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TRIGGER WARNING: Contains references to child abuse and slavery. Read at your own discretion.



It’s raining when Detraeus first steps into the village.

The already dank streets are saturated with it, soggy and sleek as the raindrops patter endlessly over its surface. Miniature lakes pool in the indents formed by the footsteps of passers by in some places, and rushing gullies of water stream down the sides of it in the lower sections, scaring rodents out of their wake and sending them scurrying into the darker niches of the side streets. It isn’t deserted, though, not completely. The more desperate of merchants continue to line the muddy side banks. They hover, miserable as waterlogged felines under the sagging canvas coverings meant to shield them from the rain as they guard their wares. Some even call out to the few that slop through the streets.

“Ten coppers for a hot pattellai cake! Ten coppers! Fresh off the coals, couldn’t ask for a better meal to warm your gut in this dreary weather!”

“Two silvers for the finest leather worked carrying pouch you could want—”

“A hood, to keep you dry from the rain! Oiled to waterproof perfection—”

Detraeus pulls the hood of his already sopping wet cloak closer around his face to tune them out and adjusts the bandana across his forehead with a frown. It’s become a nervous twitch, almost, developed over his years back in ‘civilization’. The etched, glowing brands in his skin which he had once hoped might leave him with time still linger, bright as ever: a luminous marker that spouts exactly who and what he is to anyone who spots them. He had also, once upon a time, hoped that perhaps those in Soudul would be less judgemental. See him differently, somehow.

But that, too, is a long decayed fantasy.

The smell of old fish on the brink of rot reaches his nostrils and Detraeus grimaces, lifting the back of his glove to his nose. In his distractaction, he nearly trips over the prone body of a beggar woman, clothes soaked through with wet and mud. When he spots her though and takes a sidelong step to avoid running into her with his boot, she jerks upright, bony fingers outstretched: covered in scales.

Hybrid.

His grimace deepens even as she croaksout to him, “Spare a poor woman some coins, boy? A few coppers for an old crone?”

Detraeus spits in the mud beside her and walks on before he can make out what she barks after him. Obscenities of some form, no doubt. He rolls his shoulders, pulling his cloak back close. Inn. He needs an inn. Any variety of tavern will do at this point. Several blocks later, Detraeus slows his pace, eyes narrowing on a tavern sign lit up by flickering candles to either side of it. Protected by a shielding spell, he guesses. The words are curving and elegant, though he has no way to guess their actual meaning, and he frowns, eyeing the passers by.

Several women wait around the door — dressed strangely sparingly for the season and the weather, though it doesn’t seem to bother them much — and he waits, watching as they move, drawing several passing bodies into conversation and, on occasion, moving in with one. After some minutes of indecision, Detraeus opts to ignore the unease itching beneath his skin and steps forward, immediately gaining the attention of the woman closest to him.

“How much for a room for the night?” he asks, tone curt and stiff.

Her eyebrows arch slowly, attention trailing down his soaked form with far too much of an interest in detail for his comfort. He pulls his cloak tighter about himself, shoulders squaring off. Her smile is as slow as her first look, and more poisonous. “A bit young to be buying a full night, aren’t you? Your coin might be better spent booking by the hour…” Her smile broadens, worse than before, and she winks. “Or by the minute.”

Detraeus scowles and suppresses a shiver. What is this woman’s game? If her job is to draw in customers, why is she toying with him? Anger bubbles just beneath the surface of his visible emotions, but he tampers it down. He’s cold, wet, and hungry: he needs a place to stay.

“What good is an hour?” he clips. “I have coin. I’m not too young for anything.”

“Oohh,” the woman cooes, and then laughs, drawing in the attention of several of the other waiting women as she does. Detraeus feels the back of his neck warm, fingers bunching. “Special little prince, are you? Well, then, let me ask you something, special prince—” She leans in slow as she speaks, long fingers reaching out towards his chin.

Detraeus jerks back hard and fast enough to make himself stumble and nearly slips backwards into the mud. Her laughter, and that of her rotten company, echoes through the rain as his heart throws itself hard against the cage of his chest. When he gets a grip on his pulse, he sneers. “A bed. How much?”

Her expression cools like hot wax on a winter’s night, evidently startled by his genuine outburst. At least the laughter stops. She draws her tongue over her lower lip, the polished paint for it making it glisten pale as the white moon against her dark skin. “A hundred and fifty for a full night.”

Detraeus frowns. “…coppers?”

