Name: Gilbert Greenwish
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Skills:
Swordsmanship: Advanced (Decayed from Expert)
Power (Fire): Normal Use (Decayed from Advanced)
Fishing: Competent
Items Gilbert brings with him:
A sword broken in half
A fishing pole
Some fishing lines
Some fishing hooks
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Skills:
Swordsmanship: Advanced (Decayed from Expert)
Power (Fire): Normal Use (Decayed from Advanced)
Fishing: Competent
![[+]](/images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
Spoiler
Appearance:
So Gilbert is an old man, and he's been through a lot. He's been through multiple wars, and lived the rest being drunk. Because of his fighting antics of his youth, he's got scars over scars, most of which are covered his thick waterproof coat that covers him from shoulders to his feet. Underneath it he wears a ragged tunic and an equally ragged trousers. On his head, he wears a hat that is usually lopsided on his messy gray hair that reaches his shoulders and covers some of his face. He sports a short beard that could use some trimming, and of course, has red eyes.
So Gilbert is an old man, and he's been through a lot. He's been through multiple wars, and lived the rest being drunk. Because of his fighting antics of his youth, he's got scars over scars, most of which are covered his thick waterproof coat that covers him from shoulders to his feet. Underneath it he wears a ragged tunic and an equally ragged trousers. On his head, he wears a hat that is usually lopsided on his messy gray hair that reaches his shoulders and covers some of his face. He sports a short beard that could use some trimming, and of course, has red eyes.
Personality:
He probably is the grumpiest old man you could ever come across, who is basically drowning away his hate of the world. He's not going to be friendly, and he's not going to smile, and if you get on his bad side, he'll rage on you. He'll be rude, uncaring and distant, and he'll probably not listen to a single word about what you have to say about it. Sure, he'll do his job, if he gets one, and he'll probably do decently, but he won't really be a good man to be working with. Unless it's fishing. It's always about the fishing.
The only reason really, why he's going to abide by the law, is because he's pretty much done everything he could to, you know, break the the law, and he's pretty much tired of it. He's sick of people and their shenanigans to the point where he simply can't be bothered to care anymore, even to kill them.
So it's a given that he won't be very talkative, but talk about fishing, and oh, you'll be amazed how much he can talk. Sure he'll be cynic and sarcastic, but he can talk about fishing. He's not the best at it, to be sure, but he's still going to wear your ears off.
He probably is the grumpiest old man you could ever come across, who is basically drowning away his hate of the world. He's not going to be friendly, and he's not going to smile, and if you get on his bad side, he'll rage on you. He'll be rude, uncaring and distant, and he'll probably not listen to a single word about what you have to say about it. Sure, he'll do his job, if he gets one, and he'll probably do decently, but he won't really be a good man to be working with. Unless it's fishing. It's always about the fishing.
The only reason really, why he's going to abide by the law, is because he's pretty much done everything he could to, you know, break the the law, and he's pretty much tired of it. He's sick of people and their shenanigans to the point where he simply can't be bothered to care anymore, even to kill them.
So it's a given that he won't be very talkative, but talk about fishing, and oh, you'll be amazed how much he can talk. Sure he'll be cynic and sarcastic, but he can talk about fishing. He's not the best at it, to be sure, but he's still going to wear your ears off.
Backstory:
“Old man! The ship’s leavin’, get on board!” shouted a voice from the deck of the ship that was casting a large shadow over the docks.
A fish, which had been nibbling on the bait just moments then, made a large splash and disappeared into the depths. An old man, who had been patiently waiting for the fish to take the bite, tensed and let a groan escape his lips. He shook his head slowly and looked up at the ship, but the man who had called at him had already gone. The old man’s red eyes narrowed as he squinted against the sun, and his skin, as brown as finely tanned leather and wrinkled as a dried slice of plum, creased as he frowned.
No manners, thought the old man. No manners whatsoever.
He sighed yet again and pulled his line out of the water; the fish had only taken nibbles of the insect, perhaps he might be able to use it again once it dried. He shook his head as he removed the grasshopper and threw it into the waters below. A dead insect is useless bait; no fish took interest in that. He removed the line from the staff and coiled it into a perfect circle. Good lines may be hard to come by where he’s going, he thought as he put the coil inside his pack among nine other coils, and the fishing hook into a pouch of perhaps twenty other fishing hooks.
He got to his feet and made his way round to the gangplank where ropes were being loosened and sails checked. He walked past the bustle of people who were waving goodbye and walked up the plank. Halfway up, he stopped and looked over his shoulder at the docks. She wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t. Even so, he couldn’t stop the pang of disappointment when he saw no familiar face among the crowd. He scanned the crowd once again just to be certain, and with a shake of his head, he boarded the ship.
