Tales of the Tainted: Brodec - Chapter 2-
"So, you came after all." Came a voice before the key even turned in the lock. Downstairs, an inn keeper was pouring shots, while here, the Raven stood before a locked door, key half in the keyhole of the door. The voice drifted to the dark figure like smoke, stinking of magic and strength. The key turned, and the door opened. Inside the room, however, little was as it should have been.
The window over the head of the bed was thrown open, snow swirled in the air of the room, mixing with smoke from the fire. Snow built up in great drifts on the bed already, and was starting to pile at the base of the walls here and there. The fire roared unnaturally, throwing a haunting, flickering light over the scene, and a harsh heat against the right side of the Raven's face as he walked into that smokey, snowy blackness. The door slammed behind him, and if the Raven was surprised in the least, he never showed it. On the bed was what could only be a dead body, crimson standing out in the fire light as the blood of a young woman soaked into the bedding and cheap mattress under the sheets. She was human, that much was clear, although little else could be seen past the cuts and blood. She might have been beautiful, once, but now she was dead, meat spoiling as he watched, snow building in her eyes, open mouth, on the window's side of her breasts where they caught it and held it, in the cleft between her thighs, from groin to knees. Even as she froze from above, fresh blood dripped from a fingertip, her left arm hung over the side of the bed, a long cut under her elbow still weeping slowly to the floor.
It took but a second for the raven to take in all of this, for him to realize what had certainly happened here, the cruel and terrible death that young woman faced in this room, screaming out an open window but heard by none. And all this, at the hands of the being standing before him.
For there, in little more than blood soaked rags that had been silk an hour or three before, was the beast that had done this. A feline, of some breed, eyes glowing yellow as he lurked in the one patch of shadow left by the harsh fire. The smoke and snow made it hard to see clearly, but the raven was sharp, he knew there was a blade in the felines left paw, and he knew there was likely something worse in his right. Fear was far from the black, feathered mans mind as he took another step into the room, "You can't save her. Your precious cargo is worthless now. This is what happens when you miss a payment you..."
"You what? What were you going to call me, you lowlife fool?" Roared forth the commanding, enraged voice of the Raven, the voice of the night, the storm, "You know my name, use it if you would dare challenge me, or do as you should, and fall to your knees and beg that I let you die faster than you let her die. You know me, Razath, you know what I am and what I can do to you, and you were fool enough to cross me so glaringly, so, so openly?"
The Raven may not know fear that night, but the fire and pride melted from that feline as the Raven spoke. Dagger fell from his left paw, and the dart fell from his right, poisoned tip sticking into the hard wood flood as it landed. Foolish pride and reckless selfishness had brought him wealth few tainted ever tasted, and now, as he stared into the eyes of the Raven, "Yes, Master, Brodec, my lord and my god and my savior. You raised me from nothing, slay me for daring to wrong you."
The feline, quick as any cat and twice as smart as most, never saw the Raven move, but he saw the glint in one strange, talion like hand, the dart he had just dropped. That dart, tipped with venom from a snake known for its agonizing bite, danced between the long fingers on that strange hand, it spun in the smokey, snowy air, gusts of wind never fouled the perfect, endless dance of it in the flickering light of the fire. The feline watched, losing himself in the dance of that dart, losing himself in the perfect, endless movement. Days could have passed, weeks, and the dark furred cat would have watched without blinking.
The Raven flicked his wrist, and the Feline had just enough time to blink, ensuring that his eyelid, as well as the eye under it, was lose to the dart. Then the venom set to work, and his life became agony, suffering and fear. He thought he was dead, thought for certain he would die, but for the time at least, his heart kept beating and he kept drawing breath, only to wail and scream in pain with each breath.
A soft knock at the door, clearly, those beyond the room had no idea what was happening within. The food, the raven could smell it, and he knew his body needed it, traveling as he had tonight, across such a storm, was no easy task. He sighed, and turned to the door. Ignoring the screams of the male on the floor behind him, and the stink of the dead meat to his side, He opened the door, grabbed the old inn keeper by the shoulder, and pulled him inside.
A credit to his craft, that inn keeper. Pulled from a quiet hallway into a snowy, smokey hell, dead body to his left and feline screaming in unknowable agony a few feet away, yanked suddenly from normal life into anything but, he didn't drop the food, only the bottle of wine, which he still had the attention to catch and cling to with a white-knuckled hand.
The Raven grabbed the tray of food, setting it on a blood-marked table, and then turned back to the human. The full extent of the scene before him was starting to take effect, and shock was giving way to a mixture of terror and rage. However, before the older man could make up his mind weather to run screaming, go mad, or yell at the tainted freak that had ruined his room, the choice was taken from him.
Wide, black wings snapped open, fully, and the room suddenly seemed very large, as those wings didn't touch the walls. Infact, the inn keeper felt the room was huge, he felt like an ant in a grand hall, the room bending to the horizon before him, covering the world in that moment, Bending down to touch his cold, hard beak to the inn keeper's ear, the Raven whispered, and the voice of Brodec, master of storms, spoke, not as a Raven in that moment, but as something more, something bigger, "You will forget all of this by morning, in the darkest of dreams you will remember only the storm outside, how deathly cold it was, how the snow fell endlessly, houses and trees alike falling under it, how it raged for weeks. You will remember the storm, but never the madness that blew threw with it. Tomorow, you will come to clean this room, and will find twenty gold crowns under the empty wine bottle. You will thank your good fortune, and ensure your family is dressed well and ready for the longest storm they will ever know."
A strange blankness was settled over the inn keepers face, a dead look, but he managed a reply threw the fog of the spell, even as the Raven before him seemed to bend and his wings seemed to stretch the world, "Will it really be that long a storm?"
"The longest you will ever know, it will be remembered until the days of your grandchildren, it will change the world." The Raven, Brodec, replied.
Without a word, the Inn keeper handed over the bottle of wine, and left the room. The things he had seen melted from him like a nightmare before candle light, or snow from one's tongue, and by the time he made his slow, careful way down the flight of stairs and into the bar, none would think that he was but a bit pale, likely from seeing a good bottle of wine wasted on a tainted freak, no matter how nice said freak may have been.
Money can buy a lot of things, but in the hearts of some men, it would never buy acceptance, strangely enough, it often bought hate and violence from those same men effortlessly.