“Heyho Hannah!” I shouted as I jumped out of the carriage in front of the outermost gates of the city. “How are you doing?”
“I´m tired … what are we doing here?” She said, sitting on a stone and gazing at the stars. Just like I told her, she was wearing dark clothing which consisted of black pants and a black jacket of some sort. Her dagger was tightly secured on her hip and while she didn´t really radiate combat readiness, I was sure she would fight if necessary. The black mask over her face clearly revealed she was ready for it after all.
“We are … It is a secret.” I answered and placed my fists onto my hips. Haughtily, I looked down on her while she yawned loudly.
“Fine …” It was the first of these adventures I took Hannah with me. And thus, I could sense she was quite nervous as we walked through the darkness towards the eastern slums, covered by our clothing which crucially had no crown symbol on it. We were just some short, masked gangsters, that was all.
A few minutes later, we were already inside the still unfinished part of the city. In parts, this area looked even better than some places in the commoner districts, even though the houses were all quite small and had no noteworthy features except maybe the one window which was closable by shutters.
Further down the road, I even noticed a little tavern that was filled with customers. As soon as I noticed a slightly drunken guard though, I whistled and pressed my shoulder into Hannahs side to guide her into a narrower alley.
“Where are we going?” She asked once again as I stopped at an intersection, pointing in each of the streets in succession and utter confusion. I was sure to have remembered the way correctly, but the guard had to mess everything up. A bit confused about the missing signs for where I needed to go, I turned around and went the way back until we found ourselves at another split of the street I seriously couldn’t remember. Going from both directions into this street, it was fairly easy to assume there was no intersection as the angle was quite shallow.
“We have to go right.” I claimed. I walked to the left of Hannah, there was no way I would have missed a gap in the houses.
“No? Where have you been with your thoughts?” Well, I was a bit too excited probably. Annoyed, I closed my eyes and listened to any sounds, from the breathing of a couple in a house right next to us, over the mugging of someone in the distance, to the bits of music from the tavern. I snipped with my fingers as an idea popped up in my head and turned around once more, taking the first right and listening for the mugging sounds.
They were reaching their eclipse as I took off my mask and asked Hannah to do the same. Together, we strolled around the corner to see three men threaten a slightly old human. His hairs were nearly fallen out and he looked incredibly weak in comparison to the three men.
“Hey, does anyone know how to get to Saint Street? We are searching for house nr. three, but we cannot find it anywhere.” I said, completely ignoring what was happening in front of us.
“The saint …” One of them said as soon as he turned around. He even looked somewhat familiar to me … he probably helped in the reconstruction somewhere.
“Aye, it is me!” I gave him the brightest smile possible and placed the palms of my hands against each other in front of my chest. “I´m out here for special saint duty!”
“Okay … you need to turn right when you cross the Street of Life, and then you need to head into the Saint street to the left.” The thug claimed quite proudly. Truly, we were in his area of expertise.
“Hannah, did you get that?” I asked and turned around towards her.
“It is not that hard.” She said while eyeing my movements. My hands were already at my thighs, drawing the daggers hidden from them thanks to my short dress reaching unto my knees. I took a step backwards, pretended to stumble backwards and soon found myself in the middle of three corpses. What can I say … it does happen?
“Hey, you don’t have to fear me. I´m here to help.” I said towards the other man who pressed himself against the wall. “You only have to tell me if their way was the fastest.”
Trembling, he nodded as I crouched down towards him. He was crawling further along the wall but still didn´t dare to scream. After all, the one who tried to do that earlier laid beheaded right next to him.
“So it is?” He nodded once more and opened his eyes to speak at last.
“Ye-“ I slammed the dagger into his open mouth and noticed in glee how his windpipe filled with blood quickly, blocking him from screaming or similar. For a few seconds, I looked in his wide-open eyes, and then dragged the dagger out to the left.
Standing up, I cleaned my daggers on one of the corpses and chuckled happily as Hannah stood there, rooted to the ground, but at least she wasn’t puking again.
“Shall we?” She asked as I put my mask back on.
“Why did you kill him?” I couldn’t even see a hint of remorse about these deaths in her eyes, but neither could I see excitement. She was completely indifferent to any of their lives.
“He would have identified us later.” I said drily.
“You could have asked these criminals with your mask on.” Hannah explained.
“Yeah … but then I wouldn’t be able to see their fear so clearly and especially not the hope and ultimately despair in the eyes of that man.”
“You are mentally ill.” She said, finally turning away from the scene to follow me.
“I am not? It is completely normal to like terrorizing others.” I claimed and turned right into the Street of Life, a neat little street with a few greenly lit houses.
“Certainly not.” She claimed.
