<div dir="ltr"><div>I'm not sure who's up next with the Round Robin, but he's another part to get us closer to the finale.</div><div> </div><div>----</div><div> </div><div>Early Morning, June 6, 708 CR</div><div> </div>Fourteen days. That was the longest that an unprotected human was known to withstand Metamor's curse. Rodrick had, for a long time, known that he had been born under a cursed star. Always he had to fight for a scrap of food and shelter. Always he had to outsmart the ignorant schlubs who grew up in comfort. Always he had to keep travelling before his marks caught onto his trickery. How could a man like he possibly survive in Metamor, a land that only promised a long captivity before dying under some mage's assault, or a random lutin's arrow? Rodrick was a fighter, sure he was, but never with any formal training. Neither he, nor his comrades-in-arms, had the patience for training. All he had was years of observation and practice. Never was he to be controlled by any one man, or strangled by any one fate. Never! Misha's eye had been constantly on him on the past few days. Sometimes the fox himself showed up, but most of the day it was under the eye of one of his trusted officers. Every evening they were made to clean one long section of pipe, before moving onto another corner of the Keep the next day. Rodrick didn't mind the foul smell of the middens, or how it caked his hands and stained his clothes. In fact, it gave him a sense of comfort. As a boy, he'd had to sleep by such pits of raw sewage, choking himself awake to avoid suffocating from lack of clean air. Nathan had thrown up a couple times after they'd bursted a few particularly noxious pockets. It rather amused Rodrick. Nathan was a simple man, finding simple joys in camping, cooking, and tracking. How he didn't sick himself at the sight of blood, Rodrick could only assume was because he was too simple to understand killing. It was simple labor, too. After spending most of the night of loading the Keep's dung onto a wagon, they would haul it out from under the Keep, through the streets of Euper, out into the forests, and down to the farms of Lorland. In fact, it was very nearly the same route that Rodrick had taken just days ago on his mutiny. On horseback, it took only an hour. On foot, hauling the wagon took nearly six hours, long enough for the sun to rise and beat down on them. A small patrol of three escorted them, only lifting a hand when the wagon veered off-course. Thank the gods Nathan was silent through this whole treatment. Rodrick himself felt a deep groove in his tongue for all the times he'd bitten it. Five days. That was how long this had gone on. After Jerrod's curse, it was just a matter of waiting for the curse to strike them. Every day that it didn't was a taunting reminder of how foolish Rodrick had been. If he had just trusted Gawyn, he would have been in Giftum by now. He would have perhaps gone on to Kelewair, or west to Elvquelin. Both were easy places to disappear to. There was one particular flour mill along the river to Duran's Crossing with an unlocked window, whose floors were so coated in flour, a good 10 minutes of scraping could fill a pouch for seven days. Sometimes it was worth it to wait until reaching the orchards outside Lersun, so that he could savor some sweetness with his flour. His stomach suddenly growled. It was nearly noon, and he and Nathan were heading back to Metamor with an empty cart, on empty stomaches. If only they had some syrup to pour into their gruel. Or jams or jellies. Or those hard candies that the monks had once given him. Or delectable soft frosting that he'd plucked off a tart pie, or those fresh strawberries that drizzled down his face, or, or... Rodrick's stomach kept squeezing itself even tighter as the fantasies came harder and faster. Every type of sweet food he'd even eaten, even some that he'd never eaten but always wanted, suddenly pelted every thought in his mind. He tried to squeeze it out. This was foolishness. He had no time to think about things he couldn't have. He struggled to control his thoughts, but they resisted like ghosts through his fingers. But he refused to allow such ghosts to haunt him. He imagined a great wall of stone sealing off those desserts, reminding himself that they would never be his. He pictured them being sealed deep underground, as futile to recover as all the lost treasures of the world. He refocused his eyes on the road, on the heavy wooden beam before him, and the passively stupid Nathan beside him... It was so unfair! Why did he have to be here, pulling this cart beside an idiot like Nathan, instead of wandering the world in search of treasure? He was supposed to be free! Why did he deserve to be a failure? It was like a wild snake had grabbed his iron will, and twisted it around like putty. He was a minnow in the jaws of a great beast. His own past threatening to swallow him. Rodrick was holding his breath again as he crept through the dimly lit room. The lady was distracted. He didn't dare make a sound. They always ignored him in the halls, when he was simply Jenny's brat. Here, he was a thief. But even a thief had to move fast, even for a lady who took as much time as Bella. A shadow smacked him. Good for nothing brat! He was cold most of the time now. Jenny had lost all of her fine clothes and warm blankets. Under abandoned carts and bridges, they slept. Jenny kept him tied up. Sometimes she made him sing for money. She loved to hear him sing, and others did too. She took every coin he earned, and smacked him every time he asked about his daddy. There was a woman who said she knew his daddy. Jenny was away, so she cut his rope and put him on her cart. That night, she heated an iron rod. She said he needed to be a man for a moment. But he still screamed, because he was weak. She scrubbed him down and gave him an itchy suit that was too big for him, but it was still the finest thing he'd ever worn. She took him to a great mansion, and she told the baron that she had found his long-lost heir. She showed off the burn that she said was the true son's birthmark, and bid him sing his very best for the baron. Failure. Like so many things, he was a failure. He was kept around for a few days in the servant's quarters, still thinking he had found his true home and his true father until the