The streets were deserted, lit only by the occasional lantern. The stranger, swaying slightly, trudged along the main road. Darkness watched suspiciously from the side streets.
The Cursed tried not to give himself away, sticking to the shadows and pressing close to the buildings.
At one intersection, three figures emerged from the darkness of a side street. Their faces were covered with cloths, knives glinting in their hands. They approached the passerby and demanded money. He pulled out a few coins and tossed them onto the cobblestones.
"Pick them up and hand them over!" hissed one of the knife-wielding bandits.
The passerby stood motionless and looked at him with contempt. He was waiting for his hour of death, which on this night had come sooner than he had expected.
In the light of a distant lantern, a knife flashed and flew toward him. It met the blade of the sword, which severed the limb that had held it, and the hand spun off to the side. The bandit shrieked like a beaten jackal, clutching the stump from which dark blood spurted.
All those present turned in horror. Before them stood the tall man with short black hair and the black beard. Arcane inscriptions shimmered across his face. He was clad in the hooded cloak, beneath which technological armor could be seen. In one hand he held the long, bloodstained sword. His gaze promised the creatures nothing good.
"He is the Cursed!" the bandits cried.
"Run!"
They fled, but were struck down by several blows of the sword and fell lifeless. The third, clutching his severed arm, gasped for air and stared in horror at his killer.
The man approached—grim, relentless.
"This night I mete justice. As I have not done for a long time. More than ten years ago."
He delivered a merciless strike, and the head of the third bandit bounced and rolled across the bloodstained cobblestones.
"I owe you thanks for saving me from certain death," the stranger said. "Although the fortune-teller promised I would die tonight." He bent down and picked up the coins that had been thrown moments before. "The Cursed, is it? Well, in these wicked times, you see all sorts of things and meet all sorts of people. If you like, and if you have nowhere to spend the night, come to me. And if you're not afraid that death might come for me again tonight."
"That very death is what I seek," the Cursed replied. The sword vanished from his hand. "Then let's go to you."
He said people called him the Old Man. Not so much because of his appearance — though gray had touched his hair — but for the ancient knowledge he possessed, and the way he seemed to casually let bits of it slip in conversations with neighbors or other people. He lived in an attic under the very roof of a house, its windows facing one side onto the city's main street. Here, among rare books and geographical maps, he had a telescope. He said that studying the laws of the world and the universe, as well as his dream of traveling through space, gave him the strength not to go mad in the darkness in which they lived. At night he observed distant worlds through the telescope and believed that there was real life out there, and that humanity was destined by its very existence to conquer the cosmos.
The Cursed looked at him with admiration and respect, and mentioned that in the ancient archives of the Kingdom there are records indicating that long ago, visitors from distant stars came to their planet.
The Old Man brightened at this and said he would be glad to visit those ancient archives and study the knowledge stored there.