It wasn’t until two years after his birth that he got his name, Gilbert. Between struggling to survive and debating whether to abandon the baby, his mother, Leona, didn’t have the luxury of doing so. He was an unwanted baby, a result of a careless stroll against all warnings. She was fed up, being cooped underground with the rest of the refuges of the Xitian rule, and a plan of a quick moment of freedom had turned into a nightmare in the same hour.
The gaggle of Xitians had left her in a ditch in the morning, mistaking her to be dead; she barely had it in her to reach the caves before more Xitians came. She recovered, even after severe punishments from her parents and the leader of the small pack, but it wasn’t long before they noticed she was pregnant. At first, they debated simply killing her; she was tainted by the Xitians. She was impure. Then they talked of killing only the Xit-spawn, but whenever such an opinion was put forward, nobody volunteered to actually do the act. In the end, she was exiled, chased out by the people she called family, into a fate worse than death.
She managed to scrape by, for a while, living off the meager amount of food she was exiled with, but whatever she had didn't seem to be enough for two. She tried her hand in foraging in the forest, but there was only so much one woman could do against the forces of nature. Eventually she strayed too close to a supply wagon, and was caught. They didn't really care that she was pregnant; she was thrown in with the rest of the slaves. The others only looked at the wagon floor as she pleaded to the Xitians. They knew that she would give up eventually, like the rest of them had. Nobody cared if she was pregnant; many of the women were.
Four years passed, and still she toiled, unable to die and unable to let die. The number of corpses had become unmanageable, and the slaves were strictly kept alive, even if just barely. At this point Leona had given up all hope; her life was a living hell. Between the forced labor and the ‘treatments’ she got everyday from Xitians, it was surprising she was still holding on.
It got only worse when her baby started playing with fire. It had started as a spark, nothing more than that. But as time went on the spark grew into a tiny flame that played on the thumb of Gilbert. He tried to show his mother, to make her smile, but it only horrified her to no end. She desperately stopped him from playing with his powers in the view of the others, but she was one woman, and would have failed, if it had not been for the Lucins.
It was a miracle. The Lucins came and drove the Xitians away, freeing the Mesalians from years of slavery. The day she was freed was the happiest moment Leona had felt in some time, and it would be her last; she thought she was free. She thought she could have a life at last. She would’ve been happy just to not be hungry for once. There was no one to enslave her anymore at least, no one to whip her and rape her. She considered maybe returning to find her parents, maybe they had survived as well. She was really eager to start a new life, but in her moment of glee, she had forgotten about Gilbert.
She ran. With Gilbert in her arms, she ran, and kept running. Scars were deep wherever she went, and anything Xitian related had to be destroyed or killed for that matter. The hatred carried on past the War of Veld and into the Purges, and the hatred for the Xitians seemed to only have intensified. Wherever they went, either Gilbert's eye color or his practicing his powers against her wishes ratted them out, and they were chased out of every town they entered.
A year here, and a year in another. They stayed on the move. It was manageable when Gilbert was very young; she only had to cover up his eyes with a cloth, and make him promise not to use his powers. But never using his powers meant that Gilbert had no idea how to control them, and every outburst of emotion caused more and more havoc in Leona's life. She became more and more frantic and hysterical whenever Gilbert showed even the slightest attempt at wielding fire, and started moving to more secluded parts in the continent.
From staying at 12 different towns over a span of 7 years, they slowly moved to the less populated patches of the land. Sometimes they stayed in abandoned campsites, other times they stayed in caves, and in the end they settled in a small cave not too far from a farming village. As they traveled Gilbert honed his skill in controlling fire. Leona screamed and had a good fit over it whenever he did, but a child just over 10, and a woman completely insane by her misfortunes couldn't handle living in the wild without some form of asset on their side. Gilbert sometimes went down to the farms, stealing a chicken or two, a sack of potato here and there, burning down the coop or the barn so his theft wouldn't be found. Other times and more often, he torched the burrows of animals, digging them up afterwards to find suffocated rabbits or so to sustain them.
Five years passed, and Leona cracked. She began shouting at Gilbert whenever he came to give her food, that it was all his fault that her life was in ruins. She wouldn't let him near her, or would she listen to a single word he had to say. Out of obligation, Gilbert kept her fed and watered, but grew more and more distant from her. To him, his mother was already dead; she couldn't even tell the difference between a rabbit and a Xitian anymore. So when she finally passed away, it didn't come as too much of a shock. She had grown too weak. He buried her body, and left. There was nothing holding him back anymore, and he did not want to stay in that cave that reeked of his mother. Gilbert was 16, his mother was 33.
What was there to do for a child, who knew nothing of the world but hate and fear, to survive? Gilbert knew nothing of love. His mother had only beaten him and slapped him for anything even mildly related to his Xitian nature. She had not loved him and the world hated him for being the half Xitian he was, and if there was anything that he had learned from all his years running away, digging through the garbage for scraps of food, competing with the rats and stray cats, averting his eyes, keeping them glued to the ground so no one saw their color, was that he hated the world back, just as much.
