The Chronicles of Outsider: Humble Beginnings

by Justin Wayne

  Chapter Twenty Seven: Perspective

  Outsider pressed against the rubble atop the hatch with all his might, even supporting himself upside down on the ladder to push with his legs. He grit his teeth and groaned as he continued to push until he was shaking but the mound didn’t budge. He dropped to the floor and his legs gave out on impact. He laid there a moment to breathe and recover some of his strength, knowing he didn’t have much time.

  He was fully aware that this room was underwater and could collapse at any second, but his muscles refused to obey. Steadily he calmed his breathing and his heart slowed enough that he was able to sit up. He sat against the wall and looked up at the ceiling.

  “One hatch; obviously obstructed, and walls that give way to the sea…fantastic.” He stood and stretched as he scanned the room for the umpteenth time. He looked down from the wall to his daggers then shook the thought away. “I need something heavier.”

  He reached for the explosive powder at his belt then thought better; he didn't want to risk bringing the flaming tavern down on top of him. A thought popped into his head.

  He turned to where the others had been and found what he was looking for: the two sickle-like swords the half orc had dropped. He swung them around experimentally to test the weight and found them very similar to that of a scimitar or rapier. Satisfied, he concentrated all his focus into his arms and with a spin, leapt into the air then brought them down point-first into the wall.

  Both bit into the wood deeply and punched through as his momentum carried them down. Salt water began to seep through the crack and ran down the wall to the floor. Sweating and gasping for air, he hammered away at the sword and drove it lower and lower inch by inch until the hilt hit the floor with a splash.

  Beholding the tall line in the wood that bled water profusely into the room, he kicked it a few times and was jarred back as the pressure of the water kept him from breaking through. He found another helm; this one not bent and warped, and began working on the second sword in the wall.

  Several minutes later it was halfway down when the wall suddenly shifted and the new “door” slammed forward and into Outsider. It smashed into his face and he felt his nose break with a sickening crunch. Temporarily blinded by tears and spitting blood from his lips, he wrestled the door off of him and gripped the sides of the wall as he tried to force his way through the torrent of water rushing inside. He was close but found he was no match for the sheer pressure of it.

  He cursed again as the water rose to his chest. The icy cold soaked into his bones and numbed his limbs; taking his breath away. He clumsily climbed up the ladder again and pressed some more against the resolute debris then remained there as the water rose. He took a deep breath when it passed his chin and before long the room was full. Swimming as quickly as he could, he dived down to the hole he had carved and through it.

  With the room completely filled, no more water rushed through the opening and left him with a viable way out. Weighed down as he was by his cloak, armor and weapons, he slowly made his way toward the surface. His lungs burned and ached like he had inhaled glass and he had trouble determining direction as he began to turn lightheaded. Before him all he could see were colors swimming before his eyes in shimmering opaque hues so deep he couldn’t see anything behind them.

  His chest began to shake and contract.

  His mouth opened, he couldn’t stop it.

  He closed his eyes tightly.

  He inhaled a deep lungful.

  And gasped as he broke the surface.

  He clutched the nearest chunk of debris that floated past and focused on not vomiting. His head swam dizzyingly and all the world was spinning around him on an inverted axis. He floated there with his face pressed to the cool plank of wood and set his mind to breathing steadily. In and out, in and out, for several minutes before he was ready to move.

  A familiar voice called out to him in a loud whisper. “Hey, stay down there. Don’t come up yet or they’ll find you.”

  He nodded slowly as if he had cotton in his ears and tried to focus his eyes. With enough concentration he was able to shift them into the dark spectrum and made out the shape of a woman before him on the docks. The one who had hustled the man before, he realized.

  He paddled the flotsam beneath the docks and remained there as voices rose above him. He strained to understand what they were saying even though he could hear them clearly. It was as if his knowledge of the human language here had been washed away from his brain, driving him into frustration as he realized he has missed everything and the voices were gone.

