Scoundrels

[AllenMares]

Nick D'Alvere, known more commonly and with greater admiration as simply Nick, stared appreciatively at the large manor before him. A beautiful house of white marble and stylishly wrought iron ornamentation, its beauty diminished only by the fact that the houses around it were equally as grand.

Whistling idly, he swept a bony hand through his snarled, jet-black hair, and grinned ambiably at everyone who happened to be nearby. Most of the people around, dressed considerably better than Nick was, ignored him, but one more modestly dressed, fat man grinned back.

"Beautiful houses, aren't they?" Nick asked the fat man he approached.

"They are!" beamed the fat man, stroking a greasy goatee which looked like it was stroked too much by hands that had recently enjoyed an unhealthy meal. "I usually take an hour out of the day to just come here and look at them. They're my motivation."

"Oh?" Nick made a great show of seeming genuinely interested, arching dark eyebrows above blue eyes twinkling with curiousity. "Motivation for what?"

"Well," said the fat man, his eyes still on the houses, "When I first came to Marn, as a young man, I had next to nothing to my name. Just ambition. I saw these houses, and I swore to myself, one day I would own one of these. I've tried to come here every day since. And I've started my own business producing fine wooden furniture, which is now of such reputable name and quality that the people who live in these houses are buying it themselves! Very soon I'll have money enough to buy a mansion of my own." The man seemed like he was trying to invest a moral tale in the story, that of a poor man who rose through the ranks of society, a bright and shining example of human potential.

Nick widened his eyes in surprise. "Impressive! Truth be told, stranger, your story is a bit like mine. I never imagine that I'd be able to buy a mansion, but I too came to Marn poor, and hope to make a great deal of money."

"No need to remain a stranger! My name is Michael Vincenzzo," said the fat man, offering a sweaty, greasy palm, which Nick took with barely noticeable hesitation, wiping his hand on his pants as soon as Michael was not looking.

"Sam Morrison," answered Nicholas D'Alvere, smirking just the slightest bit.

The two chatted for a while longer, Michael becoming enchanted with this young man so much like himself, full of ambition and dreams and the will to work and learn. What an age it is we live in, Michael thought, when young poor men like myself and this one can make a fortune for themselves, the sky their only limit. Michael imparted some of his sage advice on the young Sam, wishing him well and even jokingly saying that he might be future competition. He left the conversation feeling better than ever about the state of the world and his place in it.

An hour later he noticed his wallet was missing.

************************************

Nick swung wildly into the common room of Crazy Abe's Inn, long limbs flapping, to a deafening roar of approval and greetings, the sounds of a squealing fiddle and the stench of something awful being prepared in Abe's kitchens.

Crazy Abe's inn was named for its owner, a grizzled pile of scars and slabs of muscle with patches of gray hair growing apparently at random all along the top of his head. He always seemed to have a pipe jutting out of his crag-like jaw, and he wore an eyepatch to cover up the gaping hole where his right eye used to be. Most of Abe's scars came from fights, and he had lost his eye to a city guard back in the day. He had since then reformed, and instead of being a criminal himself, simply supplied an inn, paid for with stolen money, to other criminals. So he didn't so much as reform, say, as openly encourage behavior he was no longer young enough for.

Nick tossed the fat man's wallet on the bar, where it slid until Abe slammed a massive paw down upon it. "This your haul, Nick?!" Abe constantly spoke in what seemed like a gruff low roar, a result of being slightly deafened.

Nick wiped some of the spittle from his face and smiled. "Sure, Abe. Two hundred Bishani."

"This won't cover what you owe on your room!"

"It isn't for my room. It's for drinks." Nick grinned, then deftly snatched the wallet from Abe's fingers. "And whores. Seen your wife around?" He ducked as Abe's massive fist cam barreling towards him.

"When are you going to pay what you owe on your room, you filthy snake?!" Abe roared, more angry about this than the insult toward his wife.

"Don't you worry, Abe. I've got something in mind soon to make the efforts of EVERYONE in here look like petty vandalism." Nick grinned out across at the room, enduring the good-natured jeers. "Just you wait. I'm going to buy this damn inn with what I haul in. Make it a more reputable place, which means all you'll just have to go."

"Oh, Nick, c'mere," said Abe suddenly, dropping his voice to a harsh whisper, suddenly serious. "C'mon, quick. I got something to tell you."

"Oh...okay," said Nick, moving closer.

Abe promptly grabbed him and began boxing him around the ears, laughing uproariously until Nick scrambled away.

"Damn it, Abe!" said Nick, wiping a bloody nose.

"Okay, okay, sorry. I gotcha good though, didn't I? But seriously, I do have something secret to tell you. Really."

Nick glared at Abe suspiciously, sniffing from his bloody nose.

"Seriously. I was just kidding before. But I really do have something to tell you. I swear, I won't do anything this time. C'mon."

Nick advanced warily until he was close enough for Abe to whisper to him. Abe promptly grabbed him once again and began pummeling him, laughing harder than before. Nick quickly slipped away again and bounded away.

"Look at this! What the hell is wrong with you, Abe?! I think you broke my jaw! Is...is this a part of my tooth? You chipped my tooth!"

Abe slapped his knees, his face turning red from laughter. He quickly composed himself. "Okay, okay...Ah, I can't believe you fell for it twice! Ahahaha...wooo. Anyway, though, I do have something to tell you, Nick. C'mere."

"Go to hell, Abe!" Nick shouted, stomping his way upstairs to his room.

"Aw, c'mon! No! I really do have something to tell you! Awwww...I'm sorry I love physical violence as comedy. C'mon!"


******************************

Nick entered his room at the inn, sighing and spitting out blood, and promptly noticed something about his room. It smelled different. It smelled...good? It smelled good...in Abe's Inn? Impossible.

Suddenly, a cloaked figure stepped out from his washroom, face hidden in a hood. Whoever it was, they held a club in their hands, and looked like they meant to use it.

"You'll never take me!" shouted Nick, plucking a pair of throwing knives he had hidden on himself, throwing one. It stuck in the wall next to the figure.

"No, Nick! Wait! It's me, Lymirel!" said the figure, pushing back the hood to reveal long red hair and a pair of bright green eyes set within a round and deeply freckled face.

"Oh," said Nick. Lymirel had been a friend from his childhood in the farming town of Shim. When he was nineteen, he had convinced her and a few other friends to come with him to rob a noble house in Marn. In that robbery, everyone had ended up behind bars besides Nick.

"You'll never take me!" shouted Nick, throwing the other knife. It too stuck ineffectively in the wall.

"Nick!" said Lymirel. "I'm not here to hurt you!"

"Oh," Nick said, keeping his hands ready to pluck out some more throwing knives. "Then why are you holding a club?"

"I was killing a rat," Lymirel said.

"And my room! It's so different. What did you do?"

"I cleaned it," Lymirel replied, rolling her eyes.

"Well," said Nick, letting his hands drop idly by his sides. He strode lazily across the room and plucked the knives out of the wall. "What are you here for then, Lymi?"

"I'm here to convince you to give up a life of crime."

"You'll never take me!" shouted Nick, throwing the knives he had just plucked out of the wall.

[AllenMares]

Nick and Lymirel sat on the bed, Nick idly flicking knives at a wall already riddled with holes, Lymirel fiddling with her cloak as they remained in silence.

"But Lymirel, you love stealing things," said Nick finally. "It's like getting things for free!"

Lymirel sighed, staring at the ceiling, stained yellow by years of smoke. "You don't understand, Nick. When I was let out of jail after that little...mishap...I had to go back to Shim. My parents were so disappointed in me. They showed me, since then, that you CAN have nice things. You just have to work hard, and earn them. Everything in the world has had care and effort put into it."

"Or you could just steal them."

Lymirel had forgotten how dense Nick could be. Not stupid, necessarily...but it was as if he operated in a world of morals completely alien to that of everyone else. A lot of thieves knew stealing was wrong and didn't care, but Nick...well, it was questionable if the concept of 'right' or 'wrong' even entered his worldview. "Okay, yes, but Nick, don't you see, those things aren't yours. You hadn't put the effort into making them, or the work in to afford to buy them."

Nick furrowed his eyebrows in obvious confusion. "So?"

"So...Nick...I mean...." Lymirel found herself a bit flustered. This wasn't going at all how she had planned. Either Nick was intentionally pretending utter confusion or he, in all actuality, did not understand one of the basic principles of civilization. "All right. The people you steal from...they worked, or their ancestors did, to have the things they have. They own what they have. Do you understand? I mean, do you get the idea of 'ownership'?"

"Sure I do." Nick grinned, eyes gleaming. "They own what's theirs, and then I come and take it away."

"But it's HURTING those people, Nick!"

"Pffft. They'll live."

Lymirel, looking into Nick's gleaming but otherwise vacant blue eyes, and seeing that he was utterly and throughly amused by this conversation, sighed and gathered her things. "I should go," she muttered, casting her eyes around for the leather satchel she had bought with her. When she glanced behind her, she observed Nick holding the satchel, and knew from the look in his eyes that he wasn't going to simply hand it to her.

"Hand that to me, Nick," she said, regardless.

"No," Nick replied. "Why'd you really come here, Lymirel?"

"Because I felt that after learning how people should NORMALLY live, I thought I'd do best to come and convince one of my oldest friends that he was walking down a dangerous path-"

"Oh, whatever," Nick said scornfully. "Like you've ever really had that much interest in being normal. What the hell does that even mean, anyway? You're just spurting out a bunch of nonsense that your parents told you. You really ought to grow up."

