Thread Closed
It was a day after the death, and Revan was still passed out. The guards had talked it up, as much as they'd talked about Kain putting the man into a dream state, but Kain himself hadn't cared. He'd gone about his duties that day like on any other.
Now, he stood in a room, completely round, torches upon the walls tossing light about the stone face. The light crept upwards to the domed ceiling, fading so that the roof was only barely visible in the darkness of the shadows. All about him, bags full of sawdust and hay were propped up on wooden supports, a dozen or so of them in scattered formation about the large training room. He'd made a life here during his time assigned to the citadel, this imposing prison to which many of the worst criminals and prisoners in the Garlean Empire were assigned. There was little else to do but read when he was not on duty, and if he allowed himself to spend even a day away from his training, he feared becoming like so many others who had grown fat off their lazy work in the prison.
He reached to his back and stripped off the gargantuan axe that he kept always at his back, turning suddenly and putting the blade clean through one of the bags, its contents spilling out onto the floor with a rush. Had it been a man, that would have been his intestines. He then spun immediately, swinging the axe and catching the next back close to the the top, just so that the upper contents went flying into the air. That would have been someone's head. He continued in a circular motion, curving the blade downwards at the next bag, cutting it low and at an angle so that the sawdust fell out from the bottom. That would have been someone's legs.
He then spun, looking into the distance at a row of three bags, too far away to attack. He thrust his hand outwards, wind whipping at his back, eyes narrowing in focus as a gust of air blew past him, taking the bags and throwing them against the wall with enough force that they broke their wooden supports before collapsing onto the ground. The wooden chunks fell to the ground with a clatter, the bags slumping to the floor, while Kain hesitated a moment, sweat forming on his brow and staining his tiara. He blinked, for all of a moment the room vanishing. It was replaced by the sight of lines of warriors, ready for battle, desert sand stretching as far as he could see. The sun overhead was so bright it scorched the ground, a shimmering wave of vision sifting up from the sands as the heat made it difficult to see straight. In the next blink of an eye, he was once more back in the training room, breathing heavily. His eyes moved to his hand, still outstretched, and he suddenly withdrew it, looking ashamed, having been so stolen into the vision that he could not account for how much time had actually passed. All about him there were still lying many bags, their innards strewn about, and he suddenly had no strength to clean it up himself. Turning suddenly to the door, he flung it open, glancing up and down the hallway.
"Steward! Cleanup!"
*****
Kain's room was nothing much more than anyone else's. A small bed occupied the right wall, while on the left was a dresser atop which was a bowl of water and a lit candle, adding to the moonlight streaming in from the slit of a window that sat over his bed. A mirror hung above the dresser and, stripping his tiara from his face, he suddenly became Hyuran again, no longer appearing as the faceless wraith that the rest of the guards here knew him to be. He was still breathing more heavily than he was used to, and a glance in the mirror told him he was fatigued. Feeling weak, he stumbled to the dresser, bracing atop it as he forced his eyes into the mirror. His brown hair fell at his back in a ponytail, the tattoos beneath his face reminding him of days long ago, before even his days as a fighter in Ul'dah.
He sighed, looking downward, and catching sight of one of his wooden carvings atop the dresser, he lifted it. It was a symbol, something like a star, which he had fashioned long ago, in memory of his friend Haya.
"Haya." He sighed, lifting it close to his brown eyes. "It's been years."
It truly had been years since he had seen the boy. They had been friends, though they had started as foes. All it had been was a bar fight following drinks and a game of cards. Kain had taken the boy for almost all his purse, and Haya had been convinced cheating was involved. Kain smiled, laughing slightly as he walked to his bed, sitting down upon the hard mattress. He fingered the small carving, running it about his fingers as he thought of that night.
"Cheating? Me?" His grin spread, amused. "Well Haya, it is true that I was once involved with a woman who taught me all about playing dirty." He stopped as he said this grimacing at the double entendre. "In games, I mean, and maybe a little in combat." His smile faded slightly at the thought of her. So long ago, too, with her. Before Ul'dah. Long before Ul'dah.
