NELANIAN LISTEN

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

Outside the shack, Nelanian sat. He was trying to wring the water out of his soaked garments. The torrential rain that had poured all night had flooded through his ancient house and soaked up all he owned. His clothing were in a sac in one corner of the cabin, and they had spent the night sitting in a puddle of water. He awoke the next morning with an annoying cough and a fully closed nose.

He spent the remainder of the day trying to stay warm and salvage what he could from the rain. It  was a miracle that he managed to fall asleep during the storm. Even in more affluent homes, the other people down the hill were unable to sleep. The sleeping infants would be awoken by thunderclaps and would scream at the top of their lungs for the rest of the night. Strong gusts would blow open their flimsy windows, letting in a cold, heavy breeze that no one would be able to ignore. Raindrops would collect on their rooftops and form a puddle, causing their grass-thatched roofs to leak. The town awoke the next morning to shattered branches and leaves strewn across their prized lawns. The situation on the market was substantially worse. A number of stalls and kiosks were blown off their foundations and into the woods.

Nelanian awaited the sun's rise and the warmth it would bring. He intended to return down and speak with the elderly gentleman he had met the day before. He was curious about himself, which was unusual. He'd never been in a scenario where he needed to inquire about himself or his past. Despite the fact that their last chat ended on a sour note, Nelanian believed the man was a sensible man who would be mature enough to accept another meeting with him. Nelanian awoke to some bad news as well.

Water appeared to have leaked into his prosthetic bionic limb, causing it to twitch at random. He was concerned that the harm might be worse and hoped that it would not be. He had bought his prosthetic arm on the Seolaran black market, and he had no idea if it was durable enough to endure that long. It would occasionally act up for a few hours before returning to normal, but it didn't appear to go away that day. Nelanian couldn't pull it out and examine it since it required special equipment and a technique that needed to be performed by someone who knew what he was doing. Unfortunately, Nelanian had no idea where he was, and he needed to figure it out so he could travel to the man who had put the prosthetic arm in the first place, a black market merchant who had assisted Nelanian in escaping Seolara.

The old guy had gone to the village gates the day before to rearrange the ornaments he had hung up the day before. Nelanian could be seen from afar, descending the hill and slowly approaching the old man, since the winds did not spare them like the rest of the hamlet. As he was performing his work, Nelanian could be seen from afar, descending the hill and slowly approaching the elderly man.

When he finally came, he spent a considerable amount of time standing and attempting to escape the elderly man's sight whenever the latter chose to glance at him.

“Well, what are you doing standing here for?” Come up here and help me!” exclaimed the old man, who had grown tired of Nelanian's gaze.

Nelanian snatched up an extra string of ornament and scaled up a pole on the opposite side of the road that held the small gate's frames together. He wrapped it in a cloth and began hanging the decorations across the wooden frame that hung over the road.

“I apologise for what I said yesterday,” Nelanian remarked, pausing from his work. “Sorry for what?” the old guy replied as he continued to tie the ornaments with minimal effort. “All we did yesterday was talk,” 

“Well, you seemed irritated when you walked away from the conversation. So I figured it might have been something I said?”

“You said some stupid things, child. However, this does not imply that I was offended by them. I was just trying to escape getting rained on,” the elderly gentleman explained, laughing at the end and coughing weakly.

Nelanian nervously laughed at the man's attempt at a joke. He kept trying the ornaments until the two of them had decorated the entire entrance. As they conversed, they both climbed down and sat on the broken pillars by the road.

“How did you cease being The Necessary Evil?”   As the man handed him a cup of tea, Nelanian inquired.

The man took his time returning to his seat. “Well youngster, like all the other men, I aged and grew too feeble to serve the watchers a purpose, so they had to look for another one,” he said after he was fully comfortable in his sitting position.

“But aren't they frightened you'll reveal their secrets and expose their existence?”

“And who is going to believe an elderly guy who claims he was summoned by mystical, celestial, and malevolent entities known as the Watchers, and that he carried out heinous assassinations across the kingdom for many years?”

As he sipped his tea, Nelanian laughed.

