4

Lieutenant Charles Mason, 1^st Regiment, in service of the Blackwater Guard for five years, took over the overseeing of Southside after three months of service. His dedication to eradicating the crime on the streets of Backwash led him to be promoted to Lieutenant eighteen months after he became Captain, during which time he dropped the crime rate by fifteen-percent in Southside. His Lieutenant status meant he was put in charge of half of the city’s Guard, taking both Southside and the Lower Quarters into his control. The man had spent the next three years of his life seeking out the lowest of the low, the worst of the bunch, the biggest, meanest and scariest criminals the colossal city of Blackwater had to offer. And he hated it.

 

Backwash. It’s what they call the poorest parts of Blackwater. It takes up a third of Southside, the south-east section and carries its plague across to almost all of the Lower Quarters, excluding the northernmost side of the docks. The buildings in Backwash were poorly crafted and many. Tiny wooden shacks took up the area of the lower sides of the docks, housing possibly thousands of people all living in poverty. Most of the older stone buildings were crumbling and boarded up. The few that were still liveable were now used as squats for large families and other homeless groups. Any other houses that still had half-intact roofs were where most of the city’s organised-crime would stem. Brothels, drug dens, human trafficking. Backwash was ripe with it all. But the worst thing about a poor city with a big dock " smuggling. Mason knew some of the things that had been brought in and out of Blackwater through the docks in Southside. It was what he didn’t know about that really bothered him. There was no regimented way to police who came in and out of the docks in Southside; any unknown criminal could waltz in or out of Blackwater without so much as a stop and search.

 

Mason was coming to the last hour of his night shift when he received the news concerning the disappearance of Prince Ra’Lek Ebonheart and the murder of his bride-to-be, Princess Aryanna Kenway. The first thing he thought of when he received the news was his wife, Celia. It had been their seventeenth wedding anniversary since midnight that night. She was awake and waiting for him to come home so they could share breakfast at dawn. It was a tradition they had shared since their first breakfast together, when they had eaten salmon and biscuits in the lighthouse that overlooks the docks in the Sky District. They had snuck into it the night before and both spent the whole night awake, telling ghost-stories and star-gazing.

 

That was before, though, back when Mason didn’t even know the area of Backwash even existed. That most of those ghost stories actually turned out to be true, or worse. Now the city of Blackwater just felt like a battlefield, a warzone for the fight between good and evil. That’s why he had Mason Manor built for him, his wife and their daughter. It was far enough out of Blackwater to keep them safe from the criminals within the city’s walls but still close enough to get protection from the Guards in the surrounding villages and settlements outside the city.

 

But he was in the city. And the Prince has gone missing. And the Princess has been murdered. As this moment of unfortunate and terrible clarity hit him, he heard a deafening boom, and turned round to see an enormous fireball erupt into the sky not two blocks from where he was standing, on Mill Lane. The fireball mushroomed over the houses and high into the air then disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared. Mason was momentarily stunned, he didn’t move until he heard the screams that could only be coming from men who are burning to death. He mounted his horse, Horsey (a name chosen by his infant daughter) and galloped toward the scene.

 

As he turned the corner onto Mill Lane he saw Lieutenant Haarstart pinning a young boy to the floor amongst the charred remains of three Guards. Mason drew his repeater-hand-crossbow and his longsword immediately.
“What in the Hells are you doing, Lieutenant?! Get off that child at once!” he shouted. Haarstart had the boy by the throat now, choking him Mason could hear him gasping for air.
“This child is a monster! He just killed three of my men!” Lieutenant Haarstart punched the boy in the face. It knocked him out. Mason fired a bolt at Haarstart that removed a small amount of hair from the left side of his moustache. It stopped him dead in his tracks and he turned to look at Mason.
“You are not going to kill a child while I’m standing here, old man. Drop the boy.” Mason’s tone was flat. Lieutenant Haarstart let go of the boy, who slumped to the floor, and walked towards Mason, with anvil-like fists clenched and bare.
“Who do you think you are, Mason? You threaten me? Me? Don’t you know who I fucki…” Another crossbow bolt fired through the other side of his ridiculous, over-sized moustache.
“You aren’t even supposed to be here, Haarstart. Unfortunately, Backwash is my territory this evening. Weren’t you assigned to Topside?”
“You’re a f*****g a*****e.” Lieutenant Haarstart spat. “They called off the search, didn’t tell me why.”
“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing on my turf, Lieutenant. Nor why I just saw an enormous fireball erupt into the sky like dragon fire.”
“That boy!” Lieutenant Haarstart pointed at the child lying unconscious in the centre a smouldering black circle. “He’s some kind of crazy fire-mage, or something, I don’t know! It’s like he just blew up the place.”
“Fine. You can go now, Lieutenant. I will take this boy into custody, as this is, as I said, my turf.” With that Mason sheathed his longsword and cantered past the enraged dwarf, over to the boy. He looked down at the child, repeater-crossbow in hand and studied him. He didn’t look like a powerful fire mage, fire mages usually have burns all over their hands, fingertips burnt charcoal black. This child was without any burns on his body. He jumped down from Horsey, holstered his weapon and picked up the boy.

“Stop! Please, don’t take my brother!” He was shocked to see a very, small girl appear as if from nowhere right in front of him. She was very small and cute, with a heart-shaped face; she almost looked like his daughter, except for her blonde hair and the massive burn scar over her eyes disfiguring her face. The poor girl was blind. She gingerly walked towards him, shaking, terrified. He wanted to hug the poor thing. She looked like she hadn’t had a proper meal in weeks.
“This boy is your brother?”
She nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Rose.”
“Rose, you and your brother are going to come with me,” He smiled reassuringly at her, and then stopped, when he remembered that she couldn’t see him. “I’m going to take you somewhere safe.” She didn’t answer right away, she just kept on walking towards him. He bent down and gently rested the boy on the floor. She reached out her hand and traced it along his face.
“Okay, I think… I think that’s a good idea,” she eventually said. “Just… don’t let him hurt my brother anymore, please?”
“I won’t, don’t worry. Now quickly, get on my horse. We need to get out of here before a clean-up crew arrives.”
“Where are we going.”
“I’m taking you to Mason Manor, it’s my home, just outside the walls of Blackwater. My wife should have breakfast waiting, and I’m getting hungry. You look like you could do with a decent meal and a good day’s rest.” With that he lifted her brother up onto Horsey’s backside, and then lifted Rose up with himself and put her on his lap. He turned Horsey around to head home and saw Harstaart with his wonky-moustache, outraged and standing right in his path.
“Careful, old man, you haven’t got much hair left for me to take off.” Mason said. He was pretty sure he saw actual steam coming from the dwarf’s ears, but he begrudgingly moved to the side and let them through, grumbling obscenities.
“Awh don’t be like that,” Mason laughed, as Horsey started to gallop. “I think it looks better that way anyway!”
“F**k you, Charles. F**k you!” he called out. But it was too late; Mason and the children were already gone.