I Do not own anything but my own characters and my imagination. DO NOT COPY WITHOUT MY WRITTEN PERMISSION
Tristen's eyes fluttered gently at the sound of subdued laughter and the sound of hooves striking brick as a horse passed on a nearby street. Her eyes were reluctant to obey her and open, but when they finally opened she found herself in a dirty ally, nestled near a pile of refuse and horse dung. The smell assaulted her gentle senses, and her immediate instinct was to rise and flee from the hideous stench. She found her body to be unaccommodating to her request, however, stiff with cold despite the hot night, her clothes soaked, despite the dry weather, and her head pounding from some unknown assault. The world seemed strange to her, although she could not remember why, and she found herself warily taking in her surroundings. Night reigned the strange city, and she found herself surrounded by wooden buildings. She could smell the sea on the still wind, and hear the gentle clashes of the waves against the shore. Voices flittered around her, and strange figures walked the streets. She saw women scantily clad, flirting with men that passed them on the streets, and strange, dark eyed boy-men that watched from the shadows as if stalking unsuspecting prey.
The young woman seemed to as yet be unnoticed, by choice of those around her or by stealth, she did not know. She found her body thawing, and limberness returning to her, although she was frightened of standing for lack of want to draw the predatory gaze of the men in the shadows upon herself. An instinct drove her to flee from the ally, however, before predators found her weak with fear and disorientation. Tristen did not know where she would run to, however, as she had no recollection of where she came from or how she came to be nestled next to refuse and dung in a dark ally near the sea. She gingerly placed her hands out before her on the ground and pushed herself up onto her knees. She reached her soft hands then to grasp the wood of the building beside her and pulled herself to her feet. Leaning against the wall, her head spun, sending her mind into a violent disarray of pain, until slowly she recovered.
She took a tentative step forward, letting go of the wall, and found her balance sound enough to take more steps, until she crossed the ally and leaned on the opposite wall. The people on the street remained oblivious to her presence, or ignored it. She found that a small comfort, but not a comfort enough to ease her panic. She had no place to return to, and no place to take refuge from the terrors of the night and the night's denizens. As these thoughts graced her head, a figure slipped past her in the ally, ignoring her presence entirely. She watched the man pass her, as if on the paws of a cat, and slip into the streets beyond with a confidence and purpose she so desperately needed. In, perhaps, a judgment of folly, her desperation drove her to follow the man out of the ally and into the strange streets. She saw his black cloak fading away, and followed awkwardly after, fighting the dizziness of her head to make each step. A street walked turned to look at the strangely dressed girl appraisingly, and decided to sneer at her as she passed. Tristen frowned at this, her confusion only deepening, but some force drove her onward after the black-cloaked man. She passed a beggar that gave her a grin, baring his rotten and missing teeth. She barely suppressed a gasp at this, and chose to henceforth keep her eyes forward.
The buildings around her seemed to become increasingly run down the farther she followed the man ahead of her, and the sound of the ocean became increasingly apparent. She smelt the salt of the ocean, and a part of her seemed to liven, as if some distant memory begged to surface. She pushed back the nagging feeling and focused only on the lone figure ahead of her, although she could feel other eyes from the allies she passed upon her. She shivered at the sensation, and gulped down bile that rose in her throat from fear.
The docks appeared before her then, and she followed the strange man onto a dock that lead towards a building beside the water not far down. She grimaced at the sound of her heavy boots clanging on the dock, but noticed the man never glanced back at her. She looked down at the rolling black water under the dock, and glanced her reflection in the moon reflected water. She wore a simple black cotton buttoned shirt, with riding pants, and black leather riding boots that rose to her knees. A heavy coat was draped over her, which weighed her down with its waterlogged weight and caused her to sweat profusely. She had long brown hair that would have been lovely if it were not matted and filled with dirt. Her features were unclear in the rolling water, but she could see the deep gash on the top of her head, decorated by dried, crusty blood, which lead to her raising her hand instinctively to touch her wound. A wound also was exposed on her shoulder, torn through the fabric of her shirt and her coat. It was no wonder her head ached and people gave her strange glances. She did not look like the people she had passed in the streets in the slightest of resemblances. She felt more fear creep into her slight frame, and she walked faster after the strange man she followed for a reason she could not identify. He had slipped into the building, which judging by the noise and the drunken laughter had to be a tavern. A sign marked the outside of the building, although it meant nothing to her. She hesitated at the entrance to the tavern nervously, before, finding no other option, she pushed herself in.
