Dark Horse

Just a Fool on a Hero's Journey

Rough around the edges and with a profanity on his lips right next to the remnants of a long extinguished rollie, cussing at your flustered face while he's getting his hands dirty to solve your problems, that's Horse.

I met him a long time ago in the vicinity of Rustend, somewhere between Mudslide and Danubin, in a time shortly before it fell to the Crows. I passed him by while he was doing repairs on his (t)rusty excuse for a ride; a smoking derelict of a pick-up truck that was crying salty tears of coolant over its broken rear-suspension by the side of the Crimson Road. I spotted him for an expert mechanic right away, cussing in the ditch, wearing a dirty blue-ish overall hanging from his oddly narrow shoulders, a tool's belt heavier than himself keeping his scrawny appearance together, apparently attempting to fix his motorized companion by verbally threatening it with a mouth dirtier than his blistered hands.

"Goodday, friend-stranger," I said in my best Narbenland-Babble-impersonation, "My name is Konstantin Nachtfalter, and I couldn't help but notice that this vehicle of yours might be in need of repairs beyond even the skilled hands of a master of the craft like you are. I would be delighted to lend a hand to a fellow traveler."

"Did you rotting Rifter just call me a Traveler? Are you saying I look like I'm one of your inbred brother-fathers, you filthy piece of scum?!" He spat on the ground before my mare's hooves and added some more culturally inappropriate curses and slurs that made me lean forward in the saddle and cover her ears. "Feck off and don't dare to come near me or I wipe that vulgar, impotent, slimy smile off your face with a rusty pipe wrench," he added, spitefully. "If you think I let you steal my valuables by rubbing up on me, you're truly the dumbest toad that ever ended up on the wrong side of a stick."

I would never forget those first ever words me and my friend exchanged that day. He spoke with a funny, harsh, rolling accent and a ring of anger in his voice. Weirdly high pitched around the vowels, but rough and raspy from inhaling too much fumes and drinking vodka stretched with gasoline. We eventually crashed at the Dancing Thug later that very day, my favorite pub in Mudslide, where I managed to convince taking him with my amicable personality and charming rhetoric. He was a great travel mate teaching me a never-ending well of derogative terms and displayed great prejudice towards the likes of me and anybody else we met on our way to and through Mudslide.
I couldn't blame him to be honest. Town's a total trash pit. 
But while he eventually succumbed to the unfair use of a hex, me as a Moth easily pulling the emotional strings of this mere human to my favor, he told me his reason for being on the road. Turned out, Dark Horse needed to find tools and parts to make repairs to Rustend's water plant. I knew Rustend by name only, one of the better off enclaves around here. Horse seemed to have some attachment to the folks there and was worried the Black Tongue Plague that was going around might eradicate town without electricity and fresh water supplies. I did sympathize with his noble cause, obviously, and grabbed by my Traveler honor, I did in fact steal all his valuables when he was drunk like a skunk, and made sure he succumbed to the specialty of the house, hazelnut schnapps with a dash of Schrecken-Essence.

If I had been unlucky, that'd have been the last time I ever saw Dark Horse. But what can I say?

Life is what happens when you have other plans and the Fates always seemed to have a cruel thing for me. 

---

Adventure Calls!

The second next day, I woke up lying in the muddy backyard of the Milk & Honey, the local brothel in Mudslide. With buzzing head and hazy memories of a night spent in good fun, I noticed a 'clicking' noise behind me and turned around, finding myself in the unfortunate position to stare down the barrel of a well oiled revolver. Following the lead of the gun's length with concern, my gaze met with ashen grey eyes fixed on me like a hawk on its prey.

"You will help me to get these parts and tools I need for the repairs of the water plant. And I won't let you out of my sight until I'm done with what I need to do," Horse said, calmly, and then, after a pause where I had opened my mouth to respond, casually added: "And while we do that you have the opportunity to convince me not to kill you."
"Look, I don't know what you are talking about, I'm sure this is a misunderstanding. You see, I do not remember even meeting you before! I just have one of those faces..."

