Chapter Text
Prologue
“Why do I hafta take her with me? I don’t even take my own sisters” Reen asked incredulously.
“Please. It’s just for today, I promise.” The tall woman pleaded with him, holding the infant girl towards him.
“Why should I? It’s your kid, right? Besides, having a baby around’ll just slow me down.” He frowned at her insistence.
“Please, I need her far away from me! Please!” She was hysterical now, shaking, with tears forming in her eyes.
He sighed and looked at his own mother, her eyes glaring at the smaller of his two sisters. She nodded numbly and he sighed again.
“Fine, I’ll take her with me, so quiet down.” He took the baby into his arms, holding her to his chest.
“Thank you, young man. Thank you so much.” She backed up and sat leaning against the wall. Reen just sighed and left the building, the brightness of the sun nearly blinding him as he stepped out into the city.
“Is that the one?” The Inquisitor asked coldly. His eyeless gaze locked onto the small run down building the Skaa were currently housing themselves in.
“It is, yes. She went in there with… With the child.” The small nobleman replied.
“I swear, I didn’t know she was pregnant. I didn’t think that stewards even could.” The Inquisitor held out his hand, cutting off the man beside him.
“Just leave this to us, Avard.”
“Us?” Avard looked around, seeing two more of the terrible creatures land on the roof beside them, and his heart sunk. Three Inquisitors for one child was unheard of in situations with a Skaa halfbreed. He started to turn back to the first Inquisitor, but he was dead before he could.
Bendal lifted his stone-headed axe from Avard’s lifeless body.
“Well then, shall we go?” He smiled to his fellow Inquisitors before leaping towards the building and through the window, cleaving the inhabitants in twain as he ran through the halls, his compatriots following soon behind him, leaving similar paths of gore in their wake.
Reen was on his way back to the slum his small family was currently living in, still holding the strange woman’s baby in his arms.
“Why do you gotta look at me like that, huh? It’s not my fault your mother’s gone mad.”
The baby ignored his words, just looking up at him with her wide brown eyes.
“I can’t wait til we leave your sorry asses for…” He trailed off, hearing yelling and screaming from the direction of his home. He was running now, into an alleyway for cover and watching for the cause of the commotion until he saw the massacre.
Reen looked out at the slums, the home his mother and sister were still in. There were bodies lining the area, evidently thrown from the windows if the blood around the window frames was anything to go by. Two more figures bounded toward the building, Inquisitors, their eye spikes shining in the noontime sun. He shifted farther into the alley, praying that they wouldn’t spot him and shifted his gaze down to the infant bundled in his arms. The baby sat still and remarkably quiet, her eyes wide and curious, completely unaware of the death surrounding the two of them.
He looks back up, tracking the two new figures and once they both disappear through the windows, he quickly turns and runs, holding the girl close to his chest. Passing crowds and buildings, not bothering with any of the mediocre hiding spots, they wouldn’t help against an Inquisitor anyway. Pushing through he eventually reaches a large walkway, and runs across as soon as he finds an opening, entering one of the more well off districts, and coming to a stop behind one of the larger buildings, he slides down the ash covered wall, sweating and panting.
“Fuck fuck fuck!” He exclaimed, tears forming in his eyes. What were Inquisitors even doing there in the first place? He shifted his gaze down to the baby in his arms.
“Did you have something to do with this, huh? You and that mother of yours?” He questioned the child before sighing and leaning back against the wall and letting the tears flow.
Bendal walks through the halls of the slum, cutting down anyone he could see, the viscera oozing as the bodies fall. Eventually, he reaches his target. A Terriswoman standing tall in defiance of the fear his visage commands.
“There you are. Avard’s little toy.” He said while approaching her.
“Where’s the child, woman?”
“You won’t find her. None of you will.”
Bendal growled and lunged at the woman. She moved to the side faster than a human should, and grew in size, plunging her oversized fist into his midsection. He smiled lashed out with his axe, clipping her shoulder, and used iron to pull a nearby oil lamp into her back, knocking her down. He brought his foot down onto her elbow, his pewter enhanced muscles breaking the joint. As she screamed one of his allies stepped in and gave him a nod. He stepped off of her and the other Inquisitor began removing her metalminds, preparing her for captivity. It wasn’t often they had the means to steal more feruchemy, after all.
“There’s still a prize to be claimed here.” The voice in his head whispered to him.
“What? Where is it?”
“Behind that door.” It whispered again, drawing his attention to a somewhat hidden door at the back of the room. Stepping through it he saw his new goal. A Skaa woman with her children. No, just one, the smaller, newer, one was dead, her chest opened and her heart impaled.
“Here you go, Vin” The mother said to her remaining child while piercing her ear with a small bronze spike. She looked up to him and smiled.
“Hello, little crow, ready to kill me?” She laughed at those words and held up her child, still covered in her sister’s blood.
“Tevidian gave her to me, but she’s ready to go home now.”
Bendal smiled, the voice had clearly done its work on her, and done it well. He took the baby from her and lifted his hand, a coin in his palm. Using steel, he pushed the coin into the poor woman’s head. It crashed through her eye and lodged itself in her brain as she fell to the floor, dead.
He and his companion exited the building holding their captives. The baby in his arms began to wail, crying out and flailing her small limbs. The terriswoman was doing something similar, with only mildly better results, the enhancements of the Inquisitor more than enough now that her metalminds had been taken. The rest of the Inquisitors present approached, eyeing their prizes.
“This.” He held up the baby, her screaming like music to their ears.
“Is one of us now.” Though they couldn't see it, the small bronze spike shone in the sun.