One Mistake Too Many

By Riovanes

 

 

Call me Rytram.  Ryrtram Ungwillin.  I’ll spare you the details of a long-winded and essentially superfluous introduction – the details of my personal life aren’t really anything you’d be terribly interested in, and they have nothing to do with the story I have to tell, so let us skip them, shall we?

            At one point in time, I was one of the greatest thieves that ever lived in all of Nosgoth.  Not that there were many of us after Kain’s vampiric armies began their march across the land; but even so, out of the few come the great, and in this case, I had more than earned my reputation for excellence.  I did everything from contract thefts to personally amusing heists, and I reveled in it.  For years I had confounded Kain’s retainers and various lackeys; absconding with sundry goods and more than a few priceless artifacts, which I am quite sure the vampire lord still misses rather sorely.  I had no peer in the art of thievery, and no one had ever been able to catch me – until tonight, anyway.  But I’m getting ahead of myself; let me take you back to the beginning of the evening – when my life suddenly went horribly wrong.

            Business had been slow in recent weeks, as Kain’s legions had been cracking down on the human populace of Freeport.  The traders were no longer interested in purchasing goods that had been acquired through means outside the normal system of buying and selling, as any person caught with stolen goods was immediately assumed to have been the thief, and by law was dragged away to face the horrors of Kain’s judgment.  It was interesting, that one so powerful as Kain would take time out of his day to pass judgment upon his lower subjects; but then, perhaps a more personal rule imparted a greater feeling of control to the monster, thus elevating his status, if only in his own blighted eyes.  Whatever his motivation, I didn’t much care – it was bad for business no matter why he chose to do it.  My clients lived in too much fear of the vampire lord to risk his wrath, and so I was essentially left to fend for myself.  Which was fine, I supposed, given that I worked better when allowed to structure my own jobs – but even so, I missed the dependable income I had enjoyed from the traders.

            I was beginning to run low on funds when that fateful night came to pass, which probably explains why I did what I did in the first place.  I’d lived in poverty most of my young life, and once my skill at thievery had elevated me to a suitable level of income; I had been totally unwilling to ever return to the empty-bellyache and parched throat that destitution had so cruelly forced upon me.  I would’ve rather died than gone hungry again – not for the shame of it, mind you, but just because I never, ever wanted to return to the waking nightmare that had been the first fifteen years of my life.  Think of it as a post-trauma reaction.  Hell, think of it as whatever you want, so long as you understand the fact that the very idea of having to do without again galled me to the point where I was willing to do just about anything to avoid it.

            I’d been sitting around for most of the day, as I was usually wont to do when I had nothing else planned, trying to figure out who I could hit up for some quick cash – or possibly something that could sold in exchange for said quick cash.  The problem was that most of my human targets had by this time either fled Freeport altogether to seek a safe haven from Kain’s marauders – as if there ever were such a place – or had been hauled off as food for the ever growing vampiric hordes.  In either case, it meant that my primary sources of material for pillaging had for the most part dried up, leaving me with very few options.

            In the end, I decided I really had only two viable courses of action open at this point.  I could either leave Freeport and strike out on my own, to see what living could be made in the other cities of Nosgoth – or, I could follow a rather ridiculous idea that had been brewing in my head for the better part of the afternoon.  As leaving Freeport would’ve required bribes that I couldn’t afford to get me past the guards, that meant my scatterbrained inspiration and I were left to each other’s company.  Perhaps I should explain…

            There was a certain nobleman - one Attarbok Krummfeld – who had recently come under Kain’s political sway.  Attarbok was a bastard; a sniveling opportunist who always had his eye on the next great deal – so it came as no surprise to anyone when he sold out the location of the local resistance faction in exchange for being allowed to retain his possessions, not least of which had been his life.  Kain’s armies had been in the habit of confiscating all material goods they happened to come across when ransacking the various districts of Freeport, but I suppose in this case allowing one rat to keep its horde was considered a trifle in comparison to being able to exterminate an entire nest of vipers.  Such is the way of politics, I suppose.