Those years, before he'd become a fighter in Ul'dah, were now so far on the horizon of his mind that they seemed to be as dreams and figments of his imagination, like stories one reads when one was a child and then slowly forget, clinging only to bits and pieces as a person got older. Ul'dah had been only... what? Twenty, maybe thirty years ago? There he'd begun his new life, fighting in the arenas, earning a small reputation as a hero of the people, until that bar fight with Haya stripped him of his ability to fight. In place of that, the Syndicate which oversaw the city had asked him to be a mercenary in their employ. He'd gladly accepted, on the condition that Haya be employed as well. In the week following the fight and their arrest, they'd shared cells directly across from each other, and had come to respect and enjoy each other's company. He'd rather have died than left Haya to rot alone in a cell.
So they'd become mercenaries, fighting together, loyal to Ul'dah, the Sultan and the Syndicate. Loyal until the day they were given that damned mission.
His hand squeezed about the wooden figure. "Operation Proximate 6-2," he said, his smile falling into a frown, his teeth gritting even as he said the words. On the surface it had been a mission simply to eliminate opposing cartels threatening the wealth of the Syndicate. In truth...
Kain shook his head. Well, it had been far worse, and Haya had abandoned the mission rather than dishonor himself. Kain should have done the same, and done it sooner, but only after Haya had abandoned did he do the same. When the Syndicate had put a bounty on Haya for disloyalty, Kain had agreed to hunt him down, and had instead vanished.
Almost two decades later, he was here, and not happier for it. When he'd first become servant to the empire, he'd imagined he was destined for great things. He'd had visions of reliving his glory days, years in the past, of being a warrior once more. The assault on Ala Mhigo, while it had employed ground forces, had relied heavily on superior technology to simply decimate the city. Kain had not been happy with his role, and had found little to challenge him in combat while they'd engaged the admittedly brave defenders of the city. Still, what threat was there when the empire's war machines could have laid waste to any potential threat? At no time had he been happy with the rape of Ala Mhigo, and while he'd impressed his commanders with his superior mastery of arms and his skill in conjury, at no time had he felt personally threatened. He'd felt in far dire straits during his days in the desert, when he'd been a tracker, a lone warrior or a mercenary. He'd felt no great honor from taking Ala Mhigo. In the aftermath he'd been given a high position here, and he felt no better for it. There were no challenges here, no threats, unless one allowed threats to happen. The incident with Revan was the clearest sign of that, but that had been a preventable death, were these guards not so badly trained or so lazy. Yet more than that, there was simply no honor in beating the imprisoned.
He focused hard on the wooden figure, sliding it into a pocket in his robe. "Where have the years gone, Haya?" he wondered aloud. "You my friend must be... forty now? Maybe a little younger, maybe a little older?" His hand slid upwards, his fingers touching at his skin, which had softened and moistened in his years in the empire. It was a much easier life than nomadic wanderings in the desert. "And me... shall I ever see you again? I wonder how you are doing now. I wonder if you ever made it to the boat." He smiled, tilting his head forward, nearly leaning into his own knees. "I know you did."
He sighed, shaking off his memories as he got up, his hand taking hold of the tiara. He felt better now, and he had one last duty before he went to bed. He slid the mask over his face and pulled the hood over the top of his head, appearing once more like a faceless wraith, like a shadow in the cloak.
*****
Regardless of what these other guards may have though of him, Kain knew there was no such thing as a perfect warrior. Everyone had a weakness. He thought of this even as his hand fell to his stomach, where a wound so large it should have been fatal ever reminded him of life's fragility and death's immediacy. However, regardless of the reality, it was not reality which put fear into men, it was the image. Some men could back up their image, others could not. Kain had trained long to back up that image, decades really, but he knew that death could come as easily as the night if he ever let his guard down.
Especially in a place like this.
