The Living End (Trap Master)

It was one of those days.

One of which he took a step out of the Dome and roamed, waiting for fate to bring him where he needed to be. This was one of the things he liked about the Dome. He asked it to bring him somewhere. Anywhere. A sort of “surprise me” gesture. Each time, he was certainly taken to a place that needed aid. Not yet to the three he searched for, but he trusted that the Dome and Elohim would bring them to him when the time was right.

Not every mission he carried out for the Dome was completely successful. Adrien knew very well, though most would disagree, after seeing his flawless movement, strength, speed, and efficiency in most tasks, that he was not perfect. For he had not been able to prevent Caragon’s curse in the False Knight business of the previous village he had visited, nor the death of the woman that had occurred during his stay. All he could do was accept them. For fate has chosen for him to be imperfect in such ways.

It always was a little of a surprise when these days happened. Though experienced and old in so many senses, and knowing that these things simply happen, it never really took the pain of it away. Adrien was beyond numbing himself from such things; for compassion had been an emotion he had come to know to be the worthiest of them all. It was a sort of rule to him, but more than that. For a rule was something one forced themselves to obey. Compassion was simply a part of his essence now. When one comes to their authentic self, these things just came naturally. When acting on the authentic self, one can never really choose or act wrongly.

It was a summer day in the port city of Keithon. The salt and seaweed smell of the ocean was strong in the air, being blown in from the endless sea. The day was hot but the air was a gentle cool. Few clouds were blotted in the sky. Needless to say, it was a beautiful day for something so foul.

Adrien was roaming the slums of this city, where the unfortunate made their homes and often worked much too hard to the grand fishing boats and companies that took root in the cities. Over worked, under paid, but there was no other work available in the city. So they made due.

Money jiggled in his pocket, he had come to always carrying some around with him. He never knew when it would be needed, so he always carried some just in case. Be it charity for the poor, or spare change for someone needing it in the market. Adrien was starting to think it was one of those days to comb through this slum and leave some hand-outs with the civilians there.

Merchants crowded the dock where one of the travelships from Myrrhe had raked through the icy sea to bring in tourists. For some, Keithon was an intermediary to going as far as Nethen, but for most, Keithon was where many of the aristocrats of Myrrhe spent the warm season in opulent cottages. These houses were easy targets for beggars, and so the rich relied on hiring some other poor to stand with a staff and beat back their own sort for a decent pay. Often taking the chance to take out the frustrations that motivate the very ones that share their pain, these guards moved with brutal force.

But amid the throngs of more casual errands, a different force walked. His body quivered in revulsion at the state of those around him, both rich and poor alike. He had come here to deliver a sermon, and he prayed it would be received. It took a great sum of his control to keep from taking them all right then. But they were in the grip of ignorance, and he could not begin to show them the Gates of Bliss if they flocked from him in fear. He would have to work in shadows, perhaps taking two at a time if they were lucky.

A delicate hand touched his as he was leaving the dock, and he turned to see a young girl with a face urgent with concern. “Sir, you look ill. Do you need medicine?” He felt the irony crush his heart with a steel grip. He tried to avoid sobs by attempting a reassuring laugh.

“I have a bit of sickness from the ride here, yes.”

“What is your business, sir? You don’t dress like a merchant.” Her curiosity was irresistibly cute. She made him smile, despite the dirt pervading her clothes and hair and her clearly visible cheekbones. She probably subsisted on one meal a day, maybe less.

“I am a missionary who has come a long way to preach.”

“Ah!” Her eyes jumped. “My father says holy men are good husbands. Will you pay a dowry for me? I could take care of you...” She looked desperate. The word dowry meant food for her family, less suffering. She was just like him, he knew it. Only she had yet to reach the stage of egotism and appeared only twelve years of age.

“Ahm. And how old are you?” He pretended to be qute interested in purchasing her, as was the custom among one religion of the lower class here, that of Sretu. She did a couple of spins and showed the sides of her neck to prove she did not have scabies or some other plague. When her back was to him he saw the coming of age ribbon that held up her youthful hair.

“Yes, we must go meet with your father about this,” he said, pretending this was not at all too sudden. He would not pass this opportunity for such a poor creature to redeem, not for anything, and so he walked with her back to the slums, where she lived.

When they got inside, she told him her parents would be home later that night (both of them being lumberjacks), and so he realized he would not be able to cluster their salvation. They would not join her. A fine layer of ice formed on the front door, and his needles found their way to her before she could cry out.

The ice shattered, and he walked out onto the street to find the slum church.

“Have you heard the news, Aex?” grunted Joel as the tall elf wondered out of the house and next to the old man’s fish booth. He looked down at the old fisher, tough skin weathered from a life out at sea in his younger days, and rough calloused hands that still worked even now. Retired from fishing, Joel had settled himself down to simply sell fish in the market for the company.

