By now, the more experienced mercenaries know not to bother the man brooding in the corner and oftentimes will go out of their ways to steer the younger ones, always curious about one thing or another, cautiously away from his seat like mice scuttling around a half-awake cat. They whisper quietly, as if they are so sure that he could not hear the trembling words they spoke in a noisy bar, of how cold, how bloodthirsty, how dangerous, he is.
The more daring mercenaries spin tales about the formidable Archer in chapters of simmering revenge and unending hatred of Fomors. The gullible ones that feed on the dramatic narratives later on twist stories out of thin air, taking words never spoken and embellishing them for the next batch of recruits to absorb, wide-eyed in both fear and admiration.
They are not wrong, but they are not right, either. After all, who would really ever claim to know the past of a man who doesn't even speak more than four words at any given time? Not a shred of insight ever willingly passes through that ever-present scowl; rarely, however, a morsel of information he deigned to share to the legendary band of mercenaries he was a part of usually was the result of endless needling, cajoling, and shameless bribery on Evie's part.
Not even Gallagher, the most knowledgeable man on every mercenary that ever passed through the Colhen Outpost, has anything to say about him. Thusly so, he was subject to being shrouded in the shadows of the background and much speculation.
Kai, in all truth, found the constant wonderment to be a pointless endeavor; his reasons for turning to a mercenary life were, in actuality, similar to many others. From his own observations, he concluded that the variables that had led many to pick up a weapon against the Fomors – death, loss, tribulation, vengeance – were all interchangeable in so many miserly forms, as evidenced by the constant ebb and flow of empty-eyed men and women making their way into the Mercenary Outpost every day.
His own grievance was simply one such combination, he had reasoned to himself. The grief and suffering was to be expected and overcome, eventually. He does not understand the need to add onto another's shoulders the heavy burden of such intimate events.
Of course, he is also aware that this is his inhuman fault; he had always seemed far too rational, too calculating, and too removed from the concept of emotion (besides anger) that it unnerves many mercenaries that are unfamiliar with his presence.
To be human was something not many gave much thought to, seeing as they, indeed, were human to begin with. But what of the giants? For all their humanity, they were just a shy to the right of suggested normalcy, and they, too, had to learn to adapt if they wished to interact with humans and survive the onslaught of the Fomors.
Kai assumed it would have been the same with the elves, but it is a pity that the race of tribal desert-walkers and their cultural emblems had long since been ground into dust by the Fomors until it seemed like they had never really existed at all.
For all the human-likeness attributes he displays, he was, in the end, a part of those elves. He had always known that his blood was halved and meshed, human and elf, into something not quite normal.
Kai was well aware that he had enough human in him to pass through any town or city without question, but his gait had always seemed somewhat unnatural to a trained eye, whether it was that he could sprint silently in heavy armor or climb the occasional cliff much faster than his comrades.
He is a half-blood, after all, but it's suited him just fine for all these years – being the last fragment of his race, that is.