She found table after table of unsavory patrons drinking and laughing and singing. Men threw daggers into a parchment on the wall, and laughed, and seemed to take bets. Half-exposed women perched on the laps of dirty, greasy men, whispering in the men's ears, as the men groped the women's breasts. Bar wenches delivered ale to men, and served food to others. A woman sang, poorly, for the audience, but mostly received jeers and shouts from the men below her. Tristen shrank back towards the door, but when her eyes found her stranger, she found herself taking a step towards him. It was then that she realized she had no idea what to request of the man once she approached him, and she turned to flee once more.
Her sudden, quick movement thrust her into the chest of a tall, muscular giant that glared down at the small woman. Her pale amber eyes widened with her fright and she backed away from him immediately. Although large, he was quicker than she, and an iron grasp clamped around her tiny wrist, and wretched her wounded arm up, as far it would go, causing her to stand on her tiptoes and gasp in pain. The man shouted into the crowd, in some harsh language she did not understand, causing silence to sudden take over the tavern, and every eye to fall on her. Patrons began to laugh and approach her, despite her ardent struggles.
"Please, please, let me go!" She cried out, desperately, but they seemed as ignorant to her language as she was to theirs. Her struggle caused more laughter, and more men, and even women, approached and reached out to touch and prod her soft pale skin through her coat. She struggled vehemently, but the giant's grasp around her wrist was as good as an iron shackle. Voices spoke above her head, and she felt herself spinning dizzily. She felt herself faint into the giant, albeit only for a split second, but long enough for his arms to clasp around her slight form and cause a deep laugh to rock his body. The stench of him caused bile to rise in the throat, paired with a panic that roared deep within her soul. He bent his head down to plant a hungry kiss on her blushing pink lips, and she clamped her eyes shut and a scream came unwanted from her, and she believed it was what caused his sudden pause, just inches from her face. The laugher and the voices ceased as well, and when she dared open her eyes a look of terror was on the giant's face, and the crowd around them had stepped away from the pair.
A soft, but cold as ice voice sounded behind the giant's back, outside of her view, and with a half-hearted jeer that did not disguise his fear, his arms released the young woman and she stumbled away from him back to her feet. The giant moved away to reveal the hooded man in the black cloak, only his tight, thin lips visible to her. He gestured for her to follow him up the stairs that lead to the rooms above the tavern, and she quickly followed, desperate to flee from the giant. She followed close to him, although he did not appear to notice, until her turned and pulled her into a room after him.
Before she could open her mouth to speak, a jeweled dagger was pressed to her delicate white throat, one of his arms wrapped dangerously around her stomach, and his mouth next to her ear. Her heart pounded furiously, and she was sure he could hear it, and gasped back a sob as her sense of safety quickly vanished.
"Why are you following me? Tell me quickly, before I rob you of your ability to speak," He whispered icily in her ear, in a language and an accent she did not understand, although his tone she could understand perfectly. She feared shaking her head to express her ignorance for fear of the dagger that hungrily pressed hard enough on her neck for her to feel its deadly sharpness. But she knew intuitively that if she did nothing he would slit her throat for her perceived defiance.
"I do not understand, sir. Please…Please don't hurt me. I mean no harm…please, sir," She whispered in English, her voice lovely and soft despite its terror, and perhaps some touch of her desperation reached him. His dagger, however, pressed harder against her throat, erasing her hope, and she felt a trickle of her blood drip down her neck, and a single tear of despair slipped down her cheek to land on his gloved hand.
"In Common," He demanded in his indifferent, callous tone, ignoring or uncaring of her terror. She knew she had been foolish to follow this man, but a part of her wondered if any other would have had a different outcome. One of her hands reached up to delicately finger the dagger at her throat, and she accidentally touched the hand of the killer behind her, then wretched her hand back as if stung, an action that caused to dagger to sink a tiny bit more into her neck. She whispered again her ignorance, and, faster than she could think, she found herself flung roughly onto the bed.
