Blood Oath

The Hence, a place that is known for being home to a variety of mercenaries, all sorts of people go there looking for the right people to do every job imaginable. The price is determined by the mercenary and by how much the client is willing to pay, but they usually are expensive, some of them receive more fame than others, with this fame comes more jobs and therefore more money. Some jobs are more common than others, for example, killing is a very popular job and most of the profit comes from it, other than killing, kidnapping and stealing come in second with a very similar demand. The Hence charges a small part of the mercenary’s profit in order to keep them safe and running business with no problems, that’s how they make their money.

Mercenaries works are by no means legal in the eyes of the empire, that’s why The Hence works so well with these people, they pay the empire a decent amount of money to pretend that nothing is going on there so they can keep going with everything they do. Nobody knows who the owner is, very few people actually saw this mysterious person, amongst them there is The Manager and The Secretary, nobody knows their real names and they are only addressed by theirs codenames, also their faces are hidden by a mask, both masks are the same except for the colours, one is black (The Manager) and the other one is crimson (The Secretary), both masks only have an opening for the eyes and nothing else. Their jobs are to keep The Hence running with no problems since mercenaries are hard to deal with. They are very respected and usually find no issues with their orders being obeyed.

There are a lot of legends surrounding The Hence’s existence and it’s workers, but none of them were never confirmed and it is quite advisable to not go around spreading words about the place since The Secretary has proven to be very skilled in making people disappear over the years.

On one night, two mercenaries were sitting at a table drinking together, one very young and inexperienced and the other one quite forged by the time, the older one was called Sallor, but popularly called Scar due to a big scar in his left eye, a gift from an old time feud with The Manager, and the other one was Willard, a young naive boy who had just joined The Hence to find work and get money.

‘’-See Willard, if you let them fool you, you always lose, so, you have to fool them instead.’’, said Sallor while sipping his beer, Willard looked at him with his cup clenched in his hands and answered:

‘’-But what if they know that I’m lying?’’, Sallor looked at him, gave a big smile and said: ‘’-Then you kill them.’’, Sallor started to laugh but Willard didn’t seem to have understood what was so funny about that.

The door opened, a very remarkable person entered the saloon, a tall bald man wearing crimson robes with a wooden necklace, he walked towards the place where The Secretary was sitting, they exchanged a few words while everyone at the saloon were looking at them, startled. Instead of going to the wall where all the requests were pinned, the man walked towards Willard’s and Sallor’s table, he greeted them with a head gesture and sat down, Sallor looked at him and said:

‘’-Are you alright, lad? The monastery is very far from here.’’, the man looked back at him with a stone-cold face and replied:

‘’-I am here to request a job.’’, both Sallor and Willard looked at him, then Sallor put his cup at the table, got closer to the man and said:

‘’-Very well then, tell me what you need to be done and we will do it, right, kid?’’, he slapped Willard in the shoulder, Willard nodded.

‘’-I need company in a journey.’’, said the bald man, Sallor looked at him, took his black hat off and said:

‘’-And where is this journey supposed to end, monk?’’, the bald man looked at Sallor and answered firmly:

‘’-I need to find my brother. He is in a region very far from here.’’, Sallor looked at Willard then back to the man and said:

‘’-Alright. How much gold are we talking here?’’, the man took a brown bag from inside his robes, it wasn’t a very large bag, but it was filled with something, the man then proceeded to say:

‘’-I have no gold with me. But I have these stones.’’, Sallor took the bag in his hands and opened, both him and Willard were surprised when they saw that inside the bag were three green stones and one light purple, Sallor smiled greedily, looked at the man and said:

‘’-The green ones I know what they are, but what about the light purple? Is it really what I think it is?’’ the man looked at Sallor and nodded, Sallor then closed the bag and gave back to him, ‘’-It’s a deal then. But before we go, tell me, how much danger is there on the way?’’, the bald man looked at him while putting the bag inside his robes and answered:

‘’-A lot of danger can be on our way, but at the same time we could find no trouble at all. Now tell me, mercenary, are you feeling lucky?’’, Sallor laughed out loud and said:

‘’-Well said, monk. We go tomorrow when the sun is up in the sky, we meet here at this very table.’’ the bald man nodded at them, Sallor got up from his chair, put his black hat back on his head, tipped it to the man and started walking towards The Secretary, Willard followed him shortly after:

‘’-How much do you want for this job?’’ asked Sallor to the crimson mask person, the person answered:

‘’-If you make out of this alive, one of the green stones will do.’’, Sallor nodded at the person and said:

‘’-Very kind of you to let us keep the Moon Stone.’’, The Secretary looked back at him and answered coldly:

‘’-We have no use for this stone here, I doubt you can even sell that.’’, Sallor laughed and said:

‘’-There is always a buyer. You can find all kinds of people in the city nowadays. Anyway, we’re leaving tomorrow morning and will pay you once we are back.’’, The Secretary nodded at them.

