Deeping Lore - 6. Chapter 6 - Nightmares of the Feral Rut

Wrapped in Dylan's warm body, Kian felt cherished and safe.

His eyes darted back and forth under closed lids; he was dreaming.

The tent was quiet, the howl of the wind subsided.

He was a child again.

Kian stood in front of a small shrine where a table and heavily decorated altar burned incense to the God of Thieves. The altar is draped with a grand tablecloth made from red silk with painted flowers, all roses, embracing the hand of a lovely damsel with blind-folded eyes. Her linens and robes are bloodied from the thorns and her hand carries a scale with a dagger on one end and thirteen gold coins on the other.

The scale, he noted, was in perfect balance.

It had always been so as long as he could remember.

Kian opened a cleverly disguised door; on the other side was a passage. A narrow, steep staircase made completely of maple wood planks ascended into the gloom. At his feet, the wooden planks sound hollow, empty, and his weight makes the wood shriek as if it were living and in constant protest of being trampled underfoot.

He looks up the stairwell but his eyes cannot pick out any detail except that the walls and the floor itself are made of the same wood. He places a boot on the next of these steps and it creaks under his weight.

All of the steps that ascend the narrow alley between the walls were as poorly constructed as the first and all of them let out a sound protestation as if it were a warning they were just about to give out underneath him. Kian climbed these steps, counting them silently in his mind. There are thirty of them, thirty shrieking steps. As he drew closer to the top of the stairs a door appeared in the gloom. It was unadorned save for a strange symbol, a knife or dagger lying in a pool of blood. The whole of it was engraved on the door which Kian reasoned, was not made from the same wood as the stairs. He raised his hand upward to knock when a voice from the other side called out for him to enter.

Kian hesitated and pushed on the door. It swung inward, on well-oiled hinges revealing a garden.

What he saw was truly amazing.

The door opened onto a large room that is a flat of oriental variety on the top of the house. The stone walls have been covered in fine expensive rosewood panels and it is walled-in on all sides. Magnificent urns stood on pedestals on the deck, exquisite plants bloom under the open sky. Around the perimeter of the room is a ten-foot wide deck that is completely railed-in by waist high beams of rich, black ironwood. The floor of this deck is made from more of the stuff, but cut unevenly so that some of the boards are narrow while others are wide.

In the center of the room is a courtyard; Kian saw that white sand covers the entire surface; and, that it has been raked into painstakingly pleasant designs. The illusion of these sunbaked sands dizzied him, its surface delicately rendered for both detail and simplicity.

The dark beams on the wall drew Kian's attention to the arches which hold aloft the supports for the dome which lays open and incomplete to the sky. There is also an overhang that covers all of the deck and most of the courtyard. This overhang is made of the same wood as the walls and the door and it is highly polished, almost reflective. On the far side of the courtyard there are a set of three wooden steps that lead into a large room where Kian saw several straw mats, a large wooden weapon rack; weapons all neatly displayed along the far wall. The three steps are girded by three candle stands, each bearing aloft a candle of a different color, one red, one gold, one yellow, and they are only burned about half the way down. The candle stands themselves appear to be made of Cyprus, carved in simple bas-relief and covered with thin sheets of gold leaf.

Afternoon sunlight streams through the aperture in the roof and gleams hotly off the surface of the sand. The room has the smell of spice or incense about it.

He looked around the corner of the door but saw no one.

"Come in," a voice says. "I'm surprised that you can hear anything at all with that racket you made coming up the stairs."

Kian hesitated, feeling afraid.

"My name is Kian," he said. He always thought that introductions were important. He also hoped that he could get the stranger to speak again. "I was shown the stairwell and I assumed that this is where I needed to go."

He crept into the room and looked about in the dark areas of the wooden deck. Once past, Kian let the door close behind him; he wandered forward to the edge of the deck. Kian could have jumped over the rail and onto the neatly raked sand but, on second thought, decided it was probably a stupid idea. Instead, he followed the deck around the perimeter, tracing the wooden wall to the room on the other side of the courtyard.

"Where are you?" I can't see you."

The only sound he could hear was his own breathing. He reached the room and peered inside but it was empty.

He started to turn; the voice says, "Stop."

Kian froze...more out of curiosity than fear.

"What do you see in the sand?" the voice asked him.

Kian looked down at the courtyard. A little sweat rolls down from his brow and he wiped it away. "Patterns...some waves and circles...mostly circles, like ripples on water."

"And do the circles move?"

"No...of course not. It's sand, not water. Ripples in water would fade as they hit the shore. The sand, well, it's kind of permanent."

There was a movement to his left and a man stood where Kian had seen none before. It surprised him; he'd seen no one in that corner. It was like he'd just appeared out of thin air.

"Were you there the entire time?"

The man turned to regard him with interest. He had hazel eyes; hair that was dishwater brown. His face was covered in a five o'clock shadow and Kian put him at roughly forty years in age. "You tell me," he says. "Did you see me there?"

"No, I didn't."

"Do you believe everything you see?"

Kian thought about this for a minute; the man waited for the answer, studying the blond boy.

"Your eyes can deceive you young Kian. Remember that if you remember nothing else."

Kian watched him with the eyes of a hawk. He is strong, with a solid body and muscles of iron; Kian knew immediately that this stranger could overpower him. And he also knew that without a doubt, this man had sized him up long before Kian had even entered the room. It was unsettling, but he resisted the urge to bolt.

Rather, Kian's instinct instead, turned to survival.

"Are you going to kill me?"

He seemed surprised. "Kill you? I don't think so. You're different than the others."

"How am I different?"

"You saw me for what I am," he remarks then. "That tells me that we think alike.

He had an unpleasant grin. It seems almost like a sneer. Kian's dad told him once that if you frowned 200,000 times, it'd make a permanent line in your face. A little useless trivia but somehow appropriate.

"Then what will you do with me?"

"I plan to train you," he says. "I plan to teach you how to kill. And then, you'll see, you're more like me than you even can begin to know."

Kian decided not to say anything.

He regards Kian skeptically. His ugly smile turned upward in a hideous grin. "Lovely boy," he said. "I've never seen a face as perfect as yours. Close your eyes and tell me what you hear."

Kian shut his lids and listened. At first all he heard was the wind. He stilled his breath and struggled to pick out the details.

He heard voices far away.

He realized that they were three stories above the street. From the positioning of voices, Kian believed that the room was actually above the east side of the building. He pulled his senses in closer and tighter around him; he could hear breathing.