"Me? ME?!" Lymirel shouted, furious, face reddening. "Look at you, Nick, you're not a child anymore, no one is going to forgive you or think that you're some sort of CUTE SCOUNDREL for stealing. Just because I accepted the lessons of my parents-"

"But you haven't." That smirk never left Nick's face, and Lymirel was really feeling the urge to smash it off. "You're just repeating what they say to you, verbatim, because what you'd REALLY like to do got you in trouble once. I mean, really, Lymi? Since when have you cared about other people? I think I know why you REALLY came to see me."

Dangerous memories flashed before Lymirel's eyes.

Her and Nick beneath a willow tree, he having skipped work and convinced her to abandon her work at the farm-

"That is NOT why I came here," Lymirel snarled, waving her fist at him so Nick could know she was angry. He seemed to have extreme difficulty in reading facial expressions sometimes.

"Oh?" Nick said idly, grin widening, slinging her satchel over his shoulder. "You take a trip to Marn to convince your old friend to give up thieving, but give up on the argument after about three minutes?" He took a step closer to her. "It's okay, I've missed you too."

His cool hands on her face, blue eyes wide and unreadable, taking up the entirety of her vision-

"Nick," Lymirel began, then stopped. "Hm," she began, then stopped again, tugging at a strand of her red hair. She seemed to look deep into herself, then back up at Nick. She cleared her throat and began again. "Nick-"

"Lymi, I love you, you know that," he said, smiling broadly. He attached all the emotional consequence to this that he might have given the statement 'Looks like it might rain today.' Just like he always had before. The difference now, though, was that Lymirel could hear it.

Nick grinned wide, almost disturbingly so, eyes gleaming, black hair snarled and unkempt, dressed in ragged and dirty clothes in which Lymirel knew he hid many knives. He stood in the middle of a room which, for all of her attempts to clean it, was still filthy and stained, with wooden floor warped, walls splashed with splotches of discolored paint to cover up stains.

"Let me just tell you of my latest plan," said Nick, "And we'll see how you feel afterwards. All right?"

Lymirel remembered her parent's words. In the town of Shim, Nick had charmed many, child and adult alike, but Lymirel's parents were no fan of his, particularly after she had been arrested. Nick was more than just an innocent scoundrel, they had told her. Something was profoundly wrong about the boy. It was such a shame about what had happened to his parents, but something was simply off about Nicholas D'Alvere. Never listen to him.

But she still did.

[AllenMares]

Rain poured down around this miserable city, casting everything in an even more unpleasant shade of gray than usual. The sky was a broiling nightmare of storm clouds and flickering, dim lightning. Filthy water ran rapidly through the gutters of the streets.

Lymirel glanced around, a bit unsure of how she'd come to be here. She walked toward a building-a thing of rotten wooden planks and boarded windows-and knocked on the door.

"Come in," called Nick's voice, from somewhere far within the house.

The door opened with a wretched screech, and then Lymirel was screaming at the sound of thousands of buzzing flies, at the smell of burnt flesh, at the blood-
*****************

Lymirel woke screaming from the nightmare, and promptly wondered where she was and why she was naked. She glanced at the other side of the filthy bed-Nick was nowhere in sight.

"Hey there," said Nick, standing on the opposite side of the bed from where Lymirel was. She reminded herself to include the rest of her room in her search before mentally declaring that Nick was 'out of sight' again. He was reading through a massive tome bound in dark leather-the only book he owned, old and probably valuable-that contained information on various different poisons.

Lymirel groaned as the memories from last night came crashing down on her, as well as the details of Nick's shocking plan. Shocking because it displayed a level of intelligence and treachery that she had no idea he was capable of. It would never work, of course. It was complex, and the best plans were to be kept simple. In addition, the first step would have been impossible, even for Nick. Unfortunately the discussion had been...interrupted...before she could tell Nick just how impossible it was. She clambered out of bed and began to get dressed, to whistles of appreciation from Nick.

"So," he said finally, after she was covered up and he once again concentrated on the book, "You never told me last night what you thought of my plan."

"It's bloodthirsty, Nick," Lymirel replied simply, quickly combing her hair, "And if it weren't for the first step, I'd say it was somewhat good. But the first step makes it impossible."

Nick closed the tome of poisons and smiled devilishly at her. "Impossible, is it, then? You should know that nothing like that is impossible for me."

"You're good, Nick..."

"I'll say. You came here last night trying to lead me away from a life of crime and we ended up-"

"...But you're not THAT good," Lymirel finished quickly.

Nick glanced down at the book, then back up at Lymirel. "Really. You don't think so?"

"No."

"What if I told you I had already completed the first step?"

"I...I wouldn't believe you, Nick," Lymirel replied, but she was starting to get nervous. She had promised Nick in the heat of passion last night that she would help him with his plan, but she didn't believe that he could seriously pull it off. But if he already had the first step, the hardest step, done with-

Nick smiled his awful, awful smile and asked, "Would you like to meet her?"

***********************************

Lymirel sat in a very nice restaurant, one far beyond her means to afford, sipping some wine that was probably worth more than what she'd make in a month working on a farm at Shim. Nick had told her simply to wait, then had gone and sat at a table in full view of her, as if waiting for someone.

Gradually he was joined by a very elegant, very well dressed woman whose blond hair, dulling towards grey with age, spilled down over her shoulders in magnificent curls. Lymirel gasped. It couldn't be.

Nick smiled at the woman and chatted with her for a bit, she hanging on to his every word. Then he glanced over at Lymirel, as if in surprise.

"What a surprise!" he said, beckoning her over. "My dear, look who it is. One of my old friends." Nick smiled at Lymirel, an incredibly nasty smile, as the blond woman looked over and glanced at her. "Lymirel, please, meet Lady Helena de la Sauterelle."

"How do you do," said the blond woman, extremely beautiful for her age, extending her hand out toward Lymirel.

Lymirel almost didn't take it. She could barely believe it, still. She knew this woman. And it looked as if Nick had completed the first part of his plan after all.

Lady Helena de la Sauterelle was the noble whose house they had tried to rob, who had urged for Lymirel and the others caught to be thrown in prison for the maximum time possible.

[AllenMares]

"Where is he? Where the hell is he?" shouted the shopkeep. He wore a strange outfit for someone of Marn, blue silk pants and vest, and he his skin was much darker than one might normally see in this city. He overturned a table full of vials of different colored liquids and dried, sickly-sweet smelling leaves.

Two city guards stood by him, maces in hand, casting suspicious glances all around the crowded supply room of the shop. "You think he might have ran outside, sir?"

"No. He ran into this supply room, I'm sure, and the only exit is from the front of my shop. You hear me, fool? There's no way out!"

Nick, hiding beneath a pile of dry, brittle fronds, listened to all this with some interest. He hadn't known that the shopkeep actually lived and slept in his own shop. He had been interrupted in the middle of his thieving by rude cries of 'Thief! Thief!' Luckily, he had already obtained what he came for, and his face had been wound about with strips of black cloth, so the man hadn't seen his face.

"Do you have any other rooms back here, sir?" asked the second guard.

"Yes. My bedroom." The man continued to overturn tables, clearly furious-his face turning a deep, dark red. Even from beneath the fronds, Nick could see the veins in his temples throbbing.

The one guard nodded to the other, and then left to search the bedroom. The other guard stood by, mace at the ready, as the shopkeep continued to tear apart his supply room.

Nick moved slowly, very, very slowly, beneath the fronds, reaching for a knife and his matches. He slid a knife into his right hand and a match beneath his left thumb, ready to pop it and light it at any time, as the man dashed a dozen vials to the ground as he knocked over a wooden display case. He then turned to the pile of fronds, noticing for the first time how much larger they were than before. His eyes widened. Spittle flew from his lips.

Nick, in one fluid movement, erupted from the pile of fronds and flicked the knife in his right hand at the man. The man reacted much quicker than Nick thought he would, but unfortunately all this meant was that the knife, instead of hitting his shoulder as it would have, instead slid effortlessly into his right eye.

The shopkeep screamed, blood cascading down his face, the knife protruding grotesquely from his ruined eye.

At the same time, Nick popped the match beneath his thumb, dropping it into the pile of dried fronds. As he hoped, the brittle, ancient things leapt into flame.

Now the guard was advancing on him, bringing his mace up for a crushing blow. Fortunately, the shopkeep, clawing at the knife in his eye, stumbled directly into his path, buying Nick a few seconds.

Nick used those seconds to kick the flaming fronds toward the guard and the shopkeep. The man screeched as his silk clothes began to smolder and burn, and the guard stopped to bat out the flames. More generally, the fronds scattered everywhere, setting fire to other dried plants in the supply room.

"STOP!" came a booming, commanding voice. The guard sent to search the bedroom had emerged with a curiously small crossbow, one he was able to hold in one hand.

"I surrender," said Nick, throwing his hands into the air. Then from the window he had broken to get in came a gust of wind, obscuring everything in smoke, and Nick leapt back. The crossbow twanged, but the bolt only carved a small furrow in Nick's shoulder. He continued and practically leapt through the front door of the shop, slamming it shut behind him, twisting as hard as he could and snapping the doorknob.

Casting about, he began dragging a heavy display case, quickly as he could, in front of the door. Nobody tried to follow him through the door-they must have assumed he ran, or found the shopkeep's burning a more pressing issue. Nick could hear the man's increasingly frantic screams quite well through the door. Regardless, those screams didn't stop, and by the time he dragged the supply case in front of the door, it was clear a guard was throwing himself with all his force against it. But it was a fairly sturdy door, and it held.

