[Prologue 3/3] Lessons Learned

Pain is something that never leaves you until death. It's this explainable yet mysterious force that can affect anyone at any time. It doesn't care if you're rich or poor, good or evil. Pain is indiscriminate. Pain is physical and mental, sometimes even at the same time. And for some, pain is constant. An ever-present force in their life that will never go away.

To some people, like Damien Thorne, the pain never subsided. He had been left on the streets since he was three, and he never knew the reasons. He was raised for a further three more years by a kindly old man who had been living on the streets for years. But on a summer night, the old man had passed away due to a heart attack. The fear in the man's eyes stuck with Damien for years after the event.

A year before the man had passed, he had pressed into Damien's mind the necessity to be able to survive and to defend oneself. He had taught Damien how to create a crude shiv out of stone and wood, among the arts of thievery.

As he grew older, his ability to steal and make weapons grew. He began to have a collection of shivs and daggers that he'd made before he had made something better. It was a collection he'd hidden under a loose cobblestone in his alley.

By the time he was eight, he had killed a man in self-defense. He told himself he had no choice, but there was always a part of him that wondered if there was another way around it. A method he could have won, but the man could have survived.

As time went by, this event eased into the back of his mind, yet he still was haunted by it in his dreams. Occasional moments where his mind had decided to show him his memory but often twisted. There was one time his dreams showed the man surrendering, but Damien driving the blade into his chest anyway.

He had to tell himself this was not true. That the man had continued to attack him in insanity, believing him to be someone else. The only reason Damien even won against the older man was that he still had his mind. He could think even in dire situations. He was able to dive out of the way as the man charged towards him.

What he had known, but the man somehow hadn't realized, was that there was an old rickety fire escape on the wall behind Damien. After Damien had avoided the man's frenzied attacks, the man's collision with the wall caused the loose ladder to fall down and slam into the top of the man's head.

Damien stood above the crazy man lying on the damp, gritty ground beneath him with the dagger in hand. When the man's beaded eyes found Damien again, his cracked lips curled up into a snarl, his arm reaching out to grab at Damien. There was a flash of steel followed by a flash of red. The two colors warred with each other as Damien repeatedly stabbed the man in the chest. Heaving breaths as his adrenaline weaned out, Damien stopped stabbing, the gray flashes subsiding, followed closely by the red.

Instead of red or gray, what followed was blue. The image of the scene blurred to Damien, as his eyes welled up with tears of relief, fear, and sorrow for this life lost. The man had most likely been a desperate man living on the streets. Someone who had been living on the streets so long had simply lost their mind and will to live.

That man that had once had friends, family. People who cared about him and people he cared about. Conflicts and resolutions. All of them were gone in an instant. And in its place was a bloodied body with deep cuts into his flesh and checkered shirt. Cold dead brown eyes with a faraway gaze within them.

And his killer, an ordinary boy, kneeling in front of his prey, blood-spattered on his tattered, dirty clothes. It was at this moment that Damien learned a simple truth:

It didn't matter who you were or what you'd done. It didn't matter if you had friends or enemies. Death was always guaranteed.

It was a lesson he'd take with him through life, a lesson that fleeted from his mind as he stared at the looming building before the boats. The place where he would learn the skills that he had no idea he even had. Magic.