Role

Chapter 3

I have never skulked around the tunnels of the Underdark, but as I approach
my home in Hamsah Mu'tazz, I find my body knows stealth. My footsteps fall
like rose petals on the grave. I hear the slosh of hastily guzzled water from
the city fountain in my belly.

I hear the nearly inaudible creak of floorboards beneath my feet, and I hear
the muffled voices of men inside my apartment.

Fear is so palpable within me that it slithers in my stomach like a thousand
eels trying to flee some ethereal phantom. I want to turn and run. To change
my name and go far away. Start a new life. But I cannot just abandon my
family. That's why I'm here, right? To save them? Or am I here because of the
Rage that blooms quietly in my depths?

I gently pull the handle of my door. Five men are within, rifling through my
belongings, looking for the gold I've earned roping the necks of the
condemned. As I suspected, it is Urdrurn Thul's Crows. Each man is a killer
with a wicked knife or cudgel hooked to his belt. I am unarmed.

I try to swallow. The fear settles into my bones, and I am stuck in time,
teetering between two futures. One where I slip away before I am seen - the
other which is likely very short.

Despite my trembling hands and racing heart, the Rage that took me from the
desert still smolders within. Hearing the voices of my adversaries, seeing
them toss aside my meager possessions like worthless rags, smelling their
stink again, and remembering their taunts as they left me naked in the desert
to die, stokes the fire of my wrath. I clench my fits into balls of hate and
bite down with such ferocity that my jaw trembles.

I boil with waves of righteous Rage that carry me to crash on the shores of
my fate. The fear from a short moment ago is incinerated. Lesser emotions
cannot touch me. I am righteous fury. Unvirtuous ideals have no place within
me. I am a raging torrent, cleansed of mortal weakness.

I am untouchable.

I slip forward. Two shocked men go down in unconscious heaps without even
reaching for weapons. I take a knife from one of them and continue my
assault.

The knife's hilt jolts in my hand as the blade carves through the leather
armor, bone, and flesh of the third man. I feel the heat of blood sluicing
down my arm. Hear the puking as it comes out of the man's mouth. I pull the
knife upward from his belly, holding his weapon hand down, and saw. I stop
shy of his heart so that he will continue to scream. I trip him and ride his
momentum down to the ground, rolling forward then upward to my feet. I land
in front of the next man.