My breathing was unsteady and came out sounding more like choked hiccups as I stared up at him. Had he come to tie up loose ends? Then why let me leave in the first place...I willed my tongue to speak even though my frozen lips begged me to keep them closed.
"Sir, please. I won't tell anyone I swear it, please don't kill me." My voice was small and high pitched shaking with trepidation. His eyes never wandered but rather stayed imprisoned with my own, my breath caught and my stomach twisted as I saw his lips twitch with the hint of a grin.
"I know you won't. Who would believe you if you did? You're just a poor homeless wretch stealing coins from beneath a tavern floor. Who would miss you if I did decide to kill you? It's too damn easy, however no one would notice if you went missing either. Besides where is the fun in killing a poor orphan child? I'm not being paid for your head."
My heart dropped to my stomach at the realization of how right he was. No one would miss me dead or Alive, people went missing from the gutter all the time and most turned a blind eye. "Wh-wha-what is it that you want then?"
Azunè reached behind his back and grabbed a wrapped bundle and tossed it at my face. I raised my arm just in time to feel the soft fabric thud against my wet palm and dry the spot it touched. I fastened my finders around the bundle accepting the gift, he nodded and stood turning his back.
"I once was like you, if you choose to have a different life you need only reach out and take it. Kill Malcom. Then meet me here in three nights, that is how I will decide if you are worthy. Only him, three days is all I give and if you get arrested I will not help you. Understood?"
I nodded my head, I was at a complete loss for words. I was an eleven year old girl from the widow's gutter a theif and an orphan, what could I possibly be worthy of by killing Malcom a man three times my size and 11 years beyond my own age. I looked down at the bundle of fabric in my hands and felt the softness of it. As I looked back up to tell azunè thank you, he had disappeared as if he was never there to begin with.
Well that was weird, I said to myself as I hauled myself up on to the bank of the spring and undid the ties over the package. A towel, a black tunic and black trousers...a shadowstalker uniform, wrapped in the center was a small vile of green liquid and the dagger that was at azunes hip in the bar. A small note on the bottle read manticore venom, deadly if it so much as touched the skin.
I'd dive into the bottom of the waterfall and grab by clothes that had been beaten against the rocks at the base untying them and hauling them to the surface. I took the dagger and sliced up my white tunic, azunè was right I did hate this life...if there was even a sliver of a chance of having something better I wanted a taste of it. I'd carefully take my time wrapping vile of poison in the rag I'd cut from my old clothing to prevent it breaking as I dried my body and dressed myself.
The neckline of the tunic cut down to the middle of my chest and hugged my form. It tied at the top of my navel exposing my lower stomach, the trousers hugged me just as tight tying to fit around my hips with precision. I'd grab the cloth conceiling the venom and crept my way barefooted over the slick stones to the cavern behind the waterfall.
It was mostly dry within but the entrance was soaked and dripping chiming off the walls of the darkness. I'd slept here before but if never failed to give me the heeby jeebies, I kneeled known of the cold wet stone floor to feel for any approaching dryness with every couple of step until I felt it and tripped over the kindling from my last visit. "Son of a bitch!" I hissed out between my teeth as I fell on the palms of my hands, the small stalagmites that had begun to form stabbed in to my hands ripping them open with long jagged scratches. "Fuck me.". I hissed as I gathered myself and the items I'd dropped. I gripped the sticks I had hidden in a corner at reach of the dry edge and rubbed them together over some dry moss. With enough pressure and friction...I grinned as I saw the sparks ignite the moss and twigs beneath it lighting the entire cavern.
Toward the back was a stack of wood for the fire which I hastily tossed on to the flame. The wall of water at the mouth of the cave would keep the heat inside mostly, to the right of me was a bedroll made from letter that id stolen off a hunter last time I slept out here.
I wandered the cave looking for a bigger stick to whittle down in to a spear, after I found a suitable stick I used the dagger to sharpen its end. The wind whistled between the gaps created by the cavern mouth and the curtain of water, I could barely hear it over the crashing of the water that fell violently into the spring below it.
After the stick was good and sharp, I'd slip out of my warm retreat to spear a few fish for dinner. It was no easy task especially not for me, I really needed to work on my aim. But I gave it my best wading in the spring catching two very small fish and a frog. Frogs were slimy and distasteful so I swiftly pulled it off and tossed it on to the shore.
The night was getting late, I had to get some rest to complete the task of the coming day. Three days, that was All the time she had to kill Malcom. What could I gain by doing this? I thought to myself biting in to the side of one of the small trout I'd cooked over my fire.