Nick glanced about, and checked behind the counter for any money. When he found none, he grabbed several valuable-looking flasks and strolled out the front door, then broke into a quick run into the night. When he was far enough away, he looked back at the reagent and curios shop, though it was risky as hell-the screams of the shopkeep could still be heard this far away, and more guards were running towards the now blazing shop, their armor glinting red in the light of the fire. They were helping two of the guards climb through a window, away from the choking and surely deadly smoke-there was a reason Nick had broken into the shop, he had needed a poison, and the smoke from the burning reagents was almost sure to be extremely dangerous.

The second guard they pulled from the blaze carried over his shoulder the clearly smoldering shopkeep. The man moved weakly, but he screamed a horrible, hoarse, inhuman cry.

******************************************************************

Lymirel lay alone in the bed in Nick's room at Crazy Abe's inn, deeply questioning herself.

Lady Helena de la Sauterelle clearly thought that Nick loved her, and thought it was much great fun that she was running around the seedier parts of Marn with this dangerous ruffian. As Nick had told her later, the Lady Helena suffered long years at the hands of an abusive husband, and was just itching for some well-deserved revenge against him.

Nick was very good at making women think he loved them and then using them. But what about her? Was Nick planning to use Lymirel even now?

"I should go home," she said to herself, knowing she wouldn't. She sighed, then turned over and fell asleep.

Nick returned in the middle of the night smelling of smoke. He kissed her very convicingly and said he had taken what he needed, and everything had gone according to plan.

[AllenMares]

Lymirel stood in a graveyard, one that she was quite sure she had never been in before. It was worn down, vines crawling over the ground and the tombstones-obviously it wasn't maintained very well. The tombstones were all very small, and some weren't even marked. It was a graveyard for paupers-or criminals.

Three fresh graves had been dug. One was small, as if for a child. From deep within the furthest one, dirt was being tossed up by shovel, though who was digging, Lymirel couldn't see. The wind blew mercilessly, and she thought she could hear frightened whisperings blown by it.

"Hello...?" she called, and the digging immediately stopped.

"Hello, Lymirel," came Nick's voice from within the grave, though he didn't show himself. His voice seemed strange, somehow, cheerful, and yet somehow threatening.

"What are these graves?"

Nick didn't answer. Now Lymirel could see smoke rising in the distance, out across the city.

Lymirel stepped forward toward the edge of the grave and looked down. It seemed to go down into a black abyss, forever and ever.

And then something dark and scrambling came screaming up out of the damned hole, and it had a large charming smile and Nick's eyes and teeth and fire-

**********************************************

Lymirel had woken that morning to an empty bed. Nick was meeting the Lady Sauterelle for an early lunch. He had left a pile of one hundred Bishani on the table next to the bed, next to a lily. Nick must have had to walk to the nearest park, at least-quite a distance-to get that, simply for her. She found herself wondering just how much Nick slept.

She swung her bare legs out over the edge of the bed and stared down at her toes.

She wanted to work hard. She wanted to live a good life, make money, but to eventually leave the farm in Shim. Her ambitions were much too big for a life like that. She wanted so much to have some sort of power and influence, but the reality was, farming in Shim probably wasn't going to afford her any sort of life like that. She wanted-

She wanted to stay with Nick, despite the fact that any care he might show for her she KNEW, she KNEW deep down was simply engineered to string her along. She wanted to stay by his side as he trampled over the innocent in his way, robbing them blind, and to hell with the consequences.

She wanted to have a legitimate life of prosperity and success inaccessible to her, or she wanted to stay with Nick and damn the world.

***********************************************************

"My beautiful," crooned Nick, eyes gleaming, raising a glass of wine. "To you and your soon to be liberation from your dreadful husband."

The lady Helena de la Sauterelle raised her glass for a gentle clink against Nick's. "Yes, my dear. A mere two nights and I will be free of his overbearing stupidity and brutishness." Nick watched her with absolute rapture and adoration in his eyes, and as she raised her glass to her lips, the lady Helena de la Sauterelle smirked into her drink. Men were such incredible fools. She had this one wrapped around her pinky finger, and she'd soon use him to engineer her escape from her husband. He was invaluable in his knowledge of poisons and would be invaluable in his manpower, but he was simply her tool, and nothing more. She grimaced as she drank the wine-he always insisted on taking her to restaurants that HE thought were good, but were actually ratholes. Just as well, though-no one she knew would see her here with him, so no one would become suspicious.

"Have you obtained the poison we'd need, my love?"

Nick reached deep within his pocket and produced, with a flourish, a somewhat crumpled, purple-leaved plant. "I have," he smiled, probably thinking he was very clever. Idiot. Any ruffian could knock over a poison shop. She would have bought it herself, but again, she didn't want anyone becoming suspicious.

"Excellent," she cooed, snatching the plant. She leaned in for a low whisper. "I've been siphoning off my husband's finances for a while now. Hiding the paperwork. I've got quite a bit saved up for myself. That and what we will take from my husband will make Eyrop our oyster." Not like you'll be seeing a single bishani of it though, she thought.

Nick leaned in to kiss her, bringing his gleaming eyes close to hers, not closing them. She was disturbed for a moment by them. She thought she could read something deep within them that scared the wits out of her. But she closed her eyes and ignored any feelings of doubt she might have.

After all, she was noble born, so much better educated, and obviously more clever than this young man. What could he possibly do to her?

When she opened her eyes, Nick was smiling widely at her.

********************************************************

"Nick's...odd. Likable enough, but odd. He knows the good jobs, but I dunno. There's something about him that don't seem all there. Hell, you've known him longer than I have. I'm sure you know better than I do."

Lymirel nodded, then took another sip from her mug of stale beer. Men from all over the room were eyeing her, she being the only female in the main room of the inn, but she ignored them.

"For example," Abe continued, not taking Lymirel's lead. "Look at those men. Any other woman-no matter if they're taken or not-they'd be all over. And hell, you're the prettiest one I've seen in here for a while. Honestly, if I were you, I'd be a little afraid."

Lymirel started in shock at this, and began wishing her dress didn't cling to her curves so much, though she was in fact quite modestly dressed.

"But..." continued Abe, jamming one sausage-sized finger into a glass to rub out a spot, "You're bunkin' with Nick and they know it. And honestly, these guys-they don't know what to think of Nick either. They know he's smarter than most of them. And he's taken a lot of them on some pretty good runs. They have a bit to be grateful to him for. But they know something's not quite right with him upstairs. It's not blatantly obvious. But they've been around him enough to know to never trust his smile."

[AllenMares]

The night before Nick's plan was to be enacted, Nick went over the entire scheme with Lymirel one last time.

The Lady Helena was going to poison her husband, having dismissed her guards for the night. There was the possibility, Lymirel supposed, that the vengeful women might not heed Nick's instructions and overdose the man, thus killing him, but Nick didn't seem to think about this, and she doubted he would have considered it a problem.

After this, Nick and Lymirel were to go around to the back door, where the Lady Helena had rented a carriage. They'd load it up with as many valuables as they could, including the Lady Helena's assets that she had siphoned off from her unknowing husband.

After this, they were to move to another part of the city, to a hotel that Lady Helena was to rent. She had wanted to leave the city gates as soon as possible, but Nick's smooth tongue had convinced her to stay one night and move out in the morning.

There at the hotel, they were to toast their success, and Nick was going to poison the lady Helena's wine. Once unconscious, Nick and Lymirel were going to take the assets she hid from her husband, as well as a few other valuables, and vanish, leaving behind some of the valuables so the lady Helena could be accused of the theft.

There was only one problem: Nick was lying.

It could be hard to tell when Nick was lying, but Lymirel knew him very well. That distant look in his eyes, that even-more-crooked-than-usual smile-Nick was lying about something, but Lymirel had no idea what.

Shortly after explaining the plan to her, Nick had left. He left many nights, barely ever spending a night in his own bed. Just as well...Lymirel hadn't really seen any vital role for herself in this plan, and since she knew Nick was lying, she was beginning to wonder, with fright, what exactly Nick had in mind.

Bored and curious, Lymirel picked up one of Nick's throwing knives that he had left on the bedside table. She stood and walked back and forth across the room, idly toying with the blade, when a lance of white hot pain shot through her skull.

For a moment Lymirel thought her head had cracked in two, the pain was so horrible. The knife clattered to the floor as Lymirel grasped the sides of her head, nails digging into her scalp. She dropped to her knees as her vision doubled, blurred in front of her. The last thing she remembered before she passed out was a curious scraping sound, as if someone was dragging something very heavy-

*******************************************

The first thing Lymirel heard when she awoke was a curious scraping sound, as if someone was dragging something very heavy.

She stood once again in the middle of the street in Marn, but this city was almost unrecognizable to her. The windows to all the buildings were boarded shut. Gray skies overhead cast a heavy pall over the entire city.

With horror, she noted that the sidewalk to her right had long streaks and smears of blood, leading away down the street, as if someone had been dragging a body.

She heard the terrible scraping sound once again, followed by a feral, inhuman growl, and Lymirel felt her heart leap into her throat. The sounds were undoubtedly coming from the directions that the smears of blood led to.

As if her feet were not her own, she began to follow the smears of blood, though she desperately did not want to.

She turned right, around the corner, and screamed at what she saw.

Nick was there, yes, but it barely looked like Nick, and in truth, Lymirel didn't know how she could tell it was him. His hair was matted and stringy, and dry blood flecked his face. His arms were ridiculously, frighteningly long, as were his legs, and they ended in strange, primitive talons that he had hooked into the corpse in front of him, dragging it along. He seemed to have a strange grill of black iron bolted into the upper part of his head where his eyes and nose were supposed to be, and behind it there was nothing but darkness.

