Skandra Tyullis (roll_the_bones) wrote in adusta, @ 2010-10-13 10:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | aeotha easaahae, singularity, skandra tyullis |
killers (aeotha)
Above them stood that spire, unlike rock in texture but in firmness, second to none. Skandra wanted to know where such a spire could come from. And why it was this place to which Gershul continually drew himself. Something in his nature? Something about the way he summoned portals to other worlds? There was enough here that Skandra didn't know. And he did not see how things were going to be any different, later. This doorway was going to close. And Skandra was going to find a way to kill Gershul, no matter what it took. Yet it wasn't fear, so much as it was about ... what? Vengeance? Maybe Aeotha was right to look at him that way. This didn't matter. Skandra wasn't going to let himself be stopped because Gershul was still loved by his idiot of a father. Shantar was a fool if he thought Gershul was still within reach. The man had escaped that reach long ago, and he'd never fucking looked back.
Who would, if they were Gershul?
Firelight had faded behind them. And although Shantar had not agreed with what Skandra was doing - at least not wholeheartedly - the old man had not followed, either. As far as Skandra was concerned that meant he had freedom. Nobody was going to seize his arm at the last possible moment or try to stop him from doing what was right. Now that he was staring up the side of the spire, into the jungle of Elvish houses in the side, he could see torches and firelight as the distance grew. Someone was up there. But how were they up there? And what the fuck were they doing up there? Why not do it on the ground, where you could easily test and control things? Surely they weren't worried about defense. Who the hell would go into a black, village-devouring orb if they had another choice? Namely to stay outside.
Skandra wouldn't have come here, if not for...
The workshop was as dusty and ruined as anyone could or would expect, and it was nothing like Gershul had described it. Of course, a cave in the middle of nowhere was likely not the most useful place in which to establish a workshop dealing with alchemy. Skandra could imagine avenues and opportunities based on what Gershul had showed him. But when he asked for material, the older Immortal declined, saying that experimentation had been done. Skandra would be learning by rote. Which sounded dull as well. That was, until Gershul had offered a deal that Skandra couldn't resist.
Go steal something, and you can have what you want.
"Did you bring just the knife?" a voice asked.
Skandra jumped. Turned. Knife at the ready. There was little light in the workshop - a pair of candles, only. And he could not tell where the voice was coming from.
"It's all I need," Skandra answered.
"You can't kill with a knife, boy. You kill with your heart and your mind."
"Or," and Skandra waved the knife in an exaggerated motion. "With the knife. Why don't you come out? I'll show you how it works."
If Skandra had been in Shantar's place, and Shantar in Skandra's, Shantar would be dead. As surely as he knew anything the thief-turned-warrior knew that he would have killed Shantar that day, if Shantar had not been far more clever and conniving than his grandson. Today was another day, but Shantar's life was spared for a different reason. Skandra wished that some part of Gershul felt the same. That some part of Gershul could not bear the thought of killing his own son.
Yet Skandra had seen how his family lied and cheated and used one another to get what they wanted. Gershul had left Skandra's mother to rot in slavery. Had killed Skandra's wife. For either of those things, Skandra could never forgive his father. Both of them together established all of the information that Skandra needed about Gershul's character. It also made Skandra certain that Gershul deserved to die, needed to die.
He was going to be the one to do it.
Aeotha, meanwhile, had said very little. By comparison to her normally conversational ways. There was no one about to hear them as they searched, walking around each side of the spire slowly for a way to escape upward, but she said nothing all the same. maybe she thought he needed the quiet. Or maybe she was trying to think of how to talk him out of killing his own father. He did hate it when Aeotha imagined the reasons for Skandra's behavior and then assumed they were correct. Perhaps he owed her the same courtesy, this once at least. Night had settled in. The stars were horrible and wonderful in the sky, great blotches of white and yellow against a backdrop of pure black. Skandra had never seen such a night sky.
Especially with clouds, which not seemed to be gone.
"Go ahead and say it," Skandra muttered absently.
She would know what he meant. It wouldn't be the first time he received a lecture in morality from her, but it would be the first time that someone other than Shantar tried to sing the virtues of sparing Gershul's life. Aeotha's slant on the issue would be decidedly less pro-Gershul and more pro-life, based on the assumption that no one deserved to die. Aeotha, he was fairly certain, had never seen babies killed for food by the wild men in the unclaimed lands. She'd never seen children shot through the eyes by bandits to cow the adults into compliance and sorrow. If she had seen those things, and truly taken them in, she could no more defend Gershul than she could the bandits. Or the cannibals.
Wild men did wild things, and Gershul was wild, no matter how intelligent he might seem to the uninitiated.
"Go ahead," he prompted again, this time sounding stronger; he also sounded annoyed.