The Seven Stages of Sociopathy (II)

Age: 1

The woman was half-of-half and half-of-like-not-father. She was tall, thin, built in every way that seemed physically perfect, dressed in dusk and shawls and blood. She had both hands above his face, poised to sink daggers into both his eyes. Death-touched blades, razor-sharp, black as the obsidian they were made of and jaggedly vicious enough that he could only see them as beautiful. She would stab down as soon as her chanting was finished, and her face would be even more radiant in exultation then, delighting in the most complex premeditated death that he had even discerned when witnessing someone about to kill someone else. A rare thing, given the care and shelter provided by Mother and Not-Father (but call me father anyway, little one, whenever you figure out how to do anything but blubber, and I may just stop snickering at your attempts to intimidate me with that long stare of yours).

Shelter. He hadn't had that since many cries, gasps, long silences and wails ago. The tall, dark ceiling of whatever place they were in now didn't count. Wails that came as much from the discomfort of the separation, rush and running as from being denied a clear view of lash, lunge, strike, stab, slay, flash, fire that he himself only ever managed to imagine, small, weak and sloppy like a snail as he was. But imagine and fantasize he did, each time he was faced with something that could bring an end, like blades and cloth and drink and words.

Frequent were flashes that revealed the path to the end of everything and anything, but as many as they were they were fleeting and quick. But sometimes they lasted long enough for him to notice the difference between what he could know and think during the flashes and what he could know and think outside the flashes. Or, rather, didn't and couldn't.

This was more than a flash, he supposed. It was long and intense, enough that he couldn't help but criticise the entire thing, as if his mind was clearer and faster the longer the murder went on. As far as ways to force a death, it was slow, loud, wordy and overly complicated. He'd already come up with over a dozen different ways to finish the job, and twice as many to force the end on the woman herself. Knife width, length and weight: estimated. Woman's height, poise and distance: measured. Bare patches and weak seams in her garments: identified. Even her body bared every weak point to his sight, and the red beneath her skin guided his view to each and every surface vein, though he didn't have it in him to look at those. The big, fleshy thing behind her heaving chest pouches was more interesting.

It was dreadfully out of position and inefficient compared to how the woman looked on the outside. The pump would have worked better in the centre of her chest and if her air bags were symmetrically placed, even if both of the bottom thirds would have had to be a bit smaller. At least she'd have both thirds instead of just one.

On the other hand, stabbing it would be harder, what with the middle chest bone being right on top of the flesh pump than-

Roaring thunder, fire, smoke and shouts from all corners. Death practically filled the dimness with loud, wonderful suddenness as wood, metal, fire and all sorts of power cascaded into that place from the doors that had just been shattered in.

The next hundred heartbeats were of screams, shouts, outrage, self-righteousness, death, death and more death, both delivered and evaded by but half a handful of little and not so little bodies of flesh and same-as-him-but-not-really-as-much-overall. It was during the worst of it that Not-Father appeared, tall, robed and beardy as ever, but different, less and more than usual. Death surrounded and followed him, arresting infant eyes as he petrified and shattered the woman that fancied herself good at killing babies, bairns and toddlers but really wasn't.

"Oh, thank Mystra," Not-Father's words barely strung together but his voice hadn't been slain yet. "You're alright, Cyrus. You're still alright."

The longest and most intense flash of self-awareness visited Cyrus then, and he couldn't help but stare and blink at Not-Father as his mind instantly filled with the knowledge of what the not-quite-close-to-death man had done in the days since Cyrus was pried from the dusty remains of his disintegrated mother.

The one-year-old looked at Gorion as if he'd seen him for the first time, but he didn't see him at all. For one instant, his mind saw only the swift, premeditated, decisive, completely thorough, utterly unforgiving and maximally efficient method in which the man had galvanised his whatever-they-were into coming to help him track down and murder each and every one of the people there.

The moment passed, Gorion and his cohort ran amidst shaky, noisy chaos, and Cyrus's mind begun to settle back into safe mindlessness, save for one emotion that remained and would return every time he laid eyes on his Father.

It could not be anything but admiration.