“We will see.” I said happily and twirled around my own axis in excitement. The night was so beautiful, so dark thanks to the low hanging clouds, that I could barely contain my happiness. Maybe I was mentally ill … I probably was, but so what?
At last, we arrived in front of the hut we were searching for. The Saint Street was certainly not the best there ever was, but it was well kept by the inhabitants. There was barely any trash on the wayside and the inhabitants even had a manure pit somewhere … not that I would ever search for that, but the street looked suspiciously devoid of any human waste.
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Anyways, I quickly opened the door and nodded towards the thug in the corner. Wordlessly, he opened a trapdoor in the ground and revealed a ladder. I pushed Hannah towards it and watched her as she descended the ladder quietly. Once again, I nodded to the thug and jumped into the hole. As soon as I landed on the ground, the trapdoor was already closing again, leaving Hannah and me in a room lit by magical lamps. It wasn’t a large cellar by any means, just about five metres wide in every direction with walls crudely steadied by a bit of clay on them.
Even then, it was rather luxuriously furnished with a shelve on one wall, and an oven with an air pipe leading upwards on the other side. Right next to it, there was a wooden chair and a chest.
And in the middle of the room, there was the best furniture piece.
A chair.
A chair embedded into the ground, made entirely out of costly iron, with a man on it. That person was bound to the chair with his legs and arms and had a bag over his face. Satisfied, I laid my mask down on the ground near the ladder, strolled towards the chair on the side of the room and sat down on it. Crossing my legs, I watched Hannah how she stood there once again, closing her eyes tightly shut.
“Is that why you were giggling the whole time?” Well … yes? Why else would I be happy in the middle of the night?
“No? Not at all. I haven’t come here to torture anyone.” I claimed and smiled wryly.
“… you want me to do it.” She concluded, making me nod happily.
“Precisely. He has information about a unicorn in the north, and I really need to know them.” I claimed and stared at the man as he was beginning to move.
“Why? You know that I don’t plan on hurting anyone unjustified.” She asked, struggling to grasp my ideas.
“Unicorns are cute?” I said and swarmed about riding a unicorn into battle, even though I already had a near-perfect horse.
“What do I need to do?” She said, looking around the room and letting her gaze wander over all the torture instruments in the shelf.
“Well, first, why don’t you take that bag off him?” I asked slowly. It would be no fun if he couldn’t scream after all. Slowly, Hannah moved towards the man and pulled the black fabric from his head. I could see a shock travelling through her whole body as she stared at the gagged man for the first time. He was around twenty-six years old, had a scar on his right cheek and stared at us with wide-open eyes. How much I loved that expression …
“I know him from somewhere …” She muttered and eyed the man even closer.
“Oh, what a coincidence.” I said without any emotions in my voice.
“… he … no. From where do I know him?” She said, scratching her scalp in confusion.
“You really forgot him? Well, that’s to be expected if you have a serious trauma because of him … ” I said and trailed off into the distance at the end. I shook my head in denial afterwards. There was no way I had a trauma of this magnitude that would let me forget everything sexual.
“Lucinda … tell me the truth.” She said, staring at me with a questioning expression but she already started to shake quite a bit by the sudden development.
“Hmm … how old are you again?” I asked in interest.
“Sixteen.” She said, quite confused about my sudden question.
“Oh, do you remember what happened around eight years ago? I think your old neighbour described that day as a beautiful day as snow fell down from the sky. But what really got on her nerves were the loud noises coming out of your tent.” I said emotionlessly and looked at the man who slowly started to panic.
“He …” She said, turning around towards him. Sadly, I wouldn’t be able to look into her eyes while realization struck her, but whatever. I already knew that her face must have been contorted with rage she desperately wanted to hide from me.
“Yup. You weren’t even worthy enough to be abducted, but you were apparently still good enough for him.” I said with a crystal clear voice. I could see her hands slowly balling into fists while probably going through her horrendous memories again.
“… how do I make him feel pain?” She said firmly. It was way too easy to make her hurt others for the first time, at least in my opinion. But maybe she had a thing for that and just didn’t know it yet.
“Castrate him?” I proposed with glee. The man was throwing himself against the chair, even though it was completely hopeless.
“Something else.” She said and shook her head.
“Pull out a few of his nails for starters. There must be some tongs for that on the shelf.” Without any hesitation, she walked towards the shelves, took a rather rusty large tongue out of it and proceeded to kneel in front of him. I could see her red, burning eyes in the process as rage consumed her quickly and completely.
That was why we were there. I wanted to help her to break out of that shell she still had around her. She never showed any animosity to those in the eastern slums, even though she had more than one reason to hate every one of them. She hid it perfectly even from me, if her soul wouldn’t tell the truth time and time again.