  The reflection of the woman appeared in the water beside him. “Come on, follow me.” she bade him and he began to swim around the dock to the far side. He followed her slowly and made sure his hood was still up when he came ashore. The woman turned to him and held out her hand.

  He stared at it until she pulled it away. “Right. Well, my name is Natalia, and I just wanted to thank you for what you did back there.”

  Steadily her words began to seep in through his skull and he found his vocabulary. “For blowing up your source of income? Anytime.” Outsider croaked sarcastically then coughed up salt water with burning heaves.

  Natalia laughed and shook her head. “You saw my source of income, my cards. That place was a prison. He paid us miserably and charged us room and board so it was impossible to get free of his debt.”

  “Debt?” Outsider’s eyebrow arched up in curiosity within his hood, but in the darkness she would be able to see nothing but his faintly glowing eyes.

  “I wasn’t always good at the game.” she replied and looked away. “I’ve been there for two years trying to pay off what I owe by hustling games, but he kept adding interest to everything I had remaining. But now, he’s dead and I’m free. So thank you.”

  “Well you’re welcome I suppose.” he responded awkwardly.

  “You suppose?”

  “Well,” he began. “Most people don’t thank me; in fact, no one thanks me for what I do. Why thank someone who captures other people like they’re some kind of animal?”

  She shook her head and motioned for him to sit. “A lot of people are some kind of animal. They deserve no better and you could do a lot worse. I assume you’re a bounty hunter like Blaine?”

  “I’m a bounty hunter, but not like Blaine.”

  “Of course, you’re right. I’ve seen him in action a few times and he rarely brings them in alive. Even for bounties not punishable by death.” Natalia added. “Well you could be much worse to them, even if they don’t deserve your mercy.”

  Outsider stared at her incredulously even though he knew she couldn’t see it. “What mercy? Did you not see me kill those men in there? At least a dozen lay dead by my hand, several more in the fire.”

  “But you spared even more of them. And not a single one of them was a good person. They’ve all killed someone and make a living off of fear and thievery. And you had to have seen the drugs they sell, the kind that slowly rots away what makes you you until you’re just an empty husk.”

  Outsider stood impassively and tried to ignore all the questions he asked himself now, questions she had planted in his mind with her different perspective of his work. He hated himself for what he had done and knew it would be hard to accept it as his life, but now she was raising doubts as to how evil it had actually been. Perhaps by taking in criminals and dealing death to those too unruly he really was saving others.

  “Regardless,” he said after a lengthy pause and tenderly felt his bent nose. “Being alive is nothing to thank someone else for. You survived for two years on your own; you would have gotten out eventually.”

  She shrugged indifferently. “Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know. But I do know you got me out tonight which is a lot sooner than I could have ever done.” She smiled and looked over her shoulder into the dark alley. “You may think what you do is wrong or evil, but if you really look around and see what some of the people you punish are doing; you’d see ho
w much it helps.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know.” he echoed and turned away. She called out “Wait!” and grasped his shoulder, and then purely reactive, he gripped her wrist and twisted her arm about behind her toward her neck. He released her as soon as he realized what he’d done and backed away. “Sorry.”

  She paused for a moment and took a step back. “Its fine, but you can’t go yet, they’ll be looking for you. Even the Guard are in their pocket so they have eyes everywhere. The best thing you can do is lay low and get out of Cain Sander. I can help you with that; my sister owns a small inn and smuggles the oppressed like us out of town on the side.”

  But Outsider was already shaking his head. “Those guards are exactly the people I need to see.”

  Distress covered her face and she rubbed her temples. “Okay, why would you want to do that?” Lines began to crease her face, he noticed, and he studied her. She was thin and had an almost regal look to her, with high cheekbones, tanned skin and sharp features softly rounded with a feminine quality. He remembered her dark hair and light eyes from within the tavern and wondered why she was so determined he not get into trouble.

  “I’m serious; picking a fight with the guard is a terrible idea. All you’ll accomplish is getting yourself killed; they won’t jail you because you know too much. What could possibly convince you to do such a suicidal thing?”

