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Trevor

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Last year, Autumn
Free city of Aragor​


It was always easy to choose who got fortune. Misfortune on the other hand... that's where his hands shook. His determination wavered. It was always easier to give than to take. But if he was being honest with himself, inflicting harm was a kind of giving too. Just not a gift you wanted. He had waited too long. And gifts rippled underneath his skin, ungiven.

Luck always started soft. Liked to play at being your friend. The brush caught fire, but it never reached their house. A fisherman with a record-setting catch. Ladder tilted and stilled again, child finishing the climb none the wiser. He used to think these were kindnesses. That he was kind. But he'd been on the road long enough to know better. Luck wasn't a blessing. It was delay. Decay.

He gave far too much on the road to Aragor. Let a mother find her kid before dark. Shopkeep got the order he'd been waiting on to pull him afloat – just barely. An old man's cough got tired overnight. A caravan passed untouched, bandits distracted by game in the woods. And he knew what it all meant. Admitting it was another matter.

It had been weeks since he properly hurt anyone. And that made it worse. Because Luck did not understand accumulation...only momentum. And he never should've let it build up.

Like an old oak on a disputed porperty line. At first they liked the shade. And it marked the edge. Then someone claimed it got more leaves on their side. Then someone tried to cut it. Fists and pitchforks. Disputes and deaths. By the time they set it on fire, no one rememberd who owned it. By the time they were all hanging from its branches – there was no one left to care.

His steps found the streets of Aragor depressing. Once rich and beautiful – it now held that Aragor-shine. Just another word for a polished turd. All gold-flaked and hollow. Air once tasted of mints and smiths. Jewelers cut stones and set them into bronze. But that was ash now. Rings pawned. Projects abandoned. Their secession from the Empire had been long and bloody. Half the craftsmen died in the raids and fires. The other half went slow.

No one bothered fixing the chipped cobbles or cleaning the stained marble. More stalls abandoned than not. The few shops still open had their trinkets polished up to look older than they were. Parody of their former selves.

The people Trevor passed on the street all had little hungry eyes, and a stomach full of memories. This place didn't need his rotten touch. If anywhere had suffered enough already – it was here. It was them. But he could not deny the cracks slowly forming in the air around him.

A man managed to slip by a bone-dry fountain. Another fell out his window and broke more than pride. A little one lingered under a balcony that was just a little too tired of its duty.

Small things. Counting down.

He was too far from the exit to get out. Wasn't sure what he hoped for. To start a fire? Blight their fields? He kept pushing for the market square. At least he wouldn't destroy their homes there. That was the best he could hope for. Damage concentrated. And if it meant some stomped shops and a few dozen rolled ankles – well, that was acceptable.

The square grew wide, once-white stones and memory of better days. Its pale face pocked with a mishmash of stalls and patrons. In the far center, scaffolds rose around a statue of someone. An important fucker, he hoped. Had to be to spend all those resources on stone in a city that could barely afford firewood. Didn't matter. The weight of it did. Too much stone, and none of the reason. One more monument in a city that was already a tombstone of its own future.

Trevor stopped mid-step. Because it started just beneath his floating foot. The tremble of prophecy. A shake of rib and spirit. All buried in a crack that hadn't spoken yet, but already existed. A fault was forming. The time between scaffolds swaying and the statue tilting was measured in blinks. The ground grew soft. Edges first. Then everywhere. Because it wasn't just the statue's weight that was wrong. It was everyone's.

A drop on his cheek. And another. Sky itself spitting on them - just in time to make everything worse.

He didn't run. It was too late. Simply turned to someone on his left. They were a step too far.

„Move.“ The pleading barely made it out.

And then the square gave up.
 
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He'd still be travelling come winter, Walter had realized as he said goodbye to his last companion and the cart it faithfully pulled for many miles. Without a horse, every day of travel turned into three, and rest often had to come off-road, lucking out if there was a place prepared by other travelers, having to put effort if there wasn't.

