𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐎𝐍𝐁𝐎𝐑𝐍 | ❝Monsters don't get happy endings.❞
Rennen of Skellige was a cold-blooded killer, an assassin from the mysterious Dark Brotherhood. She liked to think that a life of blood and bruises was what she was made for, a life that was...
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THE SANCTUARY FOR THE DARK BROTHERHOOD was nestled in a cave at the mouth of a river in Kaedwen, near the city of Ard Carraigh, in what used to be an elven temple. It was taken over by soil and rock and old bones until the Dark Brotherhood found it and created their very first sanctuary. Stone and wood and magic, a combination that created a shared home for those that made their living by spilt blood.
Rennen leaned against a pillar with a vine of grapes in her hand, her mouth sweet. The scent of the cook's food made her stomach rumble, but she did not move to sit at the table and make herself a plate. Her mind was full of what happened in Blaviken—of a man with milk-white hair and amber eyes, and of a wizard that grabbed the body of a young woman to experiment. An autopsy, he had called the experiment. The girl had been just like her, born during the Black Sun eclipse that few wizards believed to be the beginning of a curse prophesied by the mad wizard Eltibald.
Renfri, the girl had been called, a princess of Creyden cursed by the time of her birth and the treatment of those around her. She had found little information of the princess: she had come to be known as Shrike and had a band of gnomes as her men, she had been hunted by a mad wizard ever since she was a child because he wanted to experiment on her.
They shared the horror of wizards and birth.
Rennen pushed herself away from the pillar and ambled to the grand wooden table at the other end of the room, her boots hitting the floor in a soft thud. The laughter became louder with each step, the merriment of her brothers and sisters of the Brotherhood souring the taste of grapes on her tongue. She reached the table and grabbed a plate full of honeyed bread and fried meats, and filled the rest of her earthenware cup with wine.
"My last contract was a lady!" One of her brothers laughed, his hand slamming against the table. "Imagine that, a noble lady needing the Brotherhood!"
"I got a farmer," another joined with a heavy grunt leaving his mouth. "The usual fight among them; one stole me horse and fucked me wife."
"Mine was a dwarf," one of her sisters added, grinning wide. "He wanted someone killed because he lost his paperwork in a game of gwent."
The fires danced with the breeze of their breaths and crackled against their stone pedestals, blackened from the hundreds of fires that had burned there through the lifetime of the Brotherhood. Magic sizzled in the air, flowing between each of the members like little lightning bugs flashing from one end of the room to the other.
It was the only magic Rennen was accustomed to.
The members of the Brotherhood and their merry mood lasted until the fires dimmed and merchants began their trek to and from Ard Carraigh. Late in the night, the sun just beneath the horizon with its rays threatening to light the sky in its glamour. An unwelcome to the members of the Brotherhood—they did their work in the shadows.
