[Malevolence]

”Isn’t there ANYWHERE someone can get good rum around here?”

“Listen sir, I’m sorry if you’re not happy with the quality of our drinks, but please, don’t yell. We have some very irritable, very inebriated people here, and they generally all have hangovers. So…just keep your voice down.”

“Sorry. Amaretto and vodka on the rocks. Stiff.”

“Comin’ up.”

Taere’s drink arrived promptly after being mixed, and he drained half of it in one shot. He was bored as all hell – it had been 6 days and he had absolutely nothing to do until the fight the next morning. Or, more accurately, that morning. It was about 2:30, and his fight was scheduled to start promptly at 8. He could generally get by on about 5 hours of sleep, but that was getting progressively harder, and by then, pretty impossible. He knew by then he wasn’t going to be in the best shape for the fight, even if he had a shot of adrenaline right beforehand.

Taere stared at the ice and liquid in the glass, clinked them around in front of his face for a minute or two, and then downed the rest of the drink. He left a few coin pieces on the bar, and walked out. The moon was surprisingly bright, presumably because he’d been inside a darkened bar all night. He was a good 2 hours walk from the field, so he figured he’d walk there first, then get up when people started making noise. He was alright with the streets, but once he got out of the city into the more rural areas, and finally into dense forest, he began to lose his bearings. The topazes on his armour glowed a bit, illuminating his body and about a foot around him, but other than that, he was practically blind under the dense canopies of the trees. He walked slowly, looking down as he did so, and got far enough, about halfway by his estimates, then stopped.

“Oh, fuck you.”

Taere looked down directly at the root he was struggling with the week before. He bent down, to examine what damage he had done. He saw little to none. Just for spite, he extended his gauntlet blade, and chopped down at the root so as to cathartically sever it. With his luck, of course, this didn’t happen. Instead, his left arm became firmly lodged in one position – with the blade stuck horizontally in the root, which was obviously extremely uncomfortable. He strained his muscles’ capacities pulling on his arm, but ended up still firmly lodged in a rather distressing, contorted position.

“Mind if I help?”

“Roma, I can handle it myself,” Taere said, then muttered, “When I got you stuck in my wrist I didn’t think you’d be stuck in my head, too.”

“I heard that, you know.”

“Fine, you have a better idea?”

“Actually, yes, I do. If you’ll excuse me…”

The topaz on his left wrist glowed bluish, and then the blade attached to his left hand took on a similar aura. Suddenly, the root blinked out of existence in a puff of black ink.

“What the hell? Care to explain?”

“No.”

“Fine…”

Taere continued walking, until he could see the bleachers reflecting white light through the trees. He reached them within a few minutes, and laid down under a tree behind them. Almost the moment his head hit ground, he passed out sleeping like a rotting log. When he woke up, he realized that may have been because he had unknowingly laid down next to a rotting log. He was awakened at around 7:00 by the sound of buzzing chitin shells about an inch from his nose. He jumped up, ready to fight…a maggot the size of his pinkie fingernail.

“Well, if I’m up already…”

Taere walked into the middle of the field, and waited. Apparently his opponent was famous for some kind of card trick, so fighting him would be, to say the least, interesting.