master-at-arms told him he was a fool... "Stop! Stop! Fer heav'n's sakes, stop!" He was running in the streets now, running away to find his father. Or maybe hoping the baron would send his men out and apologize, and adopt him for real, like he'd heard in the puppet shows. Instead, he slept in alleyways and gutters, selling his buttons for food. The more honestly he lived, the more hateful the response. Better that he not go begging and singing like a trained parrot. Better instead to steal from the washerwomen, pad his emaciated belly, and flee to the next town to sell "his" clothes for some pennies. Then he got caught, because he was weak. It was a one-armed man who caught him, a man who carried everything on horseback, and spewed venom at every sign of weakness. He refused to release him, or reveal anything about himself, only that he was to be called "Master". But Master knew many things. He knew the ways of the sword, and taught him to hold and swing a sword, how to block an attack, how to draw and sheathe it quickly. He knew the ways of the thief, and told him how to sneak in through chimneys, how to steal bread with no one looking, how not to cry when under pain. There were many long nights of these lessons. And Master also knew the ways of the mage. But he refused to teach Rodrick. The one time Rodrick asked, Master sealed his throat and stabbed him an invisible spear of pain. Master told him that was what life a mage led, unless he was ever-vigilant. For many nights afterward, Rodrick relived that pain. And now, under all those memories, it seemed to hit him as if for the first time. There were people shouting all around him, and Rodrick didn't care. Rodrick could only listen to the ghosts of his past as they surrounded him and jeered at him. Rodrick could only flee their taunts by digging deeper and deeper into his secret past. ---- "Fer God's sakes, leave him alone! Can't ya see he's got the kid curse?" The guards were poking at the shrinking man leaning against the beam in front of him, bawling heavily from some deep delirium. Rodrick was one of the toughest men Nathan knew, and Nathan had never seen him shed a tear, or even frown in anything but disgust. To see him seize up and start weeping uncontrollably was quite pitiable. "Serves him right, the little hoodlum," one of the guards muttered. "Maybe now he's learned his lesson." "Stop that!" Nathan said. "Leave him alone! Put him in the cart! I'll carry him the rest of the way!" The guard narrowed her eyes at Nathan. "Don't give orders to us, prisoner. Remember you are here as his accomplice." "Can't ya see he's not going anywhere?" Nathan pointed to Rodrick. He was continuing to shrink down, having been swallowed by his shirt. His cries were now a high-pitched youth's, and he was shrinking even further down into a toddler. The poor boy was completely lost and confused in his own thoughts. The rope manacles dangled free from the pile of clothing and sobbing child. "He won't walk the rest of the way," Nathan said, casting his eyes down from the guard. "Please. Help him." "The prisoner speaks truth, 'tis a prisoner of youth," the familiar winged horse boss said. "We'll be slowed to a crawl, if we're moving at all. Let him ride this once in the midden cart. At Euper, we'll know if he's changed his heart." The guards grumbled and lifted the babe onto a corner of the cart, trying to keep his head free from his clothes. The baby writhed and wiggled in their grasp. Nathan was left to haul the wagon up front by himself, though the female guard did take position at the back to push it along, as well as to keep an eye on Rodrick, suspicious that it might yet be a ruse. Nathan quite enjoyed pulling the cart. The air was so much fresher out here than in Euper, and it felt good to rest his weary arms on the beam and let his shoulders do the pushing. Nathan had hoped he'd get an animal curse, so he could spend more time outdoors, maybe have a big field to run around or fly in. Ever since Jerrod changed, he'd been thinking a lot about what animals he liked. He could accept losing his hands or his speech if it meant being outdoors all the time, feeling the soil beneath him. He could even accept being a beast of burden, like he was now. But over the past couple days, he finally accepted that that was not his fate to be. The callouses in his hands had disappeared, along with the bunion on his foot. His breath came much easily, and he seemed to be full of energy when he awoke last evening. His hair felt softer, and a few of his scars had disappeared. Nathan was only in his mid thirties, but a lifetime of scouting and soldiering had left its marks on him, marks that vanished when he wasn't looking. Nathan hadn't lost much height or weight, nor much of his intelligence or attention span. But Nathan had never had much of those to begin with. It seemed more and more likely that he'd gotten a very slow child curse, not an animal's. Nathan hadn't told Rodrick. He wanted to see how long until Rodrick noticed. He knew Rodrick was counting every day they'd been here. He also knew Rodrick was much cleverer than him, but often missed the simplest things. Nathan always preferred the simple pleasures of cooking, gathering, and fire-building, while Rodrick preferred to argue deeper topics like magic or history, or try to dig into other people's pasts. The cart bounced and wobbled over the uneven path. The child inside, reduced now to a toddler, tossed and groaned in his stupor. What thoughts could be troubling him? Rodrick rarely talked of his past, and hadn't been particularly close to him before the mutiny. Nathan had known he was a skilled fighter, though Gallus often called out Rodrick's lack of discipline and restraint. Nathan had been worried that Gwayn cared too much about his money than his own men, so when Rodrick asked him to help steal the horses, Nathan hadn't thought any harm would come of it. If only he had noticed the stableboy earlier, he might have distracted Rodrick before he'd drawn that knife. If only there was some way he could atone for his error. The sobbing subsided. Rodrick was still and silent within the cart, swaddled in his old clothes. Perhaps he had fallen asleep. Perhaps that was for the best. Nathan hoped they were pleasant dreams, as the highest towers of Metamor Keep appeared through the wooded road. </div>