Roland Creev grew up in El’ Jorel and the only belongings to his name were the rags he wrapped himself in for modesty. His mother worshipped the nature of Enlightenment and sought to achieve godliness via honesty and humility.
Roland did not share his mother’s fidelity towards any higher power and did what he needed to keep them alive. And though she prayed all day for truth and virtue, his mother never asked where Roland got the bread.
Roland Creev was a thief, but a noble one.
Noble is the one who only takes for the weak.
The days move quickly when you are hungry, and as they begin to speed up, the hungrier you get and the more you slow down. It was one of these such days that Roland found himself alone for the first time.
His mother’s eyes fluttered even as her parched and cracked lips still quivered with devotion.
Roland held her head in his lap. “If only my tears could quench your thirst,” he said.
His mother remained unhearing and finally laid still.
It was the first time Roland stole not for the living, but to honour the dead. He wrapped his mother in a thin, linen sheet and laid her down in a straw-lined ox cart. He began to pull it himself towards the outskirts of the city.
Roland walked for two days to a grove they had visited before his father disappeared when he was just a boy. He drank from the natural springs, which were filled with muddied, but clean, water. The small pool was enough to feed the vegetation which grew there but not enough for fruits or berries to sustain life. He buried his mother beneath a lemon tree that hadn’t yet bloomed and began his journey back toward the city.
He did not bother to return the ox cart.
It had been a week since he left, and Roland had not eaten.
The sky became kaleidoscopic as the Moon and Stars chased the Sun and the Sun chased them right back.
All the time, Roland continued to walk.
Daylight was cruel against Roland’s skin; his clothes were too tattered to protect from the singeing licks of the Sun’s rays. At night, the wind tore at his thin rags, cutting through them with ease. His stomach rumbled as it began to consume energy from wherever it could. The muscles of his heart thinned from weariness.
Inside his mind, a war waged—the fight for survival against the honour of his parent, and the former was winning. His feet continued to take him back to the only place he had known as home.
In the fields around El’ Jorel, farmers cared for the land and provided for the city. They lived there in houses and small communities and worked endlessly to meet the demands of the growing metropolis. They were rewarded with space seldom found within the city walls, and also with a handsome monetary boon. They could afford durable clothing that would survive being repeatedly mended while they performed their hard labour. They hung them on lines, unfearful of potential theft.
Roland ignored opportunity and continued on in his rags instead.
None paid mind to Roland as he passed through their fields. As a courtesy, farmers who dropped sheaves while collecting would pile them in the corner of their fields, so the ill-privileged would not be embarrassed and could still feed their families.
Roland ignored these as well.
He reached over a fence for a peach and, without hesitation, began to gorge himself on fruit. Never stopping his trek home, Roland left a trail of pits, stems, seeds, and rinds. He returned to the city satiated of food but now, he hungered for a freedom he had never experienced before.
Roland wanted things.
Over the years, El’ Jorel continued to prosper and expand until the city walls consumed the rolling fields and the space they cherished was swallowed by stone. And with the growth of the city, Roland came to have quite a wealth of riches and possessions.
It began with clothes. Better clothes meant more access to higher societal gatherings, which in turn led to valuable items, which—when sold—meant property. And property meant Roland now had a place to store that which he had never had.
It was in an old farmer’s house, now in the heart of the city, that Roland schemed.
Roland was draped in furs as he puttered around his personal palace, staying barefoot to feel the rugs his housekeeper had decorated the floors with. He passed portraits of people he’d never known, even though they hung regally inside his home.
One could tell from the ornate framing, oil mediums, and tiny brushstrokes they were all very expensive.
And yet, an old feeling flickered within him. One of survival and what it meant to steal to live.
Roland Creev believed he could no longer go on without the Escher Jewel. Said gem was unfortunately lodged in the hilt of Cathero “Warship” Vaalt’s Warhammer of Perfection.