Sometimes, unsavory sorts would try to accost him, doubt in their eyes as they'd stare at a thoroughly dirt-stained, tattered wool cloak and worn boots.
The tired, dark eyes that could almost be mistaken for brown or black in dimmer lighting, would stare back, framed by sleepless shadows at the lids, gaunt, pale features belaying a struggle that looked much like sickness, a shaggy, uneven beard, broken nails on one hand and the other hand thoroughly bandaged making some wonder if the man dragging himself down the road was perhaps a leper.

Most of the brigands would not bother. Some would be driven away by their own assumptions. The few who chose to persist on getting under his cloak, have so far been too desperate for any gain or too relaxed by his worn visage. He had a steady blade hand, still, and applied the means of his defense with an intimidating ferocity of a large cornered prey.
Most of them did not have enough Shroud to take for his own wounds, after; most of the times he did not have many wounds, and so the withering was slow. He had to make it.

Dirt path by merchant road by village by keep by slippery stones across a creek, he roamed like a wraith, seeking directions between Free Cities, to make it to the border, to familiar landmarks... to Bremen. He'd been to Aragor once, about a dozen years ago. Spent most of his earnings in Brezat's company that day, when Garrick inexplicably found his place of stay and once more tried to convince him to return home and step in as proper heir, seeing his leave as flight of fancy. Walter sent back a wrought briar and ivy pin of bronze, for Dolores' twenty-first birthday.

Thirteen years ago, was it. Gods, it felt like three lifetimes ago, but he still remembered the bitter honey notes in the local ale. And a bright smile through a ginger beard on a blacksmith's son, broad-shouldered, built powerful like a bull; the man joked around as he was changing the horseshoes on Azur, more at ease with the strange lordling than the company the lordling kept.

Now that he'd been walking down the thoroughfare, he noticed that the alehouse must have stood abandoned for quite sometime, dark tracks of mold on whitened walls, moss and grass and chips in the stone foundation. Perhaps he could stop there for the night, so long as he'd get some food. The smaller street vendors were all gone from outside the main square, congealing against the city's hemorrhaging wealth.

Heavy. Perhaps, a fever was creeping in again, body trying to right itself, Shroud trying to repair an almost empty vessel - and he had nobody to blame but himself, and his own poor choices.

*

And then, it hit him. Petrichor before the rain fall. Vibration of a string still pulled taught. Clarity cut through the fatigue.

He was at the edge of the square, just crossing to the vegetable stall, hand beyond the tattered cloak feeling out his travel expenses.

The first shake was the ground bumping up to his feet, making his knees buckle. Pavestones sprung from their seats, dirt spraying up between them like blood from a cut.
Some...one. And... else, but there was a someone.

Tiny pinpricks of light bloomed at the bottom of the pupils, faint in the grey afternoon, and the gaze tracked the direction with precision. The mover was there. Not too far. By the statue. Hammer in loosening fingers. Heart's last seizure.
For a few heartbeats, there was awareness, an unspoken solidified intent of enmity.

He was awake, reinvigorated at the surge of rapid heartbeat, visceral urgency mixing with dread and settling in a sheet of ice around his kinder judgements. Unblinking stare, not yet focused on the target, was turned in its direction for another beat. The Harvest was all that mattered, and the quiet wraith started moving with a silent, feral fluidity, avoiding those that screamed and ran and did not want to die.

Then, the second shake came, and, as if the statue was an anchor to the city's doom, the ground gave in proper. The noise was ear-splitting, worse than finding oneself as a blade mid-tempering, worse than being in the middle of a raging thunderstorm in a vast, hollow sea. The ground erupted in giant, uneven shards as it sagged forcefully down, crushing stalls and people and the pieces of the gods damned statue. Dust billowed in a thick, suffocating cloud.

And there was yet something worse, now, than someone. Something that would take more than the crater that rumbled and fell, and fell, and broke, and churned what once was ground and square and people walking on it, burying many alive and more freshly dead.
Some thing. Below.

In a moment before being swept away by the gravity, by miracle avoiding any of his bones being crushed into paste by the moving rubble and maneuvering with an almost inhuman reflex but a very tired human body - a moment before something hit him in the head...
He felt his senses settle on the seed to reap first. A good Harvest that would last him long.
...then, black flooded everything.

