Role

Chapter 8

Three days it took me to reach the enclave of my wood-elf cousins. I ran without food or rest, stopping for nothing,
urged forward only by my impossible love for Lalleya. I ran without permission to forsake my duties. I did not care.
When I arrived I immediately began questioning, and I learned that she and her company had left a month before I left Darsylon.
With a howl of frustration that was incomprehensible to my cousins, I began to run back toward Darsylon. It was less than half
a day before I collapsed, my body utterly spent.

When I woke I immediately began my search, backtracking the path they must have traveled. I searched for every sign of their
passage but much time had passed according to the wood-elves from when they began their journey home. I moved painfully
slowly focusing my will to search for clues of their passage. It took every ounce of my power to not think of the grim possibilities.

What I found, still haunts both my dreams and waking life. A large circumference of trampling footprints, within the broken shaft
of an arrow, the steel arrowhead bearing the mark of Darsylon fired by a member of the guard escorting Lalleya...
Following what clues I could find, I began tracking footprints which lead toward Udgaard, all but one of them human.

My heart pounded with a fury it had never known as I tracked the party across the plains. Was it Lalleya who was with
the humans? Was she still alive? Was she hurt? What was their intent? Questions reeled in my consciousness which I had
no answer for and I pressed forward. When the moon was at its pinnacle in the night sky of the fourteenth day of my search
I came across a camp of four tents. I knew it was the party I sought, from the make of the tents and the fashion of their camp
it was clear that those sleeping within were the humans who had overtook Lalleya's company.

In complete silence I searched each of the tents, only to find humans asleep by the pairs. There was no sign of my beloved.
At this point I can only say a mad vengeance overtook me, nearly unaware of my own actions I began to slaughter each human
silently as they slept, slitting their throats each in turn with my long mithril hunting dagger. As I entered the final tent, I murdered
the first human as I had the rest and moved toward the final sleeping form before me.

As the blade of my dagger pressed upon the human's neck, he awoke, his eyes wide.

"Tell me where she is and this will not be painful."