The fire in the rusty lantern on the wall danced softly, leaving the room dimly lit. Small shadows grew and crept by the minute amidst the silence as Eddie reeled in his thoughts, trying to fight back the trauma that hit him so.
Thud!
He felt a sudden pulse strike through his head as the haunting memory he had on that battlefield flashed in his mind, over and over again.
Eddie fell off the wooden chair and curled on the floor, clenching his hands on his head tightly as if to compress the echoes of war, gunshots, and bomb blasts that he could hear from a distance.
" Argh!" He growled horridly, digging his nails on his face. Lines of deep cut ran across his face as a result, and streaks of blood flowed down his cheek, dripping on the cratered wooden floorboard.
His face contorted terribly as images continued to flash through his mind.
Severed heads, torn limbs, and blood splattered everywhere... His vision was filled with these images.
Eddie was in severe agony, and he only wished that it would all go away. These memories...
He mostly had flashbacks of how he'd witnessed a comrade in war, whose limbs and torso had been torn apart by a bombshell strike, rise back to life in one piece.
Bang!
"No!" Eddie struck a fist on the floorboard, causing the wooden piece to creak.
'I must have been hallucinating back then... After all, S-Sergeant Combs was dead. There is no way... He died! Yes, yes. That's what happened!' Eddie muttered, as if to convince himself, nodding incessantly in the process like a mad man.
'Potion! Potion!' He suddenly remembered.
He hurriedly crawled to the worn cabinet on the right side of the room. He drew the drawer and quickly grabbed the small round shaped glass vial inside, only to find that he'd emptied the content.
" No! no! no!" Eddie dropped the empty vial and rummaged through the row of drawers in search of a potion, unwilling to believe that he had none left. His rough hair bounced about in panic as he shook his head in denial.
He needed it right now!
" No!" When he was done searching through the empty drawers, Eddie heaved one final sigh of defeat, finally coming to realize that he was out of potions.
Desperate, he ran towards the drawer beside his bed and hurried to count some money tokens.
The currency in the Triunian Empire are divided into Lakht, Kranc, Kapper, and Stol. Lakht, being gold tokens, are the highest denomination, while Krancs and Kappers are silver and copper tokens respectively. 1 Lakht is constituent of 25 Krancs, while 10 Kappers equals a Kranc.
Stols were the new paper currency that are now in distribution in the civilized Brivania Kingdom, and 100 of those were exchanged for 2 Krancs 5 Kappers.
Since potions were quite expensive in the current revolutionary aeon, Eddie who was a regular buyer of a dose knew just how much they cost.
Out of 13 Kapper tokens he had left from his savings of 187 Stols-- Out of which he rented and had been living off of for the past 4 months. Eddie counted 7 Kappers, leaving 6 to live by for the rest of the week.
4 kappers was just the exact amount he needed for a vial, and the other 3 was to get some barley breads from the bakery on the way back.
He rushed to the side of the room to grab his coat and hat off the nail on the wall, to step outside.
He didn't have much expenses to cover for a carriage, not that he needed any.
He grabbed his boots, flicked on his patched coat, and donned his round hat on his way out.
But just as he stepped out of the door, Eddie's nose was hit by the acrid, and smoky air in the corridor.
The blemished corridor was quite dark due to the lack of windows, and the gas lamps were all broken for obvious reasons.
The first thing Eddie saw when he stepped out of his room was a fair, scarred thigh straddled by dirty hands.
By the side of the door to his room, two people cuddled. The smacking noises of kisses, the half-nakedness of both, and the soft moans inevitably fell to Eddie's sight and hearing. He was forced to pause for a second.
However, seeing that these two did not seem to care as much, Eddie forced himself to look away and locked the door to his apartment before rushing off. He thought to mumble an "excuse me" out of politeness, but that idea could get him sucker punched.
He still wasn't used to the frugal nature of the place, he's only been there a month or thereabout.
The corridor was cramped with a few people. Some passed out with bottles in hands, some smoking, while others engaged in all sorts of vulgar and nefarious activities. Most of them weren't even residents of the cottage, they merely crashed the night since no one could stop them.
Eddie was frustrated, but he couldn't do anything about it.
This was a common sight after all, since the building was full of lawless people; Prostitutes, and outlaws alike.
Although it was a rental building, there were almost no regard for the next person. Each person had leeway over the other, and no complaints were to be heard. Though, sometimes, quarrels often broke out.
This was the slums after all.
Eddie nodded away as he walked past in a slump, his gaze fixated on the damp floor full of small craters and fissures and his eyes hidden away.
Though no one would care, Eddie couldn't risk anyone seeing the mark in his eyes. Even if they appeared only after those horrid nightmares.
Eddie made along the corridor, his steps wobbly and gaiting as he avoided stepping on the people around.
Making his way down the narrow stairs, Eddie circled around a little girl in rags sitting by the bottom of the stairs. The girl just stared at a distance, the liveliness of a kid seemed beaten out of her by the harsh nature of this part of the world she was born in.
Eddie wasn't a savior. He walked past, sauntering towards the back entrance of the tenement.
His body tweaked at every step he took, his breath haggard and bouncy as his hair.
Creak!
Once he got outside, Eddie arrived at the back alley through the backdoor. He took sharp breaths of the abundant yet, stinky air before pressing down on his hat and crossing over to the alleyway ahead.
The night in the slums were always dangerous, but it was the most perfect for vices.
The Holy Triunian Kingdom barred all sorts of potion-making as acts of witchcraft, and heresy; a crime punishable by burning at the stake!
As such, it was an illegal trade. Eddie had to be careful...
As he walked down the alleyway infested with ragged bums, Eddie tucked his hands in his pockets, clasping his 7 Kappers in place so as to avoid giving himself away to pickpockets and mobs from their jingling.
He busted to the next street at the end of the alleyway and turned left, heading towards the pub in the distance.
In an opposite ally to the street Eddie took, several hooded figures emerged from the darkness, cloaked in dark hooded robes. One of them removed his hood, revealing an excruciatingly smiling, scarred face that seemed flushed with pain as his dark green eyes that seemed bloodied watched Eddie.
" Can't hide forever now can you, harbinger?"