotten hole. Better, certainly, for one such as you."
"Where would you want me to go?"
Ysen shook his head. He put his other hand over the wound at Anomen's chest. "Away," he said. "Anywhere. You are an adventurer. A wanderer. Of course you are lost, but only because you are staying in one place. You think you have seen all the wonders and all the horrors of the world. Everything disappoints you, nothing is as you once hoped it would be. You despise lesser beings and still you envy them their innocence."
"Not for some time, no," Anomen said.
"Then don't die like they do, don't try to live like they do. You walked with me through hell. You saved my life. It was worth something, at least to me," he said wryly.
Anomen felt like getting away from Ysen's grip, but he was held fast.
"Life means choosing," Ysen said. "And then standing by that choice whether it was right or wrong, because you don't always get a second chance. I owe you, so you do get it, but just this once. If you want to live, come with me."
He let go of Anomen and turned away, striding with long legs through the motionless crowd.
Anomen hesitated but then shook himself into motion. He could not deny it felt good to be moving with this particular companion again, even if he was aware of how wrong the perception was, how changed everything was.
He trailed after the god through a city equally frozen in time. Only Anomen seemed to make any sound at all, creaking of his leather jerking, his own breathing despite the wound in his chest. Ysen's own movements were perfectly fluid, he had always been an agile fighter, smooth like a cat, but this was something more. Ysen's black boots clicked rhythmically on the cobbles, though, almost as if he was still human.
Anomen wondered whether Ysen still remembered being alive, whether there was space for regret in a god's heart.
"I miss him, sometimes," Ysen said, turning his head over his shoulder.
"Don't read my mind," Anomen hissed angrily.
"I didn't," Ysen replied. "But I know you very well. And I still remember. It's all there in my mind. All those days and nights. It was a bloody enough time, but not without its moments."
Despite himself, Anomen felt a rare smile tuck at his lips. They had been a ragtag band, certainly, with more faults than virtues between them, but Ysen was right, not everything had been without value.
Anomen had paid no attention where they were going, but now he became aware of the pale, beautiful buildings of the temple district.
Ysen stopped in front of the great gate to the temple of Helm, leaned casually against the doorway and waited until Anomen caught up with him, looking smug and sleek in black.
"I hate to sound corny," Ysen made one flamboyant, lacklustre gesture with one arm.
"You can pull it off," Anomen remarked, uncertain where the emotion came from. The memory of shared laughs, perhaps, the memory of better days, although they had never been better at all and only the distance could make them appear so. Ysen conceded the point with a slight move of his head, an old image for a moment superimposed over the otherworldliness of his regal appearance.
"Life or death, Anomen?" the God of Murder asked and the lightness was gone from his voice and face, wiped away as if it had never been, the humanity of it all fading rapidly.
Anomen said nothing for a long moment. He thought he could feel the pull of all that emptiness inside of him, became acutely aware suddenly of the hole in his chest that was neither bleeding nor hurting and would still kill him.
"Life," Anomen said, very nearly surprised himself with the answer, he had not been quite certain what he would say before he heard his own voice and the resolve somewhere within it. The will to live had never faded within him, he knew, but survival hadn't seemed important either.
"Good," Ysen said. He turned around and put his hand flat against the centre of the gate and it blew inwards in a great explosion, massive hinges tearing from suddenly crumbling wall, splinters flying everywhere and ashes darkening the air all around them.
"Helm won't like that," Anomen said.
"No, but I expect you to put in a word for me, should it all come down to it," Ysen stepped back.
"Do it on your terms, this times," he said. "Living, I mean. I'm not merciful."
"There are those who would disagree," Anomen replied. At the edges of his perception, sound was creeping back towards him. He felt a slight sting in his chest and by the next breath he tried to take, nothing would come at first. Sound hit him like a blow and the world around him tilted sideways and the ground welcomed him like it was embracing him.
Just out of hearing, there was still that other voice, half-remembered, more felt than heard. It said, "Just one who would, you know."
People rushed at Anomen from within the temple. Despite their ruined front gate, the cause of which would still be hidden from them, the priests perceived their first duty far keener and the saving of a life always came first.
Oblivion tucked at his mind, threatening to make him fall, but the murder had been declined. He had never deserved this second chance, but who would ask for justice in this world, anyway?
End