More laughter, like harpies, and his stomach knots with bile. Her smile looks almost like it pities him. Worse than anger, worse than remorse. He hates pity.

“Silvers, little prince,” she says

“Silve—”

“Listen here, boy,” she cuts him off crisply, dropping the soft drawl of her previous speech. “In this downpour, I’ll give you a night for fifty. Because you have balls.”

“And you don’t think he’ll last more than ten minutes!”

Detraeus frowns, tense and confused as the woman addressing him makes a rude gesture over her shoulder in the direction of the one who’d cut in. Fifty silvers is still far more than any inn he’d stayed at, and well above what he can afford, but night has long since come, the air is frigid and wet and rapidly getting cooler. He needs to be indoors as soon as possible. Perhaps he’ll be able to steal the coin back come morning.

“Forty,” he says.

The woman tilts her head. “Is that what you think I’m worth?” Before Detraeus can so much as open his mouth, however, she waves his words away. “Follow me, little prince. You have yourself a deal.”

The inside of the tavern is lit dimly.

Shadows dance along the walls like laughing spirits. Men and women linger in the main room leaning far too close to one another, their forms wreathed in the perpetual smog of too many pipes, and the air smells dank and odorous in a way that makes Detraeus’ fingers shake for reasons he can’t pin down. He tucks them into the sash at his waist and keeps his eyes on the floor. He wonders if the stains there are piss, blood, or worse, but decides not to linger on that thought. When the woman who lead him in takes him to a desk, he slips forty silvers across the counter and tries not to mourn their loss as they’re snatched from beneath his fingertips. For now, it’s worth it for a bed, he tells himself. He’ll earn it back later. He has to.

The stairs creak beneath their feet when the woman leads him up, but it’s better than thinking about the various other sounds coming from the surrounding rooms. After briefly considering asking for the quietest room they have, he decides against it. At the price he’s already paying, he doesn’t want them asking for anything more. She opens the door, and he steps in.

The room is small, furnished with nothing but an expansive bed that looks grossly out of place in the otherwise bare settings: heavily pillowed with thicker blankets than he’s ever seen and showcased in the center of the room like a prized kill. A single window overlooks the muddy city below, rain tapping against it like the click of small bones pattering to the earth in a heap, and Detraeus can’t help but wonder what he’s paying for. It isn’t until footsteps sound behind him and the door shuts at his back with a click that he becomes truly wary. He rounds on her, eyes narrowed.

“What are y—?”

Before he can finish his sentence, though, she steps towards him. “Relax, little prince. You look like you’ve had a long day. Shall we get you out of those wet clo—” When she reaches for him, he jerks back, half-slipping in the of rainwater already gathering beneath his sopping clothes and only just catching his balance before falling back into the nearest wall.

“Don’t touch me!”

She blinks, composure fracturing for a half second in open surprise before she puts her act back on — still confused, but smiling again. “Come now. That’ll make the evening’s events a little difficult, don’t you think? Let me guess…” When she takes a step towards him, Detraeus watches the loose, gossamer shawl slip from her shoulders with the air of eyeing a venomous snake as it uncoils and slithers to the floor at one’s feet. His pulse fills his chest. “Was this a dare?”

Detraeus wonders if he should run. Draw a weapon? Demand that she leave again? What does she want, and what is she talking about? Could she be here to rob him? He barely has any coin left to lose.

“A bunch of boys, all talking about their exploits, and you’re the only one among your friends who’d never shared a night with a woman, perhaps? Embarrassed, angry…you make a little bet?” Her hand comes to a rest on the wall just beside his head, and Detraeus feels his breath rush from between his lips, all the pieces of his confusion knitting closer and closer to a proper answer. “Don’t worry.” She smiles. “I’ll take good care of you, alright? Now, relax…”

When precisely he backed himself up against the wall, Detra isn’t sure, but all his brain registers as she leans in and he has nowhere to back up is: trapped. Panic wells up like a tidal wave. It crashes against the inner walls of his mind, floodwaters bursting against a levee, and Detraeus’ pulse overflows from his chest into his throat. Her breath brushes his lips, hot as Eowyn’s noon, and for the first several seconds after her mouth catches his own, he can’t move. He can’t think; he can’t breathe.

Panic is an entity that holds him in iron shackles, and it owns him as absolutely as the men who once called him puppet.

