It was the season of frost and snow, and he was able to take refuge in thick furs. The hood kept the cold from his face, and hid his face from less observant passers by. There was no true escape from observation in New Rahvin. It was a town of five thousand people, and all of them had been touched by lyrakin in one way or another.
He was about to enter his preferred watering hole when he was accosted by a small band of strangers. Anybody local would have known not to get in his way when he was on his way for a brew.
“Save me,” he murmured under his breath. He felt the world turn solid.
“You Bryn?”
The strangers had northern accents. They were brutish in their consonants, dress, and their scarred visages. The question was grunted at him in an aggressive sort of way, more like an accusation than an inquiry.
“I’m Bryn.”
He would never deny who he was, even to those who fairly clearly wished to do him harm.
“You collect the orphans. Right? You sell them? We’re looking for a couple of young girls ourselves. You got anything sweet and juicy to part with? Don’t care if it’s used.” The stranger jangled a bag of coin at Bryn, potential payment for one of his whelps.
This was the cruel truth of the world in which Bryn lived. Girls, of almost any age, were prey to men like these. Men who used them up and dispatched them, men who saw no value in them besides the tightness of their flesh and their capacity to survive while they served in ways no human should ever have to serve.
It was obviously out of the question for Bryn to ever allow creatures like these near his whelps. But their inquiry made it clear—these men would find their girls somewhere.
There was a moment in which he had to choose. Peace, or violence. He had experienced encounters like this before. No matter how much he might have wanted to choose a peaceful outcome, sometimes there just wasn’t one. They could not be convinced to change their sick appetites. They had to be stopped before they hurt anybody else any more than they already had, and that stopping was better sooner than later.
Bryn chose violence.
In the whirlwind of what happened next, limbs snapped and vocal cords trilled eloquent pain. Death came to those who wished harm on his whelps. Passersby turned a blind eye to what was happening. In New Rahvin, you were not well served by interfering in violence. Especially not the kind Bryn liked to inflict.
When Bryn was done, he hefted the bodies into the bushes at the back of the chapel. They would disappear in a matter of days. He did not know where they went. He did not care.
He went for his drink.
The Rahvin Rat Tavern was quiet, as it always was. The same ten people were there every time he went, saying the same ten phrases.
“Nice night for it.”
“Get out of my face.”
“Spare a coin for a poor beggar?”
“Pssst. Warrior, I have a task for you.”
He ignored them all and went to the barkeep, a woman who always had precisely ten meads in stock for him. Usually he bought one. Tonight felt like a ten mead night.
Bryn sat at the same table he always sat at, all ten meads in front of him, and drank them down steadily. Things were coming to a head. Hail could not be stopped. He had tried so many times, but the game she was playing only had one possible outcome.
Even now, she was probably getting into trouble, breaking the rules, refusing to follow the simplest of edicts. He’d tried over and over to discipline her, but it didn’t work. She did not respond the way the others did. She felt no need to please him, even if she felt shame when she failed him.
He knew it wasn’t her fault. Not entirely. She was following her programming, the way they all did. Choice was rare. True choice, even rarer. Gods knew, Bryn had tried to make different choices time and time again only to find himself right where the narrative demanded he be. This was an open world, in theory. In practice, he felt himself tied to rails he could not see, fated to tell a story he could not escape. Hail was trapped right there with him, a little spark of chaos who brought hope to his black heart.
Bryn returned to the den after his tenth brew. The shadows were thicker than usual. He felt them clinging to him, holding on to him. Blacking out everything besides what they wanted him to see.
He reached the door of the den, a big oak construction reinforced over and over again. There was no way to enter the den without being a lyrakin whelp. He had seen to that with every method known to man and some unknown besides.