Dante Madinger

Sometime in the Year of the Light, 36 LY
The city was cold as Dante made his way down a narrow street. An hour earlier, a night watchmen had reported a scuffle at a small residence and, being in control of this district as well as several others, he found himself bound by duty to visit it. He grimaced at the taste of the cold air, finding naught but wailing lads and huddled bodies to season it with. There was more tension than ever, he knew, and so much as a rat gnawing its way through the corpse of a week old panhandler could upset the night watch. He would have to deal with this quickly.

With him were two militia men of dubious competence, clinking along noisily in mail slip-ons and helmets which may have been two sizes large for either man. When they had met Dante at the bridge to his district, they had expected a gleaming figure of gilded steel and chain; Not a gruff, sallow man with tired eyes and a laboriously blackened claymore, nearly as tall as he was. He wore a thick coat made of furskin and, in the weakened torchlight, what appeared to be a mottled tunic.

Dante reached a dimly lit shack from which emanated a muffled argument: The perpetrator and victim, Dante assumed, were attempting to strike a deal; Dante listened to it with false interest. Once he had heard enough, he unceremoniously shoved open the door.

If the two peasants had been quarreling earlier, it was obvious who held the upper hand. The woman's dress had been ripped in two and was hanging limply off of her shoulders, her face puffy, nursing a blackened eye. The man was soaked through and smelled of whiskey, himself nursing a shoulder, which appeared to have shards of a broken bottle embedded within it. His face contained claw marks of little concern, although he certainly didn't think so.

“Which of you summoned a Witch Hunter?” asked Dante, silencing the man and woman both before either could tell their story.

Both of the peasants were afraid, suspicious of what the three imposing men would do. The man however reacted quicker.

“Dis broad hit me o'er deh shoulder wit me own booze, den threaten to a'light me on fir',” the man began, much to the horror of the woman. “I says, I says dat pretty evidence of... magick.”

The woman tried to speak, her face now a cocktail of hurt feelings and rage.

“Is this true, woman?” Dante spoke, now turning to the woman. The two men behind him picked at their short swords.

The woman tried to form the words to answer him, her lips moving without sound, her voice hoarse, drowning in a combination of fear and dread. “Yes,” she croaked, “but...”

Without bothering to listen to the rest of her tale, Dante motioned to the guard on his right to restrain the woman. The guard took from his pocket two thick pieces of rope, one of which he looped around the woman's wrists before she could resist. The wounded man grinned at this in a dark way, a sense of satisfaction seeping through his cracked lips.

The woman, resigned to her fate, did not resist as she was lead out of the shack. Dante nodded at the man, who had found another bottle of whiskey and had already begun to uncork it. He grinned appreciatively through alcohol-soaked gums at Dante.

Once the door to the shack had been closed, one of the guards whispered to Dante:

“With respect, sir, it seems like a domestic issue.”

“So it is,” Dante replied, nonchalantly, “Wait a few minutes, and arrest the man as well.”

“Sir?” the guard replied, confused.

“Do your duty,” Dante replied, hooding his head and turning to leave the district for another, “Take no chances. It is your law.”