*

The man's eyes opened before they dragged him out to the edge of the crater fully. He could feel bone-chilling cold first - the rain had been soaking everyone, turning ground into sticky mud and angled, worn stones into slippery traps. People were crying, screaming, calling out names. The dust settled under heavy rain.
Nobody held him back when he sat up - the men rushed past to the next body on the surface.
He was alive. Bruised but whole. Around, was sheer chaos of people trying to organize against the new unknown.
His target was below. Too far to dig by hand. The wait would be excruciating.
But something else was... not too far. The rock that started the avalanche.

Walter's head turned, searching. He stood, straightened, ripped remains of the cloak in several strips against simple linen clothes. Nostrils flared, as if searching for a missing scent.
And started moving along the edge of the crater, stalking closer to the spot he'd felt the someone last.
 
But they never did. Stones did it for them. One tumble, two – and you never could have guessed that anyone had been there before. He knew better than to look down the crater that began with him. He knew. Looked anyway. Clouds of roaddust, repurposed as cover for the retreating ground. His ears usually rung after a thunderclap...but he could hear them all this time. Screeching below. Running about. A different kind of mercy.

The gaping pit called to him. And he wanted to. But with his Luck, he'd probably not even break a leg. Then he'd just be stuck in a stinkin' hole, trying to dig his way out. Stinkin'?

But he had no time to be weary. No time to worry about the scent he hoped wasn't coming from his pants. Knelt down and set himself to purpose, helping drag the luckier fuckers out. An arm here. A lift there. Thinking too long meant listening harder. And he'd heard enough. Each one he pulled up got triaged by his fucked up gift. Past pretending, he made sure to inflict as much as he blessed.

The boy with the gnarly knee would walk again, but the limp would cling. The woman with blood in her mouth would see the morning. A bruised rib cracked instead. But wounds forgot what rot was. Fear dug deeper – so hope could be bolstered. And each one dug out cast another deeper into the rubble.

Pfft. Blessed. What a joke.

Through it all, rain. Made the stones slicker. Hands slippery. Made sure the ones already inside the gap wouldn't be the last to find it. He hoped no one got pinned down there. Drowning was a bad way to go.

Someone thanked him on the way up. Nearly tossed the fucker back in, Luck and all.

The smell seemed to abate somewhat in the rain. Small victories.

Bottom of the pit held a familiar shape. Hair a mess and dress clinging. Still swaying. A small spell cast between blinks – here for one and gone for another. But the shape carved into his mind even as it hid.

Couldn't be.
 
He did not stalk like he used to. There was no rabid tear, dirt springing from the soles, of an apex predator lunging for the kill. No swift and threatening approach of an inevitable clash. At least, he didn't scamper.

At least, when he let It spill over into him, it took the pain away, and the hurt in his chest, the darkness in his head, all turned into wisps of smoke, ephemera to be almost forgot until he was done. Nothing mattered, and he was a machine of heartbeat to move and breath to taste the air, and lethal array of gears clicking away in his head. His body felt light, like he was young, like he was sturdier than the flesh and blood stuff that made him. And he could feel it to whatever now comprised the marrow of his bones.

It wasn't quite there yet. Perhaps, if he got closer.
While he moved, his eyes traced the crowd - all folk grey and dirt-streaked, some bloody, some with crying faces. Not the girl. Not the old man. Not the guard. Not the half-elf.
There.
That one.
Him.
Willow-whip-thin, dirty hair, dark eyes.

The wraith's dry mouth closed and opened slightly again, confusion piercing the safety of his emotional retreat. The closer he got, the less he understood.
His eyes could not deceive, and even if they were failing - he'd feel the small tug each time it happened, like aftershocks, like a string in the web pricked by a spider leg. It would tug, then release itself back to ordinary. Back to balance. No excess.
Frustration welled up alongside confusion. What trickery was this?!
His not-quarry fixated on something at the bottom of the pit when Walter was but twenty steps away, and each of those twenty steps he got angrier still.
His Harvest never changed once the die was cast. This man, whoever he was - has caused this. He was responsible for the Thing Below, whatever it was.
How dare you.

