The Orb of Destiny

Zahra

The victim that I had sensed around the corner disappoints me. 

It's the same drunkard from before who barely made it out of the tavern on his two feet. He's hurling into a bucket that he has clutched to his chest, as if letting it go would do more than the worse for him. 

He's heaving until the point where he shakes so hard, I'm afraid he's just going to topple over. 

But instead, he drops the bucket and wipes his mouth with his hand. The canister drops onto the ground, spins a little on its end, which in the process makes the contents inside swish and some of it to exit the bucket.

I clear my throat, and he turns around in such a furor, it almost makes me wonder what exactly he's so agitated about. 

When his eyes lock on me, they narrow and he forms fists with his big burly hands.

"What'd you want?" he slurs, and sways a little bit on his feet.

I roll my eyes. "If you're going to talk to a lady, at least have some respect when you do it."

He frowns at me, then wipes some sweat from the space between his upper lip and his nose. "You little girl telling me what to do?"

I grin, shrugging. "No. It's simply a suggestion. That is, if you're talking to anybody else but me."

He continues to frown at me, but when he notices the red glow in my eyes, that's when his own widen with both shock and fear.

"What in the blazes are you?" he stammers, backing away while his fists falter to his sides.

"Oh? Talking pirate, now are we? Well, that's not going to make this any better for you, then." I say.

Dashing at him, I pin him against the wall before he even has the time to blink, and pushing the tip of my blood-made dagger to his throat, I make sure that the way I'm holding it is not hard enough so that he dies of lack of blood flow. When he tries to escape, I press the tip of the dagger more into his neck, which makes him squirm with discomfort.

"What'd you want, girl? I promise you, I'll give you whatever you want."

My eyes lock on to the blood slowly dripping from the wound made by the tip of the blood dagger, and once my attention is on it, it never leaves. 

The calling of the blood, the humming that emits whenever I'm near it, is all the consolation I need before I decide to let my power take control. 

The way my ability connects with the man's blood, making the red liquid draw away from the wound and take the form of a small hand similar to my own, there's this simple poetry to it. 

With the blood-hand, I use it to reach into my jacket to procure the Orb shard, to which the man whimpers in fear.

"How'd you do that? That's not possible." he mutters, his eyes on the blood-hand.

I cock my head to the side. "No, it's not. I have a question for you, which I'm sure you have the answer to. Where can I find the other pieces?"

At my question, he tries to writhe away, but I hold him against the wall, pressing harder to make sure that the blood flow this time is being cut off, but slowly.

"Answer the question, and you can leave here in one piece. That is, depending on your answer and how you decide to respond."

I press the tip of the dagger more into the man's neck, making a small whimper escape him. I give the man a disgusted look. 

A sheep in wolf's clothing; what a coward. 

He'd rather die than tell me a little piece of information I need.

 I push the blade deeper, and that makes him scream out in protest.

"Alright, alright! I'll tell you, alright? You'll find a shard in the depths of the mountains in the north. I've heard awful things about that place, though. From what I've been told, there lives a fire-breathing- monster-hybrid thing in that cave, and it never lets anyone near the shard. You'd be dead within a moment if you got near it, that's for sure."

"Is there an alternative? Another place I can search for one of the pieces?" I ask, pushing the blade in deeper, watching him squirm as I do so.

"Aye. Bet your lucky eyes you'll find one in Madam Verra's Tavern. That lady has it all. Beer, tables, beds, good food. If she has anything you want, you might want to go there."

I press the blood-dagger to his throat so that it seems like I might slit it. The blood-hand, however, descends to his pockets, where it searches for anything of value.

"Anything else?" I ask, sure that if I am going to get information out of him, I better not let it go to waste.

The man sighs overexaggeratedly, like I'm asking too many questions and he only has the brain capacity to answer one of them. I press the dagger to warn him of what I might do if he doesn't respond, which does the job and makes him loosen his tongue.

"I've heard of this nun called Thena, who people like to call the Gold Bringer. Apparently, she can't die. I've also heard of someone who chopped off her head once and she just regrew it out of liquid gold that came out of her neck."

Pressing the dagger closer to his throat, I ask: "How is this information relevant?"

The man licks his lips, before darting his eyes between the dagger at his neck and my eyes. 

"The Gold Bringer is after the other Orb shards just like you, girl. She has this whole arrangement planned out, of where she can find the rest. I've heard she wants to put them back together once she has them all."

I lift an eyebrow. "And?"

"There's a rumor going around that if Thena does succeed in putting the pieces back together, the energy from the Diffusion would return back to its container. It would be like the Diffusion never happened and people could have their normal lives again."

Giving me a sincere look which I thought would be impossible for him to do, he says: "And you could have your life back, too."

That makes me back away, and in doing so, my grip on the man is gone, and he drops to the ground with a heavy thud. The blood-hand is gone too, and the silver coins that were in his pocket that had been pickpocketed are now on the floor. 

The blood-dagger is the only thing that remains in my palm, and for a silent moment, I wish that I hadn't released him. 

Looking up at the man, I watch as he puts his fingers to his neck wound and pulls them away, only to see the blood on his fingertips. He looks up at me with a frown of uncertainty, and it takes me everything to not look away from the liquid coating his fingers.

"You're not going to kill me for offending you, girl?"

I bow my head before pulling down my mask and revealing to him the bottom half of my face.

"No. I'll grant you mercy today. You... deserve it." I say, and pull my mask back on, turning away and running into the night.