Stirring memory

[Rance]

Dear journal,

If you can't imagine I love being like this, you're vulkin' nuts.

I think I'm going to die soon, because I like booze and I like to fight and I like to make jokes at people who don't like jokes, so I decided, I'm gonna write up a family history so anyone who comes along the line can pluck it off my dead body and say, "Hey, let's not be like this guy, okay men?"

People complain all the damned time about how bad their life is, about how bad they got it -- it's like a newest trend, like it's vulkin' some kind've title to be tortured. Screw it -- I ain't kissin' your arse just 'cause you got it kicked too damn much. That's not me. That's not Darian.

I come from a proud family -- yeah, a slightly strange one -- but a proud one nonetheless. When I started growin' hair around my privates, that's when my dad pulled me to the side and said, "Kid, you gots to hold up our tradition."

Tradition, you ask? I was more curioius about the hair in my pants than about some stupid family tradition. And then he showed me his sword. I got real interested real fast -- swords is neat things, because when you make people bleed, you have power. I wanted to make people bleed.

So he said to me, "When I die, this sword is yours. ... You got to keep the Fairy Tale going strong. You got to be the man of your family with this sword, and a happy family is like livin' a Fairy Tale, ain't it, kid?"

Funniest thing about it? Very first day he was teaching me how to use it, I ran it through his chest. I mean, let me tell you, I didn't mean to, 'cause I loved my dad. It was an accident, though -- we just fell the wrong way at the same time. My veins ain't never stopped burning after that.

I came to discover a lot of things about the Fairy Tale. My pop's pop's pop's pop's pop's pop's pop made it ... but he weren't such a great guy. He must've thought havin' a long sword was the best way to get girls and money, so I guess something in the Heavens didn't like that idea. I think that's when the curse started.

Of course you gotta protect the family -- so you use the Fairy Tale, right? .. So they don't get eaten up by some ugly woods-beast when they're playing feather-toss one day. 'Course ... rumor is, like I said, the Fairy Tale is cursed -- so havin' it is like promising your entire family death. They all die before you do. Everyone you love, when you got that thing, they die somehow .. all before you do.

And then you don't die. Not when you want to. How strange is that? It's a crock of bullcrap, that's what.

So I says to myself, after my dad was dead ... after my love threw herself off of a cliff .. after my mom was gone .. that I could make a difference in this family, right? Now, I couldn't come to destroy the sword, because even though it's a bad one, it's an heirloom, right? So I had to trick it. I had to carry on my legacy to the point where the curse wouldn't matter.

So I started killing.

Five pounds, ten pounds, a thousand pounds -- you wanted'em dead, I killed'em good. I mean, I was just a sixteen-year-old kid straight off the street with a sword twice-as-long as my body, so it seemed like a good idea to prance around and say I was a professional killer. Thing was, people believed it -- I took almost twenty hits that first year, and had a good chunk of cash to boot afterwards. That, and no one vulked with me. I was the meanest bastard you ever met before you crossed the border to find the meanest bastard *there*. My fairy tale was going to be one about killing, and booze, and murder, and thievery.

My future wife was going to be a whore, I decided, so if she needed to die, at least I could be the one who'd do it. I made friends with corrupted kooks, with urchins, with lepers quicker to stab you in the back than shake your hand. Hell, if the people around me died because of the curse on the Fairy Tale, at least they deserved to die, right?

I'm one smart vulker, I tell you. I got it all worked out. ... I was killing, I was rich. I was spending my money on sex, on bottles, on medicines that made my head spin. I was bathing in blood, and at the same time, I was ridding the world of crap just like me. Sort've sounds great, doesn't it?

I ain't going to lie. It was pretty amazing, all until I met the magic-man, though. That's when I vulked it all up. That's when I realized just what I was doing wrong...

...but before we get into that vulkin' magic hat, I gotta go get me some water. Somethin'.

[Rance]

.. that's a little better. So, right -- where the vulk was I?

Oh -- oh, the magic-man. .. Well, he was pretty unassuming, at first. You know, the usual dark-cloaked father-vulker with the shining eyes and the pockets full of cash, right? So he says to me, "I've got a very special job for you, and a very special reward if you do it properly." Hey, I'm young, I'm horny for cash, and I sit here and think that it can't be too hard a job if this sleazeball is asking me to take care of his problems.