It wasn't his breathing... it was the man's breath and then it stopped.

Like he was holding his breath in an attempt to be quiet.

Kian jerked his eyes open and eyed him coldly. He held a knife in his hand and was watching him intently. "At first I heard the wind, then I heard the voices from the street and finally, you breathing. That's all."

The man looks wholly unpleasant.

"Did you hear the silence?"

"Yes," Kian stated. "I heard the silence."

"You've got good ears and good senses." He compliments Kian, scratching his chin with his dagger. "Tell me something, young Kian, what is the one thing in this world, that even if you name it, you break it?"

"That's easy," he replied. We'd just talked about that. "Silence."

"Good," he responds. "What in this world exists to give, but if you do so, you must keep it?"

"Your word. My word means everything to me."

"Clever," he said. "Can you do hard work?"

"I'm not afraid of it... if that's what you mean."

"Can you tell the difference in coins by simply listening to them hit each other?"

"Sometimes," Kian admits. "Silver sounds pure... almost musical."

He pauses for a moment, looking Kian up and down with his bloodshot eyes. They were at eye level, but Kian was standing on the wooden floor of the weapons room and thus, about a foot higher than the deck on which the man was perched. Nevertheless, Kian found himself feeling small in the man's presence. But Kian knew that he wasn't small, rather the man just wanted him to think that he was.

"Take off your shirt," he commanded. "I want to see what kind of body you have."

Kian paused for a moment, considering his request. It wasn't the first time a man had wanted to see his twelve-year-old body naked. But this seemed different than an unwanted and unwelcome sexual advance.

Slowly, Kian unbutton the front of his shirt and slid it off his body. The man stepped forward and ran his rough hand down Kian's chest much the same way as a man at market would inspect a horse he was looking to buy.

"Smooth and unblemished," he says. "You're in shape at least. You've got fine muscle tone. Your body is your resource, Kian; remember that-if you're to be a killer. You must only eat enough to nourish you. If you indulge in gluttony you'll get fat and a fat man is a dead man in our business."

He grabbed Kian by the arm and stepped into the room. "I want you to work out for me, Kian. Your body is not your own anymore; it belongs to me. And I want my property to sparkle on the floor like puddles of rain under a summer storm. And after that we shall begin. You need to be stronger and leaner than you are now. I want forty sit-ups and then fifteen pull-ups in three repetitions every day for the remainder of this week. In the weeks after that you will work at these numbers until you can do sit-ups indefinitely and until all of the muscles in your body are ripped and burning. You can use that bar over there. After that, I'll help you warm up."

He walked over to the wall and gestured at a plain rod. "This rod," he says, "is made from bamboo. I've seen it split open a man's skin with one hit. I'll use it on you if I ever feel that you're not giving me everything that I've asked you to give."

Kian swallowed hard, regarding the rod which seems to have a bit of red along parts of it. "Yes sir."

"My name is Constantine," he declared, watching Kian. He sits down then, enjoying a smoke, watching a faint breeze brush the leaves of his trees, and watching the sky darken with clouds. It smells to Kian like a storm is on the horizon.

Dylan awoke.

Underneath him, Kian was drenched in sweat. Carefully, he shapechanged back into his human form. He wrapped them both in the blanket and cloak; he curled his strong arms around Kian's trembling, gleaming body from behind. He combed his hair with his fingers, kissed him, then laid his head carefully against Kian's back, spooning with him in the dark.

By the time Kian finished his last pull-up, he was breathing hard and his body was drenched in sweat. Constantine allowed the boy to take a ten minute break but he insisted that he keep moving to avoid stiffness. The air cools and Kian could hear small drops hitting the roof above; it was a welcome shift in temperature.

"Kata," Constantine says, "is a breathing exercise which will also teach you grace and will put your mind in balance with your body. The universe," he adds, "is a combination of the three principles of mind, body, and soul. Tune the one and the others shall follow suit."

He stands up and gestures for Kian to imitate his movements. He begins to stretch and guide his hands and to instruct the boy.

"I learned this from an oriental prince named Ashimuri. A great and powerful man he is, and he taught me the ways of the ancient Doma and now I pass them onto you."

"A prince?"

"Yes," he replies, continuing with the strange movements using his arms and legs. "Ashimuri is a direct descendant of the Chrysanthemum Throne which traces its lineage back to when the first tribes of man emerged from their fishing boats to behold the chain of volcanic islands which are home to the land of the eternally rising sun. Prince Ashimuri is the finest warrior I've ever met and a master of the death kick."

"The death kick?"

"Imagine the power to crush your opponent's rib cage through what appears to be heavy armor Kian. This is a technique known as the death kick. Its performance eludes me; but, I use martial arts to center my being, and not as the ultimate field of my study.

Kian continued to perform the kata, following his graceful and sometimes difficult actions. Kian did this for about an hour, and the rain suddenly becomes a thick downpour. He says, "That'll be all for today, Kian. Be here tomorrow at precisely dawn." Then, he turns his back and walks into his room.

Kian gathered his belongings and is surprised to find some money there whereas he had none before. He didn't say anything and left Constantine without so much as a wave.

Kian thought he wanted it this way.

The dream shifts.

In the basement of the guild there is a training room where the members of the guild can practice, the man he's come to see is called Whistler. He was a midget; severely mishapen by a bend in his spine. He has a large torso and head and eyes Kian coldly, like a new piece of meat.

Whistler takes one look at Kian and snickers. "Beings quiet is all about the position of your feet... that... and it depends a lot on how balanced you are and how much you weigh. When a man wants to walk quiet, he rests his weight on his arch and carries the load farther up on his foot," he said. "To keep it up for hours is tiring."

"I don't tire easily," Kian said.

In a way, Kian could see what he was saying. For the majority of his young life, being quiet was never anything that he consciously practiced. When men had raped him, he'd screamed for help that never came. Silence certainly didn't matter when he'd been a prisoner, except when he escaped. However, he did recall moving along on the balls of his feet.

That, or he just lifted himself onto his toes.

"It's also a matter of learning when to put your weight on something. And," he adds, "when that weight is going to be too much. When something breaks," he indicates, snapping his fingers. "It makes noise. Whenever anything tears or moves, it makes a sound. That's how nightingale floors are constructed. You have a carpenter specifically build a floor just so... and when any weight is put on it, the boards rub together, like a cricket rubbing his legs against his wings. Music to some," he mutters, "a warning to others."