He left his mother’s grave behind and went straight to the nearest city and enlisted in their army; just about the only place that he could have gone to. His mother would never have gone anywhere near the soldiers, he knew, but he also knew that that army was just about the only place that didn’t care whether you were a Xitian, a Mesalian, or a Lucin. All it asked of you was to be a soldier.
Enlisting wasn't terribly difficult as he had imagined either. He was scrawny but fit, and after removing his hood and revealing his eye color, and also stating that he was half Xitian, he was allowed to enlist. Of course, there was a great amount of shouting and weapons being drawn in between, but the wishes of a commanding officer for strong soldiers, and the fact that Gilbert was only half a Xitian granted him an 'experimental' spot in the front lines. Their logic was, as Gilbert still clearly remembers, if we want him dead anyway, why not let him take a few of our enemies down with him?
Training was a bliss, and skirmishes more so. There was nobody around to scream about his ability to wield fire. And when the Civil Wars erupted, 9 years after he had enlisted, he couldn’t have been happier, in a dark grim way of his own. The fear of death was nothing new to him; he had been living face to face with Death for all of his life after all. He only wanted to get back at everyone, just everyone, and he put every damn thing he was worth into doing that. For obvious reasons, the other soldiers were wary of him and stayed a good distance from him at all times, but for the same reasons, he soared through the ranks. The people in high places loved him, and eventually he even got a squadron of his own.
He was called the Blazing Reaper, due to his incredibly ruthless fighting antics that involved his power of manipulating fire and his sword. He was a whirlwind in a fight, burning anyone that dared to cross his path and chopping heads off of those that were screaming from the burns. He never let any wounds slow him down nor did he let any sense of mercy stay his blade. Man or woman, child or elderly, it didn’t matter to him. He was simply absorbed in his obsession to take revenge on the entire world that denied him his existence. His generals and commanders thought to use his hate to their advantage, but soon realized they could not put a leash on this mad beast. So they decided to simply let him roam free the battlefield, hoping that one day his rage would subside or his strength would ebb. But if anything his rage only intensified as time went on. He never left the front lines, and even his nickname, Blazing Death, soon changed to Netherhound, a bloodthirsty mad beast that haunted the scorching lands of the Nether.
The generals had their doubts, but they had turned a deaf ear towards all the complaints of the soldiers who fought with Gilbert because of his effectiveness in battle, but there happened an incident that forced them to rethink their opinions of the man.
The man was 40 years of age but no less dangerous in battle than his men in their prime, and it happened that for a long period of time, there was a lull in the war. For more than half a year the troops had not seen action, and they were hopeful that the Civil War was finally coming to an end. Gilbert did not take to this news well. With no enemies to satiate his bloodlust, he turned his blade towards his own. Before the soldiers had realized what was happening, their camp was ablaze and soldier after soldier had been mowed down. There were only a handful of men that escaped his wrath.
He walked from there; to wherever his legs would take him, jumping into any battle that he could find. When he couldn’t find a place for his sword, he ambushed any encampments or settlements he could find.
Whichever town or settlement he found that he couldn’t take on his own, he attacked them in the dead of the night, setting fire to anything that would catch. The guards and anyone who could wield a sword fell before they realized who was attacking them under the screen of smoke and fire. He left no survivors. Until that one time.
She was a slave in one of the bandit camps he had razed and had demanded that he take her with him. He had destroyed her means of survival and therefore was responsible of her survival. She was a strange girl, occasionally speaking words that were foreign to him, and on a whim, he took her along with him.
On their travels, they were one day caught up by soldiers and bounty hunters that had finally managed to track him down. They managed to get away, but not without scrapes. Gilbert had set fire to an entire forest to get away, and in the process, the girl, who was called Reina, was injured badly. For reasons he himself did not understand, Gilbert did not abandon her, and decided to lay low in a distant town.
They blended in with a crowd of travelers, explaining that they had been hunting when the nearby forest mysteriously caught fire. People had not made the connections between the rumors of a deserter who had destroyed an entire squad and the terrible trail of burnt down towns and settlements, and in his guise, Gilbert traveled far away to where he was only an old man with a young daughter. The burns needed time to heal, and by the time Reina had recovered, Gilbert’s anger had been extinguished.
Who knows what it was that changed him? Maybe he simply got tired of it all. Maybe having had someone for the first time in his long life that depended on him changed him. Maybe it was another whim. But whatever it was, he no longer went out of his way to kill people. It wasn’t remorse, that much was for certain, but he did join the town guard, as ironic as that was, and became the town drunk.
