Kamanthian Characters: The Man with Anger Issues -- Ratchen

Back in April, the MC of The Kamanthian Chronicles: Catalystica was included in the Character Tour hosted by Ralene Burke  http://www.raleneburke.com/2013/04/character-tour-the-kamanthian-chronicle/

Although this was supposedly a one-time thing, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed right to give each of the Kamanthians a chance to have his/her say.  So, beginning with a repeat of Ratchen's "voice", the next few posts will feature the characters of Kamanthia, the wild and strange world where the Lair of Beasts is hidden in the canyon complex of the Kahall.

Ratchen:

"Prove to me, Ratchen. Bring me the horn of a unicorn so I know your love is true."

                                     

Kor, how I loved Anina. And how I loved our son, Scayne, who'd taken his first tottering steps only days before she kissed me and spoke those words. We'd been wed for just over a year, but neither of us had reached our second decade. Why did she do it? Why would she betray me?

"Bring me the horn of a unicorn..."

I was young and I believed such a beast roamed the forests of the northern Kamanthian ranges. She told me she'd spotted one just beyond the traveler's bell at Yerrick Pass . She lied.

A Regent patrol captured me, and they laughed as they shackled me. They said she'd reported I was poaching the dun fell deer.

Numbers matter in prison. Five years for poaching. Five years of hard labor in the Provincial quarry. Five years of springvine floggings. And when I protested innocence, when I defended myself from other prisoners, when the warder had a liomm headache, or when the prison consul wasn't  happy with his whore—then a three-day or week in solitary. In a rock cell— two paces from side to side, from front to back. Utter blackness but for a slot uncovered daily for food and water. Stifling. Cold. A living burial. I could scarcely breathe, but I could scream. I thought I would die. I didn't, but love did.

"Bring me the horn of a unicorn..."

I've hunted the width and breadth of Kamanthia for the last ten years. From the inland sea in the northeast, to the grasslands, to the Beacons of the western coast, to the deserts and deltas of the south. I worked on cargo ships for passage to the minor continent and along the island chains. Along the way, I earned a reputation: violent, amoral, black-hearted, unpredictable, mad. Maybe I deserved the epithets and curses aimed at me, but nothing, nothing was getting in the way of what I sought.

Then, in the great slash of canyons called the Kahall, I found the fabled Lair of Beasts.

Once I learn how to enter the Lair, I'll kill a unicorn. I'll bring Anina the horn she wanted badly enough to destroy our life together, to take my son from me as well as my freedom.

And I'll spear it through her treacherous heart.