The corpse he was dragging was bloated and burnt, oozing black ichor from its melted and ruined skin. It had three heads. The one on the right was that of a heavier, older man, and while most of his features were burnt away, she could still recognize the stubble of what must have been a heavy beard and mustache in his life.

The head on the left was that of a child, eyes closed as if it were in peaceful sleep, but still burnt so badly that its nose almost melted into the rest of its face.

The head in the middle had a bloodstained burlap sack placed over it.

Lymirel shook and was violently ill from the sight and smell of it. The Nick-thing continued its ghoulish march, dragging the corpse on down the street, leaving behind a bloody mess.

Then it cocked its head up, and though it had no eyes, apparently it could see, because bloodstained lips broke out in a hideous smile, revealing broken and brown teeth, and the thing-though Lymirel heard nothing-mouthed the words "Hello, Lymirel."

She screamed and scrambled backwards as the thing detached its long arms from the corpse and took long, bounding steps toward her, stranged claws outstretched, the smirk on its face easily recognizable as Nicks, despite everything else that was wrong, horribly so-

********************************

Lymirel awoke to the sound of her own screams, and the first thing that filled her vision was the knife that she had dropped on the floor. She gasped, pushing herself back up against the side of the bed.

The dream had seemed so horrible that the waking world itself still seemed threatening. She quickly locked the door to the room and sat back down on the bed, feeling all the adrenaline in her system drain away.

"What the fuck," she breathed finally. She had always had odd dreams, but these dreams recently were nightmarish far beyond anything she had experienced before.

She tried, but she could not sleep that night. Nick did not return until early that morning, and even then, she could barely bring herself to let him in. She could not stop thinking about the version of him she had seen in her dream.

[AllenMares]

Chop.

The lady Helena de la Sauterelle paused, smiled, and filled two elaborately adorned goblets with a deep, red wine. Ah, that was a REAL wine, there. A hundred years old, aged in the cellar all her life, but she was bringing it out for a very special occasion. After the goblets were filled, she returned to the task at hand.

Chop.

The partriarch of the house de la Sauterelle was a large man, muscular but wide. It would take more than the average dose of poison to bring him down. Or so Nick had told her. He had given her very careful measurements to go by, to make sure that she did not accidentally give him too much.

Chop.

Lady Helena examined the chopped-up leaves of the poisonous plant before her, ground so fine they were almost dust. She carefully portioned off a small amount from the rest. That's how much she'd need to send her husband into a three-day slumber.

Carefully, she scraped the small mound of purple dust into a goblet of wine, and then with a gleeful laugh, dumped the rest of the purple dust into the drink.

What did she care if her husband died? In truth, he had never abused her. The lady Helena had married him to begin with, because when she had, he had been rocketing skyward politically and in wealth, and the lady Helena had wanted to attach herself to such a rapidly rising star. But, foolish weak man that he was, he had risen and then plateaued, never fulfilling his potential, content to stay where he was. Weak.

That was something that could be said for Nick, at least. He certainly had ambitions.

"Helena, darling?" her fool of a husband called from the dining room, chuckling darkly. "The servants have laid out the dinner and left already. They said you said to leave early."

"I just wanted the house as empty as we could have it," purred lady Helena. "We're going to have a wild night, my darling."

More laughter. "The children are still upstairs sleeping."

"Believe me, my love, they won't hear a thing."

With a ghoulish smile, the Lady Helena picked up the goblets and headed out toward the dining room.

*************************************************

"Nick, I don't feel good about this."

Nick stared at her coldly, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.

"I've been having these dreams," Lymirel continued. They stood in the middle of a park from which the Sauterelle's huge manor was clearly visible. They were to watch a window for the signal to come in. No signal had come yet.

"Dreams," Nick said, voice flat and emotionless.

"Yes," said Lymirel, voice thick with emotion. Nick would never believe her, he wouldn't listen-

Nick saw the tears in her eyes glinting in the moonlight, seemed to think about it for a moment, and then swept her up in his arms.

"Nick, no, no..." Lymirel breathed, as he kissed her tears away. The bastard knew-he knew if he did this then all her words would stop.

"Lymi, my Lymi," Nick murmured as he pulled her into a passionate embrace, and all of her protests ceased.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nick kept a close watch on the windows of the manor.

***********************************************************

Helena's husband grinned at her as she set the goblet of wine before him. "Thank you, my dear." Lady Helena turned to sit down, and as she did, clicked her tongue in irritation as her husband downed half the wine in one swiftt gulp, excess wine spilling down his beard. She had wanted to toast him, to gloat over the fool as he began to choke and sputter.

The poison acted fast. Before she had reached her seat, her husband's face was turning blue. He was no idiot, and though he was choking on his own tongue, he overturned the table and staggered toward her. Helena jumped backwards, but one of his massive hands flicked out and caught her by the hand.

"Helena..." he croaked, eyes bloodshot, face swollen. "I'll...kill...you..."

He backhanded her, the first time he ever struck her in her life, and Helena had time to learn to be amply thankful for that. Her face went numb and her vision doubled, and her teeth felt very crooked in her mouth.

Then he collapsed, face down into a bowl of gravy. He burbled for a bit, and then was still.

The Lady Helena caught her breath, then gave her husband's body a spiteful kick and went to the window to give the signal for Nick to come in.

*********************************************

The carriage the lady Helena had bought was fairly small, and was loaded up by Lymirel and Nick fairly quickly. The lady Helena did no loading of the carriage herself, instead pointing out what she wanted to take with her. Nick had raised his eyebrows when he saw her husband, but said nothing. Lymirel had felt ill and could be of no use for some time.

When they had finished loading the carriage, Lady Helena stood in the midst of her largely empty living room, pondering. "Yes, I think that's about it," she said finally. "Let me go grab my suitcase and we can be on our way."

"Oh, you won't need it," Nick said.

"Please. We may have plenty of Bishani, but I'm not going to buy new clothes when we have perfectly serviceable ones already packed-"

"You misunderstand me," said Nick, flicking his right hand slightly, and suddenly the lady Helena had a knife sticking from her shoulder.

Lymirel stood shocked by this as she felt the whole world rattle around her. She looked back into the dining room, at Lady Helena's dead husband, with the flowing beard. For some reason, she couldn't help doing so. That face looked very familiar.

Lady Helena glanced down at her shoulder, mouth wide open in shock. Before she could scream, Nick had crossed the room and brutally elbowed her in the face, then grabbing her and shoving a gag in her mouth. "Don't struggle," he said, as she clawed and battered against him. "You'll just make the poison go through your system faster." With that, he wrenched the knife from the lady Helena's shoulder and shoved her to the ground.

The lady Helena sat, groaning against the gag in her mouth, eyes wide with fear, in the middle of her living room, bereft of everything save the furniture and the curtains.

Lymirel wrenched her eyes away from the corpse long enough to pay attention to what was happening in front of her. "Nick, please, stop-"

"Shut up, Lymi," Nick said idly, crouching down to examine the lady Helena's face. "As for you, you stupid worthless bitch, do you remember me? Think hard, now. It was eight years ago, after all. I remember very well. We robbed your house, and you urged for my friends to be thrown in prison for as long as possible." Here, Nick motioned to Lymirel. "Friends like her. You're so damn stupid, I didn't even bother to have to hide her face from you. It makes this all the more delicious."

And here, Nick reached into his pouch and withdrew a torch and a match, and lit the torch. Lady Helena struggled to get up, but could not.

Lymirel remained frozen, that same strange pain lancing through her head again, and all she could think about was the corpse in the other room. That beard...

Nick crossed the room, idly brushing the torch across the furniture, catching it with a slow, licking flame.

"You see, my dear Helena," continued Nick, "At first, I was just going to take what you stole for myself and frame you for the crime. But then I realized-with all your guards and servants dismissed, wouldn't it be a shame if the fair lady Sauterelle's house should burn down? Nobody would ever be able to tell what was missing from the ruins. And there'd be nobody left behind to tell why, why, on that night of all nights, the servants and the guards were dismissed. And now," he said, touching the torch to the curtains, which leapt into flame rather quickly, "My only question is, of course, whether to let you burn, or have the delicious satisfaction of cutting your throat myself, and letting the flames burn away any evidence. I think-"

And here Nick stopped, eyes bulging, torch dropping from his hand. Lymirel stood behind him with a marble statue, splattered with blood. "I'm sorry, Nick," she whispered.

And then she hit him again. Nick crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

Lymirel ran over to lady Helena, who was now curled into a fetal position, sobbing uncontrollably. She removed the gag from the noblewoman's mouth. The lady Helena seemed to be in a bad way-Lymirel had no idea what poison Nick had put on that knife.

"My children," said the lady Helena suddenly, and more life seemed to spring into her. "My children are sleeping upstairs."

Lymirel glanced around at the living room, which was now blazing steadily. It would soon be too hot
to remain in the room. "All right," Lymirel said uncertainly, "Let's see if Nick has an antitoxin we could use for you..."

But as Lymirel glanced over at where Nick had fallen, only a dark bloodstain remained. Nick was nowhere to be seen.

The lady Helena got up and began to stumble drunkenly out of the flaming room. "My children...I don't want them to die," she mumbled, staggering almost blindly. Lymirel went to her side to support her.

Wherever Nick was, he was still conscious enough to be setting things aflame. The table and the curtains in the dining room were on fire, and the flames had begun to eat into the corpse of Helena's husband. Lymirel paused, and watched in fascination as his face burned, beard sizzling up in bright yellow, stinking flame. That face...

In her dream, the three-headed corpse...the one of the burned man with the remainder of a beard...

