A Wandering Protector
I was born in the slums of Novidomov to a mother who worked night and day to support us, in a city that saw us only as worthless vagabonds.
I was also born in the forests of northern Stirge, rendered an orphan within the year by those who saw my parents as mindless beasts to be slain.
I was also born in the elevated towers of Arcaniksburg, seated comfortably in the lap of luxury, blind to the world around me until it saw fit to violently make itself known.
At an average of seventeen years of age, we pledged ourselves to the services of the Shieldmaiden, taking the name of Skydda for our collective persona. It would forevermore be our solemn duty to ensure that those along our way would not suffer as we had suffered. We would be their blade, their shield, their protector.
And yet, far too often as we look upon these people we seek to serve, it is plain enough that their fearful eyes do not see our years of hardship. They do not recognize the sacrifices we have made in their name, for the sake of the safety of our homeland. They do not even see that we are more than a single self, let alone that we are greater than the sum of those selves.
They see a monster.
Zhelt like us have always been treated as such. When your species descends from the likes of mindless, voracious blob-beasts, it’s hard to blame the descendants of their victims for feeling that way. And yet… It’s been centuries since the first Zhelt stood up from the rest and sought more out of life than food. Surely, at some point along the way, we should have been able to shake free from the degradation of our origins and see our fellow mortals as friends and peers, rather than forever seeking to atone for something we no longer are?
Nevertheless, people are distrustful of our kind. And so we travel. We’ve been traveling through this area for the better part of a year, now, aiding those in need, taking up odd jobs, paying our way with labor, and still it is difficult to earn the trust of the humans around us in each new township we visit. Most recently, that township has been the tiny settlement of Lugorod.
“Haven’t had that large a stack of firewood in, oh… I’d say twelve years! Damn fine work ya done. Here’s your pay, er…” The elderly man looks us up and down, confusion furrowing his brow. “…Sir?”
We nod quietly and accept the proffered rings. “Sir is fine.” It’s a common source of uncertainty for the people we speak to. At one time, it infuriated us, but these days we understand. There are few to no honorifics for what we are, in any language we've yet encountered. “The work was a pleasure. May it keep you warm in the coming months.”
The joy of having helped our fellow mortal keeps our steps light for the rest of the hour, but eventually the gawking stares of the people in the streets drag us back down to normalcy. Doing our best impression of a sigh, we slowly pull our hood back into position and adjust the massive weight of the sword on our back. Those fleeting moments of acceptance are like a taste of heaven to the parts of us that spent so long as outcasts, but with each passing year, it becomes harder to cope with the steady resettling of reality.
Lost in our own thoughts, we suddenly notice that it has begun to grow dark, and we’ve wandered off the main street into the dimly-lit roads and alleyways along the outskirts of town.
“Wait, please, WAIT!”
A cry from somewhere nearby is punctuated by the wet crunch of metal impacting flesh and bone, followed shortly by a man’s piteous cries. Quickening our pace, we round a corner to find a small crowd, ill lit by a sputtering torch and surrounding a fallen man and his young child. The man’s knees appear to be bending at a terrible angle, the fabric of the clothing around them already discolored by spreading blood. His daughter does her best to hide behind a crude stuffed beast of some kind.
“What did you think would happen, old man?” one of the standing figures asks. His silhouette against the torch is as repugnant as his demeanor. We thank the gods we can’t make out his face. “We had a deal, and you thought you’d just slip away?”
Words drift in and out of the injured man’s whimpering. “...Opportunity…” he wheezes. “Was going to return…”
“Were you now?” laughs another of the shadows, this one kneeling behind their victim, holding a crooked piece of brass pipe. The assailant, then. “And I suppose it’s just a coincidence that you and dear daughter here disappeared in the middle of the night to some backwater village, where it took us a whole week and a half to track you down?”
Another of the crowd, the one holding the torch, chuckles. “Might be we have to charge ya extra for the effort in comin’ all the way out here.” His head turns towards the girl. “Might be we take her.”
Already, several pairs of hands are converging on the innocent child. We have observed long enough. It is time to act.
“Hold.”
Our voice rings out through the street, clear and powerful. Everyone - injured man and his child included - freezes in place, their eyes turning towards us.
“This is none of your business, stranger,” the pipe-wielding one calls, standing up and passing through the rest of his fellows in my direction, brandishing his improvised weapon with obvious malice. “It’s in your best interest to walk away now.”
Did he mean to intimidate us? It's almost enough to make us laugh. He was bold, threatening one of our size, that much was certain... but this miscreant has no idea what he is facing. “This man’s debts are his own, but I will not stand by and allow you to hurt the child.”
“We weren’t gonna hurt her!” Torch-bearer says, eliciting some dark laughter from the rest of the crew.
“Allow us to rephrase,” we reply, reaching up and unsheathing our greatsword. It swings down to our side, creating sparks as it splits a cobble with the weight of its impact. “The girl will not be going anywhere with you.”
