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B A N D I T . T A L I N

Talin was angry… too angry to conceal it all. He knew it too but refused to wear his mask to cover the anger. Because he didn’t want to ruin his set up, so he left for the wilderness where he could easily lash out without having to worry about his naive followers noticing his true face.

Stalking out of his tent, he left the camp to vanish into the trees of Juahur, leaving behind a pair of startled guards who’d gotten a glimpse of his face. They looked at each other and didn’t bother to call out to the boss; not when he looked like that! Boss was normally laughing and smiling… the cold look upon Talin’s face, the ice blue eyes hard as crystal, the anger burning behind them… that was not the boss they knew. They wondered what had happened to make him so anger but decided it might be best(and safest) to not ask.
Talin’s thoughts burned and churned within him. How dare that brat do that! How dare the others allow it! He fumed as he headed towards the border of Tale and Oba.
This jungle camp was placed near the empty oban border on juahur’s side; where he could easily cross into Oba and then contact his oban thief friends and get news on patrols and wealthy targets. Today he didn’t want to talk though, today he wanted to kill! As he crossed over into Oba, he had thoughts of murder boiling inside of him, this would not be an information gathering trip at all! And all because of that blasted boy Ouen and his actions!

Earlier that week he had overheard some of his group mentioning a raid… a raid he had not ordered nor had any of his lieutenants! Someone had been gaining in popularity and had apparently gotten several of his men to follow them. And for what? To kick some rich folks out of a house they’d commandeered from some merchant? The hell was that? Not for wealth, not for fun, but for.. justice? Disgusting! And not something he approved of…. His lip curled and he ground his teeth yet again.

Talin slid from shadow to shadow of the trees as they thinned out from jungle to scattered smaller trees, turning into the dry grassland and savannahs of oba. He was heading towards a popular resting spot for merchants waiting for delivery of wood. He’d cased this entire place a while back and there was always some merchant here to collect the workings of the loggers and carpenters. He wanted to kill... needed to vent his frustration on things other than a tree or some merchant and then give away loot. He was going to kill them all and leave the loot, and then go and kill other people. As bloodily as possible; he wanted to smell the terror, wanted to cause mayhem. He had had enough of being mister nice guy… time to let loose and be himself with no mask for a bit. Let this town be drenched in blood…

And that wasn’t the only thing the boy… well almost a man, Ouen had done. He’d saved an oban girl and took her into their camps. Took an oban noble into the very camps of the bandits who were attacking the nobles and their merchants! Was he an idiot? Blinded by her looks? She was cute sure and in any other situation Talin would have hit on her but not this one. Not where an OBAN , one who obviously had lived a soft rich life, was in HIS CAMP… without his permission. That girl would have to go… and Talin intended to ensure she didn’t live to tell where their camp was or who the members of the band were. And the camp would have to go to; another irritation! He would have to find another safe spot and somehow keep the obans or alkidikes (or anyone for that matter) from finding the new spot and not discovering them in the middle of a move. Hadn’t that stupid idiot Ouen thought about it? She knew their faces now! She could lead hunters right to them! That stupid b*****d…. This is why Talin liked working with real bandits and not these naive young kids who thought this was adventure, and righteous and all that foolishness. They may have been giving loot to orphans, widows, widowers and all that who had gotten hurt in the war… but they were bandits. They stole for a living, they killed for a living… there was nothing honorable about it, nothing righteous about it. A bandit was a bandit no matter what!

His thoughts took him to the edge of the small town and the small open air spa that they’d built for the merchants waiting. His hand found a hilt of one of his many hidden throwing knives and he grinned. Or… his face had something on it that might have been a grin, if you took out the blood thirst, the anger, and sheer cruelty from it. A nightmare was about to descend upon this sleepy town that was eating dinner and preparing for sleep after a long days work.

Slinking through the shadows, Talin slid his bandanna from his waist to wrap about his head to conceal his features. Always be careful; you never knew who else was out there, could never be sure there was someone stronger, quieter, stealthier than you following or on the watch for thieves like himself. Though tonight he wasn’t a thief; tonight he was a killer.

He crept not into the spa but into the inn. It would be more fun to leave only those enjoying themselves alive. Let them enter an inn drenched in blood… Talin was not one for torture, but he did love to see people’s feared reactions. He started at the bottom, sliding into the kitchen where two cooks worked hard, tossing back words and gossip as their hands built delicious food. One was near.. the other was further. He crept behind one, the one who suddenly stiffened and said; “Hey… did’ya feel that draft?”

Talin’s free hand grabbed the man’s forehead and forced it back to expose the neck as his knife slashed and slit it in a gush of blood. The other turned to look as he heard the sound of the body hitting the ground.
“Hey—” He received a knife between the eyes. Talin’s ice blue eyes met the startled red eyes of the oban he’d just killed. His lips curled into a cruel smile and he retrieved his knives before leaving the kitchen. Next would be the rooms; he wouldn’t kill everyone; it’d be more entertaining to leave some alive, some dead. Let them wonder what had happened, why it had occurred. If they ever knew it was simply because he needed to kill something… he wondered what others would think. Talin did not need a reason to kill; killing was easy and fun. Often it was for simple reasons; he was angry, you had something he wanted, he felt like it…

He went from house to house, picking off one person or two if he found them, before moving to the next. A knife thrown from the window, knifed from behind through the ribs, a knife to the front as he stepped in front of someone and stabbed them through the solar plexus, knives thrown as Talin made a game of it, trying to hit the eyes or the person turning to look at the intruder. When he heard the sounds of people marshaling and loud cries of anger and grief, the sound of a bell ringing out danger, he chuckled. Time to head out. He slunk off into the desert, leaving a different way than he’d come in.

He pulled off his bandana and took a breath of the air and laughed, feeling delight flow through him. He loved to kill, it felt so…thrilling, empowering. Not having to pretend to be a goody guy, not having to care about what others thought… oh how he missed this! He really wished those alkidikes hadn’t destroyed the first bandit group he’d basically spent the last 10 years of his life in. They had been like him; and he hated the alkidikes who had taken his group from him.

But that was in the past and now he had to face the future; what to do about the oban girl in his camp and the upstart shifter in his group. Maybe he’d let the girl live… she was rather cute… but again she’d seen the faces of some of his group.. But not mine, he thought; I can send her away and the only ones who’d be caught would be those upstarts friends. Perhaps he would let her live so they could get caught. That would teach people not to trust prisoners! Especially lovely ones.

And Ouen… Ouen would have to die. There was no way around it. The boy had promise.. too much in fact if he was gathering a group of core followers who took his word over Talin’s. Talin did not share, not power, not lovers, not loot.. not unless he felt like it. Anyone who stole from him would die. His dark cruel chuckle softly sounded out into the falling dark as he took a long roundabout path home. A plan had been made… now all he had to do was implement it.