When Walter went to grab the stranger by the shoulder, he did it with his right hand. The bandages did not slip, but where the clavicle bone under the grip would probably feel it did not have near enough meat to cushion it... his right hand felt the same. And yet, the grip of it was vice-like. To yank, and make the bastard face him, come what may.
"What did you do?" a hoarse growl, from someone who hasn't spoken to anyone in a long time.
His hood slipped off, water running down the black hair that split his gaunt face like a mosaic, until the strands disappeared into the shaggy, unkempt beard that was just as black. The eyes that could be any of the darker colors glimmered oddly, violet pinpricks of light at the bottom of his pupils from no outside source.

Rain fell in streams, whipping the ones below the skies. The shakes have stopped. For now.
 
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Grabbed at the shoulder, still raw from what he saw – Trevor wasn't in the mood for bullshit. But as he got spun around, the stranger spoke and stomped the anger out. So they just stood there and saw each other for the lepers that they were. In easier times, Trevor would've chucked the brazen fuck into the pit – but the question stilled him. He didn't ask how. Just felt seen for the first time in a while. Caught redhanded, verdict pending. Fair enough.

The hand at his shoulder wasn't shaking. It should've been. By the Eight, Trevor's was.

„If you're here to kill me, be quick about it.“ Voices matching crack for crack, one tired the other out of practice. „I've had a long day.“

He couldn't spot the shape. No matter how hard he tried. Wasn't real. Yea. That's it.
 
Because that's what you are now, right, pup? Vincent's voice hid a smile behind the fangs. In Walter's mind, the Captain was never without a signature thin smirk that ever underlined those fangs at the edge of the lower lip. A gods damned hero, doing good. Like in the songs.
He wasn't moving the same, but... there was no delusion. There was no righteous indignation at the stranger's action itself. Walter was not much better than this, calling strife to challenge the unaware and unprepared, buying peace and fortune with a demanding expenditure of sheer will and effort required to overcome...
Is he like me? The thought crept down from the top of the head like a centipede, quick and viscerally unsettling in its many possibilities.

Nostrils flared. Nobody demanded the dying to come in earnest.
"No." His tongue was dry, but the bleeding wound on the side of his temple has already knit into a fading scar. The air was thick with power, and they were stuck in it like crickets in treesblood as it rolled out, his awareness straining to comprehend the intensity of the wave.
The Harvest called, driving him restless. Now. Now. Move. It stirs. Hunt. Consume.
"Answer me."
Time was of the essence. He could not ride the wave of hunting spite and agitation forever, his body was weaker than he'd ever remembered, worn away by bleeding for naught and the long road.
... did this one know what he'd done? Or only vaguely aware, ascribing guilt to himself when the accumulation reached the screaming point of shattering into a full calamity, because then one could no longer deny being painfully aware?

He was not a cruel man if he could help it. But softness, now, would be his own downfall.
"We might be similar," he voiced. Agitation was beginning to tinge with something else, a lighter sensation stirring into the hollow of his chest. Urgency made the voice waver as the next words spilled out, "I need to know if you know what you did, or if I have to do this alone."
 
Eyes closed, he was almost ready. Much as a man could get for such things. For all the death Trevor foresaw, he never could see his own. Could never quite figure out whether it was better that way. When it came for him he'd finally get to be surprised. But it never came.

„Of course I know“ He always understood. Just a tad late. Always too late. One would think that after enough failure you'd get better at avoiding it – not Trevor. „But what good does that do?“ Knowing never helped anyone.

Eyes opened and the man's hand was still on his shoulder. His hand came up to rest on it. Not the end of him, then. That posed different problems.

„If you are like me.“ And he hoped against it. „You should run. Far as you can. Soon as you can.“

He tapped the vice that held him before his fingers fell back down.
 
Eyes narrowed. The wraith did not understand the stance. If this one knew, then why'd he let it... His head tilted to the side, those will'o'wisp eyes burrowing into the other's face with a silent demand that would not quite reach the words.
The moment fingers touched his hand, the grip snapped open, arm whipping sideways in an almost dismissive notion.
Two lines deepened between the brows.

Someone passed with a lantern, descending along the dirt waterfalls, a rope in the other hand. The pinpricks flickered, faded to tekhelet hue as the pale man's attention shifted.

