AUTHORS NOTES:
Archer1eye - Could Shard tame a warg? Perhaps, possibly likely, but they make terrible pets. Shard would more likely wake up to the warg chewing her arm off than piddling on the carpet. Her blessing only affects the creatures native to that forest (and not exactly ALL of the creatures), there will be many many random encounters in the future. Oooh... Shard CAN manage a physical form (she does so for Sharein, after all)
Drouppi - Deduction my dear Watson. He didn't know that there *were* pups as such, nor exactly where they were, but deduced that they would run back that way and there must have been something to have encouraged their actions... he simply followed a fairly well worn path (track check passed!) Oooho... Wait for the end of the chapter to see Pandora!
Slyksylva - He's hard to fool that Malkarov, but also a manchild... what a weird combination.
Chapter 45
30th Day of Early Spring 768 n.c
Malkarov woke me about noon, I hadn't even woken when he returned and he must have let me sleep. It was a fitful sleep though and not very refreshing; full of vivid dreams of dead kobolds and a recreation of the events the previous night but with the chief's spear piercing me through the chest instead of bouncing away off my Shield. Malkarov woke me just as I had collapsed onto my knees in agony, the scaly devil's tooth filled maw about to bite my face.
"Oh!" I exclaimed when I opened my eyes, relieved to see his face right there in front of mine, "I'm so sorry, I must have fallen asleep!"
"That's alright Sharein," he said with a smile, "something tells me that you were up quite late last night. Would you like to freshen up and then bring down a couple of hot drinks?"
"Of course!" I said, hopping up out of the seat and heading upstairs to use my in-house. I set off some water into the bath and splashed my face to wake me up a little more and clean the gunk from my eyes. Once I felt a little better I went up to the kitchen to make two mugs using Malkarov's favourite herb blend, I brought them back down and handed one to Malkarov then sat down back into my arm chair.
"Thank you Sharein," Malkarov said and then began, "right then. Why don't you tell me what you got up to last night?"
I blushed a little and the feeling of guilt returned, but I launched into a recounting of the events of the previous night (excluding of course any reference to Shard). Malkarov nodded in a self-satisfied way when I told him about using Elemental Bolt to kill the first kobold warrior.
"I remembered the way the other kobolds looked when I saw that body," he interrupted, "that's how I knew you were responsible."
"But," I said confused, "what happened to the other kobold then. The chief was the only one there?"
"I picked it up and dragged it into the forest a little ways," he replied, "I just hoped that the townspeople wouldn't go looking too far. Continue though, I'd like to know what happened after that."
I continued my story and stopped it just prior to my discovery of Illith.
"Well then," Malkarov said, then asked, "would you have done anything differently?"
I thought about it for a moment, "No, I don't think I would have. Everything seemed to work out, perhaps if I had scared them enough they might have fled but I get the feeling that the kobold leader might have been acting to ensure it's control over the tribe."
"Good, good," Malkarov nodded, "it's important to go over the way you handled situations and think about how you might have improved the outcome, it ensures that you know better next time you are put into a similar situation. Now, why did you do it and should you have?"
"What do you mean should I have?" I asked.
"You are always put into situations where you can do something. Where you can fix a problem, especially when you have access to the magic that we have, but the question most everybody seems to forget about before the doing is 'should I do this?'" Malkarov explained, "just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should do something."
I thought about that for a moment before saying, "just because I can use magic to fetch things for me instead of standing up and getting it myself doesn't mean that I should?"
"Exactly!" Malkarov exclaimed, "but why?"
"If I use magic to do everything for me then I might exhaust myself?" I posited.
"Yes, that's true," Malkarov agreed, "or you might get close to exhaustion and something will happen that will require the use of more magic? If you merely summoned everything to you, you might get quite a bit larger and get out of shape, without the movement you might get short on breath after a short walk?"
"Okay," I said, with a better understanding, "well then. Why I did it was that I couldn't let the people of Easthaven kill all of those innocent female kobolds and the young ones. The children in town didn't have a say in the vote to attack the kobolds and there were very few women present at the meeting, maybe those kobold young and females didn't have a voice in their attack on our town?"
"Yes," Malkarov said, nodding, "I agree. I said much the same in the meeting and your reaction made me wonder even then if you might not take matters into your own hands. Now… should you have done so?"
"If I didn't do it, then the townspeople might have murdered all of the kobolds," I suggested, "one or two of them might have been injured or even killed in the attack?"
"What about the kobolds?" He asked, "what do you know of them?"
"Some might have fled?" I suggested and he nodded for me to continue, "they might have found other kobolds and brought them back to get revenge?"
"Yes, yes," he exclaimed excitedly, "a never ending circle of hatred. They attack us because we attack them because they attack us because we attack them," he repeated drawing a circle in the air with his finger pausing at the top of bottom with each 'us' and 'them'.
