Drabbling
((Wtf is this? Idek!))
The alleyway was rank and dark, as alleyways tend to be. The pair of hobos, a toothless bearded man known as Jrik when people bothered to ask, which was never, and a balding babbler without a name that Jrik just called Gib, where laying under the shutters of a bolted window as far away from the alley's mouth, and it's terrible blinding light, as possible.
Jrik was once again passed out, his breath heavy with the drink as it only was when he had gotten hold of enough to binge, not that the stench of sour grapes and decaying spuds ever left him fully. On his other side Gib sat, eyes fully open knees tucked to his chest as he rocked back and forth, not daring to blink even as his own sweat seeped into his eyes and stung like a Lucavi's breath. He kept his quite mantra of incoherent prayer up, keeping his head against the back wall as he watched light beaming down from the alley's mouth, Don't blink
his mother had said all those years ago in her cold voice Or the Lucavi will come upon you when yer' eyes are closed and snatch you away to hell with all the other bad little boys.
The light wasn't golden as it pretend, Gib knew, it was red as blood and hot as fire, it was the gate to Hell. But he wouldn't succumb, he wouldn't! He was smarter then all those stupid men with their crosses and their white robes, he wouldn't blink, he would cheat death.
Then suddenly it began.
The air became thick with cold; the sweat on Gib's forehead dried and flaked away, the barest hint of frost formed on the bricks around Gib and Jrik.
In the middle of the alley, the world folded. Like a stream of water that had been bent and swirled into a vortex of color and space. Shapes, the ground, the walls, the very light, spun like whirlpool, distorted and made unreal. From the vortex's center a single burst of midnight black lightning flashed outwards, seeming to eat and consume the vary air it passed through, another bolt appeared, then another, flashing and pulsing in unison as they turned on a invisible axis. The bolts dug into the ground and the walls, leaving complete and clean slices like a heated kitchen knife might leave through butter.
And then, as quickly as it had started it ended. Order and light and space fell back into their proper places, and where the vortex had been know stood a boy, young and pretty, with a head of curly blonde hair, dressed in a very simple black linen robe, his back to Gib and Jrik.
Gib's mind formed the only logical solution is could come up with.
"God?" He whispered.
Beside Gib, Jrik rolled over in his sleep and snored a little louder.
God turned, his face was lean a heart-shaped his eyes where crystal blue. There was a flash of silver as something appeared in God's hand.
"Close" God spoke in a cold and emotionless voice "But no cigar."
There was a glint of silver again and Gib fell back against the wall. His hand went to his chest where one point of a large three pronged, star shaped, silver something jutted from his in-between his ribs.
Gib's only thought was wonder at the lack of pain before God raised his hand and a large flash of golden light filled the alley and Gib's dead and lifeless form crumpled to the ground.
The boy stood for a single moment, taking in the sight of his victim, as the mystic glow faded from his skin. He raised his hand his eyes glowing a shining molten gold, and the Dacra wrenched itself from the dead man's chest, flying back into his hand. He raised his eyebrow, face still expressionless, at the other drudge. And made a snap decision. Folding the Dacra into a single oblong ring and slipping it up his sleeve, the boy extended his hand again. The air simmered and a flash of black lightning filled the alleyway.
When the stench of rotting corpse finally prompted the nearby butcher to investigate, and call the authorities upon his discovery, the local knights would be baffled at the one corpse dead with barely any bleeding and only a minor knife wound to the chest, and other whose body had literally been sliced in half with what appeared to be a giant razor, but not a single drop of blood had appeared to be spilled by the process.
So the authorities did what they always did with things they could not understand, the chalked it up to demon work. They never realized how very close their conclusion came to the truth.
***
"Alaric?" Dycedarg repeated skeptically as he turned the boy’s papers over in hands. "We already have one commoner slobbering on Ramza's heels day and night. Why would we want to pay another to do the same?"
"I am no commoner, Ser." Alaric said, sounding for all the world like he didn't care in the slightest what the brothers decided "I am the son of one of the most powerful women in the known universe, a servant of the work of the True God, an agent of good in this world, the slayer of more wickedness and evil then many men will know in their lives. She has left a grand feast for the crows and carrion eaters in her wake wherever she goes, to gorge themselves on the atrophy and vanquishment of the weak and wicked. She raised me to do the same, and so I have and will."
He sounded neither like he was boasting nor threatening, merely stating fact. That was the unsettling thing about this boy, along with his strange manner of dress. Who wore mourning clothes constantly?
Zalbag cough into his hand "Well...Why exactly do you think following Ramza will accomplish this?"
"I have a vested interest in his survival." His said neither slowly nor quickly, just cold and clinically.
More silence finally Dycedarg asked "And.....that is...why?"
"That information is both unimportant to your decision, and private. I will not be sharing it with you." His face never moved beyond the absolutely necessary motions, it might as well have been a wall for all the emotion it showed. A pretty wall though.
Dycedarg sighed "Why not? You're not asking for much, and who knows? You might be able to sway Ramza away from that insolent stable boy.
So small no one could notice it, the corner of Alaric's mouth twitched. So momentarily and slightly, that in the next moment Zalbag was convinced it has been a trick of the light.
Dycedarg looked up from his papers, his eyebrow raised "Do you know Delita? Are you a relative of his?"
"Close" Alaric said tilting his head to one side "But no cigar."