To recap, Niamh is 1) pronounced “Neev” and 2) is a gentlewoman thief who fancies herself to be just like Morgan Cowl, Realmgard’s Robin Hood.
Incidentally, I considered doing a day on Morgan Cowl for my 30 Days of Biographies, but I figured Morgan Cowl is fundamentally a folkloric character who doesn’t really have a biography on account of not being a real person…
Also, Niamh likes Brain Chopping people…
Copyright
J.B. Norman
“Brain Chop!” Niamh declares, unleashing her most devastating technique on the unfortunate mercenary. The Half-Goblin thief brings her green hand crashing down on the crown of the mercenary’s skull.
“Ugh,” the mercenary groans as he crumples to the ground. He’ll be fine in a few hours, but by then Niamh will be long gone.
In Niamh’s own humble opinion, she has absolutely cornered the market on righteous thievery in this part of Realmgard. Oh, she’s a darn good thief. They never see her coming. Or going. Or at any of the various intermediate points.
But what sets her apart from the common rabble is that Niamh is a thief of principle. She only ever steals things back that were stolen from their original owners in the first place. And, of course, being a woman of Integrity and Honour — plus, Grace, Beauty, and Intellect — her rates are altogether reasonable and affordable.
She’ll even work pro bono for the especially downtrodden.
Niamh continues to work her way through the camp, a green shadow in the gloom, Brain Chopping as necessary. In fact, she’s been handing out Brain Chops like candy on Heroes’ Eve. By why try to change a proven method?
She Brain Chops another one of the mercenaries and sinks back into the shadows. From she works her way closer and closer to the merchant’s tent at the centre of the tent, where the merchant is keeping his collection of smuggled artifacts illegally purchased from a gang of bandits.
Reclaiming stolen artifacts is the sort of job that will put Niamh’s eventual children through college.
She steps forward and winces as a branch snaps underfoot. Alerted by the sound, a nearby mercenary hurries forward.
“Oi!” the mercenary declares as Niamh steps into his line of sight. “‘Oo are you?”
She reaches for the pouches on her belt, her various bags of various tricks.
As the mercenary raises his sword and steps forward, she tosses a handful of powder at this face.
“Gah!” the mercenary cries. “My eyes!”
Niamh quizzically cocks her head. That was supposed to be the Sleeping Powder.
She glances down at the pouches on her belt and realises she actually reached for the Chili Powder.
“Oh,” she mutters. “Whoops.”
She steps forward and puts the bandit of his misery with another Brain Chop.
“Sleep it off, buddy,” she murmurs as she stalks forward, stepping over the prone bandit.
Niamh steps into the tent. The merchant wheels around to face her, bringing his full girth to bear. He’s about a Niamh-and-a-half tall, and probably three or four Niamhs wide.
Clearly, his ill-gotten gains allow him to eat well. And copiously…
His sheer size isn’t enough to completely conceal the chest behind him, filled to the brim to stolen artifacts that Niamh vows to return to their rightful owners.
“Oi!” the fat merchant declares. “‘Oo are you? Guards!”
“I don’t think they can hear you,” she notes.
“Stop this!” the fat merchant. “We can ‘ave a talk about this! I can pay you!”
“I don’t want your money,” Niamh counters.
What Niamh does want is simple, really.
She leaps forward.
“Brain Chop!”
“Brain Chop!” says Dunstana.
She pulls herself up to lean most of the way over the plaid couch, where Kat is unsuspectingly lounging. Her hand comes down on top of Kat’s skull.
“Ow!” says Kat. “What the heck, Dunstana!”
“Oh, sorry, Kat,” Dunstana says. “Niamh’s teaching me to Brain Chop people.”
“Why?”
Dunstana shrugs. “I dunno. What else am I going to chop?”
“It’s a powerful incapacitating technique,” the green stranger explains. “Never know when that kind of thing is going to come in handy.”
“Yeah!” Dunstana agrees.
“Who are you and why are you teaching my sister to Brain Chop me?” Kat asks hotly.
“I’m Niamh,” the green woman explains. “I’m, like, a Professional Thing-Get-Backer for Hire.”
“Huh?” Kat asks. Maybe it’s the Brain Chops talking, but she doesn’t understand what that means.
“I’m a thief,” the green woman explains. “But I only ever steal things back from people who stole them from their rightful owners in the first place.”
“Oh!” Dunstana exclaims. “Like Morgan Cowl!”
The green woman sighs. “Yeah. Like Morgan Cowl,” she mutters.
She indignantly crosses her arms over her chest.
“But I came up with the idea on my own!”
“Brain Chop!” Dunstana declares once again.
Once again, the knife’s edge of her hand comes crashing down on Kat’s skull.
“Stop doing that!” Kat exclaims.
“Oh, sorry Kat,” Dunstana says, not actually sounding all that sorry. “It should be working.”
“Wait,” Kat notes. “Are you sorry for Brain Chopping me, or just sorry that it’s not working?”
Dunstana’s eyes uneasily shift side to side. She clears her throat and looks up at Niamh. “It’s not working!”
Niamh nods sympathetically. “You just need to work on your form,” she says. “You need to flick your wrist a little more. Like this — Brain Chop!”
“Ow!” says Kat.
“Hmm,” Niamh says thoughtfully. “You should have lost consciousness by now. This has never happened before. Usually it’s just Brain Chop and WHAM — unconscious!”
Kat does not find that particularly reassuring.
“Let me try again,” Dunstana says.
“Dunstana,” Kat warns, “don’t you da—
“Brain Chop!”
“Ow!”
“What if we both do it at the same time?” Dunstana offers.
“Do not even think abou—
“Brain Chop!” Dunstana and Niamh declare in one voice.
“Ow!”
“I don’t think it worked,” Dunstana nods.
“Stop Brain Chopping me!” Kat yells.
“But we need to practice!” Dunstana protests.
“Honestly,” Niamh notes. “At this point, I’m just fascinated that you seem to be immune to being Brain Chopped. I’ve never seen anything like this before. You must have a most remarkable skull.”
Again, maybe it’s just the repeated Brain Chopping catching up with her, but Kat thinks that’s supposed to be a compliment. Even though it doesn’t really sound all that complimentary.
Kat groans. “Ugh. You come into my house. You interrupt my between-naps nap. You teach my sister to Brain Chop me. You start Brain Chopping me. This is ridicul—”
Once final time, Dunstana hauls herself up and over the back of the couch and poises her hand to strike.
“Brain Chop!” she cries.
“OW!”
“Sorry,” Dustana mutters, “I thought I had it this time.”
The rest of my writing exercises are here. This scene is from August 2022.
Follow me here:
If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:
Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:
Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author prohibits the use of content published on this website for the purposes of training Artificial Intelligence technologies, including but not limited to Large Language Models, without express written permission.
All stories published on this website are works of fiction. Characters are products of the author’s imagination and do not represent any individual, living or dead.
The realmgard.com Privacy Policy can be viewed here.
Realmgard is published by Emona Literary ServicesTM