When they were walking towards their rooms on the second floor, Willard stopped Sallor and asked:

‘’-You have a lot of things to explain to me right now.’’, Sallor looked at him and smiled then answered:

‘’-What do you want to know?’’, Willard looked at him and said:

‘’-Well, first, what is a Moon Stone and why are you so glad to have that as payment and second, why is this monk drawing so much attention?’’. Sallor looked at him surprised and said while walking towards his room’s door:

‘’-I get that you don’t know what a Moon Stone is, but you also have no idea what is up with the monk? Are you retarded or what boy?’’ Willard looked at him angrily and answered:

‘’-Look here you old sack of shit, I’m not going in a journey with you and a bald weirdo for something that I don’t even know how much money we can make of it.’’, Sallor looked at him and started to laugh, Willard didn’t seem to understand the reason why Sallor was laughing, which made him much angrier, but before he could say anything, Sallor looked at him and said:

‘’-Come inside the room and I’ll explain to you what’s going on.’’, they both walked inside the room then Sallor closed the door, took off his hat, sat down on his bed and said:

‘’-That green stone is called Jasmine, it is only found in the mountains very far from here, I’m talking like really up north, that is way is so valuable down here, we can sell it for like, a hundred thousand pieces of gold or something.’’. Willard looked at him shocked:

‘’-WHAT?! A hundred thousand pieces of gold? You can buy a lot of lands with this money!’’, Sallor looked at him and gestured with his hand for him to calm down and said:

‘’-Very few people have this much money, so we can sell it to the empire, which is not the best idea, or, we can sell it to some sailors that go to other lands.’’. Willard looked at him and nodded, then Sallor kept talking: ‘’-And there is the light purple stone that you saw, the Moon Stone. That one is so rare that I have no idea how the monk got it. It will be hard to sell but I think we can do it.’’. Willard looked at him with a confused look on his face and asked:

‘’-But why is that Moon Stone so hard to sell?’’, Sallor looked at him and answered:

‘’- It is a stone used only for sorcery and this kind of shit. Not everyone would know how to use it or what to do with it.’’. Sallor looked down then back to Willard and said:

‘’-I’m still not sure why The Secretary didn’t want to take the moon stone, that is making me concerned.’’. Willard looked at him, Sallor was looking very worried, then Willard asked:

‘’-But why would they want it anyway? If it is so hard to sell?’’, Sallor looked at him, smirked and said:

‘’-That is the problem. They have a lot of people around the city and everything, I don’t really get why they don’t want the stone.’’. Willard looked down and thought for a short time, but then he remembered that one part of his question was still left unanswered:

‘’-And what about the monk? Why did everyone look at him like that?’’. Sallor looked at him, this time he was not smiling or laughing, he looked more serious than any other time this night:

‘’-That man is a Blood Monk. They come from some far mountains, it is very rare to see them around here. I’ve never seen one before.’’. Willard looked at him and said surprised:

‘’-Then how do you know that he is a Blood Monk? As far as I can tell he just looks like a normal monk.’’. Sallor looked at him, smirked and said:

‘’-That just shows how naive you are. The Blood Monks are the only ones that use crimson robes and that wooden necklace.’’. Sallor paused for a bit like he was thinking of what to say, then kept going: ‘’-They are dangerous people. They are like normal monks but everything about them is twisted, of course, most of the things we know about them could be just the legends, but every legend has some truth in it.’’. Willard was looking a bit scared and hesitated to ask his question, but ended up doing it anyway:

‘’-What type of things are twisted?’’, Sallor looked at him and answered seriously:

‘’-Everything.’’, he paused, swallowed whatever was in his mouth and said: ‘’They use blood magic, the most twisted type of magic that exists. They use sacrifices and that sort of thing, and most scarily, some say they can even defy Death itself.’’, Willard looked shocked to Sallor and asked:

‘’-What do you mean by defy death?’’, Sallor answered coldly:

‘’-Some high priests can achieve immortality.’’, Willard looked at Sallor, but couldn’t find any signs that Sallor was joking or anything, he looked serious. After a short silence, Willard looked at him and asked:

‘’-But is it really the truth? Are they immortal?’’, Sallor answered shortly:

‘’-There must be a reason why people fear them so much. They are not the type of people you would want to fuck with. I can assure you that much.’’, Sallor walked towards Willard, looked him in the eyes and said:

‘’-Knowing what I told you, you still want to come?’’, Willard considered for a while, usually the amount of money they potentially could make from this job was enough to convince him, but this time he had to think harder, he looked around, then decided to say something, even though he wasn’t really sure if that was the best decision to make:

‘’-I’ll go.’’, he said firmly, with a confident voice, but his eyes told otherwise, Sallor slapped him on the shoulder and said:

‘’-Then it’s decided. Go get some sleep, we’re going tomorrow as soon as the sun goes up in the sky, make sure to have a good night of sleep, it can be your last one in some time.’’, Willard nodded, opened the door and went to his room.