Flint
Childhood
The following is the personal accounts of Flint, as remembered to the best of my ability.
My earliest memories were as cold as that drafty cabin I was raised in. Though perhaps the term raised is too kind. I never knew my mother, my father never spoke of her, or of what happened to her. Looking back I can imagine her death was at the hands of my birth, or perhaps an illness took her shortly after. Either way, I am sure that rotten bastard blamed me. At least, that is what I tell myself to try and bring reason to the brutality.
Even in my earliest memories he was a cruel man, and he only became more so as I got older. I have but one single memory of him showing me any kindness, and that was the time he brought me a bow, and taught me how to use it. It was a few short hours of what I imagine other children must have felt. A flicker of comradery with their parent, a sense of pride in accomplishing something that was set out for them. It was short lived. After all he only taught me so that I could fend for myself. Easier for him to dismiss me. If I starved to death now, I had only myself to blame. He could continue living on with a clear conscience.
Shortly after that it was when he decided I was man enough for beatings. He must have thought I was very manly indeed, for the beatings lasted until a sheen of sweat covered his brow, and I could do nothing but lay on the floor, torn between fear of dying, and praying that I did. Any night I made the mistake of being in the cabin when he returned from where ever he went to get drunk, it was the same. Incoherent shouting, and then pain.
For years I lived like this. During the warmer months I would stay out in the food surrounding the house. But when the frost came I had to decide if I wanted to live with bruises, and potentially die of internal bleeding, or kill myself in the elements, a scrawny boy freezing to death. Sometimes I was lucky, I'd come back in and he would be passed out, drunk as usual. Other times I think he waited.
The day he never came home. Was the scariest, and one of the best days of my life. Fifteen years old, alone, wandering through the woods freely, though fearful that he would return and beat me worse than ever before for traveling too far. That was of course, until I saw it. From what I could tell, he was stumbling home drunk, and tripped, or twisted his ankle, I don't know really. But he had a gash on his head, and he had frozen to death in the cold, alone in the woods. Freedom!
The Flight
I was exultant in my freedom, but it was not to be long lived. For a few months I lived in that cabin in the middle of the woods, isolated and alone. I survived, as that is all I knew how to do. I started hunting further and further from the cabin each day, learning the forest of my home, and one morning, before the mist had even been burned away by the rising sun, I saw it. A home. Not the shabby cabin I lived in, but a real house. A fancy house. I never understood why they chose to live there, this family of strangers. A man, his two sons, a few years older than me if I were to guess and remember correctly. A daughter, and his wife. They were fat people. My father was large, but he was large in the way bears were large, like all Northman. But these two people, the man and wife. Were large around, particularly in the middle.
I watched these people for a few days. They seemed harmless enough. And I all I knew of people was what my father had shown me. Cruelty unending. I would not risk being subject to that again, not by these strangers. So I avoided them for as long as I could. But the fat man thought himself a hunter too. Though he did so with a crossbow, and on horseback. So not really a hunter at all. When he encountered me, my fears were realized, so I though. He seemed shocked to find a filthy, scrawny boy in his woods. I couldn't get a word in edgewise, and before I knew it, he was trying to run me down with his horse. Looking back maybe he was just trying to scare me off, thinking me something unclean and evil stalking his family in the woods. Maybe he was right. I remember running through the woods, ducking in and out of the trees, weaving through the underbrush, scrambling for my life. All I could think of were the beatings, those damn beatings that left me wondering if it was my last night. He cornered me, I panicked, and before I knew what I was doing I was turning and I loosed an arrow.
I still remember the look on the mans face, he seemed, shocked or maybe outraged that I was killing him. This filthy boy putting an arrow through his throat. Worst of all though, I remember how I felt. The absolute thrill of it. Something welled up inside me in that moment, and it was like fire and ice in my veins all at once. I felt more alive than I ever had, I felt like I had found it, that something I had been missing. By while I reveled in this feeling I forgot to grab the horse and the well trained beast ran back. It would arrive without it's master, and then the sons would know something happened. I knew I only had one choice. No, that's not right, I had thought I only had one choice. I would have to defend myself, they would come for me, to avenge this fat man in his fine clothes. But this time I would not run scared. I would be waiting. What I did next is far too awful to put on paper, not yet. But I left a woman and her daughter with no men left to defend them, or provide for them. I had ended three lives and left two broken. I couldn't bring myself to do the same to them. Never sat right with me.
After what I had done, I fled the island. I knew that it would just be a matter of time before word got out. These men had to have more family, more friends, and I had left witnesses. I paid my way onto a ship, using money I had taken from that family. What was one more wicked deed of theft compared to the horrors I had wrought on that family?
The Finding.
Leaving the only home I knew, wasn't nearly so hard as one may have thought. All I had there were bad memories and a trail of bodies behind me. Good riddance I said. But I was a fool boy, I had no idea how the world worked, my only view of the world was that the man who was right was the one left alive when the dust settled. I continued to kill to get what I wanted, muggings, murder, fleeing to the next city, leaving a mess everywhere I went. Who knows how many families I destroyed beings such a fool. But this was the world as I saw it. There was no remorse for the weak, I would have not held it against anyone if they would have killed me first. I just happened to be quicker, and I was willing to fight dirty. Anything to win. I was without honor. I killed my way through port town after port town.
That is how they found me. A man, whose face I never saw, whose voice was the softest silk, but his eyes as cold and empty as the void. He told me of a place that I would be welcome, where I could learn and hone the thing I loved most. Murder. This man could have killed me any time he chose, as I never heard him coming, did not see him approach until he spoke. Yet he did not, he spoke and wove sweet promises of purpose. Something I sorely craved. Purpose.
At nearly sixteen years old, I was taken in by the church of the Lord of Murder. Ten years I spent under their tutelage. Ten years they taught me how best to serve that dark god. That monster that had consumed my soul before I even had a name to give him. Ten years I was exposed to more cruelty than I can recount, but in my mind it was with purpose. Not like the beatings my father gave me. Not Like the fat man who wanted to ride me down just for existing. This all served a greater purpose, and I clung to that belief with a zealots fervor. When they set me loose on the world again, I was better trained. Now when I went from town to town and murdered. There was no trace, no witnesses, not a sound or drop left to mark their passing, or my acts. Except when I left an offering to The Lord of Murder every tenday. I not only killed out of worship, I killed for coin. Hiring myself out to whatever organization was looking for someone who was good with a bow, and could take out targets quickly and quietly. Murder for coin. I had thought I had figured it all out.
What a fool I was, what a monster, what manner of irredeemable filth acted like this? The answer? The kind that had no heart, known no love, and felt no pity.
If you are reading this, thank you for taking the time to do so! This is just the first few chapters of Flint's life, and there will be more to come! This bio/journal has been a long time coming, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed this character.