Draken runs toward the alley, the thugs at his heels. He knows what happens in that alley, knows and cannot face it again. Anything is preferable!

He finds himself standing atop a trash can cornered by a red eyed viper. Nothing in the world scares him more than the madness and agonising death promised by the snake’s kiss.

“Nice try,” Veronica says. “But what happened in the alley?”

***

Once more he is running toward the alley. Footsteps close from behind, a fleeting memory crosses his mind and as he rounds the corner he stands in a different alley on a different evening, years before.

The man’s meaty grip is firm, struggle as he might Draken can’t break loose.

“Now, don’t be like that,” the man’s sweaty hand gropes him between his legs.

“Ye said ye wanted someone to take good care of ye, I bought ya dinner didn’t I? An I bought ya them nice clothes, time ye did somefin for me, fair’s fair.”

Draken squirms fuitilly against the old man’s grip.

“Quit yer squirmin or i’ll havta smack ya! Sides ye don wanna rip yer nice new clothes do ye? Just close yer eyes and open yer mouth an don’t get no idears about bitin me or i’ll use a hole that don’t gots teeth an ye won’t like that!”

The sound of trousers unbuckling is followed by a savage shout.

“Get your fuckin mitts off him!”

Draken’s teen uncle, not yet known as Top Boy, charges into the alley with a gleaming knife and a righteous scowl. In an instant he is on the old pervert, slashing at his wrists and making him release his grip.

“Who you think you are, ruffian? Doncha know I run yer dead pappy’s guild an I aint takin no disrespect! Ye’d both best calm down an let me have me fun an life’ll get real easy, I can raise an prentice ye both myself or I can make ye both not fit to prentice to the town drunk. ” He smiles with the smug assurance of a person used to getting his way.

“Good, I always wanted to gut a bigshot.” As his uncle lunges at the fat guildmaster and Draken is shoved to the ground. A loud grunt and the sound of a large object hitting the pavement with force. Draken opens his eyes to see the fat man motionless in a pool of his own blood and his uncle rifling through his clothes.

“Is he dead?” Draken asks. His uncle shoots him such a cold look he wants to disappear.

“What do you think?” He pockets the man’s coin purse. “Look what I had to do cuz of you! You made me a murderer, hope your happy.”

“I’m sorry,” Draken mutters. “He seemed really nice, said he knew our family and wanted to help. He bought me things, look at these clothes.” He isn’t expecting to be hit that hard, it makes his ears ring.

“You wanna be a whore like yer ma, is that it? I bust my ass keeping you fed an you let the first sweet talkin predator lure you in because he promises to give you things.”

“I was hungry and my clothes were turning to rags!” Draken shouts back. “This guy said he knew us and he bought me new clothes, a watch and fed me real food with meat and eggs,. How am I supposed to know he wanted to do that kind of thing?” His question is met with another smack, this one less savage.

“You should know better, nobody gives anything for free. This world only takes and if you don’t want to end up dead you better learn to start taking back. I been too easy on you, spoiled you and let you get by on my leavings. We’ll since them leavings ain't enough for you no more, you’re cut off.”

“No, uncle please, I’ll be good!”

“Shut up,” his uncle replies. “From now on you're in my crew, you want somethin i’ll teach you to take it but the free ride ends here. ”

“Your crew?” Draken asks, his uncle nods a grin creeping across his scar-lined young face.

“People gonna tell you the world don’t owe you nothin, they’re damn liars. This world’s taken everything from us an the only way to even the score is to learn to take back. Everything you could ever need is at your fingertips if you know how to take it.”

Draken catches the dead man’s coin purse, it jingles in his hands the coins slipping around inside the velvet pouch. The feeling of so much money in his hands is strange but he likes it and shocks himself at feeling glad that the man at his feet is dead. He fumbles with the purse, almost dropping it as his uncle savagely kicks and beats the body producing several fresh bruises.

“That should make it look like he got jumped,” he laughs. “Enjoying the dead man’s gold?”

Draken looks away, shamefaced. His uncle shakes his head, giving the corpse one last kick.

“Don’t feel guilty, this greasy bastard was gonna take something from you now you’re taking from him. An you’ll keep on taking, you’ll take whatever you need and more.”

Draken takes one more look at the body.

“Is this really alright?”

A little black dog jumps over the corpse and scuttles past the boy’s feet, ignoring him as it trots up the dark windowless alley. As if to mirror the dog’s unconcerned attitude Draken’s uncle shrugs.

“Victim of his own scheme. He brought you into this dark alley because he knew no one’d see what he did to you. If I didn’t use it as a dead drop for the same reason you’da been outta luck. Be glad it turned out the other way. ”

Draken turns to face the woman standing in the shadows of the alley.

“Happy now, I suppose. You’ve seen what happened to me in this cursed alley. I was touched and fondled, nearly made into a grown man’s plaything and in spite of it all I feel guilty about getting him killed.” Draken struggles to hold in tears, knowing it’s the response the woman expects.

The witch glances over the bloody scene briefly but her hard eyes tell Draken something is off.

“You almost had me, really you did. This whole affair reeks of the sort of sexually confusing childhood memory you’d want to burry and avoid thinking about altogether. Yet there’s one detail that doesn’t match up, it’s sunset and the memory you’ve been running from happened well after dark.”

Draken’s fists tighten, he really thought he’d thrown her off the scent. The incident of the dead pervert haunted his dreams for a week and still comes back from time to time. If this doesn’t fool her, nothing will.

“Enough games,” the witch says. “Now you have me curious so I really must insist. What disturbs you so much that you’d rather relive this than face it?”

