Aukon set out to find his fortune and began moving from city to city with an orphaned wolf pup he’d rescued not long after striking out on his own. Part of his training required that he learn to control his most primal aspects but though Aukon hardly noticed he spent more and more time in his animal form, preying on peoples secrets as a spy. Unfortunately one of his victims was able to see through his facade and Aukon was put in jail. But it seemed that the eyes of the law were not the only eyes that gazed upon him for no more than an hour after being incarcerated he was released. Aukon had been bailed out by none other than the Mice Eyes guild and this is when Aukon’s adventures would truly begin.
“Poor kid” whispered a sandy voice from beneath a veil of black cloth.
Achmed was crouched down low next to the body of a boy, no more than 12 years old. He gently turned the lifeless head revealing the after math of a serious blow to the head. The visions of violence that stirred in his mind as he pictured the event were brief, like flashes of lightning revealing only for a fraction of a second the fate of this slave. It was almost overwhelming.
Placing his hands firmly on his thighs Achmed silently rose from the ground, a gust of desert wind gently blowing against his collection of cloaks. He could taste a hint of salt on the wind and from far away he could smell a hint of torch smoke. Night had begun to fall and with the darkness it would also bring death, Like a wraith Achmed’s cloaked form flowed across the sand like water, gently gliding ever closer to his target. He spared no detail in his approach.
This bounty was personal to him, though he’d been sent to kill slavers before this was a man who Achmed had been quite eager to destroy.
like poison Achmed spit out the name.
“Ismaleos.”
His memories boiled over his years of freedom, over the mental walls he’d built what seemed like a lifetime ago, and again he could feel the weight of shackles on his hands and feet. It was if Achmed was suddenly transported ten thousand miles away, the beating of drums forced him to march, behind him was a woman, in front a man. He fell. Sand pressed into his weary face for a brief second before rough hands clawed into his hair, dragging him to his feet. “It was him” Achmed thought.
Ismaleos laughed in his face while reaching in his pouch. His hand returned with a small glass bottle “This should wake you up” he sneered, emptying the contents into Achmed’s throat.
His eyes opened wide and his mouth fell open and he tried to scream but to his horror he was only able to produce a muffled croak. The poison coursed through his body burning and twisting and for the next ten years of his life Achmed was silent.
The events that would unfold that night roared in his brain like rolling thunder, as the camp fell asleep Achmed plotted his revenge and as the night reached it’s darkest point he slipped between the guards watching over him and crept towards a lavish tent that housed Ismaleos’s hulking body. He slid a knife out of a sheath. He raised it’s glinting blade and stabbed. Unfortunately the man he was trying to kill was not so unprepared.
Achmed’s ears rang with the blow that cracked against his head and his mind slipped into shadows. He woke as dawns light was just beginning to glare against the camp, he was restrained, he was defeated. His weight was lifted off the ground suddenly and he was carried to the center of the camp. Ismaleos stood over him now, chuckling. “I guess you’re just a little more trouble than you’re worth”
Ismaleos quickly lashed him to a pole and set him across the embers left by the fire that burned through the night. Achmed’s mouth opened silently screaming in pain and horror as the heat of the embers slowly began to burn away at his flesh and for the second time his mind was overwhelmed by darkness.
When he next awoke it was to the immense discomfort of being carried on the back of a horse, he looked to see his new surroundings but all he could make out was the form of the cloaked woman commanding the beast that would take him to his new life. upon noticing his stirring the woman turned to him and ran her hand gently across his brow, sending him back into sleep and filling his mind with feelings of comfort.
The woman’s name was Sasha and over the next ten years she not only nursed him back to health but trained him in the arts of a killer. Though he was brought from the brink of death he was left with terrible scars covering most of his body, scars that he learned to conceal lest he horrify someone dear.
But as he crept into Ismaleos’s tent for the second time, twelve years after he began his new life Achmed carefully unwrapped his face pulling down his mask to show the man who made him this way true horror. Now It was Achmed smiling as he pulled a bottle from a pouch and with a short and quick movement he emptied the contents down Ismaleos’s throat.
Ismaleos lay there silently screaming while Achmed towered above him, his shadowed form looking never more like death its self. Achmed silently dispatched his foe freeing himself finally from his past.
“Now I guess we can turn our gaze on what’s to come”
Chronicles of the World of DaoTyr 