My father fit all the signs, he fell from the Top in a mass of blood and gore, he was different in his mind. He was strong, and confident. Utterly convincing and able to read a person's next three actions just by looking at them. He was intelligent and terrible. Cold, and sociopathic. He ruled the Remainder within a year. Ultimately though, he made a terrible mistake. His humanity caused him to grow greedy, and he waged war with the Brutish when they refused him. He made his people fight, and his armies perished. The people banished him and his wife, the queen, on threat of death. My father was this, and I am the same.

    My father and I were and are separated from the other Remainder, but now my father is dead. Executed by men working under my own command. I have his head prepared, ready for transfer to the Trophies of the Remainder. They will accept me, and they will meet their demise by me. I will be the bane of their society, but they will not realize until it is too late. They will shout, "To glory!" while I place upon them my revenge. Being the outcast has changed me, and the Remainder will neither realize nor appreciate their creation! This they brought upon themselves, and they will pay with the ruin of their world!

    You may know men like me, men who look through the lens of another and actually understand what they see. The most empathetic and emphatic of people, understanding and kind, vivid yet soft. The people that are most likely to work in charity for other's benefit, and to live happily ever after in their fairy-tale reality. They stay in that incorrect vision until they realize that this world is uglier than they can handle, then they change their perspective to accommodate. You see, once I was kind, for my mother. Now I'm as ugly as the world. I am an infection, and the world is the body. I can't stop myself from reading the people in front of me. I can shape them to my will. I can convince kings that they are peasants, I can create anarchy or peace within a single day, and my father's mistake is not my own. My name is Tear. And like my father, I am manipulation.

    On my way to meet the Remainder's chieftain, I pass the Top. A set of waterfalls flowing from the Land Above, my father's original home. It lives thousands of feet higher than the rest of the world, above the beautiful area that is The Drop. The Land Above... a hard dystopia that rains death upon its citizens; a land of shadows, of nightmares, and politics. My father told me once that evolution created a space in DNA that makes the citizens of the Land Above constantly able to persuade, he also relayed the information that absolutely everyone was a deceitful sociopath, which was pretty obvious considering the way he acted. He murdered people through the use of words, and hired hitmen to do some of his more dirty deeds. All in all, sociopathic was the word that described him. Therefore it, in all probability, describes Those Above*. The presence of the falls, mist rising and causing the beauty of life and the wild to splay across the land at the base of the enormous cliffs, creates a scene near to heaven. Rainbows and peaceful, exotic creatures fill the beach at the falls, living in harmony. In stark contrast to the land above and the prophecy in which my father fulfilled.

"A man will fall in a river of blood that will taint both water and land, for better or worse."

    Better not to think about that... suffice it to say that my father wasn't just brutal as a ruler in The Crevasse. Even with his head sitting in its box beside me, I feel like his glowing, silver eyes are piercing my soul. The feeling I constantly battled throughout my childhood. The knowledge that my father could, and did, read me like a book, as I could him, and that we were waging a constant war of control. I won very few times, and those fleeting moments of victory?

They were glorious.

    I move my horse-drawn cart into a gallop, knowing the necessity of timeliness. My raven-feather hair covers my eyes as I think of words and inflections that will persuade, I go back through my emotional repertoire and find suitable expressions, and most of all I practice being as honest as possible. The Remainder have a strange ability to see through the lies that anyone creates. It doesn't matter how persuasive they are. Unless the person thinks their lies are actually truths, The Remainder knows. So I have to create truths in my head that are fit with matching emotions. I have to believe they're real or they won't work. Ugh, so much work and all I get out of it is the ability to talk within a leading society of the area.  This is the one society that actually approaches an even tentative stability, and my dream is to topple them. They banned me from ever breaching their premises until I could prove to them my father was dead. The stipulations were that his death had to be by my hand, and that I had to pass a test of loyalty, whatever that means. I'm currently assuming that it means that I have to battle some kind of massive predator or force myself through some kind of test that shows a truer form of me; honestly, who knows? The Remainder are a very creative, artistic people by nature. I'm sure they will find a way to try to throw me off my guard.

    My horse breathes heavily by the time we arrive at the Remainder's fortress wall, I pass a squad of Brutish men and they hit my cart with a couple of arrows, fired from their surprisingly strong short bows, more used as nuisance weapons than anything else. "Typical," I think to myself. Even if The Brutish have the slimmest of chances to kill someone and take what they have, they'll use it. I've met a singular refined Brutish, and they were the type of person you could trust to run in a fight unless there was cash involved, or they were insulted. Their very being was an oxymoron. Though, coincidentally, they were destructive in both business and politics. I can respect that. My horse lumbers forward, and slows before the gates, which open slowly and silently. I see a small clump of figures, one has a large crescent-shaped piece of wood. It seems stressed, pulled taut maybe? My calloused, scarred hand comes up, fingers splayed as if to block the sun, and I press the sides of my thumb and forefinger toward each other, an arrow suddenly between them. My fingers begin to bleed, splinters stuck deep into my skin, suddenly blanched white from the pressure of catching an arrow. Then the snap of wood releasing from strain reaches me, the crescent shape suddenly loose.