His hand moved to the keys at his waist and, putting them to the cell doors, he stepped into a room of four prisoners. The other three were inconsequential to him, it was Revan he had come to see. Lowering himself to the man's unconscious frame, he tilted the man's face upwards. His fellow prisoners had done little to arrange the body, and neither had the guards. This was no way to leave a man, face down in the filth that covered these prison floors. Taking hold of the man by the shoulder, he flipped him onto his back, his fingers moving towards the man's neck. They pressed gently just below the jaw line and, to his satisfaction, he could feel the beating of a pulse. On rare occasion, shock caused by a blow to the thigh could be fatal. This one was strong though, deadly if left unchained, and apparently deadly even while chained.
"You're going to have a hard time of this old boy. No use getting yourself into more trouble than you have to. They're going to have to let you go one day, after all. Perhaps." His fingers slid away from the man's neck and to his temple, which he tapped slightly. "Judging by the way you've acted almost since day one though, I'm not sure whether that will be a good thing or a bad thing. Seems you lost something along the way. We all have, but you... I don't know what to make of it." He stood up, for a moment lifting the cloth of one of his gloves, a shimmering sparkle raising up from underneath it, something crystalline and beautiful. "I came to tell you I'm bored of this place. Not sure if you'll remember me saying this or not, though. Either way, if I see you on the outside, I'm not sure whether you'll be friend, foe, or something entirely different." His hand fell to his pockets and, grasping at three mound of fresh cheese, he tossed them towards the three prisoners who sat, looking at him in the strangest fashion.
"Don't ever say I didn't do anything for you," he said, though there was no emotion in his voice, no humor or sarcasm. "I may or may not see you again."
With that he turned, slamming the doors closed. He was having one of his premonitions, that strong urge of his emotion. He could feel conflict coming. He thought, maybe he'd stick around a while longer. If nothing happened, he'd find a way to leave. If something did, he'd have himself a little fun, and then leave anyway. Either way, he could feel the call, as he did from time to time. It was beckoning him back to the west, to Eorzea. He wasn't sure if that was to old treading grounds in the deserts of Thanalan, to the Black Shroud, to Dravania or somewhere else entirely different. All he knew was, his time in the empire was waning. New things were going to happen soon.
Now, he stood in a room, completely round, torches upon the walls tossing light about the stone face. The light crept upwards to the domed ceiling, fading so that the roof was only barely visible in the darkness of the shadows. All about him, bags full of sawdust and hay were propped up on wooden supports, a dozen or so of them in scattered formation about the large training room. He'd made a life here during his time assigned to the citadel, this imposing prison to which many of the worst criminals and prisoners in the Garlean Empire were assigned. There was little else to do but read when he was not on duty, and if he allowed himself to spend even a day away from his training, he feared becoming like so many others who had grown fat off their lazy work in the prison.
He reached to his back and stripped off the gargantuan axe that he kept always at his back, turning suddenly and putting the blade clean through one of the bags, its contents spilling out onto the floor with a rush. Had it been a man, that would have been his intestines. He then spun immediately, swinging the axe and catching the next back close to the the top, just so that the upper contents went flying into the air. That would have been someone's head. He continued in a circular motion, curving the blade downwards at the next bag, cutting it low and at an angle so that the sawdust fell out from the bottom. That would have been someone's legs.
He then spun, looking into the distance at a row of three bags, too far away to attack. He thrust his hand outwards, wind whipping at his back, eyes narrowing in focus as a gust of air blew past him, taking the bags and throwing them against the wall with enough force that they broke their wooden supports before collapsing onto the ground. The wooden chunks fell to the ground with a clatter, the bags slumping to the floor, while Kain hesitated a moment, sweat forming on his brow and staining his tiara. He blinked, for all of a moment the room vanishing. It was replaced by the sight of lines of warriors, ready for battle, desert sand stretching as far as he could see. The sun overhead was so bright it scorched the ground, a shimmering wave of vision sifting up from the sands as the heat made it difficult to see straight. In the next blink of an eye, he was once more back in the training room, breathing heavily. His eyes moved to his hand, still outstretched, and he suddenly withdrew it, looking ashamed, having been so stolen into the vision that he could not account for how much time had actually passed. All about him there were still lying many bags, their innards strewn about, and he suddenly had no strength to clean it up himself. Turning suddenly to the door, he flung it open, glancing up and down the hallway.
