Thorns Of Destiny - Chapter One

So, you might have seen me talking about a Dismas thing on my wall recently. You might not have. Here it is. Enjoy~

Chapter One - The Anshar Legacy

Standing outside his father’s study was beginning to feel like a chore. He’d been here for over an hour already, listening to his father yell at the stranger who had shown up outside the Manor earlier that evening. He wasn’t sure what they were saying. His father wasn’t speaking Ansharian, and neither was the stranger. Whatever the language, it was foreign to Dismas, and it confused him. He’d never liked it when his father had strangers in the house, especially when they gave his mother or one of his siblings those looks of theirs. He didn’t understand the looks; he never had. He wasn't sure he wanted to, either.

“Dismas?” He glanced up at the sound of his father’s voice, cut through by the sound of the door hinges squeaking. The study was semi-dark behind his father's silhouette. “Can you come here, please?”

He hesitated, staring up at his father’s face through the gap between door and doorframe. His father look worried, his eyes tired and stress lining his mouth. Dismas had never realised how utterly worn his father looked until just this moment. “Father?” he asked, still hesitant to move. “Is something wrong?”

“Come here, Dismas,” his father said, turning away from the door. Dismas watched the older man disappear into the faintly lit study with a dawning sense of horror, and of dread. What had his father done? As the eldest, Dismas would take over the Ansharian Throne if anything happened to his father, but this was different. It felt different. Something was definitely wrong here. “Now, please.”

“Yes, Father,” Dismas muttered and forced himself to move, to follow the older man into the study. Finally, he was going to get some answers about the stranger. He closed the door behind him like a good little boy and turned to face his father and the stranger. Before he could registered anything, a voice startled him.

“This is him?”

Dismas froze, staring at the stranger who lounged in front of the fireplace. His father was standing off to one side--the side closest to the door, as a matter of fact. He did not look at Dismas, nor did he seem to acknowledge he was there.

“Yes,” his father said, eyes downcast. The stranger stepped away from the fire, turning towards where Dismas stood. “Dismas, please behave for this man.” Dismas’s gaze flickered to his father, and he watched as the man turned to head for the door, pausing beside him. “Trust me, this is in your best interests.”

“Father?” he asked, turning towards the man in question, but the older man was already gone, door clicking shut soundly behind him. The sight of watching the door close had barely registered. A moment later, Dismas heard the lock engage--from the outside. His father had left him alone with this stranger? Had locked the door? What was going on here? Dismas whirled towards the door, suddenly angry. “Father! What have you done?!” Dismas reached the door in three strides and pounded against it, tears welling up but not falling--not just yet. “Father, come back here!”

“It’s no use.”

For a moment, Dismas had forgotten about the stranger, but now he remembered him with a burst of anger. He turned around, anger forgotten as fast as it had been remembered. It put the locked door at his back, meaning he had nowhere to go but towards the older man. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded, taking in the stranger. The man wore robes that reminded him vaguely of the desert merchants he sometimes saw his father speaking to. They were the colour of the sand he’d been given when he was younger; sand trapped in a bottle with a glass stopper for a lid. The man’s hands were empty. “Why did he leave me here with you?”

The stranger sighed and shifted to the side, moving so that his face was no longer hidden in shadows. “Your father has many reasons,” he said, sizing Dismas up with dark eyes as he took a seat in the chair nearest the fire. “Unfortunately, I cannot tell you all of them.”

This man unnerved him. Dismas didn’t like it, and he wasn’t sure why. The feeling of wrongness intensified. He had to stay calm. Wasn’t that what his father always told him? “What can you tell me, then?”

“That you are in danger,” was the reply, “and I am the salvation your father sought out for you.”

Dismas blinked. It wasn’t the response he’d been expecting, but at least he now had something to go on. The stranger looked away, gaze raking over the room. Dismas followed his lead. His father’s desk, on that desk was a dull letter opener--silver and heavy--sitting beside a small stack of papers and two books. Beside that, some kind of object that Dismas couldn’t quite make out in the light from the fire. Nothing of use there. He could try for the letter opener, but he doubted it would be any use. Beyond that were bookshelves set against the wall, floor to ceiling. None of those would help him, either.

Inevitably, his eyes drifted back to the stranger. “Salvation?” he asked, feeling his stomach drop. Just what kind of ‘salvation’ had his father brought him? “What do you mean by that?”

“My name is Arjana, but you will be calling me ‘Master’ soon enough,” the older man said, rising from his seat. Dismas pushed back against the door, suddenly afraid. The man’s entire demeanour had changed. He was now suddenly a threatening presence on the far side of the room, instead of the calm and rather un-intrusive man he’d been a moment ago. “Don’t fight me, little one, and I won’t have to hurt you any more than I planned to.”

Dismas bristled at ‘little one’ and glared up at the man as he approached. This ‘Arjana’ could go to all the hells the gods had created for all he cared. He was not going to lay a hand on him. Dismas was a prince! No one had the right to threaten him like this man was doing. It was insulting, to even think this man wanted to hurt him.

Arjana sighed. “So you wish to be difficult?” he asked, pausing a few feet away. Dismas stayed by the door, pressed back against it. He was afraid, but he was not going to let that fear show. His father had taught him that. For a moment, he wavered. The same father who had sold him out to this man. Dismas was torn for a brief moment, wanting to trust in his father but also to hate him for what he was doing. In the end, trust won out. “So be it.”

“I am a son of Anshar!” Dismas said, raising his chin and glaring him down defiantly. Scared as he was, it was weak but there was steel beneath that, even if he didn’t know it then. “I will not bow. I will not bend. I will not break.” He took a deep breath and clenched his hands into fists. “Whatever you may do to me, you will not break me, Arjana.”

Arjana’s expression told him the man didn’t like what he was about to do, but would do it anyway. For his sake. Dismas didn’t understand, but he didn’t think he needed to. His father had left him here... The betrayal finally sank in and he realised that his father was no coming back. Anger fled, to be replaced by the dawning terror and the dread sinking down into the pit of his stomach. Arjana’s face betrayed nothing but a strange sort of sadness.

“I am sorry for what I must do now,” he said, one hand disappearing deep into the sleeve of his robe, right down to the elbow or his other arm. That hand reappeared a moment later, holding a small but wicked-looking club. Dismas’s eyes widened but before he could cry out, that club was brought down towards him and everything went black.