"So, if I'm going across one of these floors or up, say, a flight of stairs that's built like this, how can I go unnoticed?"

Whistler ponders this for a moment. "There's a number of ways, and you'll get better at it with practice. First of all," he says, "Wear leather gloves. Get them as thin as possible so that you don't lose any of the feeling in your hand. You also want to be able to move your fingers as well with them on as you do with them off. But you'll want to have a good grip with them. When you cross the floor, place your hand on the wall, helping to disperse your weight. The less you weigh the less stress you're going to put on the boards beneath you. You want to keep moving too," he added. "Dead weight has nowhere else to go but down. Live weight responds to the direction you're moving. If you're running across a floor your weight is going down and across at vectors that are at right angles to each other. The result is that all of your weight, instead of going straight down, is carried at an angle across the floor. That's why you can skip a stone across water. All of its weight isn't going straight down."

Kian frowned. There was a lot more to this being quiet stuff than he had originally thought.

"That's not all my dear boy. Oh no," Whistler admonished. "If you're exceptionally able at it, you'll get to where you'll require only an inch or so of surface area, walking on a single wooden beam, etc. That minimizes the amount of movement any board can make. As for stairs, you'll get to where you'll be skipping them on a regular basis. The less surface area you touch, the less noise you make. It's that simple."

"So how do I learn?"

"Well," Whistler says. "I was just coming to that bit of unpleasantness. I've come up with an invention," he indicated by pointing to a roll of cloth on his seat. He picked it up and presents it to him. "I took two pieces of cotton cloth and sewed several tacks into them. I put these in your boot, to keep you from putting your weight down on certain areas of your foot. If you do put your weight down, well, these tacks are a good quarter of an inch long and they're sharp to the touch. You'll draw a good deal of blood if you stand on them with any force."

Kian looked despondent. Just envisioning those things under his feet brought back memories of prison when they'd branded him on the sole. He'd hopped around for days and they called him "Lightfoot" and laughed at him while he was in excruciating pain. They normally would brand prisoners on the face. However, they didn't do that with Kian. They knew they were going to fuck him so they wanted him to be pretty while he sucked their cocks.

Kian swallowed hard and met his gaze with fierce determination.

"Tacks in my boots?" Kian asked. He wanted to make sure that he heard him right.

The dwarf nodded yes.

"Is that all? I thought it'd be harder than that."

Whistler smiled at him and motioned for Kian to sit on the stool. When he complied, the dwarf knelt and took Kian's left boot into his hands. He probed with his fingers down and around Kian's ankle and pulled the leather covering off, set it aside, and then examined Kian's healthy athletic foot.

"You've got quite a nasty scar here," he indicated, trailing his finger along my arch. "Number ninety-eight. I think that's what it says."

Kian shrugged, dismissing it as unimportant. He couldn't read. In fact, it was one of the things that of which he was deeply ashamed. He couldn't say, however, that he was surprised that a number had been branded on his skin. It was easier to abuse a number; a human being took courage to destroy.

"There are a few adjustments I need to make here, Kian. It'll only take a minute." Whistler, starts cutting cloth and holding it to the bottom of Kian's arch to make sure that when he places it, that it is done properly.

"Do you have elven blood in your veins?" he asks.

Kian looked at him skeptically, "I'm Atlantean."

Whistler paused and Kian felt eyes from around the room looking at him.

"Did I say anything wrong?"

"There are no Atlanteans boy," Whistler says. "Their civilization was swallowed by the cataclysm and what remained of their race was hunted to extinction many years ago. However, if you are Atlantean as you say, it explains everything." He looks up at Kian, expression filled with awe. "Your beauty, grace, long fingers and toes. The only humans that ever had that were the Atlanteans. I'll wager you can run fast and for a long time. It's good you're safe with our small family. If you were out on the street, you'd be molested and sold as a sex slave."

Kian looked downcast. "I escaped from that actually."

Whistler mumbled something Kian couldn't quite understand under his breath. "I'm sorry," he says. He fits his foot with the cloth and tacks. Then, he wraps Kian foot in a thin cotton gauze to keep them in place.

He repeated the procedure with the other foot.

After it was done, Kian put his boots back on and stood up. It felt like he was being forced to go around with all of the weight on the ball of his feet and his toes. With some adjustment, though, and with a few minor sticks, Kian was able to discover rather quickly the most painless way to walk.

And, he was noticeably quieter.

"You don't have to thank me," Whistler remarked. There was a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

"When can they come off?"

Whistler put finger to chin in a thinking pose. "Perhaps in two months-that's the average time. Of course... if you can prove before then that you can walk across dried leaves or rice paper without a sound, they'll come off right then."

Kian ground his teeth together and looked down at his leather boots. He gave himself three weeks tops to pass the test.

In the next five days, Kian trained his body with a routine so strenuous that at times, he thought he was being tortured. Often, he was so tired that it seemed he had little energy left to do simple things like swallow, or, for that matter, to keep his heart beating. But always, he would find encouragement in the fact that all of this work was supposed to make him better, leaner, and able to withstand the rigors and punishment of someone that kills others for a living.

Kian woke up every morning before dawn and went directly to Master Constantine for what he called a "warm up". There were some hooks that he had pounded into the ceiling that he could jump up and grasp with blistered hands. He would then pull his legs up until they were level with his chest and twist and turn them from his left side to his right side fifty times. He called this exercise the corkscrew and, it always began the day.

Kian allowed himself thirty seconds to catch his breath before he went to the next exercise which was usually push-ups done with one hand or pull ups done wearing a weighted chain mail shirt. Every other day, Constantine varied his routine by trying to get one extra repetition in before Kian stopped. Sometimes, however, the pain in Kian's muscles was too much and he'd stop. Master Constantine never hit Kian with the bamboo because he knew that his pupil was trying his hardest. But he always left it next to the steps and the three candles of differing colors.

Kian thought that it was a way to remind him that the rod was always close at hand.

The fourth exercise Kian did was what Constantine called the "spring". After resting long enough to catch his breath and still wearing the chainmail shirt for added weight, Kian held his hands out in front of his chest and squatted low to the earth. Then, he sprung upward and landed in the same posture. Each time he sprung, he tried to gain more height. Sometimes Constantine placed a bar on the ground that he tried to hurdle over and over repeatedly. Kian always did a hundred of these before he moved onto the fifth exercise which was called simply, the flag.

