Eternal

Dendrin can chatter in your ear all he wants it’s not going to make you change how you want to live your life. What the hell has he ever done for you?

You the sleep the rest of the night in your bed and most of the day as well. In fact you don’t leave the sanctuary for over a month. Eventually you start to get restless again and you go for a walk in the middle of the night.

“I’m leaving Talia, I’ll be back soon.” You say.

Tromping around through the swamp at night isn’t something you normally do since the place is already a breeding ground for biting insects during the day, its even worse at night. The Sul Monkeys are usually a little more active as well. Sometimes they even get vicious if they sense an easy target; fortunately they seem to be scared of you.

As you wander through the night you reminisce about the old days, back when you were in Rask and temporarily separated from Talia. It wasn’t an easy time, but you survived it, just like you’re surviving without her now.

“Pfft. Dendrin thinks he’s so smart. Suggesting that I can’t…” you begin to whisper to yourself, but just then your thoughts are interrupted by shrieks and pleas nearby. This is followed by some loud obnoxious voices.

“Go ahead a scream bitch, not like anyone’s going to save you!” a voice yells.
“Hey are you taking your turn?” the second voice asks.
“Naw, I’m just gonna fuck the boy, seein’ as we already beat him unconscious. Less trouble.” A third voice replies.
“Suit yourself.” The second voice says.

Great, you wandered in the middle of a sexual assault in progress. What is it with these new eternals and rape? They’re always engaging in it like its going out of style. Must be some sort of defect in their minds during their training or something because none of the first generation eternals that you know of were so focused on their genital region. Even Kane, as infamous as he was for his atrocities was never known for rape. Though given some of the other things he did to his enemies, that’s not saying much.

You shake your head as the cries, grunts and laughter gets louder and louder. They presumably have all the same natural ability and training the first generation eternals had and this is what they do with it. You turn back to go home.

“SHUT UP BITCH!” you hear followed by a smacking sound.
“Hah! Teach her to open her mouth when she doesn’t have a dick in it.”

Your hand tightens around your sword hilt as you stop walking for a moment.

“I’m not getting involved. They don’t deserve my help. None of them ever did…” you mutter and take another step.

“Shit! This bitch is tight! She must be a virgin!”
“So must be her boyfriend’s ass!”

You do a complete pivot.

“(Sigh) Damn it…”

You rush towards the sounds of the group and after passing through some tall swamp plants; you find two of the eternals on top of the bodies of their victims. The third one is standing around watching the pair of them, laughing.

He stops laughing when he catches the sight of your blade shining in the moonlight.

“Oh shi…” he utters and you split his head with your sword.

The eternal on top of the girl manages to stop what he’s doing long enough to look up, which allows her to give him enough of a shove and crawl away backwards from him.

The other eternal on top of the young man doesn’t even bother getting off his victim, instead he makes idle threats.

“Come closer and I’ll break this boy’s fucking neck!” he shouts and pulls the unconscious young man’s head into his arms preparing to twist.
“He’s better off dead anyway at this point.” You say.

You hear a bone crack followed by the sound of your sword cleaving the neck of the eternal. He attempts to grab at you while making horrible gurgling noises, but he only manages to falls face first into the muddy ground.

The third eternal at this point has pulled up his pants and drawn his weapon, but given that he hasn’t attacked you immediately like he should have, you know that means he’s scared. They haven’t been challenged in so long, they’ve forgotten what its like.

You forgot too. You forgot how thrilling combat was. All those old feelings are starting to come back. You’re enjoying this.

“Give me a fight.” You say.

The eternal attempts to oblige your request, but does a poor job at it. A couple of sword parries and dodges later and you’ve already opened up a wound in his chest and hacked a deep cut in his leg. He drops his sword and collapses on his ass in the mud.

“Please! Stop! Look, you can have the girl okay? Do whatever you want with her!”
“How the hell did you idiots ever take over anything? You’re not eternals. You’re fucking pathetic.”
“And what are hell are you?”
“I’m a shadow of the past and right now the past is catching up with you.”

A little dramatic, but you’re having too much fun.

Your line is lost on the eternal anyway who continues to plea like the girl did when he was raping her. You show the same amount of mercy and smack him across the face with your hilt before shoving your sword into his crotch. His voice goes into a high scream and then silent when you finish him off with a couple stomps to his head cracking his skull. Another couple stomps and his body stops breathing.

You look around the area and see the young girl still nearby. In this moonlight you can see she’s huddled with her knees up to her body and her arms wrapped around them. She’s also completely naked with bruises on one side of her face and partially covered in mud and dirt. She can’t be any older than twenty; her dead boyfriend was probably around the same age. She rocks back and forth sobbing.

Even when the physical damage heals, this is event is still going to be a scar in her mind for as long as she lives. You have no reassuring words for her, only advice.

“Go home girl and grow stronger from this experience.” You say and leave her to her misery.

You eventually arrive back at the sanctuary and excitedly tell Talia about what happened tonight.

“…yeah, it was something to see. I sort of wondered if I was going to be rusty, but it all came back pretty naturally. Didn’t even use any magic. Heh. I…I think I’ll be really busy soon. So if I forget to talk to you or anything, its not because I don’t love you. I’ll just have my mind on other things okay? Okay. I’m glad you understand.”

Over the next few days you pick off a few more eternals that you catch unawares in the swamps. Doesn’t take Brutus long to start realizing that someone is standing up to him, though from conversations you’ve eve’s dropped on, he isn’t entirely sure who it is yet and even thinks it might be the pre-cursor to an invasion. He’ll wish that was the case by the time you’re through.

The peasants though are still being oppressed as usual. Perhaps even worse than they already were, since the eternals are taking their frustrations out on them, you can’t understand why they aren’t at least being encouraged by the situation and trying to fight back.

You briefly wonder if you should dispense with your secretive solitary operations and try to get a “rebellion” going again, but you quickly dismiss such ideas. Maybe you’re indirectly helping the people, but you’re mainly just doing this for your own personal reasons. You’re not going to do is try to enlist aid again. Those days are long gone you’re not putting up with the headache of them anymore. Someone else can do it if they feel so inclined. You’re working fine on your own. You’ve done it many times in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

Besides if you were successful in starting up a rebellion, then you’d eliminate your targets too quickly. As it stands right now, you’re enjoying taking your time. If you wanted to kill them all as fast as possible, you could easily do it.

Over the course of a few months you continue your activities. Brutus starts sending patrols in large groups. He also destroys one of the smaller villages claiming that they know who has been attacking them if not involved in the attacks directly. If something like that doesn’t motivate the people nothing will.

As it turns out, it has motivated at least one and when you’re spying an eternal patrol camp you aren’t surprised to see a familiar smaller figure hiding nearby. She thinks that nobody sees her, and so far she’s correct as far as the eternals are concerned, but you see her as clear as day. She hasn’t seen you of course due to your cloak.

Looks like she took your advice, but she has no idea what she’s doing. Her desire for vengeance is going to get her killed, though maybe she feels like she has no reason to live at this point.

In any event, she’s going to get in the way of your own plans, if you don’t do something.