So I agree. And he says, "I'll grant you all the power an assassin's ever dreamed of, if you complete this task for me. You're the city's most feared mercenary, from what the shadows say."

So he gives me the hit. Luke .. something. I don't know -- I don't care. He tells me where I can find him, so I'm off running, hungry for blood, and whatever power this doubtless bastard wanted to give me. Yeah, I know, if someone came up to me nowadays and said that, I'd tell them to go vulk a flyin' firepit, but back then, the Faustian promise didn't seem like such a black idea.

Let's just say I didn't do the hit all that well. In fact, let's just say I completely vulked it up. Let's say that maybe the cloaked spell-slinger that the *other* cloaked spell-slinger wanted me to kill wasn't all that weak. I vaguely remember being thrown from the top of a four-story tower, and breaking an arse-load of bones when I landed.

I vaguely remember the magic-man who'd hired me saying something about how easy it was to manipulate fools just for the fun of it. He waved his hands around before I passed out.

I guess that was the big reward, right? So I woke up, and there was Ta.

Now, imagine this -- you just went flying from a window, and barely survived the sudden stop, when some archaic, word-wielding fool waves his hands and says you're not good enough. And then you wake up, you need a drink real bad, and you realize that you're staring right into a complete mirror image of yourself, only it's everything you're not. It's got the same sword you do, it's got the same body-size, the same clothes .. the same everything. Hell, it's still probably got the same patches of crotch-hair you do, but I wasn't going to be checking that out.

Regardless, he said he was Ta. That was his name -- stupid name, at that, but that's when I found out exactly what Ta was. I'm thinking he was some kind've curse -- as if I needed another? -- and here I come to discover, he's part of me. Ta wasn't a real person, perse. Ta was an image, like a ghost. Ta would step into me, and just disappear when I didn't want him around, but he always talked to me inside of my head. And when I got real pissed and unhappy about something, there was Ta, coming out full-force, swinging his sword without any care in the world.

Sounds great, right? An extra pair of hands when you've got faces to smash doesn't sound too bad, does it? Well, it gets pretty vulkin' old when everyplace he gets hurt, you do, and it gets even more old that, to make him go away, you have to beat the living piss out of him ... which is just sort've beating the living piss out of me, really.

That's the day I stopped assassinating. In fact, that's the day I realized that I had a bigger problem to overcome than keeping my own ass out of hot-water.

That's the day I realized I had someone ele to keep safe. I had to keep Ta in-line to be sure I wasn't going to get killed. The day I realized I had more than one back to watch was when everything changed.

I'm glad it changed. If Ta ever did anything useful, it was making me realize I was leading a worthless lifestyle.

Or at least, more worthless than I am now.

[Rance]

I remembered the name. It sort've sounds like Luke, but it's different. 'Luc', I remember the way he wrote it one a little piece of paper for me. Luc Ahl's. That's who he wanted dead, but as you obviously read, I didn't succeed too much.

It was once I realized that I was never alone no more -- that I had this goddamned mirror image in me that liked to fight -- that I knew I had to change my profession. Runnin' around and killing everything that got me rich was going to turn into a bad idea real vulkin' fast, especially with this crazy-man hunkering inside of my veins.

Who knows when he was gonna pop out, and kill someone innocent when I was going after the big bad-ass? .. I sure as hell didn't. I didn't ever want to know, either.

I travelled for something around like two whole years -- occassionally swiping some eats from gardens or underground pantries when I needed to. Ta and I got to know each other pretty well. I got to know that I *hated* him. All he ever wanted to do was fight, was kill -- ... and that wasn't the way I lived no more. I gave that up.

He'd have to deal.

Fate's got this really odd way of knocking you to the ground and crappin' on your chest. It did it to me one afternoon, when I was sneakin' through this fella's farmland. You see, the roads where I come from was a strange thing -- they liked to take you the *long* way around places, when you could just cut through and turn a five-day trip into a two-day saunter, as the crow flies. So I decided to cut through some farmland. It seemed like a good vulkin' idea at the time.

I had camped up one night beneath a cove of some trees, and even without a fire, he saw me. He found me. He was an older fellow, pro'lly lookin' about sixty, sixty-five. He had himself a sickly face, and something like a cough that made him bleed. But regardless, he was a consistently kind man. At least, after that first night.