Lymirel's stomach sank.

"Lady Helena, where are your children?" said Lymirel. The noblewoman was obviously in no shape to do anything on her own.

"Hall..." was the only thing the lady Helena mumbled in response, but she did seem to pick up the pace a bit.

It was a bit eery to wander around this manor without knowing, exactly, where Nick was, following this poisoned, possibly dying woman. Nick certainly seemed to be working quickly-there wasn't a single room that wasn't ablaze.

The lady Helena led Lymirel into a dark hallway, the only light the flickering, orange flames of the room they had left behind.

Suddenly, at the end of the hallway, Nick appeared, an inky blackness against the flames. He still held a torch in his right hand.

"Oh my God," said Lymirel.

Nick swept into the hallway, torch high in hand, reflecting the dead, hellish look in his eyes. He swept it between the two women, separating them.

"Nick, please-"

Nick dropped the torch, ignoring lady Helena, and turned toward Lymirel. In the darkness, she could not even see his fists moving as he began to savagely thrash her. He aimed for her face, and when she bought her hands up to defend herself, pummeled her in the ribs and stomach. When she had an opportunity to strike back, Nick threw her down the hall and sent her slamming into the wall.

"You...bastard..." said Lady Helena, from behind Nick. He glanced back, unconcerned. The Lady Helena had grabbed the torch, and was holding it as menacingly as she could, shaking it at him.

Nick glanced behind her, and then, as quick as he could, grabbed Lymirel's now prone form and dragged it quickly into the blaze at the end of the hallway, disappearing from view.

"Mommy...?"

Lady Helena turned. At the other end of the hallway stood her son, Joshua, brown eyes wide.

Here stood his mother, looking demented and fierce, hair around her in a bright halo, while the house burned around him, and his father lay dead in the kitchen. Here was the mother that had always been cold and distant to him and his father, who he had adored. Here she was holding a torch. While the house was on fire.

Joshua fled.

"No..." said lady Helena, perhaps understanding what, exactly, had just happened. And then, finally, she collapsed.


*****************************************************************

Lymirel awoke as Nick was carrying her out of the burning house to the carriage. The horses were beginning to get skittish at the smoke drifting from the building. She gasped and pummeled Nick until he was forced to throw her down. She scrambled away and attempted to run, but Nick was upon her almost immediately.

"Lymi, Lymi, it's okay, I forgive you," he said as she flailed against him. Just the touch of him was making her almost physically ill right now.

"FORGIVE ME?! NICK, YOU KILLED THEM, A CHILD IS GOING TO DIE!" Lymirel screamed frantically. She was still partially unconscious, and-horrifically-the vision of Nick in front of her was flickering back and forth between the already-frightening real version and the horrific dream version.

"Be quiet, Lymi," said Nick.

"NO! NO, I WON'T-"

And then Nick drove a knife deep into her stomach.

Lymirel froze, tensed against the knife in her body. The glanced down at the blood, black in the night, bubbling from her wound, and then back into Nick's chalk-white, grim face.

"I love you, Lymi," he said.

And then she knew nothing.

[AllenMares]

Nick's hands on her face, cool against her cheek.

The summer was sweet in Shim, the sunlight golden, drifting down, almost liquid, through the branches of the willow tree.

"What do you mean, you're going to Marn?" said Lymirel, gazing into Nick's eyes. Those wide blue eyes that displayed far too much cleverness for this simple farming town.

"Only for a week or so," he murmured in response. "I feel the need to move beyond Shim. A city will have so much more than this."

Lymirel held him, a strange feeling in her chest, and knew that she was very much in love, the kind of love one can only feel when they are young and new to the idea.

"You make me very happy, Lymirel," he said, after a moment of perfectly comfortable silence between them. "I don't remember ever feeling so happy."

Lymirel said nothing, simply clutching Nick tighter to herself.

"Which is why we can't keep doing this."

Lymirel froze and tensed against him. "What?" she said.

Nick grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her away. "Look at this, Lymirel. I have NEVER been happy here, in this disgusting little town...people living here and dying here without having ever left this town or known more than farming. I've never been happy here...except with you."

Now something was opening up in the pit of Lymirel's stomach, a gaping maw that was beginning to gnaw at her guts. "Isn't that a good thing?" she asked, her voice trembling a bit.

"No," Nick replied flatly. "I'm meant for more than this. I would rather kill myself than stay in this town forever, even with you."

"I'll go with you," Lymirel said, not noting how quicker and ragged her breathing had become.

"I have dreams, Lymi...I can't ever explain them to you. But I'm not a good person. I'm going to do horrible things. And now, while I'm still a good person, I want to warn you against the person I'll become."

"You're not making sense!" Now Lymirel was sobbing openly, the maw in her stomach having reached up into her chest, leaving her feeling hollow.

Nick glanced at her, and for the first time, his eyes went completely blank and cold. Then they filled up with warmth and life again. "Once I come back from Marn, Lymi, don't talk to me anymore."

Lymirel stood, dumbfounded, staring at Nick, her tears falling to the soft grass underfoot. "I don't believe you," she said finally.

"No? Don't you get it?" Nick shook his head. "Never talk to me again. I never want to see your fucking ridiculous face for the rest of my life."

Nick had broken her young heart thoroughly, and she had avoided him for the better part of a year after that. But she had eventually gravitated back to him after that. He had never mentioned the incident, and he had always seemed more distant and cold afterwards.

*********************************

Lymirel awoke suddenly, gasping, old memories flitting away.

She was in a dank, damp place with walls of stone and a dirt floor. Chains led from her wrists and were deeply embedded within the wall. The wound in her stomach had been bandaged. There was no light.

She screamed and tugged at the chains, but to no avail. She could stand and walk with the chains for about five feet before she reached her limit.

She struggled until she was utterly spent, then wept in desperation an unknowable amount of time.

"I HATE YOU," she screamed, and was rewarded with a creaking sound, and the appearances of a bright shaft of light at the top of a flight of stairs. She almost cried out in joy at the fact that her world had some definition to it now.

Nick appeared in the doorway. "Shut the fuck up," he suggested, sounding almost maniacally cheerful.

"Oh my god, Nick, please," Lymirel begged. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Please let me out. Please. PLEASE."

Nick descended the steps slowly, each step echoing out into the darkness around her. When he reached the bottom step, he threw something out into the darkness. It landed in the dirt to her left. She reached over and felt wet, sticky fur and rough, sharp claws. It was a dead rat.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Lymirel choked.

"Eat it."

"I'm not eating a rat! THIS IS INSANE!"

"You'll eat it when you get hungry enough."

And then Nick ascended the staircase again, slowly. Lymirel screamed, and threw the rat at him ineffectively. "I HATE YOU, NICK," she shrieked, bloodying her nails, clawing at the walls, at the dirt, blinded by anger. "I HATE YOU! I'VE ALWAYS HATED YOU!"

"Whatever," came Nick's offhanded reply.

And then the door closed and Lymirel was in darkness once more.

[AllenMares]

Nick strolled happily through the dark streets of Marn, whistling idly. The people who passed him by hurried along, their heads low. People had seemed awfully subdued, lately. It was strange.

Rumor of the Sauterelle manor fire had spread through Marn quickly. It had gone in waves-first news of a fire, then news of two deaths-Lady Helena's husband, declared dead on site, and her daughter, dragged from the burning house by her brother. Despite the medical care given to her, she had died a screaming, mewling, melted thing.

Nick was on his way to see Abe, who had sent a messenger requesting his presence. Nick had long since moved his base of operations from Abe's inn to somwhere far more upscale. He had no idea how Abe had known where to send the messenger. The message itself was a bit terse, with Abe simply mentioning that he wanted to 'talk.' Nick liked the old man well enough, so he was more than willing to grant him an audience.

The rumors had only become worse from there. Lady Helena had set the fire herself, hoping to murder her family and flee-earlier in the day she had emptied her bank account. She had been knocked unconscious, possibly by her husband, before she could escape, and while she yet lived, her face and hair had been burnt away.

Nick came upon Abe's inn, and struck by a strange feeling, peered through a window. The main room was empty except for Abe himself, nursing a glass of whiskey. Nick still felt strange about the whole situation. Abe looked...strange, almost sick.

The only one to escape from the house relatively unscathed had been Lady Helena's son, Joshua-though his hands had been burnt very badly in attempting to save his sister. The young boy, broken and sobbing, had given testimony about his mother running about the house, setting it ablaze. All in all, it was a terrible tragedy.

The Lady Helena, though she could barely speak, clearly denied the charges. She said they had been attacked. But then again, her own child testified against her...

Nick entered the empty main room of the inn, sitting at the stool in front of Abe. Abe wordlessly poured him a glass of whiskey. Nick took a long gulp from it and folded his hands.

"So your plan worked out then, did it?" asked Abe. "You made your money?"

"I did," said Nick.

"You burned down the Sauterelle manor, didn't you?"

Nick remained silent for a moment, and then broke out in a horrible grin. "Yep."

"You killed a child," Abe said quietly. "I didn't want to believe that, but you're not even trying to deny it."

"Why should I? Who's going to hold me accountable, you? You've hardly got the moral high ground here."

"Maybe not," said Abe, and then reached out for Nick with his massive, grizzled hands.

Nick leapt back, tripping over the stool as he knocked it over. Abe jumped over the bar with astonishing grace for someone his size.

"You're a fucking disgrace of a human being," Abe said, unsheathng a gigantic knife. "I can hardly look at you, you sick little shit."

Nick quickly drew a knife of his own. "You asked me over to kill me?"