"WHAT IN THE BLACK HELL MAN!?"  I scream at the man with the bow, "That hurt!"

"You've been exiled, upon threat death, for your family's misdeeds to The Remainder! Exit at once!" He yells back angrily.

    I rip the box from the cart and the man pulls back the bowstring, another arrow suddenly there. I rip my father's head from the box and he lowers his bow. I give him the truth, "I killed him! Actually, I paid The Brutish to do it. Needless to say, that was the deal." I grin just a bit besides the pain between my fingers, and the man drops his bow in stupor; then composes himself and walks forward with a sure-fire welcome grin. With the muted awe of a piss-poor apprentice in the Hall of Arms for the first time, he cooed,"Damn, you are a brutal little shit aren't you."

"No more than my father." I smile back, the sting in my fingers nearly killing my soft, kind tone. I already knew this truth to be everything but false, and so did he, the guard kept moving along the conversation while I picked out pieces of wood from my flesh.

"So, have you come to prove your loyalty?" Another nondescript soldier questions, his face tightening, hand on his sword.

"Yes, obviously. I'd be killed otherwise." I reply somewhat sarcastically. And his hand pulls the sword out a couple of inches. "For the Father of Those Above." I breathe, "Yes, I'm here to test my loyalty!" The man visibly relaxes in the case of a truly honest answer. His hand dropping, his simple sword snaking into its scabbard. "Geez, their ability to react to lies has gotten significantly better than when I last sneaked in!"

"Learn some manners." A disappointed guard growls.

    The man with the bow laughs nonchalantly, and begins to chuckle darkly. "Don't mind Davis there, he's just miffed that your father caused the deaths of his entire family. Not to mention half of our total population! We're all glad, I think, that he's dead." A murmuring of agreement goes around the crew. "So, why'd you kill him?" A bit of malice returns to his tone, along with obvious suspicion that is suddenly evident on his countenance. "This guy is good!" I think to myself, but what comes out is, "He killed Mother, the one you called Queen."

This made a shadow fall on every man's face. "She was a good one..." One of them trails. The hidden message clear. 

'Even though she loved my father.'

"You're right. She was the only person I ever cared about. She was a good one." I reply. This is all true. Never have I ever had to create truths about the great relationship between mother and son. She was the only flower that bloomed, the essence of gentle sunlight. I look up at the man with the bow, "He trained you?"

His pupils dilate within magenta irises. He blinks and breaths quickly, deeply, for just a moment. Then he's back, stone-faced and suspicious. But so are the guards. I turned the situation around on him, and he is now the enemy. 

"I do not think that is important." He cuts in. 

"He obviously didn't train you well." I speak. "Your interrogative tactics are too obvious, please stop using your false emotions to have me spew information." I pause, "I will answer any questions you have without you persuading me."

He stutters, abashed. And looks at the ground. I put my hand on his shoulder, "Being trained by him does not make you worse, in fact, it makes you valuable." Of course, this was a time that I lied to myself. He really was worse off for knowing my dad. The group now turns on the man, disgusted, and forces him to walk me to the palace alone. Which wouldn't be bad, except for the fact that he's walking alongside a smiling, chatty person commonly seen as a brutal, traitorous psychomaniac who, by happenstance, is the son of a mass murderer. His reputation and all respect for him was destroyed because he was forced to chat me up. 

Oh, the beauties of life.

I get to the palace, and the gates open slowly, smoothly, and dramatically. "Father of Those Above, what is it with these dramatic doors?" The smell of incense wafts out, and the guard prods me forward. Then I notice something. "Hey, I forgot to ask your name."

"Eat a Bayglider." 

    He moves to the King's advisor, and I am put on a waiting list...

    Yup, if there's really a Great Author out there controlling my life, he's really screwing with me.

    "I deserve some special treatment." I think to myself. Though, I don't really have a choice, so I sit in a plush, cushioned chair. Dust plumes up. "This is an old chair!" I stare for a bit, studying the dust, and blink once, the Bayglider on my mind. A fish so poisonous that rumor has it you're dead if you get within five feet, farther if you're in water. Then realization dawns as I begin to feel drowsy. "Nope, it's a drugged chair." I attempt to stand, then collapse to the ground, suddenly limp. My feet give way, and my face lands on the fur rug in front of me, crimson walls all around lit by light that once was warm, but now seems hostile. My heart begins to race, and everything goes black. The only feeling left to me: a remnant of fur-lined flooring upon my cheek.

*It may be interesting to note that we call them Those Above, when otherwise names are based off of simple, single words with a capital article, usually 'The.' Examples include The Remainder or The Brutish.

*Another interesting note is that instead of the old word 'continent' the word 'area' is used to describe the entirety of the land.

