Atherton Dram's page

Near the prow of a rickety little ferry stands a young man clad in a heavy duster. His head is inclined, his dark hair, dirty and unkempt from his long journey, falling in a curtain about his face. He looks lost in a world of his own as the boat slowly glides across the dark water. He shivers slightly in the cool, misty air, drawing the well-worn leather of his long duster closer to his body and looking up, staring out across the dark flotsam-strewn waters of the harbor. He feels like a lost soul, being ferried to his ultimate fate. Sighing, he slips a gloved hand into an inner pocket and briefly withdraws a battered pocket-watch, glancing from it to the city's dreary walls in what seems to be more of a habitual motion than anything else. Not for the first time, he wishes he knew more of why his path had brought him away from Eastport. But maybe it was better that he was leaving, if only to escape some of the memories of his old home.

He’s standing in his father’s shop, a young boy of no more than thirteen cleaning and closing for the day. He had to watch the shop alone, since his father had been too ill to leave his bed and they didn’t have the coin to hire anyone else to help them with it. Atherton knows his father isn’t long for the world, despite the man’s attempts to hide his worsening condition. The boy blinks away the tears that start to fill his eyes. Their poverty keeps them from being able to afford the medicine that might save the old man’s life. It isn’t fair. His father is a good man who’s never done anyone wrong. He doesn’t deserve to waste away, destitute, and Atherton doesn’t deserve to lose his only family.
Atherton checks the pocket watch his father has lent him and pushes away his self-pity, hurrying to close up the shop. It’s growing late and the young boy has an appointment to make. An appointment which might change things.

Once more he glances at the battered brass of his watch with a sigh. It strikes his sense of irony that a choice that seemed so simple all those years ago has brought him all the way here, riding a tiny ferry into the dreary harbor of Kothas.

It’s been a year since his fateful appointment that night, and life is going better for the young boy, although no longer is he the young boy who wept as he closed the shop alone. Atherton’s had to grow up fast. No longer does the shop sell simple curios and exotic wares, for there’s a steady traffic of stolen goods and illegal substances passing through the back room, and there’s gold passing across the counter, gold that he desperately needs. Climbing the stairs to his father’s room, he clutches the bottle of medicine that his illicitly earned gold has bought. He knows his father suspects something and wouldn’t approve, but something has to be done. The older man’s condition seems to be improving, albeit slowly. Atherton doesn’t regret a thing. His father dies later that night. The medicine was too little too late. The next day the young man stands over the freshly dug grave, the lone attendee of his father’s funeral. Returning to the shop, the grief-stricken boy feels lost and alone. But he can’t focus on the grief right now; he has an appointment with a smuggler captain within the hour. Atherton throws himself into his new line of work, escaping his grief in the back rooms of taverns and dark alleys of Eastport where he facilitates the movement of the stolen and illegal.

The well-dressed criminal pulls his long coat tighter about himself, a gloved hand reaching into one of the inner pockets to clasp the small band of metal that still rests in the leather’s recesses. He closes his eyes, trying to regain his composure and reign in the bittersweet memories that twist his normally controlled features with sorrow and anger.

It was a years later, on a cold spring day when Atherton met her. She was a poet and a musician who had come to Eastport via a merchant vessel to pursue fame and fortune. He was intrigued by the beautiful young woman from even the few minutes when the spoke while he waited to speak to the captain of the vessel that had brought her to Eastport. He captured her attention, and it wasn’t long before the two were lovers, living in the old quarters above the shop, which he kept as much of a hobby as it was a front for his criminal enterprises. Those proved to be the only regular argument between the young lovers. The blossoming bard didn’t approve of Atherton’s second life as a middle-man, but Atherton found that it was much harder to escape the city’s brutal underworld than it was to get drawn into it. Yet he does as Eria asks. He pays off his debts and returns favors owed. Although most of the underworld pays his departure from their cutthroat ranks little mind, one of Eastport’s kingpins takes it as a personal betrayal. And that’s when Atherton’s life takes another tragic turn for the worse.
Eria had stays at their small home above the shop, rehearsing a performance she was planning to give. Atherton spends that fateful day out, occupying himself with minor errands and practicing something of his own. He returns to his shop near sundown, fidgeting nervously with a trinket in one of the pockets of his coat. He notices that the door of the shop is unlocked, hanging slightly ajar. And its quiet. His heart begins to race even faster and he instinctively reaches for the dagger at his belt as he calls out his lover’s name. He doesn’t notice the blood on the floor until he’s almost to the stairs leading towards their residence. Atherton’s blood runs cold as he follows the drops of blood. He knows what he’ll find in the silent, dark back room of the shop, yet the young man refuses to believe it…until it no longer becomes possible for him to do so. She lays in a tangle of limbs and bloodied clothes, surrounded by a nimbus of dark red blood. He drops to his knees, cradling the cold, still body of his lover in his arms, softly calling her name. She’s far beyond answering, and Atherton weeps over her body for hours, until finally the numbness of shock overcomes him.
He barely remembers the following days, which pass by in a blur of cheap gin and sorrow. The only thing that keeps him from being suicidal is his rage. After a few days, he awakens from a drunken oblivion to find himself in the study of a certain criminal kingpin. His rage is fueled by the honeyed, sympathetic, encouraging words whispered in his ears, and when his lover’s murderer points him to a scapegoat, Atherton eagerly takes the offered blade and seeks his revenge. He kills the man in his sleep, brutally stabbing him again and again before making his escape. Blood-spattered Atherton staggers away from the scene, alone and broken, unknowingly indebted to his lover’s murderer.

A single tear falls down Atherton’s unshaven cheek, falling into the dark waters below the boat. He slowly regains control. He unclenches the hand holding the wedding band he never got to offer as he blinks back tears and swallows his rage. He can’t lose control. He has to stay focused. He forces himself to look towards the approaching walls of Korthos, his face set in grim, desperate determination.
Atherton Dram has a job to do.