Omake: Turning Point

A life on the run can be a lonely one.
Here we get a glimpse into Terzian’s past.

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I remember blood, and I remember pain.  I remember the sickeningly sweet smell of charred flesh, burning wood and thatch, choking smoke, and the crack of collapsing timbers.  I remember shadows dancing in the corner of my eyes, gone when I turn my head.  Then I remember darkness.

Those are my dreams.  Night after night they haunt me, threatening to drown me in an onslaught of images, sounds, and smells so frighteningly real, but are they? Are they just dreams or something more?  The blood I know is real.  My hands are stained with it, and the taste and smell are as familiar as a lover’s touch.  Icy fingers of death rake my spine, and she smiles at me, her servant since I was a cub, and I smile back and toss back another pint, losing myself to the liquor.  I feel no guilt, but that doesn’t mean other ills don’t afflict me.  Despite appearances, I have my Achilles’ Heel. I am, as the saying goes, only a “man”, but even as I lay in a soft canopied bed, the perfumed scent of yet another woman cloying at my nose, I feel empty, and with the dawn I take my leave.  I promise her I’ll return, and maybe I will, but it wouldn’t be fair to either of us, so most likely I won’t.

That’s the way it is.  A thief does not linger too long in one place, or he tempts fate and courts the hangman’s noose. And so the cycle repeats: dreams, wine, women, and an ache denied. 

That is…

…until I met you.