            Anyhow, Attarbok was the only surviving human noble that still had anything of value left to his name in all of Freeport – at least, as far as I knew.  It was true that he had no fewer than four vampiric guards on his grounds at all times – leftovers from the forces that had originally come through Freeport during the days of the conquest, and likely left behind by one of Kain’s generals to keep an eye on their little human stoolpigeon, in case he should develop any undesirable ideas about his position within the hierarchy of this new order.  But vampires really weren’t too much of a concern for once such as I – after all, I had evaded them countless times in the past, and to do so again would not cause me any great amount of stress.  It was just a matter of entering Attarbok’s mansion in broad daylight – his vampiric guards would be drowsy at best when the sun was up, and as Attarbok wasn’t allowed to keep any human guards on the premises, that meant I had very little to worry about in terms of resistance to my entry into the home.  At the very worst, I’d run into the proprietor of the house himself – but I knew full well that Attarbok wasn’t much of a fighter, being an overfed and under-tried noble such as he was.  In theory, his residence should’ve been an easy hit – get in, grab something valuable, and get out again.  Too bad most theories turn out to be shit when put into practice.

            The sun was just approaching the midpoint of its journey through the sky as I strolled leisurely down the alleyway that led from my cozy little hideout to the main thoroughfare of Freeport.  The streets were all but deserted, with only a few stragglers stumbling along the cobblestone walks of the city, their eyes cast down to their feet and their shoulders slumped in a posture of defeat.  I almost felt pity for them as I looked upon those who were too poor or weak to escape from Freeport – they knew just as well as anyone else that they were only awaiting the moment when they would become a meal for one of Kain’s minions…  But I was a firm believer in the idea that people create their own circumstances, and if these fools were willing to be walking morsels just because they felt they could do nothing else, then so be it.  After all, I was hardly their keeper, now was I?

            Attarbok’s mansion was a few blocks down the main road of Freeport, not too far from the gates of the city itself.  Had I been trying to pull this job off at night, I would’ve had to have been a lot more careful – Kain’s guards patrolled those walls when the sun completed its daily rounds of the heavens.  But as the sun still sat high in the sky, I had no reason to fear the gates at this moment – the human guards left to the dayshift weren’t nearly alert enough to notice my presence; and even if they had been, they knew by experience they wouldn’t be able to catch me, so likely they wouldn’t even try.  I realize my level of confidence in what I was doing at this moment might seem a little arrogant, for lack of a better word, but you have to understand that I knew exactly how things were going to play out.  One doesn’t go as far as I had in the field of thievery without knowing one’s work very, very well, after all.

            The mansion itself wasn’t overly large – possibly the size of three to four normal houses, if that, and only if you set two side by side, and then stacked another two directly on top of them.  It wasn’t really a mansion so much as it was a very large town house, but the people of Freeport referred to it as the former anyway – what can I say; there weren’t too many personal residences of that size in the area at the time.  Constructed of quarried stone, the house looked as if it had been carved from a single piece of rock, rather than being poured forth as the slurry mixture I knew it had been made from.  The door of the mansion was carved from a deep, rich mahogany wood, and set on iron hinges about the length of my outstretched hand.  The door itself was probably about eight feet in height, and four feet in width, making for an impressive entryway without being terribly overstated.  Had the rest of the home been done in this sort of fashion, I might’ve almost had a little respect for Attarbok’s taste.  Unfortunately, the inside of the house was just as gaudy as the man that owned it, as I would soon find out.

            Deciding that at this point outright boldness probably wasn’t the best idea, I walked past the door of the mansion and around to the side of the house that faced away from the gates.  I didn’t expect this particular job to take too terribly long, but just in case the sun went down a little faster than I anticipated, I wanted to have my entry and exit planted firmly out of view of the guards on the wall.  The walls of the house were smooth and without flaws that would’ve been exploitable for climbing – which was understandable, given the overall construction of the exterior of the house – however, there were several windows recessed into the wall at varying heights, and it was through one of these that I knew I would have to make entry.

            The nearest window to the ground had its lower edge at about my eye level.  That was much too low and conspicuous a location for me to enter through, however, as even if I chose to cut my way through the glass, a violated window that was sitting right at eye level would’ve been obvious to even the most casual observer.  About four feet above the first window and a little to the left hung a second portal into the house, and it was this window that I chose for my point of insertion into the mansion.  Now all I really needed to worry about was how to get up there, which wasn’t really all that difficult of a task for one such as I.

