SP McPherson

It started out well, but just kinda...died....

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The sword shattered on the hard rocks as Jarzin slammed it down on the rusting anvil. The fragments flew everywhere, one spinning off and slicing a gash in Jarzin’s unblemished face.
Smiling grimly, Jarzin lifted the hilt, surveying it. He looked around quietly, hs green eyes dilating. He glanced at the pit tat lay beside him, a pit that had been dug ceturies before to keep prisoners, enemies of the king. Now the king was gone, the lands in ruin, and the pit serving no purpose. Brandishing the sword before him, he stepped back, and hurled it into the deep pit. He heard it slice through the earth as it hit the bottom.
And the scavengers came. Dark, hooded creatures, that seemed to appear from the mist, stooped and dark. The approached the opposite side of the pit. To Jarzin’s eyes, there seemed to be at least seven.
Jarzin’s scarred hand unsheathed his dagger, watching the scavengers with cunning eyes. Each of the scavengers took alternating leaps into the pit, until all seven had landed deftly on the dirt floor of the cavernous pit.
Jarzin tensed, waiting. The scavengers all leapt for the blade at once, hissing at each other, each wanting to claim the blade as its own. Jarzin’s raven-black hair dripped with sweat as he slowly waited for the scavengers to be caught off guard.
The dwarfish creatures desired any metal. It was their fetish, an inherited addiction. They were centuries old, but they remained fresh and agile as the day they were born.
Seizing his opportunity, Jarzin leapt into the pit, jerking a dirk from its worn leather hilt on his belt. The scavengers turned towards him in surprise, a horrible cry echoing from beneath their shadowed hoods.
One scavenger dove at him, a sharp stone poised in its hand. Jarzin easily dodged the creature, and it stumbled past him, off-balance. Jarzin smiled and stepped over to the felled creature, digging his dagger through the scavenger’s back, piercing its heart.
With a sigh, the scavenger died, Jarzin snatched the rock from its limp hand. He turnedto hurl the rock at another scavenger, slicing a gash in its stomach. Black blood spilled out, and it collapsed, twitching in the last throes of death. It shrieked, the sound chilling Jarzin’s very soul.
Tarrying only for a moment to recover from the noise, Jarzin spun around, stabbing the third scavenger in the face with the dirk. The remaining four flew at him, hissing like angry Snakes. Snatching one, Jarzin cut its throat, and flung it at the other three, toppling them over like tenpins.
The fifth Scavenger flew at him with a shard of the sword, catching it in Jarzin’s arm. Screaming in pain, Jarzin stabbed the creature through the side, cutting a diagonal tunnel straight to its stomach and was rewarded with another horrid wail. The sixth was more careful, pulling the shattered sword from the dirt. It slashed it at him, ducking back before Jarzin could retribute.
"Damn!" Jarzin swore at himself, seeing the gap in his plan. He had the dirk. Grasping it so tight that blood his fingers turned white, Jarzin slung the dagger at the scavenger. The scavenger dodged it, and the seventh scavenger scooped it up. They both advanced slowly toward him.
"Jarzin!" yelled a voice from Heaven, it seemed. Scrambling up, Jarzin glanced upwards just in time to see a longsword spinning in a graceful arc toward him. He grasped it out of the air. In one fluid motion, he turned and decapitated the two scavengers before him. He sighed with relief, running a bloodstained sleeve across his forehead to wipe away the sweat.
He stepped forward, and examined the bodies of the scavengers. Around the bloody stump of a neck, a pendant necklace, so intricately designed. Jarzin carefully unfastened the latch of the necklace. Examining it, he sighed as he saw that no blood had touched the gold. Blood was a rust to metal as precious as this.
Jarzin carefully climbed the wall of the pit, using the sword and the dirk as handholds. The grim pendant hung from his neck, its spectrum of jewels reflecting off the sun. His dirk hung from his belt, and the blood of the scavengers still remained on its steel blade, rotting it slowly. His emerald eyes also flashed in the sun, burning with a flame of satisfaction.
He climbed the edge of the pit, and looked up into the kind, nervous eyes of The Father. "Thanks, Father, but I owe you nothing."
"I would expect not, sir, especially knowing you. I’m just doing God’s humble work." The Father was a stolen monk, who had lived for all his remembered life at the Emerubil Monastery, and though he was snatched away from Emerubil by Jarzin, he had continued serving God in any ways he could.
"God supports the slaughter of these scavengers, then?" Jarzin said.
"In some cases. Did you find it?"
"What’s around my neck, Father?" Jarzin asked impatiently.
He stood, looking at the Father. "Move." The command was simple, but the Father stood rooted to the spot, staring at the pendant around Jarzin’s neck.
"That... thing around your neck! Take it off!"
"That’s what I killed all those scavengers for, idiot!"
"I didn’t know that was what you sought. That pendant! It is the work of Satan!"
Jarzin nodded. "I am sorry to say I know that, Father. But it will serve my purpose."
"Are you insane?" The father yelped. "That–thing–will always turn against you! No matter what your intentions!"
Jarzin sneered. "Well, we’ll see if that myth is true."