Greyhound

The Greyhound

I was born somewhere in the Vesve forest to a nameless mother. I remember only brief visions of her, the violence of my childhood is a pain I am not ready to face. I believe she was a Druid. I remember very early attempts at teaching the ways of the wood. I remember being terrible at these, and I remember my mother’s face full of disappointment and pity.

I have vague memories of a druidcrafted home, but when I try to recall it the strongest image is of a building burning and the woman I call mother beset by hobgoblins bearing the banner of the red skull. My mother’s last words to me were a magically empowered command. She said “Run” and a toddler of an elf ran headlong into the wild wood.

I probably should have died in the forest but the beasts of the wild will not stand by and watch an elf-babe starve. They taught me harsh lessons that left scars but they provided for me and in time I provided for them. Eventually I found civilized folk but there are still nights when I dream of honest living with mud as my only shirt and companions who hug you close when you are cold or frightened and don’t ask stupid questions about it in the morning.

I stumbled upon a logging camp and drove them off with my animal kin. They came back with mercenary adventurers but the adventurers were surprised to find that the goblin horde harassing the loggers was actually just an angry elf-child and some wild boar. They took me captive, then eventually I earned their trust and they brought me to Furyondy where they could dump me off with some kind of foster family. They found a plantation outside of Chendl that was willing to take me on as an apple picker.

My new family was kind and more patient with me than I probably deserved. They were elf-blooded but not true elves but they did their best to give me a life and a chance in the world. They had a son named Tybald and for a time we were the best of friends. In time he grew up and I didn’t and I went from best friend to little sister in his eyes. I watched him age, marching ahead of me through time it seemed. Looking back I realize that it was a crush but in the moment I just wanted my best friend to pay attention to me instead of the heavy chested human girls he was so infatuated with. I got really good at throwing tiny rocks at stupid humans and hiding in the bushes.

Not too far from the plantation there was a racetrack where they ran dogs. I hated everything about that track. The customers were loud and cruel, the dog owners were abusive, and the track owner was downright nasty. I found out that when dogs stopped being useful the track owner would give them a couple coins for the dog and then part the animals out to unscrupulous tanners and butchers. I took to breaking in during the night and stealing the dogs, hiding them in the orchard. My family turned a blind eye for as long as they could but eventually I was told that I could only keep as many as I could feed. Some I let loose in the Vesve, others I worked with until my pack and I could run down our own game. Fortunately the King didn’t uphold the poaching laws in the Vesve.

When I met Michael I was in the middle of stealing puppies from the track. I thought he was a guard, that I would have to take him out but I noticed that his gear didn’t fit. I also noticed that it had dagger holes in the chest, and that he was rapidly bleeding out from wounds that didn’t match the armor holes. I didn’t know who this blonde human was, but I knew he had killed a guard and that made him an instant friend in my book. I got him out, bandaged him up, and hid him in one of the empty silos. When I came back to check on him I thought he was dead at first. He was laying flat on his back, still as the grave. I looked for a stick to poke the body in case he had gone all Zumbie, but my eyes caught some motion in the dark. A beautiful, perfectly ripe apple with a skin streaked red and gold floated up to his still mouth and a piece dropped in. Sorcery never really bothered me but that was one of my best reserve apples, the ones I kept in a pouch on my belt. My hand went for my pouch and sure enough my belt was bare.

I drew my shortbow until it gave an audible creak. I put a warning shot into the apple but to my surprise the arrow did not land.

There was a brief flurry of motion from his hand and I distinctly heard “Shield! Ow FUCK!” as the arrow bounced off an invisible barrier and the partially eaten apple bounced off his eye. The stranger rolled to his feet but somehow managed to catch the bouncing apple before it landed in the straw.

I couldn’t help but laugh as a string of extremely colorful expletives followed. The stranger alternated between rubbing his bruised eye and taking healthy bites of the apple. I called out to him “You know, stranger, I worked awful hard for those apples.”

His tone didn’t change as he responded “So did I, it takes a lot of effort to get this good at pickpocketing. Still, no reason to forget one’s manners. My gratitude to you miss elfling, for your graciously unattended fruit, and also for your expedient and well timed assistance in extricating me from danger and thrice welcome was your succor in my time of need and as well for the much needed sustenance in my hour of desper… wait didn’t we already cover the apples? In any case, you have my thanks.”

