3. Neckache

Neckache


  • He opened gummy eyes and looked up. A scene of paradise was painted on the ceiling. What kind of idiot paints a ceiling, he thought. Is it for prople waking up of the floor or are they planning on guests leaning so far back that they will get neckaches looking up?

    Necks. He put his hand to his throat and felt the ridges that encircled it. Like rings on a tree trunk they spoke of change but these were of loss, not of growth. But he had not lost everything, he was still here.

    back three days*

    He had been on his way to debate with his favorite 'collector'. The way took him past and a round a few temples but he had been this way so often that he didn't even bother spitting, anymore. The spell he heard was slightly different in construction but he knew it for what it was as his muscles froze and he could only stare straight ahead. He heard, but did not see, the mace whistling at the back of his head.

    When he awoke he was bound to a table leaned upright. The room was all shadows and figures in dark robes moved somewhere beyond the hooded lanterns that lit him without lighting them. The smell in the room was odd. There was the damp mustiness of underground, the coppery scent of blood, and somewhere . . . hovering on the edge of perception . . . an odd scent of insense.

    "Whom do you serve?" The voice boomed in his ear from a speaker who stood behind the table.

    "I am a mercenary, unemployed at the moment. I serve those who pay me well. Need another hand?"

    There was a pause and again that whistling sound as the mace swung un from the side and crushed his right hand against the table. He didn't scream, loudly. "Whom do you serve.?"

    "Look if this is about that song I wrote, they deserved it. They are both acting like . .. ." Whistle, crunch. His left hand joined his right as a crushed mass of bone and blood. This time he did scream.

    "I only ask this last time. Whom do you serve and will you renounce that service or die, here and now?"

    A thud told him that the mace had been laid aside and an axe blade gleamed on the edge of his vision. His head and hands competed to see which was the worse pain and he knew he was dead, they had taken his hands, his lively hood. "Pray all you want fools. It is futile." He was laughing at them as the axe took his head.
    .
    ..
    …

    And then he awoke. As he tried to struggle to his feet the grabbed him again and tied him to the same table. His back was immediately soaked bay the blood that covered the table . . . his blood.

    He felt weaker, like a part of him had been left in that damnable sandy place with the drunk fool of a skeleton.

    "I am done asking three times. Once only. Will you renounce your evil ways or will you die . . . again." The voice was haughty and very deadly in its tone. Paladins. He had fallen into the hands of Paladins. There would be no lying, no lipservice to fool them. He could give up his faith or he could die, here and now.

    "I . . . I . . . " It was the closest he came to yielding. In that moment though the final truth came to him. One that would carry him on. There is power and there is weakness. He wanted power. "I serve whom I choose and I will not yield to fools in the shadows. Cut me up or cut me down but hurry it up, my neck aches."

    Whistle, thud.

    And so the three long days went. Each time he would be asked, each time he would deny them. He never named his god but ranted against their cowardice, their 'good intentions'. He insulted them and then would be sent back to that sandy place to think of better insults. The last time he had actually been laughing when they cut into him.

    Now he was looking up at the ceiling and his hand drifted up to his neck. Six. Six ridges showing the six times he had stood fast. Six times they had tried to take his faith and been left with only his life. He rolled to his feet, fully healed. At the door was a small pack holding all his things.

    "Oh aren't we sooooo honest" He yelled at the walls. "Grab a guy and kill him, raise him only to kill him again but nooooooo, we aren't thieves. THAT would be sooooo wrong."

    He spit on the floor and wished he could do the same to the ceiling. Taking up his things and placing them about his body as he liked them he looked from the doorway out onto a side street and then back into the room. A dart fell into his hand almost of his own accord, a quick flip with deceptive speed and the god in the ceiling was neutered. Rubbing his neck again he slipped out the door and onto the streets.

    Payback might take some time, he thought, and this town might not be the best place to be planning it.

    As he passed an inn on the way out of town he heard 'the song' being sung and chuckled softly. Yes, Pelt was really not the place to be right now.

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    Al'Fezz Sobanen
    If you fall off of a horse . . . .kill it and climb up on a new one.

    :twisted: :!:


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