Its taste was mild, similar to salmon with a flakey texture. It left behind a nutty after taste after it slid down my throat leaving a memory of it's delicate texture behind. I filled my belly with those trout and laid in the bedroll on the floor aftward staring at the stalactites that had been forming over the century's this place had been hallowing. The water no longer reached this far so they had stopped growing, I couldn't seem to get azunè out of my head no matter how hard I tried. If I want a different life I need only reach out and take it? And somehow killing Malcom and running away with a man who has killed a thousand men was going to do that? If you ask me a foolish plan like that would get me a one way ticket to the executioners block.
I could do it though, kill Malcom. I know I could, God that man made my blood boil sometimes. He deserved to die, and I could be the very person to deliver that justice. How many women had I seen him rape? Children? It didn't matter the number was beyond my knowledge anymore, but if I didn't make a change to my life now I was sure I'd be the next little in his bed calling him master.
I would have to be smart about this, think it through quickly. I was educated which was rare for the poor even more uncommon to find an orphaned girl who could read, what are the odds. I'd read a few things on manticore venom, I knew it's effects would be different depending on how it's administered to the unlucky party.
Finally after the adrenaline rush from earlier started to wear off I could feel the searing pain in my side. That's right, I broke a rib...I blinked in the darkness as my fingers moved across my skin. My entire right side was swollen and felt hot to the touch, no doubt it was bruised. I flinched at my lightest touch realizing from how tender it felt that it was more then one rib that had been broke.
It all happened so fast id hardly remembered I was pretty messed up myself, breathing was a chore and it ached with every painful expansion of my lungs but I was used to it. Malcom had broken my ribs a few times for shorting him on my dues, this pain was a familiar one.
I couldn't focus on my pain right now, I didn't have time for that nonsense. Manticore venom, if it was applied to the skin it caused...what? Come on Arya think! You know these answers. I'd search my mind for every piece of information I had ever read on manticore's when it hit me. That's it! Skin contact causes delay of death up to an hour with bleeding from the nose eyes and ears.
That's right, it was commonly called the sorrowful goodbye. If it was swallowed it caused the blood vessels in the neck to swell and burst asphyxiating the victim where they stood. And finally...if it was stabbed in to the bloodstream it would offer no quick death, it would be slow and painful. The would itself would blister and ooze eating away at the flesh around it little by little spreading over the entire body within hours, it caused delusions and blindness and loss of bowel control as it worked it's way through the body. There were many ways to kill a man with a poison like this venom, but which way did Malcom deserve and what could I get away with?
I could just touch him...it would give me enough time to flee the scene before he died and be gone from here but how? Malcom rarely let people near him let alone touch him...no I'd have to find a different way.
Sleep didn't come easy on this night but when I finally fell asleep I was greeted with a familiar blackness. The world around me seemed swallowed up by the blackness climbing the walls around me. The ground beneath my teeth rippled like water and reflected the surrounding abyss, in the distance the flames grew brighter and brighter moving fast toward me. Panic rose in my chest seeing the glaring orange flames dance toward me with a purpose and behind them giant faceless beings with spindling arms and long legs.
These creatures that marched toward me through the flames had no eyes just giant flesh heads with a pair of stretching black lips that held rows of sharp teeth like grinders and a tongue that flicked out like a lizard as it smelled it's way through the crowd of people running toward me.
I tried to move but it's like my own body disobeyed me, my feet stayed planted on the watery surface just as one of these gangly creatures gripped a woman by the waist and licked her face with it's slimy long rope of a tongue. Faster then my eyes were able to catch it's tongue was drove into the woman's eyes and gobbling them in their shark like jaws before going back and ripping her brain from her empty bleeding sockets.
My stomach twisted as it tossed the lifeless woman to the ground and focused it's attention on me. My heart skipped a beat as my breath stopped short leaving the cloud of white in it's wake. Finally after what felt like ages my feet pried themselves from the ground allowing me to turn on my heel and run. I expected to see nothing but blackness but the walls around me flaked away like ash as giant rusted walls appeared holes filled with fire to light my path.
I ran as fast as I possibly could tripping a few times in my effort only to face the end of the tunnel filled with dead children and at the top of this heap gnawing on a leg with blood dripping down it's body was a woman. Her hair was stringy and hung in her face as her head snapped to me. Her face in one side was have rotted exposing her gnashing teeth blood squishing through the gaps as they spilled down her rotted flesh. She rose upon her arms and feet spreading out ike a four legged spider as her gaze locked with mine. Her eyes were black as night, his skin that wasn't rotted a dark ebony.