            Gripping the lower lip of the first window, I set my feet carefully against the smooth stone of the wall, and gathering the muscles in my legs for one explosive push, thrust my legs against the wall, propelling them up and over my head, turning my body completely upside-down.  I gripped the lower lip of that first window with a strength born of years of training and practice, and as my feet arced up towards the wall further above my head, I pushed up with my arms, elongating my body to its fullest extent.  Just as it seemed I was about to lose my grip on the lower window lip, I felt my heels catch against something above me, which I immediately interpreted to be the lip of the second window.  Digging my heels into what little purchase I could find there on that lip, I tightened my abdominal muscles and pulled myself up to the second window by means of curling my torso against my legs, and then sliding my hands up to grip the lip of the window against which my heels were currently pressed.  Slowly now, very quietly, I pulled myself up into the little recess afforded by the wall of the house before it met the window, and hunched there, digging into one of my many pockets for the tools I kept there.

            Producing a finely honed razor from my left pocket, I began a slow, circular cut in the glass of the window.  It was a sectioned window, with two crossbars running at ninety-degree angles to each other through the middle of the window frame itself.  The sections of glass were possibly a foot square in terms of area, but that was fine with me.  I was quite used to squeezing my body into tiny spaces by this point in my career – indeed, I had gotten myself into much tighter spots than this before, which had nothing to do with some of the more active women that lived in this town prior to Kain’s conquest.  I completed my cut as this last thought ran through my mind, and pressing in on the window gently, dislodged circular plate of glass roughly the width of my hips from the window.  The plate flopped onto the hardwood floor below with a dull thud, and I hunched in the window recess a moment longer, listening for any sound that would indicate I had been discovered.  A minute passed, then two…  As no sound of alarm was forthcoming by this time, I decided that Attarbok must not have heard my entry, and slipped myself in through the hole I had created (which required the temporary – and voluntary – dislocation of my shoulders).  I eased myself to the floor quietly, and carefully replaced the pane of glass I had cut from the window into its rightful spot.  The cut was so fine that only the most discerning eye would notice anything amiss with the window, and even then, they’d have to look fairly closely to notice what was really wrong with it.

            Taking a moment to observe my surroundings, I found myself in a small room with stacks of sacked provisions laid up against almost every inch of available wall space.  A pantry of some sort, then?  I wasn’t terribly interested in whatever might’ve been in the bags – as foodstuffs had a fairly low resale value on the street – but I gave one of them a light sniff anyway.  It was all I could do not to gag directly after that, as the sack smelled strongly of some sort of rotted meat.  Interesting, I thought, that the rest of the room didn’t smell horribly of a meat locker…  The stench seemed to reach only to the edges of the sacks themselves.  I decided that whatever rotting crap it was that Attarbok was keeping in his pantry, I wasn’t much inclined to discover, and so opened the single door of the room, and cautiously exited into the main hallway.

            Shutting the pantry door gingerly behind myself, I took a quick look up and down the hallway, and headed off to the left making my way toward what I assumed was the center of the house.  Nobles, I had learned through experience, the habit of keeping some of their most valuable possessions in the main greeting room of their homes.  Probably just to be able to show them off the more easily, but for whatever reason, it didn’t matter so long as I could easily make what was theirs become mine.

            The greeting room, I soon found, was not too far from the pantry which I had just exited.  Less than a minute’s cautious creeping down the hallway found me at the entrance to one of the most pathetically overstated rooms I have ever seen in my life.  A massive mural graced the walls of the room, depicting some form of angelic beings bringing a golden sword to a lone, naked human figure, whose musculature was totally unrealistic, and whose, erm, other physical aspects were ridiculously overdone.  The body looked like it belonged on one of Kain’s generals, but upon closer inspection, the head of this person turned out to be none other than Attarbok himself.  Arrogant son of a bitch, to have himself portrayed in such a manner – but no different from any other noble for that, I imagined.  The mural was traced with gold inlaying, and several precious stones glinted in place of the eyes of the figures depicted within the painting.  The stones alone were probably worth several thousand gold pieces, but the amount of work required to remove them from the wall wasn’t worth the inherent risk I would incur in the effort thereof.  I needed something that wasn’t nailed down, so to speak…  Something small, but precious, and easily concealable.