They stayed in that town for 10 years, and if his whims and the girl weren’t enough to change him 10 years ago, the decade of peace was certainly enough to, soften his edges, so to speak. At the very least, he didn’t decide to go on another murderous killing spree when the news of the end of the Civil Wars reached their town, neither when the news of the gate opening reached them. He did, however, end up completely wasted for the entirety of the week in both occasions.
He made friends with the other drunks in the town tavern, another first, and his friendship with them, gave start to a hobby that was rather contradictory to his nature. They had one day brought him along to the local river to fish, and he took to it like a fish took to water. He loved it in some inexplicable way, and though he didn’t know at the time, this little hobby of his was the one thing that saved him from the horde of bounty hunters and soldiers that were feverishly searching for his whereabouts. After all, who had heard of a Xitian who loved fishing? Gilbert was, for all the townsfolk knew and cared, an old man who was easily mistaken as a Xitian because of his eye color, who had a lovely daughter.
Of course, all this was very misleading, because the pair hardly spoke to the other at home. Gilbert provided for both and Reina accepted. So it didn’t mean anything to him when he heard from the townspeople that Reina was courting a man in town, nor did it mean anything still when he heard a year later that they were getting married. What did matter to him was that the man was a bounty hunter that was trying to get close to him to kill him from where he least suspected, and claim the reward. Alcohol does wonders to open sealed lips. The man was completely wasted by the time Gilbert had gotten all the information he wanted from him; he probably didn’t even feel his own skull cracking on the pavement.
The next day, the town was buzzing with the terrible news of a murder, and at home, Gilbert was experiencing a dose of domestic violence.
Reina didn’t listen past ‘I killed him,’ and started swinging Gilbert’s own sword at him, inevitably swinging it the wrong way and smashing the blade on stone and breaking the already age old sword in half. She shouted and shouted and shouted. He heard more words from her that day than he had heard from her the past 10 years combined.
The next day, Reina left the house and entered apprenticeship under the town tailor. She refused to see him anymore and refused any support from him whatsoever. Rumors spread that Reina wasn’t Gilbert’s daughter, and this confession from Gilbert was what caused the falling out. Gilbert didn’t pay heed; rumors were rumors, even if they rang true. Besides, he had more pressing matters at hand. More bounty hunters were in town. Apparently, the death of the bounty hunter he had killed had aroused suspicion and word was spreading that he was residing in the town. It wouldn’t be long before the soldiers turned up as well.
He didn’t have any choice. The next morning, before the morning mist had dissipated and after dispatching of the bounty hunters, he left the town without saying farewell to anyone. He left only a note briefly explaining where and why he was leaving, paying a bakery boy to deliver it to Reina. He then travelled to the nearest port town, a few hours travel on foot. It was too dangerous for him to stay on the Main Continent any longer.
The seagulls were screeching. The waves were breaking on the docks and a couple of sailors were singing, seated on a stack of crates. Apart from the occasional sailor, there was no activity on the docks. All the ships were roped in and anchored, the decks were swabbed.
Then a new noise joined the fray. The sound of a horse, galloping as quickly as it can, the sound of a whip, ruthlessly rushing the horse to go faster. The woman entered the docks at breakneck speed, and jumped off the horse before it had even slowed to a stop.
“Gilbert!” she shouted, frantically looking this way and that. “Ah'ro?!”
She jogged to the docks and scanned the ships. Her hair was disheveled and her bare feet filthy. The couple of sailors that were seated nearby stopped singing and watched the woman curiously.
“Who ye lookin’ fer lass?” called one sailor.
The woman whipped towards the sailors and rushed towards them.
“Ha, id! Have you seen ah'ro, an old man with long gray hair and red eyes?” She said breathlessly. “He would have been wearing a white tunic with a brown vest, with a green sash around him.”
The sailor glanced at his friend, who shrugged. “Lots o’ people pass on by here lass,” he said. “That could be ‘nyone.”
"Maj kor'rim!“ She exclaimed in frustration. "He has a broken sword, and fishing things,” she added hastily. “Please, he’s my father.”
The sailor nudged his friend. “May be that old man,” he said. “Remember ‘im? The one who was fishing o’er there.” He pointed towards the end of the pier. “Weird bugger, I remember. But the ship e’s got on left at midday lass. Ye’s more than late.”
The woman sank to her knees and began sobbing uncontrollably. The sailors exchanged troubled looks and tried to cheer her up the only way they knew how, by offering drinks, but in no way was the woman comforted. Eventually the sailors gave up on her, and went into town, and Reina, got to her feet and left the docks alone.
“Old man! The ship’s leavin’, get on board!” shouted a voice from the deck of the ship that was casting a large shadow over the docks.
A fish, which had been nibbling on the bait just moments then, made a large splash and disappeared into the depths. An old man, who had been patiently waiting for the fish to take the bite, tensed and let a groan escape his lips. He shook his head slowly and looked up at the ship, but the man who had called at him had already gone. The old man’s red eyes narrowed as he squinted against the sun, and his skin, as brown as finely tanned leather and wrinkled as a dried slice of plum, creased as he frowned.
