Role

Chapter 3

To care, or not to care--Maybe that is a question.
Added Sun Aug 24 07:40:49 2008 at level 37:

Torture. The assassin asked her about torture. Malsius, a little bitty bloody
servant of a bigger blooder bloody lady mentioned it after killing her. She,
Erelia, sat on the ground with her legs crossed in the middle of the
Blackclaw outpost. "What are your fears?" he asked, from the shadows, like
most assassins do. She had never thought about that before. Fear.That little
tingle on the back of a child's neck when he heads to bed, the chill a farmer
gets when he smells smoke near his house, the jolt of realization when an Elf
notices an orc hurtling air-bound towards him. Had she ever feared anything?
She remember when she was younger that she had always slept fine in the dark,
witnessed other races and cultures with ease, and could calmly walk through a
spider-filled forest. The assassin, as bloodthirsty as he was, obviously just
wanted to hold her up longer so he could attempt another assassination.but
it was a good question. What did she fear?

While thinking on it, the assassin continued to prod for more
information, likely wanting to know his prey better. "What if your family was
tortured?", he asked her. Erelia took that thought into her head. Her mother,
tied down to a table, screaming. The entire room dark, soft light
illuminating the table, grunting noises coming from the rugged Duergar
standing near it, his blade in hand. Slowly grinning, he slides the blade
across her mother's stomach, cutting it open with no proof other than the
responding blood pockets swelling to the surface. The screaming continues to
get louder, sounding less like a cry for help, and more for death. The image
continued in Erelia's head for a small while, embellishing itself with detail
and gore, partially Erelia's making. Zoning back to the assassin somewhere
near here, Erelia began giggling about the image. How overdone it was, how
dramatic...Oh scream for pain, scream for death! She'd screamed for ale
herself before, why was this any more important? The assassin didn't seem to
get the joke, of course, and considered it morbid that she should laugh.
"Don't you care?" the assassin said with a frown. "Well, if we cared about
everything we should would have a lot less fun, wouldn't we?", Erelia
responded, beaming. Her response wasn't met with words, but rather a quick
dagger to the stomach. Giggling, she fell backwards into a pool of her own
blood, her last senses being the sight of the sky, the smell of clean fela,
the small taste of blood in her mouth, and the last touch of a dagger in her
stomach. "Silly", she thought "I'll never digest the dagger at this rate."
She recognized the futility of digesting metal, but it seemed her stomach
tried anyways....Funny way that worked. Her vision faded and was replaced with a
ghostly view of the small monolith in the open plains. "Oh well, I suppose
I'll go haunt a house". She floated off back to her corpse, thinking on her
newest revelation about caring.

Why do it?
That's the question.