“Good boy…” Androynn’s voice coils its way over the back of his ear like boiling molasses. “See?” His fingers are gentle as they trail up Detra’s stomach, but they feel like nails, like claws as they trace over the shape of old bruises and press just hard enough to make sure Detraeus knows all the places and all the reasons he’s been punished before now. “Isn’t it easier when you cooperate the first time?”

No.

Bile pools in the back of Detraeus’ throat and his palms shake.

No.

He squeezes his eyes shut, gritting his teeth and gathering his fury because anger is his beast. The only one that ever truly drives away panic.

“No!” He screams it, shoving at the woman hard enough that in her startled state she stumbles back, nearly crashing into the bed in their cramped quarters, and his dagger is in his hand before he realizes he’s reached for it. “Don’t touch me,” he snarls, shaking. “Never touch me. Never touch me!”

Her lips open and close several times, eyes wide. Then: “Jerhome! Jerhome!”

The outcry is brittle, and seconds later, Detraeus darts aside as the door bangs open, the entire frame filled with the shape of a man that looks half again his height and twice as wide but is probably only a hand and a half taller. Still heavy enough to break every bone in his body by sitting on him. The woman Detraeus just threw off of him jerks her finger, pointing a sharp, painted nail at him.

“The boy’s out of his mind. He paid, then screamed when I touched him and drew a knife, just—” She shakes her head sharply, drawing the back of her hand back to her lips. “Get him out of here. I—no. Just get him out of here.”

Detraeus feels his heart in his throat, pulsing a wild rhythm as the apparent bodyguard narrows in on him. “She touched me…” It’s a whisper at first, then louder. “She touched me. She touched me! She wouldn’t—”

“And what did you expect, boy.” The guard’s voice is gravelly as he stalks in towards Detra, his footsteps heavy enough to make the floorboards shake with his weight. “In a whorehouse…”

“A beautiful little monster,” Andorynn says, tracing his fingers along the glowing brands on Detraeus’ shoulder blades that mark him as property, “…and a broken…” Detraeus grits his teeth but doesn’t make a sound when Andorynn’s fingers snake into his hair, gripping the mass of it like a leash and yanking to expose his neck, “…pitiful little whore. Do you know what that word means, Essireth?”

Detraeus’ stomach drops, and his grip on his dagger tightens.

“Drop the weapon, boy. Or you’ll be in for a world of hurt.”

“I means I own you.” Andorynn’s breath burns against his cheek. “You were made for this, and your purpose is to make me happy. Don’t you think that’s a blessing? To have such a simple, positive purpose in life. I take care of you…” Fingers grip Detraeus’ shoulder, and he squeezes his eyes shut, “…and all you have to do is express your gratitude.”

When the guard reaches for him, Detraeus lashes out, screaming, “Don’t touch me!” but he’s bashed back against the wall before he can say it again and his world spins. He jerks, yanking against the hold and snarling when his wrist is smashed back to the wall and pinned. But to little effect. His pulse is already a hive of drilling insects inside his skull, his panic eating at the edges of his anger like a corrosive toxin and making his chest feel like its closing in on his lungs.

He fights, but he might as well not have. The man is so much larger than him, that putting up a struggle seems only to make it worse, and Detraeus loses track of how many times his body is beaten against the wall. By the time the man drags him out of the room, consciousness is a fleeting thing dancing on the edge of a knife blade. Back, forth. Black, white. Pain is a constant, but at least pain is better than panic, and when his limp body is tossed out into the muddy street, Detraeus’ knees fold after two staggered steps. His stomach lurches, and he falls to all fours, retching in the puddle before him.

He flicks his tongue over his throbbing lower lip, grimaces, and spits. Vomit, and blood. Of course there’s blood. There’s always blood.

“What do we say when we’re grateful, puppet?”

Detraeus flicks his tongue over his throbbing lip, but he doesn’t dare wince when he finds it wet and metallic in flavor. “Thank you, my lord.”

“That’s right. Clever boy…you learn fast when given the right incentive, don’t you?”

Detraeus digs his fingers into the muddy gravel and bites his tongue until the memories vanish. Present. He is in the present, on Soudul, a world away from Seren’s hell. No one can find him here. He has—

Weapons.

His weapons.

Detraeus sways, pushing himself messily up onto his knees and touching his hip where his dagger usually rested, but his fingers touched only an empty sheath. Had the man taken it from him? Had he dropped it? He couldn’t lose it. Not that dagger. I had meaning. It—

A boot crunches down into the muck and gravel inches from Detraeus’ fingers, and he jerks his hand up, scrambling backwards. The brothel guard looms over him like death, and Detraeus makes a point not to swallow. Then, he spots the glint of metal in the man’s hand. His dagger.