I kept talking to distract him, reaching out with a hex to give my opponent a ghastly vision of their own death and demise. It's a neat trick, and almost always works. Humans aren't made to know too much about their half-life. With a smug grin I reached out with my aura to pull the strings of my opponent's fate, sure to send them to the ground in emotional shock, maybe even puking their heart out.
It was a good plan, it really was. Just. It was the wrong guy I was messing with.


When I touched his aura with mine, the vision slapped me in the face like a sledgehammer. 

I was in the middle of a battlefield, surrounded by death and destruction.

My world shook while I was cowering in a trench surrounded by screams. I was kneeling on the muddy, moldy ground, the stench of septic flesh and feces, gunpowder and garlic overwhelming me. Tight, sweaty bandages wrapped around my chest, unable to breath without sharp pain jousting through my ribcage, my flesh sore from the relentless grasp of dirty fabric. But every stab was liberating at the same time, everything was better than having to feel 'them'. These weird, heavy, lumps of flesh on me that didn't belong. The grey uniform felt good, just one and the same with everyone, nobody giving me weird looks or treating me like someone I was not. But was it worth all this? Caught in a loosing battle, against the Red Terror, clutching my rifle and losing faith. Looking at my brother who cowers exhausted and terrified alongside me, but is trying to smile at me nonetheless. But anything is better than being 'home'.

Then, a flash and a bang, seconds stretching out like hours as the artillery fire rips apart our defensive structure. Dust and debris raining down on me. My ears pop as reality is torn apart around us. Hellish figures storming in, wailing like ghosts. I throw away the rifle. It doesn't do anything against these demons anyways. Ears ringing, I turn around in high alert, looking for my brother. But he's gone. He's on the ground. The realization grabs me by the throat as I am falling to my knees to pull him back up, but instead, staring down on my red hands trying frantically to press down on a relentlessly bleeding wound, releasing hot blood and intestines from a body that is growing colder by the minute...The sharp, desperate pain of inevitable loss, as the only person that had ever seen me as who I am, is dying.

"Don't leave me here, brother," my own voice echoing through my skull. His lips are forming words. But his lungs' are penetrated, and only red bubbles emerge. I know what he's saying, though. 
"Fix your heart or die." As the body under my hands spasms and calms down, finally, nausea and guilt take over my world.
"So this is how I die," is all I'm thinking. 

When I came back to my senses I was the one reeling.


Irritated and still shaking, I looked up at him, not only hurting because of loss and war, but by the feeling of unbearable, lingering alienation towards my own body.
I looked up puzzled and insecure at the awkwardly young face of a man who seemed to have gathered a lifetime of grief in his pale eyes, but didn't even sport as much as a stubble on his chin after two nights without sleep. Whatever this guy had come to retrieve from this lowly thief, it was important enough for him to go right back to the place he died, emotionally. I could clearly sense the shadows haunting him. And fate had punished me for trying to mess with his cause.
Fate, and the hilt of his gun, that he now sent flying for the back of my neck with force. And again, the lights went out in my conscious-department.

---

Trials

When I came back to my senses, I found myself on a wild goose chase through Mudslide to acquire all the parts needed to repair the water plant in Rustend. I managed to convince Horse to put the gun down, eventually, and regretted every second of my waking life while my neck grew stiffer by the minute, from the impact of his pipe wrench earlier that day. But I felt something I hadn't felt in a long time.
Responsibility.
When we finally reached Rustend, it didn't take long to see that the people here didn't deserve Horse; but he couldn't care less about it. I learned that he had been living with these people for half a decade now, offering his services as a mechanic, a rare craft out here, to help them maintain their everyday tech items, the few motorized vehicles the people here could afford fueling and, most importantly the water plant they had inherited from generations past, but had no clue how to properly run and maintain.
So frankly. Horse saved their livelihoods by giving everything to fix the plant. And we did. But during the time we spent in Rustend, I couldn't help but feel resentment as to how they treated this man. They called him 'Lady Mister' to his face and even worse things behind his back, but took his offer to help without hesitation; muttering about how outrageous his price was while I knew that the parts and travel alone had cost him double of what he had asked from them for the repairs. But Horse wasn't mad at them. They didn't have any power over him.
And that's probably why they would never feel comfortable around him.