Maybe, he'd just gotten to understand. It was a horrifying affair, becoming. Most in his position would die, most not lucky enough, not knowledgeable enough, not willful enough, not resourceful enough... that this other one lived, was a strange comfort, even though for now Walter marked him a bastard.

The lantern bearer slipped, but regained the footing against the tilted piece of what was the statue'd pedestal, and continued the descent.

"Run? No. You-" lips pressed together, the last color fading out of them for a moment, nostrils flared, and when he spoke again, the tone was that of reassuring, eyes turning back to the strange mover. "We have it, doubt me not. We have the thing below if we apply. I'll help you, I might have more years on this, even if I'm not in my strength. Listen. There is no running from the Harvest. We have to take a bite out of serendipity to make peace manifest. You've done something that made the rot well up faster, can't you see?" Urgency, there was, as he gestured at the bottom of the pit. "We can excise it, now. Do you understand?"
 
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The other guy droned on. About doing, helping, serendipity and whatnot. Excise? Who talked like that? He looked half-mad with sickness and hunger. But he'd seen Trevor for who – for what he was. And that carried weight. Even if Trevor didn't want it. Pit still looked up to them. The apparition still out of sight. He had no desire to go down there. Didn't want to be sure about what he'd seen.

He found comfort in watching the struggling lantern-fucker. Guy wanted to climb down and help, but the world kept messing with him. Glad for brave men, he made the rope just a little firmer in its stance. The tiniest push. He'd make someone stub a toe or something. But later. Still too many people in the area. Too much misfortune to let it unravel on its own.

„You don't want me touching this.“ He took the madman's measure. „You probably shouldn't either.“

Still didn't step away. Because if the rope could hold, so could he.
 
The noise that erupted from the shaggy beard parting into a bitter smirk was between a cough and a morbidly bemused wheeze. Teeth bared, too good for a drifter, and odd, somehow, fangs coming into neat points.
"It's rooted now that you've called it, and won't stop growing by itself," he pointed out.

It seemed so trivial. Why was this one so listless now, instead of riding on that almost predatory yearning for the emerging challenge? Not too much time to think about semantics, maybe the stranger was like him, but somehow managed to be a careless bastard, too. Maybe, he was resolved to not involve himself, even if it meant disasters would spring up like crops from under the snow, wherever dormant seeds lay.

He looked around, eyes like a starlit sky through a black mirror, wisps tracking the contours within the iris, all the way to the center, the well of dark where they lingered before fading. It hurt to look. The world blurred with involuntary tears, quickly blinked away, his head too sharp, too clear, his senses demanding to reach below the earth where there was yet no passage.
Frazzling. His body's ache was returning, too, the need for sustenance and sleep.

"I am not leaving these people with it," he stated simply. A step back from the edge. One could bemoan bad luck for getting rained on, but only for so long as he didn't know the weather was about to turn. Knowing was his nature, now, comprehension solidifying the course.
The hunt was no longer burning in his lungs. Everything seemed to settle, dull slightly. Gods, he was not just tired, he was crushed. His feet were killing him, his heart beat in heavy, uneven drumming, dull ache pulsed in his head from hunger, agitation winding down, and the sheer comprehension of the scale of what just happened.
He couldn't even feel the pangs of empty stomach anymore.

The man started turning away from Trevor, seeming to only now discover the stripe-torn state of his own cloak. He'd unclasped it, dragged the useless thing off his shoulders, so rain pelted against a grey wool gambeson, old riding boots and simple linen underclothes, all dirty, all upkept but wearing threadbare in places. His right hand under the sleeve was covered in bandages to the fingertips and up, way higher than the wrist.
"If you aren't helping, do you know a place one can sleep undisturbed, at least?" Grim stare. Trying to withhold judgement from the voice and failing.
 
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Which one was it? Couldn't leave them or had to go take a nap? Stress broke men in all manners. Perhaps that's what he was seeing. There were many buffers to madness. Trevor preferred to get drunk until he didn't remember where he woke up. But, you know – different strokes.

So let the man talk of rot. His hand was wrapped like he knew the touch. And Trevor knew the look. Probably wore it himself more than he'd like to admit. But if they truly were alike. They couldn't stay here. Even as they stood here, he couldn't stop meddling. A stone less slippery. A hand steadier. And it would only get worse. One of them was bad enough – two was promising to be a shitshow.