"Steward! Cleanup!"
*****
Kain's room was nothing much more than anyone else's. A small bed occupied the right wall, while on the left was a dresser atop which was a bowl of water and a lit candle, adding to the moonlight streaming in from the slit of a window that sat over his bed. A mirror hung above the dresser and, stripping his tiara from his face, he suddenly became Hyuran again, no longer appearing as the faceless wraith that the rest of the guards here knew him to be. He was still breathing more heavily than he was used to, and a glance in the mirror told him he was fatigued. Feeling weak, he stumbled to the dresser, bracing atop it as he forced his eyes into the mirror. His brown hair fell at his back in a ponytail, the tattoos beneath his face reminding him of days long ago, before even his days as a fighter in Ul'dah.
He sighed, looking downward, and catching sight of one of his wooden carvings atop the dresser, he lifted it. It was a symbol, something like a star, which he had fashioned long ago, in memory of his friend Haya.
"Haya." He sighed, lifting it close to his brown eyes. "It's been years."
It truly had been years since he had seen the boy. They had been friends, though they had started as foes. All it had been was a bar fight following drinks and a game of cards. Kain had taken the boy for almost all his purse, and Haya had been convinced cheating was involved. Kain smiled, laughing slightly as he walked to his bed, sitting down upon the hard mattress. He fingered the small carving, running it about his fingers as he thought of that night.
"Cheating? Me?" His grin spread, amused. "Well Haya, it is true that I was once involved with a woman who taught me all about playing dirty." He stopped as he said this grimacing at the double entendre. "In games, I mean, and maybe a little in combat." His smile faded slightly at the thought of her. So long ago, too, with her. Before Ul'dah. Long before Ul'dah.
Those years, before he'd become a fighter in Ul'dah, were now so far on the horizon of his mind that they seemed to be as dreams and figments of his imagination, like stories one reads when one was a child and then slowly forget, clinging only to bits and pieces as a person got older. Ul'dah had been only... what? Twenty, maybe thirty years ago? There he'd begun his new life, fighting in the arenas, earning a small reputation as a hero of the people, until that bar fight with Haya stripped him of his ability to fight. In place of that, the Syndicate which oversaw the city had asked him to be a mercenary in their employ. He'd gladly accepted, on the condition that Haya be employed as well. In the week following the fight and their arrest, they'd shared cells directly across from each other, and had come to respect and enjoy each other's company. He'd rather have died than left Haya to rot alone in a cell.
So they'd become mercenaries, fighting together, loyal to Ul'dah, the Sultan and the Syndicate. Loyal until the day they were given that damned mission.
His hand squeezed about the wooden figure. "Operation Proximate 6-2," he said, his smile falling into a frown, his teeth gritting even as he said the words. On the surface it had been a mission simply to eliminate opposing cartels threatening the wealth of the Syndicate. In truth...
Kain shook his head. Well, it had been far worse, and Haya had abandoned the mission rather than dishonor himself. Kain should have done the same, and done it sooner, but only after Haya had abandoned did he do the same. When the Syndicate had put a bounty on Haya for disloyalty, Kain had agreed to hunt him down, and had instead vanished.
Almost two decades later, he was here, and not happier for it. When he'd first become servant to the empire, he'd imagined he was destined for great things. He'd had visions of reliving his glory days, years in the past, of being a warrior once more. The assault on Ala Mhigo, while it had employed ground forces, had relied heavily on superior technology to simply decimate the city. Kain had not been happy with his role, and had found little to challenge him in combat while they'd engaged the admittedly brave defenders of the city. Still, what threat was there when the empire's war machines could have laid waste to any potential threat? At no time had he been happy with the rape of Ala Mhigo, and while he'd impressed his commanders with his superior mastery of arms and his skill in conjury, at no time had he felt personally threatened. He'd felt in far dire straits during his days in the desert, when he'd been a tracker, a lone warrior or a mercenary. He'd felt no great honor from taking Ala Mhigo. In the aftermath he'd been given a high position here, and he felt no better for it. There were no challenges here, no threats, unless one allowed threats to happen. The incident with Revan was the clearest sign of that, but that had been a preventable death, were these guards not so badly trained or so lazy. Yet more than that, there was simply no honor in beating the imprisoned.
