(Pronunciation: Just the way it looks -- like the start of the word "GLAd," running into the word "AXE," running into the word "STICKS". Stress is on the first syllable.)
Glaxtiks saw his parents killed in the street by town enforcers when he wasn't yet in his teens. His father's only crimes were the Fire Coast equivalents of petty theft, grand theft, robbery, various assaults with deadly weapons, battery, murder, (he considered it to be "accidental death," not having intended for the man to bleed to death of his wounds) and (fatally) resisting arrest when he was finally run down. He had never considered himself a public menace: Just a man without a job doing what he had to do. The authorities, those of his victims who survived, and the friends and family of the deceased, might have taken a slightly different view of the matter. Glaxtiks' mother hadn't been much involved in criminal activity at all, except for reaping its limited fruits, and -- at the end -- attacking the enforcers, with intent to kill, as she saw them fighting her husband to his death. Glaxtiks knew he could do nothing, and so he stayed in the shadows and watched. Another child would have sworn vengeance, but Glaxtiks was more concerned at the time with tactical matters of survival - he had every expectation, however false, that he too would be killed if the enforcers found him, and wouldn't have liked the alternative they did intend if he found out. One of his primary sources of food and shelter was gone, and he knew he would have to work harder than ever to keep meat on his bones in the future; his parents had done little to raise him, and seemed to forget about his existence as often as not as he grew older; increasingly, for years, he'd been more or less looking after himself.
Glaxtiks knew the local gangs of thugs and young troublemakers, and steered clear of them as asiduously as he avoided the town's enforcers. He didn't like the looks of them, and he didn't like to live under anyone's authority but his own. His gutter's-eye-view of the world suggested that human life consisted of purposeless violence -- like his father's against his mother when he was drunk -- lies, cheating, betrayals, and structures of authority designed to crush the compliant for the enrichment of those at the top. Animals could be trusted, when they weren't broken and ruined by a human master -- not to be his friends by nature, but to respond to him in a fashion he understood -- but humans could not be trusted at all.
Glaxtiks was entirely unlike his father. He abhorred drunkenness and the pointless violence to which it led, but welcomed violence as a means to any end he deemed worthwhile. His father had avoided fighting anyone who could be expected to fight back, except in the last necessity -- even Glaxtiks had ceased to be a target a year or two before his father's death -- but Glaxtiks willingly did anything and everything necessary to acquire what he needed to survive. As he grew older and more capable, and started doing his larcenous "work" less often, with more dangerous and lucrative targets -- he was coming to understand that falling into habits, and continuous risk exposure, brought greater risks of getting caught than any short-term ones he might undertake head-on -- and he sometimes needed to kill in order to open an avenue of entry or escape, or to eliminate a witness, he killed without a qualm or a second thought. He was skilled and clever and lucky, and he had reliable friends: With meat as his introduction and careful work after that, he taught the stray dogs of his town's streets to take him as one of their own, and an alpha male at that. He befriended other strays as well -- cats and rodents and racoons and every other wild animal he found sneaking about the city at night -- and though they weren't as loyal as the dogs, and couldn't be trained to make useful diversions and the like, he won their trust, so they wouldn't react to his presence, and by watching their behavior, he could tell when other humans were nearby, long before his own senses could detect them -- though knowing when and where to look helped him train those senses to a fine pitch as well. Unlike his father, he was an utterly cold-blooded killer, who would refrain from murderering a man for his purse only when he thought the risk too great for the gain -- and unlike his father, he was always master of himself, and never, except in self-defense, hurt anyone he loved.
There were girls, but his feelings never lasted -- he would long for one for a while, holding her in his heart, and follow her in secret, hoping to defend her in case the need arose, but also watching her, making sure that he could trust her, always, always, learning some reason that he could not, and turning away from her forever. Still, he did not blame the objects of his brief infatuations for failing to live up to his hopes and desires; he had loved them, and if anything, to Glaxtiks, that was his fault. So there were girls he would not harm ... there were girls, and there was the child, whose story must wait for another tale.