“Well well well, boys, looks like we found ourselves a real hero!” Pipe-man laughs, striding forward with an air of supreme confidence. Our mass must be roughly three times his own, and yet he seems entirely unshaken. We might normally grant him some measure of respect for that, had his actions thus far suggested him entirely unworthy of it.
“Think I ought to show them what we think of heroes in our neck of the woods?” he asks, turning back to face his friends. They respond with a round of bloodthirsty cheers, and in an instant he is in motion. He blazes forward, his boots barely touching the road as he zigs and zags toward us, pipe winding back for a tremendous swing. We brace ourselves, shifting our shoulders and stretching our arms, preparing to sling our sword through his weapon as it comes.
We succeed, but so does he.
It was a feint, and a deft one at that. As his swing begin, the bandit suddenly manages to halt his own momentum, spinning on his heel as he releases the pipe and whirls under our sword, a blade of his own emerging from the depths of his clothes. As our weapon effortlessly cleaves the abandoned pipe in two, a curved dagger sinks into our upper thigh.
There is a brief, awkward pause in the action. Pipe-man seems confused. Had he expected us to scream?
“Lucky for us, and for them, it seems this is not your neck of the woods.”
He begins to retort, defiant to the last. Something uncouth that begins with the letter F, no doubt, but there is a child present, and we can’t allow such foulness to dirty the air in her presence. Matter flows into our arm, pooling around the cuff of the leather glove currently wrapped tightly around the neck of the disgusting little man. We hoist him up, then bring him straight back down.
After leaving him there for just long enough for the lack of air to start getting to him, we peel him off of the ground. His broken face trails spittle and blood in equal measure. We hurl him back at his compatriots in disgust, knocking two down as the rest dive out of the way.
“Take your friend and leave this place.”
“B-b-but this blighter owes us money!” Torch-bearer whimpers, pointing down at the man with the shattered knees.
We unhook several full rods of rings from our belt and hurl them at Torch-bearer, who - to our great delight - takes them directly to the face before having to scrape them up off of the ground along with a tooth or two. It is very nearly everything we have; everything we’ve made in the last few weeks, minus living costs.
“Consider that his payment, whatever he might have owed, and depart.” We take one imposing step forward, “and if I ever see any of you in this region again, I will not be so merciful as I was with this one.”
The brigands scatter, dragging their battered colleague with them. In their wake, I approach the girl and her father. She cowers slightly at my approach, but does not flee or hide. Her bright eyes are visible even in the dim light of the cloud-covered moons, and they watch me like a hawk.
“Come on, then,” we say, kneeling to pick up her wounded father. It seems he had fallen unconscious somewhere along the line while we had been otherwise occupied. “We’d best get your father to a physician."
The physician and her assistants had eyed us suspiciously when we’d entered with an injured man in our arms, but the little girl at our heels had eventually managed to assuage their fears. They’d set to work treating his shattered legs. Unfortunate phrases like ‘never walk again’ and ‘worst I’ve ever seen’ drifted out to us from the privacy of the operating room, but we did our best to keep the girl calm. It had been a long day, however, and eventually, in the middle of a reassuring tale of talking animals and distant princesses, we’d drifted off to sleep.
We awaken to see the girl standing in front of us, watching us intently, with a sizable flower in her hands.
“You turn all goopy when you sleep.” She says.
We’d have blushed crimson were we able. “Er, yes. It’s hard to hold a shape like this while sleeping. We hope we didn’t scare you!”
“No, it was funny!” She laughs quietly, giving us the closest thing we’ve seen to a smile thus far. We return the expression with our eyes as we slowly get our face back in order.
“It’s good to hear that.” We sit up slowly, looking around the room. The physicians were nowhere to be seen. “Is your father alright?”
Her face falls slightly, but she seemed to be trying to stay strong. “He’s sleeping now, but he was awake earlier. I told him how you saved us.”
“Oh, well I-”
“He says I made it all up," she interrupts, raising her voice in indignation, "and that slime people just eat things! I told him he was silly and that he needed some sleep.”
“That… is the kindest thing anyone’s done for us in a long time. Thank you so much.” Our eyes, affected or not, well up with joy.
“I picked you this…” she says, holding out the flower. “You can eat it if you want to.”
We laugh. “We couldn’t possibly!” Instead, we very carefully feed the stem of the flower through a buttonhole on our overcoat. “I’ll keep it for as long as it lasts. It's beautiful... Thank you.”
The girl blushes, looks down at her toes, and murmurs a shy "You're welcome," before a nurse calls her away to see her father again.
We look at the flower for a long time. It is beautiful, but it is also perhaps the most thoughtful gift we can ever remember receiving. It will fade in time, perhaps, but until that day, it will serve as a reminder. We might be looked down upon as some sort of freak - a monster in the eyes of the ignorant and the bigoted - but where it counted, we were appreciated.
Innocence, tolerance, and love still exist in this world. And that, above all else, is worth protecting.
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