Immediately, he scowls. Despite the lingering nausea in his gut, the stabbing pain in his ribs and the continued throbbing in his bleeding lips, anger wins out just long enough to give him temporary strength again. “That’s mine, you—”

The weapon clatters to the ground as the guard lets it drop at Detraeus’ boot. “Get out of here, rat. And don’t come back.”

Heat pools in Detraeus’ cheeks. Shame. Disgust. Contempt. A thousand words swirl in his mind — bitter comebacks, explanations, curses, threats — but all of them feel hollow and dangerous. None of them come near his tongue. Instead, he reaches out, snatching up his prized gift and holding it close to his chest momentarily before tucking it into the sheath at his hip. When the guard steps away, not even bothering to make sure Detraeus follows through with the demand that he leave, much of the energy in Detra seeps back out.

His limbs are quivering. Whether from cold, fear, or hurt he can’t tell, but his previous exhaustion feels as though it’s multiplied triple fold and for several long seconds all he wants is to curl up then and there. Let the world move him if it pleases. He’s done. But panic is nipping back at the edges of his conscious. The nausea in his gut is roiling, and he can’t stay. He can’t stay.

‘Get up.’

Detraeus squeezes his eyes shut, breathing in as the cold rain patters wetly against his skin having long since soaked him through.

‘Get up.’

He grits his teeth, bites his lip and tastes the metallic sting of blood on his tongue.

‘Get. Up.’

Detraeus pushes himself up, staggers, and then stands. One step back. Two. He touches the dagger at his hip, then his quiver, arrows, and bow. His coin is gone, but he can earn or steal that back later. In the meantime, once satisfied that all his material possessions are in order, he turns, and starts back down the village street. First a walk, then a jog, and finally a run. The pace hurts, but he pays it no mind, his entire focus dedicated to getting out. His boots make the puddles dance, scattering in every direction, and he darts between carts and passerby with the dexterity of an alley rat with only one destination in mind.

Detraeus runs until he’s out of the village, until it’s far behind him, and further still, until there’s nothing but trees, swamp, and a looming canopy overhead so thick he can no longer spy the face of the moon.

When he stumbles, boots sinking into the ankle-deep shallows at the edge of a river, he stops. There, as his lungs greedily drag the chilled night air in to fill them, he sinks to his knees, shivering, and splashes his already rain-wet face. It starts light, but grows rougher — gentle washing to rubbing, to scrubbing. He wets part of his cloak in the river and then scrubs hard at his lips with it, where the woman kissed him, and then his hands, where she touched him, and his neck, where her fingers brushed.

Eventually, after setting his bow and quiver aside with some reluctance, Detraeus wades out deeper into the water. Ignoring the rising chill seeping through him, he washes thoroughly, scraping and rubbing over every inch of himself he can reach — once, twice, three times, four — until he loses count. He feels filthy and he can’t get the grit off. There are hands on him. Finger marks smeared all over his skin no matter how much he cleans.

His teeth are chattering, his dark skin notably more pallor with cold, when he first feels something distinctly more alive than the current slither past his ankle.

Detraeus freezes. Jerked out of his hyper-focus on cleaning and abruptly as alert as his exhausted and trauma-addled mind can manage, he stumbles backwards, trips over a slippery stone beneath the water, dunking himself, and then scrambles back further, shuddering. His gaze darts around, trying to make out what touched him, but the water is dark and muddled with silt, near impossible to see through. Then, something glints.

Scales?

Just another wet rock?

A reflection of the waning moon?

Pushing himself up onto his feet and doing his best to ignore the chilled quiver to his limbs, Detraeus takes several slower steps backwards until he’s safely on the bank again, and reaches for his weapon. Strapping his quiver to his hip, he draws an arrow, aimed at the water, and waits. His pulse beats in his throat. Even his breath feels cold against his lips on its way out.

The serpent strikes at him before Detraeus completely registers that it has so much as broken the surface of the river. His first shot veers off far from his target, but mostly thanks to his staggered retreat. His second shot hits, and by the time it hisses again, his dagger is in his hand. It snapps its fangs, but fortunately snags on nothing but boot leather, and he jabs down. Gouging the back of its head in the first blow, he twists his blade, stabs again, then slits its head off in the next several goes.

