Lucian awoke in such a fury that he felt as if his heart would beat right out of his chest. Nothingness enveloped his gaze and for one fleeting moment he felt as if he would die in fright.
And then he remembered.
Just the barn.
The lanterns had been extinguished. He could hear the soft, steady breathing of Brian on the other side of the loft. Torrential waters pelted the walls all around him, and below, Lucian heard the frightened bleating of a lamb.
All at once he decided he was leaving. The memory of his uneventful discussion with Brian filled Lucian with such an anger that he couldn't bare being in his company anymore. He would make his way back to Crell by himself, without the help of a cryptic, old cracker.
When his eyes became accustomed to the dark, Lucian felt around for things he had placed in the hay, and placed them in a small, clasped bag that Brian had given him. Stuffing in things that also didn't belong to him, when the bag was full he forced it shut and quickly got to his knees.
Still, Brian slept.
A glimmer caught his attention and Lucian looked at a thick bundle blanketed upon a stack of hay lining the wall behind Brian. He remembered why Brian travelled, and why he seemed so secure with his life.
The swords.
Lucian carefully crawled across to where Brian slept, with his blood thudding against his ears. Quietly, he put aside his belongings for a moment and shakily reached over and placed a hand on the blanket, drawing it back. About a dozen elegant scabbards seemed to gleam in the dark. Lucian squinted his eyes and pushed a couple quietly aside, groping for his favourite. Then he would assess if he had the will to take anymore to sell.
He screamed when a warm, death-gripping hand pulled his wrist and all of a sudden Lucian was sent plummeting onto his back. Brian looked down at him, his brows furrowed in anger and his eyes dark from the shadows.
"I gave you all that I had," he whispered furiously, "and still you wish to double cross me? Have you learned nothing from the tragedy you have endured?"
He pulled Lucian up by his shirt and shook him. "Even one who has lived in the darkness such as you, cannot be pulled back into the light. You are incorrigible!"
Lucian choked out a sob and fought the lump in his throat in effort to say something, anything.
"You will not take one of my sabres! Now get out of my sight!" and Lucian was flung against the floor again. Dejected, he threw himself at the ladder and hurriedly climbed, missing the last two rungs and falling all the way down. With a frightened cry, he picked himself up and struggled to find the door. As he tore it open, he heard Brian call something into the stormy night.
"Thief!"
"I'm not a thief!" Lucian cried out in the dark as he ran. The rain came down in buckets, drenching, pelting, attacking him as he fumbled along the side of the road, holding himself in terror. It took seconds for the water to reach to his bones, and a furious chill set in, making his teeth chatter. Thunder rumbled overhead and lightning illuminated his broken reflection in the puddles he stumbled into.
"Why couldn't I have been born as someone else!" He screamed into the air, his mouth open in a snarl, fists clenched tightly and shaking upwards to the sky.
He howled and screamed to the village of the damned until time and sanity slipped from his shaken reality.