[b]Name:[/b] Alice Curnow

Appearance: [img=http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/303/2/b/common_sellsword_concept_by_nimao-d6sdmlr.jpg]

With sapphire eyes, Alice stands at 5ft exactly. She typically also wears thick leather gloves on her hands.

[b]Personality:[/b]Alice is cheerful. Almost disturbingly so, given that she’s a mercenary who most people assume fights for money and who will kill anyone and anything. Which is only half true. She does fight for the money in any given job, but she also fights to help as many people as she can, and typically doesn’t take jobs that involve hurting those she deems as innocents. When collecting a bounty, she typically brings her target in alive, to face justice rather than being killed on the spot. It matters little to her that they often are killed anyway. They got a trial for their crimes, and everyone who they hurt was given assured closure. She has a strong sense of justice, and that doesn’t include murdering the target.

She also rarely swears, and never in casual conversation. Just one of her quirks that makes her an…odd mercenary to say the least.

[b]Excerpt:[/b]

When the mercenary was done with her, he stood and retied his trousers. Grinning down at her, he winked. “I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.” Alice stared back up at him with dead eyes, huddling herself back up against the tent pole. The bastard shrugged and walked out of the tent that had been her entire world for the past six months, leaving a knife behind on the table. Outside of the tent, she could hear one of the mercenary’s friends ask, “Where’s your knife?” The bastard’s response was casual and unworried. “It’s in the tent with the whore who played at soldiering. I only wish more of them tried it. This is the best sex I’ve had in years. It’s free, and you don’t have to worry about keeping her around with gifts and being nice.” He laughed, while his friend commented. “Aren’t you worried she’ll get it?” If anything, this made the bastard laugh harder. “And do what with it? She can barely fight! Even if she could, she’s broken. She doesn’t have the courage to try and leave. She fears me. And besides that, she can’t leave. She’s in our camp, in the middle of winter, miles away from any help she might get. So no. I’m not worried at all.” The bastard’s and his friend’s voices receded, and Alice’s eyes locked on the knife.

It was pure bad luck that she fought for the losing side in that battle. It was worse luck that she was knocked out instead of killed. It was the worst luck of all that she was taken prisoner, stripped of her armor and weapons, dressed in rags, and sold to the highest bidder of the mercenaries to be used. Her luck continued to worsen as the months dragged on, as her rapist never died in battle, and every attempt she made to escape failed and was punished severely. Disobeying, resistance, or trying to escape, resulted in pain, she knew this in her very bones now. So what made her reach for the knife? She didn’t quite know. A death wish, perhaps. Maybe if she tried to kill him, he would go into such a rage that he would accidentally kill her. Or maybe purposely. Either way, death would be welcome. Maybe she still had some hope that it would work. Some hope that she could kill him and get away from this hell. For whatever reason, she took the knife and hid it in a small hole that she dug nearby. He wouldn’t notice it was gone. He always came back drunk in the night.

Old habits held when he came back. He was drunk again. If anything, this was the most drunk he had ever been. Stumbling, laughing, and struggling with his clothes. Alice watched him in a disinterested way. They way you might stare at a grotesque bug, stumbling its way across the ground in front of you. She was completely detached from the fact that the next few moments might decide the course of the rest of her life. When he finally beat the obstacle that was getting his clothes off, he came for her. Alice waited. When the opportunity came, she slowly stretched her hand towards the pit where the knife was, ignoring him, his stinking body, and his grunts. She dug gently into the loose earth, and wrapped her hands around the hilt of his knife. After that, it was easy. He was too drunk to notice what she was doing, and even if he had she was too fast for him to stop her in his drunkenness. 

The blade sank up to the hilt in his throat, turning a grunt into a gurgle of shock and pain. In dumb surprise, he stared down at her. “Broken, am I?” Alice whispered, blood dripping from the blade onto her face and chest. She twisted the knife. “I don’t have the courage, do I?” She twisted it again, drawing a gurgle that may have been an attempt at a scream. “I fear you?” She hissed. Alice suddenly and viciously dragged the knife across his throat, bringing a spray a blood all over her face and body. She pushed him off of her before he could bleed anymore than necessary on her. Alice stood, breathing heavily. Then she began to strip him of his gear. It wouldn’t be a good fit. It wouldn’t even be a close fit. But if she was to have any chance of getting out of this hell alive, she would have to make it work. Before she left, she gave one departing kick to his dead ribs. “Burn in hell.”