Mathys Harclay "Mat"

Art by Fausto

Human, Psionic Mind Sorcerer / Psiblade Warlock

Urchin

It all started with the voices. My mother told me that sometimes she heard voices coming from my room, when I was still an infant. The voices were talking in a language she did not understand but they were hurting her ears.

Then she realized those voices were coming from me. I couldn't even speak the Common tongue, but somehow I was able to utter terrible sillables that sent shivers running down her spine.

They brought me to the local church, the blessings helped. The voices stopped, and eventually I learned to speak like everyone else.

Then came the whispers. I must have been 6 years old. At dinner, my father would put his head in his hands "make it stop!" he would say, to no one in particular. "It's spitting my head in two!" and he would run away, his chair would bang on the floor, sometimes his food and the plates too.

Then for a few days he would look at me like it was my fault. He's always been a wise man, my father. A hard-worker, just like my mother.

Art by Caterina

A couple of years later my little brother was born. I think they needed that. I've been a brooding child, a silent one (well, apart from the voices and the whispers) for most of my life. They needed a bit of happiness.

And I liked that little guy. When he was alone in the room, inside his crib, I would make his little wooden toys fly about him, to make him laugh.

I thought it was the right thing to do. But I was wrong. One day, my father entered the room, and he saw me, he saw the wooden toys flying around the room.

I will never forget his eyes. His gaze. He was confused, in the beginning, but then I saw it. He was disgusted. No. Disappointed.

"What are you?" he asked me. It was a good question. What was I? My mother arrived, as the toys begun to drop to the floor. She run to the baby, took him into her arms. She looked at me, with hate "He's a monster, that's what he is!" I think she meant it.

"I'm sorry?" I said. I think I was sorry to be such a disappointment. Maybe we just needed to go to the church again.

"What are we going to do with you?" my father asked me. Or maybe he asked my mother. "We should send him away" she said. I saw my father thinking hard. Was he really considering that?

Art by Fausto

I remember I wished I could be in his mind, to know what he was thinking. And then I was there. It's difficult to remember now, but I opened a door in his thoughts, poured myself in, and I tried to stay there. With him.

Then I was out. And he was on the floor. Blood was coming out of his nose, his ears. His eyes. My mother was terrified. She knelt on the floor, clutching the baby. He started to cry.

I extended a hand, I tried to speak.

"NO!" she shouted. "Don't hurt him!"

I would never hurt my little brother, I'm sure she knew that. She was just scared, I understand that now.

I looked at my father again. He wasn't moving. At all.

A tear started going down my cheek, how strange. "I'm sorry" I said again. I took one of the little wooden toys. I moved to the door. "I really am".

And I run.

Death (session 32): Stabbed to death by the goons of a slaver's guild.