The flag is a grueling abdominal exercise in which Kian suspended the entire weight of his body off of a bench, holding himself as rigid as a flag with only the strength of a rock-hard abdomen holding the legs erect. The only part of his body allowed to touch the bench was the shoulder blade. While in this posture, Kian would move his legs up and down, sometimes wearing wet leather boots for added weight. And each day, Kian tried to keep the flag going for a longer period of time.

After these five warm-up exercises, Kian worked with specially designed weights that Master Constantine had engineered himself. He had them in five, ten, twenty, forty and one-hundred pound increments. At first, Kian thought they were a strange and foreign idea, but the Master assured him that the designs were sound and actually given to him by the Emperor of Shaitan, a country he said, that lay far to the east, and which was far more technically advanced than the West. It was difficult for Kian to imagine, but Constantine told him that the Emperor of this strange and wondrous place lived within a city inside a city that would make the grandest court in the West look like a common sitting room inside an alehouse. The grand palisade, as he called it, was made of thirteen marble steps that led to the Emerald Throne of Shaitan. And these thirteen steps were covered in richly embroidered carpets made from a rare wool, and dyed in dark purple and vermillion, and lined with thread of silver and gold. On either side of this palisade were dragons made of gold, platinum, silver, and copper and the throne itself was lined in the most beautiful of peacock feathers with emeralds and sapphires adorning the headpiece directly behind the red silk cushion where the Emperor of Shaitan rested his head.

After Kian had finished working with the metal weights, Constantine stretched Kian's legs, his back, his arms, and his neck. Kian was naturally limber. But the stretches Master Constantine had engineered for his pupil eventually turned him into a double-jointed contortionist.

The middle part of the day was always meditation.

During meditation, Kian spent most of his time with his eyes closed or with a blindfold on, clearing out thoughts of just about everything. Sometimes, meditation was difficult because of the pain in his shoes or the bleeding the tacks had caused when they'd cut into his skin. But at other times, meditation was a welcome relief. Sometimes, it was everything that he looked forward to.

Kian spent four or five hours a week learning about nutrition from Master Constantine. He taught him the kinds of foods that he could eat that would keep him alive in the wilderness. He taught him the kinds of foods that would keep his energy reserves high and the ones to avoid, the ones that would make Kian sleepy or that had too much fat in them. He told Kian that at his age, it was important to eat things that would make his bones strong. That it was important to eat the right kinds of meals that would make his senses keen and his body prone to healing itself.

For many months of training, Constantine fixed Kian's meals himself, always showing him exactly how much to eat and proffering him a taste of foreign spices which he said, were good for the mind, the body, and the soul. Some of these dietary supplements were excellent at fighting colds and infections. Others were excellent at speeding up the metabolism or just giving Kian an extra energy boost during the high time of the day. Kian was fascinated that food could be so important to a person's health, and even more so when it actually did the things that Constantine had assured him they would do.

Kian washed the blood from his feet and boots daily.

And daily, he failed at the rice paper test.

During his second week, Master Constantine integrated martial arts lessons into Kian's daily workout routine. Following his weight training, Constantine began sparring with him, performing kicks that he demonstrated to Kian time and time again. Master Constantine was obsessed with form and he wanted his pupil's to be perfect. He wanted to stop bad habits now, so that as Kian got better, he would strike with force and with flare. Master Constantine was a sadistic man as well, and Kian thought he overtly enjoyed the pain that these practices caused him.

That first week of martial arts training, Kian learned the basics of what Constantine called the wheel kick. A wheel kick is a difficult maneuver to perform, essentially spinning the body around very quickly and slamming the foot into an opponent in a vulnerable place.

Kian's wheel kicks at first were very poor.

Sweating and breathing hard, he studied Constantine.

The Master lowered his body and lifted himself neatly on one leg. He snapped his torso about so swiftly that Kian's hair rustled in the wind. His foot connected with a wooden beam-a solid hit.

He felt the thud of the impact through the sand.

It was powerful, brutal, and graceful.

"Always remember," he began, "that the body's strength comes from within the soul and within the mind. Like a circle in the sand or like waves on the ocean, you touch and affect everything within a given realm. If you're true to your body, your soul will reflect this, and your mind will become like glass, clear but able to focus much like the evaluation of an idea or, the angling of a magnifying glass to concentrate light and make a fire. Flesh is only as strong as the will that unites it. Be unified and powerful. Now, you try the wheel kick."

Kian flung his most despair-filled look into his teeth. "But Master, I-I'm wearing tacks in my boots!"

Constantine's eyes narrowed visibly and he could see that this was his way of warning him. "Do the wheel kick Kian," he said calmly.

He realized then that any protest was going to fall on his deaf ears. Instead, Kian resolved himself to this one physical action. He cleared his mind and tried repeating the word "balance" over and over again upon his soft lips.

When he was ready, Kian stepped up and held his leg out, poised to strike. He'd been stretching all week, and he found that his balance was better achieved on his left foot than on his right. Kian kept this in mind and whirled about on his heel, using the momentum of his body to generate power. Kian struck the dense wooden beam with his boot, and as he had predicted, pain shot through every nerve in his quivering body.

In Dylan's arms, Kian's body jumped suddenly, jarring him awake. He looked at Kian's face, his eyes were wide open, irisis huge spots of blue with the white pupils gazing forward.

He shook him by the shoulders, "Kian?"

There was no response. He was gleaming slick with clean sweat; breathing hard from his mouth. Dylan realized something else was going on. The feral rut had pushed Kian's mind into some kind of nightmare from which he was having trouble awakening.

He lovingly held him, kissed his neck and reached around to hold Kian's hands so that he didn't hurt himself.

Inside the dream, Kian felt the warm rush of his own blood inside the leather of his shoe. But he didn't cry out. "How was that?" he asked.

"Poor," Constantine replied. "You're foot needs to be higher... at least as high as mine."

"But you're taller than me," Kian blurted out. "I can't kick that high!"

Constantine grabbed the bamboo rod, the one that had the lines of red upon it, and he snapped it down hard over Kian's back. He tried to get out of the way but he kicked his legs out from under him and beat Kian across the chest and hands.

He stopped after his third hit.

Kian was still holding his breath, still wondering if Constantine was going to kill him.

In relief, he looked through inflamed eyes and saw Constantine's feet disappear into his meditation room. He rolled over and gazed up at the sky. He saw its bright blue color and was reminded of drifting on a sea of calm ocean. Kian was hot and blood was in his eyes.

But, he was alive.

