Lost Excerpts (Mianite)

Motanite 1

The song for this story is "Bleeding Out" by Imagine Dragons. If you recall Mot giving Dianite a dagger back in TL&F right after Dia's revival, good on you. :) I may have made some backstory for that... I know, me and backstory, right? XD Technically, this could stand on its own. Either way, I hope y'all enjoy!

*Mot's POV*

I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Story of my life. When that unusually wet spring followed that unbelievably mild winter, my village was closest to the swamp the creepers poured from like snowmelt down a mountain river. Everyone I knew and loved died that day, but I survived. Or so I thought. It wasn't until weeks later that I learned the burns on my right shoulder and side had been infected with creeper spores. I was condemned to a slow death where my loved ones' had been quick. As long as I kept the burns covered no one knew, and I managed to beg and find work as a transient hired hand when I was old enough.

My bad luck struck again when my boss at one farm saw me with my bandages off. I couldn't have stayed there much longer anyways; the infection that had started on my shoulder was spreading towards my neck and was getting harder and harder to hide. One of the farmhands who I might have called a friend gave me a scarf and wished me luck as I was "escorted" off the property.

The scarf worked for a while, and I found a job in a warehouse. The work was hard, but paid enough to keep food on the table and firewood close to hand in winter. Soon enough I fell into a routine; I became complacent. I should have known better. I'd made a habit of avoiding mirrors over the years, and so I was caught unawares when my right eye started turning an inky black around the edges. A few of my coworkers recognized the signs, and I was chased off again.

I'd rather not relive the following years, but they brought me to Urulu's back alleys on the day Dianite was visiting the desert metropolis. Why he came down that alley as I fought off a group of thugs who thought they could take my night's earnings was beyond me. Maybe he heard the fight or the explosion. Either way, when I recovered enough to register my surroundings, there he was. I must have been quite the sight, a scrawny, diseased kid in his late teens covered in soot, leaning against the sandstone wall with three crooks sprawled unconscious around him.

Whatever he saw, he was interested. At least, that's what I assumed after I blacked out and woke up in a fancy office with him reviewing paperwork at his desk. At first I feared he was some head honcho crime lord I'd p*ssed off by working outside their system. Yeah, I'd heard of Dianite, but I didn't know what a god looked like. That wasn't something you picked up in my line of work. When I tried to bolt and found the door locked, he assured me he meant me no harm.

Then I thought he might be one of those goodie two shoes types who'd brought me here to "nurse me back to health", because no medical establishment in their right mind would have me. I didn't want any pity or handouts. I'd learned not to trust them ages ago.

He proved me wrong again by offering me something I understood: a business proposition. A bodyguard shtick in exchange for living expenses, and he offered to halt the spread of my infection with his magic as a bonus. (Apparently being a god had its limits too; he couldn't reverse what was already done.) I was suspicious of some trap or catch, but in the end I couldn't resist such an offer. Scaring people sh*tless was something I could do just by looking at them, and when they didn't run, I fought. Easy enough, right? Nothing I hadn't done before, and better than a lot of things I had done.

That was how I wound up following Dianite and his caravan as they left town on their way to somewhere in the mountains. Dianite lived up to his end of the bargain, even going so far as to outfit me with leather gear for the trip. (There was no time to commission the blacksmith for more durable armor.) Not all of his followers and associates shared his tolerant point of view though. The merchants and other guards took a while to get used to me, and the horses never did. I quickly figured out to stay away from the skittish beasts and picked out which humans to avoid too. Even though I wasn't contagious or worsening anymore, once a monster, always a monster in their eyes.