The Mistrunners

The old city of Mythras wakes up every morning to a thick fog that comes in silently through the night. Whether it be a scorching summer or a devastating winter, it spreads and encumbers the city faithfully every morning, enrapturing the buildings in its misty tendrils. Only in the afternoon, when the sun is at its zenith, does the fog release its prey.

The people of the city have long since given up on trying to understand this oppressive companion. The great magicians could never find a reason or source for the fog. It comes and it goes without mercy. Some have said that it is a curse brought down by an elderly man who was betrayed by a family he sought refuge with. Getting around the fog in the mornings was impossible. No wagon could find its way through such impenetrable weather. As a consequence, the city has an ordinance that restricts all movement until the fog is cleared. Even with the best navigators and maps, ordinary people would get lost in the fog and risk falling into the many rivers that cross the city. Every year, a dozen or so children go missing because they did not heed their parents’ warnings.

This severely impacted the commerce and life of the city, but it could not be helped. Even the best technologies failed to push the fog away, so the residents became used to staying inside, preparing meticulously for every morning, and drumming their fingers away as they waited for the fog to arise. Only a few individuals were allowed to navigate the fog. These individuals, named Mistrunners, have the distinction of being allowed to do errands during the fog because they were both blessed  with high levels of intuition and cursed by a severe illness. They are able to navigate the streets even without much sight, but they also could not speak. Born with a corruption that disrupted their ability to communicate verbally or through writing, Mistrunners, although able to understand any human language, were doomed to menial tasks that required very little communication. They are capable of primitive gestures, but they lack the precision and nuance of language that could make them particularly helpful. As a consequence, they became messengers to carry other people’s words.

Mistrunners were officially under the protection of the government, but their protected status was very much debated. Despite being messengers and carriers of urgent news during the fog, they were considered demons by many. The city folk loathed a message from the Mistrunners as it often bore bad news. They became associated with death and misfortune as a natural consequence. Mistrunners were once targeted in the past by vigilantes for being the cause of harm and death to the people, scheming to take down innocent citizens and justifying their heinous deeds through their work and for a while the city government looked away until a rich family found out seven days too late that their grandfather was dying. Afterwards, all Mistrunners were marked with protection runes to protect them from physical harm. What it could not protect them from was, however, the emotional.

Even though the people knew that Mistrunners could not speak language, they often confused this to mean they could not understand language. When faced with a Mistrunner’s news, the people often took their anger and disbelief out on them. The Mistrunners, aware of the weight of the news, could do nothing but look on with empathy. Whether they were angry or frustrated, people could never tell. All seemed to have a knowing but innocent look in their eyes. Some people saw this as pity and became enraged at this. Others saw this with their own pity and stopped their tirades in response. Many observers often wonder why these Mistrunners continue to do their job and show empathy despite the horrendous insults and stigma cast upon them.  While a few locals believe they are simply dumb and incapable of feeling anger to stand up for themselves, some have surmised that their lack of verbal and written language meant their empathy was also highly developed. They saw the clear expressions of emotions on their patron’s faces. They, too, must have felt the same deep void of not being able to properly express such powerful human emotions.

A Mistrunner, once the fog is over, is often found wandering the streets. They are all housed in the same government buildings in the outskirts of the city, but they never seem to want to go back except for sleep. Surprisingly, Mistrunners do not spend much time with their own kind. They struggle to look at each other even. This may be due to shame, but one brave young researcher who spent time studying them through case reports suggested that it was actually because Mistrunners could feel too much of the emotions inside of their kin. Staying away was protective rather than an act of shame. His work was eventually published but it barely got any attention. Most of his colleagues considered this a fringe theory.

Mistrunners often find pleasure in observing human life during the day. They lurk in the dark, trying to hide themselves while watching people buy their food from the market or watching kids play with their toys in the park. Aware of their own stigmatization and showing signs of very high intelligence, they often seem to know when people were observing them from afar, ran when people noticed them, and had positioned themselves in such unique locations that they had access to seamless escape routes to use. The kids, still young and innocent, might run after them in the hopes of being the one to finally communicate with them, but many of them end up lost racing after them. It was considered bad luck to run after a Mistrunner. No one knows where they run to after they escape the eyes of their observers. This is because there have been many ancient tunnels created during the original founding of the city for the sake of secret protection for the old kings and queens of ancient days. Very few people ventured into these tunnels because the entryways were so well hidden and dangerous. It was strange to the people that Mistrunners could navigate these tunnels without evidence of a single trace of harm on them.

Another strange anomaly about these Mistrunners was that they never seem to eat or drink water. No one knows how they manage to survive as most agreed they are human. They were born to parents who often grieved after they realized their child could not communicate. The parents often abandoned them to the state and tried to erase their existence from their memories. From the outside, they looked like ordinary humans, and the only detail that distinguished them from others was their clothes. They all wore the standard black tunics of their profession. Although meant to make them more visible during the fog, it often became associated with the stigma of death and misfortune. No one could understand how humans would not eat or drink, but the state does not reveal if they actually eat or drink in their housing. Heavily guarded and inaccessible to the public, no one has been able to confirm if they are fully capable of consuming human food and drink or not.

The mysteries surrounding the Mistrunners are numerous and none of the city folk are any wiser to the inner-workings of the minds and worlds of these workers. All they know is that they can count on hearing the steps of Mistrunners running through the fog every now and again and hope they do not stop in front of their doors. If they ever do stop, it will either be a message of misfortune or death or it will be because the fog has finally lifted for good . The likelihood of the latter has become implausible. The fog is accepted and incorporated as reality. How can the Mistrunners be any different?