The Sharded Blade | Part 1 (A Dark Fantasy Novella)

Part 2

It should have been an easy job. The old man didn't seem like a threat to anyone, except maybe himself. I couldn't even believe I'd been hired to take him out, much less for the princely sum I was offered.

But then again, I was always hired to handle other people's problems. Whether they were real or imagined, or ones they couldn't or didn't want to handle themselves was irrelevant.

For days, I stalked the elderly fool. From his appearance, and if it were possible, he might have been one of the original inhabitants of this city when it was first founded a century ago. His mud caked overalls and worn-out boots spoke to him being a pauper and hardly worth anyone's time. I tried to figure out what danger lurked behind his doddering steps and the filthy crust on the crooked gray hairs of his beard.

His routine was regular and downright boring.

Up at the ass crack of dawn and down to the business district he'd go. There he'd scrounge through the garbage of last night's discarded meals to feed himself and that pet rat of his. That smelly, disgusting pet rat.

After that, it was over to the docks where he would sit for hours muttering at the waves lapping against the pilings. Then he'd wander up and down the streets. Like a pendulum keeping regular time, he persisted from late afternoon until early evening.

Finally, after the sun had set, he'd return to that ramshackle, abandoned old inn he called a home.

The damn building would have been a blight in any of the better-off sections of the city. But not here, not in what had become known as Underside. It was the oldest part of the city. A onetime wonderful place to put down roots, I supposed. Now it was the sort of squalor even those who lived in the slums wouldn't touch with a thirty foot pole.

His daily customs drove me nuts. I was used to making copious notes about my targets, then formulating complex strategies to take them out. But this guy was too easy.

After a week of the mundane redundancy, I decided I'd seen enough and elected to make my move. Besides, there was another job waiting for me. Not as much money, but more exciting, I supposed. It was out of town. An all expenses paid gig that I'd been recruited for, and I wanted to get on that one as soon as possible. See some sights, you know?

So, I camped out in the festering inn, waiting for the old man to return from his rounds of senility. Lingering in the rafters supporting the second story as darkness settled, I tallied the minutes after the sun went down. He always came "home" at twenty minutes past sunset.

The door opened, letting in some faint ambient light from the night. Then it closed while the old man lit a lamp hanging by the entrance. Its flame was weak, struggling to find enough oil to feed itself. What little fuel resided in its reservoir had probably been salvaged from somewhere like his meals were.

Perched on his shoulder, his rat was more than a little agitated. Perhaps it sensed something. Maybe that something was me?

"Gertrude," the old man said, "settle down, girl." They were the first coherent words I'd heard pass from his lips.

While I waited in the darkness, I watched his shadow drift across the creaking floor like the dead man he would soon be. He moved over to where the central hearth was, crumbling under the weight of its own age. Despite there being a fire stacked and ready, he didn't light it. He chose instead to just stand there and stare.

Tired of watching, I made my move. Slipping through the rotting timbers and then down a post, I stayed to the gloom in silence. Closing in, I hovered like death when I reached the distance of a mere three feet away from my prey who stood like an oblivious statue. Once I struck, I knew exactly how he would fall.

His rat whirled and hissed, spotting me at the last second. The old man followed suit, heeding the warning. But his recognition of me as a threat came too late. My knife went straight into his gut. Clean, like I was cutting butter. Warm, bleeding butter.

He wailed.

As if that was its cue, his rat bounded from its perch and on to me. That's when I saw its eyes change. They were demonic. You could see it in them. And its teeth were not like those of any other rat. They were jagged razors straight from Hell that sank into my ear.

I realized then that the man was no ordinary man; he was a wizard, and this beast assailing me was his familiar. The twist was one I hadn't seen coming. He'd shown no signs of being anything of the sort. Not once had I ever seen him even weave anything close to what I would consider a spell. And there was nothing around this old inn that spoke to a magic-user living here.

I tore the beast attacking me from my face, and it flew across the room into the corner with a squishy thud.

The old wizard crumpled to the floor, pulling my knife out as I let go to deal with his pet.

"Fifty times you will atone for this!" he said, cursing me under his breath.. "Fifty times you shall avenge the innocent!"

Already bleeding like a red river, he cut his palm with my own knife.

Once again his familiar pounced. I should have known that the demon rat wouldn't be so easily subdued as I swatted its latest assault off my leg.

But the attack from his underworldly servant was just a distraction. While I was relieving myself of the beast, the wizard stabbed me in the gut. Same as I had done to him.

I felt the blade plunge into my liver. A fatal blow. Or it should have been.

But instead of bleeding, it burned. I felt the blade as it cracked inside me, and I sensed it taking the last remaining part of me that mattered; my freedom.

Yanking it out didn't end my misery.

The old man fell back to his hands and knees in a pool of his own blood. An unsteady finger pointed at me he said again, "Fifty times! Fifty times! Before you will be allowed to die!"