KILL YOU SOMEDAY

== AMITY ==

SCENE 1
~10 years ago

“Come on! Come on! You’re not really my son, are you!? Ya’ can’t throw a punch for shit!”

He yells at you. His voice is taunting, howling, bellowing; it projects him into every corner of the room, and projects his venom into every corner of your skull. It gushes through your veins, and your arms burn. You throw your fists into him as hard as you can, and he stands there, unmoved like a cliff face. The specific words he speaks start to blend and melt together, into a boiling and molten slurry that bubbles in your head. You stop throwing fists and start throwing claws, until you find his skin catch against your nails and spill the gold in his veins to the floor, raking them across his smarmy grin.

“Huh…” he says, looking at you with some measure of surprise. “Maybe you’re not so worthless after all! That’s the spirit, fight dirty, kid!” he hollers with laughter, even as his goading sends you throwing yourself into him with all your might. You lose yourself; you aim for his throat, and bring him to the ground. He bats your hands away effortlessly, of course, and soon has his hand around your throat, pinning you to the ground.

“That’s the spirit, kid…” he mutters, that disgusting, toothy grin splitting his face far wider than the gashes you’d left.

“I’ll kill you someday!” you spit.

“I count on it, runt,” he says.

SCENE 2
~5 years ago

What the hell happened?

You stand in awe, staring at that brilliant pyre. The carriage’s fire drowns the night sky, illuminating sprawled-out corpses that flank it on all sides. Only one of your subordinates remains alongside you in the aftermath; he’s in need of serious medical attention, while you’re only scuffed up. You two are all that remains of this fool’s dance.

He looks at the riches at his feet. A few sacks, within each a thousand gold pieces, ransacked from the torched merchant’s cart; stained in blood, of course.

“Well… don’t know if that was worth all those men,” he mutters, with a raspy, hopeless laugh. “But at least we got somethin’ out of it, right?”

You don’t acknowledge what he says. You just tap your sword against the ground, quietly. You haven’t sheathed it yet, because the bloodbath isn’t over.

“Boss?”

SCENE 3
~Half a year ago

“They’ll kill you someday,” he warned you, the very last time you saw him. That same smarmy, ugly grin on his scarred face.

You just didn’t think it would be so soon, you know.

The hideout is eerily quiet. No sounds of scheming, no sounds of fighting, no sounds of revelry. The only sound is you, breathing haggardly, dragging yourself to your feet. The bloodied end of your rapier drags against the ground as you pull it up into your twitching, weak hands, stained with gold. It drips thick between your fingers, as you try anything to stem the tide pouring from your gut, and to keep your insides where they belong.

Not all of them are dead. Most of them aren’t, probably. You can see them moving. You can hear them breathing, too, now that you stop and listen. But they’re not worth it. They’ll kill you, surely, if you don’t escape before they gather themselves.

Trembling and weak, you limp out of the hideout, leaving behind you a steady and glimmering trail of golden blood. It disappears off into the woods, just as you do.