Role

Chapter 1

They say there's nothing worse than having a child die. Maybe that's
true, I don't know, but I can tell you that killing a sibling is
no picnic. Like a parent losing a child I'd think, it's the kind of
thing you play in your head over and over and over and even if a
small weak voice keeps saying it wasn't your fault, there was nothing
you could do. That voice may as well be a guppy bumping up against
whale. I once heard a triton talk about some little humans who came
to the coral palace, obviously too young to swim, let alone fight.
It wasn't pretty they said and nothing they could say would dissuade
the kids and sure enough each of them got sizzled by an eel that would
make a grown woman pause. But I digress.

Whoever said that talking about it helps was obviously stealing from
Olin because there really isn't anything that helps. You just learn to
live with it. The real question is how you live with it, what you do
with your life. I had dreams of being a builder, or maybe a sailor,
or even just a baker. Maybe finding a man who liked the look of me,
and I liked the look of him. Maybe have a family. Nice dreams, don't
you think? That's not going to happen, now.

When you're still young enough to be in university, still living with
your family, but old enough to be close to being called an adult, you
don't think anything truly bad can happen. Not news, I know. When your
brother asks you to help him win the girl of his dreams, to chip in with
some silver so he can go to land and buy a love potion, to go with him
and find just the right jewelry and gifts, of course you go. You make
fun of him and give him a hard time, but you go. Of course you go.
And when the well-meaning alchemist brews your potion, when the well-
meaning transmuter gives gills to his heart's desire because the silly
boy went and fell in love with an elf, when somehow these fail, fail
in such horrible and still unclear ways to result in her painful and
slow death, well, you don't understand how it can happen. Nothing that
bad is supposed to happen. We're too young. Life isn't this cruel. But
when something inside your brother just breaks, and he becomes something
new, something ugly, something abhorrent, then you know that life
really is that cruel. Worse. Because now your brother has slaved himself
to the dark knight guild, begging for the means to kill the mages who had
caused his love's life. And because now it's your job to stop him.

Maybe one day I'll tell you how that went down. I'm not in the mood right
now, and honestly I don't think it matters, at least for now. What does
matter I suppose is what happened after, and where I am now. Going home
with the body of your dead brother isn't exactly what they make parades
for, and there was no way I could live there anymore anyway, so shortly
both lost and gained. Lost my hazy plans for life, lost the easy smile