I'd heard a rustle from the trees. The next thing I knew, where I was bedded down on his land, there was this old guy bursting from the bushes with a pitchfork, stabbing and thrusting, ready to spit my sorry arse up for dead.

You gotta remember, some of these farms is miles and miles wide .. I'd been walkin' for a whole day and still hadn't come across his *personal* property, and at that time, I didn't really know it belonged to anyone. Well, I did right then, with the pronged edge of a pitchfork jabbing at my ribs. I was up and I'd drawn the Fairy Tale in defense.

I was a murderer, but killing old men wasn't my style. Not even ones that killed me. I staggered backwards, but held out my sword just to make him think I would kill him.

"What the vulk are you doing, you old son-of-a--" He retorted halfway through my question with another thrust from the pitchfork, and it smacked it away with the Fairy Tale.

"--Don't you ask what I'm doing, you stupid, young fool! You're on my property, and you're a murderer, to boot! Get yourself out of here before I cut your throat and tie you up for the vultures!"

It was not the smartest thing to do right then, but it struck lightnin' into my heart, that he knew that I'd killed before. I threw the Fairy Tale to the ground, and raised my hands up above my head. "Look, you must be vulkin' insane, man! I ain't gonna hurt you! I was just sleepin'!"

His eyes were impassioned. That fire in someone's eyes -- you can't mistake that for moonlight. It's *fire*. It has its own look. "Sleep somewhere else, you gutter-sludge pile of dung! Get off my land, get gone!"

I dropped my hands to my side and shook my head. "I don't know you, sir -- .. but it weren't my intention just to bed down on your fields for any bad reason. I just had to find a place to sleep -- I ain't killed no one in two years."

"Once a murderer, always a murderer!" He yelled, voice raspy and hoarse. "Prove to me you ain't a murderer, with that sword you got!"

".. Not only am I gonna prove *that*--" I said, ".. but I bet I can make you trust me enough to let me sleep in your barn tonight." Yeah, I know, I was going out on a limb. What said in my mind that I could turn this into a good situation for myself?

Ta must have said it, I guess. The words just came flying out.

But the old man lowered the point of his pitchfork, and gnawed upon his bottom lip somewhere within that mass of a white beard. He turned his eyes down towards his hands, and he seemed to think for a minute -- of *something*, I don't know what -- before I was rattling a hand around in one of my belt purses, and pushing out my palm to him. I had enough coin to buy a night in some hay, I gathered. I was riskin' a pitchfork in my guts, but I might as well have tried.

"Look," I told him. "I got some money for a good place in one of your barns. It's yours -- just one night."

He would shake his head and stare up at the moon. "What's to say you're not going to slit my throat in the middle of the night, and take it on back for yourself, huh, kid?"

I was silent for a minute, before I raised up a foot from the ground, and proceeded to unlace my boots. When it popped off of my stocking-swallowed foot, I thrust it out to him and demanded: "Look, smell the dirt. You're a farmer, you know what the dirt of your land smells like."

Cautiously, leering at me over the sole, he gathered the shoe and sniffed. His nose wrinkled, and his eyes narrowed. "Doesn't smell like any dirt I've ever smelled."

"And how long have you been farming in this country?"

"Seventy-one years." .. So I was a little off about the age, but I wasn't faltering. Not yet.

"So if that smells like the dirt from another land, what does that tell you, along with the coins in your vulkin' hand, old man?"

He would rattle the coins for a minute, and he tossed the boot back down to the earth at my feet. "That you're a traveller. That slitting my throat to get this money back won't do you no good, because by the time you have a chance to use it, you'll be out of the land it's accepted in."

I was grinning, and I extended my hand out to him. "Exactly. My name's Darian .. Ta," And it was the first time I'd ever put the two together. I'd forgotten my last name long ago. Murderers don't have last names. A last name is a soul. I never felt like I had one.

"Darian, eh?" He firmly shooky my hand right back. His skin was wrinkly. Brittle old bastard still had some fight in him, it had seemed. "Alright, Darian, you got my barn for tonight. ... And then, you be off with yourself in the morning, hear?"

I dipped my chin downwards in a respectful nod. "Yessir," I agreed. That was the first time in a long time I'd ever thought of sleeping in someone else's property without cutting their neck open to steal all their stuff. Yeah, you could say I felt like I had a soul.

Or maybe this was the very first time I actually realized I'd had one all along.