---

Catharsis

I sat down with him after a hard day's work, when the town's life had almost returned to normal. While teasing each other with reminiscent banter of how we first met, and had been at each others throat just two months ago, I felt the need to speak up:

"Horse, I am wondering. Don't you want to leave this place?"
"Leave?" He scoffed. "Why would I leave Rustend?"
"Because it's not your home."
"It is as much as anywhere else, Kostja. Why would you of all people talk like that, anyways? You don't have a place to call home. Why would it be any of your business to get nosey about mine?"
"Because I know what it means to feel home. Home is not a place. Home is were your people are. Your tribe. And these people, well. They simply ain't gonna be that for you."

He just stood there for a moment, breathing in fumes although his rollie had long been extinguished.
I felt the cold creeping in. I flinched and saw the shadows moving. His demons manifesting in the shades around us. His memories that I had seen, felt, intruded on. I shivered, but did nothing. From the resolve on his face I knew he could see them, too. But he had to pick this fight with reminiscence himself. I could tell he was used to it.

"What does make the sky turn pale?" He continued with an open question, slowly reaching into his pocket to produce a zippo from it. "What sends the Old Man round and round? Isn't it the never-ending circle of shame and guilt that keeps us all trapped in this golden cage - this divine garden of delights at the bottom of a hellish prison?"

He solemnly lit his cigarette stub back up and I could see his eyes catch the spark when the device snapped shut and the flame dancing on its tip died. "It is, my friend-stranger. And that's why I can't stop doing this. I had a brother once. I leaned on him to define who I am to validate myself. And when I lost him, I thought I had lost everything." The shadows receded as the light in his pale eyes caught up with his voice, drawing strength from the memory of a man he adored. "But I had to let him go and rely on myself to truly understand the world. I realized that, while he didn't deserve what happened to him, it wasn't my fault."

He paused and smiled. "What's important is, this stupid dog died in my arms, bled to death on a battlefield he only entered to protect me. The best thing I can do to honor his name and mine is to learn to live with the guilt and stay being courageous and curious about the world. And that's it. I'm just a man trying to be his best self. And I know how hard that is."

  Horse turned around and smiled at me, suddenly, with a power and spite and overwhelming sadness in his eyes, that left a lump in my throat.

"I learned that you can't fix people's hearts. But you can fix yours. So actually. I think you are right, Kostja. I think we should leave tomorrow. I think there's more people out there who can use my help than these suckers. And there's no reason for me to stay. They have to figure out the rest for themselves."
"That's beautiful," I said, staring at the starry void above, with a million worlds like ours, wincing at us.
"But there's one thing I've always wanted to ask you and I think it is now or never."
I took a deep breath, bracing myself before I uttered the words: "Are you really... hung like a Hor..."  

He knocked me out cold with the beer bottle he had been holding. I would feel that pain in my temples for days and the blood from the cut ruined my favorite shirt. But the look on his face was totally worth it.

---

Warnings:

Bad language, PTSD, Alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco, Death, Violence, Blood, Dysphoria, Transphobia.

Year of Birth

295 CoMA 38 Years old

Eyes

The greyest sky or the bluest dust. You decide.

Hair

Pale ash.

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Yes.

Height

Can comfortably lean on a donkey's rear when drunk

Weight

Fits comfortably in a hessian sack when drunk.

Aligned Organization

Alliance, the