An average southerner lived in a red house with small windows and large courtyards. The families were larger, with a man having more than one wife and many kids.
Lucian approached one of the houses, hiding behind a pile of trash, waiting for someone to throw away some food. It would be his lucky day if he found a bone with meat still attached to it.
The surrounding buildings blocked the sun, making it slightly cooler. The smell was awful, and Lucian's stomach had long since become accustomed to it. One step outside the shadows, and he would cook in seconds.
He moved closer to the edge of the pile, peeking out from behind a broken chair.
Cries of pain came from the courtyard. The violence was a daily occurrence in these parts, but it was always a shock to see.
A man was hitting his wife and children, a girl and two boys. The woman was trying to cover her kids with her body.
'They look like Jax.' Lucian's thoughts drifted to his friend and compared the southerners' features to his. Tan skin with tattoos covering their bodies. Their hair was of earthy colors like brown, green, and black.
The cycle of violence continued until the tattoos on the man's arms stopped glowing.
Instead of 9 ranked knights, there were 9 marked hunters. The hunters had to absorb energy from the sun's rays in order to awaken their tattoo's beasts.
The southerner's tattoos were on his neck and chest, and around ten percent of them were prominent, darker than the rest, which meant the man was a one marked hunter.
Awakened tattoo's beast could go wild if left untamed, like the man before Lucian. The beast's rage caused the hunter to become violent, but it was not an excuse.
Failing to gain control over the beast could turn southerner into a feral state. Ferals (failed hunters) were treated as nothing but animals, not aggressive until someone provoked them, but still dangerous.
The southern man left them on the ground and left the courtyard in a rush. "Get luku moyo, you northerner scum!"
Lucian looked up from his hiding spot.
"Tut'fano, mibimbe," a kick hit Lucian's body, throwing him to the ground. His body rolled over the dirt and stopped next to the wall. "You come here to take our food, huh? You think I don't see you hiding?"
The man kicked him away from his house and then spat on him, "If I see you here again, I'll kill you," he warned before he continued on his path.
'Kill him, make him pay.' Voice was starting to get annoying with its blood thirsty requests, 'Enough of this pathetic life. Show these people that you are not a luku moyo (maggot).'
'Maybe I deserve the beating...' Lucian returned to his corner and curled up on the ground. He missed Seline. Nothing would bring her back, no rage or revenge could ever soothe his aching heart. 'Maybe I deserve to die.'
'Look at how he treats his family,' Voice tried to anger him, 'Didn't you want to be a hero? Save them...by making him suffer.'
Lucian was mad at the world, at Celine for having everything, at the northerns for treating him like a burden and tossing him away, at the southerners for seeing him as a parasite. He was mad at himself for causing Seline's death. And he was mad at Voice for taking her away from him.
But, even with all that anger inside him, he didn't care enough to act on it. As fast as it came, it was gone, and he was once again left with nothing but crybaby thoughts.
'Suffer with me, Voice. I will keep on suffering, and you will suffer with me,' Lucian said, curling into a tight ball, trying to replace the hunger with the new bruises, 'This is our punishment.'
'Why are you punishing me for your stupidity? Why must I be the only one to suffer for your mistakes?'
'I don't know,' Lucian said. Not listening to Voice was the only thing he had power over, so he took it. 'It's the only thing I don't regret.'
Another woman walked up to the bleeding woman and helped her up. She looked like her younger version. It was apparent that she was pregnant.
The pregnant woman sensed Lucian's presence and looked in his direction. He ducked his head and hid behind the trash pile. A moment later, a bowl of soup was left on the side of the street.
"Thank you," Lucian whispered in the language of the south, and then sneaked to pick up the bowl. He checked around to see if anyone was watching and then brought the bowl closer to his mouth.
He figured kind southerners weren't so different from the kind northerns. While searching trash for anything edible, he collected some junk, which he could turn into small toys and trinkets. Something he thought the southerner women and kids would appreciate.
The man soon returned with his third wife and Lucian had to hide at the other side of the road to not get beaten. This wife tried to run away from him too, but the binding mark on her palm made it impossible.
The southerners had the ability to bind themselves to others. It allowed them to communicate telepathically across great distances, and also find the location of the person they were bound to.
It was a useful skill to have in a desert land where the wind could easily change the landscape and get you lost. It was also a skill that could be used to enslave others, like how Jax's father used it on his mother.
Lucian finished collecting some junk, 'Now water,' he thought. He moved away from the houses and toward the water stream that flowed through the village.
The more violent, the more hardworking the men appeared to be, the richer they were, the more wives they had, and the more kids they produced.
The southerners trained their kids from a young age, teaching them to hunt, to fight, and to survive in the desert. When they weren't under the tattoo beast's influence, they were actually people with lots of love for their families.
First impressions Lucian had of the southerners were terrible, but the more he lived among them, the more he understood how the environment had shaped them. Like it shaped him in his own way.
'Maybe this is where I belong,' Lucian thought as he filled his palms with water and drank.
He had no tattoos on his skin, but he could see people becoming violent if they had Voice whispering in their ears.
Could Voice's powers be a result of a hidden beast tattoo?
The curiosity led Lucian to seek out more information on the matter, his thirst for knowledge about his own origins pushed the bad thoughts to the back of his head.
If he had to keep on surviving, then he wanted to know why.