He was alive as the day that his family died and somehow, he alone managed to survive. And this life burned in Kian's throat as a final warning that to stay alive, he would have to survive and overcome the things that wanted to defeat him.

That was the end of that day's lesson.

Time passed.

Aside from the five daily exercises and the weight training, Master Constantine supervised his rehearsal of the wheel kick. Kian tried over and over again. And when he thought he couldn't do it anymore, he managed to reach into that well deep inside him and find the strength to perform the wheel kick a few dozen more times.

Kian's springing exercises started paying off. With each leap he was getting higher, faster, and stronger. He was jumping with more grace and skill and he learned to land without injury. He could kick a man square in the head even if he was much, much taller than himself.

Oftentimes, after lunch, Kian would run laps around the guildhouse with the tacks in his boots. The first few days he failed and only bloodied himself. However, he never gave up. Kian's body was learning its new posture and he was quickly becoming immune to the pain. A well-known Atlantean philosopher once said, "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger." Kian learned the meaning of these words by living them.

At times, he was a bloody mess.

But he could tell his body was getting used to its new strength.

Kian saved the money Constantine paid him in the role of his pupil and bought some gloves made from kid leather. Kian toiled at holding his weight with his hands pressed against the walls of the stairwells in the thieve's guild, trying to ascend the steps without making a sound. He eventually succeeded in his task, and even surprised Constantine one morning when he arrived early. He admitted to Kian that he had not heard him coming up the stairs, and he was very proud that he'd learned this part of the new trade so quickly.

The dream shifted again; time had passed.

It was morning and the end of Kian's first month as a pupil of Constantine. He found himself sitting at the edge of his bed looking out at new morning's sunrise and staring at his thin feet which seem to be pale, wounded, and sore.

Kian felt strange and somehow, invincible.

He donned boots but without the tacks and the strips of soiled cotton cloth. These, he wound up and took with him downstairs. He tossed them onto the breakfast table made of planks of cherry wood where Whistler is sitting now, watching the transparent morning break its way through fragile panes of glass.

"Is it time Kian?"

"I think so. I've worn them for weeks now. And I don't want to anymore. I want to take the test."

Whistler stands up and hops down. He is wearing a satin doublet made from deep magenta cloth. "Alright," he says, "let's go downstairs."

Kian followed him across the room and down the stone steps. He wasn't afraid, but his body is tingling with excitement and nervousness. His stomach also turns a little uneasily inside him as the training room comes into view, lit by braziers that burn smoky on the walls.

They are the only ones here, for it is still early and thieves are, by nature, creatures of darkness. He walks into an office and removes ten large sheets of thin paper from a cabinet with heavy oak doors. These, he takes in his hands and lays them out on the floor before him. The pupils of his eyes have grown large in this dim light and he studies Kian with small spots of gray as if to observe in the golden boy's face some fatal resolution hidden there. Or perhaps he wants to see failure there, to see Kian weary and bloodied again by the tortuous tacks.

Kian regards for a moment the delicate rice paper. It is like a narrow carpet laid out before him, two feet wide and ten feet long. He knew that it was the most difficult stuff to step on in all the world and not tear.

Kian gazed at his boots and decided that he wasn't going to take them off. This was unheard of-all thieves did this test barefoot. Kian, however, told himself that he was exceptional. He could pass this test wearing his shoes.

Kian tried a meditative stance for just a moment, cleared his thoughts and blotted the idea of a test completely from his mind. Kian got nervous during tests and the uneasiness of his stomach oftentimes made him throw up. He mumbled the word "balance" over and over again and tried to find his center.

Kian recognized the calm he'd felt many times before in meditations with Constantine. He called this thing his center and he went with the gut feeling for just that one instant. Then, he opened his eyes, took his first step, and almost faltered.

That was and is the hardest step to take because Kian realized suddenly that he could fail. However, now that the first step was behind him, it was up to him to keep himself from failing. And so he resolved himself to success only.

One step at a time, he crossed the paper.

He did it.

Kian smiled at the dwarf, victory complete. He waited to see his expression and listened to the silence feeling the exhilaration course through his veins like fire.

Whistler laughed softly. His manner is impulsive. "I don't believe it," he whispers. "How -how did you do that?"

But, Kian couldn't explain it. It was a skill; you either had it or not. He simply resolved to have the skill. And once his mind knew, just as Constantine had said, his body and soul came along for the ride.

"Have I passed?"

"Yes," he said.

Kian shook his hand. "Thanks." Kian meant it too. His respect was important to him.

The dream then unfolded in a flickering of images.

A month passed, maybe two.

Kian's training continued and he grew stronger, swifter, leaner...all of these things at the sake of a life without sex partners, friends, and oftentimes meals.

By the sixth month, Kian's body was completely ripped, with muscle and skin and ropy veins trailing down his arms and over his chest, abdomen, and legs.

He learned new special maneuvers of the style that Constantine called the "Clicking Lotus". "Clicking Lotus" is an ancient style that focused on the use of the legs and feet in martial arts. It is all about kicking and there are about twenty different ways to perform a kick, and each one has a different purpose.

Kian had been practicing the wheel kick. Now, Constantine told him, it was time to learn the axe kick. An axe kick, simply put, is a swift downward blow with the feet against a standing opponent. When properly administered, it had the effect of knocking the opponent onto the ground, stunning him, or even knocking him unconscious. The effects, of course, vary with the actual fine points in which the blow is dealt. Kian could jump down onto an opponent, using vertical strikes with the side of his foot and it might not do anything but make his opponent mad. But that's because he wasn't that good at it yet.

So he practiced it. After a month, he wasn't that much better.

So he practiced some more.

The third kick Kian learned was a flying double kick. To initiate this maneuver, Kian had to be running or moving. He leapt into the air and struck with his legs to either side, kicking twice before landing. Then he learned sweeps, circle kicks, back kicks, and a variation of all of these kicks flowed into Kian's own particular style. He became a perfect kick boxer. In a year's time, Kian was hitting hard enough to be deadly, to crack bones and to shatter teeth. He could kick out the feet of his opponent oftentimes faster than they could draw a sword.

Each and every day Kian pushed himself to stretch farther than ever he could've done the day before. He could arch backward and touch his head to the backs of his knees and his palms to the backs of his heels. But always, despite his leaping exercises, he had a disappointing vertical leap of no more than five feet.

So, Kian learned circus tumbling.

