Zachery sauntered around his small and dirty apartment, used socks, and half-eaten portions of food lining his worm-eaten furniture. He was a meager, middle-aged man, looking malnourished and disheveled, his lifeless eyes sunken deep into his skull to resemble a dried-up corpse. On his head, only a few streaks of long, scrubby bristles remained of his once luscious and full black hair that his brother had always envied.
"Almost two years! Two Years!" he repeated over and over again, sometimes screaming at the top of his lungs, sometimes barely whispering.
Soon would be the anniversary. The day his older brother died almost two years ago. How could he ever forget that damn, god-forsaken day that changed everything?! How he had lost him. How everything had been taken from him.
"I had it all! Women, power, money, booze! But that bastard… that bastard!" he gibbered with a bone-chilling smile on his face, showing his pointed teeth more than seemed possible.
Trying to calm himself down, he hurried over to his shaky, rotten desk and pulled out one of its drawers, rummaging through it impatiently. After using a filthy stack of stained papers to further decorate the few empty blotches on his floor, he finally held a clear crystal vial in his shaking hands.
Zachery cracked the thin, glassy neck sealing the vial with a single, well-practiced motion, and dropped the translucent liquid into his ears, two drops each, completely emptying the small flask. Visibly pacified, he slouched over to the other side of the room and laid down on a mottled, old couch that remained relatively schlock-free, compared to the rest of the apartment.
"Ahhhhh…" he moaned eerily, squeezing the remaining air out of his lungs.
This was what he was left with. His only remaining pleasure.
Zachery could not afford the expensive healing potions anymore, used to avoid the severe side effects, nor had he access to as many whisps as he wanted any longer, but he did not care. He did not care now. Not anymore.
He closed his eyes and let himself sink into the cushions. He felt like falling, slowly he began to lose his sense of direction and floated away.
His ears were ringing, distorted and hushed sounds continuously caressed his mind and took him farther and farther away from reality. Soft echoes, faint voices, they became louder until they completely flooded his consciousness.
It was not the uncomfortable kind of loudness though; it was a melodic, soft, and omnipresent sound that filled him to the brim and brought him great joy. Yes, it sounded almost like whispering. An important message that someone tried to convene to him but was lost in translation, hushed by thick walls, suffocated in gauze.
It was the whispering of distant angels reaching out to him in the earthly realm.
Angel's Whisper, or whisp for short. That was both name and effect of this hallucinogenic and sedative drug, which had become increasingly popular in Sigella throughout the last decade.
Whisps, yes. Boon and Bane of his existence.
Zachery and his brother grew up in the slums of Sigella, at the edge of town near the harbor. Where gangs ruled supreme and shady businesses lined the dark streets. It was a Slork eat Slork world out there, and they had no time for playing around. From a young age, they had to resort to deception and thievery to help with the family finances.
The brothers were lucky enough to get acquainted with the right people and made the right decisions, becoming bigger and bigger players in the local black-market economy.
When they found a connection to a desperate, money-hungry Alchemist and coaxed him into providing them his goods, their business skyrocketed.
The whisps that brought the heavenly song of angels to the desperate scum of the slums sold like hotcakes, and they quickly began to expand their distribution network. Bribing politicians, merchants, and guards. Setting up trade routes to the harbors of the south and into the deepest mines of the Black Mountain Range, they only saw success in their ventures for years.
The highly addictive substance brought them loyal servants and beautiful maidens, willing to do anything they demanded for just another drop. More money than they could ever spend and influence they had never dreamed of. It was glorious.
Yet pride goes before the fall, and they reaped what they sowed with their progressive carelessness. They left the most critical decisions to incompetent drug-addicts instead of carefully planning out their operations as they used to in their early days, bringing about an abrupt end to their life of luxury.
None other than the highly motivated Commander of the Town Guard Brigade, the Burning Sword Saint, Allvar Jumpheart, had meticulously investigated their operation and raided their base before they could even suspect anything. He personally directed the charge and arrested everyone he laid eyes on. Even Zachery's own brother was no exception, and he had been executed for major violations of the law shortly after.
He had never forgotten that fateful day two years ago, not for a moment. When he returned dead-drunk from the brothel that evening again, he found the hideout surrounded and flooded by guards. He was forced to flee like a dog under a false name, lie low, to be a nobody once more. When he watched his brother hanging from the gallows a few days later…
His guts were burning with anger for years. There was only one thing on his mind, one last goal left to accomplish: Revenge. It was stuck in his brain like a burning, red-hot nail.
After hours of lying still like a skeleton, he stirred again and fell off the messy sofa with a groan. Shoveling aside the garbage on the floor, he heaved himself back onto his knees, followed by his feet. He stumbled towards his shabby desk and dug through the pile of papers on it.
Zachery had spared no effort in planning out his revenge. His last savings, the rest of their broken network, his compatriots who had suffered on that day like him, everything for his revenge. It was not easy, but he had finally gotten his hands onto some useful information — the weakness of his dreaded nemesis.
He held a detailed drawing in his cramped hand, depicting a boy dressed in a school uniform, with thick brows and flaming-red hair.
"Ha-haha Hahaha! HAHA HAHE HUAUHAHAHAHUEHEHEHA!"
A couple of crows were startled by the manic laughter and kicked off from their perch on a decaying building, flying into the endless darkness of the moonless night.