As I studied Khaller, it was interesting to see the effects of him recollecting unpleasant memories. He shifted nervously, fidgeted, his eyes lost focus, and he drank incessantly when he was about to narrate an uncomfortable part of his story.
Khaller looked to be in his mid-thirties, and from what I deduced, these specific events of his life must have taken place roughly twenty years ago. But they still had a profound effect on him. This Kosher intrigued me; who was he that he made this powerful man feel inferior?
As Khaller continued his story, I cleared my thoughts and focused on him again.
"Soon it became clear that I was no longer a tough challenge for Kosher. The time it took to defeat me became shorter and shorter. By our thirteenth fight, he defeated me in eight moves. He became the undisputed champion of the fight club. To make it somewhat of a fair match, he'd be made to face multiple opponents at once. But soon enough, even that was no longer fun."
Khaller paused for a moment before he continued.
"I was by no means normal myself. You could call my combat growth inhuman. I could learn and adapt in minutes, but Kosher was something else. I still had the advantage in my prediction ability, but he compensated for it with immense speed that I had few seconds to react to attacks. Landing attacks on him became extremely difficult as well. But I was still superior. His ability to feel no pain, though, that was a cheat. He wouldn't even know he was bleeding until you told him.
"Soon enough, he left the fight club; Madam Cati let him. No point in retaining his services. It wasn't much different for me too. I became the champion of the fight club, but the challengers were too weak for me as well, and so I left too. Kosher and I were best friends, but I must admit I felt some jealousy towards him. We still fought on occasion, but neither of us enjoyed doing it anymore. Kosher fought to indulge me, and I fought to measure the gap between us. I was still confident of my superior abilities and took solace in the fact that without his painless nature, I was the stronger of the two of us."
He took a sip from the remaining tankard of ale in his hand.
"We earned a lot of money from our time in the fight club. But, as irresponsible adolescents are wont to do, we spent it recklessly. Kosher was particularly fond of wine and women. He was a decently good-looking young man with a good physique, so he never had a shortage of those. I too was a popular ladies' man; I was good-looking in my own right, and my unusually red hair was a great draw as well. My vice was gambling. Since I could no longer get good fights, I needed something to replace fighting, something that got my blood pumping. The uncertainty of gambling gave me that. I betted my money on the most ridiculous things, from who could get the most girls' attention to who could take the longest piss.
I would have betted in the fight club too, but Madam Cati refused to let me. Her argument was she never allowed fighters to bet. And although I made my argument that I was no longer a fighter, that didn't seem to sway her. I never went back there again. I later heard that her fight club was shut down by the naval forces; apparently, it became a serious problem in Cross Harbor as people began to borrow money to take part in fights, which led to a lot of debt issues. I also heard she left Cross Harbor and went into the kingdom where she now had multiple fight clubs.
Take that with a grain of salt, though; I never verified this information myself. Anyway, Kosher loved women and ale, and there was an endless supply of both; being a major trading town, there was always going and coming of goods and people. I loved gambling, and I was no good at it. Soon, we were broke."
Khaller cleared his throat; his voice was getting hoarse now. He obviously wasn't good at talking for this long. He took another sip of his ale and continued.
"We needed money, but our options were limited in the slums. Unless we resorted to stealing, and I never liked the idea, so we never did it. We briefly considered joining the Navy forces but quickly shelved the idea. We liked our freedom too much to take orders from people we thought we were stronger than. We also considered joining some of the in-town gangs, but seeing as a new head was mounted on spikes every day, we thought against it.
We were too young to die. We worked briefly in the harbors as members of ships' crews. But that didn't last long either. Kosher was terrible at sea; he would spend the entire time throwing up the contents of his stomach, even when it was empty. I worried that eventually he would be throwing up his insides as well, so we stopped that as well."
Khaller had a small smile on his face as he spoke of these fond memories. I noted the difference in his actions now and contrasted it against his actions when he spoke of more unpleasant ones. I actually quite enjoyed it. I was certain even he didn't know he was doing some of these things. It was intriguing.
"We exhausted all possible options, even considered leaving Cross Harbor. Kosher had no family left, not that they were dead or anything like that; they abandoned him in the slums as a child. He was born into a rich merchant family that lived in town, but he never told me which. He never cried, even when he was born, when he was flogged for wrongdoing, he never shed a single tear. This unnerved his parents so much that they dropped him in the slums. He told me he used to sneak into town and watch them. He had three sisters and a brother. Soon, their entire family packed up and left Cross Harbor. He never saw them again and never even tried to find them. So he joined The Takers, and within the first couple of months, he beat up their leader and took his position. When I asked him why, he said the man annoyed him."
Khaller chuckled.
"He had one last option, though: to join inland caravan groups as muscle. It's what we did on the ship crews we joined, to defend against pirates, but Kosher was always sea-sick. The inland caravans brought and took goods back to different cities in the kingdom. There were bandits and other dangers, so the caravan needed defense of personnel and goods. We were more than qualified for the job.
The problem was we couldn't just get jobs. Caravan muscles had a guild in town where jobs were placed, and credibility was a big factor in the guild's success. Being strong wasn't enough; there needed to be assurances that you were not joining for nefarious reasons.
"Apparently, before the formation of the guild, when anybody could just join a caravan as muscle, members of bandit groups would join caravans just to learn the value of the goods or even personnel, learn about the planned route, then their group would attack the caravan to either steal the goods or kidnap valuable people for ransom. The guild was formed as a result of this. You needed to be strong, yes, but you also needed to be trusted.
Another long-term guild member needed to vouch for you before you could be allowed to join. Even then, you would start with low-value caravans, and it would take at least a year before you started to get more high-profile jobs. Kosher and I had no such person to vouch for us. We barely knew anybody in town, not to mention someone who could vouch for us. This was why we initially discarded the idea. But we were out of options, and there was no harm in trying. So, we went to the guild one day to try our luck."