Vaalt was already an infamous pirate-turned-hero Admiral during a Dommian War battle on the Mason Coast. His tactic of reinforcing the prow and using the ship itself as a weapon won the respect of the El’ Jorel’s generals. It was his willingness to board enemy vessels while swinging his mighty hammer which earned him the nickname Warship, for his ship was a weapon and he a vessel of victory.
For successfully rebuffing the coastal attack, the city knighted Cathero Vaalt an Admiral and gave him the gem as a token of gratitude. No longer would the once-pirate need to steal and pillage to live. But that didn’t stop him from stealing and pillaging for fun—it was just that now, he had a fancy badge.
Roland was at the ceremony and was enchanted by the stone’s beauty. He followed Vaalt and his crew to the wharf and was amongst many to join the Warship’s fleet that night. After a week of celebrations, Vaalt set sail with two hundred ships, which was one hundred ninety-nine more than he had won his battle with.
Of the scores that went to sea with the naval hero, Roland made it onto Vaalt’s boat.
Less than half returned just three months after. The fleet shrank every day as gung-ho spirits were battered by rough seas. Some moored and stayed on foreign soil, some fled, some disappeared, and a few sank with hulls cracked wide by the Warship’s prow. Roland stayed close to the captain, still under the spell of the jewel.
Roland was there when Warship garnered further nicknames, ones given to slayers on the sea. It was a Kraken that Vaalt single handedly slew, and in its blood, he adopted its name as a moniker. He witnessed and participated in Vaalt’s excursions as a deckhand and pirate.
He’d steal but never harm. He remained a noble thief.
But now, he writhed before the hearth as if in physical pain. He needed the Escher Jewel. It would be his one day.
Standing amongst the docked ships, once more on the solid ground of his homeland, Roland was reminded of his time at sea at Vaalt’s side. The violence Roland had seen and how close he’d come to relinquishing his virtue to never harm due to avarice and greed for the Escher Jewel. In the streets he never inflicted pain to feed himself.
How could he trade the pain of another to sate his hunger, ebb his pain?
For the first time since her death, Roland remembered his mother.
Roland went straight home from the wharf to drop off that which he didn’t need for the journey ahead. He unclipped his Robe and hung it on the branch of the olive tree which grew in his house. He removed his rings and necklaces, unfastened his belt, and stepped out of his Leather Boots, only then noticing the playful foxes carved into the heels of his shoes.
Leaving all weapons and armours at home, he began the several-day walk to a grove he had visited as a boy before his father disappeared and where his mother was buried.
He did not eat as he walked, and each step was a memory tracing back all Roland had seen and all he had done.
He felt the weight of his mother’s spirit sit heavily on the cotton of his thick shirt, one which stretched over shoulders that had once only known thinned threads.
Steal to live.
The sky swam, recreating a celestial chase Roland once witnessed. Onward he moved, slower now.
Live to steal.
At the height of the day, he tore his shirt from his chest and wrapped his face to block the baking sun from blinding him further. His feet burned through callouses from days of exposure to the hot ground.
“I didn’t hurt anyone!” Roland yelled with a fit of anger.
But there was no one there to offer absolution.
Almost dried to dust, Roland fell to his knees and smelled the sweet scent of lemongrass. Crawling forward, he reached the spring which had flowed into a much larger pool, with waters now as clear as they were deep. Roland rolled from his belly to his back onto lush moss and welcomed the breeze tickling his goose-pricked skin like a whisper. Sunlight filtered in through a canopy of rich green leaves and a vibrant yellow leather fruit.
He remained there and filled his belly with berries and lush vegetation, drinking deeply from the clearwater pool. Over the years that Roland had prospered, so too did the grove of his mother. Where she had suffered in this world, she had achieved sanctity in the next, and now Roland took sanctuary in the Mother Grove’s care, feeling like a child once more.
Roland sat in the shade of a lemon tree with no belongings and understood; his mother’s prayers were not enough to save him. The bread he had brought home when he was younger had not been what she was praying for. It was for her son not to lose his way in doing what he needed to. She had given her life’s divinity to protect him, and he had thrown it away.