  “They have a friend of mine.” Outsider explained. “And what do you care of my doings?”

  She looked up in startled confusion. “Where? In the prison?” He nodded the affirmative and she rubbed her temples with both hands. “And what’re you going to do? Fight or sneak your way in past all their forces, locate his cell, pick the locks, break him out and escape together?”

  “Yes,” he stated matter-of-factly. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  “Escape back into the city they own? Cain Sander is more of a prison than their jail will ever be.” She stepped toward him and reached out for his face. His hands caught hers before they could reach his hood and she stared at him. “I care, because you were able to save me and the other girls. You did what no one else would in a single night, and unintentionally, so if anyone could make a difference in this place, it’s you.”

  He still held fast to her wrists despite the honest hope in her words stinging him. He released her and remained silent. Slowly she backed away a pace and held her arms up unthreateningly. “I just want to take a look at your face; I saw you feeling your nose earlier. Is it broken?”

  “I think so…got hit by a wall.” he said and reached up to his face without realizing it. She came forward again and reached under his hood. “Don’t pull it back.” he warned her and she nodded.

  Feeling the bridge of his nose with two fingers, she determined where the break was very quickly. “You’ve split the slope of your nose in two places, but they’re clean breaks.” She pressed slightly with her thumb and he winced beneath her touch. “Okay, on the count of three I’m going to set it.”

  Outsider nodded and held his breath, jaw set determinedly and eyes closed. “Do it.”

  “On the count of three,” she repeated. “One—“She pressed suddenly together, thumb to thumb, and his nose popped back into place with a snap. Outsider jumped back and grit his teeth as the sharp pain flared and blood dribbled down his chin.

  “What happened to three!?” he growled and spat some of the red from his lips. Steadily the pain gave way to a numb relief and he found he was able to breathe through his nose once more.

  “It’s always worse when you’re expecting it, this way it was sudden and caught you off guard.” she explained. “You’re welcome..?” She left the question in the open and waited to see if he would answer it, inwardly knowing he would just because he had so few to talk to; women’s intuition she called it.

  “Outsider.” he replied quietly and wiped the blood from his face on his hand then turned back to the docks. Natalia followed him over and sat beside him as he washed the blood from his face with the water.

  “Is that your bounty hunter name?” she asked him, trying to read his body language since his face was hidden. He remained resolute and continued washing his face and hands. “Salt water will make it sting more,” she whispered. “I know from experience.” He looked over as she slid one of her sleeves down from her tight-fitting tunic and leaned away from him.

  A spiderweb of scars crisscrossed her shoulder, some thick and others thin; like an assortment of worms beneath her skin. They shone brightly in the moonlight, pale against her olive skin as he reverted his eyes to the normal spectrum and seemed stretched as if she had grown and they had not.

  “I got them as a little girl.” she breathed low and almost to herself, still staring away. “They continue across my entire back, arms, and legs; almost everywhere. My battle scars they were called by those responsible.” She shuddered and pulled her sleeve back up then her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I’m from the southern islands as you can probably tell, from a little village named Verillex, but the people here call it Vexus.”

  Outsider faintly remembered overhearing tale of the island Vexus, so called for its beautiful women who could vex a man with a single look.

  “One day as I was helping my father fish for our dinner we saw boats on the horizon. They were an ordinary sight as we were near the larger islands that often had traders and merchants visit them so we paid it no heed. That night they attacked our village, burning our homes to the ground, taking the men and women as slaves. Those who fought back..like my father..”

  She lowered her head and took a deep shaky breath as tears fell into the sea with a mesmerizing conglomerate of ripples. “The rest of us were taken on their ships in chains to be sold on the mainland. They came for me one night, drunk and looking for some ‘fun’.” She shivered and shut her eyes. “I refused and scratched one of them across the face. So they took me to the deck and called everyone there to watch as I was whipped to unconsciousness, then dipped into the saltwater as soon as I awoke.”