"If I have to. I'd prefer to drag your ass to the guard and prevent them from hanging Lady Sauterelle."

Nick rolled his eyes, then ran for the door. Abe, in an incredible display of strength, picked up a table and threw it at him, sending splinters and shards of wood flying everywhere.

"You know," Nick said slyly, "If you kill me, no one will ever find out where Lymirel is."

"My God, Nick," Abe said, in almost a whisper, "That lady loved you blind. What the hell have you done to her?"

Nick replied by throwing a knife at Abe. The large man dove and dodged it. While he was recovering, Nick drew two more knives and leapt onto the larger man, aiming to drive his blades into his back. Abe recovered too quickly, however, and drove his cleaver deep into the meat of Nick's upper arm. Nick growled ferally and dropped the knife from his stabbed arm.

Abe shoved Nick to the ground and pinned him, wrenching the cleaver out with a spray of blood. "Where is she, Nick?!" he roared, bringing the cleaver to Nick's throat.

"Okay, okay," Nick said frantically. "Listen, it's an abandoned building down in the warehouse district. I know where it is but I don't know the address. I'll lead you there."

"I don't trust you to do that, Nick," said Abe, but he drew the cleaver back from Nick's face an inch. It was all Nick needed. He leaned forward and caught Abe's wrist in his mouth, and bit down until he felt blood flood into his mouth.

Abe roared, twisting his wrist, and Nick felt the cleaver slice deep into the left side of his face. Nevertheless, he continued biting, twisting, until he came away with a chunk of skin and flesh, and Abe dropped the knife. The larger man roared, and Nick scrambled to draw a knife and bring it between himself and Abe.

He succeeded, but the large man collapsed on him regardless, trying to choke the life out of Nick. Unfortunately for him, as he collapsed upon Nick, he impaled himself upon the dagger Nick had drawn, and as he bent down further, the knife sliced up through his stomach. Dark red blood splashed out all over Nick, and for a moment, he felt oddly warm and comfortable.

Nick scrambled away from the weakening larger man, blood dripping from him. Abe was scrambling around on the floor, holding one massive forearm across his stomach, holding in his guts. Nick felt at the gouge in his right arm and the deep cuts across his face.

"You worthless little worm," he said, picking up a broken leg from the table Abe had thrown at him.

"Nick..." Abe groaned, and then Nick bought the leg slamming down on Abe's face with all the force he had. Then again. And again. Teeth flew. Abe's face shifted, broke, changed before him, until it wasn't so much a face as a bloody slab and a pit full of teeth. Nick kept raining blows down upon the man's head until his hissing, gurgling breaths stopped.

Nicked dropped the bloody table leg and breathed heavily, stepping back from the corpse. He gathered his knives and walked from the inn, staggering, and disappeared into the night.

[AllenMares]

James was walking home in the orange sunset, having finished his patrol as city guard little less than an hour ago. He left his armor at the barracks, but still carried his mace with him. Some guards preferred to leave their weaponry at the barracks as well, but James didn't live in the safest of neighborhoods, and indeed, a big reason why he had joined the guard was for the training and the weaponry to defend himself. His normal route home had been blocked off by a collapsed cart. Normally he would have simply clambered over it, but the merchant had insisted everyone take alternate routes, thinking passers-by would steal from the disabled cart. James had shrugged and taken a side street.

It had been a busy month for the City Guard. The trial of Lady Helena de la Sauterelle had been a nightmare, largely due to the woman herself, who had, with her ignorance and vile temper, probably done more to condemn herself than anyone else. According to her, it should be plain that only a 'peasant ruffian' was responsible for the death of her family. This had been interpreted, unfortunately, as incredible upper-class callousness, and the streets had become rather vicious in their criticism of her. The judge in her case had faced political pressure for a speedy, harsh verdict, both from elected officials and furious individuals in the street. She had been handed down a sentence of death by hanging, which was to take place in the cover of darkness tonight. There had been more than a few calls for her execution to be public, and the Guard didn't want people swarming the execution.

James glanced nervously around himself. He didn't live in a good neighborhood, true, but the ramshackle, run-down buildings here, wood rotting and moldy, was enough to make him almost superstitiously afraid. He kept his hand on the mace by his side, and...

He paused. He could have sworn he heard...there. A faint scrabbling sound. Probably rats...but for a moment, he thought he could have heard a faint voice beneath it all.

Ah, there it was again! A keen sound, like moaning, accompanied by the scrambling sound. It was enough to send shivers down James' spine. The sound was incredibly faint, but...a spirit of some kind, maybe?

His curiousity and sense of duty getting the best of him, James approached the house to his right. The door, it seemed, was intended to be locked, but the wood was so rotted through that it splintered open at only a small push.

Inside, there was a completely bare wooden floor, cockroaches fleeing from his presence. And there was the unmistakable stench of dry blood, as well as a large stain in the middle of the floory. A locked door, this one sturdier than the front door, led to another room. There was a nail on the wall that held a ring of keys. James approached these keys, plucking them off the nail.

And then, from behind the locked door, that scrambling, moaning sound.

James froze, and then, trembling, approached the door and unlocked it. He flung open the door, and shouted in horror at what was behind it.

A deathly thin, pale, red-headed woman in dirty, damp clothes was chained to the wall at the bottom of a poorly-constructed stairwell. Blood and fur was smeared all over her face, and before her was the dismembered remains of a rat, clearly gnawed upon. To her right was a blood-spattered human hand, the rest of the body concealed in darkness.

"Oh God, Oh God thank you," wept the young woman, slumping against her chains. "Oh God. I thought you were him."

James felt an almost immediate urge to slam the door shut and simply flee from the horror, but he descended the stairs nonetheless, into an almost unbearable stench. "What...what is all this?" he asked. As he descended, he got a better glance at the dead body in the darkness, and quickly looked away.

"Unchain me..." said the woman. "Please. Please."

James fumbled uselessly with the ring of keys, his mind reeling. "What happened to him?" he said, gesturing to the corpse.

"He killed him," the young woman said, and then breaking into wracking, sickening sobs, "And then put him down here for me to...to..."

James silenced her and began trying keys in the locks of her cuffs. On the third try, he was successful. "Who killed him?"

The woman shrieked, pointing to the top of the stairs, and James turned around in horror.

At the top of the stairs stood a slim figure, dressed almost completely in black, illuminated by the dying light. Dark hair fell down over his face, but James could still make out one eye gleaming frighteningly.

"Well, goodness, Lymirel. At the rate you keep luring fools into this old place, you'll stay fed forever," he said.

"Oh God," moaned the young woman, presumably Lymirel, and curled into a fetal position.

"Stay right where you are," said James, raising his mace in front of him. "I'm a member of the city guard. You're under arrest."

The dark young man wordlessly stepped aside from the doorway.

James glanced behind himself at the young woman, who was nearly catatonic with fear, decided nothing about her could be done at this moment, and advanced slowly, cautiously up the stairs.

He came out into the upper room slowly, casting all about him for the young man. He seemed to have disappeared-

James bearly reacted in time to the young man coming from just out of the corner of his eye. He ducked as a knife slashed through the ear, and instead of having his throat cut, he just ended up missing a chunk of his right ear. He swung his mace wide and low, and the man leapt back.

"Stop," James yelled out, but the only response he got was a knife flicking through the air at his face. He barely managed to avoid this as well.

James was an expert at fighting with his fists and more than proficient with the mace, but it was clear the dark man was faster, more agile, and experienced with the knives himself. Without armor, and with the clearly hostile disposition of the young man, it struck James that this was a situation where he could very likely die.

As if to emphasize this point, the dark man rushed forward, sliced James all down his right arm, and leapt back before James could react. He gasped loud, in pain, and the girl downstairs, apparently recognizing the sounds of the dark man's victims, began to moan and scream. The dark man seemed momentarily distracted by this, so James took the opportunity to rush forward, his mace slamming into the dark man's side. He was rewarded by a wretching, wheezing opponent who scrambled away from him, reaching into a pouch on in his side. James quickly swung the mace again, pulverizing the hand the dark man had on the floor for support.

The dark man howled in a way that seemed almost inhuman, then dashed a powder into James' face. For a moment, there was no effect, and then James lost his vision as his eyes brimmed up with stinging tears and swelled shut.

James swung blindly with his mace, bellowing in pain, the only response being a chuckle which chilled him to the bone.

And then he felt a blade dig deep into his back, and then, as if the dark man was relishing this, begin to slide down, tearing him open.

James launched himself backwards, throwing his opponent off balance. He forced his eyes to open, regaining some of his visibility. He spun around and, through his shaky and blurred vision, saw the dark man staggering to his feet. He swung his mace as hard as he could at the man's face, and was rewarded with a sharp crack and a wordless roar of pain from the man. Thrown off balance, he fell down the stairs into the basement, where he collapsed heavily.

"Nick...?" said Lymirel, as the dark man fell near her.

James, blood gushing from his back, and feeling rather woozy and close to unconscious, staggered down the stairway. Amazingly, the dark man sat up, his face shattered, and retreated into the dark corners of the basement, invisible, especially now that the sun had gone down and all light was almost gone.

Lymirel got to her feet, unsteady, her steps faltering-James wondered how long she had been down here. She stumbled her way to him, and, weeping, tried to push him back up the stairs.

"I've got to kill him," mumbled James, but his thoughts were muddled and he wasn't all too sure why.

"No, no, no," gasped the girl, struggling to push him back, "He's poisoned you, he's poisoned you and now he's just waiting for you to fall unconscious, and then he'll kill you and I'll NEVER GET OUT-"

"But if I kill him..."