No manners, thought the old man. No manners whatsoever.
He sighed yet again and pulled his line out of the water; the fish had only taken nibbles of the insect, perhaps he might be able to use it again once it dried. He shook his head as he removed the grasshopper and threw it into the waters below. A dead insect is useless bait; no fish took interest in that. He removed the line from the staff and coiled it into a perfect circle. Good lines may be hard to come by where he’s going, he thought as he put the coil inside his pack among nine other coils, and the fishing hook into a pouch of perhaps twenty other fishing hooks.
He got to his feet and made his way round to the gangplank where ropes were being loosened and sails checked. He walked past the bustle of people who were waving goodbye and walked up the plank. Halfway up, he stopped and looked over his shoulder at the docks. She wouldn’t be here. She wouldn’t. Even so, he couldn’t stop the pang of disappointment when he saw no familiar face among the crowd. He scanned the crowd once again just to be certain, and with a shake of his head, he boarded the ship.
-=oOo=-
It wasn’t until two years after his birth that he got his name, Gilbert. Between struggling to survive and debating whether to abandon the baby, his mother, Leona, didn’t have the luxury of doing so. He was an unwanted baby, a result of a careless stroll against all warnings. She was fed up, being cooped underground with the rest of the refuges of the Xitian rule, and a plan of a quick moment of freedom had turned into a nightmare in the same hour.
The gaggle of Xitians had left her in a ditch in the morning, mistaking her to be dead; she barely had it in her to reach the caves before more Xitians came. She recovered, even after severe punishments from her parents and the leader of the small pack, but it wasn’t long before they noticed she was pregnant. At first, they debated simply killing her; she was tainted by the Xitians. She was impure. Then they talked of killing only the Xit-spawn, but whenever such an opinion was put forward, nobody volunteered to actually do the act. In the end, she was exiled, chased out by the people she called family, into a fate worse than death.
She managed to scrape by, for a while, living off the meager amount of food she was exiled with, but whatever she had didn't seem to be enough for two. She tried her hand in foraging in the forest, but there was only so much one woman could do against the forces of nature. Eventually she strayed too close to a supply wagon, and was caught. They didn't really care that she was pregnant; she was thrown in with the rest of the slaves. The others only looked at the wagon floor as she pleaded to the Xitians. They knew that she would give up eventually, like the rest of them had. Nobody cared if she was pregnant; many of the women were.
Four years passed, and still she toiled, unable to die and unable to let die. The number of corpses had become unmanageable, and the slaves were strictly kept alive, even if just barely. At this point Leona had given up all hope; her life was a living hell. Between the forced labor and the ‘treatments’ she got everyday from Xitians, it was surprising she was still holding on.
It got only worse when her baby started playing with fire. It had started as a spark, nothing more than that. But as time went on the spark grew into a tiny flame that played on the thumb of Gilbert. He tried to show his mother, to make her smile, but it only horrified her to no end. She desperately stopped him from playing with his powers in the view of the others, but she was one woman, and would have failed, if it had not been for the Lucins.
It was a miracle. The Lucins came and drove the Xitians away, freeing the Mesalians from years of slavery. The day she was freed was the happiest moment Leona had felt in some time, and it would be her last; she thought she was free. She thought she could have a life at last. She would’ve been happy just to not be hungry for once. There was no one to enslave her anymore at least, no one to whip her and rape her. She considered maybe returning to find her parents, maybe they had survived as well. She was really eager to start a new life, but in her moment of glee, she had forgotten about Gilbert.
She ran. With Gilbert in her arms, she ran, and kept running. Scars were deep wherever she went, and anything Xitian related had to be destroyed or killed for that matter. The hatred carried on past the War of Veld and into the Purges, and the hatred for the Xitians seemed to only have intensified. Wherever they went, either Gilbert's eye color or his practicing his powers against her wishes ratted them out, and they were chased out of every town they entered.
A year here, and a year in another. They stayed on the move. It was manageable when Gilbert was very young; she only had to cover up his eyes with a cloth, and make him promise not to use his powers. But never using his powers meant that Gilbert had no idea how to control them, and every outburst of emotion caused more and more havoc in Leona's life. She became more and more frantic and hysterical whenever Gilbert showed even the slightest attempt at wielding fire, and started moving to more secluded parts in the continent.