            I got my wish about five seconds later, when turning my head to the right I perceived a long, slender dagger lying on a display stand not five feet away.  The handle alone would’ve fetched enough gold for me to have lived well on for several months, as it appeared to have been cast of pure gold, and was laced round about with diamonds and other precious gems.  But the value didn’t end at the hilt of the weapon, for the blade that issued forth from the hilt was of a material I had never before seen.  It appeared to be a form of metal that I had never encountered in my life, and dark blue energies coursed up and down its length, intertwining and chasing each other along the blade in a slow, sinuous dance.  A magical weapon, then.  These things went for small fortunes in even the poorest of markets – I had just made quite the find.

            Reaching out gingerly with my left hand, wary of any potential alarm triggers that might’ve been incorporated into the stand itself, I slowly removed the dagger from its resting place and held it up to the light, where I could better appreciate the light show playing across the blade.  It was absolutely gorgeous, and in its own way hypnotizing – which is probably why I didn’t notice the other presence in the room with me until it cleared its throat.

            “I see you have found Myrcyr,” came a cold, calm, and impossibly well-refined voice.  Definitely not what I would’ve expected to hear from the mouth of a swine like Attarbok, but then, I’d never met the man in person, only seen him from a distance.

            Slowly, ever so slowly, I turned to face the direction whence the voice of my discoverer had issued, and felt my heart freeze in my chest.  There before me, with a blank, unreadable expression on his face, stood the lord of the armies that had marched across all of Nosgoth, conquering all in their path.  The cancer that blighted our land, the cause of more misery and woe than all of the human wars of antiquity put together…  Kain.  Almost without thinking, I cast my eyes to a nearby bay window, and discovered much to my confusion that the sun still rode high in the sky, its beams shooting through the glass of the window and into the greeting room like shafts of golden fire…  So then why in the world was a vampire standing here before me, and looking so well-possessed of himself?  I knew they could operate during the day if absolutely required to do so, but they were supposed to be weak as kittens.  True, this was Kain, the lord of all the bastard creatures, but even so…

            I wanted to say something brave – or at the very least something that took on the appearance of bravery.  I had somehow developed the deluded idea in the last few seconds that if I didn’t show this monster any fear, I might have a prayer of escape.  Unfortunately, all I could come up with was, “Oh shit…”

            “Quite the little weapon, Myrcyr,” Kain went on, acting as if he took no notice of my little outburst upon my discovery of his presence.  Indeed, why should he have deigned to notice it?  He was in complete control of the situation, and I merely his helpless audience to whatever he might’ve had in store for me.  “It has the distinction of being the only blade in existence to be able to completely incapacitate its victim when it pierces the flesh, without otherwise harming him.  It’s really quite the valuable tool when you don’t feel like killing an irritant that might prove – useful.  Wouldn’t you say?”     

            “I wouldn’t know,” I bit out, fighting myself to keep from stammering, “I’ve only just now picked it up.  If you’d like to do me a real favor, you could give me the opportunity to test it…”

            “Oh, by all means,” Kain said, something that might’ve been a smile touching the corners of his black lips.  He spread his arms before me, slowly extending the long, and somehow delicate fingers at the ends of his hands as his arms reached their fullest length.  It was an invitation to strike him with the weapon, obviously, and one I would’ve been suicidal to have taken.  I had to stop a moment at the gesture, however.   From everything I knew of him, Kain had never been one to play games.  If he wanted you dead, you generally wouldn’t know about it until your spirit was halfway to whatever heaven or hell you were destined for – he was just that good.  But now, for some reason, he seemed to be toying with me – but why?

            As if he had heard my unspoken question (which was possible, given the rumors of his telepathic abilities), Kain folded his arms once more across his chest and smiled slightly.  “You wonder why I do not kill you, thief?  More than that, perhaps, you wonder how it is that I even stand before you here in the light of day, creating the situation in which you are forced to wonder at the condition of your continued existence?”

            I had no answer for Kain, save to tense the muscles in my legs slightly, in preparation to run.  I knew I probably wasn’t going to be able to get away from him, but I would be damned if I’d die without trying.

            “Isn’t it obvious, little one,” Kain smirked.  “Over the years, we vampires have developed – certain immunities, shall we say?  You may know that at one point in time the mere touch of the sun would kill us – but in this day even the youngest fledgling may move about during the day.  If we may overcome something so severe as death by sunlight, isn’t it only a natural progression of evolution that we should eventually become altogether exempt from its effects?”

