92nd of Glade, 119th Year of the Age of Steel
The Southwest Slums of The Free City of Antiris
The Southwest Slums of The Free City of Antiris
It might have been a day like any other. Arvine had been woken by an argument over snacks that one of his juvenile comrades had been hoarding from the others. It ended promptly enough, but once he was up he was up for the day. He took a basic, basin bath and fussed over his appearance in a sheet of polished bronze- Not to make himself look tidy, but to make himself look the right balance of unkempt to detract attention rather than draw it. To blend into a crowd like a nobody, not to frighten people off like an untouchable.
The morning and afternoon were spent making his rounds through the various market places that served as his hunting grounds. Lately, Demitrov had teamed Arvine up with a human boy named Mihai. It had been couched as a decision made because of their ‘complementary techniques’, but Arvine couldn’t help notice it was suspiciously timed shortly after he’d been caught trying to leave the hideout with a bag of his belongings. That had been well over a year ago, after a botched purse-snatching had turned into an unique opportunity to abscond from the home he loathed- To flee into the West with an over-generous foreigner who somehow saw something worthwhile in Arry. But Demitrov had scotched that opportunity. But perhaps the foreigner hadn’t even followed-through on their plan. Maybe Aurin had left on his own the next day and never looked back- never thought about the thief who’d stolen more of his time than gold already. Whatever the case, now Arry had Mihai to chaperone him.
The day’s haul had been moderate, and the porridge provided for supper watery. Arvine was not the only one of his comrades to go to bed with a grumbling stomach. It was not, however, the familiar sound of quarreling teens that stirred him from slumber on this occasion. It was the sharp, throaty shouts of strangers and the desperate shrieks of his brethren. The first word he could make out in the midst of the din was,
“RAID!”
The hideout had been exposed. Arvine leapt to his feet, and spun around to get his lay of the land and take stock of the gravity of the situation. The constabulary had sent a small army, it seemed, and all around him grown men were beating or binding the children and teens who inhabited this dark corner of the slum. He grabbed the tunic he’d folded and placed atop his shoes to serve as a pillow- He grabbed the shoes, too, as an afterthought, and bolted toward the nearest exit, spilling into a dark alleyway. He bolted toward the dim light of the main street and, as he reached the corner, a darkly-clad man whipped around and obstructed his path to freedom. Ploughing into the constable, who had significant height and weight on the scrawny teen, Arry was knocked back onto his rear- Landing on the hard ground with a stinging thud.
“Not so fast, you little scoundrel.” The city guardsman bounded down, reaching behind Arvine’s neck to grab him by the blond hair that protruded from under his cap.
“Ah!” The youth let out a sharp yelp, and struggled in the grasp of the larger man, causing the hat to ride up. He tried to keep his golden eyes to the wall his fingers dug at in his desperate attempts to flee, but at this proximity and with position of his cap revealing more cartilage than most humans had, it was a fruitless endeavour.
“A little Elf urchin, eh?” The constable chortled, unkindly, and dragged Arry to his feet. “Your cellmates in the dungeon will make a good go of you.” He said, with a cruel, crooked sneer that bore yellow-stained teeth with quite a few missing.
Arvine snarled as his fear was suddenly supplanted by an overweening ire. His irises went wide, and illumed like twin Searing suns, poised to bleach and burn whatsoever lay bare before them. It was at the height of that moment’s wrath, that time seemed to slow and all was quiet for the briefest moment, before he could hear a quiet, distant tone. But no, it wasn’t distant- Within a moment it was nearby. And as the volume grew, he realised it wasn’t a single tone, either, but a chord. Dark, dissonant and cacophonous, but a chord- and it surged from the sallow flesh of his assailant. Stranger yet, he could see it… Faint and barely perceptible, but there were lines of colour worming forth from the man’s person. And he could see that they seemed to be drawn toward his left wrist… Where his inheritance was imprinted.
Returning his fiery gaze to the hate-filled eyes of the attacker, he parted his lips and felt a warmth build along the lines of the rune, as he emitted a voice not his own- An uglier, raspier sound that lived in the same sonic world as those in the chord that sung its wretched din to him, but it wasn’t the same. It was his own, and the squiggles of light were suddenly more drawn toward his wrist as he descanted a simple command:
“Release.” And the constable obliged. The grasp that tore at Arvine’s hair relaxed and the youth stumbled back, as the eldritch moment passed and time seemed to move at its normal pace once more. The assailant gaped in disbelief at Arvine, who stared, just as rattled, at the officer. After a beat, the young mixed blood darted by the constable and out into the street.
He pulled his hat back down to cover his ears, and when he drew his hands down he found them speckled with blood. He quickly reached one hand up under the wool and felt around, realising the origin must have been his ear canal itself. He pulled the hat farther down, and kept running. There wasn’t time enough to concern himself with threats less immediate than those of the small army of police descending upon his home. He kept running- Out of the slum, out of the quarter, and ultimately out of the city itself.
It was dawn and he didn’t know how long he’d been on the open road, when he realised he didn’t even know where it led, nor where he wanted to go. What he did know, in that moment, was that he had no desire to return to Antiris. It had been a cruel place to Arvine in the best of times, and the recent tumult had severed whatever tethers had held him there.
He’d heard stories of other places where things were better. In younger days, he wouldn’t have needed to pause- The Hytori motherland of Sol’Valen would have been his destination. But meeting her on the verge of adulthood had soured the idealistic notions he once bore for that place. The stories that most called to Arvine’s heart today were Western promises- Tales told by a fair-skinned foreigner about a city of art and culture- A melting pot of peoples, guarded by beautiful ‘Bird boys’, as Aurin had called them. In Kalzasi, Arvine would find his true home.