From staying at 12 different towns over a span of 7 years, they slowly moved to the less populated patches of the land. Sometimes they stayed in abandoned campsites, other times they stayed in caves, and in the end they settled in a small cave not too far from a farming village. As they traveled Gilbert honed his skill in controlling fire. Leona screamed and had a good fit over it whenever he did, but a child just over 10, and a woman completely insane by her misfortunes couldn't handle living in the wild without some form of asset on their side. Gilbert sometimes went down to the farms, stealing a chicken or two, a sack of potato here and there, burning down the coop or the barn so his theft wouldn't be found. Other times and more often, he torched the burrows of animals, digging them up afterwards to find suffocated rabbits or so to sustain them.
Five years passed, and Leona cracked. She began shouting at Gilbert whenever he came to give her food, that it was all his fault that her life was in ruins. She wouldn't let him near her, or would she listen to a single word he had to say. Out of obligation, Gilbert kept her fed and watered, but grew more and more distant from her. To him, his mother was already dead; she couldn't even tell the difference between a rabbit and a Xitian anymore. So when she finally passed away, it didn't come as too much of a shock. She had grown too weak. He buried her body, and left. There was nothing holding him back anymore, and he did not want to stay in that cave that reeked of his mother. Gilbert was 16, his mother was 33.
What was there to do for a child, who knew nothing of the world but hate and fear, to survive? Gilbert knew nothing of love. His mother had only beaten him and slapped him for anything even mildly related to his Xitian nature. She had not loved him and the world hated him for being the half Xitian he was, and if there was anything that he had learned from all his years running away, digging through the garbage for scraps of food, competing with the rats and stray cats, averting his eyes, keeping them glued to the ground so no one saw their color, was that he hated the world back, just as much.
He left his mother’s grave behind and went straight to the nearest city and enlisted in their army; just about the only place that he could have gone to. His mother would never have gone anywhere near the soldiers, he knew, but he also knew that that army was just about the only place that didn’t care whether you were a Xitian, a Mesalian, or a Lucin. All it asked of you was to be a soldier.
Enlisting wasn't terribly difficult as he had imagined either. He was scrawny but fit, and after removing his hood and revealing his eye color, and also stating that he was half Xitian, he was allowed to enlist. Of course, there was a great amount of shouting and weapons being drawn in between, but the wishes of a commanding officer for strong soldiers, and the fact that Gilbert was only half a Xitian granted him an 'experimental' spot in the front lines. Their logic was, as Gilbert still clearly remembers, if we want him dead anyway, why not let him take a few of our enemies down with him?
Training was a bliss, and skirmishes more so. There was nobody around to scream about his ability to wield fire. And when the Civil Wars erupted, 9 years after he had enlisted, he couldn’t have been happier, in a dark grim way of his own. The fear of death was nothing new to him; he had been living face to face with Death for all of his life after all. He only wanted to get back at everyone, just everyone, and he put every damn thing he was worth into doing that. For obvious reasons, the other soldiers were wary of him and stayed a good distance from him at all times, but for the same reasons, he soared through the ranks. The people in high places loved him, and eventually he even got a squadron of his own.
He was called the Blazing Reaper, due to his incredibly ruthless fighting antics that involved his power of manipulating fire and his sword. He was a whirlwind in a fight, burning anyone that dared to cross his path and chopping heads off of those that were screaming from the burns. He never let any wounds slow him down nor did he let any sense of mercy stay his blade. Man or woman, child or elderly, it didn’t matter to him. He was simply absorbed in his obsession to take revenge on the entire world that denied him his existence. His generals and commanders thought to use his hate to their advantage, but soon realized they could not put a leash on this mad beast. So they decided to simply let him roam free the battlefield, hoping that one day his rage would subside or his strength would ebb. But if anything his rage only intensified as time went on. He never left the front lines, and even his nickname, Blazing Death, soon changed to Netherhound, a bloodthirsty mad beast that haunted the scorching lands of the Nether.
The generals had their doubts, but they had turned a deaf ear towards all the complaints of the soldiers who fought with Gilbert because of his effectiveness in battle, but there happened an incident that forced them to rethink their opinions of the man.
The man was 40 years of age but no less dangerous in battle than his men in their prime, and it happened that for a long period of time, there was a lull in the war. For more than half a year the troops had not seen action, and they were hopeful that the Civil War was finally coming to an end. Gilbert did not take to this news well. With no enemies to satiate his bloodlust, he turned his blade towards his own. Before the soldiers had realized what was happening, their camp was ablaze and soldier after soldier had been mowed down. There were only a handful of men that escaped his wrath.
He walked from there; to wherever his legs would take him, jumping into any battle that he could find. When he couldn’t find a place for his sword, he ambushed any encampments or settlements he could find.
Whichever town or settlement he found that he couldn’t take on his own, he attacked them in the dead of the night, setting fire to anything that would catch. The guards and anyone who could wield a sword fell before they realized who was attacking them under the screen of smoke and fire. He left no survivors. Until that one time.
She was a slave in one of the bandit camps he had razed and had demanded that he take her with him. He had destroyed her means of survival and therefore was responsible of her survival. She was a strange girl, occasionally speaking words that were foreign to him, and on a whim, he took her along with him.
