As the end of the alley neared in sight, the child was alarmed by a clamoring noise that seemed but a short distance away. He stopped walking as soon as he heard it, many thoughts raced through his mind yet few courses of action could be taken.
The child did not scramble to escape, instead holding his ground as he quickly concluded that they were not coming his way.
'No, it can't be them,' He ruled out the smugglers, with the city still under lockdown they had no business coming this way this early in the day.
He also considered the fact that the entrance to the alley was disguised to look like a regular wall, blending with its surroundings.
He had observed its opening before, and memorized the incantation used. Having not heard it spoken, he was sure that the approaching stomps were not the hymn of his doom.
'Let me see,'
The child crept forward, careful not to make even the slightest sound as he approached the false wall. Once he reached it, he found tiny cracks by the rays of sunlight that seeped through them, and peered out inspecting the group that blocked his path.
He saw them, they numbered four in total, rough and unruly men with more dirt on their heads than hair. They gripped their wooden bludgeons with menacing intent as they encroached from both sides.
The moment the child glimpsed the girl that stood in their midst, it became clear to him that he was not their intended target.
'It smells good' he took a deep breath.
She lingered with no sense of worry, he could almost feel the smell of roses she radiated battling the stench of her assailants.
The girl looked so out of place with her high boots white and unmuddied and her face clear without a blemish. A pointy hat sat on her head, rivaling it in length, and from it hung a little fur ball that jiggled in the breeze.
She wore a purple dress that raced her blonde hair downwards, both stopping just short of her knees. On its back sewn in glittery gold was the sigil of a candle flipped on its head.
The boy glanced all around, trying to cover his many blind spots as he hoped to find a way to slip past unnoticed should a chance present itself.
That is when he noticed a sixth figure hiding further back, its features obscured from him by a scarf and nature by a loose fitting robe.
How the scarf was wrapped around its head reminded him of a guide he once saw riding atop a giant crowned bird whose wings were unfeathered, leading people through the land.
'That doesn't look right...' He strained his eyes to take a closer look as he noticed it was somewhat different than he remembered, and the guide suddenly looked his way.
"...!" The child nearly fell on his butt as he recoiled away from the wall.
For a long moment, he panicked, hesitating to even take a breath as he anticipated that they would soon be upon him.
'No, stay away, let me go!' He felt the tightness of their clench as they dragged him out of hiding, his hand seeped through the dirt when he tried to grab it.
A jolt shook the child, his heart's way of urging him to breathe before it was shut.
He patted down his chest, looking for the hole in which he was skewered, but there wasn't any.
A few more moments passed with nothing happening, and he could hear that no one was coming.
'I am okay, I am okay...' He breathed easy.
His sense of danger and habit of getting ahead of things may have saved his life before, but he hated how real it all felt.
'Was I seeing things?' He questioned what he saw, rejecting the notion that he had been discovered.
He approached the wall again, and his eyes circled around the four, carefully scanning their faces.
'I don't recognize any of them.' he breathed a sigh of relief.
That relief stemmed from the fact that, in order to survive in this hellish place, the child was forced to memorize everything about his surroundings.
He studied where each alley led, in which places he could hide, and where people gathered. He knew every nook and cranny like the back of his hand because he was powerless, and had no recourse to confrontation but flight.
He lived his life in isolation, sleeping in ditches covered by leaves in the summer and on rooftops in the winter. Never in the same place twice, and for a few hours at the most.
Still, he strove to know the people around him, should he ever interact with them.
Every time he ran into someone he deemed dangerous, he made sure to carve their faces into memory.
Gradually, his eyes became trained to recognize those who were either willing or able to do him harm.
The child was small and weak, even by the lowest of standards, so the ones who fit that description were many.
The task of keeping up with hundreds, if not thousands, soon proved strenuous, prompting him to think of a better way.
He lived in a place devoid of law where the use of violence was seldom pondered beforehand.
A misplaced glance, an absent minded remark, or a sleight of hand exposed was all it took for a man to spill the blood of another.
He filtered out those who would perish that way, and soon the pecking order that was in place unraveled.
Those who remained, he studied everything about. He memorized their faces, the sound of their voice, the places they frequented, and even the way they walked.
He held no interest in their names, he was jealous of it, why do they get one and he doesn't?
He liked numbers, so he used them instead, the lower the number the more dangerous and cruel the individual.
This trivialized them in his mind, and often came into play as it helped him better weigh his options and overcome his fear of confrontation.
Sixty-four, that was the number he reached so far. In a list he took to calling "The list of eschew", avoiding its members like the plague.
As for the rest, the many masses who would vanish out of mind as quickly as they did out of sight, he referenced by their traits.
-A break-
With his preferred tactic of flight no longer an option as the child had no hope of outrunning a pursuit, he had little choice but to wait for this matter to settle.
The four men did not catch his eye. That is not to say that they could not harm him, but that Vagren had no shortage of such vagrants and ruffians who were up to no good.
'You will be Small, Medium, Big, and Bigger.' That's what he named them after he took notice of their varying sizes.
He turned his eye to the guide again. The child still had lingering doubt about what happened earlier and did not dare gawk at him, just a fleeting gaze he kept repeating over and over.
'Sixty-five, for now at least,' He decided to be cautious.
Then he turned his full attention to the girl, as something about the way she stood tall and confident despite the gravity of the situation vexed him.
The child did not speculate too long whether it was naivety or courage, for he will soon find out.
"So, this is her?" said Bigger as he swirled his tongue around in a menacing grin, revealing a row of crooked teeth that belonged on a decaying corpse. "You people weren't lying, huh? She does look a rich cunt."