„I'd recommend the gutter. No one to judge there.“ And they were comfy spots. No one bothered you. And everyone lived. Tough sell as the sky dripped all over them. Well, at least no one could call him unwashed at this point. There was a silver lining in that.

„We take their house.“ He pointed to the unmoving bodies further off. If their presence brought about ruin, at least it would happen to the dead. And they had the luxury of not caring. A win-win really.
 
"No. Need out of rain, until I'm back into this." As if he'd seriously considered the gutter as an option. Judging by the face, he probably did - behind the haggard exterior, eyes were shifting in thought, cogs were turning. The man's breathing was slowing down, and as it grew calmer, it gained more effort needed for a full breath. The world was closing in. Too sharp, too much.
I need three hours if I am to fight, or dig.
Sleep, if strained nerve would permit it, though being near a rooted seed of malice would be excruciating. He'd have to risk it growing, because if he could not fight - then he would die before he'd stand a chance to win.

Eyes fell on the bodies, quietly assessing whether they would have been young enough to have living children, someone who might as well need help. He had a poor bedside manner, worse still with children, Walter thought dimly.
"Do you know where they lived?"
He swayed, though the ground was still. The lights blurred.
Was he a local, the wraith pondered, eyeing his companion in calamity again. There was a tense concern, a touch of irritance, but no hostility. Analysis. Same as he'd look at the sinkhole ground to try and judge if it was steady to put weight on.
 
Guessed as much for the gutter. Trevor wasn't much for swimming as he slept either. The other part was harder to answer – harder to explain. But if the stranger was anything like him, he'd need no explanation. Much like Trevor, he'd already know. There was no need to think. His feet were already turning. Because you didn't truly need to find rot – it found you.

„Come. Shouldn't be far now.“ And in his mind, he could almost picture it. A thatched, sloped roof with too much give on the east side. Had no idea where it was or how he'd get there. But each step knew where the next one should go. And that would have to be enough.

„Figured out a way to get rid of yours?“ It was the only way to ask without begging for it. And he would. He'd dreamt about it many times over the years. Not like he'd believe the answer. But you had to ask. The truth could hide under any rock – even a mad one.
 
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A nod. Heavy footfall behind Trevor in the mud, as gracious as a slowly stomping bear, the soggy folded tatters in arm. Right arm, as if by instinct to keep it hidden. Without a cloak, what few things the man had on him were open in view. A coinpurse, a road bag that seemed mostly empty. On a layered belt without a sword - a bronze dagger in its sheath, too ornate to belong with the rest of the garb.

There was a pause that lingered after the question. A few more weary steps. Eyes searching for the place he had no clue about. More thinking.
"Which part?"

The house was off the thoroughfare. Dark when they stepped in, Walter exhaling slowly and softly with relief - the shakes were coming in, the chills. He needed a fire. He needed something for the pain. He caught the scent of cooking - must have been yesterday's.
A shadow scurried underfoot, almost making him trip - a veteran mouser tabby, square-faced, grey and slightly striped and impishly green-eyed, with a nick in its ear. It did not hiss, but the stare it gave was judgement and damnation before it slinked away into the darkness.
Somewhere, something shifted, sliding cloth or a soft whimper of breath, just in the next room.
 
Which part? Like asking which part of the plague you'd like to keep. What were they even talking about? No – there were no parts to this. Perhaps it was foolish to hold to hope in the first place. If it'd been that easy to cut it off piece by piece, he'd have given every one. As many as it took. Burned Her out like the blight She was.

„Nevermind.“ Because questions like that had no answer worth hearing.

He kept moving with the precise confidence of someone who didn't need to know. It simply felt right. Even the door had already been opened for them. How thoughtful.

Nearly stepped onto the fucking cat as they entered. Heart skipped a beat, further exposing how frayed he already was. He liked cats. Reminded him of his sorry ass. No matter how much shit happened, always had another life – another chance to piss it all away.

The noise got the briefest bit of attention.

„Let them slink. It's not us should be worried.“
 
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