  She turned to him then and stared into the dark abyss of his hood. “The pain was overwhelming.” she stated simply. “Yet nothing compared to losing my home and family.” She stared out to sea and took a deep breath to steady herself, wiping away a few more tears. “I was sold to a private group the next week, along with all the other young girls. When they came for us, we were all so frightened already, but when we saw what they were..” She shook her head and stared dead ahead. “They were dark elves who had bought us, and they were behind the entire raid. They funded the pirates to go out so far and find the ‘infamous island of Vexus’.” she said with enough venom to kill a man.

  Outsider stiffened and sat up straight then, watching her carefully. Something in the back of his mind warned him to leave now, to let this woman go on her own path alone and he on his. He didn’t fear her or anyone for that matter, but she had connections in the city, connections that could very well prove formidable to face. But something kept him there, perhaps their mutual hatred for what he was.

  “They took us to the mountains where they had a secret tunnel network to the Shadowverse. The ones who could speak this language taught us the basics of common and a couple even told us a few words of dark elven, but only enough to tell us the horrible things they were going to do to us that had no name in any other language.” She picked up a small pebble and skipped it across the water. “The next morning when the sun was at the highest point in the sky, I and three other girls left the group and ran. We went on and on for hours before we noticed they weren’t following us. So we setup camp that night in a small area of the forest. But that’s when they’re active. That’s when they found us.”

  Outsider tried not to picture it but couldn’t stop the flashes that seared through his head. Blood. Darkness. A face frozen in terror. Blank eyes glazed over and unseeing. The warm wet of someone dying in his arms. A song drifted through his mind. He turned his head away and bi
t his lip until the pain sent the visions away.

  “We were all too scared to sleep so we huddled together against the cold when the girl next to me seemed to have finally drifted off. I looked at her and shook her but she wouldn’t wake up. Then I saw another girl fall over, except this one had a crossbow bolt in her back. I wanted to scream but couldn’t breathe when the bolt hit me.” She rubbed the side of her neck with her palm as she spoke. “A group of hunters heard the commotion and rode in then. It wasn’t until the day after that I woke up, surrounded by the girls' bodies. The bolt that hit me had gone all the way through so the poison hadn’t fully dispersed in my bloodstream…and that was considered lucky.

  “The men were gone; probably thought we were dead or got killed themselves. So I made my way to the nearest town over the next week, living off whatever I could find until I found this place. I got a job as a server girl from the sister I told you about, but she’s not blood. She took me in and raised me with her family and I knew I could never repay that. So two years ago I left to win it big at the tables and…well you know the rest. She’s tried to help me so much but I wouldn’t let her pay my debts, not after so much she’s already done for me.”

  They were quiet then for a long while as Outsider digested everything she had told him. On one hand, he couldn’t understand why she told him all of this; they had only known each other a few hours and he could very well have been lying. Yet on the other hand he understood completely; having someone to vent your frustrations to, someone to understand what has made you become the person you have, and it was why he had told Thom his story. Or some of it at least.

  He nodded and cleared his throat nervously, deciding to take a risk; a new type of risk at least. “Outsider is the only name I have ever known. My parents were killed when I was a small child, too small to remember their names or faces. I was taken just as you were…except no one saved me.” She turned to face him and true pain filled her eyes as she beheld him. “I was raised to kill and forced to on a daily basis my entire childhood, always kept separate from anything resembling a life. I managed to escape once I had grown and I’ve been free for a few years now, but what transpired, what I’ve done, will always haunt me.”

  He looked her in the eye and whispered, “It’s what I am.” then lifted back his hood to rest on his shoulders. He had to admit the breeze ruffling through his hair and caressing his face was pleasant, especially on his sore nose, but the look he received; the look he knew he would always receive, would never be worth it.

  Natalia stared at him in shock, taking in every little detail of his face, then scowled with such ferocity he expected her to strike him. Her eyes burned into his and he stared back as innocently as one of his kind could manage. Without a word she stood and backed away from him, too fearful to turn away where she couldn’t see him, but when he made no move to follow she ran into the alley and disappeared into the night.