[center][url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/]The Sorcerer’s cycle.[/url][/center]


[hider=WIP - sorry I don’t have word count on my phone :p]
[b]Primary Alias:[/b] Vallen Thorn
[b]Appearance:[/b] Young, scrawny,  and short. Wiry limbs and a mop of brown messy hair. Hands and feet stained with dirt. Soft freckles splatter his tanned skin. 
Loose tattered rags bound by fraying ropes pass as his clothing.
[b]Equipment:[/b] Most notably is his absence of things. Bound in simple tattered rags secured by fraying rope. A worn leather satchel hanging over one shoulder with makeshift ties along the weathered strap. 
[b]Reputation:[/b] A street rat. Defiant, brave, angry at the world.
[b]Recent History:[/b] The wet cobbled stone path was cold and hard. Unforgiving to the bare feet frantically slapping against it. It’s stones uneven and loose, littered with traps of small pebbles and sharp rubbish just waiting for the unsuspecting, unprotected foot to fall upon, as Vallen’s did, again and again. These cruel and devious dangers sulked out of site in the thick heavy shadows cast by the ever present looming towering walls on either side, blocking what little light fell from the dark cloudy night sky.

Still, he endured. Heart thudding profusely in his chest. Lungs burning with desperation. Muscles aching, head spinning, mind a blur.

He didn’t have the luxury to care about the occasional bolt of pain shooting up his leg as again he smashed his toe or stepped on some viscous debris, no matter how intense or severe it may be. He couldn’t worry what state this left his feet in. He knew they were bloody and bruised, he could feel a warm tingle oozing along his icy cold skin. He was surely missing a nail or two from toes most likely broken, but regardless he just couldn’t stop. No matter what he just had to keep them moving. For no matter how disconcerting it might be, worse things were coming.

Disconnected from his mind they were like objects that he kept placing in front of himself. One after the other as fast as he could. Numb with pain. Without full feeling or sense of the ground on which he was running, Vallen slipped and stumbled every few meters as he darted down one alleyway and then suddenly flew around a corner into another, always frantically avoiding possible signs or sounds of trouble ahead. With every fumble a new fear rose in his stomach and his eyes widened with terror. 
He had somehow been managing to  keep away from his pursuers so far, but if he fell over completely, surely they would be upon him in an instant. Even if they weren’t, the young boy wasn’t sure if he could even get back up. The night was growing long and despite all his urgency and adrenaline, the malnourished young lad was growing tired and weary. Already running on empty it was only desperation and fear that still drove him.

He was so scared and yet still so hopeful that he hadn’t realised just how much he had slowed. This wasn’t the usual guard chase that lead to a simple beating [i]if[/i] the one or two men could be bothered keeping up the pursuit. This was different. Vallen had wondered into territory that he shouldn’t have, and with his stubborn attitude he had upset the wrong people along the way. Hateful spiteful people not concerned by rules or laws except for their own. They were a viscous pack that ran these streets, more deadly and dangerous than those of the slums. This was the real reason why the upper regions had less beggars and bums. It wasn’t the guards that kept them in check. 

It hit him too late...
How many others like him had came here before him. Leaving the slums in their final hours of desperation, overwhelmed by thirst or starvation. Vallen would not be the first to threaten their hold. More begging children meant more guard patrols and they didn’t want that. No. They had quick methods for despatching his kind. Vallen was running the alleyways blind, had been running them for ages, yet still he was in them. Never had he come to an open road or passed a lit up building. There were no sights or sounds of the many people living in this densely populated area. Sure he didn’t know the streets. But his pursers did.

Realisation rushed up to him as quick and as hard as the solid brick wall before him. Trapped! Isolated and alone. He had been running exactly where they had wanted him to. Vallen was known for his defiant fighting spirit, but at this point it was all gone. He had nothing left. Sight of the wall broke what little spirit and hope he had left. He didn’t even look around to see where it was going to come from. It didn’t matter. He dropped heavily to his knees, defeated, given up, just as a soft rain began to fall over him. The rain did little to conceal the tears pouring down his face, still he did not sob. How could he have been so stupid. This, this was his third and final failure. 

As the rain grew heavier and the omnidirectional beating commenced, his limp body bounced around back and forth between the violent shadows. Lighting streaked the air and a bellowing thunder echoed down the alley. Despite being like them, of the street with no family, no love, living in fear, constantly fighting for survival. Having being beaten and abused, abandoned and forgotten. Looked down and spat upon. Considered lesser or nothing at all. Despite all these similarities and understandings, there was no sympathy or remorse towards him. They would beat him to death out of the rage and pain those years had built in them, or out of fear of returning to those days. 
It wasn’t long until his vision dulled and his body offered no resistance to the assault as he rolled around on the floor. Hands and feet pummelled every inch of him. He was sure there were sticks too and probably some sort of bladed weapon. It didn’t matter, there was nothing he could do now and in his final moments he thought only of the sister that he had left behind. His little sweet sister who he had abandoned with that monster all those years ago. How now he could never go back to save her...

