Short Fiction: Aklin

Since this seems to work pretty well, here's another character study for a current project.  She's loosely based on a concept for a character I played in a tabletop RPG years ago, mostly so I could use the name again.  I was having trouble getting a hold of her in the new world I'm working with, and wasn't even sure how to write her character study, until I realized I needed to let her talk.  I feel a lot better about working with her now.

Here's the bit; hope y'all enjoy it.


You’d think that in a world like this, people would be used to a little weird.

My mom kicked me out when I was twelve years old.  Said I’d caused enough trouble in her life just by being born, and now that I had a wyrd, that was all the proof she needed that I would only make things even worse.  So out the door I went, with nothing but my clothes and a few things I could keep in a bag.

Thanks, Mom.  Bad enough you gave me a name that’s the old elven word for ‘disaster.’  I guess I should be glad there’s not enough people around who understand it, or my life might actually have turned out worse.

Yeah, I should be careful what I wish for.

At the time, all I could think was how to survive.  I knew there were people who preyed on kids in the city.  Being a human with just enough elf in me to give me a look that some creepy jerks called ‘exotic’ even when I was a little kid, I knew if I didn’t find a safe place and quick, someone would snatch me up, and that’d be the end of me.  So I had to find someone who would take me in.

Of the three gangs who run the city, only the Syndicate was worth trying.  The goblins, the minotaurs, they wouldn’t take in anyone not their own kind.  But the Syndicate?  All kinds of people made up the Syndicate.  The trouble was finding a way in.

So I asked.  Crazy thing about growing up in the city, you hear about who’s bad and who’s okay and who acts nice but will stab you if you look at them funny.  And I knew that one of the okay ones was a guard for a gambling hall downtown.  When I got to him, and asked if the Syndicate was hiring, he laughed and asked why they would want me.

So I showed him.  I worked my wyrd, I disappeared and reappeared ten feet away in the time it took him to blink.  I told him, I could do that and get anywhere I could see, long as it wasn’t more than ten or twelve feet away.  I could get on the other side of windows, and closed doors, long as I could see where I was going.

Gotta give the guy credit, he caught on quick.  He brought me before some Syndicate underboss that same night.  After a few trials and a few swearings, I was in.

I’m not proud of everything I did over the past ten years.  Sometimes it was for people who deserved it, like the time we shut down that slavery ring.  That’s one of the rules the three gangs agreed on – nobody buys or sells another person.  I found one tiny hole in the wall where they were keeping the slaves, got in, and let them all out to help bring the place down.

Other times, it was just plain thieving.  I was okay with that, most of the time; I knew I was in for that sort of work when I told them I could get into places others couldn’t.  But some jobs came back to bite me, one of them in the worst way.

When I was new, I stole something from the wrong person.  I didn’t know he was secretly a higher-up in the Syndicate.  The jackass who put me up to it didn’t say a thing.  But he found me, and he told me, I owed him for keeping quiet about it.  And someday, he’d collect.

So now here I am, on loan to the Lord of Bones.  Everyone has debts to pay, and the guy I stole from owed a favor to the creepiest person in the world.  But I think anyone in the Syndicate would have pointed to me if the Lord of Bones came knocking and said, hey, do you know someone who can get into anywhere?

Even one of the lost elven cities?

Because somewhere in this wasteland, there’s a sealed city of crystal and light, and at the middle, the last lost elven princess.  Still alive.  And the Lord of Bones wants me to get in.

What if I can’t?