Role

Chapter 8

It was a great day. Tiamat had fallen. After centuries, Deiramor had
completed the greatest quest of his life and fulfilled his promise to
himself and his Lord. The dragon quest was complete, and what a quest it
had been.

It was a great day... and it was not to last.

Putting into words the sensation of impending danger was hard. Already on
high alert from battling the Scion, Deiramor reacted with explosive speed
when his senses thrummed in warning. His staff parried aside an axe, struck
five times in the blink of an eye...

And the ivory and gold clad form of the peacekeeper that had lunged for him
dropped lifelessly to the ground. In a cruel twist of irony, the
lightforging crumbled into dust scant moments later, leaving Deiramor's
hands empty as he stared in shock upon the corpse.

Deiramor stood there for hours, staring in horror at the body. What had
happened. He was no criminal? Had not raised hand against any that the
peacekeeper was charged to guard? What had he done to offend the poor man
so that he would think to lash out at him without word or warning?

In a daze Deiramor took the body to the Peacekeeper Commander, with a
promise to return for a proper burial and to speak with the family as soon
as the Commander could find time.

His discussions with Lord Korsgaard and Laurandt did not bring relief from
the tighteness in his chest or dull the memory of that single moment of
horror. They did however bring him clarity, and purpose.

First, he had to learn from what happened, not only for his own sake and
the sake of the innocents that would be harmed, but for his fellow Maran
and Acolytes. It was a hard lesson. A terrible lesson, and Deiramor thought
it might be the one lesson he had ever learned that he would rather have
remained ignorant of.

Second, he needed to do what he could do for the man's family. They would
hate him, and he could not blame them. If Deiramor could not forgive
himself for the act, how could he expect them to? But he must still do what
he could for them, for he had wronged them terribly.