***

The footsteps are right behind him. If he can only get over the wall, just a few more feet. Too late, hands pull him down and and he impacts the damp ground with a hard and painful crack. The three thugs from the Slate Street Slicers have him. Slipping and stumbling in the awful muck he gets to his feet only to feel the palm of a large hand on his chest pushing him against the stone wall he’d just tried to climb. The knife presses against the his neck. Murderous eyes and a crooked toothed smile meet Draken’s gaze.

“Tryin to work our street?” the thug barks. “Ain't no festivals on boy, ain't no truce for a fortnight an you know the penalty.”

The knife slowly moves from Draken’s neck down his midsection stopping at his crotch.

“I’m gonna cutchu where the sun don shine.”

Time slows down, this has happened before but never like this. This time it’s different than the others, this time he feels a power all around him. The power is like an old acquaintance, he’s briefly encountered it, felt it’s fleeting presence in his fingers as he lifts a purse. Now the power feels like it wants to be his friend. It pours into him like nothing he’s ever felt, filling him to the point of overflow and he becomes aware. It feels like having a thousand million hands that touch and probe everything around him. He can constrict the hands into fists, dozens of fists. He could knock out each of his three enemies, push them, throw them against a wall, leave them aching for weeks with broken bones. The grin on the other lad’s face catches his attention.

It’s a look of utter joy and anticipation. His eyes sparkle in excitement.

“I’m gonna cutchu where the sun don shine.”

The words echo in Draken’s memory, he meets the thug’s eyes and feels cold. Suddenly the idea of showing these three mercy is repulsive. Would they show it to him?

They’ll leave him in the streets to bleed to death given the chance and probably think his last moments are a great show. Pulling the knife from the thug’s hand to his own is so easy that it astonishes him, though he doesn’t quite understand how he does it.

It’s a good, well balanced knife. There is little resistance as it cuts flesh.

The speed with which he slices is the result of lightning reflexes honed by theft.

But even as the other two stand wide eyed in shock Draken has made up his mind. Holding absolute power over life and death like a magistrate with no limits he takes a moment to look them each in the eyes and casts his sentence, death. They charge toward him at full speed yet they seem to move so slowly that they may as well be standing still.

As Draken throws the knife he commands it to arc in the air, slicing one neck then the other. Blossoms of brilliant red are blinding and in all directions, a warm sticky sensation and a pungent copper smell dominate the senses as he hears the bodies drop.

Draken laughs like a man possessed.

He is intoxicated on the twin powers of magic and murder. Thoughts roam through his mind of men and boys who’ve wronged him. Beatings, cheats and snitches all come to mind. Rivals, dangerous predators and people so far above him that he’d never dared dream to have a means to kill them. The breeze blows, chilling him as it cools the warm blood.

The intoxicated feeling drains away, leaving him empty and cold but his mind refuses to slow.

Objective truths become clear to him.

Firstly, he’s just commited murder and if he’s caught he will hang.

Secondly he’s used some kind of magic to do it, this is the only explanation.

Following that if he is caught his case will go to the magician’s council and their reputation for brutality has reached even his ears. He doesn’t know what tortures they’ll inflict but he’s aware that practicing untrained magic and committing any kind of crime let alone murder will likely result in an execution so painful and spectacular that people will talk about it for a generation.

A creeping dread builds up as he conjures images into his mind of the many creative ways a mage can horribly kill a man. The seriousness of his act sinks in, it’s magical nature and all the dreadful consequences that could befall him but also the thoughts he’d just been thinking.

Thoughts of vicious revenge on any and all who’d ever crossed him. For a moment he’d been a cruel, hateful person and as he begins to feel like himself again the idea of being that person is the most horrible thought of all. He still feels little remorse for killing the three thugs but now he feels dirty. Draken sees the witch standing in the shadows and his heart is gripped in a hand of ice. The present hits him like a slap in the face and he feels a creeping dread. Madame Veronica steps from the darkness, her eyes glittering in the dim light of the streetlamp. Eyes of a witness that promise death through what they’ve seen.

“You’ve seen what you wanted, now i’m doomed!” He shouts at the witch. “I’m not stupid, I know what this means for me.”

Veronica looks at the mess in the alley with a disapproving scowl.

“So, this is what you’ve been hiding from. We’ll it’s clear to me you’re gifted in sorcery if not witchcraft.”

Draken knows with a terrible certainty that there is no escape, no bargaining. This is it, how he goes down and the council will show him no mercy.

“What will they do to me?” He asks, all hope gone from his voice.

The witch shakes her head.

“Nothing, crimes discovered during a mage trial cannot be prosecuted. Besides which the council is typically lenient in these cases, light torture at most.” She laughs at the stunned look on his face. “I suppose you expected to die horribly?”

Draken spots a little black dog sniffing around the edges of the alley. There’s something wrong, that dog is too familiar.

“No point dragging this out, my curiosity is satisfied and to be honest your mental defenses leave something to be desired. Not surprising as dual talented mages are especially rare.” She shrugs, indicating the corpses. “I think we’ve established that sorcery is where you shine.”

He's’ not listening, his eyes are locked onto that damned dog. It’s been slipping into each of his memories and making itself at home, sniffing around and pissing all over the lamp posts of his mind. It must have something to do with the damned witch, he thinks. The pieces slowly form together. He can hardly navigate his own memories without losing himself to them yet Tamrin walks around another person’s head as if she owns the place. Something his new friend told him comes to mind, he’d mentioned something about anchoring thoughts to stay sane under the witch’s mental invasion. He wonders as he sneaks slowly toward the animal if it works both ways.

He dives for the dog.