A spout of dizziness overcame her and she laid passively where she was flung, attempting to recover from the tremor in her head. When she recovered enough to sit up, she rolled and sat up towards where he had been when he pushed her, one of her hands clasped around her bleeding neck. He stood where he had been before, staring down at her with an indifferent face, although his eyes bore into her cruelly, soaking in every detail and movement she made, somewhere computing all her actions into his head for later retrieval. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with fear, half covered by the disarray of her jostled hair. He said nothing as he stared at her, and she found she could no longer look at him, and instead stared meekly at his feet.
"Who sent you?" He asked sharply, his eyes aglow in suppressed anger. She braved a glance at his face, handsome, despite its hard, cold expression, and opened her mouth once more to profess her confusion, as she moved to lower her gaze once more. Before she could register the need to move away, he was upon her, his hand clasped around her jaw, wretching her face up to level with his, her own hand instinctively flying up to wrap around the wrist of the hand that held her. He repeated his question, ignoring her hand, and she stared hopelessly into his gray eyes, her terror slowly fleeting from her as desolation took its place.
"I…" She began, but stopped, in a suppressed sob, some figment of her pride preventing her from letting her tears roll down her cheeks. He stared intently at her face, and a part of his expression seem to soften, although so slight it could be easily mistaken for something else, perhaps due to the innocent desperation that burned in her young eyes.
"Who are you?" He asked, with signature indifference. To which she shook her head slightly, despite his iron grasp, which was neither softened nor released. When she did not reply, he sighed, frustrated, and released her. She shrunk away from him then, crawling to the other side of the bed despite her heavy wet cloak, her terror immediately returned when it did not appear he was going to kill her just yet. He walked to the other side of the room, albeit that was not far in the tiny, shoddy room, and stared out the window, as she watched him like a timid animal poised to flee at his slightest threatening move.
"Take off your coat," He demanded, not looking at her. When she did not move, he turned to face her, and lightly picked up his own cloak, unclasped it, and draped it over the sole chair in the cheap inn. He pointed at it, expectantly, with an edge of impatience. She nodded, and took off her coat gingerly, before letting the garment fall with a wet thud onto the ground. Her eyes never left his, and when she pointed at her fallen coat, he nodded. She shyly offered him a small, somewhat forced smile then, pleased immensely at even the slightest of communication between them.
"And yours boot," He commanded, pointing to his boots, although he did not remove them. She eagerly obeyed, more than happy to be out of the soaked garments. He walked towards her then, quickly, and with purpose, which caused her to slink away in fear, to the head of the bed, her smile fading away.
He sat on the edge of the bed, and pointed to the spot next to him. He seemed to have determined that she was not a threat to him, and had rid her of any possibly hiding placed for weapons. She seemed unsure, and watched him anxiously, until he stated, impatiently, "Sit. Now." Although the words meant nothing to her, the tone did, and she crawled towards him obediently, draping her socked feet over the bed, sitting next to him, although not as close as he had requested.
"Who are you?" He asked again, harshly. She tilted her head to the side, and frowned. To this, he pointed at himself with a growl, and said, sharply, "Artemis Enteri."
She smiled brightly at him, which he seemed to frown ever so slightly at, clearly surprised that his name would bring a smile to her pretty, but dirty, face.
"Artemis Enteri?" She asked, actually reaching out a hand to touch him ever so slightly on the shoulder, as if to form a connection between the name and the man, his name almost sounding sweet on her voice, despite the husky, injured tone that came from her raw throat. He made no reaction to her touch, but rather he gestured to her, and she nodded, and spoke slowly her name, "Tristen Morgan." He raised a brow to her name, as it sounded as foreign as her clothes appeared. She bit her lip nervously, and glanced around the room, before standing slowly as to not surprise him. He allowed her movement, so she walked to the window where he had stood previously. She turned to him then and pointed out the window.
"Calimport." He said irritably, becoming somewhat annoyed at the ignorance of the girl that had followed him through the streets, wondering if she was foreign or dumb. Her expression at the name he gave her provided him much information, however. She did not look dismayed, as someone delivered here against her will might, or content, as someone who knew where she was and pleased at her location. Rather, a look of complete confusion passed across her features as clear as day, telling him the name meant nothing to her, and for a few moments she appeared to the assassin as little more than a frightened animal, helpless and innocuous, and caught, hopelessly, in a hunter's snare. He only could not help but wonder if he were the hunter, or some other man that lurked the shadows of Calimport.