"He's just going to keep evading you until you drop either from poison or from blood loss! Fool, we have to get out of here!"

From the darkness in the basement, not ten feet to their right, came a gurgling, hissing voice.

"You sorry bastard, you've broken my face. I swear, when I get my hands on you, I'm going to nail your tongue to the ceiling and hang you by it." This was punctuated by a knife flying through the darkness.

Lymirel quickly convinced the muddled James to retreat, as quickly as he could, out the front door, though he was feeling more faint by the moment. They both hobbled together out into the street, and Lymirel was almost ecstatic with freedom. She was in the street! She was free-

They hadn't taken ten steps from the house when another knife came flying at them from the darkness, this one striking Lymirel in the foot.

She shrieked and tried to flee down the deserted street, but in her condition, and with a nearly unconscious guard who could barely carry his own weight, she could not move very quickly.

Eventually, she merely left the still-staggering James behind and ran as quickly as she could. About thirty seconds after doing so, she could hear the guard's tortured screams echoing behind her.

She sobbed, staggering onward, poison coursing through her famined body, the only thing keeping her alive sheer terror at what Nick might do to her. Her vision blurred in the darkness, and she swore she could hear the patter of Nick's feet almost right behind her. He was toying with her. He was going to wait until she collapsed and then drag her back into the darkness.

When a city guard caught her, she shrieked, thinking it was Nick, before falling into unconsciousness.

[AllenMares]

The lady Helena stood upon a scaffolds, rope tight around her neck, cutting into her burnt and blistered flesh. One good eye glared out, somehow expressing remarkable disdain despite her ruined and featureless face.

A pair of grim and silent guards stared up at her, faces flickering in the light of a pair of torches. One kept his hand upon the lever that would drop the floor out from beneath her and snap her neck.

"Does the condemned have any last words she would like on the records?"

Lady Helena, whose throat had healed just enough to speak, grimaced, a terrible sight, and nodded.

"The condemned may speak now."

She seemed to pause for a moment, her eye rolling back into her head, before she turned it, full force, upon the two standing before her.

"I suppose now I know I cannot expect more from the bumbling idiots who staff the Guard, who are, after all, recruited from some of the lowest, least educated people in this damned city. I have learned, however, that while someone may be uneducated and woefully ignorant doesn't mean they aren't capable of great cleverness."

She tossed her head to the night sky, and if she was still capable of it, she would have wept.

"He's out there, somewhere, laughing at you and me. But while you may never find him, I simply won't rest until I've repaid him. The grave won't stop me."

She was silent for a long moment, and the guards glanced at each other. Then she whipped her burnt face toward them. "WELL?! COME ON THEN! DO IT! HANG-"

The guard, startled, pulled the lever. Lady Helena shot through the floor in mid-sentence, the rope snapping tight, and she swung back and forth slowly, neck broken and bleeding from where the rough ropes had cut through her burns.

********************************************************************

The guards who had found Lymirel had bought her to the nearest hospital. They had informed their superiors of their situation, and had her provided with adequate medical attention, though she seemed to have fallen into a deep unconsciousness from which nothing could wake her. After ensuring the young woman was secure, they had gone back to the spot where they had found her and, by torchlight, followed the bloodstains in the street from her trail, all the way back into a rotting and largely abandoned section of Marn. It had not been hard-a little ways back from where they had found her, there was a large amount of blood, and whatever had shed it had been dragged back into a building, leaving wide red smears.

They had entered the building the trails led to, entering it cautiously. Within was a scene of horror that neither had really been prepared for.

The body of a young man-that they could identify as a guard from the mace that his corpse still bore-lay sprawled on the floor, rent open with various horribly huge gashes. He was decapitated, and the guards had quite a nasty shock when they looked to the ceiling. His head was there, nailed to ceiling by his lips and tongue.

They entered the basement of the building, finding the gnawed-upon remains of yet another corpse, this one still with head intact. It was carved up beyond the point of recognition. Chains had been installed in the wall of the basement, and a thorough search of the basement provided yet another clue: a bloody knife, not very large, but well balanced for throwing and certainly capable of inflicting the type of wounds seen on both corpses.

Chillingly, both guards, as they were in the basement, heard footsteps on the floor above them. When they both rushed upstairs, no one was there, but the corpse had been moved.

****************************************************************

Lymirel stood before a massive set of wrought iron gates, set in a massive wall of stone. The wall was impossibly high, the gates immeasurably large.

And there, pounding on the gate incessantly, was Nick. Every blow shook the massive gates so much that bits of stone would rain down around him. At the very sight of him Lymirel shook her head, turned and ran.

Behind her were endless acres of dry, cracked earth, and in the distance, a single withered tree. Nevertheless, she ran, and as she did, she glanced over her shoulder.

She noted with some relief that Nick was not following her, but he had grown into a monstrous version of himself yet again, identical to the one from her previous dream. He laced both clawed fists together and sent them crashing into the gate, ripping it open with a terrifying squeal of metal. He staggered through the hole he had made, long limbs awkward and unreal on his body.

*****************************************

The nurses at the hospital had done Lymirel the favor of cleaning her and changing her out of her filthy and blood-caked clothes, but they had taken a personal interest in fretting over her. Once cleaned, deep bruises and lacerations were clearly visible on her wrists and ankles from where the chains had cut into her.

She moaned and screamed in her sleep, sometimes causing such an upset that she had to be held down unless she would hurt herself. She was already dangerously thin, and the nurses worried that she'd simply starve to death before she awoke.

One of them was combing the snarls and tangles out of her hair-now a duller red than it was a month before. They had a guard assigned to stand outside her doorway-it had been deduced that she had been the one held in chains, and they wanted no risk of a murderer sneaking into the hospital to finish off their only witness.

"He's getting away," said Lymirel, very clearly.

The nurse put down her brush and looked very closely at the still comatose young woman.

Lymirel, suddenly, opened her eyes.

[Camulous Smithson]

"Over here?" Camulous asked the nurse quietly. She nodded and pointed him to the isolated room where Lymirel's bed was. There was a guardsman standing watch there, who exchanged a curt nod with him.

The captain of the guard did not feel particularly at ease going through the hospital. He knew his presence made a number of people uncomfortable, and it was not a good place to be doing so. The hospital made him doubly uncomfortable because he was never there for a good reason. It was always either to interrogate someone who was injured, or to talk to a wounded or dying friend.

So he let the staff lead him around, and tried to make himself less conspicuous - a feat which was completely impossible when he was wearing the full armored uniform of a guardsman. Everyone stared, even the bedridden.

The object of his current attention, a woman named Lymirel, had been in a comatose state since being found in the streets, frantic and in terrible condition. She was connected to a grizzly murder; the kind of thing that sent the greener guardsmen home with nightmares.

For Camulous, it was business as usual. Someone had to be brought to justice, and the only reason he involved himself personally was because a guardsman had been murdered. That had to be dealt with swiftly and decisively. The men wanted blood, and their captain was leading the hunt. Nearly all other crimes took a sideline when a guardsman was treated to such indignity.

He allowed the nurse to open the door for him, who then motioned for her assistant to leave. The assistant did not appear to like the idea of him interrogating a girl who had just that day gotten out of her coma, but she knew better than to bother trying to protest. She slipped out around the captain, who stepped up to the bedside slowly, waiting for some sign of recognition from Lymirel.

[AllenMares]

Lymirel was remembering the first time she had seen Nick.

His parents dead, and with no one in the town financially secure enough to adopt another as their own, he was passed from family to family, whoever was willing to take care of him for a week, a month, however long he needed to survive. The town had been kind enough in their raising of him, but he had never known true parents or real care.

Lymirel had heard of the little boy with dark, ruffled hair, only six and yet already lean and wild-looking, his baby fat gone. She hid behind her mother's skirts as her father ushered him into the house, introducing the little boy to the family that would take care of him for the next three weeks, until time came again to move on.

"Come now, Lymi. Come say hello to little Nick." Her father smiled broadly beneath a bushy mustache, and even now Lymirel remembered the kindness that seemed to radiate from him.

Lymirel had peaked her head out from around her mother's skirts, staring wide-eyed at the little boy. Even for one so young, he stared back at her with an intense defiance. Blushing, she had hid her face while her father chuckled.

*****************************************************

"Lymirel, dear," said the assistant, her voice soft and gentle. "This is Captain Smithson. He has some questions for you about...about whoever did this to you."

Lymirel raised her head. She had begun to eat porridge since she had waken, but she was still deathly thin. One of the reasons why the Captain had been bought as soon as she was able to speak was because the nurses were still unsure whether she'd survive.

Lymirel glanced up. Standing above her, face neutral, was the Captain of the Guard. Lymirel knew of this man-most anyone in Marn did. Nick had even mentioned to her once that his life of thievery in Marn had become much more difficult since the man had assumed the position of Captain. He was handsome enough, rugged was perhaps the better word. Lymirel could tell by looking at him that he was a hard man, but not unapproachably so. He had that same determination in his eyes that...well, that Nick did, at times.

"Lymirel," he said, kneeling down so he did not tower over her, "I need for you to tell me anything you can about whoever chained you to the wall in that building. Did you ever get a good look at who it was?"

"I knew who did it," said Lymirel softly. "Oh, I know him very well. And the corpses in that building are not the only ones he is responsible for."

"You knew this man?" The Captain paused for a moment, considering this. "You'd best tell me all you can."

*******************************************************************

"I don't know, Nick." The figure, his face briefly obscured by smoke as he puffed on a cigarette, shook his head. "You don't look so well to me...I think you need some medical attention."

