In the name of courage.

Strife, you reek of it

I felt my thin ribs crack under the weight of their boots as they bashed me, kicked me, dashed me across the stone street, tearing me away from the only home I've ever known. These men tore me away from the cold dead arms of my mother and my sister, away from where I willed myself to go with them. After all I deserved it. I kicked and screamed, my voice aching from the exertion as the only sound it had made for days was soft beseeching sobs. Nothing came of those screams a set of eyes peeked out of cottages once in a while but the souls behind those eyes were filthy and uncharitable they left me to rot in the clutches of my captures who where taking me to-

I awoke with a start and I looked down at my naked body, I did not see the flowing blood I had expected just the normal thin white lines that ghosted through the muck and filth I was caked in. I curled in on myself breathing quietly it had been neigh on twelve years since those events and almost two since my escape. I was truly a piteous creature, I wanted to die, but No I would not swing nor bleed nor drown by my own hands, I couldn't, it was my curse, a sick game made by my captures, I knew not their faces nor their names but what they did- I cannot count the amount of attempts that had led me to this moment, sitting unclothed in the alley behind the Raven's Brier Tavern, wasting away in increasing putrescence, starving myself, willing every nook of my soul to simply leave my body, to rot with the rats and garbage that remained my only home and family.

 It has been over three months, I've not allowed myself a single drop of water not a crumb of food, I simply wanted to be gone, if that meant enduring such pangs I would chain myself to a wall in order to stay away from such lower temptations. But the curse lasted I was always hungry but never on the brink of death, I was thirsty to the point salt water or the urine of any passing beast sounded as refreshing as a cold spring, but I remained, in a constant state of weakened agony, mercilessly alive. Anger filled me with the thought of my lack of control, my inability to make the choice for myself and wipe my dismal existence off the face of this earth. But the curse lasted.

I was once again awoken from my starvation sleep but this time not by a nightmare that gave, if anything, a diluted representation of my past but, by a man standing above me clothed in a dark teal cloak. It covered the entire length of his body to where I was only just able to see his chin and the now soiled tips of his armored boots. I felt my body seize with fear. Had they found me

"K-kill me." I muttered hoarsely 

Slowly he lowered himself to the ground at my feet. I awaited the oncoming violation of what my mother had taught me to hold dear but, it never came.

I vaguely heard a sniffing sound coming from underneath the hood of his cloak.

"Strife, you reek of it." He muttered quietly.

"Among other things I would imagine." I said with just the barest hint of pride leaking into my reaction, before I remembered the situation all together and closed my eyes awaiting a blow to the skull or stomach.

I heard .... a chuckle, a sound I hadn't truly heard in person for over a decade.

I looked up to see the glorious mirth in the eyes of the man standing before me, he had removed his hood as I cowered to reveal a middle aged man with a salt and pepper beard, short black hair and cozy brown eyes that where reminiscent of my sisters. 

"Ey, you'll be perfect, get up, you're coming with me."