In three months, he reached the first of his own personal goals by being able to increase his vertical leap by three feet. Before learning this technique, Kian could never get enough ground clearance to catch onto the awning above the sand circles in the center of the training ground and pull himself onto the ceramic-tiled roof of the guild house.

But now he could, and he did so without much effort.

The view was so perfectly marvelous.

The first time he climbed onto the roof, Kian's body trembled so much that he almost lost his footing. Here he stood-a creature overcoming every physical limitation. He had learned to fly in his own way. Indeed, he had learned to soar like a dream, like a vision and the power of his splendid body driven to the point of perfection that made others envious.

This is where he learned that he was not afraid of heights.

In months to follow, the Master added a few more martial arts maneuvers to Kian's agenda. The first of these came from the school of the "Twitching Mongoose". Called the "claw of the eagles" it was a way of punching that hardened Kian's hands. He continuously thrust his hands into a bowl of rice pellets. And sometimes, Constantine had Kian punch on a solid object made of stone for an hour. It bloodied his knuckles but he developed callouses on his hands and on his narrow fingers. There was a cost to all of this, Kian's sensitive touch diminished, but his ability to hurt someone with his hands increased tenfold.

The dream shifted again and Kian cried out in Dylan's arms. Carefully, Dylan closed Kian's eyelids with his fingers so that they wouldn't dry out and continued to press his flesh against him, to keep him warm in the long cold night.

After a year of studying with Master Constantine, the seasons changed once more to Winter and then Spring and Kian was ready to learn the art of vital areas. He had within a special rosewood cabinet that he'd been given, several anatomy charts drawn upon scrolls given to him by the Emperor of Shaitan, when he had stayed with him in his court several years back. The emperor had given these to Constantine as part of a bargain between the two of them, and they contained within their folded sheets of paper, all the knowledge that the doctors of Shaitan had assembled on acupuncture points and other places on the human body that were sensitive to nerve stimuli and damage. The drawings that had been reproduced on these vellum sheets were very detailed scrawlings, made with black ink and somewhat faded with age. But the Master smiled at them for he knew the knowledge contained therein was an ancient secret of his trade and with much pride, he began to show Kian how to take advantage of these pressure points.

"I protect my goolies," Kian confessed one night.

"Yes, but everyone does that. Use less obvious ones. If you hit a man under the bridge of his nose it will send shards of bone into the brain. Death is almost instantaneous."

"What other ones are there?"

"There are sensitive points to the leg. A sharp blow to the muscle in the thigh will drop a man. There are also points behind the ears that are painful...and don't forget the temples on the side of your skull."

Kian learned what he could from Constantine and spent a year outside of his usual training on studying these points and committing them to my memory. But of all the questions that plagued Kian, he wondered secretly if there was a single, all-powerful point on the body which could kill a man with but a single blow.

"It's called the Dim Mak," he said to Kian one evening, while drinking heavily from a bottle of rice wine. "I've no idea how to do it but there are some people in the world that know how to use it. It doesn't have to kill either. You can use the Dim Mak to paralyze someone permanently-to make them a vegetable. I'd like to learn it but I don't think I will."

Constantine showed Kian how to perform simple wrist and elbow locks. Once he'd mastered those, he showed him more complex...more advanced maneuvers. Constantine cautioned, "Holds are not the way of the assassin because it brings us too close to our victim. An assassin never wants to be that close to his victim. However, it's important to keep in mind the paralyzing power of a hold, in case you find yourself in one. That way," he reasoned, "you know how to break out of it. For example, if someone grabs you from behind, the correct maneuver is to turn your body and punch directly to the groin. You place one of your feet between theirs and with both hands, press against their knee cap. I don't care how big they are, if done properly, your opponent will be on the ground in no time."

Before Kian realized it, he'd had two birthdays in the guildhouse and he had become an adept fighter. But to his dismay, he didn't have any sex for those two years. It was the longest dry spell of his life.

Kian lowered his sweating body to the straw mat in his room for a bit of a respite from the morning's toil. It was now Summer, and the placid sky was a large, and open sweltering spot above the Bay of Dreams. He was gazing out at the opening above the white sand courtyard at the sky. There was a remarkable amount of clouds and he thought that a summer storm was probably on its way. He hoped so because it was unbearably hot and Kian's pale skin didn't tan. Rather, it just burned and then blistered later. He was drenched and wasn't wearing a shirt so the feeling of cold steel against his hot skin was unmistakable.

He turned and regarded the remarkable weapon Constantine held with a bit of aesthetic wonderment.

"This is called a katana," the Master said. The blade was dazzling. It had a slight bend to it and ended in a handle that was wrapped in some kind of thin cloth strands. Kian mused that it was probably silk; on the pommel was an exquisitely crafted dragon's mouth holding a pearl in-between its teeth. Kian's mouth was open the entire time he stared at it.

He felt dizzy.

"It was given to me by a weapon's master when I was about your age," he paused gazing at Kian. With his left hand he brushed back his blonde hair. "How old are you?" he asked.

"Fourteen."

He swung the weapon about a few times and then handed it to Kian. It was the lightest and most well-balanced weapon that he'd ever held.

"It was folded some one-hundred or more times and it's made from the finest steel in the world."

"It's remarkable," he whispered, still held in thrall by the polish of the blade. Kian put his finger to its edge and it cut him almost instantly. He had numerous questions.

"It is. But I'm going to possess an even finer weapon Kian. A weapon crafted by a God to be wielded in mortal hands. It has been a lifelong quest for me, and if you'd like, I'll tell you the story," he stated.

"A weapon forged by a God?"

He scratched his chin, wrestling with the stubble of his partial beard. "Bloodbane," he said, his voice distant. "Sword of Assassins." He looked at Kian and could see that he had no idea what he was talking about.

He smiled then and put his hand on my shoulder. It was a kindness he'd not seen in him; he really wanted to tell Kian this tale. "The world was not always like it is, or for that matter, as you see it. There has been a war in heaven and it continues even now as the old Gods dispute over unsolved questions and differences of opinion. From time to time, man gets involved in these wars and the result is bloody indeed. Some of this blood, as I understand it, is as powerful as it is ancient. In the First Age, Tethyr himself, having slain a powerful demon, took up some of this old blood and bound it into a wondrous weapon the likes, the world has never seen. From millennia to millennia it has at times surfaced but only under dreadful conditions of war and upheaval. It has been credited for murdering thousands of history's most elite soldiers and generals; and, its thirst to kill is legendary. It disappeared seven centuries ago in the battle outside the ancient city of Mal Ruen and has not been seen since. But in its blade is contained the breath of a God and the soul of an ancient Demon."