There was intent to kill, that is what they were trying to do. Vallen should have died there and then that cold and miserable night, under the heavy rain and crumbling heavens. In that lost little alleyway behind the houses of the rich wealthy and corrupt. 
Perhaps it was his resilience from a lifetime of beatings or maybe a greater power like some form of divine intervention or fate, it could have even been his stubborn will and his unfinished business that forced him to cling desperately onto those last threads of life. Then again most likely was just simple sheer dumb luck and an eagerness on his attackers part to escape a miserable night too cold and too wet to be thorough.
Either way he wasn’t conscious when his near lifeless body plummeted deep into the filthy sewer drain. He barely recalls the rising rapids washing him away through the forgotten unholy pipes beneath the city or even how long that journey took. 


But as with all journeys, it eventually came to an end. However Vallen’s was not yet over, one might even say this is where it truly began.

He faded in and out of consciousness multiple times over a period unknown. Light and darkness came and went. Pain was the only constant. Caught between worlds, teetering on the edge of life and death he experienced the most beautiful dreams he had ever had. He saw a mother that he had never met, played happily in safety with his sister all grown up. There was a house and food in abundance. This was all so vivid and as real as real life. He was almost convinced that this was his actual life, but always it quickly and cruelly was vanished, ripped away from him before he could truly clasp or hold it. As in life,  forever evading his reach. Despite all its beauty and warmth he would have been better off without it. These visions serving only as a painfully taunting reminder of what could never be. It only gave him further to fall as it vanished, fading away to a myriad of horrid nightmares that came to torment and aggravate him. Reflections of the worst parts of his true past and his greatest fears replayed over and over again. 

Seemingly he was only shown that happiness so he could be harshly reminded how far away from it he was, and had always been his whole life. How dare he think he could ever be happy. 

Had he the strength to end his life and stop the cyclical nightmare there and then he would have. But even that he couldn’t do. With the visions he saw and felt he welcomed hell, but even that was too close to happiness for him. So with no other option of escape Vallen was forced to open his eyes.

He awoke to a tugging on his right arm. While the midday sun was bright in his eyes and burned at his retinae, slowly a blurry image appeared amongst the sea of white and came into focus as the blinding light faded. Vallen was in a swamp, half submerged in a soaking pile of trash and faeces, caught on the bank a little way down from an open still dripping pipe. It was only because of the heavy rains did the tunnels bring him here. No longer pure luck but divine cruelty, it had to be. It couldn’t be anything else. 

Then he recalled the tugging of his right arm and looked over half expecting to see some wild dog feasting on his flesh, but it was not. It was a man, old and crooked. Patchy wisps of unruly white hair littered his chin and were weaved through his thick bushy eyebrows. He had a long thin nose that was apparently resistant to the putrid smell in which they were both bathed. Around his otherwise bald head (except for the just noticeable white hairs in his ears and nostrils.) he wore a thick dirty band on a slight angle that held a makeshift cloth patch over one eye, leaving just one beady hazel eye to gaze suspiciously at Vallen. Beside that the man was concealed heavily by a thick grey course fabric cloak that gave little else as away, leaving only his head and hands protruding. 

Noticing Vallen was still alive the old man stopped trying to remove the contents of the boy’s hand. Something Vallen had been holding with a death grip, presumably grabbed in his moments of fleeting consciousness and desperation. The old man showed little interest in the boy and continued to rummage through the filth. If Vallen was to live or die, this man held no stakes or care either way. Suddenly it night and Vallen awoke to the familiar squelching swooshing of the old man rummaging new patches of waste. Had he left and returned? Had he stayed here all day? Either way Vallen welcomed the disturbance that pulled him once again from his nightmares. Once again the old man tested the boy’s grip on his treasure and quickly gave up and moved on. 

The next time Vallen awoke it was not to feeling or sound but smell. Through the pungent aroma he had become accustom to cut a powerful forgotten smell that caused a trifle within his stomach and drew a new life within him. A faint orange glow shimmered, caught reflecting in the puddles of water that surround him. Light from a camp fire. 

Not far from the boy the old man sat beside the humble flames holding over them sticks of skewed lizard and bugs. While he offered nothing to the near dead child he did not object as Vallen crawled his way through the cold dirt and feat upon the hot food he had set aside. 
In Vallen’s movements all his injuries were revealed to him. The large and the small. Even the simple ones now infected. But he didn’t care of them. Like a man possessed, all that mattered was that food. Like the risen dead he shambled his half non-responsive body over and feasted with an insatiable desire before again blacking out. Alls whilst holding onto the thin frail leather bound journal like it was his last strand of life.

This became routine. The waking to his grip being checked. The lack of objection as Vallen helped himself to the mans unattended food. The consuming silence between them and a faint absence, both growing more noticeable as Vallen held conscious for longer and longer.
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