Chapter 1: Guilt
I was always bad at that one part of Templar training. We must remain emotionally detached, it was my folly and what made me almost fail the training. I passed though and it was on that very night that I was celebrating along with the others. We had drank a lot in the tavern, enough to kill a horse one of the barmaids said, but we wanted to forget. Forget the horrors that awaited us and the horror of training, the pain we endured would fade away, or so we hoped.
We were singing loudly, loud enough to wake up the inhabitants of Redcliffe Castle, in fact I don’t think anyone in Redcliffe slept that night. We laughed and joked as the beer stained the floors, much to the barkeepers dismay who promptly tried to throw us out. “Oh come on old man,” Markus, a friend of mine, shouted, “We’ve just become fully fledged Templar’s, you think you can deprive us of celebrating?”
I laughed along with the rest of them but the bar maid seemed extremely angry, especially with me. She came up to me and said, almost whispered, “What would your mother say if she saw you now Cristof, a fully fledged hater of everything she was.” she tutted and dropped a huge pint of beer onto me. “Sober up you idiot, you’ve got a lot of work awaiting you.”
“Bah, leave him alone you old witch, Mary he’s been living with that guilt his whole life he deserves one night to forget!” Markus roared, he always got angry when he was drunk.
“Markus, I have watched you grow up, helped you in fact but do not think that at any moment I couldn’t end it.” she said, there was no emotion in her voice and she looked deadly serious. The whole room went silent and the colour drained from Markus’s face.
The silence was broken when the door was slammed open, a figure stood there his long hazel hair flowing in the wind and stroked his short beard. Cullen. He was a the best of all the recruits and the second of my best friends. “Cristof, we must talk.” he said and noticing I didn’t rise, commandingly added, “Outside.” I rose slowly and felt the eyes of every man in the room watching as I left.
Outside the weather was awful, a huge fog had sunk over Redcliffe coupled with the rain and thunder it was quite an eerie scene. Cullen turned and carefully shut the door. “Have I got news for you,” he smiled and I could feel the excitement oozing off him. I stared expectantly. “Oh come on, at least try to guess.”
“I don’t know,” I rolled my eyes, sarcastically I retorted “You’ve been promoted to knight-commander?”
“After this a promotion may be in sight for both of us,” he was literally shaking with excitement. “I’ve found something, a, a Malificar and if we are the ones to kill it, we’ll be hailed as heroes. My eyes lit up, a Malificar here? If it was true and we managed to kill it, we would almost certainly be promoted and the townsfolk would look upon us as they did the heroes of the legends. It could be my way, my way to redeem myself. The smiled faded from my face as I remembered the pain, the pain of that one night. The night my world almost ended. Cullen seemed to read my thoughts, “It wasn’t your fault,” he said sympathetically, “and this could be your way of redeeming yourself in the eyes of those who blame you.”
“My thoughts exactly,” and we both grinned like young school students. Cullen took off a huge pack on his back, “Here, I brought your armour and sword.” I quickly heaved my heavy armour on and brandished the sword, it was a gift from my father an ex-grey warden it glowed with a strange silver light which, apparently made it able to kill Darkspawn not that, that was much good against a Malificar. “Well where is this creature?” I asked as we began to walk out of town.
“It was spotted just outside the village, you know the small wooded area?” he spoke quickly, “it has made camp there.” A rush of adrenaline made me run towards the woods. Cullen could barely keep up with me but soon I regretted my eagerness as I tired from moving in the huge suit of armour.
As we approached the woods we could hear the close howls of wolves and I begin to get worried. “Are we not better waiting till morning?” I looked up at the huge glowing moon that illuminated the path in front of us, “The wolves might attack us and I heard that Malificars gain power from the moon.”
“By tomorrow it’ll be gone and don’t be stupid that’s the sort of tale your mother says to scare yo…
He stopped noticing how the word mother pained me. “I’m sorry,” he added.
“You really need to stop blaming yourself for her death, she wasn’t killed by you, you couldn’t have stopped that demon.” Tears stung my eyes and I tried to blink them back, this Malificar was the sort that attracted demons in the first place, for all I knew it could have been the very one that created that abomination. I would kill it. I had decided.
We entered the forest and I felt a chill down my spine, the whole place had a feel of mystery and the tree’s themselves seemed angry that we had entered. In the distance we could see a soft glow of a lantern, it must be where the creature is camped, I thought. We both quickly headed towards it and I drew my long sword which helped illuminate the dark path. The tree’s stood like soldiers in a line, stiff and lifeless.
As we got closer to the light the thicker the woodland in front of us, the land itself was quite strange there was hardly any woods in the Hinterlands so this place had an especially mystical aura about it. From the thicket beside us I heard a noise, a screech that made my skin crawl. Cullen looked at me and then gulped, “I’ll go see what that was, you go ahead.” he was still fearless even in the face of a screech like that.
I headed onwards, trying not to look back as Cullen descended into the thicket. I continued walking until cursing I noticed that the path went straight into a huge overgrown thicket. I certainly couldn’t go through it with my armour on, that was for certain, but that made increasingly vulnerable and the thought scared me considering it was likely I would be ambushed by wolves at any moment. I began to try to control my breathing as I slowly piece by piece took of my massive armour. Finally when all pieces lay on the ground, I stood their in my soft leather clothes and began to traverse the huge thorny bushes.
I moved quickly through and the thorns stung and cut my flesh but I continued to move. My arm was badly injured and I felt extremely faint by the time I was but half way through. I began to get increasingly light headed by the time I finally got out of the thicket. I noticed something then that changed everything I ever thought about Apostates. In the centre of the clearing which I had reached was a house, a very ordinary village house made of wood, it had but one window and it was through that window which I felt compelled to look.
I spied a young elven woman dancing, which was quite a strange sight normally, but she was dancing with a little girl and laughing joyfully with her. I was shocked, this was the Malificar, the evil creature? With that one thought in my mind I collapsed from blood loss.
I awoke moments later, covered in bandages, inside that very home I had been spying into. The young elf was the first sight I saw, “Those wounds would normally be fatal but luckily, I am far from normal.” she winked. “Now my child, if you want to return to your village you can you have had enough rest but it wouldn’t be advisable at this time of night, what were you doing out there anyway?”
“I, I must warn you, Templar’s here to kill you.” I panted, she looked at me with disbelief.
“Then they know,” she turned to the young child that had been shying away behind her, “We will have to leave soon my darling.”
I got up quickly and grabbed the sword from the bedside table. “I will have to go now to, I am very grateful for what you have done.” I whispered, and then I felt the presence of someone else enter the house.
“Ah, Cristof you have finally come to end the life of this thing,” Cullen’s voice never sounded so horrid, I never thought I would dread to hear it, “Well since you found this woman you may have the honour of killing her, - he pointed at the elf - and don’t you think your magic will help you, I’ve already disenchanted you.”
The young elf looked at me with her big eyes and I felt extremely guilty, I had brought this man here and now I was being forced to kill her mother. I gripped my sword tightly, “Well go on then kill her,” the woman had tears in her eyes and turned to her daughter, “I, I am sorry,” she whispered and I brought the sword down upon her. A scream followed. The little girl looked at me with shock and horror, “and the girl.” Cullen sneered, I turned holding the
bloody sword.
“I will not kill a child!” I shouted, “We should bring her back to the chantry she is probably no threat and she could become a priest.”
“I suppose,” Cullen looked quite mad, “Bring her back then, we shall ask the Revered Mother what to do.”
(I’m going to end this part here as it’s getting extremely long,)
EDIT: Formatted it properly.
Modifié par Drake_2009, 07 août 2010 - 01:33 .
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