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Wed 11th May 2022 07:42

Percival The Calm

by Percival The calm

In the eyes of Percival there is no higher cause than the Library, it is his entire world. He once had nothing and the library gave him something to fill that void where he once was empty, now there is just the library. He will do and give anything for the success of the library. He believes everyone should be following the guidance of the library and will try and preach the good word to any that will listen.
 
At a glance he is a large powerful man with long well kept hair, who many take his careful speech as a sign of slowness but instead he is a man who carefully picks and chooses his words carefully. A man who would rather say nothing than the wrong thing. An observant individual would have no such notion as all it would take is one look into this young man's eyes to send shivers down one's spine. They are the eyes of a man who has seen far too much of life's horrors and they are the eyes of someone who would not hesitate to do what he must.
 
He doesn't remember much from his childhood, the name he was given at birth long lost. His father died early in his life fighting in a war and his mother quickly abandoned him and his brother. They survived on the streets to the best of their ability but his brother became ill not long after with what at first was just a cough. His brother did all he could to help his brother but sadly living on the streets and scavenging for food is no way to deal with an illness so his brother worsened over the years until he could no longer function. At his wit's end and not willing to lose the last part of his life our young man became desperate. Having heard word of a couple wisemen in town claiming to have access to an incredible amount of knowledge he sought them out to heal his brother. After a couple days of non-stop searching he eventually found them in an inn across town and managed to convinced them to heal his brother offering them his own life in exchange for his brother's. But unfortunately they came mere hours too late, his brother had already passed....
 
As long as he could remember his life had been only shades of grey, his only goal in life had been to keep his brother alive in a desperate attempt to cling to what life he had before everything went wrong. There was no joy or ambition, there was only surviving. As he saw his brothers breathless corpse laying where he had hidden him in their best hiding spot, something broke in him, and from that break a colour began to bleed into his world. The colour of passion, the colour of heat, the colour of both life and death, it is the colour of an all consuming ever burning rage. Where there once was only shades of grey, now there was RED, a terrible crimson red.
 
Having nothing left of his old life, the boy that he was died that day and Percival was born. A name given to him as he joined the remaining librarian who saw potential in the young boy and began his new life in service to the library.
 
The story of what happened that day is rarely spoken of out loud and even then it is only in the dying moments of the night, when the tavern hearth burns at its lowest and all that can be heard is the quite snoring of those who had far too much to drink. How a quiet midsummer day turned into a waking nightmare. How hundreds died that day. Most from the fire and ensuing panic but some will whisper of bodies found by an rarely used alley , how they were found broken beyond belief, limbs twisted to unnatural angles, entire portions of their bodies missing.
 
Accounts of the few survivors vary greatly with some who claim to have seen what cause the chaos. Some say that a monster got into the city, a terrible beast who's unfathomable rage and blood lust destroyed an entire part of the city. Others say it was a spell gone wrong or that it was some sort of conspiracy to regain control in a part of town no longer loyal to the crown. There are many theories but the only thing that agreed upon is that no one is certain what cause this devastation.
 
But there is one man, a forgotten old man barely holding onto life, a man who tells fantastic and wonderful stories to any who can spare a coin. He claims to have seen it all ,that a child, a boy who was not quite yet a man caused all this destruction but all who hear those words give them no thought. As if a child could cause this much destruction, they believe that it is just another tale to earn his next meal.
 
There is but one part of his story that has come up from multiple sources, that moments before disaster struck a young boy was seen leading a couple long robbed men into a dark alley that has a dark reputation.

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  1. Percival The Calm