            “I have seen no other but you look so confident in the light of day, monster,” I returned, my left foot shifting slightly toward the bay window through which I had earlier spied the sun.  “If indeed this is the natural course of your bastardized evolution, why does it seem only you have followed the path?”

            “Every advance in a species requires a leader, child,” Kain replied, not yet deigning to move any closer to my position – which I didn’t mind in the slightest.  “Why should not I, the lord of my kind, be the first to take that step into the light?”  Kain chuckled darkly at his own poorly made pun, and it was all I could do not to snort at him.

            “Alright…  So I buy the evolution bit.  I suppose the proof is standing right in front of me, after all.  But why is it, then, that you do not kill me?  You aren’t exactly known for being the most merciful of foes, Kain.”  I began to lean back on my left leg as I said this, having by this time pointed it toward the window through which I intended to escape.  If I could just keep him busy a moment longer…

            “Simple, boy.  I have heard of your exploits from my servant, Attarbok.  It seems you have quite the reputation for being a thorn in the side of my forces here.  I would think someone of your talents might be useful to my empire.”

            “And what exactly makes you think I’d work for you?”  I’d like to say I spat these words in anger, that I stood up against this parasite that seemed to be hinting at an alliance.  The truth is, though, I was more than a little curious – and still trying to buy some time, as well.

            “If you wish to live, I don’t much see that you have a choice.  Defy me, and you will die just as your own intended victim of thievery did.  I do not take refusal lightly.”  The menace in Kain’s voice left little room for doubt as to the seriousness of his threat, and his implication about the fate of Attarbok only served to increase the fear that was rapidly forcing its way into my heart.

            “So you killed your own servant, then,” I asked, very slowly rotating my hips towards the window.  “That wouldn’t seem like such a wise move for one that still needs help in solidifying his hold over Nosgoth.”

            “Servants are much like flies, my child,” Kain said quietly.  “If you swat one, two more will spring up to replace it.  Rather annoying, these lackeys are.  You, however, seem to have a rather sharp mind – a trait I value in my most trusted lieutenants.  Join me, and this life of petty plundering could end this very night – all the riches of Nosgoth would be at your fingertips, and you would never again know want of anything…  Only serve me.  Be my eyes among those whom I know already cannot track your presence.  Be my ears where I have no other means of hearing.  Serve me, and you shall find me a most giving master.”

            “Thanks, but I’d rather not have to deal with that whole blood thirst thing,” I said, finally ready to run.  “I have this thing about sucking on other people’s necks…  They’re sorta dirty.  I mean seriously, do you even bother to consider where your food’s been?”

            Kain laughed as I said this, and in this moment of distraction I chose to bolt for the window.  My legs kicked against the floor as if they were driven by a force not of this world, and I shot toward the window at a speed I had never before in my life thought possible for a human such as I.  Fear may have leant my feet wings, but unfortunately laughter didn’t take any of the speed out of Kain’s stride as a balancing measure – he caught me by the throat with a single hand, making it seem as if such an unbelievable feat took the barest of his effort.  His hand was cold as the grave, and leathery to the touch – but I wasn’t really concentrated on the intrinsic qualities of undead flesh at this moment.

            Slowly, Kain lifted me over his head, and gazed up into my eyes with those piercing orbs of his.  “You poor fool,” he said softly, “You could’ve been great.”

            “And you could let me go – we don’t always get what we’re hoping for, do we,” I bit out.  In a last act of desperation, I remembered the dagger was still in my hand, and with one mighty thrust, buried the blade deeply into Kain’s forearm…  He didn’t even twitch.  Well, okay, so he twitched, but only to constrict the muscles in his forearm enough to bring his fingers together around my throat, crushing my larynx and windpipe in a single devastating movement.  The shock sent a wave of blackness welling up into my mind, and as consciousness left me, I reflected on the fact that it had indeed been a good run…  Ten years without ever getting caught…  And when it finally did happen, it was only the lord of Nosgoth himself that could manage it.  All in all, not bad for a common born thief.  One mistake in a ten year career isn’t bad at all… 

Even so…  I would’ve much preferred living out the rest of my pathetic little existence to this damnation I suffer now…  They say you can’t take it with you when you die, and by God, they’re right…  It’s cold here, and very dark…  But the worst part is…  I’m all alone…  One mistake might not be that bad in a ten year run…  But why did this one have to cost me everything?  Why did my one and only mistake…  Have to be one mistake too many?