    I open my eyes slowly, and realize I'm in the plush chair in the same room, a little bit of drool on my shoulder, oil lanterns give off a warm glow that envelopes the area. Pinks, greens, and cream colors make my vision fuzz as my eyes begin to focus. The back of my head feels like a rat's nest and I begin to panic. Then my mood worsens as the guard from earlier chuckles at my deteriorated state. My hair's a mess, a dark pool of the drool on my raven-black suit is a big blob on my shoulder, my eyes are red, and a little too contracted for the brightly lit room. My shoes are off... I don't remember doing that. I start moving my head, looking for where they could be, even panicking a little bit before Bayglider, for lack of a better name, holds a pair of perfectly polished black horse-leather dress boots and speaks a proverb of my father. "You know, he used to say that 'without a man's shoes all sense of professionalism is lost.' I wonder if that's passed on to you." He taunts me, provokes me with these words. A fire begins in my heart. Ultimately, though, he's right, my father passed that on, and I force myself to stay cool. Killing him would do nothing, and they're just shoes... just shoes. I stand up with soft, woven carpet beneath my feet, and I wiggle my toes a bit to release some tension. My eyes open wide.

"It isn't the same." I declare.

"What?" 

"I'm not the same as the man I called dad, now give back my shoes." And I left it at that. No reason to explain my true meaning to a man who's deceiving me.

"Aww, come on!" He teases maliciously, "If you were your dad I'd be off to the gallows or worse! Now I have his son, who can't do anything about what I do on threat of death, and I have the chance to mess with him? It's too good to be true!"

"Yes, but-"

"I'm not giving up on hurting you in any possible way I can." He states.

"Good, that'll make it so much more pleasing when you fail." I reply, ending the conversation.

    He slumps back, twirling an elaborate wooden ring on his finger, made of a reddish-brown wood. His wedding ring, a common one, and one of the least expensive. The inner part very worn. It is smooth within, though... worn? I decide to keep that fact for later, just in case this guy becomes a real threat. This nation praises purity, and absolute truth, a worn wedding ring means something. By happenstance, it means more in this nation than any other. It means you might not be true and loyal. That's worse by far than walking with the sworn enemy of your country. Works out, I guess, if this comes to blackmail. 

Damn, it seems like everything is too easy. It wouldn't make for a very good story, that's for sure! Ha! 

Of course, if this was a story, there'd be some kind of twist, right? I wouldn't be able to destroy the remainder because of something or other and all would be great for the good nation. I would be exiled probably, again. good guys win, story over. Great Author, how I hope that doesn't happen. I think I'd die if that was the case. 

Dying of pure sadness sounds like a lot of fun. Probably the amount of fun a small animal has while it is being drowned in a river. The greatest time of its short life.

Or not.

Bayglider sits up quickly and stands. His right hand moves to a forty five degree angle from his hip, fingers together, hand straight. Then he makes a fist and brings the same hand hand to the left side of his upper chest in a fluid motion. He lowers his head and averts eye contact from whatever he was looking at. Then something cold and thin is placed gently on my neck. It moves slowly from one side to another, tracing a thin, deadly line. Yup, this is my interrogator "Called it!"  I scream to myself internally. I stay calm. "This isn't necessary. Such a display of force is uncharacteristic of people in this kingdom... and frankly I'm a bit disappointed."

"For this, we require someone to be very, very submissive." Says a woman's voice from behind me. It takes every ounce of restraint to keep from laughing. 

"Is this supposed to be some kind of seduction? Because it isn't working for you, neither is the scare tactic."

"Then maybe we should take it a little farther." She replies, obviously enjoying herself. She takes the knife (What the hell else would it be?) off of my neck. "So. Let's start playing, shall we?"

"Gladly."

"Why are you here?" She asks in a malicious tone. She moves in front of me, walking to the opposite side of the elaborate stonewood table. She sits on a plush throne-like chair. Her attire includes a black dress made of several layers of light fabric sewn together, as if to be made for free movement. She has a bright, needle-like hairpin stuck through an impeccably styled mass of light brown hair. Slate grey eyes bore a hole immediately, like punching a nail through a pile of moss.

"So, why are you here?" she asks, twirling the knife handle with one hand on her opposite index finger, on which the knife point is resting.

"Well, you see..." and we sit like this, question and answer, for a while. She'd get up, and lean over the table or walk around me, hand trailing at some points. Trying another method to get answers or signs of lying.

What seems a quarter-day later she finishes asking me questions, and threatening/seducing me. "I didn't realize both were possible in conjunction!" I think to myself. "Impressive." I push myself up from the chair and extend my hand for a shake on good terms. She smiles and gets up, then I ask her a question of my own.

"Why is this room a different one from the lobby?" I inquire cautiously.

Surprise flashes for a moment across her features. Then, she smiles and nods, as if contemplating my question. I sit back down, and she begins to open her mouth.

I get knocked out from behind. 

Why did I not see that coming?