“I'd reached my limit. I'd squandered the final vestiges of my youth. And then I was given a new mission one day. I was summoned to their chamber and assigned a name. He was a businessman who lived on Lorth's seashore. He had a small business selling and trading locally produced goods such as leather and grains. But underlying it all, he was conducting a narcotics enterprise right under the Lorth government's nose. I was given a month to kill him and had to escape before I ran out of time.

As a result, I purchased a bus ticket to Lorth. When I first arrived, it took me time to adjust to the extreme heat. I loaded up my belt with the vials of the options I needed and I set off. It was simple to get past the guards at his front gates, but as I progressed farther inside his mansion, the manpower grew stronger and more skilled. I eventually tracked him out, and we battled all across his property, breaking and smashing vases into each other's heads. I eventually managed to stab him in the chest with a knife and flee before the authorities stormed the estate.

They discovered a stockpile of drugs in his home office that had just arrived that day, and he was waiting for the delivery men to come and pick them up so he could start distributing them on the streets. I was able to get away, but when I looked down, half of my abdomen was wide open,” the elderly guy explained. Nelanian could see the deep scar that ran over his chest when he removed his shirt.

“As soon as I saw it, I realised there was no way I could endure it. I went underground for a few days while waiting for the storm to pass, and three days later, despite my best efforts, he was still alive. He'd escaped the onslaught, and the knife had just missed his heart. The watchers summoned me to the council, and I used my last death list request, and he died. That's when I told them I wasn't fit to serve them as a necessary evil any more, and they terminated me. They told me I could retire to this island and start my own family. I've never married or had children. But once I got here I was greeted by a woman and two other young boys who called me their grandpa, Apparently I have two sons and a daughter now. I sat with them for a year, listening to them tell me about things I never did or events that never occurred. Memories implanted in their heads by the watchers.”

said the old man.  Nelanian was captivated by his tale, and when the elderly man didn't continue speaking for a while, Nelanian decided to ask him a question: "Is this the fate that befalls all Necessary Evils?" He wondered aloud, "Is this what happens? they get old and are forced back into society with makeshift families?"

“I am one of the lucky few,” the elderly mom replied, smiling at his question. " The majority of the Necessary Evils die before they reach their forties. This is not a respectable title. We commit heinous acts and refuse to stop. It is our fate to become a Necessary Evil, no matter how much we try to avoid it or fight it,” 

“But, we kill evil people in this world? Isn't that the right thing to do?” Nelanian inquired. The old guy stared at him for a long time before realising that his memory had been erased.

“You forced yourself to forget what you had done. That is something I am certain of. My memory is only erased once in my instance. The watchers summoned me one night, gave me his name, and informed me he was going to die before midnight. I imagined it would be a common criminal, a drug lord, or a crime boss. I was told his name and location, so I drew my weapons and donned my mask. When I first arrived in this neighbourhood, I noticed that it was a close-knit community. I thought what kind of drug lord would come to live in a community like that as I strolled across the loans and leapt over the children's bikes. It was a modest existence, intended for individuals who weren't as wealthy as the others I'd killed previously. I located his residence and slid into his room silently. He was still awake and watching television in the living room. I crept up behind him and slashed his throat with a dagger before fleeing as fast as I had arrived. I could hear children screaming and dogs barking as I was fleeing. All of the ruckus was heard by the neighbours, and the entire neighbourhood was soon awake. I was scared of being seen, so I dashed away from the scene and drank the potion that whisked me back to the watchers' chambers. They discharged me once I told them the deed was completed. I returned to my daily routine.

Then, one day, when I was at school and my lesson was finished, I returned to the staff room for a cup of coffee, and that's when I heard it. The death of a man, a plumber, was reported on the news. He was married with two girls and a sick wife. He was slain in his own house, according to authorities, when someone broke in and slit his throat. Nothing was taken from his home, and no notice was left behind. They questioned the neighbours, and I overheard everything they said about me, including how much of a monster I was. I couldn't bear it any longer after killing a man in his own home, so I walked out of the school that day.

When I returned the next day, I learned that the wife had passed away. She committed suicide in her own bedroom, and her children were the ones who discovered her. I couldn't take the guilt any longer and was going insane. I would fantasise about that day night after night. I stopped going to work and was finally dismissed, and I got psychologically ill. When the watchers approached me, I begged them to wipe my memories, which they did.