Reckoning - Part II

I left her body there, in the forest. My resolve was set and somewhere in the turmoil of emotions that ravaged my mind, I reasoned that the mutilated corpse was no longer her, could not possibly bear any relation to the person she had been. Perhaps, you may say, burying her would have been the respectful thing to do but I had succumbed to my grief, my fear, my anger. Something inside me had been irrevocably torn asunder… I found Will waiting for me at the farmhouse. The child looked at me in fear, terrified not of what he reasoned had happened, but of me; he looked into my eyes and saw the pain, the turmoil; the madness and he fled. I found them in the Prancing pony. I entered that den of wretched, deprived humanity, bloodied and wild, fearful eyes all turning upon me as I made my way to their table. I sat down with the beasts that had murdered my wife and child… the child, not even from his mother’s womb to see the light of day; cold and dead both… They did not stand a chance against my wrath. I lost myself to the heart of darkness and cut them down with savage brutality. Those that stood in my way; I cut them down in turn and the patrons fled in terror as I became the beast; my only salvation, my only defense against the intolerable pain of my loss, my failure, the unjust tragedy that had befallen the man I left behind that day… And that is the end of my tale. That is who I am. I escaped into the wilds, away from the clutches of the town guard and their ‘justice’. I became an outlaw, a murderer; a monster in the eyes of the people and perhaps that is what I am now… I swore never to utter her name again for fear of evoking her light, her spirit; not just from the agony her memory wreaked upon me but for fear she would see what I had become… Illuriel, my love… They will see; I will show them all…