Eroforth

The days go by, the celebration of the Captain's daughter and her Dalesman draws closer. I am certain this occasion will fill my coffers just nicely if it goes as planned.

I suppose you are half-expecting to read that there has been another significant jump in time given the content of the last page but I must dissappoint you. I am here in my study, quill in hand.

What have I gone and done? It is as if all sanity left me, took on a form of it's own and uttered the words I have so carefully tried to conceal. It was as if I were on the outside, watching this unfold through a window, time slowed, agonizingly slow, and I hammered my fists upon thickened glass, trying to break through and stop the madness that was unraveling afore me. What was I thinking of? What possessed me?

The wisdom the Dalesman had shared with me played on my mind for days. I had left his house both disappointed with the fact he would not intervene and ask Taala to change her mind about letting me attend their post wedding celebration. I was also utterly disappointed with myself, even Eroforth seemed to detect that I was growing ever more attached to my childhood friend. We were not children any more, but men and women who had both seen our fair share of trials and tribulations, and I was becoming more and more moved by his.

Despite my best efforts, my disappointment at being excluded from Taala and Eroforth's wedding feast still occupied my thoughts. What had I done to deserve this? ah, she is a cold one that Taala, but her husband is not. I do not claim to know him well, but I liked him instantly the first time I met him, and this was what? Perhaps the third time I'd met him?

My intent to leave our relationship in the past did not go so well. I did call upon the Variag after a chance encounter in the Inn and I awoke in a strange bed. Since she put to voice my fears through observation I find my desire to retreat grow stronger. I have been spending my days simply surveying my operation and keeping a closer eye upon my guardsmen and caravan drivers as they make their local shipments and me turning up unannounced as I have without warning seems to have forced them to up their game.

Left to the sands at such a young age as the Variag describes it, abandoned by her mother whom her master later bid her to murder in order to prove her worth and her loyalty. It is perhaps unsurprising that the dark skinned beauty I have come to know is so cold. Unfeeling. And yet sympathy stays my blade. I have for long enough in the past played judge, jury and executioner when the darkness took me. At first hunting down individuals myself. Then in the hiring of a murderer I thought I could control when my face had begun to be too well known to do so effectively.