She chattered her teeth at me as she snarled and shrieked a blood curdling scream. At least ten still born infants with knives for hands spindled down around her on their umbilical cords, what kind of insanity was this what were these creatures! I panicked and began looking for anyway out seeing another path on my left. I didn't hesitate, I bolted for the hallway tripping on the leg of a dead corpse and flying on to the rusted ground knocking the wind from myself. As I tried to gather myself one of the corpses reached out and gripped my leg. It was the woman with no eyes the monster peeled her flesh from her body leaving the musculs and tissue being. Large patches of bloody sinue wrapped around her skeleton as she moaned at me attempting to climb up my body.
I'd kick out with my foot as hard as I could to get her off of me getting to my feet to keep running. My feet slapped against the rusty flooring as I ran leaving the shrieking behind. I knew I wasn't safe so I slowed my pace as to not be blindsided again by what was in this dream, first I heard silence...like a whisper it grew louder. The grinding of metal being dragged across rust like a shrill shriek crunchy yet piercing.
What ever that was I wasn't sticking around to find out, through the hallway doorways manifested. I immediately tried the first handle I saw but it was locked, I ran to the second door to find it was also locked. Out of the corner of my eye I swore I saw something slither over the floor but when I looked it wasn't there. I tried another and then another all locked except for the door on the end. Of course this was the only unlocked door.
I opened the door to be surprised to find it was all white, the walls the floor the ceiling all white...what was happening? The room changed the further I entered a hospital stretcher appeared in the corner on top of the metal table they used to carry injured men to the mages to be healed.
The door busted open and a doctor approached, at first I thought maybe he was normal. That was before I saw his eyes were replaced with syringes and his hands where long scalpels "time for your exam miss?" He said his mouth oozing black slime as the scalpels glided over the white floor...this room was an illusion, this was the creature that made those grinding noises I heard earlier.
I dove behind the metal table that held the stretcher and shoved it toward him keeping my back to the wall as he swung out with his knife hands. I closed my eyes sure my death was nigh as the blade drove itself in to the wall inches from my eye.
My eyes forced themselves open out of sleep. My side ached from my panting as I placed my hands on the cavern floor. My palms felt clammy Im sure as the rest of my body was soaked in sweat. What was that? A nightmare? I didn't dnt know but I did know I was no longer tired. Maybe I could start back toward the white valley walls and climb back over...didn't really want to go back?
I didn't think I was cut out for a life like azunè, how could I kill others? I was already haunted by creatures killing people in my sleep the last thing I wanted was to be haunted by my own victims too...but to be rid of Malcom...a chance at a better life,no more starving...was that all really possible? I didn't want to take the chance and miss out if it was.
I'd gather my things tying it around my waist so I wouldn't loose it and head back to the wall. Once I'd climbed to the top I knew to keep my belly low to the stone as a night patrol of two guards came walking past the ally. Once they passed I shimmied my way down to the ground landing with a light thud. I swiftly ran and ducked in to the shadow behind a Nobles home just as the other two patrol passed by.
I held by breath praying they didn't catch me. Breathing in relief as they passed without an issue, I managed to get back to the widow's gutter without being caught and slipped in the backdoor to Malcolm's brothel. It seemed quiet as I slipped through the door trying to close it without makeing to much noise.
"Well well well, look who finally came crawling in?" A low voice said from behind me I closed my eyes knowing the multitude of things that could happen next. "You got my money orphan?"
I gritted my teeth and spun to face him. I hated that, being called an orphan as if it was my fault. Malcolm's eyes were dark brown and beady ever vigilant like a vulture, that sat on either side of his beak like nose. his dark skin exposed the vein throbbing at his temple in anger, he was drunk of this I was sure. "Yes sir."
He reached out his hand palm up as if he was entitled to the money. Since he caught me I decided in this moment was the time, I nodded and gripped the pouch I had on my hip which I conveniently hid the bottle of poison in I pinched the bottle between the gold and silver coin in my purse causing it to break in the fabric it was wrapped in saturating the coins on one side but avoiding contact with my own skin. I pulled out the poisoned coins and placed them in his palm knowing he'd be careless do to the ignorance of the situation. I watched his eyes grow wide over the gold peice as he flipped it in his hand. That's right...touch that coin all over your skin. I nodded and moved past him to my mat in the corner as he scurried off to where I'm sure joffery was hiding to show him this find.
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