Nick's once-handsome visage was marred by a huge gash running down the right side of his face, a relic of his battle with the guard that had stumbled across Lymirel. He had paid to have someone stitch it up, but he hadn't dared go to the hospital to get it treated. It was now turning a dark purple, almost black, and the torn flesh was hard to the touch, while the flesh around it was feverishly hot. He kept the wound hidden as best he could beneath a hood and a scarf, but it was large and difficult to conceal completely.

"Just take me out of the city, Alex," he rasped. That was another thing. He was sick, his throat felt as if it was on fire. "Get me out of Marn."

Alex, a spice merchant by trade and trafficker in poisons by reputation, shook his head. "I'm not really scheduled to leave Marn for another two weeks. If you could wait that long, I'm heading from here to the Presidential City in Providence. I could drop you off somewhere along the way..."

Nick slammed a gold statuette down upon the table the two sat at. "Get me out of here now," he snarled.

Alex picked up the statuette, that of a nude woman, and inspected it, whistling. He inspected the base of it, where, in very fine lettering, the words 'To the Sauterelles-for their anniversary' were inscribed. He raised an eyebrow at Nick. Nick said nothing, just stared back at him, clearly smirking beneath his scarf.

"A monster's gold is still gold," Alex said, shaking Nick's hand.

[AllenMares]

As Lymirel related her story to the Captain, breaking down in tears at one point, he inwardly cursed.

The Lady de la Sauterelle had not been guilty after all. And now, knowing that the true murderer was still on the loose, he could only wonder how long it would be before the word got out on the street. And how long after that before those that had been agitating for the lady Helena's execution would issue calls for heads to roll for being too quick to judge her. The girl, though the Captain had sympathy for her, and though her anguish seemed real, was suspicious as well. She was telling her story in a strange way...according to her, she had been seduced by this Nick character and was living with him, though she had no idea of his plans. Fair enough. But then she had said how she had followed Nick one night to the Lady Helena's home, to see if he was cheating on her...the Captain had seen many liars during his life time, and Lymirel, in relating the burning of the Lady Helena's home and Nick's capture of her, was lying.

He had other issues, however, far more pressing than grilling a young bedridden woman barely able to lift her head. The rest of her story, the emotion in her voice as she spoke-the fact that she seemed to be lying about one part made him doubt the validity of the whole story somewhat, but the Captain was reasonably sure the story, overall, was truthful. In which case, they had a dangerous, clever and exceptionally cruel murderer on the loose. He had dealt with the worst Marn had to offer, but this young woman's tale of a man who planned the framing of a noble, knowingly burnt her children alive, imprisoned and savagely abused the young woman in question, murdered a witness and forced her into cannibalism, murdered a guard and then brutalized his corpse-

All this spoke of a mad, sadistic individual, one of the bad ones who murdered not only from necessity, but because they found no small degree of pleasure in it. Made all the more troubling by the fact that, if his charming of this young lady and a prominent noble were any indication, he had no small amount of social charm.

What would be done with this young woman could wait until she had recovered a bit, at least. In the meantime, the Captain knew of one thing that, while not completely undoing the damage done, would at least begin to bring a conclusion to this blood series of crimes.

The killer-this Nick-would have to be captured, put on trial.

The Captain called in the guard that had been watching over the young woman and gave the appropriate orders. All he could really do was hope that it wasn't too late.

***********************************************************************

Alex had loaded up the cart with his various herbs, and the poisons stored in the secret compartment as they always were, but all the wealth and baubles Nick had weighed down the cart quite a bit. There was really no way to hide them all.

Nick rode up on the front of the cart, face hidden still beneath his hood and scarf. He was feverish, pale, and the massive wound on the side of his face looked awful. His eyes were an awful bloodshot red. With any luck...or a little 'help'...he'd die on the trip, and Alex would have no choice but to keep all the wonderful things he'd stolen. In fact, he had already begun mentally cataloguing how much each item would bring him.

They approached the gates of the city. They were in luck. Alex was on a friendly basis with the two guards at the gate, and they were already waving in recognition of him.

"Hello, gentlemen," Alex said idly, bringing the cart to a clattering stop.

"Leaving so soon, Alex?" asked one of the guards.

"Yeah. Can't get any business in this damn city of late. Someone robbed and burned my best client-he ended up dying."

"Yeah, I heard of that. Too bad." The guard did a cursory check-over of his cart, then waved him on through the gate.

Alex tipped his head to the guards, and was through the gate and down the road.

Not two minutes later, a messenger arrived. The guards at all gates were to do a thorough search of every cart that passed through the gates, and all people going through the gate were to reveal their face. They were on the look out for items of wealth belonging to the late family de la Sauterelle, and for a man of dark hair and pale complexion.

The guards were faithful and did as ordered.

[AllenMares]

It had been a few days since the Captain had spoken to Lymirel.

Nick had not been found, and Lymirel had no doubt in her mind that Nick had escaped. That he now stalked another part of Eyropa, and that soon the blood of yet more victims would soon stain his hands.

She still lay in the hospital, with a guard standing outside her door, to protect against Nick should he return. She had insisted he was not necessary-Nick would not be returning for her. Not yet, anyway.

But he would, there was little doubt about that. Nick could not stand to be insulted, to be betrayed, to be lessened in any way-just look at what he had done to the lady Helena. Lady Helena, whose sole offense had been ruining Nick's plans for robbery and insisting on punishment for the thieves. Lady Helena, whose punishment had been to see her home burn down around her, to see one of her children burnt to death, and to be condemned to hang, damned by her own son's words.

The punishment Nick had in store for her-she who had betrayed him at his moment of brutal glory-would surely be much worse. Lymirel was struck suddenly by a horrific vision-that of a dank, windowless dungeon that would be her home for years-and shuddered.

She was gaining strength, and had begun to quickly regain the weight she lost while Nick held her. Her red hair was growing brighter and not as dull anymore, and the nurses had taken a liking to braiding it.

She had to leave, though. She had to, as soon as she had the strength, find a way out of Marn, erase any mention of her presence there-and find a place to eke out a nameless existence. Because if she did not, Nick would find her.

Pain suddenly lanced through her head. She screamed, and as the guard and a nurse rushed into the room, she fell unconscious.

***************************************************************

She seemed to be standing in the midst of what looked like a small campsite, only a few dozen feet from the road. A cart stood off to the side. A few feet from the cart was a fire, two horses tied to a stake, and looked to be a sleeping body beneath a pile of blankets.

A fat, short man stepped down from the cart, looking out toward the campfire, smoking a cigarette. After a few short moments, he flicked the cigarette away and went back into the cart.

He emerged with a sledgehammer.

He walked slowly over to the sleeping figure, toying with the sledgehammer, and stood still for a moment.

"Sorry, Nick," he said, and then swung the hammer above his head with amazing force for a man who did not seem very fit, and bought it down with all his might where the sleeping figure's head would be. He did not stop there-he quickly bought the sledgehammer up for another blow, but then the gleeful look on his face was replaced by one of puzzlement. He dropped the hammer and kicked the blankets aside-revealing merely a few pillows.

"Oh, no," said the man, his voice thick with fear.

"Oh yes, Alex," came a reply from the darkness, a rasping, wheezing voice that was still recognizably Nick's. "Oh, yes."

"Nick?" called the fat man into the night. "Nick. Please understand. Please...I...I just need some more payment. The statuette...not enough...I...please, Nick!"

There was no answer from the darkness. The fat man picked the sledgehammer back up and began to creep, slowly, away from the campfire, back towards the cart.

Nick appeared from the darkness behind the fat man. His face was ruined by a massive, infected scar running from his eye to the bottom of his cheek, black and oozing, the skin around it hard and dead. A few black veins could be seen beneath his pale skin, running to disappear near his temple. His smile was made all the more gruesome by this.

He held in his hand not a knife, but a rusted iron spike-perhaps an extra stake for tying down the horses. With an inhuman howl, he slammed this deep into the fat man's back.

The fat man screeched in terror and fell to the ground in shock. He crawled for a few feet before Nick, having picked up the sledgehammer, crushed his forearm.

Lymirel, though she knew she could not move or stop anything, neverless did not watch. She looked away, and the fat man's screams grew more frantic. There was the unmistakable sound of a knife being unsheathed, increasingly panicked screaming, which quickly became a gurgle, and then the fat man fell silent.

There was the sound of Nick dragging the man's body away. Lymirel turned around in time to see him return and sit by the campfire, poking at the cinders with a stick. He looked up-and seemed to notice her.

The world twisted.

Nick, his face covered by a bolt-iron plate, his arms too long, his hands claws, reached across a fiery pit, whispering things, horrible things-

Lymirel awoke, screaming, sobbing, shaking uncontrollably.

************************************************

"Where are you two off to? Don't you have something better to do?" It was Christoff, the butcher, fat and jolly, lifting a cleaver in the air, shaking it at Lymirel and Nick.

Lymirel blushed, hair covering her eyes, but Nick waved back enthusiastically. "Hey Christoff!"

"I'm not kidding, young man!" Christoff put his hands on his hips, glaring at them sternly. "What are you doing?"

"I have something important to tell Lymirel," said Nick, reaching out to hold her hand. "We're going to the willow tree."

"Kissing beneath the willow tree, you say?" Christoff jutted out his lower jaw as Lymirel blushed even more.

"Please don't tell anyone, Christoff!" Nick pleaded. "It's important, really!"

Christoff glared, and then broke into an amiable smile. "Oh...I suppose this one time. Far be it from me to stand in the way of young love. Off with you, you scoundrels!"

The butcher grinned as the two young ones ran off, inspired and enchanted by their innocence and all the potential that lay with them.