The Rebirth of Young Mather

The story of Young Mathers and the beginning of his transformation into Dogwater, one of the realms most feared assassins.

The rain had not stopped for three days. Fat rain drops pounded continually on the tin roof of the dwelling that Young Mather shared with his father. And, as a matter-of-fact, he had not seen his father in three days either. The rain had started shortly after his father walked out of the door of their one room shack.

They lived in one of the rougher neighborhoods of the Poor Quarter and his father would often leave him alone for days at a time with no more than a handful of dried beans to eat and a gruff warning not to go outside or be subject to serious bodily harm when he returned home. The last time he disobeyed his father he was beaten unconscious and his ears bled periodically for a week afterwards.

To call where they lived a shack was stretching the truth. Although It was true that it had a semblance of four walls and a roof. The scraps of leather and random assortment of scavenged rags that could be seen jammed into cracks and plugged into holes made it more accurately resemble a scrap pile. It smelled of rat piss and human feces. The dirt floor was transformed into cold mud due to the nonstop rain over the past three days.

In his short seven years of life Young Mather didn't have much of a childhood, not that anyone in the Poor Quarter did but Young Mather's was more challenging than most. He never knew his mother, she died in childbirth. It was said that she was a whore but Young Mather wasn't quite sure he even knew what that word meant.

Young Mather didn't even have a name of his own. His father's name was Mather and he had been unconcerned with giving his infant son a proper name of his own. His father was often heard saying, "This pathetic piss ant isn't worth a bowl of dog water. Why does he need a name?".

The citizens on his block started to refer to him as Young Mather for lack of a more creative option. An unnamed down-and-out drifter with questionable motives and an apparent lost child of her own had seemingly taken pity of the mewling infant and took it upon herself to care for the boy, stopping by 2 or 3 times a day to nurse the infant.

Old man Mather was rarely home when she would stop by. However, when he was home, he pawed at her incessantly until she would relent and let him have his way with her before he headed out the door. It was usually over in less than a minute and the nanny knew she must endure for now.

Young Mather was lost in his thoughts, crunching on the last few of his dried beans, trying to recall the face of his impromptu nanny and the stories she would tell him about a man or maybe it was a god, he wasn't really sure, named Morsesh. He vaguely remembered that her stories would be terrifying and intriguing at the same time.

He had not seen her since he was just short of four years old. He was not sure if his memories were true memories or just what he remembered people had told him about her. He was certain he did remember the night she left. It was late one evening when she had told him she was no longer needed there and he would not see her again.

He was deep in his own memories and had just popped the last bean into his mouth when a deafening boom of thunder rattled the roof startling Young Mather from his thoughts.

He looked up just as a dagger sped past his face to thump deeply into the wall where he was sitting. Young Mather let out a yelp of surprise and glanced over to see his father standing in the doorway with his signature sneer of his face. Holding a dead rat and a bloodied and partially eaten pigeon.

Old man Mather was an imposing man in his more prosperous days before he fell into his drug habit and spent nearly all his days scraping up enough coin to turn around and spend his nights in one of the many drug dens that were found in Shadows Alley. Now he was a shell of his former self. Withered and weak. His skin, a pallid yellow, hung loosely on a frame of bones. His teeth were rotted and his voice was destroyed from years of inhaling harsh smoke

In his raspy and cracked voice, old man Mather pointed a gnarled finger at the boy and said, "we're celebrating tonight. I found a buyer for your worthless hide and you're going to be out of here by this time tomorrow, and I'll have enough coin to last me a month".

He continued, "I met a Gnoll down at Pete's Tavern when I was there to sell some information to Stone Pete. This Gnoll just happened to be looking for a boy your age to give to his son as a plaything."

A wicked twinkle lit up old man Mathers eyes as he said "plaything".

He held up the bloodied carcasses and let out a hoarse cackle. With his free hand he gestured at the pigeon as he commented, "I snatched this away from that feral orange cat from down the street".

Old man Mather narrowed his eyes threateningly and scowled at his son as he uttered a harsh warning, "If you burn my meal again there won't be much left of you when the buyer arrives and if that causes me to lose coins on your sale, well, I think you know what will happen". As he delivered the threat, Old man Mather clenched his fingers into a fist causing his knuckled to pop loudly.

Young Mather visibly trembled in terror. He knew well enough the penalty for causing his father any distress. He lived every day of his life in fear of punishment for slights real or imagined. He also knew if he performed his cooking duties adequately his father may allow him a portion of the meat. On these rare occasions he was allowed to eat the feet or sometimes even the heads.

His father’s earlier words suddenly registered and they hit him square in the chest, tears weld up in his eyes. He had heard many stories about the Gnolls and their viciousness. He even met a few on occasion when his father brought them over for business dealings. He knew too what is meant to be a Gnolls plaything. It is a well-documented fact that Gnolls will purchase young humans as a combat training tools for their own young.

Distracted by this revelation Young Mather was not prepared for when his father thrusts the carcasses into his trembling hands and they fell to the muddied floor of the shack. His father roared in white hot rage. Young Mather instinctively raised him arms over his head in a futile attempt to ward of the strikes that he knew were coming.

Right on cue, heavy thumping blows began to rain down on his gaunt and scraggly body. A tooth was rattled loose almost immediately as his mouth filled with blood, he felt the skin on the back of his head split open, and his eyes blurred with tears as his father continued his relentless beating.

The welcome relief of unconsciousness was beginning to envelope his mind when a booming voice echoed inside of his head and rattled his brain, "STAY AWAKE BOY!".

It was not his father’s voice. This voice was powerful and clear and spoke directly into his mind. The command jolted Young Mather back to full consciousness and the voice boomed another demand, "ON YOUR FEET BOY!".

Young Mather was powerless to defy this command and he scrabbled his hands along the wall trying to gain some semblance of balance and to get his feet under him. He grasped something smooth and metallic and recognized it as the dagger his father had thrown at him earlier.

He used the dagger as leverage to pull himself to a half kneeling position and it was at that moment when the rotting wood that held the dagger in place crumbled beneath the added weight and he fell forward to his hands and knees, dagger still in hand.

A sudden surge of unbridled rage coursed through his beaten and battered body as the voice in his head boomed one more time, "FINISH IT BOY!".

Through blood and tear blurred vision, Young Mather braced himself against the wall and shrieked a wail of fury as he thrust out with the dagger, straight for his father’s throat.

Time became irrelevant, Young Mather was unsure how long he had been standing over the corpse of his father as he watched the blood foam and bubble from the deep gash across his throat. Old man Mather had stopped making the unusual sucking sounds and now he just lay there, silently, with his eyes slowly glazing over.

The thud of the dagger, landing on the blood-soaked dirt floor as it slipped from his numb fingers woke Young Mather from his reverie. He looked up to see an old wizened man with a cruel looking, deeply wrinkled face staring down at him with a twisted smile.

Unafraid for the first time in his life, Young Mather stood straight and proud and he stared back directly at the old man that was standing before him.

With a confidence that he had previously lacked, Young Mather spoke boldly and directly to the point, "Who are you?" he queried.

The old man shifted his gaze appraisingly up and down at the boy standing before him, smiled faintly then nodded in approval.

The old man spoke in that same booming voice that had previously been echoing in Young Mathers skull, "I am Morsash, Lord of Murder and I am your father now."

Young Mather raised his chin even more and pulled his shoulders back, locking his eyes with Morsash, the rain suddenly stopped and a silence hung in the air. A sneer briefly crossed Young Mathers face and he replied loudly and proudly, "I am Dogwater."