Crossroads

He had a moment of peace to himself to contemplate whether he’d actually drink for once or leave as Reynard suggested. He didn’t necessarily like himself when he was drunk, so he gladly stayed away from it, but tonight he was envious of the usual rowdy joviality you saw in red-faced men coming in from a long day’s work. He just wanted to feel anything other than the acidic pain in his gut, just wanted to sit with his friend and lay down his burdens for a while. Why was that so wrong?

He didn’t have long to debate before the rustle of chairs and shift of clothing told him of someone’s curiosity, and he bristled when the first sentence he heard sounded like quiet sarcasm. Accusations followed, and he kept his head in his hands as his jaw clenched and his muscles tensed defensively. Genial tones aside, this man didn’t know him or what he was going through.

“I don’t destroy anyone,” He rumbled deeply, finally raising his head, his expression heavy as stone.

“The last call I answered was for a young lad of fourteen whose new magic decayed his family’s flesh on contact. He was kept in the basement, afraid of everything.” He said, looking the stranger in the eye, his golden gaze weary. “The call before that was a girl making animal sacrifices to Fortune to bring back her mother, and we stopped her from slaying the last assignment of hunters for another offering. The call before that, a mage brought down a witchfinder by setting him on fire, and his companion brought back his soulless corpse to fight on their behalf. The call before that, a shadow mage killed a man while completely out of his mind, whether by corruption or something else, I’ve no idea. But he was shot and bleeding out on the street and was brought to Namarast like all the rest, to be given help.”

This was the speech he recited to himself late at night. It swept away the fact that the Witchhunters who’d first caught the sacrificing mage tormented her first, and Málmr had seen the bruises on her as she brandished the knife at their throats. It brushed clean the necromancer’s desperation to reach his lady love that spurred on his need to escape capture. It ignored the nagging doubt on the shadow mage’s guilt, until it all sounded like something his Witchfinder partner Milovash would say.

 He couldn’t sleep at night otherwise.

“I make no assumptions of others, of what drives them to their actions,” Málmr said quietly, tired of the guilt, unaware of how practiced his defense sounded to anyone beyond himself. “So please don’t make assumptions of me.”

There was something familiar about the man as he stared him down, but he couldn’t place where he’d seen him before.