The Towns: Beyond Shelter Forest

Ynghadin (Minotaur) Part 1

All you knew was the guild.

The guild leader, Marcus, was a cruel, cynical man of mixed-orcish descent who had always made it very clear that he was not your father. The first time you asked who your parents were, he made the off-handed remark that they had sold you to the guild for a pouch of tobacco and two pints of beer. The second time you asked, he slapped you and told not to ask stupid questions. You didn't ask again.

You'd been the maid for the guild for most of your life, though you were locked inside a windowless closet that served as your room when the sun was up, and only permitted to do your work at night when most other people would be asleep. If you set foot out of the closet for a single second during the daytime, you'd be beaten to within an inch of your life. You didn't mind it working the night shift, though, despite the fact that you couldn't eat or relieve yourself until Marcus unlocked the door in the evening. Since the other guild members delighted in bullying and tormenting you, it was preferable to work when most of them were unconscious or out on jobs.

Marcus was strangely possessive of you and didn't want people seeing or interacting with you besides himself and his most trusted men, and even that was closely monitored by Marcus. You were not to speak to anyone other than Marcus, so most people, including many of the guild members, were under the impression that you couldn't speak at all. You had to wear a heavy cloak and boy's clothes far too large, stuffed with cloth, to hide your body shape, making you look more like an adult gnome than a human child. Marcus regularly shaved your head as well, telling you that he hated the color. Most of the guild, the ones who knew of you, believed you to be a boy rather than a girl, a misapprehension Marcus did not correct.

The guild dealt in information, and all of its members were angry, violent men who would do whatever was necessary to get what they wanted. You'd often witnessed the aftermath of such interrogations and had been made to clean up the blood, teeth, and body parts. You tried to close your heart to it and not think about it, but it was very hard to do, especially since you weren't even six years old the first time you'd been given the task of mopping up the remains.

Secretly, the guild was also quite adept at political kidnappings and would periodically abduct family members of high-ranking officials and dignitaries, sometimes for ransom, sometimes to cause unrest among the nobility or destabilize a certain family they felt had too much power, and sometimes they did it just for fun. They were discreet, careful, and masters of their craft: they never spoke around the captive, never revealed their faces, and the abductee had their hands tied and their eyes covered at all times. They often employed the use of drugs and potions to both incapacitate the victim as well as wipe their memory in the unlikely event they managed to escape.

You had always been tasked with feeding and caring for the abductee, who were kept in a special cell built into a crawl space in the basement. Very few ever got returned, even if the ransom was paid. You always felt sad when Marcus told you, with a glib smile, that you didn't need to feed the captive anymore, because it usually meant that they were either dead or had been sold into slavery abroad.

One evening when you were ten, you had awoken at your usual hour and were sitting on the threadbare blanket laid over a scattering of straw that served as your bed, waiting for Marcus to unlock your door so that you could get started cleaning, hoping to dodge as many of the guild members as you could.

Except the door never opened. You listened with your ear to the door and heard nothing. Daring to look out of the gap at the bottom of the door, you saw that the common area where most of the guild members hung out was completely empty, looking as though it had been cleared out in a hurry. There was even half eaten food, half drunk tankards, and coats left hanging on the back of chairs, abandoned in their haste.