Job Searching, Again [Private - Hazudar]

[Lichen]

OOC: Original Thread

His pockets full of baubles his mind full of greed, Hazudar reached for the giant hourglass. The golden gleam transfixed him and he lunged for it with a need that he couldn't explain. He wanted the hourglass; not merely to possess it, but to touch it. It suddenly seemed vital that he touched the smooth surface, carressed the curves of the glass and gold. Baubles spilled from his overflowing pockets as he tried to achieve this suddenly all-consuming goal but Hazudar neither noticed nor cared, for what were petty trinkets compared to this great trophy?

Finally he made his way to the great hourglass and reached out one hand to stroke it. He felt it's cool surface for a second and then, suddenly, it had disapeared. In fact, so had everything else... including the odd trinkets he'd attempted to confiscate. Looking around, he discovered he was no longer in the strange clock-obsessed place. He was in a tavern. No, not a tavern. The tavern. The Crown Inn and Tavern. In Alleria Prime. Staring at the greasy face of an unpleasently familiar man; Slate.

"What are you staring at, orc." Slate said as he undid the chains that bound the orc in place. He paused before finishing and leand back, fixing Hazudar with a searching stare. "You're not thinking about going back on our deal, are you? That would end... unpleasently." He sneered and tapped the sword at his side warningly.

[Hazudar]

Long ago, there was a time where Hazudar might've been surprised to find himself here; back in this wretched room, face to face with his hated enemy once more. It was the very place he'd swore on his life, that which he'd always held most sacred, to never again to be held captive. The place he dreaded more than any other... the place he couldn't escape. Not even in his dreams.

But it was all so familiar now; this was the way it always began. Slate was the beginning, the trigger, the crossbow held point-blank against Haz's throat. That hateful bastard. He and his oh-so-knowing eyes, mocking eyes, taunting. Boring into Hazudar's own, past the sockets, the image searing his mind irreparably. Hate, yes, the orc hated him with a fervor he'd never felt for anyone or anything else. He despised him utterly, without reservations; he loathed everything, every aspect, every blasted detail. The easy movements, casual and relaxed; a tiger toying with its prey. That perpetual little smirk, the swagger written on his face, every feature screaming subtly of its own all-encompassing superiority. And those eyes. That lazy, careless gaze. The one constant, no matter how the man's features might warp and shift, boiling and stretching horribly into Cyraxian contours or sprouting bestial fangs and fur or melting like the trecherous scaled skin of the dracons, the 'friends' who'd gotten him into this. Worst of all was when the face became like a twisted mirror, the skull splitting gruesomely open as tusks jutted out. But the face was never Hazudar's... it was stronger, sharper, more defined. Darker. His father's face.

Then again, sometimes there was no transformation at all; the face remained human, the arrogance and malice purely Slate's. The way it was now. Yet the terror was still there, lurking somewhere in that sadistic gaze, hiding somewhere in those eyes--dull, shallow, yet fathomless in their uncaring contempt for the creature they surveyed. And that one thing Hazudar couldn't face, the one thing more horrifying than any other: the image reflected in those dark, beady orbs. Beast.

"No," Hazudar choked, his voice a ragged whisper. As always, the refusal lacked any power or conviction, its feeble noise glancing pathetically off the too-close walls. In spite of all protests, the Uruk-Shara felt himself drawn inexorably upwards, a mannequin dangling upon the string of some sadistic puppeteer. Upwards, upwards to stare into the eyes of his captor, to see the sickening image reflected there, just as it had happened so many eras ago. So many nightmares past.

And yet strangely, this time Hazudar found something different waiting for him in the depths of the guardsman's gaze. This time he saw--not a ravening animal, not a savage soulless beast, but a true vision of himself. Or at least, himself as he was then. Less scarred. Less tough. Far less, at first glance; he seemed haggard and bruised, worn around the edges, with a desperate, hunted look about him, but underneath it all, there was... what? Something the orc couldn't quite put into coherent thought. Something he'd lost that day and never got back, its absence haunting the dark corners of his psyche where he hid all the miseries he couldn't deal with. Like a piece of him torn throbbing and bloody from his insides, leaving him not quite alive but not quite dead.

Now it was back.

"No," Hazudar repeated in a growl, louder and more forceful than its paltry forerunner. For this time the half-orc was speaking of his own volition. This time--he could feel the change--this time, his words and his actions were his own. His destiny was his own. "Not at all."

His shackles now removed, the half-orc stepped slowly away from the cold stone wall that lay behind him. His ankle hurt. What had he been doing? Oh, yes--Slate's little test. Hazudar faced the man now, taking in the arrogant sneer, the glint in those icy eyes. A familiar contempt rose within him, but now it was passionless, born out of something other than fear. Slate was a bastard, but he'd only provided the stick--it was Hazudar's hand that had taken that first fateful swing. Hazudar's hand that had bathed in the blood of the innocent.

He looked the man in the eye. "I'll need a weapon."

[Lichen]

"Fantastic." Slate said unenthusiastically, finishing with the chains but keeping his finger tight on the crossbow even as Hazudar stepped away from the wall. "I'd hate for this to end unpleasently. Now," he said with an unkind smirk, gesturing towards the door with the crossbow in a way that threatened to pull a bit too tightly on the trigger, "as for a weapon... no offense, mate, but I don' trust you as ta not knock me head in if'n I give you a weapon. So you'll do without 'tills the jobs on the way."

Again he gestured with the crossbow, the same scumbagy smile on his face. "Well, you got buisness ta attend ta. So gets to it - I don' know when 'll arrive, an' yous best be prepared."

Up in the tavern, a silrosian elf was fulfilling what might be the last task his job ever gave him. He was escorting a disruptive vysstichi from the tavern in order to avoid further trouble. Easily identified in his armor and regal airs, Hazudar watched him head for the door across the crowd of people. He didn't appear to be a bad man; his manner towards the vysstichi, despite the gulf between their races, was nothing if not courteous... but according to Slate, he was a dead man. He simply didn't yet know it.