The guide simply nodded in agreement.
"What is this place? You said we were going to take a shortcut." wondered the girl, her voice soft and chirpy.
"You know, I'm really thankful for people like you," Bigger said as he turned back towards her.
"W-what do you mean?" the girl asked.
"Your peers would have requisitioned their household's troops and a dozen servants. Traveled in the most comfortable horse-drawn carriages filled with silks and furs. But that is not you is it?"
Responded bigger as he lowered his bludgeon and scratched his protruding belly with his gloved left hand.
"It is exactly fools like you, who set out alone, trying to prove a point to themselves and others, that I am thankful for.
Usually, it's a third-born or lower clamoring for his father's attention, trying to one-up their siblings, but occasionally it is a girl that rejected her predetermined future and set out seeking adventure."
"What are you talking about?" The girl stammered, "Who are you?"
"I am someone who was once like you, I too stood where you're now standing, yet we couldn't be any more different.
See, my father was a commoner, he had children to spare, and he wouldn't mind if one or two were to go missing.
So when the ransom letter reached him, he laughed in its face, and kept laughing even as my fingers reached him one by one."
Bigger said as he removed his leather gloves and showed his left hand, he had only the middle finger left which he wiggled, the rest cut from the roots.
"This one gave them a laugh you see, so they let me keep it.
But you nobles, you are more concerned with saving face than saving coin, and that is why I am thankful."
"You are insane. I am leaving, get out of my way!"
"That's what they all say," Bigger wound up and slapped her, leaving her rolling in the dirt. "They all claim that they want to escape the robes and riches of their parents, but they still talk as though a wave of hand would make all their problems go away."
"Is it money you want? Take it, just let me go..." she pleaded with teary eyes as she surrendered her satchel.
"Yes, we want it, we can't have enough of it. But what makes you think that what you have is still yours to give?"
"Then what? What do you want from me?" She broke into tears.
"There were four of us at first, but their superior blood granted them leave, and I was left alone—
'This is gonna take a while...' Sighed the boy as he zoned out. He shifted his weight off his wounded foot, trying to find a more comfortable, or at least less painful, position to wait in.
'I don't care, just get out of my way,' he protested in silence, and quickly a gut wrenching feeling followed.
'She will live, a certainty I can't say about myself' he argued, trying to justify his apathy, 'I am in no position to worry about others.'
'A hostage for ransom. They give you food and drink and a place to sleep? I will swap places with her in a heartbeat.'
A loud cackle interrupted his chain of thoughts.
"What else but whores and drinks?" mocked a voice that came from his left. The child looked to see who was talking and found it to be Small "Ever since the sack of Verila you became obsessed with the two."
"You say that as if you didn't partake that night," Big remarked slyly. "I saw you dragging that little boy by the feet into a dark alley. Even so, this time is different."
'You son of a bitch...' the child's stomach churned. He glared at him, he now had a reason to listen, a reason to remember a new face.
They were deserters, he concluded, no doubt have been here for some time since they weren't brandishing blades.
'They must have stashed them somewhere near,' he thought. Sharp edges are the rarest commodity in Vagren, and few dare to walk around with them in public, fearing the target it puts on their backs.
"All of us did, well, save for a certain idiot," Small replied as he glared at Medium who was by Bigger's side. "So tell me, how will it be different?"
"Well, I'm saving for a visit to the Virtuous Inn once the city reopens. I'm sick of the women here, if you could even call them that."
"You think someone like you can set foot in there?" Small snickered, "Take my advice and stick with Ahra and her harlots, what's wrong with them?"
"Screw Ahra and her whores, Bald skanks the lot! Why, the last one almost looked like you. Hahahaha!"
The child, still fixated on Small's face, saw it turn orange and then red as he grimaced in a struggle. And before long, he burst into a wheezing laughter that sent snot and spit flying out all over the place.
"What, what's so funny?" asked Big.
"It's funny because," Laughed Small as he wiped his face into his elbow, "It was me!" He said more, but the rest of his words were incomprehensible as the chuckles shook his thin frame.
"What do you—" Big stumbled words for a moment, confusion clear on his face before the realization set in. He grabbed Small by the collar and started shaking him like a wet rug. "You bastard! What do you mean it was you?"
"What do you want me to say? You were blind drunk that night," Shrugged Small, "I wanted to try a threesome for once, so I used your money to do that and got me two girls."
"You wretch! Is that why I had bite marks all over my co—"
"Enough, you two! Stop messing around, and fall in line." Bigger barked an order in frustration as he rushed from the other side to break them up.
"Those two crass idiots, the foul things they say in front of a lady." Medium spoke with a stutter and kept shaking his head to the right as he approached the girl. "I am not like them, I am saving myself for someone — someone special. Say, you are like me, aren't you? You haven't done yet too right?"
Medium reached forward with nails filled with dirt to grab her, the girl did not flinch but pulled him closer with a strength unsuited to her thin frame.
She whispered a word in his ear, her breath a greenish dust, and medium froze in place.
The guide also jumped forward as soon as Bigger's back was turned. He balled a fist in front of his mouth and a light shone from his hand, it broke off into several rays that then reformed into a strange symbol.
'What the hell is binding roots?' Before the child could even wonder why these words came to mind the earth beneath suddenly trembled, throwing him off balance.
"You have endured well, Lady Elecand" he heard a shout, a woman's voice, as loud as crackling thunder. "Brigand Flip Off and the rest of his hairy-bunch crew, you are to face the king's justice for your crimes."