Silence hung between us for a beat as I took in the deluge of words. “You sure like the sound of your own voice, don’t you mister?”

“In all honesty I find it a bit reedy and lacking in gravitas but I take your meaning. In truth, I find that a barrage of complex sentence structure is a rather effective shield against the slow witted. One of proper intellectual talent such as myself can easily manage to pontificate at length while still retaining enough mental acuity to accomplish important nonverbal tasks while your average quarter candle yokel can do nothing else if they have any hope of following the conversation.” Sure enough, the whole time this odd little man talked he was also actively gathering gear, evaluating his stolen armor, and changing into rather fine pieces of aristocratic clothing.

“Now that I am somewhat more presentable, can I trouble my lovely benefactor to share her purpose for lurking about in such an unseemly place as she found me lurking?” I was fairly certain that I shouldn’t trust this strange fellow, but something inside me wanted to anyway. “I was busting up the puppy mill in the basement.”

The stranger nodded. “How very elven of you. And yet there was a not insignificant quantity of blood about you. Did you perchance run afoul of one of the watchmen as I did?”

I took a breath and shook my head. “Some of the pups, they were born wrong. I put them down.” The words hung in the air.

The stranger nodded sagely. “So a rescuer but also a pragmatist. I see.”

I felt judgement in his voice. “You weren’t there, you didn’t see them. They needed it!” My eyes stung.

“Oh no, do not misunderstand. I completely agree. That sentiment right there, that is a truth of the universe. Some things just need killing, for many reasons.”

“So why were you down there? Looking for the vault were you?”

The stranger shook his head in a way that even the severely oblivious could tell hid no deception. “Nothing so glamorous. It appears that dogs are not the only flesh being trafficked in Chendl these days.”

The stranger told me that his name was Michael du Karist and that he was the leader of a group known in the underworld circles as “The Mongrels”. He explained that the Mongrels were a criminal organization focused not on wealth and power, but on putting their collective thumb on the scales of misfortune. Michael claimed to be no less than a prophet of Ralishaz, the much feared God of Bad Luck itself. But more than that, he assured me that it was his intention to “steer the hand of fate” as it were. His lifelong goal as he put it was to take people who had escaped the eye of misfortune and shove them back into Ralishaz’ direct attention. The whole concept was lunacy, but at it’s heart I rather loved it. Even if it was madness to dance with Ralishaz the Un-looked For, the idea of pushing back at the karmic imbalance that seemed to permeate the whole world was downright compelling.

In this instance, Michael had come to Chendl and uncovered a ring of slavers untouchable by the law, and he meant to see them touched. His cover was blown but I convinced him to allow me to continue his plan. He spent months coaching me on disguises and performance in an attempt to move invisibly through every noble house without a single incantation. It turns out that you don’t need magic when you can convincingly pretend to be a servant or housemaid. You don’t even need to remember your fake name since they will never use it.

We answered a question nobody ever thought to ask, namely “How many combat trained greyhounds can you fit in a portable hole?” Turns out the answer is twenty.

Nine great houses in Chendl fell to the “Curse of the Greyhound” that summer. The only one to escape that curse was the Earl of Niholm. The Earl’s men did not quite catch me, but they were closing in. Michael said I had to leave, that they would make an example of my execution in order to kill the legend of the Greyhound. I told Tybald to come with me but he was full of hesitations and I did not have the time to overcome them. Michael and I left in the night.

We moved through Keoland. I met other Mongrels. A gnome called Kitty taught me poisons. A broad shouldered dwarf named Chabuth drilled me on organ strikes and concealed weapons. Michael taught me the way of a light touch and a distracting bump. Others came in and out of my life and for eight years I learned how to be a weapon for misfortune. In due time Michael said I was ready to find my own luck. He told me to start in the Hold of the Sea Princes, that there was a festering boil there that needed to be lanced. So of course I went north.

I used all of my training to sneak into Chendl. I found Tybald working at a bakery. A bakery owned by his wife’s father. I couldn’t even bring myself to speak to him. I made my way south, keeping my ear sharp for trouble. I found some in a garbage fishing town on the Old Coast Road. Seemed like their luck was running out.