Roland knew he must steal one last thing—the life of a tyrant whose shadow he had once acted under. Roland’s soul will never be saved, but life of others may not be cut short by the hands of vandals. He knew what he must do, yet he remained curled beneath a lemon tree as the Moon and Stars chased the Sun and the Sun chased them right back.
Warship Vaalt returned to El’ Jorel and expected celebrations for another claimed victory over some distant enemy in a war no citizen had heard of. His fleet had found balance with twelve ships, all reinforced as hammers of the sea, and whenever the Kraken Warship docked, he demanded libations.
Roland had been waiting for the day to come when Vaalt would return to the city, drunk on his cruelty. This would be the time for Roland to redeem his worth.
To re-join the Warhammer’s ranks, one must only carry a cup of mead and partake in raucous hootenanny. Roland would not drink but appeared intoxicated when necessary, and as such, it was easy to blend with a crowd, and easier to find his target.
He just had to follow the density of the people. The streets were packed with fans, desperate to see their hero and hear a slice of adventure. Roland jostled and shoved until he was on the outer ring of the inner circle with Vaalt in the middle—he was once again regaling the city folk on how he took down the Kraken.
Roland fingered the hilt of his blade but knew now would not be the time. It was too crowded. Warship didn’t notice Roland slip away.
The carnival continued for several days until real life caught up with the citizens and Vaalt’s whole crew—save the captain—passed out in their cups. Instead of resting, Vaalt was on the shores of the Mason Coast. He trudged along the beach, shouldering two thick chains to pull a rowboat full of “ladies of the dock”. The women were asleep with bottles of rum and brandy littering the floor of their dory. Vaalt’s hammer was strapped to his back and an amulet hung from his neck but he wore no armour.
His necklace began to hum.
The crossbow bolt connected with his right shoulder. He stumbled forward and dropped the chains; they fell with an unexpectedly great force, for they were heavier than they appeared.
Before Vaalt could turn, Roland was already on him, throwing himself at the shaft of the bolt and pushing it deeper into Vaalt’s deltoid. Warship roared and, with a sturdiness borne from sea legs, swung his hammer from his back to launch Roland over his shoulder into the sand.
Roland rolled back to his feet and charged, bolstered by the rekindling anger he had harboured towards himself.
Roland stabbed at Vaalt’s chest with his sword and dove slashing at his heels. Warship deflected the initial attack with the butt of his hammer but lost the assailant as he slid between the towering pirate’s legs. Warship felt a sharp heat rise from his calf as he fell to one knee.
Roland tumbled several feet behind his enemy, slowing his momentum with an outstretched arm and digging his fingers into the sands. He readied himself to charge Vaalt and finish him.
Warship kneeled, taking stock of his wounds and noting that his right side was almost useless, crimson blood soaking the golden sand. He gripped his hammer in his left hand and prepared himself for an over-the-shoulder strike.
Roland, misreading the signals, believed Vaalt to be off balance and charged. The sunlight passed through the Escher Jewel and a rainbow danced across Roland’s face. The distraction was exactly what Warship was looking for and, finding his moment, he swung and connected with Roland’s left side.
Roland crumpled before he hit the ground.
Warship, knowing he had landed a killing blow, let himself fall to the ground faceup, breathing steadily.
Beside him, Roland choked on blood through ragged breath. “I never—” he started, before breaking off into a wet-sounding cough. “—killed for you.” Roland tried to move his arms so he could crawl to Vaalt and slit his throat, but his limbs wouldn’t obey him.
Warship said nothing. He slowly got up and limped back towards the wharf by using his hammer like a crutch.
Roland clenched his hand tightly as Vaalt passed him. He remained that way for a long time, until slowly—and with unfeeling fingers—he opened his hand and let the light shine through the magnificent cut of the Escher Jewel. It refracted a kaleidoscope of celestial light into his unseeing eyes.
And as the Moon and Stars chased the Sun and the Sun chased them right back, he wheezed out a laugh.
Noble was the thief who only took for the weak.