Chapter Text
When I was a child, I heard voices
Some would sing and some would scream
You soon find you have few choices
I learned the voices died with me
When I was a child, I'd sit for hours
Staring into open flame
Something in it had a power
Could barely tear my eyes away
All you have is your fire
And the place you need to reach
Don't you ever tame your demons
But always keep 'em on a leash
When I was 16, my senses fooled me
Thought gasoline was on my clothes
I knew that something would always rule me
I knew the scent was mine alone
All you have is your fire
And the place you need to reach
Don't you ever tame your demons
But always keep 'em on a leash
When I was a man I thought it ended
When I knew love's perfect ache
But my peace has always depended
On all the ashes in my wake
All you have is your fire
And the place you need to reach
Don't you ever tame your demons
But always keep 'em on a leash
Everything is in flames. Breathing is really painful and all Thorfinn thinks about is escaping from here. He starts to scream for help, to his father, to his mother, to anyone, but no one answers. Something hurts but he can't tell what it is. Suddenly, he hears laughing from outside the house and feels some hope. They must be all outside the house, waiting for me to get out on my own already. He gets up with difficulty and finds out that his right leg has a small hole above his knee from where a lot of blood pours out.
“Ah, that's why it hurts so much…” It’s really difficult to think. His mind feels like an overfilled candle, and his thoughts are dripping and scattering like melted wax.
Deciding to follow his resolve to finally get out of the house, he starts slumping out of the smoke-filled corridor and towards the door. He reaches the end of the corridor in no time, only to find almost 30 bodies stretched out in uncomfortable positions and covered in blood on the adjacent rooms. He pauses and looks at them. Then, he scans the bodies and approaches them because he doesn’t get scared. He doesn’t get scared because he recognizes them. All of them are family members or new members of the group. All of them are people who smiled at him or petted his head at some point in time, and now they are all static, cold. Not people anymore, but dead flesh, dead bodies. He can’t take it anymore and throws up in front of one of them. After he wipes his mouth with his hands, he notices the tears that fall from his cheeks and into the floor. All of them... They left me alone...Wait, not all of them. Dad…. My father isn’t here… In that moment, more laughing and shouts are heard from outside and suddenly feeling he might not be alone anymore, he sprints. He runs as well as he can with the bullet wound on his leg, avoiding any of the bodies on the floor, and pushes the door outside open.
A pause.
A thought.
This can’t be real.
What he finds outside is no better than what was inside and he instantly regrets ever coming out.
There is a circle of men in black suits, all of them with guns in their hands except for one. He has a big bloody machete in one hand and a severed arm in the other. Finally, in the middle of the circle lays his father, missing both of his arms and kneeling painfully in front of this man. Most of the other men were laughing until the moment Thorfinn steps outside, but now they are looking at him with amused and sadistic eyes.
"Hey kid, How come you're alive?" The man with the machete approaches him slowly while the other men snicker and relax, seeing he's just a kid, while anticipating the fun. "And how come you're stupid enough to come directly to us? Do you want to die that badly, brat?"
Thorfinn feels the air escaping his lungs at the same time the dread starts spreading inside him. He is paralyzed and looks at his father for help but seeing his fathers face, looking at him with an even more horrified expression than the one he has in his own face, just serves to leave him feeling absolutely helpless.
"Pl..ease... don't... I'll do anything...I swear... just not him! Leave him alone!" His father gets up and starts shaking his body until a small sword falls out of his robes to the floor below him. Then, he kneels again until his face is at its level and takes the sword with his mouth, his teeth pressing hard on the blade, making a disgusting sound.
"Hey..look..."
"what the fuck man.. with those injuries... and he still wants to fight the boss? Unbelievable."
Ignoring the other men's comments, Thorfinn's father gets close to the man who hurt him while looking only at Thorfinn's shaking figure.
"I don't want to keep fighting with you, so drop that small knife before I change my mind." The boss takes a step towards him and gets away from the boy. "I won't hurt your kid, but in exchange, you will be left completely naked and do a little dance for us. Oh, and your head needs to roll." He ends the sentence with a smirk as he continues to get closer to the injured man, ignoring Thorfinn's presence.
More laughing bursts from the group of men.
A minute or two after the boss says that, Thorfinn's father lets the sword fall from his mouth and with all the seriousness his eyes were capable of, looks at the boss and asks "May I know your name?"
At which the boss replies "Just Askeladd is fine, your don't need to know what group we belong to."
"Very well, Askeladd, If you and all your men swear not to lay a finger on my son, I will do what you ask."
"No way... Are you serious? I swear, I swear. Come on, men! You swear too" The incredulity in his voice at the beginning was relaced with cold seriousness.
A chorus of "I swear"'s erupts from the crowd and Thorfinn cannot stay put any longer. The cold of the terror he is feeling being replaced with hot anger.
"NO! Dad... you...can't" Thorfinn pleads with all his might to his father.
"Thorfinn you.. You have to be strong now, okay? This is what it means to be strong. You don't need a sword or a gun to be strong, you don't need to fight. Just be strong for me."
Everything that happens from this moment on is blurred on Thorfinn's mind.
One of the men steps forward to help the man out of his clothes. When he is naked, he begins moving around clumsily and trying to dance. The stumps in his arms are bleeding profussely and the bloodloss soon makes him reach his limit. He doesn't hold out for long before he falls face-first in the muddy grass of the floor. As the man lays there, Askeladd goes down to him and shots him two times in the head.
While all of this happens, not a single person present makes a sound, not even laughs or tasteless insults. Everyone feels overwhelmed by the strengh the man before them displayed. Everyone is still, enraptured in a moment that does not feel real. Everyone except Thorfinn, who drops to the floor besides his father and starts to cry. His screams seem to break the entraced state of the other men and just as they prepare to leave the scene, seeming satisfied with the result, Thorfinn gets up with a sudden movement and glares at them.
"HOW DARE YOU! How dare you kill father! HOW DARE YOU!" He takes the small sword his father left on the floor in his small hands. The weight feels alien to him but he grips it with all the force he can muster. He looks at the men before him with eyes full of hatred and continues screaming. "Now I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'LL KILL YOUUUUU!"
"Holy..."
"He's just a boy, but...Look... Look at his eyes..."
Thorfinn was painfully aware that if even his father didn't have a chance fighting with those men, a twelve year old kid would be far less able to. The pain he feels everywhere only increases when he advances towards the man who shot his father. The injury on his leg keeps bleeding and he can't walk straight. Some part of him feels the pressure of avenging his father, restoring his honor. Some other part of him is aware of what exactly he is doing and why. He is alone now, and he will have to live for the rest of his life with the memory of his father humiliating himself just to save him. Would it be better to be killed now, and disappear from everything? To leave all of this behind as a bad dream and never wake up again? His thoughts are interrupted when Askeladd speaks.
"Look kid, what your father did was really brave, and I will respect his will. I won't touch a hair on your head, so leave it. Scram already." Askeladd wasn't a man of ethics, not with his line of work, but he knew when to recognize a true respectable man when he found one. He liked torturing them, of course, but now that he was dead there was really no reason to continue to do so.
That is when Thorfinn makes the resolution in his head. To kill this man will be his purpose in life, the engine that fuels his desire to live. Until he kills this man, he can't die. With the mission of killing this man, his life will continue on and his father won't have sacrificed anything for nothing. But where can I go to? I need to learn how to fight if I want to defeat him...
When he is a just a step behind Askeladd, he finally gathers the courage to get it out.
"Let me join your group."