The young boy was used to being in a violent household; he knew nothing else in his 7 years of life.

After being tucked into bed by his mum, and left to be claimed by the unconsciousness of night, he would hear the screams, and occasionally the distinct sound of one human striking another.

Sometimes he would fall asleep in a peaceful interlude, only to be awakened by another round of arguing or the sound of a physical blow landing, which were inevitably followed by the sounds of his mother sobbing.

What was unusual was his mother doing much in response; her husband’s weight doubled her own, and he dwarfed her in height. Lashing back only invited a more forceful response.

On this night, the boy quietly climbed out of bed, and stole down the stairway to peek around the corner, taking care to be invisible to the warring spouses. He watched intently as his mother tried to leave the room, heading away from where he was hiding. His father took two steps, reached out with his long arms, and pulled her back, spinning her around and following this with a backhand across her face, screaming that he would brook no insubordination by some measly wench in his home.

In that very moment, the boy shifted his weight off of a foot that had fallen asleep, generating a feeling of pins and needles in his lower leg. As he shifted, the stair squeaked slightly but audibly in relief.

His father, momentarily distracted by the sound emanating from the hall and stairway, turned his head away. With this distraction, the boy’s mum spun under and out of her husband’s grip, and ran to a credenza against the far wall of the room. She quickly pulled the middle drawer open, pulling out a loaded weapon, taking aim at the vicious man’s head. She warned her husband to back off and to leave their home, but he refused to listen, moving relentlessly towards her, laughing at her sheer audacity of thinking she could threaten him, that she would think herself capable of using the weapon in her hand.

He moved slower and more methodically than the wild abandon exhibited when he was in the midst of inflicting a beating upon his wife, suggesting he knew she had some power to inflict her own harm upon him. And so he coupled the physical caution with shifting to an approach of verbal aggression and taunting, uttering every comment that might devalue the suddenly and unexpectedly in control wife, comments that were fuelled in part by his substance-influenced mind.

At about 3 metres away from her he stopped, and asked her to hand over the weapon. “I will leave you alone if you hand it over. If you do not, you will not live to see tomorrow.” speaking with bravado the circumstances suggested should not be there in that moment, he was still trying to find a way to control and batter his favourite prey.

He stopped, taking time to observe her, look for weakness, for any vulnerability, for his chance to move and strike.

For her part, the boy’s mother wisely kept her unblinking eyes focused on the long proven threat looming before her.

All at once, the man saw opportunity and lunged at her. As he closed the last several feet between them, her mind sent a signal to her right index finger telling the muscles within to contract and curl the finger inward. As the finger honoured the command from her mind, the weapon trigger reached a critical point and moved beyond, discharging with a bright flash.

The weapon fired wide, sending the still all too real threat into uncontrollable laughter. He  was still moving forward; at two steps left, he knew he had her.

He was mistaken.

Quickly realising as she fired her first shot was firing wide; she found an incredible reserve of strength within. She refocused, and with lightning quick reflexes her husband would swear to his grave she did not possess, adjusted her aim and fired the weapon right at the small space between his eyes and above the bridge of his nose.

Her attacker fell backward, an almost indescribable expression combining elements of shock, horror, and pure hatred upon his face, an expression now frozen forever in time. Her shot snatched his life away before the penetrating force ever touched the backside of his head.

The young boy sitting on the steps watching this unfold sprung from his staircase perch, clearing the final four steps in one giant, downward, leap. He ran into the room where life had just been lost, his mind now taken with grief. It was more than grief; in fact, it was a combination of grief mixed with outrage. Outrage that his very own mother murdered his father.

Turning toward where his mother had slumped down against a wall, her own emotions spent moments before, her body battered to the point of needing immediate medical assistance, young Brellian pronounced his intended hatred for his mother, and by intended extension, all women on their world.