Kian turned and looked at the katana. Admittedly, he had not been out of Clothol before but Constantine's ravings could not possibly be true. A weapon forged by a God! Why would a God need a weapon? It didn't make sense, after all, for a God should be able to do anything.

"I don't care if you believe me," he said. He stood then and gestured at the blade. "You can keep it. I will show you how to use it and several others of its like. I'll be leaving in two months' time. I've an important journey to make but you must be ready to take my place at this year's guild war."

"What's a guild war?" Kian asked him.

Constantine opened a bottle of whiskey and ignored the blond boy for the moment. He took a long drink and then followed it up with another. Then he paused, waiting for his thoughts to gather cohesion. He had about him the air of human ambition, and Kian shall never forget that look-a dizzying combination of splendid physique and arrogance.

"The guild war," he explained, happens irregularly over the course of a decade. This year, it's going to happen about the time that I leave." He shrugged his shoulder, indicating in that one smooth gesture, how unimportant local politics were for him.

"A shipment of jewels is coming in from the mines of Valis-Dur in the east and it's heavily guarded. Its destination is Ladika which is south of here. That's Lyran's territory. However, the stakes are high enough that this Guild is getting involved. The Daymaster and Nightmaster both want a handful of our best to go into Ladika at night and retrieve the jewels. Lyran will be after the same shipment, and I'm to be present to kill as many of the bastards as I can. That and I was going to deal with their upstart guild assassin. He's a self-important blundering oaf... you shouldn't have a problem with him. But just in case, I'm going to train you on how to use that thing properly," he said, gesturing at the katana. "And on how to garrote someone and of course, on the use of poisons. Poison is an assassin's best weapon lad, but it can kill you too which is why you must be cautious."

"What kind of poison?" Kian asked. "Strychnine or cyanide perhaps?"

He took another swig from his whiskey bottle. After swallowing he watches for a second before he attempts a reply. "No...no," he says. "Those poisons are for amateurs. You can bet that they'll be expecting you to use that though," he declares. "I prefer to use a more rare and valuable poison called caasak. It's derived from the captured fumes of corobidian, the rarest of all metals. If you're lucky enough to have a few scraps of the metal you can burn it over an intense flame. The fumes kill on contact and there is no cure and virtually no onset time. When you distill the fumes into a liquid, it's deadly indeed. I have one vial of the stuff that I'm going to let you have. But until then, I want you practicing with lemon juice. You'll be able to tell if you get it on your clothes or on your hands. With caasak there can't be any mistakes. You can't even spill a single drop on yourself or your finished! Do you understand?"

Kian nodded. Inside, however, he felt his courage wither.

For eight weeks, Kian trespassed in the shadow lands of death.

Constantine tutored him from morning until night. He even took lunch in his room; and, he was not allowed to see any of his friends.

Poison. Caasak.

Kian came to understand it.

Scentless and colorless, this liquid was death. Kian respected the simplicity and feared it all the same.

The katana, though similar to a longsword, was a far faster and more cunning weapon. Constantine also showed Kian how to garrote and that, for lack of any weapon, he should never be without a garrote. He spent one afternoon fashioning a perfect garrote from a coil of corrobidian ribbon that Constantine had among his supplies.

During the latter part of the eight weeks, Constantine focused on re-learning the training that had come before. As well, Kian practiced daily with the lemon juice so that he could use the poison he was going to gift him and not end up dead.

The sword training continued. Constantine blindfolded Kian and told him to rely on only his keen senses to guide the swing. Kian learned to pay attention to the smallest difference in air movement. He had to learn how to recognize certain subtle changes in air density and temperature caused by the approach of a warm body signaled on the surface of bare skin. Constantine told Kian what to watch, focused him on that to which he needed to be aware. But the science behind the application was a difficult thing for Kian to grasp and it took him some time to be able to sense a hand that approached his face, or to recognize a brief movement in air for a closing door, for an exhaled breath, or for what it might possibly be...a short and quite natural gust of wind.

Kian learned seven ways to disarm a person wielding a knife. He studied four ways to disarm an opponent with a sword, and six different ways to disarm a person with a club, axe, or mace. The only way any of this schooling would ever be useful to him would be if he could somehow perform these actions out of habit. So Kian studied hour after hour, trying to make blocks and parries a reflex action.

To his surprise, the last week of training arrived. He'd never thought that he'd be sorry that it had ended, but there was a regret in his soul that longed for more.

"Master, is there nothing left to learn?"

Constantine said, "You never stop learning Kian. You've only begun to scratch the surface."

He handed Kian a jar of sticky black grease. "This is called weapon black. Put it on your blade and anything else that has a reflective surface. Hmmmm," he began, "you're hair and skin is too light and I think it might cause you problems. Try covering your face with something, a black mask or even some makeup. And dye your hair black."

Kian nodded and watched him unfold an article of heavily embroidered silk that was tied with a thick rope of gold twine. Inside was a set of exquisite throwing knives, with small holes in the handles, he presumed, for hanging from a ring like a key chain. The knives were made of polished steel and they were very well balanced. Then, to Kian's delight, he handed him the set, ten of them total. "These are yours as well, Kian."

"M-mine?" he managed to stammer. "I don't deserve it master."

"What? Don't be silly. This isn't a matter of what you deserve, but what you must learn and become skilled at." He held them carefully and showed me the proper way to hold the knife in his palm so that Kian could throw them with deadly accuracy.

"I had these made for you," he said. "About three months ago. They were just barely finished." Constantine told Kian that he'd ordered these made to fit specifications on balance and weight. "They cost me twenty gold crowns a piece to have forged," he said. "Don't toss them about needlessly." He paused, watching Kian cradle them and laughed. "When held properly, it's almost like they know where to strike to kill." He flung them at a pole across the courtyard and they sunk into the wood-all of them-within an inch of each other."

When Kian tried to mimic his action, he blundered.

Kian beheld the knives with the wonderment of a child examining his first pocket knife. They were sharp and cold in his untrained fingers. But as the day went on, he got better in their use. Over the next two days he perfected the throw. He wasn't sure if he could throw other things with as much accuracy but Kian had gotten a feel for these knives. In the pit of his stomach, he felt that he was ready, at last, for a night of murder.

Kian had afterall, trained almost three years.

