Rundel: On Tobias
My name is Rundel, and I am not a nice man. My shop in the city of Trusis is ostensibly a hodgepodge of art, gear for adventurers, historical relics (note the lack of capitalization), and anything else that I either take a fancy to or think will fetch a good price. Like any other lizahn, I like to be comfortable, and that includes my shop. We’re all about survival, of course, and comfort is survival of the soul.
Like any other lizahn, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to become comfortable.
Illicit goods, illegal magical items and potions, anything passes my hands that can get me what I want. I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was a child, and I can tell you the price of every guard in the city, or how to distract them long enough for me to be safe. I know everything that happens in this city, even if my clawed fingers aren’t in it. And when someone crosses me? I eat well.
So, no. Despite my comforts, despite my cordial nature in my shop, I am not a nice man. And yet, I look at this boy...
A beggar, really. His story is as old as time. Parents worked for the nobles, upset the wrong one, and had trumped up charges placed on them. They “resisted” when the personal guards came to arrest them. It never even came to court. And a poor child, terrified of the noble district and determined to survive on the streets.
Now he scuttles around my shop, cleaning while I’m downstairs breaking someone who sought to steal from me. I’m teaching the whelp how to read, I’m fussing over if his clothes are comfortable enough for him. I’m getting him his own hovel to live in. Teaching him how to use a blade to defend himself and my shop.
Oh, I’m sure that the humans would call him a psychopath. Such rage, so willing to be honed into a cold, killer edge. I wouldn’t have taken him in otherwise, he wouldn’t work with my lifestyle. But even my heart isn’t unmoved by a child living on the streets. No child deserves such discomfort. And now that I found one who suits me, I see so many others who don’t.
I’m not a nice man. Not even by lizahn standards. I’m cruel, I’m shrewd, I’m almost dastardly.
But I think that it’s about time that the city had an orphanage. A child’s life is hard, dependent on the comfort of their parents, and if there are no parents, then there is no comfort. And that, my friend, is a travesty. One that I will not abide by now that I see it.