He swallows and grimaces as he wipes his blade. A shake of his boot dislodges the head, and a kick sends it spinning bloodily into the river as he takes a step away from the still-twitching, oozing body. When he stoops, however, propping his elbows on his knees, pressing his palms to his forehead and squeezing his eyes shut to give them just a moment’s rest, a string of rustling in the nearby foliage roots him in place. Again, his breathing slows.

Not now.

Why now?

Why now?

Detraeus exhales, and jerks to a stand, drawing his bow. “You want to die?” he snaps, shouting at shadows. “You want to die? Come die.”

The serpents come at him in droves. Enough that he assumes he must have disturbed some variety of nearby nest, because how else would there be so many? He doesn’t recognize their species type, but from the long fangs to glinting, striped bodies, he stays well away from their bite, automatically assuming them to be venomous. He sinks multiple arrows into the first three as soon as they break the tree line, managing to down them before they reach him. The fourth and fifth draw in close enough that he has to bat their snapping jaws off with the butt of his bow before gutting them with his dagger.

The sixth shreds a slit in his trouser leg, teeth nicking into his thigh, and Detraeus winces, teeth gritting as he stumbles. When he slits beneath its jaw, warm blood spews out, spattering his skin wetly and joining the other smears. The nick in his thigh stings, burning enough to make him wonder if some of the creature’s venom managed to get to him. Then, the seventh sinks its fangs deep into the back of his calf.

Detraeus cries out, jerks, and then sinks, toppling to his knees and then lashing back at his attacker. His world spins as he fights, and in seconds, every movement feels more surreal. He jabs at the creature and blinks, watching his dagger grow and contort. Blinking, he shakes his head and stabs again, and again, splitting a gaping black chasm into the beast’s body. His dagger is a sword by the time he finishes. A writhing, thorned sword, and he collapses back against the earth, shuddering and squinting up at the sky as it whirlpools.

Undulating, bulbous clouds that twist into grotesque faces and then melt away again, screaming. He squeezes his eyes shut, anything to block it out, and then something moves to the side of him. Another serpent? Jerking himself around, he tries to push up, but the ground ripples, soft, and sponge-like; unstable enough for him to lose his balance again immediately. He feels for his weapon instead. When his fingers close around what he assumes is the hilt of his dagger — sword, thorn vine — he rolls onto one side, and forces himself up, balancing on his knees as best he can despite the rippling earth.

It’s another serpent, but nothing like the others. As he watches, it grows before his eyes, doubling and then tripling in size, fangs the size of his torso, body the size of a small ship. It opens its mouth, jaw large enough to swallow him whole, and Detraeus drops his sword — it’s fighting his grip anyway, hissing when he tries to swing it — and reaches for an arrow instead. The tip glows, shimmering as though laced with dark magic as he notches it into the string of his laughing bow.

“Give me a name, Detraeus,” his bow says, and Detraeus frowns as he aims.

“Now’s not a good time…” His arrow swishes through the belly of the beast like a pebble cutting through fog. Nothing. Not a scratch.

“But I deserve a name,” his bow insists. She sounds almost as though she’s pouting. “I’m loyal to you, aren’t I? Faithful, even when your other weapons desert you?”

“Your arrows aren’t working.” Detraeus’ his tongue feels thick and strange in his mouth. Not made for talking. He narrows his eyes at the beast, shuts his lids completely, and then opens them again. “But help me kill this, and I will give you a name.”

“Swear to your goddess.”

“I swear to Soudana.” He sinks one arrow, and a second, and a third into the black mass that was the snake beast. It snarls, twisting and splitting into multiple beasts, too many to count. He fires more, and, after what feels like an eternity, it shrinks back down, the multiples folding in on themselves again and again until there’s nothing but a handful of bubbling puddles several paces from his knees.

Detraeus crawls back to the riverside. Eyeing the roiling current, he sinks, succumbing to his dizziness, and eventually collapses completely, half in and half out, feeling the liquid seep into and soak his side. As he trails the tips of his fingers along its surface, observing the gentle tug of the current, he wonders when the entire stream became blood.

Had it always been blood…?

The dragon’s roar is distant — or perhaps very close — but Detraeus pays it no mind. It probably doesn’t exist. His eyelids sink heavily against his cheeks, and he watches the sky spin: pivoting on its axis, fading into and out of existence with each blink. It’s possible he loses consciousness.

The next thing he feels is two fingers on his neck.