On the last evening before the Master's departure he called Kian into his meditation room on the far side of the courtyard. There under the moonlight of silver-hued Mondath he presented the boy with his first suit of armor. It looked like it was silk but in fact, as he informed Kian, was comprised of gossamer strands of interwoven corobidian mesh. He said, "I commissioned this for you some eight months ago when I realized how talented a student you were. It was exceptionally costly but it will protect you far better than anything else you could wear. This metal here," he indicated, "is black corobidian. All of it-I'd say about six ounces in one fist-sized rock. On the black market it would sell for more than one-hundred thousand gold crowns. It should fit you nicely."

Kian's mouth was agape. "How could you afford this?"

He laughed. "I didn't pay for it. That's a black market price. If I was to look around here, people wouldn't even know what I was talking about. Clothol is an ignorant if not humble town. I had some of the rock with me and I know a man who was able to make it into what you see before you. He owed me a favor. In this business, you come to collect a lot of favors. Now, for example, you owe me one, should I choose to collect."

Kian picked up the armor brimming with gratitude. He surmised that the whole of it weighed less than ten pounds, and it was as pliant as thick cotton. He could tell instantly that it would fit his body with perfection-that this incredible thing would be like a second skin to protect his body while being simultaneously stylish in design.

"There are new boots to match," he indicated. "Black ones with good tread and a place to put your throwing daggers. And I took the liberty to sew a garrote into the collar which is similar to a turtle neck, in case you need it. You can reach the ends of it with your fingers...like so," he demonstrated, exhibiting the small loop which served as one end to the garrote. Here, as well, is your tool belt and bandolier."

Constantine showed Kian that the bandolier would hold his katana on his back, and he also indicated that he should wear it upside down so that he could get at the handle more easily. Inside one of the belt pouches was a vial of caasak, a small mirror, some flash powder, and a six-inch rod that could be snapped to form a hook and attached to a rope. He also gave to Kian a scabbard for the katana. In the bottom of the scabbard was a compartment holding twenty feet of very fine silk rope. "It should hold about 180 pounds or so before breaking. That's more than enough for you."

It was almost too much for Kian to take in all at once.

"You need to be careful with corobidian," he declared. "Corobidian has the tendency to build up an electric charge when moving around. Associates of mine in Mon Arcanos have called this property superconductivity. If you move around fast enough, lightning will start to course down your arms. However, there is nothing as hard as corobidian in all of the world. A single strand of it as thin as a hair is as strong as a steel cable thirty times its thickness. But the lightning will give you away. I've gotten around this by making these grounding bands."

The grounding bands he pointed out looked like they were made of chestnut colored leather.

"Always wear these on your ankles on the outside of your suit. This will cancel out the static effect." He put his hand on Kian's shoulder. "Now, listen very carefully," he said. "There is something that you can do for me. In this shipment of jewels there'll be a stone about the size of my thumb. It is clear and otherwise unremarkable but it shall be locked away in a decorative tube and set aside on a cushion of faded blue velvet. You'll retrieve this item for me. That's all. Don't let anyone see you take it either. If you do, you must kill them." He paused to chew on his lower lip. "Do you understand?"

Kian shook his head. "Yes. Is that all you want?"

He smiled. "It'll be enough."

"What is it? I mean...what's the stone?"

He mused quietly to himself, judging on whether to tell Kian or not. "It's one more piece of the puzzle," he stated quietly. "One more clue to follow to Bloodbane's resting place."

Bloodbane... More nonsense about this strange sword.

But even as Kian thought this to himself, he began to question as to whether he had any right to deny its existence.

"Where will you be going?"

"To the south, across the sea and into the steamy jungles of the Mirimar to meet with the Holy See in Thorn. It seems that others of our profession have a few gripes with me and have brought them before the Council of Assassins."

"What is the Council of Assassins?"

"The Council of Assassins, Kian, is my employer. It's thousands of years old and has a great investment in keeping rules to our game of kill or be killed. Without rules there would be chaos. We are the enforcers of the rules and we take assignments to kill those that would seek to change them."

"That's a very simple way to boil things down."

Constantine agreed. "There's no use in complicating things. Killing is a serious business, my boy. That, by the way, is the key to everything. Be simple, Kian. Don't pause to boast or to gloat. Kill and be done with it. Make it quick, not sloppy."

He handed Kian a leather pouch with ten coins in it. "This should buy you food for the next couple of weeks and anything small that you might need. Whilst I'm gone, I don't want you in this room. In my absence, continue your training. When I return, I'll send for you." He stroked Kian's hair with fondness. "You have so much training still left to do."

"I've worked hard."

"Aye, that you have," he agreed. "But I'm still not where I'd like to be, and I, Kian, have been at it for twenty years."

He paused, looking at the blond boy's eyes in the moonlight. "Get some sleep and take your belongings. I shall, I believe, see you in two months' time. Keep the stone safe," he added. "And let no one see it."

"I will," Kian promised.

"Kian wake up," Dylan said.

In the tent, Kian blinked his eyes. He had Dylan pinned on the floor of the tent, his throat in his hands. He could feel the knight's pulse under his skin and the dark haired young man was looking up at him, frightened. Slowly, Kian loosened his fingers, realizing what he'd done.

Dylan sat up, wrapped the blanket around Kian's nude body and hugged him. "What was all that stuff you were saying?" Dylan's cheeks were wet with tears. "I was trying to keep you warm and you punched me and then hit me in the side with your fingers so hard, I couldn't breathe but I was paralyzed. I couldn't fight you off. When I thought you were calm I tried holding you again and you hit me in the head with your elbow."

"I'm sorry," Kian said turning and kissing him. "I love you so much D, I'm sorry. I was having a nightmare."

He nodded, "I think it was caused by the feral rut. It looks like its subsiding now, but you were screaming. You said ‘Bloodbane'. What is that?"

Kian pointed to his sword which lay next to his sweaty toes. "That's Bloodbane. It's a legendary sword that the one I was having a dream about was researching. He was like a father to me; taught me so much about who I am and who I wanted to be. His name was Constantine; he was an amazing man, excellent at his craft, and treated me with kindness all the days of his life."

"What happened to him?" Dylan asked, holding Kian to his chest. He knew that Kian's life had been filled with suffering, that his lover had so unfairly lost so many loved ones. He wanted to comfort him, knowing that the memory of this father figure was still fresh in his mind. Outside, the winds of Vas of Kleef ruffled the tent.

"Dylan," Kian said in a voice that bordered on a whisper, "I-I murdered him for the sword."