On their travels, they were one day caught up by soldiers and bounty hunters that had finally managed to track him down. They managed to get away, but not without scrapes. Gilbert had set fire to an entire forest to get away, and in the process, the girl, who was called Reina, was injured badly. For reasons he himself did not understand, Gilbert did not abandon her, and decided to lay low in a distant town.
They blended in with a crowd of travelers, explaining that they had been hunting when the nearby forest mysteriously caught fire. People had not made the connections between the rumors of a deserter who had destroyed an entire squad and the terrible trail of burnt down towns and settlements, and in his guise, Gilbert traveled far away to where he was only an old man with a young daughter. The burns needed time to heal, and by the time Reina had recovered, Gilbert’s anger had been extinguished.
Who knows what it was that changed him? Maybe he simply got tired of it all. Maybe having had someone for the first time in his long life that depended on him changed him. Maybe it was another whim. But whatever it was, he no longer went out of his way to kill people. It wasn’t remorse, that much was for certain, but he did join the town guard, as ironic as that was, and became the town drunk.
They stayed in that town for 10 years, and if his whims and the girl weren’t enough to change him 10 years ago, the decade of peace was certainly enough to, soften his edges, so to speak. At the very least, he didn’t decide to go on another murderous killing spree when the news of the end of the Civil Wars reached their town, neither when the news of the gate opening reached them. He did, however, end up completely wasted for the entirety of the week in both occasions.
He made friends with the other drunks in the town tavern, another first, and his friendship with them, gave start to a hobby that was rather contradictory to his nature. They had one day brought him along to the local river to fish, and he took to it like a fish took to water. He loved it in some inexplicable way, and though he didn’t know at the time, this little hobby of his was the one thing that saved him from the horde of bounty hunters and soldiers that were feverishly searching for his whereabouts. After all, who had heard of a Xitian who loved fishing? Gilbert was, for all the townsfolk knew and cared, an old man who was easily mistaken as a Xitian because of his eye color, who had a lovely daughter.
Of course, all this was very misleading, because the pair hardly spoke to the other at home. Gilbert provided for both and Reina accepted. So it didn’t mean anything to him when he heard from the townspeople that Reina was courting a man in town, nor did it mean anything still when he heard a year later that they were getting married. What did matter to him was that the man was a bounty hunter that was trying to get close to him to kill him from where he least suspected, and claim the reward. Alcohol does wonders to open sealed lips. The man was completely wasted by the time Gilbert had gotten all the information he wanted from him; he probably didn’t even feel his own skull cracking on the pavement.
The next day, the town was buzzing with the terrible news of a murder, and at home, Gilbert was experiencing a dose of domestic violence.
Reina didn’t listen past ‘I killed him,’ and started swinging Gilbert’s own sword at him, inevitably swinging it the wrong way and smashing the blade on stone and breaking the already age old sword in half. She shouted and shouted and shouted. He heard more words from her that day than he had heard from her the past 10 years combined.
The next day, Reina left the house and entered apprenticeship under the town tailor. She refused to see him anymore and refused any support from him whatsoever. Rumors spread that Reina wasn’t Gilbert’s daughter, and this confession from Gilbert was what caused the falling out. Gilbert didn’t pay heed; rumors were rumors, even if they rang true. Besides, he had more pressing matters at hand. More bounty hunters were in town. Apparently, the death of the bounty hunter he had killed had aroused suspicion and word was spreading that he was residing in the town. It wouldn’t be long before the soldiers turned up as well.
He didn’t have any choice. The next morning, before the morning mist had dissipated and after dispatching of the bounty hunters, he left the town without saying farewell to anyone. He left only a note briefly explaining where and why he was leaving, paying a bakery boy to deliver it to Reina. He then travelled to the nearest port town, a few hours travel on foot. It was too dangerous for him to stay on the Main Continent any longer.
-=oOo=-
The seagulls were screeching. The waves were breaking on the docks and a couple of sailors were singing, seated on a stack of crates. Apart from the occasional sailor, there was no activity on the docks. All the ships were roped in and anchored, the decks were swabbed.
Then a new noise joined the fray. The sound of a horse, galloping as quickly as it can, the sound of a whip, ruthlessly rushing the horse to go faster. The woman entered the docks at breakneck speed, and jumped off the horse before it had even slowed to a stop.
“Gilbert!” she shouted, frantically looking this way and that. “Ah'ro?!”
She jogged to the docks and scanned the ships. Her hair was disheveled and her bare feet filthy. The couple of sailors that were seated nearby stopped singing and watched the woman curiously.
“Who ye lookin’ fer lass?” called one sailor.
The woman whipped towards the sailors and rushed towards them.