The old man didn’t look up at Aex as he spoke. A red bandana wrapped around a bald head, though he still had a white beard growing from his face. His eyes were deep and blue, from a life with many experiences. There was a calm way that the grizzled old man gutted the fish in a bucket next to him, as he sat on a stool behind his booth. Though he appeared calm with a cold distance, Joel was a good man. He had found both Aex and Brax living in the streets and offered them lodging in his home. He also helped Aex find a job on the fishing boats of the Raith company, which dominated the current fishing industry of the city.

“What news would that be?” Aex returned with a question.

Joel looked up with his calm gray-blue eyes. The gesture made the topic seem all the more important. Joel hardly looked away from his work even when talking with another person. “They found Mr. Raith dead … rather gruesome death as well. Hanging from a hook in one of his warehouses … gutted ... Had no kids, so his wife is selling the company to Skavis … They pay a lot better I hear …”

Aex stared and Joel lowered his eyes back to his fish. He … didn’t know what to say. It was … eerie to hear how Raith had been gutted like a fish in one of his own company warehouses, but ironic all the same for such a tyrant. It was a strange and disturbing, but sudden blessing. Perhaps the gods were with them.

Shocked thoughts were soon overcome by another sudden occurrence to him. Whenever he thought of danger, he instinctively looked to see if Brax was nearby. Aex looked around, brows furrowing with discontent at seeing that his son was not under his careful gaze. “Where’s Brax? I thought I told him to wait outside for me.”

Joel paused in gutting his fish, eyes lifting up briefly and somewhat guiltily. “I’m sorry; I didn’t realize you had wanted him to wait. He ran out of here just a while ago …” he grunted awkwardly.

Aex swore and hurried off in a direction that Joel shortly indicated for him. It was bad enough that trouble always seemed to find Brax or that Brax seemed to find trouble, but with news of a killer being out and about, and apparently hanging people on hooks …

He quickly rushed off in the direction of the church.


Brax raced as fast as he could, jumped, and landed with both feet straight down in the nearest puddle, splattering water and muck satisfyingly in all directions. There were lots of fun puddles around the church. He liked the biggest, deepest ones with the most water that he could send splashing farther than the others.

He looked up after this splash and saw a really strange man. He was really, really thin. His body reminded him of a knobby and gnarled old tree, with fingers like twigs of branches that could snap off with the slightest touch. Brax could see the man’s ribs, like before Mr. Joel took them in and daddy didn’t get to eat a lot. Anything he found he had always given to him.

The man wore a strange band of twigs and branches with poky thorns all over it. Brax wasn’t sure why he would wear such a hurtful and uncomfortable thing. The weird man approached the church and when he got closer, Brax called out to him.

“Mister, do you need something to eat?”

The child was young and tragic beauty. The thin man surveyed the boy as if looking into the vertiginous abyss of some vulgar hell, observing the ways the boy could be crushed. He saw hungry women, and even men, depraved and excited by their vulgar nature to mate with him in the passing of years. Everything he would be told would confuse him, the scripts of life scrawled down by scribes of pleasure scribbling jaggedly in their flight from destruction until inevitably engulfed. Eventually even the beauty of the boy would be dried and wrinkled, as if by the nuclear heat of the sun itself. Then the ground would eat him alive and words of regret, that he could not be stolen from further, would bawl down into the maw of the earth.

"Mister, do you need something to eat?" His tender features gave a girlish impression, as prepubescent children are already neither clearly men nor women, but even moreso. The effeminate nature of the boy was pitied by Sade as a target for entropy, though it was still endearing.

"I would like some food, yes. I have traveled a long way and the sailors were not very attentive to my needs. What is your name, boy?" The sense of mission in his eyes seemed to react with his thorned crown, and it grew just a tiny increment with his focus. A few droplets of his own blood trickled down his brow.

When blood trickled down the man's brow, Brax didn't feel right about this anymore. It was suddenly scarier than before. Though the man smiled kindly at him ... Still, just because it was a little strange, he didn't think that was any reason not to feed him. Why did the man wear thorns that made him bleed so? Brax was so distracted by this pondering that he forgot the man had asked him for this name.

"Why do you wear that on your head?" he asked instead of answering.

"Ah, but is this not a sign of culture, the hallmark of humanity?" His words were kissed with contempt for the entire idea. "I wear this because it is written by God that I should do so. God talks to us in many ways, and while it might seem strange, the Great One knows it is best that I bleed a little now and then...But myself alone. That is what being nice is, isn't it? To push yourself aside for others?"
He held out his hand and smiled to the boy, his face nearly transformed by sudden charisma. "We all want what is good, don't we? Just like I need some bread or fish, for it will sate me...at least for a moment."

A few people walked by the church, hardly noticing the emaciated man and his young conversant. Their suffering, like thousands of barbs of horror, washed over him in a sudden moment. But he kept himself calm.