Vaid Intro 1

--- The Wheel Turns ---
"Move yerself, ya big lummox!" The fat dockmaster growled, slapping the cudgel against a fat palm and glaring at Vaid. "C'mon we don't got all day! And I ain't payin' by the hour neither!"

Vaid Al'Hain's dark eyes flared angrily at Gerrick's rebuke. The dockmaster was large though, and he did look like he could handle himself no matter how much Vaid wanted to smash his face. And under Gerrick's fat there was muscle, Vaid knew. Yesterday, Vaid had seen the "dockmaster", as he was wont to call himself, bash a man's head in with that cudgel. It had made a sickening crunching sound and the man hadn't gotten up. A couple of Gerrick's toughs had dragged him down a narrow side alley and out of sight. The man was never seen again. Vaid thought Gerrick a murderer, but then again, Vaid never claimed to be a picture of sanctity himself.

Gerrick had named the man a thief. It could rightly be so. There seemed to be pleanty in Tanchico of late. Pride of the westlands or no, Tanchico, the capital of Tarabon, had fallen on hard times. Refugees from the troubles on the Almoth Plain had Tanchico bursting at its seems. Crime was rampant, and the Civil Watch seemed virtually nonexistant. Yes, it was a breeding ground for thieves and other unsavory types. And not a shortage of men with cudgels neither. Respectable folk couldn't take three steps into the city without getting acosted. No, Gerrick might look soft, Vaid knew, but he could be hard as a rock with that cudgel of his.

"But I could break that rock," Vaid muttered. "Easily break it. With...." He finished the thought inside his head. Some things were dangerous to speak outloud. With Saidin, the male side to the True Source, he finished. The tainted side. No, that wouldn't do. Gerrick bursting into flame on the spot, while oddly satisfying in Vaid's mind, would be... noticed. With an effort, Vaid pushed the anger into a harmless grimace, and grunting he hauled the large, round barrel and stacked it next to the others.

Vaid straightened and put his fist in the small of his back. After his back gave a satisfied pop, he looked back at Gerrick standing against the fading sun as it dipped into the Aryth ocean down river.

Light, but if Vaid had been alone, this job could have been done hours ago and he wouldn't have been this sweaty either. Such were the advantages, Vaid thought, of one who could channel. Advantages! Burn me, Vaid glowered at his own thought. What advantage? But I didn't ask for it! I didn't want it! There was little advantage to knowing you were fated to go mad! Knowing you could be hunted by the bloody White Tower. Advantage? Just as those at the Breaking of the World went mad. Blood and ashes! They broke the world then and I seem to break everything around me... first Truneas and then Donovian... both of them broken... and so easily too... Truneas lying still in the forest glade, the smell of his clothes burning, his skin blackened as he screamed. And Donovian grasping for air as the weave of air clamped around his windpipe slowly crushing the life out of him... slowly....

"Vaid!" Gerrick's voice from a few hundred paces away cut into Vaid's morbid thoughts and Vaid jerked reflexively. "You lazy, good der nuttin lout! Move it!"

Vaid nodded, bowed down with guilt and grief to even get angry. He brushed a hand against his eyes. He pushed away the thoughts of madness, of despair further down inside himself. Locking it away for now into some dark unkempt corner of his mind. Locking it far inside, Vaid's tall form hauled barrels and lost himself in the mindless, sweaty work. x

---

The sun had long since faded as Vaid trudged up the street to "The Drum and The Fig", a sour looking shack that passed for an inn here near the docks at Tanchico Bay. The bay where the river Andahar flowed and drained into the Aryth ocean. Tanchico... The city reminded Vaid of himself. On the outside it appeared whole, a picture of beauty and grandeur. But that fades on close inspection. Buildings were falling into disrepair, their paint and plaster peeling away in the usual humidity. It was fall... nearly winter back home, if he could call the small village he had grown up in 'home'. No, he had left that all behind.

Viad idly jingled the coins in his pocket. Gerrick didn't pay much, and it wasn't the best job in Tanchico, but at least it was a job and right now he didn't have any better prospects. After all, he had only been in Tanchico for a fortnight now. It was enough for him to pay for the rent and food in The Drum and The Fig and the rent on the stable where he kept Thunder his large black mare and his dog, Virtue.

"Get outa here ya wench!" A man's gruff voice called from somewhere around a corner that led towards The Drum and The Fig. "I ain't given you nuttin!"

"Please!" A small voice perhaps a woman's voice or a girl's called out in pleading tones, a voice torn with grief. "Please, my mother is dying... I need some herbs. I have the coin!"

"Bah! Not enough! Besides, I'm all out. Now, beat it, brat! Pester someone else!". A door slammed.

Vaid sighed. The world was not a kind place. He rounded the corner and from the pale orange glow from the windows of nearby homes could make out the slender form of a young teenage girl, standing alone outside a man's home. She turned and started walking away up the narrow, street, her quiet sobbing growing fainter.

"So... she has coin, does she?" A soft voice crooned from somewhere where the shadows gathered in dark pools from tall buildings on the cobble-stone street. A man's shape detached itself from those shadows and blocked her route. The girl gave a tiny yelp and started to walk backwards.

Vaid stopped for a moment, cautious and careful, peering into the darkness. Then he moved foward.

"Why, it looks like she might. After all, she's an honest girl ain't she?" A second voice answered in a sneer, and Vaid could make out the second smaller shape. "And maybe she can give a hungry man like me more than just a few paltry coin." The shape made a lewd gesture and the first laughed.

"Yeah... I haven't had me a girl in a long time!" The first voice said softly. Dangerously. Vaid could make out a pale gleam of steel from a small knife of some sort. "Come on lass... hand over the coin and then we'll move onto more...interesting things. Don't worry... I can be real gentle if you don't struggle" The two shapes pushed her out of sight into a dark side alley. A dog started barking in the distance, Vaid could barefly make out the sounds of the girl crying for help.