“Ha, id! Have you seen ah'ro, an old man with long gray hair and red eyes?” She said breathlessly. “He would have been wearing a white tunic with a brown vest, with a green sash around him.”
The sailor glanced at his friend, who shrugged. “Lots o’ people pass on by here lass,” he said. “That could be ‘nyone.”
"Maj kor'rim!“ She exclaimed in frustration. "He has a broken sword, and fishing things,” she added hastily. “Please, he’s my father.”
The sailor nudged his friend. “May be that old man,” he said. “Remember ‘im? The one who was fishing o’er there.” He pointed towards the end of the pier. “Weird bugger, I remember. But the ship e’s got on left at midday lass. Ye’s more than late.”
The woman sank to her knees and began sobbing uncontrollably. The sailors exchanged troubled looks and tried to cheer her up the only way they knew how, by offering drinks, but in no way was the woman comforted. Eventually the sailors gave up on her, and went into town, and Reina, got to her feet and left the docks alone.
Epilogue:
The lit end of the tobacco fizzled and died. The last puff of smoke floated up to the sky, invisible against the ashen clouds that blocked the sun completely. A drop of rain fell, soon a downpour followed.
The man knew he’d have to move soon; he could already feel his strength being sapped away from him by the second, but he stayed where he was, watching the last of the fires flicker and die under the torrent.
He didn’t know how much time had passed before she spoke.
“Jak'Kricka, you’ll die if you stay in the rain any longer, you know.”
It was a girl, just past being a child and just short of being an adult. She was in tattered clothing and was barefeet. The clothes sagged under the weight of the water and the raindrops tore at the clothes that were as tough as cardboard. The damage on her clothes wasn’t done by the fire. A ring of red circled her neck, wrists and ankles; a patch of skin that had been continuously irritated before new skin could grow over it. A mark of shame. A mark of a slave.
“You are a Xitian aren’t you?” said the girl. “Or do you want to die?”
It wasn’t until moments later before he opened his mouth. “What do you want girl?” he said gruffly. “I have no business with a slave. Leave me be.”
The girl watched him, and kicked up a mound of ash by her feet. “You know, I was their slave,” she said matter-of-factly. “Did you know? They had killed my banu, my family.”
He grunted. “I won’t have your gratitude, slave,” he said. “Leave me.”
“They were also keeping me alive,” she continued. “They kept me fed.”
He raised his head and looked at her properly. She didn’t seem fed; he doubted he’d feel any skin at all if he had grabbed her by the wrist.
“And you killed them,” she said pointedly. “That means you are now responsible.”
This made him snort. “For what?”
“For my survival,” she replied shortly and looked at him intently.
Did he see fear? Or was it simply determination? He couldn’t tell, his vision was getting blurry.
He got to his feet. “Come along then,” he said. “Keep up.”
The girl didn’t smile. She didn’t show any sign of appreciation. She only nodded and followed in his wake.
The lit end of the tobacco fizzled and died. The last puff of smoke floated up to the sky, invisible against the ashen clouds that blocked the sun completely. A drop of rain fell, soon a downpour followed.
The man knew he’d have to move soon; he could already feel his strength being sapped away from him by the second, but he stayed where he was, watching the last of the fires flicker and die under the torrent.
He didn’t know how much time had passed before she spoke.
“Jak'Kricka, you’ll die if you stay in the rain any longer, you know.”
It was a girl, just past being a child and just short of being an adult. She was in tattered clothing and was barefeet. The clothes sagged under the weight of the water and the raindrops tore at the clothes that were as tough as cardboard. The damage on her clothes wasn’t done by the fire. A ring of red circled her neck, wrists and ankles; a patch of skin that had been continuously irritated before new skin could grow over it. A mark of shame. A mark of a slave.
“You are a Xitian aren’t you?” said the girl. “Or do you want to die?”
It wasn’t until moments later before he opened his mouth. “What do you want girl?” he said gruffly. “I have no business with a slave. Leave me be.”
The girl watched him, and kicked up a mound of ash by her feet. “You know, I was their slave,” she said matter-of-factly. “Did you know? They had killed my banu, my family.”
He grunted. “I won’t have your gratitude, slave,” he said. “Leave me.”
“They were also keeping me alive,” she continued. “They kept me fed.”
He raised his head and looked at her properly. She didn’t seem fed; he doubted he’d feel any skin at all if he had grabbed her by the wrist.
“And you killed them,” she said pointedly. “That means you are now responsible.”
This made him snort. “For what?”
“For my survival,” she replied shortly and looked at him intently.
Did he see fear? Or was it simply determination? He couldn’t tell, his vision was getting blurry.
He got to his feet. “Come along then,” he said. “Keep up.”
The girl didn’t smile. She didn’t show any sign of appreciation. She only nodded and followed in his wake.
A sword broken in half
A fishing pole
Some fishing lines
Some fishing hooks