"It's better to put a stop to that sooner rather than later," he continued, "of course with some races like orcs or goblins there is often a bloodlust there and a desire to kill that overrides any sensible resolution and they must be attacked straight away, without hesitation."
I nodded in understanding.
"All right then," he said, "why don't we walk down to the Pig and Wheelbarrow to see if Missus Rose has anything good for lunch?"
"That sounds like a fantastic idea," I replied and both stood up to return our mugs to the kitchen and then to head out to the Inn.
On the way, once we had crossed over the bridge I spotted a small blackbird that had been killed, resting on the ground next to the path. In my mind flashed the body of the kobold that I had killed with Elemental Bolt and the bodies of the kobolds that I had killed during the attack on the village and the bodies of the kobolds that I'd killed during the raid on our farm. All of them, all of the death, all of the dead. I blinked to get rid of them, to force my mind onto something else but it didn't work.
It had worked all of the other times before, when something made me randomly think of the lives that I had taken, "why doesn't it now?" I whispered to myself.
"Sharein?" I heard Malkarov shout but I didn't look up as I was suddenly distracted by the salty taste in my mouth.
'What was that?' I thought, 'tears?'
My vision went dark and I realised with a start that Malkarov had taken me up in a hug and I was sobbing into his shoulder. The visions of kobolds had receded and I could feel more clearly once again.
"There there," I heard Malkarov say, and could feel him rubbing my back gently.
I lifted my head, "I'm sorry," I apologised.
Malkarov let me go and handed me a handkerchief to clean my face on, which I gratefully accepted and used.
"There's nothing to apologise for," Malkarov said, "what was wrong though?"
"I was just thinking about all of the kobolds that I'd killed and how I killed them," I explained, "I don't even know why… I mean, I saw the dead bird down here…" I pointed to the blackbird beside the bath, "and it all just came up."
"Ah," he sagely replied, "it happened to me also once, after I helped track down some bandits that were praying on travellers."
"But why?" I asked.
"It's too much, too quickly," he explained, "we know that it's wrong to kill people, but what about when the people need killing? It takes a lot to override that restriction inside of us to do something that we know we shouldn't. We don't feel it for animals and I've never felt it for kobolds, goblins or orcs to be honest. But for you, it's your first time and at a guess I'd say that you just haven't been thinking about it?"
"Pretty much," I said, "I've been occasionally thinking about it, but I've made myself think of something else by blinking away the visions."
"You've probably been treating killing kobolds like killing animals," he explained, "we generally don't feel bad about killing a lamb or a chicken for instance, but with the way you interacted with that kobold child last night I guess that you are starting to see them more like people?"
I nodded sadly, "How do I go on, how can I keep doing this?"
He sighed, "You just need to put it behind you and continue on, that's all there is to it. You will likely see some truly horrible things in this world, things that will keep you awake for nights on end… But you will be able to put it behind you, you will because you must, because there is no other option. Eventually, you sleep again. But it's important to know that it's normal, completely. If you didn't feel anything, then I might worry. I've known one person like that, an assassin who could sneak into an enemy camp and kill indiscriminately. Human or orc, it didn't matter to them. We spoke quite frankly one night about this sort of thing and they disclosed to me that they were aware that they were different from everybody else, that they knew there was something broken inside of them. They just didn't feel... at all."
"Why do you keep calling them; they?" I asked, confused.
Malkarov laughed, "That's what they asked me to refer to them as. As an assassin they would dress as a man or as a woman to infiltrate the place where their target was and one day I asked them exactly what they were; a man or a woman? They said that they were born a woman, but never felt any attachment to being a woman, or a man. They said that they were neither, which made them a perfect assassin. I asked them if all assassins were the same and they laughed at me, 'No, just me.' they said."
"Are there many assassins?" I asked.
"The Druaga-darg, the Brotherhood of Druaga, the Allarthian God of Death," Malkarov explained, "are the guild that they belong to. I don't know how many assassins there are, but you can take out a contract with them or you can pay them a large sum for a hire for a period of time. This one, the Baron had hired them to take out a number of enemies including a bandit lord and some orc warriors."
We were interrupted by Father Mattias and Sister Tera walking over the bridge.
"Malkarov and Sharein!" He called cheerfully when he saw us, "How good to see you both. Sister Tera and I were just heading over to the Pig and Wheelbarrow for some lunch, would you care to join us?"
Malkarov looked to me, silently asking a question that I assumed to be "are you alright with that?" I nodded in return.
"Of course!" Malkarov exclaimed, "We would love to have lunch with you both."
And so we continued our eventful journey towards lunch accompanied by the Priest and Priestess of Mithras.