He focused hard on the wooden figure, sliding it into a pocket in his robe. "Where have the years gone, Haya?" he wondered aloud. "You my friend must be... forty now? Maybe a little younger, maybe a little older?" His hand slid upwards, his fingers touching at his skin, which had softened and moistened in his years in the empire. It was a much easier life than nomadic wanderings in the desert. "And me... shall I ever see you again? I wonder how you are doing now. I wonder if you ever made it to the boat." He smiled, tilting his head forward, nearly leaning into his own knees. "I know you did."
He sighed, shaking off his memories as he got up, his hand taking hold of the tiara. He felt better now, and he had one last duty before he went to bed. He slid the mask over his face and pulled the hood over the top of his head, appearing once more like a faceless wraith, like a shadow in the cloak.
*****
Regardless of what these other guards may have though of him, Kain knew there was no such thing as a perfect warrior. Everyone had a weakness. He thought of this even as his hand fell to his stomach, where a wound so large it should have been fatal ever reminded him of life's fragility and death's immediacy. However, regardless of the reality, it was not reality which put fear into men, it was the image. Some men could back up their image, others could not. Kain had trained long to back up that image, decades really, but he knew that death could come as easily as the night if he ever let his guard down.
Especially in a place like this.
His hand moved to the keys at his waist and, putting them to the cell doors, he stepped into a room of four prisoners. The other three were inconsequential to him, it was Revan he had come to see. Lowering himself to the man's unconscious frame, he tilted the man's face upwards. His fellow prisoners had done little to arrange the body, and neither had the guards. This was no way to leave a man, face down in the filth that covered these prison floors. Taking hold of the man by the shoulder, he flipped him onto his back, his fingers moving towards the man's neck. They pressed gently just below the jaw line and, to his satisfaction, he could feel the beating of a pulse. On rare occasion, shock caused by a blow to the thigh could be fatal. This one was strong though, deadly if left unchained, and apparently deadly even while chained.
"You're going to have a hard time of this old boy. No use getting yourself into more trouble than you have to. They're going to have to let you go one day, after all. Perhaps." His fingers slid away from the man's neck and to his temple, which he tapped slightly. "Judging by the way you've acted almost since day one though, I'm not sure whether that will be a good thing or a bad thing. Seems you lost something along the way. We all have, but you... I don't know what to make of it." He stood up, for a moment lifting the cloth of one of his gloves, a shimmering sparkle raising up from underneath it, something crystalline and beautiful. "I came to tell you I'm bored of this place. Not sure if you'll remember me saying this or not, though. Either way, if I see you on the outside, I'm not sure whether you'll be friend, foe, or something entirely different." His hand fell to his pockets and, grasping at three mound of fresh cheese, he tossed them towards the three prisoners who sat, looking at him in the strangest fashion.
"Don't ever say I didn't do anything for you," he said, though there was no emotion in his voice, no humor or sarcasm. "I may or may not see you again."
With that he turned, slamming the doors closed. He was having one of his premonitions, that strong urge of his emotion. He could feel conflict coming. He thought, maybe he'd stick around a while longer. If nothing happened, he'd find a way to leave. If something did, he'd have himself a little fun, and then leave anyway. Either way, he could feel the call, as he did from time to time. It was beckoning him back to the west, to Eorzea. He wasn't sure if that was to old treading grounds in the deserts of Thanalan, to the Black Shroud, to Dravania or somewhere else entirely different. All he knew was, his time in the empire was waning. New things were going to happen soon.
![[Image: Mog%20House%20Final.jpg]](http://usera.ImageCave.com/DaishiGajo/Mog%20House%20Final.jpg)